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By Root 14402 0

cry, hoarse like surf, and think that the crowd there could cause the event. But no, it could be said, Willie Stark caused the event by corrupting and blackmailing the Legislature. But no, in turn it could be replied that Willie Stark merely gave the Legislature the opportunity to behave in the way appropriate to its nature and that MacMurfee, who sponsored the election of those men, thinking to use their fear and greed for his own ends, was truly responsible. But no, to that it could be replied that the responsibility belonged, after all, to that crowd of people, indirectly in so far as it had, despite MacMurfee, elected Willie Stark. But why had they elected Willie Stark? Because of a complex of forces which had made them what they were, or because Willie Stark could lean toward them with bulging eyes and right arm raised to Heaven?

One thing was certain: The sound of that chant hoarsely rising and falling was to be the cause of nothing, nothing at all. I stood in the window of the Capitol and hugged that knowledge like a precious and thorny secret, and did not think anything.

I watched the fat man get out of the black limousine and mount the bandstand. I saw the crowd shift and curdle and thin and dissolve. I looked across beyond the now lonely and occupationless policemen, beyond the statues–frock coats, uniforms, buckskin–to the great lawn, which was empty and bright in the spring sunshine. I spewed out the last smoke from my cigarette and flicked the butt out the open window and watched it spin over and over to the stone steps far below.

Willie Stark was to stand on those steps at eight o’clock that night, in a flood of light, looking small at the top of the great steps with the mountainous heave of the building behind him.

That night the people pressed up to the very steps, filling all the shadow beyond the sharply defined area of light. (Lighting apparatus had been mounted on the pedestals of two statues, one buckskin, one frock coat.) They called and chanted, “Willie–Willie–Willie,” pressing at the cordon of police at the foot of the steps. Then, after a while, out of the tall doorway of the Capitol, he appeared. Then, as he stood there, blinking in the light, the words of the chant disappeared, and there was a moment of stillness, and then there was only the roar. It seemed a long time before he lifted his hand to stop it. Then the roar seemed to die away, slowly, under the downward pressure of his hand.

I stood in the crowd with Adam Stanton and Anne Stanton and watched him come out on the steps of the Capitol. When it was over–when he had said what he had to say to the crowd and had gone back inside leaving the new, unchecked roar of voices behind him–I told Anne and Adam good night and went to meet the Boss.

I rode with him back to the Mansion. He hadn’t said a word when I joined him at the car. Sugar-Boy worked through the back streets, while behind us we could still hear the roaring and shouting and the protracted blatting of automobile horns. Then Sugar-Boy shook himself free into a quiet little street where the houses sat back from the pavement, lights on inside them now and people in the lighted rooms, and where the budding boughs interlaced above us. At the corners where the street lamps were you could catch the hint of actual green on the boughs. Sugar-Boy drove up to the rear entrance of the Mansion. The Boss got out and went into the door. I followed him. He walked down the back hall, where we met nobody, and then into the big hall. He paced right across the hall, under the chandeliers and mirrors, past the sweep of the stairway, looked into the drawing room, crossed the hall again to look into the back sitting room, then again to look into the library. I caught on, and quit following him. I just stood in the middle of the big hall and waited. He hadn’t said he wanted me, but he hadn’t said he didn’t. In fact he hadn’t said anything. Not a word.

When he turned from the library into the hall again, a white-coated Negro boy came out of the dining room. “Boy,” the Boss asked, “you seen Mrs.