Chapter V: Part 5

"All that I need add," said the Judge, "is this: we must take only one step at a time. If we can succeed by persuasion, there is no need to use other measures. I do not want to use other measures unless he forces us to use them. Remember that. The first thing to do is to convince him that we are too strong for him. For instance, he has this reform nomination for the district-attorneyship. If he could be made to see that we could take that nomination away from him, he might listen to reason."

"I see."

"You will report results to me. Not methods, Irwin: only the results, but please report the results step by step. And understand that whoever undertakes this matter must not know too much to be dangerous, but must know enough to make no error."

"How soon do you want the letters, Judge?"

"As soon as I can get them."

"And the outside limit?"

"The first step must be immediate. We must not run so fast that we stumble; but for the completion it will be impossible to wait long. Say twenty-eight days from date."

"Right," said Irwin, and walked briskly from the room.

Irwin had a manner of telephoning that was more hurried than the Judge's, and Miss Weston treated him with greater deliberation. However, he had soon called up the office of Anson Quirk and learned that Quirk was there.

"Then, stay there for twenty minutes, will you?" asked Irwin. "I'm coming right around to see you."

Anson Quirk was a lawyer who had a small office and a large reputation on the East Side. His round, smiling face shone in every important case where was endangered the liberty or life of minor politicians or major thugs; the number of acquittals to his credit was surpassed only by the number of clients whom he had saved from ever appearing in court. He called every patrolman, magistrate, and tipstaff in the City and County of New York by his first name. He was successful before a judge, but he was magnificent before a magistrate, and with a police-officer he was a worker of miracles. In his own world, Quirk, whom Stein would have refused to shake hands with, was what Stein was upon a somewhat higher plane.

He talked with the bright-eyed Irwin for less than half an hour. Then he showed his visitor from his dusty office full of law-books that were never consulted.

"Easy?" he chuckled as he bowed Irwin out. "It's a hundred-to-one shot. I'll tell you what I'll do: I'll----"

"No, you won't tell me," laughed Irwin. "The less I know, the better for me. All I want to be sure of is that I can count on you."

"Sure, you can."

"And don't do everything at once."

"Not me. The frame-up comes first."

"Let me know as soon as it's tried. Then we'll talk about the next move--if one's needed."

"I understand. And whatever's needed, I'll deliver the goods inside of three weeks."

Irwin said he hoped nothing more would be needed and that a few days would suffice, and Quirk, screwing a derby-hat on one side of his head, walked around the corner to the police-station to see his friend, the red-faced, genial Hugh Donovan, lieutenant of police.

Sec.2. Ex-Judge Stein, in the handsome room overlooking Broadway, had been having another telephone-conversation with the head of the Titus & Titherington Mercantile Agency while Mr. Irwin was consulting with Mr. Quirk.

"That man has saved a bit," Alexander Titus was reporting; "but outside of his salary he has really only a hundred thousand dollars, and it's all invested in the R. H. Forbes & Son clothing firm over in Brooklyn."

The Judge made a note of this on a desk-pad.

"I see," he said. "Who is the head of that firm, now?"

"Wallace K. Forbes; I think he's a grandson of old R. H."

The Judge made another note.

"How do they stand? Oddly enough, I have a client interested in their affairs, too."

"The Forbes people? Pretty well. I had to get a report on them last week."

"Have they any heavy loans?"

"Only one that might hurt them: two hundred and fifty thousand dollars at call with the East County National."

The Judge's pencil was still busy.

"I want to be quite clear about this," he said--"quite clear: my client in this Forbes matter is considering an investment. Am I to understand that if the East County National should call this loan, if it could not be renewed elsewhere, the firm would become insolvent?"

"Oh, there's no doubt about that. But then, there's no doubt about its not being called, either. The company's quite sound, Judge."

"Thank you," said Stein. "You will have that other full report sent over?"

"It's on its way now."

"Thank you again. You had better follow it with a copy of the Forbes report. If that bears out all you say, I shall instruct my client to go ahead."

"He'll be safe if he does, Judge."

"Very well. Good-afternoon," said Stein.

He called Miss Weston again.

"Miss Weston," he said, "please get me City Chamberlain Kilgour, and, while I am speaking to him, call up the East County National and ask where you can find president Osserman. He will have left the bank, but I should like to reach him before I go home to-day."

Miss Weston obeyed with her usual readiness to serve this one of her employers.

Sec.3. Police Lieutenant Donovan had not listened to half a dozen of Quirk's words before he rose quickly and closed the door of his private room. His was one of those voices that cannot whisper, but it descended now to a hoarse muttering.

"How much is there in this for me?" he demanded.

"Nothin'," grinned Quirk.

Donovan's broad palm banged the table at which he sat.

"Then good-_night_," said he.

Quirk was undisturbed.

"Could you do the trick?" he inquired.

"You mean if it was worth my while?"

"I mean what I say: could you do it?"

"Could I do it? Of course, I could. It'd be like takin' pennies from a blind man."

"Then," said Quirk, rattling some coins in a pocket beneath his round abdomen, "I guess you'd better get busy."

Donovan's eyes narrowed.

"What's your game, Quirk?" he asked.

"It's not _my_ game, Hughie," smiled the lawyer.

"Well, you're not in it for your health, I know that damn well. If it ain't your game, whose is it?"

