“He did, he did, of course … I was speaking only as his … proxy, as it were.” He smiled again, plumply. I decided that I disliked him but then I usually dislike all men on first meeting: something to do, I suppose, with the natural killer instinct of the male. I tried to imagine Mr. Hollister and myself covered with the skins of wild beasts, doing battle in the jungle, but my imagination faltered: after all we were two Americans living in rooms centrally heated and eating hygienically prepared food got out of cans … the jungle was remote.

“In any case,” Hollister was saying, “I thought I should brief you a little before you meet the Senator.” He paused. Then he asked: “What, by the way, are your politics?”

Being venal, I said that I belonged to the same party as my employer; as a matter of fact, I have never voted so even if I did not entirely admire the party of Senator Rhodes I hadn’t perjured myself.

Mr. Hollister looked relieved. “I don’t suppose, in your 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 by one 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 Byrd … I stared at them all. Then the swinging door opened and Leander Rhodes, the Great Bear of the West as he liked to hear himself referred to, appeared in the cloakroom, his face red from speechmaking, his gray hair tangled above his bloodshot eyes, eyes like his daughter’s I thought, recalling irreverently her face on the pillow beside me that morning. But no time for that.

“Ah, Sargeant. Glad to see you. Glad to see you. Prompt. I like promptness. Secret of success, punctuality.” Since neither of us could either prove or disprove this statement, I murmured agreement.

“Been to the office yet? Yes? Good scout. Let’s go to lunch.”

It took us quite awhile to get from the cloakroom to the Senate Dining Room. Every few yards or so, the Senator would pause to shake hands with some other Senator or with some tourist who wanted to meet him. He was obviously quite popular with the voters; the other Senators were a bit cool with him, or so I thought, since he was, after all, by reputation anyway, a near-idiot with a perfect Senate record of obstruction. He regarded the administration of Chester A. Arthur as the high point of American history and he felt it his duty to check as much as possible the subsequent national decline from that high level. He was a devout isolationist although, according to legend, at the time of the First World War he had campaigned furiously for our entry into that war, on the side of the Kaiser.

I suppose I shouldn’t, in actual fact, accept jobs from men for whom I have so little respect but since it never occurred to me that Lee Rhodes had a chance in the world of getting nominated, much less elected, President, I saw no harm in spending a few months at a considerable salary to see that his name appeared in the newspaper, often and favorably.

The lunch was excellent, served in an old-fashioned dining room with tile floor where the Senators eat … there is a Pre-Civil War feeling about the Senate Dining Room … especially the menu, the remarkable cornbread, the legendary bean soup which I wolfed hungrily, trying not to stare too hard at Senator Taft, who sat demurely at the next table reading a newspaper as he lunched.

“Suppose Rufus here has briefed you?” said Senator Rhodes, when coffee arrived and all around the room cigars were lit, like Roman candles.

I nodded, holding my breath as a wreath of blue Senatorial smoke crossed the table and settled about my neck.

“Day after tomorrow, Friday, that’s the big day. Making announcement then. Want it well covered. Can you do that?”

I told him that all speeches by such a celebrated statesman were well-covered by the press. He took my remark quietly, adding that he wanted Life there, or else. I said that Life would be there.

“Get yourself located yet?” he asked, after we had exchanged a number of very businesslike remarks. I said that I hadn’t, that I’d only just arrived on the morning train.