The Honorable Sammy Scott was having the fight of his life and he knew it. It almost wiped the genial smile from his lips, but he screwed it on and metaphorically stripped for the fray. He knew it was the end or a glorious new beginning for Sammy Scott.
Sammy’s first real blow had been Sara’s wedding. He had settled down to the comfortable fact that if Sara ever married anybody it would be Sammy Scott. At whom else had she ever looked—of whom had she ever thought? He was her hero in shrewdness and accomplishment, and he preened himself before her. There hung the fruit—the ripe, sleek, dainty fruit at his hand. He had only to reach out and pluck it. He was not a marrying man. But—who could tell? He might want a change. He might make his pile and retire. Or go traveling abroad. Then? Well, he might marry Sara and take her along. Time would tell.
And then—then without warning—without a flash of suspicion, the blow fell. Of course, others had talked and hinted and winked. Sammy laughed and pooh-poohed. He knew Sara. Nobody could take his capable secretary off the Honorable Sammy Scott. No, sir!
After the announcement and through the marriage, Sammy bore up bravely. He never turned a hair, at least to the public. He was best man and general manager at the wedding, and his present of a grand piano, with Ampico attachment, made dark Chicago gasp.
Gradually, Sammy got an idea into his head. Sara was a cool and deep one. Perhaps, perhaps, mused Sammy, as she left him after a long and confidential talk, perhaps this husband business was all a blind. Perhaps after the marriage with a rather dull husband for exhibition purposes, Sara was going to be more approachable. In her despair at not inveigling Sammy himself into marriage—so Sammy argued, waving his patent-leather shoes on their high perch—after her wiles failed, then perhaps she’d decided to have her cake and eat it too. All right—all the same to Sammy. Of course, he might have preferred—but women are curious.
He hinted something of this to Sara and got a cryptic response—a sort of prim silence that made him guffaw and slap his thigh. Of course, he had upbraided her first with disloyalty and quitting; but all this she disclaimed with pained surprise. She gave Sammy distinctly to understand—she did not say it—that she was loyally and eternally his steward forever and ever.
So Sammy was shaken but hopeful, and matters went on as usual until the second blow fell from a clear sky. Sara proposed to resign as his secretary! This brought him to his feet with deep suspicion. Was she double-crossing him? Was she playing him for a sucker? She had been in fact no more approachable to his familiarities since than before marriage—if anything, less. She actually seemed to be putting on airs and assuming a place of importance. If Sammy had dared, he would have dropped her entirely the moment she resigned. But he did not dare, and he knew that Sara knew it. He caught the glint in her gray eyes and almost felt the steel grip of her dainty hand.
Moreover, Sara explained it all very clearly. As the wife of a member of the legislature, it did not look quite the correct thing for her to be just a secretary. She proposed, therefore, to have an office of her own next Sammy’s where the work of her women’s organization could be done. At the same time, with an assistant, she could still take charge of Sammy’s business. Sammy had hopes of that assistant, but before he had anyone to propose, Sara had one chosen. She was nothing to look at, but she certainly could make a typewriter talk. Business went as smoothly as ever, and Sammy couldn’t complain.
No, evidently Sara could not be dropped. She knew too much of facts and methods. So, ostensibly, Sammy and Sara were in close alliance and almost daily consultation, and they were at the same time watching each other narrowly.
The trouble culminated over the nomination for Congress. For thirty years, Negroes, deprived of representation in Congress, after White of North Carolina had been counted out, had planned and hoped politically for one end—to put a black man in Congress from the North. The necessary black population had migrated to New York, Philadelphia, and St. Louis; but in Chicago alone did they have not only the numbers but the political machine capable of engineering the deal. It had long been the plan of Sammy’s machine to have the white congressman, Doolittle, retire at the end of his present term and Sammy nominated in his stead. This was the ambition of Sammy’s life, the crowning of his career. He and Sara had discussed it for years in every detail. Every step was surveyed, every contingency thought out. It was only necessary to wait for enough political power in Sammy’s machine to dictate the nomination of one colored candidate among the myriad of aspirants. That time had now come.