"I don't know for sure," said Quirk.

"Oh, come on. You know me: you've got to cough up if you want me to help."

Quirk did know the police-lieutenant. He had expected all along to be forced into an admission; but he was aware that by letting Donovan suspect reluctance he could the more speedily gain his point.

"Well," he said, "it didn't come to me straight, but I'll tell you how it did."

He embarked upon a narrative brief and abounding in gaps that Donovan's imagination was not, however, slow to fill as Quirk intended it should.

The officer nodded comprehendingly. "Then who's at the back of it?" he asked.

Quirk walked quietly to the door. He opened it suddenly: nobody had been listening at the keyhole; so he turned to Donovan and said a certain name.

The police-lieutenant's red face grew redder. He opened and shut his mouth twice before he spoke.

"Again?" he muttered.

Quirk nodded.

"That's all I know about it," he said.

"Well, why in hell didn't you tell me this right off at first?" asked the querulous Donovan.

"Because I didn't think I'd have to," pleaded Quirk.

"Have to? Looks to me like the have-to business all came on to me! How long've I got to put this across?"

Quirk appeared to consider.

"You'd have to begin with the first thing right away," he said, "and let me know about that. If it didn't work, I'd get my party to give me fuller instructions, and then I guess you'd have eighteen days."

"I'm gettin' sick of the whole game," said Donovan.

"So am I," said the lawyer blithely. "But what are we going to do about it? We've got to make a living, don't we?"

"I ain't so sure of that."

"Anyhow, we've got to buy shoes for our kids, Hughie."

"Oh, come on," muttered Donovan, "let's talk business."

They talked business until Quirk remembered another appointment and had to leave. When the lawyer had gone, Donovan put his head into the large room next his own and called to a sleepy officer seated at a desk.

"Anderson," he asked, "where's Patrolman Guth?"

Anderson yawned.

"Just come in, Lieutenant," he vouchsafed: "him and Mitchell. He's in the locker-room."

"Send him in here."

Donovan closed the door and sat at his table, frowning at its surface, until Guth entered.

"Hello, Bill," said the Lieutenant.

Guth was as big as the Lieutenant and more powerful. He would have been handsome, but his mouth had been torn in some obscure street-fight, and the scar from this wound carried the line of his lips to the left corner of his jaw-bone.

"_How're_ you, Lieutenant?" he replied.

Donovan resumed his study of the table.

"What's Reddy Rawn doin' these days?" he presently continued.

Guth shifted his weight from one leg to the other. As much as that scar would permit, he smiled, the right corner of his mouth shooting upward and the left turning down.

"Well," he said, "you know how it is. I warned him he'd got to keep in the quiet ever since that night him and the Kid shot-up Crab Rotello for tryin' to steal Reddy's girl."

"Rotello's still in Bellevue, ain't he?"

"Won't be out for near a month yet."

"He hasn't squealed?"

"Naw. You know these here guys: wouldn't tell if they was dyin'--rather leave it to their own gang to square things. Crab'll wait till he gets well, an' then he'll fix Reddy's feet for himself."

"Still, you told Reddy what I said you should?"

"Tol' him we was on."

"Find him to-night."

"All right, Lieutenant."

"Tell him Rotello's squealed: he'll believe it because he hates him. Tell him the Dago's goin' to croak an's give me an ante-mortem statement--see?"

The patrolman stolidly bowed assent.

"Tell him the only way for him to square me's to do me a good turn," continued Donovan.

Guth nodded again.

"Same's we worked on the Crab himself ten or twelve weeks ago," he said. "I got you."

"That's it. Remember, I don't know much, an' you know a lot less, an' this guy's got to know less than you do. He's got to pull it off inside of two weeks. Now, sit down here, an' I'll tell you what he's got to do. There maybe'll be more later, but this is the start."

Sec.4. The last talk that Judge Stein had that day was one with a brisk, bald-headed man, whose close-cropped mustache only accentuated the heavy mouth below it. This man called in person at the offices of Stein, Falconridge, Falconridge & Perry; he seemed to have come in a hurry, and he handed Miss Weston a card bearing the legend:

+-----------------------------+
| B. FRANK OSSERMAN |
| *PRESIDENT* |
| EAST COUNTY NATIONAL BANK |
+-----------------------------+

With him the Judge began by being as deliberate as he had been with Luke Huber. He mentioned the names of the three men upon whom Huber had that morning paid so unusual a visit to Wall Street; but this time Stein frankly declared that these three men empowered him to speak.

At the mention of their names, Osserman's fingers played with a thin gold watch-chain that ran taut through a buttonhole of his waistcoat, from one pocket to another.

"I dare say that you will remember," pursued the Judge, "that I have acted with you for these gentlemen on one or two previous occasions."

Osserman cleared his throat. "I hope there is no trouble," he said.

"No. Oh, no; there need be no trouble," said the Judge. Then he sat and watched Osserman move uneasily in his chair.

The bank-president by saying nothing tried to force Stein to explain; Stein, by the same means, tried to force Osserman to make a confession of weakness. At last Stein won.

"Of course," said Osserman, "I know the favors they've done us."

"Exactly," said the Judge; but he said only that.

"And so," continued Osserman, as one who cannot turn back, "our bank will be glad to do anything we can for them." He paused and looked at Stein; but Stein only looked pityingly at him. "Indeed," the banker ruefully resumed, "their connection with our investments and securities is such that we would have to."

