Part 1

A HAT IN THE RADIO RING

By Garret Smith

“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.

Twice when the confusion subsided a little he tried it again, only to be thwarted by a renewal of the racket.

Here and there through the throng there were cries of protest from the fairer-minded. There were growing indications that the meeting might break up in a riot.

The toastmaster stood helpless, his eyes fixed on the boss, who regarded him with an indulgent grin.

At length Hammond gave it up altogether. With a bow and a smile, he turned and walked out of the hall.

At this gesture a partial hush fell on the crowd. There were cries of “Shame!” “Call him back!” “Give him a chance!”

Several fist fights were threatened among some of the more explosive of the faithful. The toastmaster began gesturing for silence.

Then Jim Neenan leaped to the center of the speakers’ table and gave an elaborate caricature of the presiding officer’s gestures. As soon as he could make himself heard, he shouted:

“Gentlemen, inasmuch as Mr. Hammond had to catch a train and could not make a long speech, I’ve been asked to go on with it.”

Thereupon the vaudeville artist launched into a parody of a political speech that in a few minutes had restored the crowd to hilarious good humor. At length the orchestra struck up “Home, Sweet Home,” and the crowd filed out, most of them convinced that the whole episode had been a bit of horseplay staged to give a light touch to a successful occasion.

II

Boss Quaid was chuckling contentedly as he entered his limousine with Forsythe, Barney Fogarty, and Jim Neenan. He had expressed his satisfaction and his gratitude to the manipulators by giving the dignitaries the slip, with the exception of Forsythe, and inviting the trio to supper at his favorite roadhouse where neither henchmen nor reporters would search him out.

“Now we’re all set,” Barney assured Forsythe as they rolled away. “There were three or four possible bad eggs there tonight, Hammond among ’em. Hammond was the only one that hatched, and we squashed him before he got out of the shell, laughed him to death.”

“Barney’s right,” Quaid agreed.

But for once Barney was wrong. How amazingly, mysteriously wrong, he learned two and a half hours later, when the party stopped at an all-night news-stand on the way home and bought copies of the _Press_ and the _Sentinel_, the capital city’s two morning papers.

MARTIN W. HAMMOND THROWS HAT IN RING

This was the flaring headline that smote his eyes from one front page, at the top of the dinner story.

HAMMOND FLOUTS FORSYTHE, DECLARES HIMSELF CANDIDATE

This blazed at him from the other newspaper.

“What!” the boss exploded. “The damned traitor! Sent ’em a statement! Hell’s bells!”

“Statement nothing!” Barney ejaculated. “These papers are full of prunes, both of ’em! Why, they say he made this speech as the dinner feature of the occasion, the _Sentinel_ calls it.”

For several minutes, under the glare of the dome light in Quaid’s limousine, the four men read, pop-eyed with amazement, the silence broken only by occasional crackling profanity. There was no doubt but that both papers had seemingly gone mad.

According to their accounts, Hammond had actually completed a ringing speech of some twenty minutes’ duration at the dinner, and at its conclusion had received tumultuous applause. He had scathingly picked Forsythe’s empty mouthings to pieces, keenly analyzed the State power proposition, declaring it must be put in the hands of experts to determine the right policy as between State and local control. He was personally engaged in such a study now, he declared, and the State could have his services as Governor to direct such a study and carry out its results.

There was added a brief account of Hammond’s career as a successful engineer who had served the State for one term as engineer ten years before.

Quaid finished reading and dashed the paper to the floor in a purple rage.

“_Sentinel_ office, George,” he ordered the chauffeur.

The _Sentinel_ was controlled by Quaid. Boon, its managing editor, and handy man to the boss, was just about to go home when the enraged and mystified quartet stormed in.

“What the hell?” Quaid demanded, slapping the paper down on the desk and pointing one pudgy finger at the offensive and mystic headline. “Are you fellows crazy or drunk?”

“That’s what I wonder!” Boon returned with unwonted spirit. “We’ve been hunting you boys for two hours, almost lost the trains on the first two editions, waiting for you to give orders on the handling of this yarn. Why didn’t you tell us you were going to flop to Hammond? All we could do was to print the news.”

“News, hell!” Quaid snorted. “Damned lies! Hammond never made a speech. Tried to; got hooted out.”

Boon leaned close and got a good sample of the breath the quartet had acquired at the roadhouse, drawing erroneous but not unnatural conclusions as to their sobriety.

