Death Before Bedtime Read Free

business, that you’re much interested in politics.”
    I said that, aside from my subscription to
Time
magazine, I was indeed cut off from the great world.
    “You don’t have, then, any particular choice for the nominating convention?”
    “No, sir, I do not.”
    “You realize that what I tell you now is in the strictest, the very strictest confidence?”
    “I do.” I wondered whether or not I should cross my heart; Mr. Hollister had grown strangely solemn and mysterious.
    “Then, Mr. Sargeant, as you may already have guessed, The Senator’s Hat Is In The Ring.”
    “The what?”
    “Senator Rhodes will announce his candidacy for the nomination for President on Friday at a speech before the National Margarine Council.”
    I took this awesome news calmly. “And I am to handle the publicity?”
    “That’s right.” He looked at me sharply but my Irish, piggish features were impassive: I saw myself already as Press Secretary to President Rhodes: “Boys, I’ve got a big story for you. One hour ago the President laid the biggest egg.…” But I recalled myself quickly to reality. Mr. Hollister wanted to know my opinion of Leander Rhodes.
    “I hardly have one,” I said. “He’s just another Senator as far as I’m concerned.”
    “We, here in the office, regard this as something of a crusade,” said Mr. Hollister softly.
    “Then I will, too,” I said sincerely. Before he could tell me why the country needed Lee Rhodes, I remarked that I happened to know his daughter, that, by chance, I had come down on the train with her. Was it my imagination, as they used to say in Victorian novels, or did a cloud cross Mr. Hollister’s serene countenance? As a matter of fact, it was worse than a cloud: it was a scowl.
    “Is Miss Rhodes
in
Washington?”
    “I believe so. Unless she decided to go back to New York.”
    “A charming young lady,” said Mr. Hollister, without conviction. “I’ve known her since she was a tiny tot.” The idea of Ellen Rhodes as a tiny tot was ludicrous but I was not allowed to meditate on it. Instead I was whisked out of the office and into the reception room; then into a further office filled with gray women answering the Senator’s voluminous mail. I was introduced to all of them; next, I was shown an empty desk which I could call my own, close byone of the tall windows which overlooked the Capitol. I noticed that none of the typists was under fifty, a tribute, I decided, to Mrs. Senator Rhodes.
    “Now if you like we’ll go over to the Senate.”
    I had never been inside either the Senate Office Building or the Capitol before and so I am afraid that I gaped like a visitor from Talisman City at the private subway which whisked the Senators in little cars from the basement of their building to that of the Capitol.
    After we got off a crowded elevator, Mr. Hollister led me down a long marble corridor to a green frosted double glass door beside which stood a uniformed guard. “That’s the floor of the Chamber,” said my escort, in a low reverent voice. “Now I’ll see if I can get you into the cloakroom.”
    As I later discovered, this was the holy of holies of the Senate, almost as inaccessible to a non-Senatorial visitor as the floor itself. Some quick talk got us in, however.
    The cloakroom was a long room with desks, couches and a painted ceiling, very ornate, a little like Versailles; swinging glass doors communicated directly with the Senate Chamber from which could be heard a loud monotonous voice.
    “Senator Rhodes,” whispered Mr. Hollister proudly, pushing me back against the wall, out of the way of the statesmen who wandered in and out, some chatting together in small groups, others reading newspapers or writing letters. It was like a club, I thought, trying to summon up a little awe, trying to remember that these were the men who governed the most powerful country in the world.
    Mr. Hollister pointed out several landmarks: Senator O’Mahoney, Senator Douglas, Senator