"Exactly," repeated the Judge, bending his face toward the pink roses at his elbow. But he was a little sorry for Osserman, and so he added: "Not that the East County is in a position very different, in that respect, from most of the other banks."

Osserman took a deep breath.

"Well," he said, "what is it?"

"You are carrying," said the Judge, "a call-loan at two hundred and fifty thousand to R. H. Forbes & Son."

The banker showed his relief. It was clear that he had expected something more important.

"Are we?" he asked. "I dare say we are."

"Mr. Osserman," said the Judge, "the finances of the R. H. Forbes company are not long going to be what they should be. In the interest of your depositors, I should advise you to stand ready to call that loan when I give you the word."

The banker looked at the Judge and knew that, before this loan would be called, the Judge's clients would see to it that no other bank would take it up. That, however, was no affair of Osserman's: he considered that he was escaping by means of a small service.

"If there's any danger of the Forbes people failing," he said, "it would be only good business to do as you say."

"Yes," the Judge assented. "The fact of the matter is this, Mr. Osserman: that young man named Huber, who has been backing Leighton, is leaving Leighton and will be the candidate for the reform people to succeed him."

"I saw something about it in the afternoon papers."

"Yes. Now, my clients have no objection to those reformers; we see that they may do a great deal of good, if they put a temperate man at the head of their ticket. But we happen to know that this Huber is a young, hot-headed demagogue. He is the kind of man that attracts the crowd. He might be elected. If he was not, he would hurt credit by his wild speeches; if he was, he would undoubtedly upset it by trying to put his impossible promises into action. The safest thing for Business is to take the nomination away from him before he gets started: then nobody is hurt. What money he has (it is not much) is invested in this Forbes concern. My advice to you is to see Mr. Forbes to-morrow; make him appreciate how your bank feels about the unsettling nature of this candidacy, and tell him that you will have to call his loan if the candidacy continues."

Sec.5. That was a busy night for the president and cashier of more than one bank in New York City, and for certain gentlemen whose business it is to negotiate for loans from banks in other cities. Judge Stein's telephonic talk with City Chamberlain Kilgour was as effective as the conversation with president Osserman. It is in the chamberlain's official province to deposit municipal funds with almost whatsoever institution he chooses, and to withdraw such funds as he may elect: the thin, energetic figure of Kilgour, long familiar to the tents of Tammany, was this evening hurrying from private houses to Madison Square Clubs and from clubs to Broadway cafes. The swift, quiet motor-car of ex-Judge Stein was busy, too.

Sec.6. Somebody else was busy: Patrolman Guth. Patrolman Guth, in citizen's garb, was standing almost invisible in the shadowy alley behind a saloon near Forty-third Street and Third Avenue, and was muttering to the darkness. And at last the darkness answered.

"I'm on," said the darkness.

*CHAPTER IX*

Sec.1. "No, sir; she's gone out," said the servant that answered Luke's ring at the door of the Forbes house and his inquiry for Betty on the afternoon of his interview with Judge Stein.

"To town?" asked Luke.

"Yes, sir; I think so. I think she's gone over to Mr. Nicholson's Hester Street mission."

Luke had frequently met the Rev. Pinkney Nicholson; he liked him. The young clergyman was a friend of both Forbes and Forbes's daughter. The latter often helped in Nicholson's slum-missionary work; an attendance at Nicholson's church of St. Athanasius was the only occupation that brought Forbes and Betty even slightly into touch with the world of the Ruysdaels. With Betty, Luke often went to the Sunday morning services. Indeed, he had recently become a consistent member of the congregation, partly because Betty liked the church and partly because Luke himself admired Nicholson's simple and forcible eloquence and believed enough in Nicholson's philanthropy to forgive a ritualism that in itself had only a superficial appeal for him.

"She didn't say when she would be back?" Luke inquired. Until this moment he had not known how badly he wanted to see her.

"No, sir. By dinner-time, I guess. Would you like to leave any message, Mr. Huber?"

"Only that if she isn't going out this evening, I'll call."

"Very well, sir."

Luke had hurried to the Forbes house in Brooklyn as soon as Stein left him, for he knew that Betty was usually at home from three o'clock in the afternoon until five; but the Judge had consumed some time; there was a block in the subway and another block on the surface-line at the subway's end: Luke had missed Betty. There was nothing to be done but to return to town, where he should have remained in order to be in touch with the new friends that were announcing him as their certain chance for the district-attorneyship.

He considered himself ready for the fight. He knew that Stein, although checked in the engagement at the Thirty-ninth Street apartments, would not be defeated and would resume the offensive from some other quarter at some later date; but Luke looked for no serious oppilation by these secret enemies before the end of the month that he had given them in which to come to terms. He underestimated, in short, both the power and the unencumbered license of his foes. He would not realize the handicap that his grant of a four weeks' armistice placed on his own movements, he would not believe that his antagonists might violate the truce, and he refused to credit them with the vast influence and free conscience which were at their command.

The open war, the war that the reformers and the public saw, was, however, waging. The Municipal Reform League had taken city headquarters in an office-building in Broadway below Madison Square weeks ago, before they began their search for a candidate. At that time divisional headquarters were opened in every ward in New York, and the remnants of an older reform organization, left from a defeat ten years old, were gathered and cemented for present use. Nelson, Venable, and Yeates were working day and night with their lieutenants, and when Luke returned to his apartments, the loneliness that he was beginning to feel because of the sudden end of his duties under Leighton, was banished by the news that the League headquarters had been telephoning madly for him.

