LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

"Betty," he said, "do you understand what your father is asking me to do?" . . . (Outside cover) (missing from book)

Betty stood at the window in the full light of the street-lamp . . . . . . . . . Frontispiece

He found it necessary to be emphatic

The mob was using the coal from the dismantled wagon

EXPLANATION

In order to warn off trespassers, I have begun my novel with four chapters that an expert bookmaker—indeed, my own book-maker—has pronounced dull: I knew that only those to whom the book belonged would persevere. By the same token, being aware that the story which is prefaced by an apology is ended with suspicion, I preface this story with an apology: I want to apologize to my friends for using them and to my enemies for not giving them what they have expected; I want to create in the minds of the former the suspicion that I am darker than I have been painted, and in the minds of the latter the suspicion that I am not a whited sepulcher but a blackened altar.

In 1909 I projected, vaguely it is true, a cycle of four novels, each to be independent of the others in plot and character, but all carrying forward a definite view of life. As, however, the announcement of a cycle is the surest means of alienating readers, not to mention publishers, I held my tongue about the general plan and concerned myself, in public, only with its separate parts. These were "The House of Bondage," "The Sentence of Silence," "Running Sands" and "The Spider's Web."

Privately, the first question demanding answer was that of method. In what I had to say I believed burningly, as I still believe deeply, and the great thing with me was not to say it in the manner that most people would call Art, but to say it in the manner that would convert as many readers as possible to my way of thinking. I did not want to produce the effect of a work of Art; I wanted to produce conviction of truth. On the one hand, I must avoid even the appearance of a personal interest in my characters, because that would divert my readers into the charge of sentimentality; and on the other, I must not hesitate to marshal my events in their largest force, even though the reviewers called this melodrama.

Here is a choice that is sure to come sooner or later to every writer of fiction: the choice between what he has considered Art for Art's sake and what he considers art for Man's sake. He has kept in mind the day when his books will be judged solely by their own merits, when the causes with which he sympathizes have been defeated and forgotten or established and beyond the need of sympathy; when new evils demand new remedies and old wounds are healed. He knows, as few of his contemporary readers can know, that then he will be heavily handicapped by all that is immediate or local in what he writes; that by nothing save adherence to the eternal standards of Art can he endure. He may be certain, in his own mind, that any true art is the expression, in the manner best calculated to secure a desired effect, of the ideas essential to the effect, but he will be equally sure that the world will not so consider. If he sets any propaganda above Art, the future will forget his work, the present meet it with prejudice, probably with opposition; and against all this he has to set only his own faith in the righteousness of the thing he has to say.

I made my choice and began my cycle with that one of my four novels which I knew would receive the readiest hearing. In "The House of Bondage" I wanted to put before my readers the theory that the superimposing of one human being's will, or the will of any group of human beings, upon any other's is the Great Crime. For the purposes of illustration, I chose for attack the chief present means of such imposition or compulsion, the pressure of our economic system, and depicted its effects in forcing women into prostitution. The result was amazing: the book sold and, they tell me, is still selling in my own and several other countries and tongues; it either originated or promoted a series of sociological crusades and legislative investigations concerning themselves with the symptoms and neglecting the disease, and by no persons was it so heartily welcomed as by those who are themselves the instruments of compulsion. I began to think that the instruments were becoming conscious and that I might not be so unpopular after all.

I was never more mistaken. In "The Sentence of Silence" I proceeded to show other effects of the same evil compulsion: the effects of our failure to instruct our children in sex-hygiene; of imposing upon our heirs the moral code that our economic system has imposed upon us, and of imposing upon our daughters an abstinence from which we absolve our sons. In its circulation, this book left its publishers nothing to complain of; but its reception was of a sort vastly different from that of its predecessor. Parents that were loath to see other people's daughters forced into prostitution were shocked at a proposal to educate their own sons against the practice of seduction; husbands that lived in secret polygamy were aghast at the idea of instructing their wives in any code save that which they preached, but did not follow; and men that took any woman's body they could get were horrified at the notion of any woman sharing their liberty.

The remarkable book-reviewer of the generally sane Philadelphia "Inquirer" upbraided me because, after I had dragged my central character, Dan Barnes, through the sewers of debauchery and venereal disease, I did not "save" him by marrying him to a "pure" woman!

Came the third novel, "Running Sands," and came a louder protest. I had here tried to take a step further my argument against compulsion and to show that, if I had been right before, then compulsion by matrimony—the marriage of the old to the young and the knowing to the ignorant, rape within wedlock and forcing of wives to become mothers against their will—was wrong. Here again the people read and the instruments of compulsion condemned me. Those persons who, without a wry face among them, swallow the funny but futile jokes of another type of fiction were so whole-hearted in their curses of my book that I was inclined to believe their present bitterness enhanced by their recollection of how they had once praised me.

Now I have written "The Spider's Web," the last of my four, and I have read that it is expected to be to its predecessors what Landor said the fourth George was to his. For a good pair of eyes at the conventional point of view, it is all this and more; but then there are no good eyes at the conventional point of view, and so I fear that, without help, the condemners of "The Sentence of Silence" and "Running Sands" may find this novel innocent: there is only one "bad" woman among its speaking-roles, and she appears but three brief times. In order that my condemners may not miss what they want to find in me, I shall tell them in a simpler form than the dramatic what I have done.

I have made Luke Huber a man that comes to see the sin of compulsion exerting itself against humanity in all the powers that conduct modern society; in the ownership of men and things; in our entire system of production and distribution, and in the creatures and ministers of that system: Government, Politics, Law, and what passes by the name of Religion.

Such a mind as Huber's comes to Dora Marsden's conclusion: "Life is no two days the same: the same measure never fits twice exactly; hence the futility of state-making, law-making, moral-making, when all that is of importance is life-augmenting, and that is the individual's affair." He sees that only Labor creates wealth, and that nothing should be robbed of a fraction of what it creates. He sees that actually government is "not the president, congress and the courts, not any body or power created by the Constitution, but always a combination of important business interests,"[#] not even any individual, and that even if it were completely constitutional it would still be compulsion—that to "consent" to be governed is to consent to be compelled.

[#] Charles Edward Russell.

He would argue of politics:

"We Americans pretend to hate kings, and so we devise a republic; finding the rule of one man bad, we believe we can better it by multiplying it by ninety millions; finding an ounce has evil effects, we take a ton. We simply change the tyranny of one for the tyranny of many. Even if the will of our fifteen million voters ruled us as they tell us it does, then each one of the fifteen million would be giving all the 14,999,999 others the right to interfere with him in return for his one fifteen-millionth right to take a hand in interfering with them. For that fraction of power over others, he would be giving away all his power over himself."

Huber would say of religion and law:

"Both are tools in the hands of compulsion. Both try to belittle divine humanity, the first making Man a pygmy before God and the second making Man a pygmy before a few men. There can be no crime against God, since God, or the force that created the world, is omnipotent; no crime against law, since law is an instrument of the great crime. The law a deterrent? It isn't. The statistics prove that, so far as statistics can prove anything. But you prove it yourself. Why do you try to refrain from conscious wrong? Not because you're afraid of the law in heaven or on earth—you're not a coward. You simply want to do the decent thing because it is the decent thing. The desire to do the decent thing: that's all the religion and law there is to-day among even the people that make laws and religions for the purpose of ruling other people by them. The rulers sin only because their system has dimmed their judgment of the decent thing, and so they go on maintaining their law and their religion. The ruled will want to do the decent thing just as soon as they become responsible creatures through the abolition of these compulsions, exactly as the rulers, though dulled by keeping up their system, wanted to do it as soon as they became responsible creatures by growing above the dictates of these compulsions."

Other men, other religions. For some faith; for some denial. Huber's religion was the Gospel of Negation.

He came to this by conversion, which means the sudden revelation by the sub-conscious self to the conscious self of the meanings that the sub-conscious self has long been drawing from the conscious self's experiences. The outward phenomena of such conversions—"being saved," "receiving grace," "being regenerated," "experiencing religion"—are perfectly familiar to all persons that have attended evangelical churches, know the work of the Salvation Army, or have read Harold Begbie's "Broken Earthenware." The psychology of the force causing them has been elaborately, but not always scientifically, treated in William James's stimulating volume, "Some Varieties of Religious Experience." The force itself can, and often does, change the entire life of a man from evil to good. The men so changed that we most hear of are changed by an affirmation of faith, because they are men whose only spiritual experience has been in connection with accepted religions and because their change is generally first exhibited in the public meeting-place of the followers of some such religion; but there are other men similarly changed by a denial of faith, because they have had spiritual experiences distinct from any accepted religion, and of them we hear little, because their change is generally wrought in the solitude in which they have had those spiritual experiences which are unconnected with accepted religion.

Huber was a man of the latter sort. Being of that sort, he says the last word that follows logically from an acceptance of "The House of Bondage."

About the manner of this last word I should, perhaps, say something more. I have not, I confess with shame, read M. Fabre's book on the habits of the spider, but I have read other books and studied the spider in my own garden; and the more I learned of web and spider the more I realize how Huber would see their simulacra in our civilization and learn at last that there the web outlived many spiders. That is how I got my title, and that is why I have tried to construct my chapters with a certain rough resemblance to the female diadem-spider's web. At the end, both the web and Huber win: the former because it catches its fly and goes on catching other and larger flies; the latter because his soul has found itself.

The method of procuring data requires a fuller explanation. The writer who endeavors to present actual conditions in fictional form has constantly to choose between truth and facts, and if his readers accept his facts, they are inclined to doubt his imagination. In all of these four books, I have been careful to present only types, but I have tried to endow each type with character, and each character has assumed a living personality in my own mind. I have used no person and no event that was isolated; but, having individualized my types and chosen my typical events, I have felt free to employ the latter in whatever way seemed to me best fitted to enforce my argument, and at liberty to imagine what the former would think and do under the stress of the latter. I have heard of a dozen women in real life designated as the originals of Mary Denbigh, three wives selected as Muriel Stainton, and one man—myself—named as Dan Barnes. The discoverers of these prototypes only flattered my powers of detection and portraiture at the expense of my imagination and good taste.

I intended to present, and I have presented, simply certain types produced by our civilization and working in the media of our economic system. I spent considerable time in New York last winter to procure certain data; I found the data, selected what was typical as I saw it, and made my story. "The Spider's Web," whether well done or ill, has been done by my own imagination.

Help I have had and eagerly sought. An historian always cites his authorities and acknowledges his assistants; I could never see why a novelist should be less honest or less courteous, since every realist must delegate some of his research-work, and even the writer of that fiction farthest from life must take something from the fancy of his acquaintances. I know, and I shall not soon forget, how much "The House of Bondage" owes to the encouragement given my work by its publishers. During the latter part of the actual writing of "The Spider's Web," it was impossible for either my wife or me to be in New York, and I taxed the generous patience of many a friend by inquiries. I exacted tribute from Max Eastman's editorials in "The Masses," Walter Lippmann's papers in "The Forum," and C. P. Connolly's in "Everybody's Magazine" as expressing three current phases of American opinion; I even seized a picture from Mary Macdonald Brown's accounts of New York and secured from an editorial in "The Nation" my reference to the past of the Astor House. Molière took his own where he found it; I have taken other men's at my need. To all of these my score is long; to those few and fine newspaper and magazine critics and reviewers who have seen my purpose and helped it—who, when they have differed or blamed, blamed or differed honestly—to them, from whom I have learned so much, my obligation is still greater.

No opinions that are worth while are unalterable; only the insincere have fixed convictions: my cycle of four books expresses an attitude toward life that I may some day very well change. This series completed, I am left with my conscience free and my brain at liberty to turn toward work that I may try to design only by the more lasting standards of Art, but no change of belief or work will make me regret having expressed what I believed. I am thoroughly aware of how, if they understood it, the condemners of "The Sentence of Silence" and "Running Sands" would condemn this book. I am equally aware of how many persons that are my comrades, friends, and well-wishers will alter their relations toward me when they have read "The Spider's Web"; but, though I shall be sorry to lose these, I shall not be sorry for the reason of their loss. Horace Traubel, who puts most things well, has put this well:

REGINALD WRIGHT KAUFFMAN.

POSCHIAVO, SWITZERLAND,
8th September, 1913.

CHARACTERS

THE SPIDER'S WEB

CHAPTER I

§1. Early that morning, Luke Huber stood before the Pennsylvania Railroad Station at Americus and fancied himself a latter-day crusader setting out to reconquer from the infidels the modern Holy City of God. He had graduated from the Harvard Law-School in the previous June. Now the Republican brother-in-law of one of his classmates, having been elected District-Attorney of corruptly Democratic New York, offered a place on his staff to Luke as soon as Huber should meet successfully the necessary formalities. This new public-prosecutor was to "clean up" the largest city in the country, and Luke, as his assistant, was to aid in restoring to the metropolis the ideals of the framers of the Constitution.

