NASHUA, N.H. - After I checked into my room Tuesday afternoon at the sprawling Radisson hotel, where Chris Christie had his election-night headquarters, I noticed a guy in a dark suit pacing the hallway.

It turned out the guy was from the State Police. Chris Christie had the room next to mine.

My first thought was, "I hope the neighbors don't keep me up late as they celebrate."

As the results from the New Hampshire Republican presidential primary came in, that didn't look very likely.

But the early results said there'd be parties in the rooms of Jeb Bush and John Kasich.

Those two were locked in a battle among what I have dubbed "the Gang of Four," the candidates who are competing for the role of establishment favorite to take on the big winner last night, Donald Trump.

The other two members of the gang are, of course, Christie and the guy he's been targeting for the past month or so, Sen. Marco Rubio from Florida.

Both were lagging well behind Bush and Kasich as the results rolled in.

Christie was in danger of finishing out of the top five and therefore being kicked off the debate stage for the next primary, which is less than two weeks in South Carolina.

That would likely spell the end of the Christie candidacy. But he had his moments.

In the Saturday debate, Christie lured Rubio into an exchange in which he repeated the same bit of canned rhetoric four times. The resultant videos likely finished off Rubio's candidacy.

If Christie was trying to do a favor for Bush and Kasich, he certainly succeeded.

Rubio was on a roll after his third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses. A win here would have made him the consensus favorite.

Christie stopped him in his tracks, probably for good.

But the big question going into Tuesday was whether Christie would go up as Rubio went down.

When I ran into state Senate minority leader Tom Kean at the festivities, he said he'd seen a lot of positive response as he spent Election Day on the governor's campaign bus.

"People understood the message very, very well," Kean said. "He was connecting with the people, whether it was in the diners or the voting places."

The problem was that lots of other candidates were connecting as well.

Trump was the biggest beneficiary. But the other big winner could be Bush.

Earlier in this campaign, when he was under a withering attack from Trump, Bush had been reduced to the low single digits in the national polls.

Last night, Kasich was the clear winner in the establishment lane, but Bush was close behind.

That's evidence of a real comeback, said Ocean County lawyer Larry Bathgate, who is on Bush's national finance committee.

"Many of us have believed that when people get closer to the time when they're pulling the lever in the voting booth, they're going to take it more seriously and decide who they want as president," Bathgate said when I phoned him last night. "Bush has the experience."

Not only that, he's got the money. Bathgate said Kasich doesn't yet have the funding to mount a national campaign. And the Ohio governor is not particularly well-suited to pick up votes in the next primary, which is in South Carolina.

That's Ted Cruz territory. Cruz isn't competing in the establishment lane. He's running against Trump for what looks like a sizable anti-establishment vote.

At the moment, he's 1-for-2. He beat Trump in Iowa but only got one-third the votes Trump did in New Hampshire.

But he lines up well against the Donald in South Carolina, a good chunk of which is in the original Bible Belt.

As for Christie, it's looking like he will go down in history, but not for his sterling finish in New Hampshire. He'll be remembered for having finished off Rubio. It was a nice piece of work and he should be proud of it.

The result is that we now have two races for the Republican nomination for president, Trump vs. Cruz and Kasich vs. Bush.

As for Christie, he performed his role in this drama and he performed it well.

But as for any celebration next door this evening, all I can say is I don't think I'll be losing any sleep over it.

UPDATE: Christie just finished what was a pretty classy concession speech -- though he did not yet fully concede.

When Christie got to the floor, he gave what was effectively a concession speech for not just the primary but the race for the Republican presidential nomination.

His schedule had called for the governor to go straight to South Carolina, but he announced instead he and the family were headed back to Jersey to await the final New Hampshire results.

"There's no reason to sit in a hotel room in South Carolina for that, he said. "We'll go home. We haven't been home for two weeks."

He added, "We need a change of clothes" to inject a bit of levity into the situation.

Those results are not likely to change. With 76 percent in, Christie was stuck below the 8 percent barrier.

But Christie went out gracefully. When someone from the audience shouted out an attack on Donald Trump, Christie corrected her and congratulated Trump.

"Winning isn't easy," he said.

You can say that again.