He bought a newspaper on his way downtown and discovered what was one of the things that his associates wanted to see him about: Leighton had issued a statement saying that he had forced Luke's resignation from the District-Attorney's staff because of Luke's inefficiency.

"You must nail that lie immediately!" cried Venable as soon as Luke entered the offices of the League. The old man was standing at a desk with Yeates and Nelson beside him.

"Why did he fire you, anyway?" asked Yeates. "I always thought Leighton was a rather decent kind of fellow."

"Jealousy," suggested Nelson. "He was afraid of him."

Luke sat on a table and dangled his long legs. He did not like the necessity that Leighton had put upon him.

"Of course, he didn't discharge you at all," said Venable. "We all know that. But we have called the committee for the day after to-morrow, and you must make the public see the matter as we do."

"I'm not so sure that he didn't fire me," said Luke. He chose to be blind to his hearers' astonishment. "It was a race to see whether he'd chuck me or me him, and I think it ended in a dead-heat."

"Oh, come off!" said Yeates.

Venable stroked his white hair.

"But the reason?" he commanded. "You must give the full story to the public. We stand for absolute honesty in politics, and we can't begin with any suppression of facts in public office."

"Well," said Luke, "I think I gave Leighton, in a general way, to understand I believed he was willing to use the Money Power in politics, if he could get it to use." He smiled at them. "Does sound rather vague, doesn't it?"

Nelson puffed out his cheeks. "Men don't break up a partnership for such things," said he.

"Leighton and I did."

"Perhaps you did, but people won't think so."

Venable cut in:

"We don't want to pry into your private affairs, and, of course, we don't expect you to violate any personal confidences that you naturally had with Mr. Leighton; but a broad statement of the basic facts has to go to the papers at once. The charge wouldn't be so serious if it was specific and vulgar, because then you would have no trouble in disproving it; but Mr. Leighton is a thorough politician; he knows the value of vagueness, and he gives the impression that he could tell a great deal if he wasn't so much of a gentleman as to want to spare your feelings."

Luke slowly got down from the table.

"I will say this much," he replied; "I will answer Leighton in his own language: I will say he tried to get hold of some documents that would make trouble for a group of unscrupulous and influential men, and he wasn't going to use those documents in court or out of it to stop those men in a wrong they were doing, but only as a means to force them to give him their political support."

Venable reflected.

"I think it would suit if you published that," he said.

"Did he get the documents?" asked Nelson.

"No," said Luke, "he didn't. Now, send me in a stenographer, and I'll dictate a statement along those lines."

Sec.2. The headquarters of the Municipal Reform League occupied a half of the second floor. They were accessible by either the stairs, or any of the three elevators that all day long shot down and up narrow shafts from the roof to the hall opening on Broadway. Entering the offices, one came first to a reception-room; beyond that, one passed along the cleared side of a railing in the large apartment, behind which sat the company of stenographers and typewriters, and so came to a series of offices with ground-glass doors and windows giving upon the street. It was one of these offices which was permanently assigned to Luke.

Here, pacing the floor between the roll-top desk at one side and the small safe for private papers on the other, Luke dictated his public letter. He tried to word it in such a way that its facts would not sound incredible to the uninitiated reader, would not seem so vague as to excite suspicion, and would yet convey to both Leighton and Stein the threat of complete publicity to be fulfilled if the writer were pushed too far. It was a hard task, but Luke, after several revisions, was satisfied with it.

"Yes," said Venable, "I think that will do. The reporters are waiting outside; I sent for them. I have only one addition to suggest."

"What's that?" asked Luke.

"You deal exclusively with your resignation, and yet you are issuing this statement from the League's headquarters. Don't you think you had better say something about your candidacy?

"Hadn't I better wait till I get it?"

"You will have it as soon as the committee meets. Everybody knows that. I don't propose that you should anticipate all the good points of your letter of acceptance, but merely that you should state what you will stand for. You could say that your name has been mentioned for the nomination and that, if nominated, you will make your campaign on such and such issues."

"All right." Luke shrugged his lean shoulders. He turned to the waiting stenographer. "Take this," he said:

"In conclusion, I wish to say that my recent experience in the service of the city has convinced me of the crying need of a new movement for civic improvement: a non-partisan movement in which the one object shall be the purification of municipal government and the fearless administration of the law, all of its supporters working together not for any man or party, but for the good of New York. Such a movement is that now started by the conscientious men who compose the Municipal Reform League.

"My name has been mentioned as a candidate for office on the ticket of this league, and I shall feel honored, indeed, if I receive my nomination under such happy auspices. In that event, I shall go before the people with a frank appeal to them to drive the money-changers out of the Temple of Justice, the grafters out of the police-force, vice and crime from the streets; and, if elected, I should attempt to do these things, as the will of the people who placed me in power, with favor to no persons, or combination of persons, in Greater New York. But whether I am nominated or not, I shall take my coat off and roll up my sleeves and go to work for the Municipal Reform League as for the only present hope of this city's moral regeneration."

Luke turned to Venable.

"How's that?" he inquired.

Venable agreed that it ought to do.