A slim young man, with a smooth face too rugged to be handsome, and gray eyes too keen to be always dreaming, Huber stood erect, the wide collar of his woolen overcoat turned up, for the spring lingered that year in the valleys of Virginia, and the brim of his Alpine hat pulled over his nose. He disregarded the group of boys waiting for the "up-train" that would bring the Philadelphia morning newspapers to his native Pennsylvania town, disregarded the grimy station-buildings, and looked toward the river, where the morning mists were lifting and the cold sunshine was creeping through to light the Susquehanna hills. He was one of those fortunate and few human beings who are born without the original sin of superstition, but what he saw seemed to him almost a favorable omen. He had come down early, because he disliked to prolong the good-bys of his mother and sister, and because he felt that even the walk to the station was an important advance in the quest which he was so eager to begin. When he arrived beside the railway tracks and allowed his father, the Congressman, to see to the checking of the baggage—a concession that Luke made to his parent's desire for some part in the great adventure—the entire river was hidden from view by a thick dun curtain: one could see nothing beyond the point by the shore where the black arms of a derrick, at the Americus Sand Company's works, were silhouetted against that curtain and stretched over a tremendous mound of sand, as if they were the arms of some gigantic skeleton pronouncing the benediction at a Black Mass. But now, though the fog really rose, it appeared to Luke to be torn from above, and as the sun mounted over distant Turkey Hill and gradually gilded the pines on the surrounding summits, it seemed to advance up the bed of the stream, slowly descending of its own force along the dark hillsides, until, all at once, the river was a rushing stream of gold. Luke found himself thinking of the veil of the Temple, and how it was rent in twain from the top to the bottom.

His father, who was taller than Luke, but broad out of all proportion to his height, came puffing back from the baggage-room. He held the checks for Luke's luggage and a slip of pink paper.

"Here are your checks," he said, "and here's your pass. I forgot to give it to you. It came last night."

Luke took the proffered paper.

"I thought," he began, "that the Interstate Commerce Commission didn't——"

The Congressman interrupted with a deep chuckle.

"Oh, that's all right," he said. "Don't let your conscience worry you about that. This is for a continuous ride to a terminus of the road."

"I see," said Luke; but what he saw was that his father, whom he loved too much to hurt uselessly, had, out of kindness, strained a legal definition. His father, he reflected, was not a man to abuse privilege in large matters, and would be only hurt by a refusal in the present trivial affair. Luke put the pass in the cuff of his overcoat and silently decided to pay his fare to the conductor. The elder man, big as he was, stamped his feet on the concrete pavement and complained of the chill in the April air; the younger was too happy to notice the cold.

"Train's five minutes late," remarked the Congressman as, through a cautiously unbuttoned overcoat, he drew and snapped open a heavy watch.

"Is your time correct?" asked Luke.

"Hasn't varied three seconds a week in ten years," his father assured him.

Neither was thinking of what was being said. The younger man was so full of the high work ahead of him that he had already forgotten his mother's ill-concealed tears at parting; the elder, granted political favors rather because of his personal popularity and pliant good-nature than for any ability at the game of vote-keeping, possessed at least the chief virtue of the politician: he was a man of few words, and the more truly he felt the less he spoke.

The "up-train" arrived (it was the "down-train" that Luke must take), and the Congressman was besieged by the newsboys, who knelt about him, striking their rolls of newspapers on the pavement the quicker to burst the wrappers in which the journals were closely confined.

"Press, Mr. Huber?"

"North American or Record?"

"Ledger?"

The boys bobbed up, flourishing their wares.

"Aw, I know what he wants," said an older lad, elbowing the rest. "Here's yer Inquirer, Mr. Congressman."

Luke's father smiled: he had never outgrown his liking for homage from whatever quarter; but he bought a paper from each boy, giving each a five-cent piece and telling him to keep the change.

"You might as well take the lot," he said to Luke. "You'll want something to read on the train." He was handing all the papers to Luke, when his eyes were caught by a large headline on the first page of one of them. "Hello!" he commented, his lips immediately pursing themselves as if to whistle. As Luke took its fellows, the Congressman folded this paper with the sudden skill of the confirmed newspaper-reader, who can handle a journal in the open air as neatly as a trained yachtsman can reef a top-sail before an undesirable wind. "I see the Big Man's been giving some more testimony to that committee of the legislature up at Albany."

For the past few weeks, Luke had been too busy preparing for his bar-examinations to keep track of current events.

"Who's the Big Man?" he asked.

The elder Huber raised his thick brows.

"You know," said he, and he mentioned the name of one of the richest men in America; not a man that had made his wealth even through the building of a great industry, but one that had, by "editing" money and combinations of money much in that manner in which a news-desk copy-reader edits the reporters' "copy," made himself a member of the triumvirate—rumor said made the triumvirate and made himself its head—which had for years controlled alike the labor and capital of the country.

"What's he been saying?" asked Luke.

"He's been answering questions about campaign contributions."

"To the Democrats?"

"Well, no." The Congressman was reluctant. "It seems it was to the Republicans."

Luke colored.

"Of course," he said, "I always knew those fellows had no real political convictions, and of course any party is bound to have some bad lots among its small fry, but I do wish our National Committee would kick out of the ranks the men that take money from such people."

The father did not like this. Luke had been a great deal away from him, first at boarding-school and then at college and the law-school, so that the two had not seen much of each other for many years; but since the younger had come home this last time, he had given frequent expression to sentiments of the present sort, and the Congressman, although he disliked argument as keenly as most Congressmen, felt that now it was his duty to protest.

"My boy," he said, "you won't go far if you go about talking that way. This contribution went to the fund that elected your District-Attorney Leighton."

"I don't believe it!"

"That's the testimony."

"I don't believe it. This man's swearing to that so as to hurt the party in New York."

"This man?" Luke's father repeated the phrase interrogatively. His usual taciturnity fell from him. "Why do you say that? How do you know it? Why should he want to hurt the party? As a matter of fact, what do you know about 'this man,' anyhow? Nothing but a lot of unfounded gossip printed in papers that want him to come over to their side. Why shouldn't he help our party? I do know something about him. I've never met him, but I know the whole story of his career—know it intimately—and I tell you that his is the greatest intellect in America to-day, and he has used his intellect, and the wealth it got him, to help—not only once, but again and again—to help and to save—yes, save, the party and the prosperity of the nation. I tell you——"

He did not tell any more. The down-train had been rumbling over the last span of the river-bridge when he began talking; and now it rolled before the station.

Luke took his suitcase in one hand and extended the other in farewell. Unexpectedly he felt a lump in his throat.

"Good-by," he said.

His father gripped the hand. His habitual inarticulateness redescended upon him. "You've—I know you're all right, Luke. Don't forget to write once a week: your mother worries."

"I won't forget."

They stood, hands clasped.

Close by, the "train-crier" was calling in a high, nasal voice:

"Train for Mountwille, Doncaster, Downington, Philadelphy, and Noo York! First stop Mountwille!"

"And, Luke——"

"Yes, father?"

"Don't make charges when you don't know facts."

"Perhaps I have a weakness that way," Luke smiled.

His smile conjured another.

"That's right; now you're showing the proper spirit." With his free hand, the elder man patted the younger's shoulder. "Stick to your books and stick to Leighton. Gratitude is the best virtue—and the rarest."

Luke nodded.

"Now, get aboard," concluded his counselor. "Got your pass?—and the checks?—I'll be running over occasionally, I dare say.—And let me know if I can do anything for you."

Luke clambered into the smoking-car. He took a seat on the side near the station and waved his hand to his father as the engine began to snort. He paid his fare to the conductor, and, when Americus was well behind him, he opened the window, tore the pink pass into a dozen small pieces and let the clean April breeze carry them away.

At Doncaster he changed to the Pullman car that was there attached to the train; he again carefully chose his seat, this time selecting one on the side from which he could the better enjoy his first view of New York. He had always liked this view when it came to him on his returns to Boston after his vacations; it wakened in him the dreams of the day which should light him into the city, there to work for its salvation and the nation's. His youthful dreams were still with him, and, since the moment when the sun had rent the Susquehanna mists, he was looking forward to that sight of the southernmost walls of New York towering like the ramparts of a mighty fortress above the crowded waters of the Jersey City ferry. Then, indeed, with the battle yet to be fought, he would feel as the crusaders must have felt at their first sight of Jerusalem.

But Luke's train was late, and by the time that it reached the point from which the city should have been visible, the mists had again descended. They had deepened. All that Luke, with straining eyes, could see were a few spectral turrets, distorted and ugly in the thickened atmosphere, swaying overhead upon waves of yellow fog.

§2. Jack Porcellis, with his mother's motor, met Luke. They were driven to the apartment-house in Thirty-ninth Street where, upon Jack's advice, Huber had written to engage two small rooms and bath. It was Jack Porcellis (his real name was John Jay Porcellis) who had District-Attorney Leighton for a brother-in-law and had induced that official to give Luke a place on the staff of the public prosecutor.

Porcellis was considerably taller than Huber and very considerably thinner. He was a quiet member of an old Knickerbocker family, who was at home in every sort of society, had gone to law-school as an intellectual diversion and now spent most of his time traveling, always well within his income, through whatever lands chanced to attract his continually changing fancy.

"I hope you'll be comfortable here," he said, when they had been lifted to the fifth floor of the house, which was dry and hot from the steam radiators and smelled as all steam-heated houses smell. The elevator-boy was unlocking the door to Luke's apartments while Porcellis spoke. He stood aside as the two men entered.

"I think I'll make out very well," said Luke. He handed the boy a tip and dismissed him. "It's not so big as our rooms in Ware Hall, but then there were two of us there."

The quarters were indeed small. The parlor was almost diminutive, and the bedroom, which opened from it, was an alcove; the front window gave upon the busy street, with a bit of Broadway to the right, and the bathroom, in American fashion, was as large as the parlor.

"I did the best I could for you," Porcellis explained: he failed to account for his friend's tone by the fact that Luke was fresh from the spaciousness of a small town.

Huber softened.

"I didn't mean to criticise, Jack. I'm sure this will do splendidly. After all, I'm in New York for hard work."

"I know you are." Porcellis smiled faintly. "You were never anywhere for anything else. Well, you'll probably get over that before you've quite spoiled yourself for everything. It's a way New York has."

Huber was tolerant. "Is it? You see, I don't know the town very well."

"Who does? However, I'll show you what I can before I sail—I'm going to Russia next week, you know—and by way of a beginning I've brought you a ready-made engagement for to-night. We'll dine at my club, and see the Follies, and after that—well, I've got you a card to Mrs. Ruysdael's dance."

"This doesn't sound like preparation for work," chuckled Luke; "but, thank you—and who is Mrs. Ruysdael?"

"Who is Mrs. Ruysdael?" Porcellis repeated. He was stroking the spot where his blond mustache had been a year ago, but where, because mustaches had since become unfashionable, it no longer grew. "Why, the Mrs. Ruysdael, of course: Mrs. Cornelius Ruysdael."

When he heard it in full, Luke remembered the name. Of Mrs. Ruysdael he knew only that she was a woman of fashion; but her husband was everywhere known as the worthy representative of a Dutch New York name long eminent in the country's history. The family had been rich for several generations, but they had proved themselves surprisingly able to wear the cloak of wealth with dignity.

"I remember now," said Luke. "They're said to be among the heaviest real-estate owners in New York, aren't they?"

Porcellis laughed.

"Well, yes, they are," he conceded: "but none of us ever think of that. I doubt if even they do. They leave their estate to their agents to manage, and we leave the story of it to the yellow press to talk about."

"I never knew there was any story connected with it."

"No? Well, for my part, I don't believe there is. Some labor-agitator searched the records and tried to prove they made their first fortune buying condemned muskets from the British garrisons just before the Revolution and selling them as good arms to the Continental Congress. He said they invested the profits in New York land as soon as prices fell after the Declaration of Independence was signed."

"Was it true?" asked Luke.

Porcellis shrugged.

"It was all a long time ago, at any rate," he said, "and the Ruysdaels are very nice people now: you would never guess they were worth more than a million. Besides, Charley—that's my Wall Street cousin—says they've somehow funded their landholdings with one of Old Nap's concerns. I don't know. I don't pretend to understand finance."

Luke felt extremely ignorant.

"Old Nap?" he wondered. "Who's he?"

In reply, Porcellis mentioned the name of the man of whom Luke's father had spoken so highly that morning at the railway station in Americus.

Huber pushed forward a chair.

"Sit down," he said, "and have a cigarette. I want to ask you one question more. You've been all over the map. You've got the cosmopolitan point of view. What do you think of this man?"

"I think," said Porcellis, accepting both the chair and the cigarette, "that it doesn't make any difference what I think of him." He lit the cigarette. "But I'm quite sure," he presently added, "he is the sort of man nobody can help thinking something, about. Why do you ask?"

