Tiny got to his feet. He opened his mouth several times, wet his lips, and seemed about to speak, but each time the now gray face closed back up over the expensive bridgework.
The Boss went up to him. "You tell Larson." he said. "Larson is your pal, and you tell him." He punched Tiny's front with a stiff forefinger. "Yeah," he said, "he is your pal, and when you tell him you can put your hand on his shoulder." Then the Boss grinned. I had not expected a grin. But it was a wintry and uncomforting grin. It put the seal on everything that had been said.
Tiny made the door, and was gone. He didn't bother to close it, but kept on going through without a pause, dwindling away over the long green carpet. The he had disappeared.
But the Boss was not watching his departure. He was staring moodily down at the bare top of his desk. After a moment he said, "Shut the door." I got up and shut it.
I did not sit back down, but stood in the open space between the desk and the door, waiting for him to say whatever it was he was going to say. Whatever it was, he didn't say it. He merely looked up at me with a look that was innocent and questioning, and asked, "Well?"
I do not know what it was he wanted me to say or what he expected me to say. Since that time I have thought a good deal about that. That was the time for me to say whatever it was I was ever going to have to say to Willie Stark, who had been Cousin Willie from the country and who was now the Boss. But I did not say it. I shrugged my shoulders, and said, "Well, it doesn't matter if you kick Tiny around some more. He is built for it. But Larson is a different kind of cooky."
He continued to look at me and seemed about to say something, but the question faded off his face. Then he said, "You got to start somewhere."
"Start what?"
He studied me a moment before he said, "Skip it."
I went on back to my own office. That was how that day started. I got to work on a last review of the subsidiary figures for the tax bill. Swinton, who was handling the thing through the Senate, had wanted them Saturday, but I had been running behind on my homework. I had had that date to meet Swinton and the Boss Saturday evening, but things had not fallen out that way. Later in the morning I ran into a kink. I went out into the big room and started for the Boss's door. The girl out there said that he had gone across to Sadie Burke's office. The door there was closed. I hung around a few minutes in the big room, waiting for the Boss to come out, but the door stayed closed. Once I could hear a voice raised beyond the door, but then it dropped.
The ringing of my own telephone bell took me back into my office. It was Swinton saying what the hell, why didn't I get the figures down to him. So I got my papers together and went down to see Swinton and give him the stuff. I was with him about forty minutes. When I came back up to the office, the Boss was gone. "He's gone to the hospital," the girl said. "He'll be back this afternoon."
I looked over toward Sadie's door, thinking maybe she could help me and Swinton. The girl caught my glance. "Miss Burke," she said, "she's gone too."
"Where did she go?"
"I don't know," the girl replied, "but I can tell you this, Mr. Burden, wherever it is she sure must already be there the way she tore out of here." Then she smiled with that knowing snotty little secret way the hired help always uses to make you think they know more than they are telling, and reached up a nice rounded little red-nailed white hand to tuck in a stray back lock of really beautiful corn-colored hair. Having tucked in the lock, with a motion which raised her breast for Mr. Burden's inspection, she added "And wherever it is she's gone they probably won't like her getting there, to judge from the look on her face when she left." The she smiled sweetly to show how happy any place would be to have her arrive there.
I went back into my office and gave some letters until lunch. I had a sandwich down in the basement cafeteria of the Capitol, where eating was like eating in a jolly, sanitary, well-run, marble-glistening morgue. I ran into Swinton, jawed some with him, and went, at his suggestion, up to the Senate when it reconvened after lunch. About four o'clock a page came up to me and handed me a slip of paper. It was a message from upstairs. It read: "Miss Stanton telephones to ask you to come right away to her apartment. It is urgent."
I crumpled up the slip, threw it down, and headed up tom my office for my coat and hat. I told them in the office to notify Miss Stanton I was on my way. When I got outdoors I discovered that it had begun to rain. The clean, pale sunlight of the morning was gone now.
Anne answered my knock so quickly that I figured she must have been standing by the door. But when the door flung open, I might not have recognized, at the first glance, the face I saw there unless I had known it to be Anne Stanton's. It was white and desperate and ravaged, and past the tears which you could know had been shed. And somehow you could know what kind of tears they had been: tardy, sparse and painful, quickly suppressed.
She clutched my arm with both hands, as though to support herself. "Jack," she exclaimed, "Jack!"
"What the hell?" I asked, and shoved the door shut behind me.
"You've got to find him–you've got to find him–find him and tell him–" She was shaking as if with a chill.
"Find who?"
"–tell him how it was–oh, it wasn't that way–not what they said–"
"For Christ's sake, what who said?"
"–they said it was because of me–because of what I did–because–"
"Who said?"
"–oh, you've got to find him, Jack–you've got to find him and tell him and bring him to me and–"
I grabbed her, hard, with a hand on each shoulder, and shook her. "Look here!" I said. "You come out of this. Just stop jabbering a minute and come out of this."
She stopped talking and stood between my hands, in my clutch, and looked up at me with her white face and shivered. Her breathing was shallow, quick, and dry.
After a minute, I said, "Now tell me who you want me to find."
"Adam," she said. "It's Adam."
"Now why do I find him? What's happened?"
"He came here and said it was all because of me. Of what I had done."
"What was because of what you had done?"
"He was made Director because of me. That's what he said. Because of what I had done. That's what he said. And he said–oh, Jack, he said it–"
"Said what?"
"He said he wouldn't be paid pimp to his sister's whore–he said that–he said that, Jack–to me, Jack–and I tried to tell him–tell him how it was–and he pushed me and I fell down on the floor and he ran out–he ran out and you've got to find him, Jack–you've got to and–"
And she was off again on the jabber. I gave her a good shaking. "Stop it," I commanded. "Stop it or I'll shake your teeth out."
When she had quieted down again and was hanging there between my hands, I said, "Now start slowly from the start and tell me what happened." I led her over to a chair and pushed her down into it. "Now tell me," I said, "but take it easy."
She looked up at me for a moment as though she were afraid to begin.
"Tell me," I said.
"He came up here," she began. "It was about three o'clock. As soon as he came in the door I knew something terrible had happened–something terrible had already happened to me today but I knew this was another terrible thing–and he grabbed me by the arm and stared in my face and didn't say a word. I guess I kept asking him what was the matter, and he held my arm tighter and tighter."
She pushed the sleeve up and showed the bruise marks halfway down the left forearm.
"I kept asking him what was the matter, and all at once he said, 'Matter, matter, you know what's the matter.' Then he said how there had been a telephone call to him, how somebody–a man–that was all he said–had called and told him–told him about me–about me and–"