"_I_ think it's stodgy enough," said Luke.

Venable visibly winced, but passed the comment by.

"I am not quite sure," he said, "about that expression concerning taking off your coat and so on. Our first appeal has to be made to the cultivated voters, you see, and we don't want to sound too--well, too agricultural."

Luke smiled his weary smile. No doubt Venable was right.

"Change that," said Luke to the stenographer--"change it to: 'I shall put on my armor and take up my broadsword to go into this battle.'"

Sec.3. "Miss Forbes got back?" Luke asked that evening when he again rang the bell at the Forbes house.

"Yes, sir," said the servant, "she's in the parlor. Mr. Forbes is in the library. Shall I----"

"I think I can make out with only Miss Forbes--for a while," Luke interrupted. He started to walk past the servant.

"Mr. Nicholson is there, too," the careful servant warned him. "He stayed to dinner."

"Oh, that's good," said Luke. "Well, I'll be glad to see him." But his tone was not so enthusiastic as it had been, and his step hesitated half-way to the parlor door.

The door was open. Through it Betty heard him, and through it she now hurried into the hall to meet him, her hands outstretched.

"How splendid of you!" she was saying. "We've just been reading your letter in the paper, The papers are full of you, and you don't know how proud we are to know you, and how proud that you come here to see us at such a busy time."

Her cheeks were flushed, her brown eyes shone. Luke noted a little curl that escaped from the mass of golden hair, so like a saint's glory to her head, and seemed to caress one coral ear.

"It's all nothing but my good luck," he said as he took both her hands in his and thought not half so much of her words as of the woman that uttered them. "But I didn't expect your father's approval."

"You have it, anyway," she assured him. "Of course, he's a Progressive, and he thinks you would have done better to come into his party; but he does admire your courage, and so does Mr. Nicholson."

"Does he?" said Luke dryly. "I hope not: it might go to my head." He remembered that Nicholson believed in celibacy for the clergy, and he was glad of it.

The young priest rose as his hostess and her new guest came into the Eighteen-Sixty parlor. He was a handsome man and his eyes were kindly, yet he had the face of an ascetic.

"Miss Forbes is right," he said. "New York needs men with high convictions and the courage of them."

"So does the Church," replied Luke heartily--"and she is getting them now."

They sat down.

"The Church," said Nicholson, "has always had them. What she lacked was the co-operation of such men in the practical world. If all of our millionaires were like some few of them, our work would be easy; but now we scarcely know which is more dangerous: the evil tyrant or the evil demagogue."

He talked for some time in this strain, not to weariness, but with the completeness of the zealot. Nicholson regarded wealth as a sacred trust, a gift from God given to the great intellects of the world only that it might be administered for the benefit of the lesser of God's creatures. He mentioned no specific instance, but he saw in many of the country's rich men souls that were proving worthy of their trust and others that were using their money selfishly and even cruelly. For the former he had the highest regard, for the latter the severest condemnation; the spiritual and physical welfare of the poor he considered as the especial care of the more fortunate, and charity was not only the right of penury: it was the salvation of the rich.

Betty listened to him with a rapt face; Luke honored him, but sincerely hoped that he would go. Fearing that this desire was becoming too patent, Luke said:

"The Manhattan and Niagara people don't seem to share your views."

"Ah," said Nicholson, "there you touch a vexed problem, because there you have to do with a corporation, and it is almost a fact that corporations have no souls."

"If that corporation ever had any, it is damned," said Luke; "but what I'm driving at is that the individuals composing a corporation have moral responsibilities."

The clergyman agreed, but in corporations, he thought, responsibility was so intricately subdivided and so sinuously delegated that no one man had much left to him or could incur much guilt for his individual errors. In connection with most such accidents as a railway wreck, there was really an ethical basis for the legal phrase "an act of God."

"Not in the North Bridge wreck," said Luke. "It's been shown that the company used cheap material, didn't have any proper system for checking its work-reports so as to tell whether ordered repairs were made, and didn't hire competent men. The company can't get out of this mess by saying its experts were forced on it by the unions: it hasn't any legal right to delegate its choice of experts to a union. It's a common carrier and, if it can't do its work properly, then it ought to stop work."

Nicholson saw this much as Luke did, and said so at a good deal of length. It was some time before his part of the conversation lagged and he rose to go.

Sec.4. Luke waited only until he heard the door close upon the departing clergyman. Then he turned to Betty with a relieved sigh.

"Phew!" he said. "I'm glad that's over."

She was sitting opposite him in the full glare of light from an old-fashioned, crystal-hung chandelier. Betty could bear strong lights.

"Why?" she asked. Her brow was puckered, but her lips smiled. "I like him. He's very good, and he's doing a really great work. I like him ever so much."

"Oh, yes," said Luke. "Nicholson's all right. He has what he admires in other men: high convictions and the courage of them. Most of us always admire in others what we don't have ourselves; but not Nicholson. He is doing a big work, too. But I'm glad he's gone, just the same."

"Why?" repeated Betty.

Luke rose. He came over to Betty and stood looking down at her, his arms folded across his chest.

"Because," he said, "I wanted to talk to you."

"It didn't look so. It looked as if you wanted to talk to Mr. Nicholson."

"I wanted to talk to you and about you."

She stopped fencing. She gave him her full, frank gaze.

"Well?" she asked.

