A hat in the radio ring

“The radio’s playin’ hell with politics!”

With this sententious remark, a long speech for Boss Quaid, the big fellow, who had just taken the end seat at the speakers’ table, glared at the microphone opposite the toastmaster’s seat halfway down the long alley of snowy linen. His pale little eyes betrayed secret anxiety through their slits of fat.

“How so?” asked the lean, dapper gentleman at Quaid’s right.

“Why, it’s this way, Mr. Forsythe,” broke in the rat-faced little man at the boss’s left. “Take this dinner tonight, for instance. In the old days when we pulled a keynote dinner like this, that was to set the pace for the campaign, we could pretty much keep it bottled up. We had the newspaper boys fixed, and if anybody made the wrong turn, or started puttin’ tacks on the pike, maybe we could keep it out of the papers.

“Anyhow, we could get it toned down, or if worse came to worse, have a statement of our own printed along with it. Now everybody has a radio and gets the gas right hot from the cylinder. He should worry about what the papers say next morning.”

“Barney’s right. They don’t even go to meetings any more,” mourned the boss.

“Unless they’re hand-picked, like this one,” Barney chuckled.

“Barney’s right,” the boss echoed the chuckle.

Barney Fogarty, the big fellow’s secretary, was as loquacious by nature and profession as his chief was silent. But his speech was the thought of Quaid, O. K.’d by the big fellow’s guttural “Barney’s right.”

“I take it I better be careful what I say tonight,” the elegant Forsythe murmured with mock anxiety, as if his utterances were to be his own spontaneous outbursts.

“If you want the boss to get you nominated for Governor, you had,” Barney laughed. “As long as you’re cagy about the State power proposition, it doesn’t matter a whoop what else you say. It’s some dark horse popping up here tonight that we’re afraid of. Every yahoo in the State will know it as soon as we do.”

“Barney’s right,” Boss Quaid sighed again. “People hear too damn much these days.”

Boss Quaid’s domain had for twenty years been practically a one-party State, dominated by the machine which Quaid till lately held tight in his fat hand. But lately he had felt his power slipping a little with this ominous growth of modern publicity. Walls had developed too many ears.

Now on the eve of the county conventions he was not quite sure he would get enough hand-picked delegates to dominate the coming State convention which would nominate a Governor this year. The question of State control of water power on which the boss saw fit to hedge was threatening internal disruption.

To-morrow was county convention day. He was hoping that Forsythe’s speech at this dinner tonight would swing sentiment in enough doubtful counties to give him a majority of pledged delegates when the State convention opened.

But he was uncomfortably conscious of that great unseen radio audience in a hundred thousand homes already settled before their “speakers,” listening eagerly to the preliminary gossip of the announcer as the faithful gathered around the tables.

He knew that a wrong note struck at this dinner might start a thunderstorm up-State over which he would have no control.

Forsythe was worrying, too, under his suave exterior.

“Suppose somebody did break loose tonight,” he remarked, leaning insinuatingly toward the boss’s secretary. “Couldn’t an accident happen to the radio temporarily?”

“Oh, nothing raw like that!” Barney deprecated with outpushed palm. “They’d smell something rotten to the end of the State. No, I got a better way.”

He glanced at a smaller table adjoining the low platform on which the speakers’ table stood. It was surrounded by a group of dashing and determined-appearing young men. At the end of this table, facing them, sat a dark youth, even more rat-visaged than the red-headed Barney. He winked knowingly at the latter.

“Who’s that young gunman?” Forsythe asked a little distastefully.

“That’s Jim Neenan,” Barney told him. “He’s a vaudeville actor and a friend of the organization. Jim and his little pals will kind of unofficially supervise what goes over the radio. Watch ’em if anything breaks.”

And something did break. It held off so long that less acute observers of political nature than Boss Quaid were beginning to breathe freely.

The harmless preliminary speakers had received polite applause. Boss Quaid, after a glowing tribute from the toastmaster, had risen, bobbed his head, grunted, and sat down to the tune of a thunderous ovation and orchestral strains of “He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.”

Then Forsythe, the favored son and real speaker of the evening, had risen and said nothing dangerous, in burning, glittering language and at considerable length.

But while his favorite was talking, the roving little eyes of the boss had settled on the keen, quizzical face of a big, shaggy man at the other end of the table. The man’s high, thoughtful brow corrugated as the would-be candidate went on with his mellifluous platitudes. The pleasant blue eyes, bent intently on the speaker, turned to gray steel.

Quaid nudged Barney.

“Watch out for Hammond,” he whispered.

When Forsythe sat down, Hammond sat bolt upright in his chair and stared hard at the toastmaster.

It was not on the cards to have any more speeches. Forsythe’s address had been planned as the climax of the evening. A half dozen lay figures and uncertain quantities remained at the speaker’s table who would be called on as a matter of form. All were supposed to know better than to do more than rise and bow.

While the prolonged applause for Forsythe was still ringing, the newspaper men gathered up their notes and departed, leaving the Associated Press man to let them know if anything unexpected broke loose at the last minute, not amply covered by the radio.

Then, in its perfunctory course, the name of Martin W. Hammond of Gainsport was called.

The big man arose promptly. But instead of sitting down with a bow and a word of greeting, as the man before him had done, he marched straight down the table to the speakers’ position in front of the microphone.

“Gentlemen, I beg a moment’s indulgence,” he began in deep, mellow tones that filled the suddenly silent hall and rang in the ears of the greater radio audience in a hundred thousand homes. “I did not come prepared to make a speech, but I cannot let this occasion pass without saying certain things that the Honorable Mr. Forsythe left unsaid.”

Boss Quaid grunted and kicked Barney’s shins. Barney turned and winked at Jim Neenan at the little table.

Neenan and his gang jumped to their feet with a yell of “Hurrah for Forsythe! Hurrah for the next Governor! Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!”

They chanted it in chorus, crowding to the edge of the platform, and leaning almost over the speakers’ table, with their faces only a few feet from the ringing microphone. They kept it up, their cheers alternated with catcalls.

The tumult spread through the big hall like a contagion. The whole place was in an uproar. For a minute or two Hammond stood facing the clamor, a sardonic smile on his face. Then as the noise continued he leaned over the microphone and tried to go on with his speech in an effort to reach his radio audience at least.

But the young cheer leaders bent closer to the instrument and redoubled their efforts. The ether waves bore only an inarticulate roar.