"I'll go get the drafts at once, Charlie, and I'm mighty much obliged to you," he said, with gratitude in his voice.
Norton's smile was one of deep satisfaction.
"That's all right, Randolph. You know I want to do anything I can for you."
Randolph was starting for his room when Haines and Cullen turned sharply around the corner of the hotel desk. Again Bud and the young Southerner accidentally collided.
"Where are you going? Can't you look out?" blurted Langdon.
"Oh, it is, is it?" irritably replied Randolph, who as the "young marse" had been accustomed to considerable deference on the plantation. "Well, take that," he angrily cried, aiming a savage swing at Haines.
The reporter's athletic training proved of ready service. Dodging under the clenched fist, he turned dexterously, seized young Langdon's outstretched wrist and bent the arm down over his (Haines') shoulder as though to throw the young attacker with the wrestler's "flying mare." Langdon was helpless, as Haines had also secured his free hand, but instead of completing the "throw" the reporter walked away with his foe held securely on his back--to put him to bed, a kindly service, in view of Randolph's mental state.
From across the lobby Charles Norton had watched Randolph's discomfiting encounter with Haines with amusement.
"Now that I've got the young fellow to sew up his old man's money in Altacoola land," he chuckled, "reckon Senator William H. Langdon won't see anything wrong with that same noble tract of universe when he comes to vote for the naval base. Senator Stevens will be pleased."
As Bud Haines returned from young Langdon's room, where he had left the latter in bed, with a towel filled with cracked ice around his head, he saw two familiar figures standing in a secluded corner of the lobby. They were talking earnestly in a low voice.
"Whew!" whistled the newspaper man. "It must be something important that brings both the boss of the Senate and Stevens of Mississippi here."
"Good-afternoon, Haines. How are you?" Senator Stevens said, cordially, as, looking up, he saw the newspaper man approaching. "Senator Peabody, you know Haines, don't you? The brightest young correspondent in Washington."
Senator Peabody of Pennsylvania, the leading power in the upper house, was a man of commanding character and of strong personality. The fact he used these attributes to advance in the Senate the financial interests of himself, of Standard Steel and other commercial organizations met with very little protest in Washington. That he deserved the title frequently used in referring to him, "boss of the Senate," none would deny who had knowledge of the inner workings of the Senate and the various committees.