"You know what I want to say, Betty," he answered. "You've seen for a long time what I was coming to. I held off. I held off because I hadn't anything to offer you. Even now I haven't much. I haven't half enough. If I win this fight I'm in, it won't give me anything that would make me deserve you. I've not been a bit better than I should be." His voice grew tense. "When I come down to brass tacks, when I--I beg your pardon; but what I mean is that when I get to the point of telling you I love you, I see how far I've been from being what I should be. I---- Oh, hang it all, Betty!" He put out his hands. "I love you. I've never really loved anybody else and never can. If I win this confounded--blessed fight, will you marry me?"

She got slowly to her feet: it seemed to Luke minutes before she had stood up and begun her answer. Then she took both his hands.

"You don't have to win the fight to win me, Luke," she said.

The realization swept over him. He took her in his arms. He looked in her upturned face--the eyes wide, the sweet, fresh cheeks hot, the lips parted, breathing quickly--and then he felt the blood rush to his head, felt it hammer at his temples. It got into his eyes and blinded him. He ground his lips upon hers.

The dull despair of his last months under Leighton commanded a reaction. The rushing changes of the last two days had set his nerves to a speed that would not now cease in whatever physical activities he engaged himself. These things flung him along a new road; they raced him down a way of which he had known but little. As he felt the warmth of her gracious young body next his, he was hurled with such violence down a course so unfamiliar to him that only the thought of losing his race by running it too swiftly could serve to lessen his straining speed. Like a quarter-mile runner stopping himself short in the last hundred yards before the tape, he almost fell as he forced himself to release her.

"Your father," he panted. He looked away from her: "I must see him now."

Betty did not understand. She was only exalted by this new thing; she was only happy.

"Now?" she whispered.

"Yes." He looked back at her and, with a white face, smiled. "He has a right to know." He caught her hand, pressed it only as tightly as he dared. "I'll go to him in the library. Wait for me."

Sec.5. Forbes was seated at a round table, engaged in his regular nightly task of reading the editorial-page of the _Evening Star_, nodding his head when he agreed with its generalities and muttering maledictions upon it when it specifically ridiculed the Progressive Party. As Luke came in, Forbes was in the midst of one of the paper's attacks on progressivism, and his frown seemed to drive his beaked nose into his mustache.

"Oh, Huber," he said, without at once relaxing his scowl; "I didn't know you were here. Come in. Been here long?"

Luke could not have guessed how long he had been in the house.

"Not very," he ventured.

"Sit down," said Forbes. He had not risen. He indicated an easy-chair near his own.

"Thanks," said Luke; but he did not sit down.

Forbes at last noticed his visitor's nervousness.

"I suppose you've had a hard day," he said. "Pardon me for not congratulating you sooner on your success. This sheet"--he brandished the _Evening Star_--"doesn't want anything but to be against everything. It upsets me every evening. But you've done a big thing. I think you should have come clear over to our side, but I dare say you will do that in time. Meanwhile, I'm sincerely glad for your good fortune. You deserve it."

"You're very good," said Luke. His eyes twinkled a little. "I wonder if you know about it--all."

"Only what this mealy-mouthed sheet says. It's absolutely inexplicable to me, Huber, how a paper written by such able men can be so narrow-minded on broad subjects. However, I think they're going to support _your_ party, if they may be said ever to support anything."

"I'm afraid they _are_ rather reticent about the real news," said Luke.

"They never tell anything that weighs against their theories."

"They haven't had a chance to tell this."

Forbes looked puzzled.

"What do you mean?"

"It's only just happened." Luke breathed deeply. "I'm engaged to be married," he said. He spoke with an unusual rapidity. "Engaged to be married, and I'd like it to come off--the wedding, I mean--right after the election."

Forbes scrambled up. He wrung Luke's hand.

"Well, well," he said, "you are to be congratulated!"

"I am glad you think so," said Luke, "for you know the girl better than I do."

"The girl? I know her better----" Forbes's voice rose. "You don't mean---- You don't mean to say----"

"Yes," Luke nodded. "It _is_ luck, isn't it? It's Betty."

"Bless my soul!" Forbes brought his left hand down on Luke's right shoulder. "Bless my soul! My little girl! Huber, you--you rather knock the wind out of me."

He said all the conventional things; his manner showed all the proper surprise; and both men understood that he had been expecting this news for a long time and wanting it.

"Huber," he said, "of course this is sudden, and of course I'm an old fool not to have got over considering Betty a child--a mere baby--but, now you're here with the announcement, I'm quite certain that, out of all the men who've been tagging after her, you're the one that I'd want for a son-in-law."

Luke again mumbled his thanks.

"You're not standing still," pursued Forbes: "you're going ahead. You have a great deal to you, and Betty's the very girl to make you make the best of yourself"--Forbes's voice abandoned the commonplace note and fell to the note of genuine feeling--"then there's your interest in the Business. Huber, I've always regretted that I didn't have a son to leave the Business to, as my father left it to me and his father to him. If you'd married somebody else, and Betty had married some chap that had no interest in it, the Business might have gone over to you eventually, and so on to children of another stock than mine; whereas, now"--he looked around Luke to the doorway--"Betty!" he said.

She had not obeyed Luke; she was standing at the door.

"I couldn't wait," she confessed; but she said it with an allegiance that was now all for Luke.