“Say that again slow,” he requested. “I don’t get you.”

Barney said it for him, making from two to four words grow where one grew before.

“Now I say you ought to get out an extra denying this rot,” Barney wound up, looking about for confirmation.

“Barney’s right,” declared the boss.

“Now, listen,” Boon exclaimed. “I was glued to that radio horn from the time your dinner opened until the orchestra stopped playing ‘Home, Sweet Home.’ Don’t try to tell me I don’t know what I heard. Half the rest of the office heard it too. About twenty other people who listened in on the radio in Gobel’s drug store drilled in here to get the inside dope. The men over in the Press heard it too. They had me on the wire, asking for a statement from you.”

“Now we all heard Hammond called on at the end of the evening. We heard him get a whale of a demonstration and some kidding. Then we heard his speech to the finish and the cheering he got afterward. We got his speech right from the radio by shorthand. They heard it all over the State too. We’ve had wires from papers from one end of the State to the other asking for dope.

“Now, in the face of that, do you want to make an ass of the whole party by a statement that your keynote dinner was so wet that you were all too drunk to hear the key speech?”

“Did your reporter hear that speech?” Quaid demanded in bewilderment.

“No. The boys all left when Forsythe got through. The A. P. man stayed, but he must have been drunk and gone to sleep. We couldn’t get anything out of him.”

“Listen, boss,” Barney broke in. “Somebody double crossed us, unless the spooks have been at work. I bet Hammond played in with the broadcasting station some way and got ’em to let him break in. The whole mischief’s been done for tonight. We better lie low till we find out how it was done.”

“Barney’s right,” Quaid decided, and stalked out.

Barney was right when he said the mischief had been done. But the following day only increased the mystery of how.

First thing in the morning, the fatal morning of the county conventions, Quaid began getting wires from leaders all over the State, asking instructions, and confirming the fact that every radio user outside of the dinner hall had heard the speech.

Also he had innumerable phone calls from people who had been at the dinner, asking what it was all about and confirming the fact that no one at the dinner had heard Hammond’s speech.

Following Barney’s hint, the staff at the radio broadcasting station were given the third degree. They swore that Hammond’s speech had come over the regular wire along with the rest of the dinner program.

Their announcer on duty at the hall that night could shed no further light, as he had gone home after the Forsythe speech, arranging with the toastmaster to give the radio “good night.”

Hammond himself, who had a reputation for truth telling, issued a statement to the afternoon papers exonerating the broadcasting staff.

“I was invited to speak at the dinner, and I did,” he told the reporters. “That’s all. I’ll swear to you I made the whole speech right there. I’m sorry if the gentlemen at the dinner couldn’t hear it, but I have the statement of my radio audience about a thousand to one against theirs.”

That’s all they got out of him, and the twinkle in his eye indicated that he was enjoying himself immensely.

But the speech was on record. That was the important and practical fact.

Events pressed too fast to waste further time over a puzzle as to how it got there. Early reports from the counties decided Quaid to hold off his own statement for another day till he could count noses of instructed delegates.

It was a worried group who met with him in his office the day after the county conventions. Forsythe, under his air of debonair indifference, was decidedly anxious for fear his sponsor might decide to drop him for the new entrant.

“Give ’em the dope, Barney,” the boss ordered.

“Well, we figure just about forty per cent of the delegates pledged or sure for Forsythe, and just about the same number for Hammond. That leaves about twenty per cent waiting to be shown.”

“And that kind hates a dude,” Quaid remarked, looking hard at Forsythe.

“Meaning that’s what I am?” he asked.

“No! No!” Barney assured him. “He means that’s what they might figure if you go to talk to ’em personally. They’re shy of city men. You’re a polished gentleman. Hammond’s sort of rough and ready. Other things equal, they’d be for him if they got a look at you both. And it’s a cinch Hammond’ll go around and talk to ’em. I expect Mr. Quaid would like to keep you both out of sight of those birds. For once he’d like a straight radio campaign.”

“Barney’s right!” rumbled the boss.

“Perhaps I’d better begin wearing soft shirts and a slouch hat,” Forsythe suggested wryly.

“Be yourself,” grunted the boss. “I’m for you.”

Forsythe departed, content with this assurance of the boss’s support, but not altogether optimistic as to the final outcome. Barney Fogarty retired thoughtfully to his own private office and went into the silences.

After a little of this, some cryptic phoning resulted in a luncheon appointment in a discreet back room of one of the city’s quietest speakeasies.

