He was a heavily built man, with a
big jaw. And when he saw me there, confronting him, his face changed
from a look of displeased surprise to one of angry contempt--lowering
his head like a bull--as if he were saying to himself: "What! That
d---- little devil! I'll bet he heard me!" But he did not speak. And
neither did I. He went off about whatever business he had in hand, and
I caught up my hat and hastened to Gardener to tell him what I had
heard.
When the House met again, in committee of the whole, the Speaker, of
course, was not in the Chair, and Gardener found him in the lobby.
Gardener had agreed with me to say nothing of the telephone
conversation but he threatened Smith that unless our jury bill was
"reported out" by the Judiciary Committee and allowed to come to a
vote, he would oppose every House bill in the Senate and talk the
session to death. Smith fumed and blustered, but Gardener, with the
blood in his face, out-blustered and out-fumed him. The Speaker, later
in the day, vented some of his spleen by publicly threatening to eject
me from the floor of the House as a lobbyist. But he had to allow the
bill to come up, and it was finally passed, with very little
opposition--for reasons which I was afterward to understand.
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