"Come here," her father ordered.

He released Luke's hand and shoulder. The girl ran to him and put her arms about his neck.

"Please be nice, daddy," she whispered. "Please be nice."

Forbes managed to draw a handkerchief and blow his nose.

"I _am_ a fool," he said. "I--Betty, you're looking so much to-night the way your mother--By George, I _am_ a fool! I think I must be getting old, Huber."

Sec.6. In the room at the end of the hall marked "Family Entrance" to a saloon in Fifty-second Street, near Eighth Avenue, a red-headed man dressed in cheap clothes of fashionable cut, was leaning across a table at which he was drinking raw whisky with a girl who, had she not been too heavily painted, would have had a face like that popularly ascribed to Joan of Arc.

"I've got him showed to me," the man was saying. "He lives at the Arapahoe on Thirty-ninth Street. I'll play lighthouse. All you gotta do's put on them glad clothes an' get him into Pearl's Six' Av'nue place. He's in wrong, anyhow. Then I'll tip off Charley Guth, an' he'll put Donovan wise an' pinch the joint. See?"

The girl that looked like Joan of Arc nodded comprehendingly.

"But the clothes has got to be real swell," she said.

*CHAPTER X*

Sec.1. As Luke left the Forbes house that night, his step kept time with the beat of his pulses, and he walked fast. At last he thought that he saw happiness within reach.

He was not yet happy; he was quite clear about this. One half of him, perhaps the nobler half, was engaged in a political battle with the forces of corruption, but it was so engaged that those forces affected it; they invaded his individuality and, therefore, curtailed his freedom and curtailed completeness. Happiness, if it was to be found at all, was to be found only in the perfect development of self, and such a development was impossible so long as self, seeking expression in politics, found expression thwarted by an evil opposition in the political field.

Nevertheless, this opposition, Luke was sure, could be crushed and swept away; his ideal for the good of the city, which had become his own good, could be attained; and then, he told himself, that other part of him, the part that loved Betty and that Betty loved, could enjoy Betty as the reward of the whole man. It was as if he were one of two runners. Betty he saw not as the goal, but as the prize to be given him for leading at the goal; not a prize that any other runner could win by worsting him in the race, but a prize that he himself could deserve only if he were to lead at the finish.

He was thinking of this when he left the Subway station and walked toward the Arapahoe, but under his conscious thoughts the subconscious self was still tingling with the emotions that had flamed up in him when he took Betty in his arms and felt her lips on his. He quivered with the physical recollection, and though the flame had burned, his flesh found the pain of it sweet.

At the corner nearest the apartment house in which he lived, he became aware of a woman. The street was nearly empty, but until she was close beside him he did not notice her. How she came to be at his elbow he did not appreciate, nor did he at first realize whether she were young or old, beautiful or ugly.

"Will you tell me the time, please?" she asked.

Luke's experience in Leighton's office had long ago taught him that such a request was the commonest form of watch-stealing, but he was not afraid of losing his watch. He stopped under a lamp-post.

"Certainly," he said.

"I know it's late," pursued the woman, "but I don't know how late."

The words were thick. The voice was the voice of all the phantoms of the street, low in pitch and hoarse, but luring because of all that it connoted: because of the mystery, the adventure which, after all knowledge of her sordidness and all understanding of her frigidity, the woman who most reveals her body has maintained by that revelation's forced screening of her soul.

Luke consulted his watch.

"It's a quarter to eleven," he said.

He looked at her, and he was glad to look. That she was well-dressed, but overdressed and wore her clothes with the defiance of one unhabituated to them, did not impress him. What impressed him was the face that, in spite of its tokens of much evil done and more evil suffered, retained the fragile beauty which men associate with innocence. The calm, broad brow, the gray eyes wide and steady, the underlip timidly drawn back, the delicate chin upturned above a slim white throat, reminded him of the pictures of Joan of Arc on trial and foredoomed by her English accusers.

"It _is_ late, isn't it?" she said.

"Yes," said Luke. He had forgotten about his watch; he was holding it loosely in his hand.

"I wonder," said the woman, "if it's too late for you to take a little walk with me."

Her eyes had narrowed coldly; a smile that was a trade grimace distorted her mouth.

The change in her wakened Luke. He restored his watch to his pocket. He felt a slight chill at his heart and a self-accusation.

"No," he said brusquely; and started to walk away.

The woman followed.

"Aw, come on," she urged. Her tone coarsened under his refusal.

"No," said Luke.

"Please?" her voice whined. She put her hand on his arm.

Luke shook off the hand. He was too angry with himself to have pity for her.

"Stop this," he ordered.

"But won't you listen?" The woman's hand returned persistently; it clutched. "I got somethin' to----"

Luke saw that they were at the door of the Arapahoe.

"I'm sorry," he said, "but I can't stop to listen to you."

He went into the apartment house.

Sec.2. He really was sorry. Once inside the door of the Arapahoe, he said to himself that the woman had only been plying her trade, and that what he had visited upon her was a portion of the wrath against his own momentary weakness. He could never have given way to her, because he was so firm in his resolve to live worthily for Betty that he could not enough want to give way to offset the efficacy of his resolve; only the portion of him subject to his will without being a part of his will had momentarily weakened; it could not have rebelled victoriously, and although it merited punishment, the exterior cause of its weakness did not deserve censure. Altogether, Luke concluded, he had behaved in a rather contemptible fashion.

