They found the colonel in his room, sitting by an open window, his Panama hat on his head, his cigar in his teeth, and his walking-stick twirling in his long fingers. The room did not present that orderly and cool appearance it had on the few occasions when Carroll had been in it before. The shades were high at the window, admitting flames of heat, wads of crumpled paper bestrewed the floor, a huge table had been brought in and it was already littered with newspapers and telegraph blanks. The bureau had been moved, the tall white door it had hidden so long had been unlocked, and Carroll heard the incessant clicking of a typewriter in the adjoining room. Two or three men sat idly about, gossiping, as men will, about political battles of the past. There seemed to be none of the industry of politics apparent, though political headquarters seldom do display that, perhaps because a good part of the industry of politics consists in talking and smoking and drinking, and partly, perhaps, because of the necessity of concealment that always exists. These men were gathered to organize the defeat of a crafty and unscrupulous man who had a national, state and city machine at his command, with money to heart’s desire, and yet they sat and smoked, stirring only when a telegram came from down the state, or some long-forgotten politician came in to offer himself as a recruit. For a month the colonel did not go out of the hotel. He was up early and at work, his cigar in his mouth, dictating letters, sending telegrams, receiving callers. When he slept, no one knew. He never had his hat off. He ate his meals from a tray in his room, after the food had grown cold. His headquarters recalled pathetically the old days when his power and supremacy were unquestioned. They were crowded day and night with the back-numbers and the soreheads Baldwin had talked about, who came with their grievances, their impossible schemes, their paltry ambitions. Of such stuff the colonel had to make his machine, flattering, threatening, wheedling, soothing jealousies, reconciling discordant factions, healing old animosities, inflaming new hatreds, keeping up spirit in faint hearts, leaving not a wire unpulled. He appointed a steering committee, on which were Mosely, of Alexander; Garwood, of Kankakee; Harkness, of Macoupin, and Malachi Nolan; he wrote personal letters to old friends in every school district in the state, and thus, slowly, patiently, laboriously welded his organization together. What he most needed was funds, and a candidate to provide funds; lacking them, he insisted that this was not a movement for the profit of any one man, but for the good of the party alone, and so invested it with the enthusiasm of what passes for patriotism in a nation where party is set above country. He told the landlord of the Grand that he would be responsible for the rent of the two rooms he had engaged next his own. He already owed the landlord.