Sammy was the recognized colored state boss; three aldermen and three colored members of the legislature took his orders; the colored judge owed his place to Sammy, and, while independent, was friendly. The public service corporations were back of Sammy with money and influence. Four “assistant” corporation counsels named by Sammy were receiving five thousand dollars a year each for duties that, to say the least, were not arduous; while the Civil Service, the Post Office, and the schools had hundreds of colored employees who owed or thought they owed their chance to make a decent living to the Honorable Sammy Scott. Finally, there was Sara’s Colored Women’s Council, through which for the first time the Negro women loomed as an independent political force.
Thus Sammy was dictator and candidate, and the party machine had definitely and categorically promised. The Negro majority in the First Congressional District was undoubted.
Now, however, and suddenly, matters changed. Since Matthew’s success, Sara had definitely determined to kill off Sammy and send Matthew to Congress. Sammy sensed this, and these politicians began to stalk each other. Sara’s task was hardest, and she knew it. Sammy was Heir Apparent by all the rules of the game. But there were pitfalls, and Sara knew them. She was going to make no mistake, but she was watching.
Gradually Sammy became less communicative. He had a number of secret conferences in the early spring of 1926, to which Sara, contrary to custom, was not invited; and his accounts of these meetings were vague.
“Oh, just a get-together—talkee, talkee; nothing important.”
But Sara wasn’t fooled. She knew that Sammy was in trouble and struggling desperately. The fact was that Sammy was sorely puzzled. First and weightiest, the white party bosses wanted Doolittle for “just one more term.” Doolittle held exceedingly important committee places in Congress, and especially as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee of the House, he was a power for tariff legislation. Millions depended on the revision which exporters, farmers, and laborers were demanding more and more loudly. Then there was legislation for the farmers and on the railroads and above all certain nationwide superpower plans at Niagara, at Muscle Shoals and Boulder Dam. It was no question of “color,” the white leaders carefully explained. It was a grave question of party interests. Two years hence, the nomination was Sammy’s with bands playing. This year, Doolittle simply must go back, and money was no object.
That was reason Number One, and as money always was an object with Sammy, it loomed large in his thought. But that wasn’t all. Sammy did not trust Sara, and Sara, by efficiently organizing the colored women, had quietly become the biggest single political force in his colored constituency. Indeed, her new Colored Women’s Council was the most perfect piece of smoothly running political machinery that Sammy knew. He couldn’t touch it, and he had tried. Now Sara had an uncomfortably popular husband. Matthew was a successful member of the legislature, young and intelligent, with some personal popularity. His very aloofness, absentmindedness, indifference to money or fame—increased his vogue. If Doolittle were forced to resign, could Sammy land the nomination without Sara’s help? And with the knifing of men like Corruthers, who was still sore with Sammy; and particularly without the party slush fund?
Sammy hesitated and all but lost. He pocketed twenty-five thousand dollars for campaign expenses within a few days and consented to Doolittle’s renomination. But he did not dare announce it. Sara scented a crisis. She looked over his papers—always kept carelessly—and ran across his bank book. She noticed that twenty-five thousand dollar cash deposit. Then she got busy on the Doolittle end. She knew a maid long connected with the congressman’s family. Soon she had inside news. It was going to be announced that Doolittle was not to resign. His health (which was to have been the excuse) had been “greatly improved by a trip to Europe,” and the honor of another and strictly final term was to be given this “friend and champion of our race”!
Sara immediately took the high hand. She walked into Sammy’s office without knocking and closed the door. She was brief, inaccessible, and coldly indignant. She reminded Sammy of his solemn promise to refuse Doolittle another term; she accused him of being bribed and announced distinctly her withdrawal from all political alliance with the Scott machine!
Sammy was aghast. It was the coldest holdup he had ever experienced. He promised her office, influence, money, and anything in reason for Matthew. She was adamant. She expressed great sorrow at this breaking of old ties.
“Oh, go to hell!” growled Sammy and slammed the door after her. He knew her game, of course. She was going to run Matthew for Congress, and, by George, she had a chance to win, unless he could kill Matthew off.
