When Attorney Toole descended on Kilo, the Citizens' Party was "in," and the Republicans were "out," and the attorney saw an opportunity of making himself valuable to his party by working to put the party "in" again.
Never before had the Colonel climbed his stairs, and Toole smiled like an Irish sphinx when the Colonel entered his office.

He smiled most of the time, not because he thought a smile becoming to his freckled face, but because he found things so eternally amusing.

In law a man is considered innocent until he has been proved guilty; in Kilo Attorney Toole considered everything amusing until it had been proved serious, and he considered the Colonel and Skinner, and the whole Citizens' Party they had been instrumental I organizing, as parts of the same joke.

They would stand until he was ready to lazily push out his hand and topple them over.

It was almost time to topple them, now, and he was glad to see the Colonel; he motioned him to a seat, and smiled.
The Colonel took his hat from his mat of coarse iron-gray hair, and laid it carefully on the floor.