"Because——" Luke was not certain why he did ask. He could not politely inquire of Porcellis whether he believed that his brother-in-law had accepted, to aid his election, money from a power that could not but be interested in the official actions of a District-Attorney of New York. "Because," he compromised, "my father was speaking to me about him only this morning."

"So were a lot of other fathers. So are a lot of other fathers every morning. That's greatness. What I think is that Old Napoleon is the greatest man this country has ever produced."

"You think so well of him as that!" Luke was amazed.

"I didn't say I thought he was good," Porcellis defined; "I said I thought he was great. Greatness hasn't anything to do with good or bad, or only accidentally. The greatest national figure a country produces is the figure that most intensely and—well, and powerfully—expresses that country. That's why Shakespeare was the greatest man produced by Elizabethan England."

"Oh—Shakespeare!" laughed Luke.

"Why not?" asked Porcellis. "Shakespeare lived in a country and time of expanding intellectual conceptions, and he expressed them the way I've said. We live in a country and time of tremendous financial combination and expansion; we're not working in the material of intellectual conceptions, except as we conceive finance intellectually; we're working with figures and dollar-marks and differentials and compound interest and dividends as complicated as an astronomer's calculations. Well, this little old man in Wall Street can see those figures before they happen; he can make them come to life out of nothing—make them happen, give them life just the way Shakespeare gave life to another sort of ideas. These ideas are the ideas of our country; they are our country. Here is a genius that most fully and powerfully, most intensely and perfectly expresses them, and so I say he is the American Shakespeare."

Luke writhed in his chair opposite Porcellis. He could withhold the question no longer.

"Then"—he almost blurted it out at last—"those campaign contributions——"

But Porcellis was scandal-proof.

"Those!" he said lightly. "You'll have to ask Brouwer Leighton about them."

§3. After they left the theater, the two young men were driven, again in the motor belonging to Mrs. Porcellis, up the noisy river of yellow light that was Broadway, where their vehicle joined a long procession, until they reached a cross-street in the early Fifties. Then their car darted from the parade and plunged through a dark thoroughfare to Fifth Avenue. They drew up before a house where Luke could at first see little save that from its doorway, high above the pavement, a long and narrow tent of white canvas striped with red ran to the curb. Several other motors were ahead of theirs, so theirs had to wait its turn.

"Is this the place?" asked Luke.

Porcellis nodded.

"It does look rather like a barn from the outside," he said, guessing his companion's thought and agreeing with it. "That's a Ruysdael way: they maintain the old tradition of severe exteriors; they don't believe in flaunting their wealth in the face of the public; they believe in keeping the best for their friends."

Luke leaned shamelessly forward. Whenever he had gone to dances heretofore, the houses of his hostesses had shown lights in every window and dispensed a glow of festivity to the streets; but this house, essentially forbidding, stood dark and silent, its windows masked. Except for the faint illumination of a street-lamp that sputtered bluely at the corner, the only scintillations visible were two thin lines of radiance, one along the pavement, at the bottom of the entrance-tent, and a corresponding one above, between the walls of the tent and the loose overhang of its roof: these and a glowing spot at the end of the tent upon the curb where, between rows of ragged night figures watching the scene, dismounting guests appeared and disappeared—white shirt-fronts, and opera-cloaks, and the glint of jewels—like pictures in dissolving views.

With each arrival, motors swung away from the entrance, turned to the other side of the street, and proceeded to the farther corner there to await their recall, while their drivers gossiped in the darkness or drank beer at a convenient bar. Thus, with starts and stops like those of an American railway train leaving a station, the Porcellis car slowly approached the canvas mouth.

When that mouth yawned directly before them, Luke and Porcellis, the door of their automobile held open by a servant in livery, descended into the tent. A string of incandescent lamps had been hung in this corridor—it was the light from these lamps which crept from above and below the walls—and a thick carpet covered the pavement. Along it they walked to the house-steps, where two turbaned East Indians stood ready to relieve them of their hats and top-coats and show them to a room prepared for incoming men-guests.

"Now," said Porcellis, "you see what I was talking about."

A greater contrast between the outside and the inside of the Ruysdael house it would, indeed, have been hard to find. The reception hall was of white marble and of a height generally seen only in public buildings. Pillars held the distant ceiling; the staircase rose in a pentagonal tower, a copy, Porcellis explained, of that in the Francis First wing of the Château of Blois; the light, although its sources were hidden, was almost blinding to eyes fresh from the darkness of the street; there was music heard lightly from a distance, and the air was faint with the scent of American Beauty roses.

Porcellis and Luke went up the carved staircase in the tower, which was open at each landing so as to command a view of the hall, and were directed to the men's room, where three valets were in attendance. Against the walls of this room were several dressing-tables, each with a strong lamp before it and each covered with toilet articles.

"I'm not sure," said Luke, in a whisper that was both amazed and amused, "whether I'm in a belle's boudoir or a musical comedy star's dressing-room."

"It's a judicious combination," said Porcellis in a conversational tone that disregarded the fluttering attendants. He picked up a gold-backed buffer and polished his always coruscating finger-nails.

Luke contented himself with a touch to his hair, which had a way of standing upright, and a tug at his tie, which was forever straining toward independence.

"What's this?" he asked as he lifted a glass case. He removed its lid and sniffed at the contents. "It looks like rouge," he added.

"It is," said Porcellis.

"But I thought this room was for men," said Luke.

Porcellis drew down the corners of his sensitive mouth.

"It is," he said again.

They went toward the ballroom.

A man-servant with those brief side-whiskers which, twenty years before, were used to proclaim the millionaire, stood splendidly against the crush about the doorway. He bent to each newcomer and secured a name, which, turning his head, but not moving his body, he then shouted, from an impassive face, into the ballroom.

Porcellis nodded to him familiarly

"Good-evening, James," he said.

"Good-evening, Mr. Porcellis. And the other gentleman, sir?"

"Mr. Huber," said Porcellis with careful distinctness.

The servant turned his head toward the crowd in the room behind him.

"Mr. Porcellis!" he cried, and then, as if it were an afterthought: "Mr. Urer!"

"It's all right," Porcellis hurriedly reassured Luke. "Nobody pays the slightest attention to him, anyhow."

Nobody did. As they shouldered their way forward, the huge apartment that they now entered was like what Luke thought the rooms of state at Versailles must be, and the great hall in the Brussels Palace of Justice. All about the walls, and especially about the large entrance, was a press of men and women, standing still, or moving slowly from group to group through an invisible, but palpable, cloud formed by a mixture of the odor of withering flowers, Parisian scents, and human sweat. A band of music, concealed in a far-away balcony, blared rag-time, but distinct from its impudence, there rose from all these people the noise of shoe-leather dragged over parquette flooring, the composite of laughter in many keys and the perplexed buzz of small-talk. The moving figures of the women, over whom countless aigrettes quivered, had a kaleidoscopic effect, curiously unreal: an effect of flashing colors—crimson, ivory, blues, greens, and pinks—splashing against white breasts and backs, falling away from dazzling shoulders, the waves mounting in oily satin, feline velvet, or clinging peau de cygnes, and breaking in the foam of lace and the flying spray of diamonds. Here even the ordinary black-and-white of the men became black-and-gray or black-and-lavender, with gems for waistcoat buttons. On the dancing-floor many couples, hugging each other so tightly that their bodies touched from chest to center, swayed to the sensuous music of a one-step, the leaders' high collars wilting, the fingers of their right hands spread wide along the women's upper vertebras, their partners looking into their intent faces from narrowed eyes.

The picture was too bright, too varied, for the unaccustomed mind to seize it: Luke turned to Porcellis:

"And Mrs. Ruysdael?"

He was expecting his hostess to meet her guests at the door of the ballroom.

Porcellis, however, did not wholly understand.

"Oh, she's about somewhere, I dare say," he responded—"though she doesn't care for late hours and sometimes leaves after the third dance. Come on. I'll introduce you to some worth-while people."

He introduced Luke to a great many people, for he seemed to know them all. There was the British Ambassador and a German baron, a string of dowagers with marriageable daughters (Luke danced with each daughter and liked her), an artist, a scientist, and a bibliophile, and several debutantes that were not marriageable at all, but were quite frankly determined to marry.

As is the way when a name runs in one's brain, three out of five of the people that Luke talked to sooner or later mentioned the man that the elder Huber had spoken of that morning and that Porcellis had later so highly extolled. The Ambassador said that this man had, by lending or withholding tremendous sums, preserved the peace of nations; the artist praised him as the only true patron of art in America; the scientist told how the same man had established and equipped a now world-famous institution for the study and cure of a world-plague; the bibliophile envied his first editions and medieval manuscripts.

Leading his prettiest partner across the floor, Luke's glance, in spite of his will, rested on a diamond pendant that hung from a thread of gold about her neck and fell above her beautiful bust. She was a girl with the face of one of those Italian peasant girls that the early painters loved to paint as Madonnas, and Huber felt that his regard must be an insult.

The girl, however, took the pendant between a white thumb and forefinger and looked from it to him with pleased eyes.

"You like it?" she asked.

"I think it's wonderful," said he.

"It is pretty," she replied. "My uncle gave it to me on my last birthday. It used to be in a heathen god's crown in some Chinese or Hindu temple or other."

"The god ought to be pleased to lose it to you," said Luke, "even if it didn't come to you directly."

"Oh, but it did come to me directly," she laughed prettily. "That's half the charm of it. Uncle sent right over there and got it for me."

When Luke found Porcellis again, he asked him about this.

"Who's that girl with the broad, low forehead," he inquired, "and the expression of a stained-glass saint?"

"You're aiming high," said Porcellis; "that's one of the richest girls in New York."

"Who's her uncle?"

"Ah, she's been talking of him, has she? Well, I don't blame her. Her uncle is the man I call the American Shakespeare. She'll get a lot of his money, too, for he has no children of his own."

"Is he here himself?"

"Not he. He doesn't care for this sort of thing. That football-playerish sort of fellow that the niece introduced you to—that's young Hallett she's dancing with now—he's the son of George J. And there's George J. himself!"

Luke remembered that George J. Hallett was one of the financiers whose name was most frequently associated with the donor of diamonds and benefactor of medical research.

"And," continued Porcellis, "do you see that stoutish, nervous pale man over there talking to the British Ambassador? Oh, don't be alarmed: they're probably not talking about anything more important than how they hate dances. Well, that's the third member of the triumvirate: that's L. Bergen Rivington."

Luke went home in the early dawn, feeling that these were pleasant people, however they came by their money, and that he had certainly judged the one that was not there long before he knew much about him.

§4. Leighton was out of town—he, too, was before the legislature's investigating committee at Albany—and the bar-examination was not to be held for a week or more, so that Luke had the next few days to devote to himself. The use that he put them to was an endeavor to learn what he could of the city of which he had seen so little before he came to live there. He saw what, considered of itself, was a great deal, but what, considered as a part of New York, was minute; and at many turns, the number of which surprised him—for long as he had known of the man's power, he never before looked for its effects—he came across traces of that financier who more and more seemed to him to be the controlling force in America.

He was shown a great college, handsomely housed, splendidly equipped, in which the higher education was provided free to every graduate of the public schools that chose to take advantage of it, and this, he was told, had been given to New York by the great "money editor." He was taken through a cancer hospital, where mesothorium, which cost about $52,000 a grain, and radium at $64,000, had been bought and were kept and used without charge in the treatment of poor patients—where physicians and surgeons of international repute were engaged to spend all their time searching for a true cure and final prevention—and this institution had been largely endowed by the same man, whose first wife, it appeared, had died of cancer. There were homes for destitute widows, pure-milk depots, orphan asylums, all assisted by this man or his associates.

"Do you know him?" Luke asked Porcellis one evening as they sat at dinner in the latter's club. They had been talking of many things, but Luke found this one conspicuously interesting.

"No," said Porcellis. "He doesn't go out much. I saw him once. I was being shown through his library—it's a marvelous place, full of treasure-trove that would make a scholar think he was in heaven—and the librarian pointed him out to me: he was sitting in the alcove that held the First Folios, and he was reading the current 'World Almanac.'"

They both laughed.

"Still," protested Luke, "he seems more Jovian than ever to me. I don't know whether he's a good Jove or a bad one, but I don't see how he can really be bad when he does so much good."

Porcellis was still intolerant of the ethical question. He pointed out that nobody of weight ever knew or cared whether Shakespeare's life was moral or whether the effect of his work was immoral. What had happened in regard to the American was that, because he had at last been secured to come to a public hearing, people were beginning to realize that he was a living man and not a force of nature. For a quarter of a century he had been the greatest individual power in the United States, and for all that time he had remained hidden. He had been doing daily tremendous things, things that were epic in their sweep and yet affected every man, woman, and child included in the census—and nobody knew of them, no paper printed a word about them, until he had passed them out of his own hands and into those of his lieutenants, not until, indeed, his lieutenants had sent them so far from hand to hand that none could tell precisely when and where they had started.