His mind was immediately diverted. As he passed the clerk's desk in the hall, the clerk beckoned darkly to him.

"There are some reporters looking for you here," he whispered. "I sent them into the waiting-room so's you could get by them when you came in, if you wanted to. Do you?"

Luke almost laughed as he reflected upon the figure he would have presented to the representatives of the press, had they been waiting for him at the door.

"Yes, I'll see them," he said.

They came to him in a body, seven of them. They worked for the morning papers and, because the evening papers had printed Luke's letter about his resignation from the District-Attorney's staff, they wanted a fresh sensation for their journals.

Luke leaned against a pillar in the lobby and talked to them. Most of them he had met while in Leighton's office. Personally, he was popular with them, and he liked them.

"I'll say anything you want," he agreed. "But what is there to say?"

The spokesman was a keen man with curling black hair.

"You might develop the last part of your letter," he suggested: "the part about the big financiers that you're going gunning for."

"I haven't got the gun yet," objected Luke. "Better wait and see if I'm nominated, boys."

"Oh, you'll be nominated, all right. Come on, Mr. Huber."

"You're going to support the League, anyhow," said a stout little fellow, whose paper opposed all reformers. "You can tell us how the League will go for the men at the top."

To this Luke agreed. He began to speak and, as he saw the busy pencils noting his best phrases upon sheets of roughly-folded copy-paper, he fell into stride with his subject. He declared that the League meant to put an end to the influence of Big Business in municipal politics, and, although he mentioned no names, it was evident what big business men he had in mind.

The reporters tried to make him mention names, but their efforts only seemed to restore his caution. They urged him to be specific in his charges against the present administration of the District-Attorney's office; but here again they encountered the impassive side of Luke with which they were more familiar.

"No, no," said Luke; "there may be a time for all that, but this isn't the time. Just wind up by saying we mean, once and for all, to put Wall Street out of politics and graft out of the administration of justice in New York City and to keep them out, if we have to send every financier and every policeman to jail."

Sec.3. The reporters made all that they could of what Luke gave them, and the next morning's papers were full of it. Leighton, on his way downtown, read them with anger against Luke and annoyance with himself for losing a man that might have been so valuable to him.

He began to be afraid of the effect of Huber's implications regarding the District-Attorney's office. Remembering that his party was in no position to risk putting up a weak candidate, he telephoned to George J. Hallett and was granted an interview: he said he knew of the letters in Luke's possession and knew how Luke came by them.

Hallett, whose office was almost the counterpart of that in which he consulted with his master and Rivington, sprawled in a deeply upholstered chair. He smoked steadily at a cigar, and when the letters were mentioned, he accepted the mention with complete composure.

"Who else knows about 'em?" he frankly inquired.

"Nobody," said Leighton--"unless Huber's been talking."

"He's got 'em, hasn't he?"

"Had them the last time I saw him."

"Anyway, you haven't 'em?"

"No, of course, I haven't."

Hallett took his cigar from his mouth; he looked at the cigar, and from it to Leighton.

"I don't see what use _you_ are to us, then," he said.

Leighton understood that the only satisfactory way to deal with this man was the direct way.

"I can't be any use to you except to tell you where the leak is these letters came through."

"What do you want us to do for you?"

"I want your support at election time."

"Can't promise it. The other side has just as good a claim on us."

"Heney?"

"An' the whole Democratic organization, yes."

"Would you promise not to interfere on either side?"

"Can't do it. You see, you haven't got much to sell."

Leighton ran his fingers through his black hair.

"Look here, Mr. Hallett," he began again, "we don't know each other personally----"

"That's all right," said Hallett.

"Well, then, if I can't count on your influence for the election, may I count on it for the nomination?"

"Who stole those letters?" said Hallett.

"I can count on you people in the matter of the nomination?"

"Yes."

"A man named Rollins."

Late that afternoon it was found that Rollins had made an overcharge for postage-stamps in the course of his secretarial work. He was arrested and "railroaded" to jail.

Sec.4. It was somewhat later when the Republicans nominated Leighton and then, to the amazement of the public, the Democrats and Progressives each opposed him with candidates so weak that every politician understood this as a surrender to Leighton in order to defeat the candidate of the Municipal Reform League. In advance of their occurrence, however, all these things were gossiped about by the leaders of every faction and so confidently expected that plans were shaped in accordance with them. Somehow, they sent word ahead to the Reform headquarters even on the day of the happening that set them in motion, and Venable and Nelson, together with the other executives of the M. R. L. bestirred themselves.

"Where's Yeates?" asked Nelson, as he came into Luke's room, where Venable and Luke were busy. "That young fellow's never around when he's wanted."

"He sent in word he had some other engagements," said Venable.

"Had to play golf with Hallett's son, I guess, if it wasn't L. Bergen Rivington," Nelson sneered. "There's too much society in that boy for any political usefulness."

Luke looked up from the notes he was preparing for his formal letter accepting the nomination that the League was next day to offer him:

"Is Yeates a friend of those people?" he asked. "I knew he knew some of them, but is he a friend?"

"Only socially," he said. "Yeates was born to it, but politically he is all right. He has high ideals and a really fine enthusiasm."

"Hum," said Luke. "What do you think of this paragraph, Nelson?"

He read from his notes: