"You'd vote for Murgatroyd," yelled McGrath, "you know you would--you couldn't help yourself."
"But I ain't an assemblyman," he answered; and in the next breath he added: "There's somebody at that there door."
McGrath crossed to the door and opened it; and Challoner, Mrs. Challoner and Shirley Bloodgood entered.
McGrath, who remembered them well, and who knew Challoner especially well since the hospital investigation, bowed low, and announced that the prosecutor was out.
Shirley stepped forward and said determinedly:--
"He's expected any moment," said Mixley from across the room.
"We'll wait," chorused the three visitors.
McGrath bowed again and went back to his seat near the window.
Presently Miriam turned to Shirley, and said regretfully:--
"You ought not to have come, Shirley. Perhaps you had better not stay."
Shirley looked narrowly at Challoner and at his wife. After a moment she inquired:--
"Yes, yes, of course we do," Miriam assured her, "but you don't want to stay, do you?"
"Indeed I do," was the girl's quick answer.
"What good will it do," sighed Miriam; but, nevertheless, she found herself clinging to the girl as she did in every crisis when Shirley happened to be on hand.
"Do you suppose I'd miss being in at the death?" said Shirley after a moment.
"Yes, I could see him hanged, drawn and quartered!" she exclaimed, with mock ferociousness.
Meanwhile, Mixley and McGrath were still holding their desultory conversation upon the situation of the day.
"They said," Mixley remarked to the other, "that the chief was politically dead after he had blackjacked the organisation; maybe he was--maybe he is, but he fights all right."
"He certainly cleaned things up," admitted McGrath, feeling of his biceps. "We helped him, eh?"
"He didn't do a thing to Cradlebaugh's," mused Mixley.
"Well, anyhow," said Mixley, "if he hasn't got the machine and the brewers and the twenty-five-thousand-dollar assemblymen back of him, he's got the people, all right. They know he's honest."
"Oh, yes, he's honest, and they know it," assented the other. "But hang it! The people can't get him into the Senate. It takes more than the people--it takes good money to do that. At least," he added emphatically, "it always has, up to date."