"The man's a genius," said Porcellis, "and like all geniuses he's just what we all are when his genius isn't at work. What he feels is just what we'd feel if we were in his place."

"Still," argued Luke, "the influence of such a man is too great; it's dangerous. It oughtn't to be allowed in politics."

"There you go again!" sighed Porcellis. "Allow? How are you going to allow or disallow a force? It simply is. This man can give the big politicians certain large advantages if they pass laws that suit him. The big politicians can give the little politicians certain lesser advantages if they furnish the votes. The lesser politicians can get the votes if they let the police charge the criminals for protection in crime. Each man seizes his opportunity, and that's all there is about it."

"You think so?" said Luke. "I can't believe it. I can't believe it would be necessary if the right laws were passed and enforced. Wait till your brother-in-law gets the District-Attorney's office cleaned out and in working order. Then you'll see I'm right."

§5. At ten o'clock on the following Sunday night, Luke, on a lonely walk through the East Side, noticed that, whereas the front rooms of the saloons were darkened, the back rooms were all alight. The doors to these back rooms were forever swinging to the entrance and exit of unmistakable customers, many of whom came out bearing foaming jugs of beer under the indifferent noses of policemen at the corners. Luke chose a saloon in Essex Street and entered it.

The room was small, but crowded. The walls, which were papered in green, bore a few framed prints in high colors, advertisements of various brands of beer and whisky. All about were small tables at which blowsy women and men in stained clothes were drinking.

Luke hesitated. Nobody had questioned his entrance, there was no guard and no password: the door hung free; but now his startled eye could not see a vacant table, and he knew that he must appear an alien to this place.

Presently a nearby woman smiled at him. She looked to be about fifty years old. There was a mangy peacock feather in her straw hat, which was set a-slant of dank black hair touched with gray.

"Hello, sweetheart," she said. "Come over here a minute." Her smile was toothless.

"Shut up, Mame," somebody else commanded. "You're drunk."

Luke looked at the man that had spoken. He was sitting alone at a table the length of the room away. He had a puffed face, red from liquor and blue from an unshaven beard; his coat, once black, had turned green; he wore no collar, and a part of the rim of his greasy derby-hat was torn away.

"Shut up," he repeated. "You're drunk."

"Thank Gawd," the woman assented. Her acknowledgment of the accusation was fervent; she returned her attention to the glass of whisky that stood on the table before her.

"You can sit here, if you want to," said the man, addressing Luke, and nodding at a chair beside him.

Luke crossed the room and took the chair. The other people in the room were indifferent to his entrance with the same indifference that the guests of Mrs. Ruysdael had shown. The woman that had invited him did not look his way; even the man that had invited him remained for some time silent. Luke ordered a glass of beer from an aproned waiter, who came with a tray full of whisky glasses in one hand, and five foaming beer-mugs in the fingers and thumb of the other.

"Will you have a drink with me?" Luke inquired of the derelict beside him.

"Sure," said he, and Luke noticed that, though he did not cough, his voice was hoarse.

They gave their orders.

"And perhaps your friend would have one?" Luke suggested.

The man raised his rheumy eyes.

"What friend?"

"The—the one that spoke to me when I came in."

"Who? That skirt? I never saw her before in my life."

Their drinks came, and the men drank for a while in silence.

"What's your graft?" asked the man presently.

"I'm a lawyer," said Luke. He was first proud of the answer and then ashamed of himself for being proud of it.

The man looked at him dreamily through watering eyes.

"Quit yer kiddin'," he presently remarked.

"I'm not kidding."

"You're a lawyer?"

"Yes."

"Well, I'm a bum," said the man. He tilted up his bristled chin; his seamed throat swelled; sounds that, because they were not speech, Luke took to be song, came from his throat. He sang:

He stopped abruptly. "I'm sorry for you," he said.

"Why?" asked Luke. He thought the sentiment of that song as horrible as the creature that sang it.

"Because you're all tied up with everything. But me—there ain't nothin' can tie me. You fellers is in jail all the time an' don't know it; I'm only in jail when you fellers can ketch me and put me there."

Luke realized that he had found a philosopher who, however mistaken in his deductions, had seen quite as much of the world as Jack Porcellis. He attempted the vernacular.

"Is this a bums' joint?" he inquired.

The philosopher sneered.

"Naw," he said. "It's a bum joint, but it ain't a bums' joint. Too much class for me. This bunch"—he included the entire company with a wide gesture—"is all in the same jail with you. If they wasn't here, you'd be where I am."

"I suppose they do give us lawyers cases," Luke granted; "but they seem to get around the laws pretty frequently: they're wide open to-night."

"Sure they are. See that?" The other man indicated the waiter, who was disappearing into the dark vestibule with two drinks on his tray. "Them's for the cop on this beat, an' a vice-squad cop 'at's with him. I'm wise. I seen Tony (that's the boss o' this joint) slip them a fifty-dollar bill last Sunday—protection money."

"But some day," urged Luke, who was trying to plumb the dark pool that was this man's mind, "the Mayor or the District-Attorney will get proof of that sort of thing—some day when the Mayor and the District-Attorney are honest men——"

"Don't make me laugh," the derelict interrupted: "me lip's cracked. The Mayor and the District-Attorney's got to get elected, whoever they are, don't they?"

Luke supposed so.

"Well, then. Tony an' his kind gets the votes. They can't elect without the Tony kind says so. It's a fair trade. An' the Mayors an' the District-Attorneys ain't got no easy thing of it, neither. Votes costs money. They've got to get the money from the money-guys, the candidates do, an' then they've got to let the money-guys kill as many people as they wants to on their railroads without sendin' them to jail for it.—Have another?"

Luke consented to another drink.

"This one's on me," said the other man, and he paid for the order. "No, sir," he went on, as they were finishing their second drink together, "there's only two sorts o' men that ain't tied up. One sort's me that knows things an' ain't afraid to starve (there's lots of me); the other sort's the guys at the top that does the tyin', an' there's only a few of them, with the King as the boss-knotter."

"The King?" repeated Luke. "Who's he?"

But he had guessed the answer before the derelict gave it: the answer was the man that Porcellis considered the greatest American.....

All the way to his apartments in Thirty-ninth Street that night, Luke's feet were pounding to the wretched derelict's wretched hymn:

CHAPTER II

On a morning of that same April in a large rear room on the twentieth floor of a Wall Street skyscraper, three men were seated around a large mahogany table. They were talking business. Each man had his own offices and his own businesses, but they frequently and quietly met in this, the inner office of one, because most of the businesses of each were closely connected, at several points, with the business interests of all.

There was nothing unusual about the outward appearance of the public actions of this trio; they were apparently but three units of the legion that makes this portion of New York a city by day and a desert by night. Each had come downtown in his own motor that morning, defying speed laws and traffic regulations, just as scores of his business neighbors had done. Each had descended at his own offices, passed through a half-dozen doors guarded by six bowing attendants, and proceeded to his own desk in his own private room, precisely as a small army of other business men were doing at the same time within a radius of half a mile. Each looked like the rest of that army. All three were men of about the average in height, not noticeably either above or below it, and inclined to bulkiness. They had pale faces and close mouths and quiet eyes, which looked out upon the world from under bushy brows with glances that gave the lie to the lethargic indications of the little pouches of loose skin below their lower lids. Each man wore a flower in the lapel of his dark coat; one wore a white waistcoat; the cropped mustache of one was black; that of another was touched with gray; the man at the head of the table was clean-shaven.

The man at the head of the table was, for the most of the time, even less remarkable than his companions. He was somewhat shorter and heavier; his abdomen swelled so that his shoulders were somewhat farther from the table than were those of his associates; his bushy eyebrows were somewhat more bushy; his pale face somewhat paler; his calm eyes somewhat sharper, yet more calm;—and his lips, in addition to closing tightly, were so heavy that the compression of the mouth must have resulted from a habit acquired only by a strong and long effort of the will. He sat with his great hands flat upon the surface of the table, his thick fingers extended, his elbows raised at right angles to his torso and pointing ceilingward. His chest heaved visibly, but his breathing was inaudible. His eyes were everywhere. He spoke rarely, but when he did speak it was as if he darted over the table, seized something, and returned: he was startlingly brief and sudden, and was instantly back again in his quiet watchfulness, apparently heavy, unruffled, slow.

He had come to work that morning with his usual promptness—the moment of his coming never changed—and in his usual temper. He had threaded the maze of corridors with a springing step. In the mahogany-paneled room with its heavy table and arm-chairs, and its one decoration, a rare engraving of George Washington, hung between the two windows that gave the place its only chance for sunlight, he found on his desk, in a corner, a clean blotter, a fresh pen, a small pad of cheap paper for memoranda, and nothing else. He pressed one of a row of worn buttons in the side of the desk. He was ringing for his private secretary.

The secretary, who patently tried to look as much like his master as possible, and succeeded, entered, a sheaf of open letters in his hand, and noiselessly closed the door behind him.

"Good-morning," said his master. His voice was quite low; it was thin and cool, but his words fell quickly.

"Good-morning," said the secretary.

"What's in the mail?"

"Not much, sir. Only about twenty things that need your personal attention."

"About twenty!" The master's words seemed to leap from him and assault the secretary, but his face was set like a plaster-cast of calm and his tone was even. "Do you mean nineteen or twenty-one?"

The secretary was too used to this manner of speech to be alarmed by it.

"Twenty-two," he said. He handed the letters to his master.

That one ran them over with a quick hand and a quicker eye. In terse, sharp sentences, he directed his secretary how to reply to them, the latter taking rapid stenographic notes of the commands.

"You have turned the begging communications over to Simpson to investigate?" the employer inquired.

"Yes, sir."

"And the requests for contributions?"

"Yes, sir. There was one for a new hospital at Akron. The rubber people have given five thousand, and——"

"Tell Simpson to write that I'll give ten thousand if the town raises ten thousand more."

"Very well, sir."

"Has Mr. Brinley telephoned from Washington?"

"Yes, sir. He says he is to take breakfast at the White House to-morrow."

"What's that? He was told to arrange it for to-day."

"He was; but he said he'd got word from the——"

"Never mind. To-morrow will do, if he only keeps his word this time. Wire him: 'Right; but positively no more postponements.' Use the code signature and send from somewhere uptown,—Anything from Albany?"

"Yes. Senator Scudder says to tell you that bill will be reported to-day and rushed through before evening."

"Have Conover go up to the Astor and get Scudder on the 'phone and say that the bill must be passed before noon recess. The Governor will sign it immediately."

"Yes, sir."

"And Conover is not to mention names."

"Of course not, sir."

"Anything else?"

"No—except somebody has been trying to get you on the long-distance wire from Hartford."

"That's Sparks.—Run over to the corner pay-station and call up the legislative building at Hartford. Get Sparks on the 'phone. Be sure it's the right man you're talking to. Tell him that the New York gentleman he wanted to speak to—just that: the New York gentleman he wanted to speak to—is out of town, but has telegraphed you to say to him it is all right for him to go ahead. Got that?"

"Yes, sir."

"Read it."

The secretary read from his notes.

"Now," said the business man, "get Mr. Rivington and Mr. Hallett on your own 'phone and ask them if they can find it convenient to come around here to see me for a half-hour. Tell me what they say, and then give me Atwood and the other brokers in the regular order."

"Yes, sir."

"And, Rollins——"

"Yes, sir?"

"When Mr. Hallett and Mr. Rivington arrive, we are not to be disturbed."

The secretary went; the brokers were given their orders, and then came L. Bergen Rivington and George J. Hallett, the two men with whom this third man was now consulting.

"About the Manhattan and Niagara——" began Rivington. He had a way of moving his hands nervously when he spoke, and he rarely completed a sentence.

Hallett, who was the man in a white waistcoat, stopped chewing his cigar to ask:

"What are they kickin' about? We own seventy-five per cent. of the preferred and sixty of the common."

"And it is too much, I think," said Rivington. "We need it only to keep from unsettling the N. Y. & N. J. interests, because—— Fifty-five of the preferred and fifty-two of the common, perhaps, but seventy-five and sixty——"

"And, now," chimed Hallett, "this little fellow—what's his name?—the president. Oh, yes: Dohan, that's it—starts out to launch a new stock-issue to bridge the river five miles from town and come into New York, an' all without as much as sayin' 'If you please' to us! We ought to wreck his damned picayune road for him; that's what we ought to do."

The two continued their indignant comments. Every little while they paused to give the crouching man at the head of the table a chance to speak, and more often they looked at him to see whether he wanted to speak; but, though his eyes were always alert to meet theirs, he did not, for some time, utter a word.

"Of course," said Rivington, "we are not directors of the road, but still——"

"Oh, hell!" grunted Hallett disgustedly. "Didn't you just say between us we owned all the stock worth ownin'? We ought to unload and smash 'em."

"You may be right. I am inclined to think——"

"Right? Of course I'm right. I'm not goin' to be bullied by a handful of dummies when I can sell them up as if I was a sheriff closing down on a crossroads grocery store!"

"They certainly are impudent and——"

"They're beggars on horseback! Wastin' our money like this!"

"They have—— We should tell the legislature——"

"Gentlemen,"—it was the clear, crisp voice of the man at the head of the table that interrupted; he spoke in a tone somewhat different from that in which he habitually addressed his clerks and his brokers, but he spoke as suddenly and with all the authority that he used toward them—"if the M. & N. comes into New York, it will not take one-half of one per cent. of the profits away from our other roads. For all but its last thirty-two miles, the new line taps territory new to us, and the new stock will have paid for itself, and have paid a profit too, in five years."

Rivington and Hallett looked at each other. The latter took his cigar between his fingers and folded his arms.

"What do we care?" he asked, but his tone had lost the assertiveness that had marked it a moment earlier. The man at the head of the table did not answer this question directly. He proceeded:

"Except for ourselves, most of the old stockholders are poor people. They need the money, and the old holders are to have the first chance at the new issue. In five years, then, the minor stockholders will have realized a profit on their investment; so shall we. At that time we could unload without hurting anybody but the officials that have defied us. Always supposing," he added, "that the management observe a proper economy."

Hallett's eyes burned.

"You're right," he said. "We can win both ways if we do that. The road will be bankrupt, and we can buy it in."

The man at the head of the table did not smile. He only said:

"You have always been very naïve, Hallett; but I did think you would have seen this point sooner."

Rivington at length cut in:

"But the cost of getting the bill through the legislature——"

"The bill will pass this morning," said the man at the head of the table. "The Governor will sign it immediately."

His certainty silenced them for a moment; but Rivington, whom the outside world pictured as a pirate, was still timid.

"Yes," he said, "but the expense of the city ordinance——"

"Oh, we'll take care of that," grinned Hallett.

"And the cost of construction——"

"I said," repeated the man at the head of the table: "'Always supposing the management observe a proper economy.'"

He settled back in his chair. He seemed to consider the subject closed, and so, presently, did his companions. Within five minutes they had left him, and he was ringing for Rollins.

"Rollins," he said, "take this letter."

The secretary seated himself at the far end of the table.

His employer walked to a window and looked out. His hands were clasped behind him now, and he did not turn his head as he rapidly dictated:

"Robert M. Dohan. (Send it to his house address, Rollins, and mark it 'Confidential.') I understand that the bill of which you have spoken to me will be passed and become a law to-day. I have just seen Messrs. Hallett and Rivington and have secured their agreement to the plan outlined in my personal conversation with you last week. In view of the favors that you have done me in the past, I think it fair to tell you, for your own use only, (Underline that, Rollins), that my friends have decided that they and I ought to do what you thought they might decide, viz.: unload at the end of five years. Considering your contemplated resignation next year, this will not affect you, except favorably in case you care to manipulate your own holdings in accordance with this news.

"(Paragraph) I note what you say about the estimate submitted by the construction-department; also the letter of the steel-rail manufacturers which you inclosed, in which they say that the grade I suggested might not wear well. I think their use of the word 'dangerous' is absurdly exaggerated. We have used this grade on several of our roads and feel sure from long experience that, with proper repair-gangs, it will wear for five years as well as the best.

"(Paragraph) My desire, and the desire of my associates, is to protect the interests of the stockholders. With that in mind, I should state, what you have probably already gathered, that we feel that the new line must be built and operated with all possible economy. —— Very truly yours."

The secretary closed his book.

"Is that all?" he asked.

Without turning, his employer nodded, and Rollins left the room.

In the corner by the desk, a stock-ticker was clicking out yards of tape into a high wicker basket. The man that had just given the M. &. N. Railway permission to enter New York started to walk to the ticker; but he paused again, at the second window, to look down on the thoroughfare and buildings below him. From that height the streets of the city seemed to be threads leading in every direction; they seemed to radiate from the building in which the watcher stood. On the threads black dots that were hurrying men and women seemed to quiver like entangled flies.

CHAPTER III

§1. The legislature's committee made its report—the legislature was heavily Republican that year—declaring that no wrong had been done, and Luke accepted this verdict as a proof and triumph of right. He passed his examinations and, shortly after Porcellis sailed for Russia, became a member of the staff of the District-Attorney, who was to "clean up" New York.

District-Attorney Leighton was a pleasant man, still young at forty, who had a plausible and engaging manner supported by that bluff and downright good-humor which passes current as the legal tender of honesty. He had been in politics, and on the losing side, since his twenty-first year, and during all that time he was fighting toward the office which he had ultimately attained. Even his relatives, who were people of so high a position that they regarded voting as something beneath their caste and would rather be pillaged than lay hands upon the pillagers, had kept him at a distance and were a little ashamed of their pride in his success now that he had secured it. With a few other men, all his elders, he had found his party a ruined fortress and rebuilt it, stone by stone, now seeing the work of months plundered in a day, now resisting his assailants by their own sort of arms, until the stronghold, still far from impregnable or potent to command the entire city, could at least dominate that spot beneath its guns on which he had been able to take up his present position.

Under him Luke went cheerfully to work. He was at first disappointed because his tasks were minor tasks and seemed to possess only the most distant connection with the great crusade; but he was, in those times, as modest as he was ardent, and he realized that he was still in his novitiate. He tried petty offenders whose crimes were so insignificant that he frequently found it hard to consider them crimes at all, and he was often too sorry for the accused to be glad when he convicted them. The first time he won a sentence, which was by no means the first time he tried a case, he passed a sleepless night, because he feared that the defendant's plea might have been the true one. It was long thereafter before he could exult in a conviction that carried with it a term in prison, even when he was certain of the condemned man's guilt.

The other members of the staff, more experienced in criminal practice, showed no compunctions. They were a rather jolly lot of men, ranging in age from twenty-five to thirty, with a cynical tolerance of life and a tendency to regard their work as a game that everybody played solely for the sake of winning it, with the opposing lawyers as the rival players and with the accused as insensate pawns. Luke forgave them only because of their unanimous and unbounded loyalty to their high-purposing chief.

"I got that case," declared one of these young men, a Larry O'Mara, when he came through Luke's little office one afternoon after the court had risen.

"What case?" Luke inquired.

"That one I had against Burroughs—and old Laurie was sitting, too. The jury was only out ten minutes."

O'Mara was pink with triumph.

"What was the charge?" asked Luke.

"Larceny. It was hard work to make out; but the fellow's past record did for him. I got that in while Burroughs was asleep at the switch. When he did object, Laurie ruled against me, but the jury'd heard it all right. Laurie's the strictest man on the bench, and Burroughs is about the cleverest criminal lawyer in town."

Luke blushed for this victor:

"Was the man guilty?"

O'Mara's eyes were first wondering and then amused.

"They all are," he said. "If he didn't do this he did something else we didn't know about—lots else. They're all guilty."

Luke supposed they were, but he could not understand his associates' desire to secure convictions for the convictions' sake.

The innocent did not always suffer, nor yet the guilty. Luke was not directly attached to the homicide bureau, the name applied to that branch of the staff regularly employed to investigate and try cases of suspected murder. Nevertheless, Leighton believed in giving his men some chance at many branches of practice, because he wanted them to be what he called "all-round criminal practitioners" when the time should come for them to leave his service, and so Luke was once or twice called into a capital trial. On one such occasion he was helping young Uhler. Leighton himself had tried a striker named Gace on the charge of shooting and killing a detective during a strike-riot, and Gace, greatly to the District-Attorney's chagrin, was acquitted. Some slight evidence adduced at the Gace trial seemed to point to another striker, Reardon, and, though there was small hope of convicting Reardon, popular clamor forced Leighton to plead for a true bill against him and bring him to trial.

"I won't touch it any more, though," laughed Leighton. "Uhler, you'll have to take it, and you might as well have Huber with you. We're bound to lose, and so I'm going to give my assistants a chance to bear the discredit. That's what you boys are here for."

Smarting under his chief's prophecy, Uhler, one of the youngest of the staff, went into court and fought hard, which was doubtless the intention behind Leighton's words. His enthusiasm was strong and contagious. He convinced himself of Reardon's guilt, and he ended by convincing Luke. The proceedings, indeed, went largely in the State's favor until, shortly after the defense had opened its case, the man Gace, who had previously been acquitted, was called to the stand to testify to some minor detail. His examination was about to be completed when he quite calmly volunteered the statement that it was he who had done the killing.

"Cross-examine," said the defending lawyer and, covering amazement, sat down.

Uhler looked helplessly at Luke. Luke, now enough of a lawyer to believe that this was no more than a clever ruse to secure an unjust acquittal, sprang to his feet and shook an angry finger under the nose of the witness murderer, whose confession, had it been expected, would have been prevented.

"So," he cried, "not satisfied with cheating justice in your own case, you come back here to taunt it, do you?"

"Oh, I don't know as I'm taunting anything," replied the witness. He was a big man with the frame of a blacksmith and the eyes of a ruminating cow.

"Then," thundered Luke, "you really mean to tell this court that you actually killed that man?"

The faintest shadow of a smile brushed the murderer's lips.

"They buried him, didn't they?" he inquired.

That answer lost Luke's case.

§2. Luke's enthusiasm long resisted these miscarriages of justice and the undeniably slow progress of his chief to secure indictments against the Democratic politicians whose drastic punishment Leighton had promised in his ante-election speeches. It resisted even the callousness of the participants in the legal game, and the discovery that the best minds at the Bar, of course seeking the most lucrative field for their practice, were in the position of advisers to the great financiers, their incomes, which far exceeded those of their more active fellows, being composed almost entirely of the annual retaining fees and "tips" for speculation. It required more and more resistance, but Luke continued to hug tightly the faith that the wrongs of the world could be set right through honest laws administered by honest men.

As he loved his work, so also he came to love the scene of it. The vortex of the city fascinated him. Broadway, one color by day and another by night, one spot of color uptown, a second at its middle, and a third below the street that lies across New York like a gorged but devouring anaconda; the dark passages full of tenements; the quiet pavements bordered by prosperous dwellings; the roar of every sort of business and the crackle of all sorts of pleasure; the joy and suffering eternally intermingled, yet so intermingled that he could not tell which caused the other, or whether they were independent; the whole tremendous whirlpool whirled him, a straw among uncounted straws, now on its surface and now sucked below beyond all plummets' soundings, and intoxicated him by its dizzy revolutions.

He knew Fifth Avenue, Riverside Drive, and Central Park. Because he felt it his duty, he learned the outsides of the houses in the Italian quarter, the French quarter, the Syrian quarter. He walked the Bowery and thought that he understood it. From that artery of America, he turned a corner and found himself in China, in crooked streets heavy with the smells of the East, among shops whose signs bore Oriental characters, among crowds of impassive yellow faces—men and only men—where there was no sound of English speech. Once, passing the door of a slum mission, he saw a crowd of half-human things, their heads sunk upon their chests, listlessly droning a popular hymn around a puffing harmonium: on one side of the mission was a saloon and on the other a shop that displayed the legend:

With some of his friends—for he made many friends both in the office and out of it, and Mrs. Ruysdael and her husband, whom he finally met, were exceedingly kind to him—he went on a tour of those cafés that called themselves Bohemian. That night he descended from restaurants where one drank champagne and heard songs by vaudeville performers who thus earned more money than at the theaters which they had deserted, to seats in shoddy beer-halls where there was dancing by women too old or too unskilled to continue upon the stage; and on the way home from "Little Hungary," a place in which a dull company drank strange wines to the music of a good band, the motor that conveyed his party crept under smoking naphtha lamps through a jumble of push-carts converted into bargain counters, and past the overcrowded squalor of the quarter of the Russian Jews.

Poverty hurt him, or the sight of poverty. Somewhere he read that one per cent. of the families in the United States owned more than the other ninety-nine per cent., but he explained this by the theory that the one per cent. had created the wealth that they owned. He was told that there were four million paupers in the country; but he ascribed their condition to their failure to take advantage of a republic's free opportunities. Somebody said that, during the past winter, seventy thousand New York children had gone hungry to the public schools; Luke was sure that the schools would soon supply their pupils with free meals. From a report of the New Jersey Department of Charities that came into his hands, he learned that, in New Jersey, one person in every two hundred and six of the population was a ward of the State; but his reflection was only that New Jersey must be badly governed. His heart ached over what he saw; but his intellect satisfactorily explained all hearsay evidence. He could go out to Ellis Island and, listening to its thousands of immigrants prattle their hopes in forty-three languages and dialects, could share their hopes. Evil administrators had hurt the country by overturning the purpose of its founders; the remedy lay in a return to first principles.

Already in men of the Leighton type and in their works, he saw signs of the revival. He had more than one occasion to visit the Children's Court. Its quarters near Third Avenue were cramped, but it was soon to be fittingly housed, and already here especially adapted magistrates, acting as judge, jury, and parent, conducted in kindly, quiet, and colloquial fashion the cases of fourteen thousand children in one year. These, all of them under the age of sixteen, were no longer herded with mature criminals that completed their education in vice, though their offenses ranged from mere waywardness to burglary. Their judges were patient and sympathetic men. One was the president of a society called the Big Brothers, the duty of whose members was to act in fraternally helpful fashion to boys less fortunate than they themselves had been; and some of the women probation officers of this court belonged to a similar organization known as the Big Sisters. There were twenty-six probation officers, some men and some women, and into their care were given all the little offenders for whom the court entertained any hope of reformation.

Luke concluded that the public schools, because of bettered conditions, were turning out fewer candidates for the Children's Court than ever before. He saw with high hope the Washington Irving High School for Girls, the result of an agitation begun by pupils. Here was a building eight stories high, and Luke, with the American love for size and numbers, wrote enthusiastically home to his sister that it was the largest school in the world.

"It cost half a million dollars," he told her; "it has a hundred and sixty rooms and it holds six thousand pupils. Think of that! Six thousand,—not your pasty-faced, moping diggers either, but all noisy, laughing, healthy girls. The equipment is wonderful—just wonderful: you girls from the old Americus High School would think you were in Heaven if you came here. There are two big restaurants, chemical and physical laboratories, a conservatory, a zoological garden and a roof-garden, and laundries. There's a regular theater—stage, scenery, and all that—a store, a bank, a housekeeping department, and an employment bureau. They have an orchestra, and they dance. There are nurseries with real babies in them—babies that can cry—and there is a five-room model house, a hospital, and a section where they train nurses. They use all these things really to teach, and this is in addition to languages and the usual unpractical stuff. They teach librarians' work, shorthand, typewriting, bookbinding, costume-designing, and dressmaking. Why, Jane, the girls are taught to make their own clothes. Every girl is expected to make her own graduation dress, and only a few of the dresses cost more than a dollar apiece. I'll bet you wouldn't like that part of it!"

Even his social life served subtly to confirm him, during this period, in the opinions he had brought to it. He mistrusted combinations of capital, because he thought they tended to restrain honest trade, but he believed such combinations could properly and effectively be curbed by legislation, and he had a fine respect for such of his acquaintances as had made their own money by building up their own industries. He doubted certain men in whose hands lay the administration of government, but he was sure that the cure for this was the election of honorable men. He brought to New York, and long retained, what he called a muscular Christianity (he had read Kingsley), and, under its control, he sought a remedy for the world's evils that he could synthesize with, a respect for authority and an acceptance of the dogma that the individual man is nothing and the omnipotent Deity everything.

He used often to be invited to dinners at the Ruysdaels' when there was no other guest, because Ruysdael liked this earnest lad and enjoyed long evening talks with him. On one such occasion, his host, little, sallow, with almond eyes that gave him a strangely Japanese appearance, fell to talking of these questions while the two men sat over a glass of port—for Ruysdael liked the old-fashioned English custom of after-dinner port—in the candle-lit, oak-paneled dining-room.

"I can't understand," said Ruysdael, "the shortsightedness of these really honest men who call property a crime."

"They call it that," said Luke, "because it's the result of profit."

"Yes, but what's profit?"

"Selling dear what you buy cheap, I suppose."

"Yes, that's one way of putting it, but it's really wages. It's the wages that the employer draws for his executive ability: he must be paid for his work if his employees are paid for theirs. It's the fair return that he gets for the risk he's run in starting his business, and it's his reward for his years of saving up his money till he had enough to start that business."

Luke agreed.

"Of course," said he, "we don't want the man that's done these things to use his power so as to prevent other men from doing them, but we haven't any right to take from him what he's earned or to stop him from going on earning it."

In much Ruysdael's manner, Luke's father, during Luke's visits to his home in Americus, would talk of government. Government, by which he meant the particular form of government adopted by the United States, was one of the few topics that could move the Congressman from his characteristic reticence. He scorned the tyranny of Russia and the English make-shift of a constitutional monarchy. In the United States the people could rule; the means were provided; if they failed now and then, it was for a brief time only. To Mr. Huber the majority was as infallible in matters of government as, in matters of faith, the Pope is to a devout Catholic, and the hope of the majority lay in that party which had freed the negro from slavery and saved the country from disruption.

To these ideals Luke was true. He saw the rottenness of Tammany rule in New York and knew it for a symptom of the disease that made a national danger of the entire rank and file of the Democrats; he saw the integrity of Leighton, and accepted it as a true token of Republican virtue. He wanted the government restored to its pristine simplicity, wealth curbed of its newly developed predatory instincts, religion restored to its place in the daily thought and conduct of man.

§3. Leighton's announced intention to "clean up" New York was proving, nevertheless, a slow process. He had great difficulty in obtaining evidence against the Democratic politicians whose scalps he had promised to hang to the belt of the public. Grand Juries had a way of including enough partisans of these politicians to prevent the finding of true bills. When true bills were found, petty juries generally contained enough Democrats to persuade the other jurors to acquit or to hold out for a disagreement. Even when convictions were secured, the appeals had to be argued before appellate courts composed of men that owed their positions to friends of the appellants.

"It's rotten luck," said Leighton, "but I believe they've got us scotched. We've tried seven cases, four of them twice and two three times; we've had our hands full with appeals, and the only one of the lot that we've sent to jail is a peanut politician from Second Avenue who doesn't control ten votes."

"Yes," said O'Mara, "and they let him go because they believed he was getting ready to go back on them next election."

"We've got to begin lower down," concluded Leighton, "and work up."

He began immediately. He found that, in violation of the law, cocaine was sold at scores of places on the East Side, and that the use of the drug was spreading alarmingly. Against these retailers he proceeded with all the vigor he had shown in his larger and less productive efforts. Evidence to convict the sources of supply was hard to get, since those sources were high in Tammany politics, but small sellers and street peddlers were rushed to jail with such commendable speed that the trade soon seemed abolished.

Luke appeared in some of these cases, and won most that he appeared in. He had been feeling the chill of disappointment, but this gave him fresh courage. One day, when Uhler was on vacation and Luke was taking the work of the absent man, he thought he saw the chance to approach "the people higher up," which they had all been waiting for.

A gang-leader named Zantzinger had been dancing with his wife at a ball on the second floor of a house in Avenue A. As he waltzed past the door leading to the back stairs, a friend looked in and called Zantzinger aside.

"Excuse me a minute," said the gangster to his wife.

He left her and went to his friend.

"Well?" he demanded.

"Butch Dellitt's down there," warned his friend, nodding toward the door. "His crowd's after you 'cause they say you piped off Dutch's brother-in-law's poolroom to the fly cops. He says he's goin' to croak you."

"Where is he?"

"He'll be 'round front when you come out."

"Where is he now?"

"Down back."

"Down these stairs?"

The friend nodded.

Zantzinger walked to his wife.

"I've got a little business below," he explained. "Wait here: I'll be right back."

He opened the door and descended the stairs. As he went, he drew his revolver. Dellitt was standing in the doorway, with his back to the stairs, smoking a cigarette. Without warning, Zantzinger shot him through the head. Then he returned to the ballroom, apologized to his wife for leaving her so hurriedly, and resumed his interrupted dance.

This was the story that came to the homicide bureau. Luke took it at once to Leighton.

"And this man Zantzinger," he reminded the District-Attorney, "is the right-hand man of the Tammany leader in that ward."

"Who saw him?" asked Leighton.

"Three men on the street."

"Got their names?"

"We can get them."

"Is the coroner on the case?"

Luke thought he was.

Leighton shrugged.

"Then that'll be the end of it," he said.

Luke could not credit this.

"Oh, yes," said Leighton wearily, "I mean it. By the time he's done with the case, he'll see to it nobody knows anything. Why, man alive, that coroner's the cousin of the ward leader."

"But you'll try?" urged Luke. "You'll fight?"

Leighton swung back in his swivel-chair. He put his feet on his desk and clasped his hands behind his head.

"No," he said, "I won't. What's the use? I'm getting tired of trying to do things with all the people taking no interest and a Democratic Mayor and Police Commissioner fighting against me." He spoke like a man at last driven to declare something he has long striven to conceal. "If ever I want to be re-elected," he continued, "this office has got to be more careful about taking up cases that are lost to begin with."

§4. Luke fought hard with the ugly doubt this incident raised. He tried to convince himself that Leighton had spoken only in a moment of passing weariness and discouragement; but he daily found this endeavor more difficult. What suddenly turned his mind to other things was the news that an aunt, his father's widowed sister who lived in Philadelphia, had died, leaving him a hundred thousand dollars.

CHAPTER IV

§1. Luke had never expected to be possessed of so much money. His father's income was comfortable, but it was well understood that the family lived somewhat beyond it, and that what might be left at the Congressman's death would go to his widow for life and, after that, to Luke's sister Jane. The Philadelphia aunt had inherited her fortune from her husband, and her affection for her relatives was generally supposed to be slight. Luke, consequently, found himself in a position for which he was totally unprepared.

"I suppose," he said to Ruysdael, to whom he went for advice, "that I ought to invest it."

"You ought to lose no time," counseled Ruysdael. "A hundred thousand dollars is too much for a young man to have at his call in New York. It's not enough to spend, and it's too much to gamble with in the bucket-shops."

Ruysdael thought he knew a safe investment.

"There's a man named Forbes," he said—"Wallace K. Forbes, who came to the offices of our estate the other day when I happened to be there. He wanted to borrow just the amount you name, and my agent says it's a good thing; but we happened to have a bigger one on hand. His concern's an old one, one of the oldest American firms in its line; this man's the third generation of his family to be in it, so it's well-established and has the good old-fashioned element of family pride behind it. Nowadays, you don't find many men regard their businesses the way an English landed gentleman used to regard his estates and his family honor; but Forbes seems to be an exception."

"What is the business?" asked Luke.

"Ready-made clothing, and well made, too, I'm told."

"Still, he does need money."

"Yes, but you couldn't get in if he didn't need it. He only wants it to complete some improvements he's begun. He's perfectly well-grounded, but I suppose he has to keep up with the progress of the trade. Of course, that very element of family pride might disincline him to give an outsider any hold on the business, but if you want me to, I'll have Croy—that's the man that runs our estate for us—look into the situation and sound Forbes."

Luke, after some satisfactory inquiries in other quarters, acquiesced in this proposal. All the reports were good, and that of Herbert Croy, the shriveled Ruysdael lawyer, was especially rosy. Forbes expressed his willingness to meet Luke, and Luke called at the offices of the R. H. Forbes & Son's factory in Brooklyn.

The present head of the firm was a grave man with a direct and unassuming manner. His aquiline nose gave his face the air of strength, and his mustache and the hair about his temples being slightly touched with gray, he seemed sober and conservative. He sat at a plain roll-top desk, in a room simply furnished, and he lost no time in coming at once to business.

"Would you like to walk through the place?" he inquired, when he had told Luke much of what Ruysdael had already said.

"I suppose I ought to," smiled Luke; "though of course I don't know enough about the business to appreciate what you show me."

Forbes smiled sadly.

"You are no different, then," he said, "from most modern investors, or, for the matter of that, most owners of businesses either. In these times the average president of a company thinks he earns his salary by manipulating its stock; he seldom knows anything about the work that makes the stock marketable. Our firm isn't like that."

Under Forbes's care, Luke was accordingly taken through the factory, with which, he noted, the office of the chief administrative was in close touch. He was shown the room where the cloth manufacturers brought their products; the scales to weigh the material; the windmill-like machine that spread the offered fabric on its wide arms and, turning at the will of the expert buyers, displayed its burden before the examiners in a strong north light; the long boards on which, having been re-rolled, the cloth, once its quality had been thus determined, was again uncoiled, an ingenious contrivance attached to the uncoiling-wheel stamping its measurements at every fifth revolution.

"We have to be careful," Forbes explained. "Business isn't so honest as it once was, and if the cloth-makers could gain an inch in ten yards, they'd do it."

The factory, which closed the end of a street, was built about four sides of a small square, and the center of this square was occupied by a large room with overhead ventilation and lighting, the glass fluted and sloping as the ribs of a Venetian blind may be made to slope, so that, in summer, the sun's rays would be tempered to the workers under it. Here, at the tables nearest the entrance, men were employed at designing patterns of cardboard and working, amid busy calculations, with rulers and T-squares, like so many architects' draughtsmen. From them the completed patterns were taken to other tables at which they met the cloth accepted in the first room, other workmen tracing the designs in chalk upon pieces of the cloth. The problem of these second workers, Forbes explained, was to arrange the designs in such a way that almost no shred of cloth was wasted. Luke observed that they solved it with astonishing skill; and, as each piece was completed, a ticket was roughly sewn on it with written directions for its further progress and blanks to be filled in by the signature of each worker responsible for its future steps.