Late that afternoon Jim Neenan, the handy impersonator and general utility man, presented himself on private business at the offices of Thomas Forsythe, who rather distastefully granted the caller’s request for a confidential conference.

“Look here,” Neenan opened, “I hear you and the boss are honin’ for a pre-convention campaign that’ll limit you an’ Hammond to radio speeches, figgerin’ it would give you a better break.”

“That seems to be Mr. Quaid’s idea,” Forsythe admitted dryly.

“I suppose you know Hammond has a different idea?”

“I have heard as much.”

“How much would it be worth to you to have it arranged so that Hammond would be glad of a chance to make it a radio campaign?”

“It might be worth quite a little, but I fail to see what is the practical use of discussing it.”

“Just this. For a price I might be able to bring it about.”

Forsythe laughed.

“Judging from such of your methods as I have seen I feel safe in saying I’d pay as high as a thousand dollars if my opponent is persuaded to such a course and you can convince me that you were instrumental in bringing it about.”

“Is that a promise?” Neenan demanded.

“It is,” Forsythe agreed again with another cynical laugh. “And if your machinations result in my nomination I’ll make it another thousand. And that’s a promise. Now I’ll bid you good day, as I have another appointment.”

Neenan departed, a crafty smile on his narrow features.

III

That same evening Warren Hammond arose from a hurried dinner and gave his pretty young wife an affectionate goodnight kiss.

“Don’t wait up for me, ladybird,” he warned her. “I’ve got to speak at two meetings, and I may be out till all hours.”

“I wish I could go with you to your first meeting. I’ll be thinking of you. I’m so proud of my big boy.”

“Even if he does traffic with the powers of darkness and employ black magic to make himself invisible,” he laughed.

“I think you’re mean, Warren, not to tell me the truth about that mysterious radio speech. I think everybody there must have been drunk as one of the papers hinted, and you don’t want to let me know it.”

Hammond laughed boyishly.

“Why, it was so simple I’m ashamed to tell it. When I do tell you, you’ll be ashamed to think you didn’t guess it.”

“But do you think it’s nice to fib to everybody about it?”

“Nary a fib,” he denied. “I’ve told nothing but the truth, so help me. Now stop worrying and go to bed early.”

He kissed her again and was off.

But Warren Hammond did not get to his first meeting. In fact, he got no more than a scant hundred yards down the narrow country road that led from his suburban home into the capital city.

He was just shifting his gears into first when he felt the front end of the car swaying violently back and forth. He threw out the clutch and jammed on the brakes, but it was too late.

The front of the car lurched over to one side, dropped to the ground, and plowed down into the ditch at the roadside. He was thrown forward felt a stinging blow on the head, and then went unconscious.

A few minutes later a passing car saw the wreck and stopped. Hammond came to in the ditch beside his car to find a neighbor applying first aid.

Besides the blow on the head, which had left an ugly welt across his scalp, both legs were broken. Fortunately the glass in his car was nonbreakable, and he had suffered no disfiguring cuts.

The cause of the accident proved to be a loose front wheel, which had come off, completely tipping the car half over. It had all occurred so suddenly that he had no clear notion of just what had happened to him, but he assumed that his head had hit one of the top braces, and that his legs had been broken when he was thrown over the door.

Never at any time did he suspect that his accident had been inspired and carefully planned.

But a few days later Jim Neenan, with a smile more deeply insinuating than ever, again called at the offices of Thomas Forsythe. He carried with him a copy of an afternoon paper just off the press.

“Perhaps you’ve noticed that I’ve made good on that radio campaign stuff,” he announced, pointing to a story on the front page.

Forsythe took the paper and read an announcement by Hammond’s political manager. The latter would be confined to his room and bed until long after the State convention, his doctor had predicted, but would doubtless be restored to complete health by election time.

In the meantime the physician saw no reason why the patient should not carry on such mental labor as the pre-convention campaign required, as soon as he had completely recovered from the first shock of the accident. It had therefore been arranged that he should deliver a limited number of speeches by radio, from a telephone in his room connecting with the broadcasting station.

He would also have a final statement to deliver at the convention in the same manner, assuming the privilege of a regularly elected delegate and a leading candidate for head of the ticket.

“How’s that?” Neenan gloated. “Barney tells me you are going to swing back with a big show of doing the sporting thing by agreeing to the same program yourself. So we’ve got our wish, and little Jimmie’s come for his pay.”

“How’s that?”