Sara immediately gave her story to the newspapers, colored and white, and called meetings of all her clubs. Bedlam broke loose about Sammy’s devoted head. He was accused of “Betraying and Selling out his Race to White Politicians!” The Negro papers, by secret information or astonishingly lucky guess, named the exact sum he received—twenty-five thousand dollars. The white papers sneered at Negro grafting politicians and praised the upright and experienced Doolittle. Sammy’s appointees and heads of his political machine sat securely on the fence and said and did nothing. They were glad that Sammy had missed the nomination. They were waiting to know just what their share of the slush fund was to be. They were afraid of the popular uproar against Sammy. Above all, they feared Sara. It looked perilously like Sammy’s finish.
Sammy was no quitter. When he was “down, he was never out.” And now he really began to fight. Sammy turned to the gang he could best trust for underground dirty work. The very respectability which Sara had forced on him in his chief appointments greatly cramped his style. He had to go back to his old cronies and his old methods. He made peace with the Gang. Soon he had around him Corruthers and a dozen like him. Sammy promised the utmost liberality with funds and began by distributing scores of new hundred-dollar bills. They all decided that the case was by no means desperate. Towns could, at worst, defeat Doolittle at the election only by dividing the Republican vote. He himself had small chance for the Republican nomination. And even if he got it, Sammy could also split the vote and defeat him. As long then as the bosses stood pat for Doolittle, Towns’ only hope was to run on an independent ticket. Could he win? Probably not. Negroes did not like to scratch a straight Republican ticket. Meantime, however, in order to insure Doolittle’s election and keep their machine intact, Towns must be put out of the running altogether. As Sammy said: “We’ve gotta frame Towns.”
“Publish him as a jailbird.”
“What, after I got him pardoned as an innocent hero and worked that gag all over the country?”
“Knock him on his fool head,” sneered an alderman.
“There’s only one thing to do with a bozo like him, and that is to trip him up with a skirt.”
“Can’t he steal something?”
They went over his career with a fine-tooth comb until at last they came back to that lynching and train wreck and his jail record.
“I remember now,” said Sammy thoughtfully, “that Sara unearthed a lot of unpublished stuff.”
“We’ve got to discover new evidence and admit that we were fooled.”
Corruthers had been lolling back in his chair, smoking furiously and saying nothing. His red hair blazed, and his brown freckles grew darker. Suddenly now he let the two front legs of his chair down with a bang.
“Oh, to hell with you all!” he snarled. “You don’t have to get no new evidence. I’ve had the dope to kill Towns for six months.”
Sammy did not appear to be impressed. He had little faith in Corruthers.
“What is it?” he growled, with half a sneer in his tone.
“It is this. Towns made that attack on the woman for which another porter was lynched on the Klan Special last year.”
Sammy sat up quickly. “Like hell!” he snapped.
“Yes, like hell! Towns confessed it to the executive committee of the porters. Said he was in the woman’s compartment when the husband discovered them. He knocked the husband down and escaped. The husband thought it was the regular car porter, and he got his friends and lynched him. Towns offered to tell this story to the general meeting of the porters and in court, but the committee wouldn’t let him. They let him say only that he knew the lynched porter was innocent, because he wasn’t in the car. They figured it would be bad policy to admit that the woman had been attacked by anyone. I got this story from the secretary of the committee. After you ditched me for the nomination to the legislature, I tried to get him to come out with it and swear to it, but he wouldn’t. He was backing Towns. Then I tried to find the widow of the guy who was lynched. I knew she would tell the truth fast enough. Well, I couldn’t get her until the election was over, but I’ve got her now fast enough. She’s in New York, and I’ve been writing to her.
“And that ain’t all. Remember, there was another colored woman mixed up in this. Called herself an Indian princess and got away with it. Princess nothing! I figure she was in the blackmailing game with Towns, double-crossed him, and left him holding the bag. Slip me five hundred for expenses, and I’ll go to New York tonight and round up both of these dames. We’ll bury Towns so deep he’ll never see the outside of jail again.”
Sammy hesitated. He didn’t like this angle of attack. It was—well, it was hitting below the belt. But, pshaw! politics was politics, and one couldn’t be too squeamish. He peeled off five one-hundred-dollar bills.
That night Corruthers went east.