Then came what to Luke was the most wonderful part of the work. Nineteen pieces of unmarked cloth to be made into suits of the same style as that on which the chalk pattern had been outlined, were laid under that piece and the whole bundle given to a man at a large table. Through a slit in the center of this table, a knife of incredible strength and keenness plunged rapidly up and down. The man in charge forced the bundle against the knife, deftly pushing it forward, so that the blade followed the lines drawn upon the top piece, and in three minutes a score of suits of clothes were cut into their various parts and were being sorted and ticketed and signed for waiting boys to carry them to the sewing-machines.

"Those patterns look like the parts of a jig-saw puzzle," said Luke, "and that knife looks like a cross between a jig-saw and the guillotine."

"It cuts twenty suits at a time," said Forbes gravely, "and the bottom one doesn't vary the thirtieth of an inch from the one on top."

"Twenty suits!" Luke wanted to rub his eyes.

"Yes; but the inventor is still at work on the knife. We hope soon to get one that will do three dozen."

At each corner of the building was an elevator and a stairway, the latter walled in so to serve as a fire-escape. Forbes took Luke up one of these stairways, a broad and easy flight of which the corners at each landing were protected by curved wainscoting to prevent jamming in case of panic.

The three floors above ground contained the rooms in which the sewing was done and one room known as the matching-room. All seemed well lighted and well aired and well protected by the overhead pipes of an automatic sprinkling-plant.

In the matching-room girls especially trained to the task selected, from vast quantities of samples, the fitting shades of thread and buttons best adapted to the different bundles of cut fabric brought by elevators from the cutting department below. Beside them were four other girls, who worked at a contrivance in which, when covered buttons were required, an uncovered button, a piece of tin and a bit of cloth were inserted, a lever pulled and the three factors withdrawn ready clamped together and complete for use. From here, after the tickets had been signed, and the necessary further directions added to them, the cloth was sent on to the sewing-rooms.

Luke found those sewing-rooms crowded with machines of possibilities that he had heretofore never dreamed machines could realize; machines horrible because they seemed half-human, and diabolically intelligent; machines that not only moved up and down in the manner of the old foot-pumped sewing-machine in the second floor back of his home in Americus, but twirled and danced over the cloth pressed under them by women feeding them as a frightened keeper in a menagerie might feed an angry beast. They were all of them run by steam or gasoline, and Forbes told Luke that they were all made by one trust, which owned all the patents. There were different machines for every kind of sewing, for every loop that could be required of the thread: machines for hemming; machines for the cord-stitch, the lock-stitch, the chain-stitch, and the damask-stitch; machines for sewing the cloth together, for sewing the lining, for sewing the trouser-seams; and there was one machine, the needle of which moved in dizzy zigzag, for sewing, on a sort of herring-bone design, the stiffening material into coats.

Next Luke was shown a room in which, on benches a foot from the floor, beside tables six inches high, sat rows of intent little girls, their arms flying like flails as they stitched the shoulders into the coats, and still another row in which still other girls, their arms flying in a similar manner, sewed buttons on coats, waistcoats, and trousers—the only two processes that invention was as yet unable wholly to deliver over to machinery. Lastly, there was a half-floor given to what at first looked like linotype machines, and at these sat brawny women who passed over the coat-shoulders long flat-irons, each heated by flexible tubes attached to it and reminiscent, for Luke, of those terrible instruments that, immediately revolving, grind the heart and lungs out of a patient's teeth.

Forbes exhibited it all with a quiet pride. He said there was no work sent out of the factory, and so no "sweating"; the factory was a union shop; there had never been but one strike, and that one was speedily adjusted by arbitration.

Luke was impressed. He secured favorable reports from a financial agency and from a firm of expert accountants. Then he invested his fortune in R. H. Forbes & Son.

§2. About this time, the United States Senate happened to be investigating itself and unavoidably stumbled upon a witness whose testimony filled all the newspapers for several weeks and remained a matter of public comment for quite two months. Perhaps because he had fallen out with his employers, this witness insisted upon telling how he had for ten years been hired by a combination of the ruling corporations to influence national legislation. Five hundred letters and telegrams substantiated his assertions; he gave dates and mentioned places; the names of popular idols fell from his lips with infinite carelessness, and the idols broke as their names fell.

Speaking in unimpassioned detail, the informer showed how his activities had covered the entire country and included the chiefs of both the large parties with a splendid catholicity. He had bought the services of labor leaders to end strikes, had broken up unions by purchasing information from their members, and had ended one dispute by having himself appointed a member of its arbitration board. He had operated in congressional campaigns throughout the Union, and he told how he had bought the defeat at the polls of members of Congress that sought re-election after having opposed the corporate interests at Washington, and how he had spent thousands of the trusts' dollars in electing candidates who, personally or through their bosses, promised that they would support a high tariff and prevent the passage of laws too kindly to the working class. He had hired congressional clerks and pages, the former to betray what advance information came to them, the latter to pick up valuable gossip. He had the secretaries of Congressmen on his salary-roll when he could not buy or defeat their masters or when, having bought those masters, he feared treachery. He had secured the appointment of those legislators in his pay to important committees, and he had, he said, planned and secured the establishment of a national tariff commission for the benefit of the powers he served. Those powers were headed by the man that Jack Porcellis likened to Shakespeare and that the derelict in the Essex Street saloon called the King.

Luke, who of course had nothing to do with the management of the Forbes company, nevertheless occasionally passed an evening at the quiet Brooklyn home of its president, who was a widower living alone with his only child, Betty, a pretty, high-colored, brown-eyed girl, as yet unformed and only twenty-two years old. As a rule, these two men sat in the parlor, a room that retained the character of Forbes's grandfather, and talked of everything and nothing, the girl rarely intruding upon them. It was inevitable that they should, during the floodtide of the Washington scandal, speak of its revelations.

"I don't know what to make of them," sighed Luke. "It seems as if the fellows at the head of our party were no better than the fellows at the head of the other."

"They are not," said Forbes with conviction. "Here they all are blackmailing the tariff, a system the country owes all its prosperity to."

"We shall have to pick honest leaders in the future," Luke reflected. He still believed in the power of a party's individual members. "We've simply been too easy-going in the past."

Forbes thought this would avail nothing.

"The parties themselves are rotten," he declared, "and the deeper a man gets into them, no matter how well he starts out, the more certain he is to be infected. You see how even the good measures are fraudulently put through. Then here's our own state with a Governor we all believed in—a Democrat, to be sure, but an anti-Tammany man. He comes out for a fine thing like direct primaries. Well, the other day an Assemblyman I know went to him and asked him to sign a bill this Assemblyman wanted passed. What happened? The Governor said: 'Will you vote for the direct primary law?' The Assemblyman happens to be a fool and against that law. He said he'd vote against it, and he tells me the Governor told him in that case the other bill wouldn't be signed. No, the thing we need in this country is a brand-new party run by honest business men on sound business principles."

Luke could not yet consider such a revolution; but the next day the papers contained further news of the senatorial investigation, which lent weight to Forbes's opinion. A witness, after testimony further entangling that great financier whose power seemed to pervade the country's entire industrial system, described an alleged forgery in the books of a railway known to be controlled by Porcellis's hero and eager to evade the anti-trust laws. According to this witness, a "double entry" of $2,000,000, representing securities that the road assumed in taking over two other roads, was carried in the "Consolidated balance sheet" for some time, then erased from one side of the ledger, and left as a credit balance on the other side.

"They took all the securities of the acquired roads," he swore, "and used them as securities for a bond-issue. They got that money and used it to finance two other outside transactions that they sold out at a tremendous profit."

He named as participants in this three Senators high in the councils of Luke's party.

"Of course they're a bad lot," Leighton cheerfully admitted when the District-Attorney's staff gossiped about the latest revelation, "and the party is no better right here in New York than it is in any other state. But you can't repair an organization by smashing it. What we need is reform within the party. The party must reform itself. And that's what I'm trying to bring about."

He did, indeed, give out interviews to this effect, and gathered a considerable following. A little convention was called at Saratoga where, fired by fresh faith, Luke made his first political speech, holding up Leighton as the Erasmus of Republicanism. It was an unfortunate simile, for the opposition press lost no time in lampooning the District-Attorney as Erasmus at his weakest; but the movement grew, and Luke, in common with his fellow-believers, began to see light in the political darkness.

He still possessed the beautiful power of dreaming, and when, by night, coming from a theater or leaving the house of Mrs. Ruysdael or one of her friends, he turned into Broadway and saw the myriad lights of its cafés mount heavenward and mix with and illuminate the pillars of smoke and steam rising from its chimneys, he could detect in their wreaths the faces of grinning devils raised by the pestilential life below, laughing at it, dipping enormous white claws to stir it, and then hissing skyward as if to proclaim, because of what New York was, their defiance of God. Once or twice, to escape from them, he walked as far downtown as Wall Street and loitered through the silent night, where the three churches stood on the modern battleground of mad finance to remind of its history the city with the shortest memory in Christendom. Mentally, he converted that portion of the town to what it once had been. He saw it the home of a modest aristocracy in simple houses along shaded streets, a center of good taste, of culture, of social well-being.

The old Astor House, now fallen into shabby desuetude, he pictured as it was when state banquets were given there, and when it was the one place in which the distinguished visitor would stop. Close by the spot where the Woolworth Building to-day houses eighteen thousand persons, the Astor House had moved Horace Greeley to admiration because six hundred and forty-seven persons slept under its roof. There Clay had received the news of his nomination in 1844, and Webster the word of his defeat at the hands of the Whig convention in 1852. That hotel had been familiar to Pierce, Van Buren, Buchanan, and Taylor, to Seward, Choate, and Douglas. Edward, Prince of Wales, had given it an almost royal atmosphere, and recollections of Lincoln still hung about its tarnished walls.

Would the old spirit come back again? Could it return? Luke was sure that it could and would. He was sure that Leighton, and the honest men associated with him, had begun a movement that must end by restoring the nation's lost ideals. Government would govern, honest property would be protected, religion would again open man's eyes to his own littleness and the omnipotence of the Deity. There would be legislation that would be the end of industrial combinations, of the crushing of the small manufacturer and the grinding of the faces of the poor. No more national banks would be merged, none would engage in promoting or underwriting; interlocking directorates would cease, and the concentration of credit, the Money Trust, would forever after be an impossibility. It was so easy. It needed but an awakened conscience in the majority of the voters and a few conscientious men to lead.

§3. Luke's father died within three years after the young man entered upon his duties under Brouwer Leighton. The elder Huber had embarked his small fortune in an adventure that, as events soon proved, was opposed to one of the interests of the great financier whom he had once so much admired: those interests ruined the adventure and, more from grief because of this than from any specific malady, the Congressman fell in the fight. He died proud of his son—a pride that Mrs. Huber and Jane zealously shared—and he left the family in Luke's care.

The young man, who had loved his father in spite of all the differences between them, and long felt the loss, met this situation without complaint. Neither the mother nor the sister wanted to go to New York, and, as Luke managed to live within his meager salary, he was able to continue for them the home in Americus upon the income from his now well-paying investment in R. H. Forbes & Son. Jane, indeed, soon engaged herself and was married to a Doncaster lawyer who secured an election to the late Mr. Huber's seat in Congress, so that Luke's expenses in Americus were light.

He began to fall in love with Betty Forbes. The women of the Ruysdael set did not fail to attract him, but he never considered them as within his means, and so speedily placed them outside of his desires. Forbes's daughter, on the other hand, was the feminine counterpart of her father, and, as she grew, she developed many of his qualities, being quiet, determined, unobtrusive, and womanly in the sense in which men like Forbes used that word before Woman began to give it a new significance. Accepting the world in the garb in which Forbes thought it well to present it to her, she owned only the finest standards of her type, and there was no meanness in her. Physically, she had that rarity in young women: height combined with grace. Her hair, as Luke saw it, was like so much sunshine, her eyes were clear and brown, and the radiance of her coloring not even a man that was not her lover could deny. Luke, for his part, thought her far too good for him. He told himself she was all that the people of the Ruysdael set should be and were not: she made important and shameful the casual relations he had had with women of the half-world and that in their occurrence—less frequent than is usual in the lives of young men—had seemed trivial and matter-of-fact; and therefore he determined to win her, so soon as he could make a place for himself through the pursuit of his ideals.

§4. That pursuit grew daily more difficult. The candle of his faith in Leighton, though it continued to burn steadily, burned less fiercely than of old. The movement for reform within the party spread, but it spread almost too rapidly; it came to include certain politicians who were now for the first time in their careers evincing a desire for the organization's betterment, and that only after the organization had failed to re-elect them to office. These men, in one or two instances, came into control, and it was soon necessary to reform the reformers. Sometimes Leighton appeared disheartened, and Luke began to acquire a weary and well-nigh uninterested manner in dealing with his part of the crusade.

"Look here," he once said to his chief, "that fellow you got a pardon for last week has been in to see me."

