"
Enoch looked thoughtfully from the window, then turned back to the
Senator. "There is no great hurry, is there? Give me a month to get
matters clear in my own mind."
"There is no hurry, except that the Brown papers work while others
sleep, and Fowler is Brown's nominee. However, take your month, old
man. I don't doubt that you have troubles of your own!"
Enoch nodded. Havisham shook hands heartily and departed, and the
Secretary turned to his loaded desk. The Alaskan situation was causing
him keen anxiety. The old war between private ownership, with all its
greed and unfairness to the common citizen, and government control,
with all its cumbersome and often inefficient methods, had reached
acute proportions in the great northern province. Enoch was faced with
the necessity of deciding between the two. It must be a long distance
decision and any verdict he rendered was predestined to have in it
elements of injustice. For days Enoch thrust, as far as possible, his
personal problem into the background while he struggled with this
greater one. It was only at night that the thought of Diana
overwhelmed all else to torture him and yet to fill him with the joy of
perfect memories.
It was on the morning after he had given his Alaskan decision that
Charley Abbott, eyebrows raised, laid a Brown paper before the
Secretary, with the comment:
"Either Cheney or some one in Cheney's office has leaked.
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