The Night Before
I saw Einarson and Grantham that evening, and spent several hours with them. The boy was fidgety, nervous, without confidence in the revolution’s success, though he tried to pretend he was taking things as a matter of course. Einarson was full of words. He gave us every detail of the next day’s plans. I was more interested in him than in what he was saying. He could put the revolution over, I thought, and I was willing to leave it to him. So while he talked I studied him, combing him over for weak spots.
I took him physically first—a tall, thick-bodied man in his prime, not as quick as he might have been, but strong and tough. He had an amply jawed, short-nosed, florid face that a fist wouldn’t bother much. He wasn’t fat, but he ate and drank too much to be hard-boiled, and your florid man can seldom stand much poking around the belt. So much for the gent’s body.
Mentally, he wasn’t a heavyweight. His revolution was crude stuff. It would get over chiefly because there wasn’t much opposition. He had plenty of willpower, I imagined, but I didn’t put a big number on that. People who haven’t much brains have to develop willpower to get anywhere. I didn’t know whether he had guts or not, but before an audience I guessed he’d make a grand showing, and most of this act would be before an audience. Off in a dark corner I had an idea he would go watery. He believed in himself—absolutely. That’s ninety percent of leadership, so there was no flaw in him there. He didn’t trust me. He had taken me in because as things turned out it was easier to do so than to shut the door against me.