So the time of the State convention arrived, and, as Boss Quaid had feared, the fight was carried to its floor with the chance of victory ready to fall either way according to the words a sick man might utter into his telephone in the privacy of his bedroom. For when the convention opened, Warren Hammond was really ill, broken down by the strain of the campaign on top of the shock of his injuries. With great effort he had finished dictating his final radio statement which he hoped to read over the wire to the convention. Now there were grave doubts whether he would be able to read it himself. The morning of the convention dawned at last. Into the city’s convention hall the delegates poured. Quaid snorted at the spectacle. “Don’t look much like the old-time batch of handmade ones,” the big fellow mourned to Barney as they watched from the gallery. “Nope,” his satellite admitted. “Especially with the skirts in on the game. But the women ain’t nuthin’ to this Hammond. He’s a woman and a devil and one of the Lord Almighty’s mysterious ways wrapped up in one bundle. He’s been one trick ahead of us at every jump. That accident of his was either plain dumb good luck or fixed by himself intentional. The poor invalid stuff’s got the women going. The boys that are feeling him out say even those in the neutral crowd are leanin’ his way. I’m afraid he’s got us licked, chief.” “You’ve said it, Barney--afraid I’m about through.” An out-of-town man under the edge of the gallery hailed a local acquaintance. “Hello, Dick! Is this the place where you held the ghost dinner?” Barney and his chief grinned at each other ruefully. “They’ll always believe we fellows were blind and dumb that night,” Barney replied. “And I’ll always believe those radio people double crossed us somehow,” Quaid added. And the big fellow clung to that belief to his dying day. A good sized knot of delegates came in, making the roof ring with cheers for Forsythe. Another knot across the hall tried to drown them out with counter cheers for Hammond. “Hello, you bedroomers!” Shouted a Forsythe man above the din. “Go on, you ghost walkers,” a man from the other ranks retorted. And in Hammond’s sick room out in the little suburban farmhouse, the invalid was listening to the tumult in the convention hall as it came to him over his radio. A vigilant wife and nurse kept him constantly under their eye, shutting off the blaring instrument whenever he showed signs of getting nervous. “Remember, Warren, if you overstrain your nerves, the doctor won’t let you read your speech,” Mrs. Hammond warned him at intervals. “I’ve got to read that speech if it kills me,” he told her. “If I don’t know what’s going on beforehand I won’t be able to put the right spirit in it.” And he managed to grin at her cheerily, although it was an evident effort.