sat at the table with one paper propped up before him and four others beside his plate, his eye-glasses on his nose, and ate his oatmeal and his beefsteak and his boiled eggs just as he did on every morning of the year. Then he drank the half cup of coffee that he always reserved, with its cream slowly coagulating at the surface, for the end of his meal, because it was cooler then, laid his napkin down and shuffled slowly out.
Half an hour later a man stopped by his chair in the lobby and said something to the colonel that made him drop his paper, and look up over his eye-*glasses with a scowl. The man was known as Birdy Quinn, and he had lost his job in the water office the week before, because Warren wished to make room for a fellow who could deliver more votes at the coming primaries than Birdy could.
"Are you sure?" the colonel asked.
"Sure! Isn't it all over the ward this morning?"
"You're sure that Pat Gibbons consented to run as Warren's candidate for state senator in the First District against Carroll—after promising me—me?" He bent his brows angrily and pointed with a long forefinger at his own breast.