"Yes?" said Leighton. His feet were cocked on his desk and, in his favorite attitude, he was leaning back in his chair with his fingers clasped in his crisp, black hair. His face was not the face that Luke had known when he first came to New York.

"Well," continued the assistant, "he came in just after I got back from the Ludlow Street Jail. That place is full of nobody but husbands who won't pay alimony, but the keepers act as valets and barbers and do light housekeeping for the prisoners."

"It's the civil prison. We can't help it."

"Couldn't you swing things so a Grand Jury would report on it?"

"What's the use? And what has Ludlow Street got to do with Auburn, where our pardoned friend has been?"

"Only this: the rich men in Ludlow Street are living as if they were in a hotel, but at Auburn, this fellow says, they've got a cell with pointed nails in the floor so a prisoner sent to it for bad behavior can't sit down or sleep. They've—— Oh, I can't go into it all now; but the women are treated as bad as the men; the thing must be worse than the Black Hole of Calcutta, and all the while the State's paying for the warden's horses and carriages."

Leighton showed some interest, but later, when Luke returned to the subject, he said there was nothing to be done: the political situation would not just then permit it.

Came the unmasking of one of the new partisans of reform. This man, a Simon Kaindiac, was an inspector in the New York post-office. Federal detectives arrested him and showed him to have made a fortune by extortion from swindling concerns that were using the United States mails to entrap their victims.

"I know, I know!" cried Leighton peevishly when Uhler brought him the news in Luke's presence. "But how am I to blame for that? All the papers will be at me for it. As if I were responsible for the business morals of every man that happened to think as I do about the political ethics of the party!" He turned to Luke. "What's on your mind, Huber?"

Luke said that what was on his mind was this: the office had that morning received the report of investigators who pointed out that, since the success of the cocaine raids, heroin had taken the place of the proscribed drug.

"Well," said Leighton, "I'm sorry, but the laws governing the sale of heroin aren't the same as those governing the sale of cocaine, and, until they are, you'll find you can't successfully prosecute under them."

"We might get at the thing another way," Luke protested. His growing love for Betty had given him new views on some old subjects. "They say the girls in the houses——"

Leighton swung his feet to the floor. His tired face worked irritably.

"Now, don't begin on them," he commanded. "They're the police's affair, anyhow. They've always existed and always will. They simply adapt themselves to whatever form of society happens to exist. No really effective method of regulation, let alone suppression, has ever been devised or ever will be. Gee whiz, young man, do you know what you'll get up against if you tackle this subject? For four thousand years the high-brows have been trying to make it unpopular, and they haven't succeeded yet."

It was much the same when Luke and O'Mara came across the trail of corruption among the police. They found one man who would make affidavit to the fact that patrolmen had paid him to instigate burglaries in order that the patrolmen might make arrests and win promotion. This man had friends among the keepers of illegal resorts who would swear to paying tribute to police captains. He introduced the two lawyers to a collector who said that $2,400,000 were yearly paid in this way, that he himself was the go-between for a police lieutenant, securing from fifty to five hundred dollars a month each from those who bought protection. No discretion seemed to be used, and he showed checks to corroborate his story.

"Do you think you could do anything on such evidence?" sneered Leighton. "You couldn't send a yellow dog to jail on it. This fellow confesses he's a crook himself. Start an agitation to force the Police Commissioner to resign as unfit? Not much! If he resigned, 'unfit' would mean 'guilty.' His crowd's in the saddle, and if you want to unhorse him, you've got to unhorse them."

He walked up and down the floor.

"The trouble with us is we don't fight the devil with fire," he said; "and the trouble with the whole system is too many laws. There are too many lawyers at Albany and Washington; they know all about law and nothing about Man, so when the public conscience turns over and whines in its sleep, these fellows think they can cure it of what ails it by passing a few more laws. They pass a law against dance-halls, and they breed brothels. That's the way it goes all down the line. They pass a lot of such laws and then say: 'Now, let the District-Attorney do the rest.' I wish they had my job for one day! People have got to understand that other people don't indulge their tastes out of mere love of law-breaking."

He took another turn of the room.

"And if we're going to whip political gangs," he said, "we must have a political gang of our own, and one better than the one we happen to be fighting. There's Tim Heney over on the East Side. He may be as crooked as God makes them, but when people give him votes, he gives them coal in winter and picnics in summer. He goes to their funerals and their weddings, and he knows more about what the people of this country want than Thomas Jefferson would have known if he'd lived to be a hundred. And what's more, he can do what none of your statesmen ever can do: he can keep them quiet. Do you wonder? Think what he does for them. Do you wonder they stick to him?"

§5. Luke began to believe that Forbes was right: There was need of a new party. Daily his lethargy increased; daily he lived more in his love for Betty and in the dreams that emerged less and less upon the plane of his actual life.

His contact with the bar did not raise either it or the bench in his estimation. In a file of documents at his office, the legacy of a former administration, he came across vouchers for sums aggregating $3,000 paid by a local railway to witnesses who had sworn against a lawyer indicted for subornation of perjury in pressing a damage-case against the company, and among these was one for $500 paid to the referee that signed the report. He heard of a rural courthouse that by night became a gambling-house conducted by court officers; there was a judge on the Pacific Slope who sold a patent, the idea for which he stole from the plaintiff in a patent case in his own court; the District-Attorney of Doncaster County, in Pennsylvania, told Luke that only the statute of limitations saved from jail three associate judges of that county who had accepted bribes in the granting of liquor licenses, and that a judge in a nearby county had accepted $3,500 toward his campaign fund from brewing companies whose retailers must apply to him for licenses. It seemed that of two of the most prominent judges of the higher court in New York, one was chosen directly through the efforts of Tim Heney, and the other was the brother of the principal member of a trust which had cases in his court. A judge of a Federal Court was forced from the bench because of his financial interests in a company with which he had to deal in his judicial capacity, and a New Jersey judge, a friend of Leighton, was said to be hearing suits to which a certain railway was a party and then, during vacations, appearing in a neighboring county court as a lawyer retained by the same company.

The follies of the law appeared to be more numerous than its faults. One judicial decision enjoined members of a labor union from the peaceable persuasion from work of individuals not under agreement to work for the corporation in the mills of which a strike was in progress. A Philadelphia jurist denied the right of free speech to aliens. In Illinois, Smith appealed from a conviction for swindling Brown, and the Supreme Court upheld him because the indictment, which read that Smith "did unlawfully and feloniously obtain from Brown his money," was indefinite and misleading: the learned court held that the pronoun "his" might refer to either party, and that the Grand Jury might simply have been indicating its belief that Brown obtained his own money unlawfully.

Worse miscarriages of justice were, of course, common, even in Leighton's office, and sentences were often out of all proportion to the crimes that incurred them. The editor of a radical paper in Paterson was given an indeterminate term in prison of not less than one year and not more than fifteen years for criticising the Paterson police. The larger the scope of a swindler's transactions, the better his chances of immunity. One minor case long remained in Luke's memory. A clerk in a trust company disappeared with $25,000, and a fugitive bill of indictment was returned against him; the runaway opened negotiations with his former employers by means of advertisements in the Paris newspapers and then used his wife as an intermediary until the trust company promised to have the District-Attorney submit the indictment for a verdict of not guilty if the clerk would return with the $15,000 still in his hands; the careful fugitive hid $7,500 in Germany, and returned with the rest; he refused to tell the hiding-place until he was safe; the company found the District-Attorney willing to follow its suggestion; the verdict of Not Guilty was accordingly recorded, and the clerk, free from further harm, made over to the company the remaining $7,500 that he had left in Europe as an anchor to windward.

There was probably no more laxity among lawyers than among men of other professions, but to Luke's mind it seemed imperative that traders in justice should be especially just. He came across countless cases of pettifogging among shyster practitioners, and nearly as many suspicious actions in the ranks of their cleverer and, therefore, more successful and eminent brethren.

Ever seeking remedies, he once drew up a list of such as he found. He wanted more publicity and freedom of criticism; measures to curb the bench's power to declare laws unconstitutional, to force it to give fuller reasons in support of its decisions; he wanted devices to end "the law's delays," simplified procedure and judges who were closer to the people and farther from the corporations; he thought the courts of appeal ought to be forced to decide every question in every case appealed to them; and he advocated but one appeal in civil actions together with the right of recall both in regard to judges and to their decisions.

§6. He had come to a point where he doubted, not it is true Leighton's intentions, but his ability to achieve them. Those were the days when the Progressive Party was being formed, and Luke for some time considered it as a hopeful sign. Forbes enlisted in the ranks of the new organization and championed it wherever he went, not least among the workers in his factory. Luke had joined a club of young men who had for the most part inherited their money and were unanimous for the new movement; it was time, they said, that politics should be taken out of the hands of the muckers, and they came near to convincing Luke until, in a moment of enthusiasm, he happened upon secrets which showed him that the men in power in this party were not different from the men that had spoiled Leighton's plan for the purification of the Republican Party from within. From a source he could not doubt, he heard that even George Hallett had talked of offering his support "because these old crowds are too greedy; they're chargin' us too much; it's got to be highway robbery that big business has to submit to, and I'm tired of it."

For some time Luke lost faith in the possibility of any cure. There was talk of a movement to fuse the reform voters of all parties, but it left him cold. He had been a successful prosecutor, and his name was familiar to newspaper readers; his advocacy of Leighton had won him a prominence, even a certain following, among the public; but the irony of life was too much for him; he had, at this period, an eye too appreciative of the odds against him. He saw Betty two or three times a week, took her motoring and to the theaters, but he refrained from showing her that he loved her, because he saw no chance of offering her himself as a man worth while. The lethargy of his manner became more marked. He began to bear the outward tokens of one that does not care. To this he had come after four years in New York.

CHAPTER V

§1. The hideous North Bridge disaster occurred on a spring morning during the last year of Leighton's first term in office. The District-Attorney, whose habitual disparagement of his post did not dull his desire to retain it, was busy planning for re-election, and the work of his staff, labor how they would, was congested. The assistants were straining to make a record of convictions with which their chief might go before the electors in the autumn, and were giving to participation in political councils every half-hour that they dared spare from their legal tasks; they were hard driven and worn to the nerves; yet the news of the wreck of the Manhattan & Niagara Railway, immediately within the city's limits, burst through doors that had been opened only to men with power or appointments and swept, even from the collective mind of the corps, the bulking thought of jury lists and ballots.

The Manhattan and Niagara had entered New York only a few years before, with a line that tapped fresh territory. Along this line real-estate operators forthwith plotted ten or a dozen towns, and white-and-yellow suburbs leaped up like mushrooms. They were peopled by clerks and small businessmen that came into the city over the M. & N. every morning and returned home by the same route each evening.

From the opening of the new line, complaints had been common: it was said that the service was inadequate, that the cars and other rolling-stock were largely second-hand material purchased from the older New York & New Jersey Railroad; that the rails were the cheapest obtainable, the ties bought from an abandoned branch line near Buffalo. One serious wreck had preceded that at the North Bridge, but had not been followed by the improvements the company had promised. The patrons had protested with all the vigor Americans exhibit when they feel that a public-service corporation is cheating them, and had stopped as far on the discreet side of action as protesting Americans usually stop: the M. & N.'s parsimony became grist for the mill of the humorous weeklies and produced no further reaction. This morning, a train crowded with men going to their offices plunged through a bridge crossing an uptown street: a hundred passengers were wounded and twenty-five killed.

The earliest editions of the evening papers shrieked the news, and special editions rushed from the presses. In most of them the M. & N. had taken care to be a heavy advertiser, but here was an event so clearly due to the railway's known policy that no paper could belittle the culpability of the management: the bridge had been recently examined and pronounced safe by state inspectors, yet all reports agreed that it was constructed of the very lightest material, and the earliest evidence showed that a rail had flattened and thrown the train. To persons having a fair knowledge of current finance, it was known that the M. & N. was controlled by the group of capitalists who were actively at the management of the nominally rival N. Y. & N. J.

Luke sent his office-boy to buy him the first edition that he heard called beneath his window. It placed the dead at a hundred and the injured at thrice that figure, and when Huber's eyes caught the obscure paragraph that hinted at the real ownership of the road, his cheeks, now so generally pale, reddened, and the hand that held the paper trembled. Something of his old indignation and purpose woke in him. He ordered the boy to bring him a copy of each fresh edition as it appeared on the street, and though the lists of victims shrank to their true number, the outstanding fact of the owners' guilt remained.

Leighton passed through Luke's room on his return from luncheon. His face was drawn with the long worry of his campaign; he had been eating with two politicians and shaping plans while he bolted food.

"Begins to look as if we can get the indorsement of the anti-Tammany Democrats," he said as he hurried by. "I've just had a talk with Seeley and Ellison. They're coming here at three o'clock."

Luke held up his paper.

"This is an awful thing," he said.

"What?" asked Leighton. He passed beside Luke's desk. "Oh, the North Bridge wreck? Yes, isn't it? When Ellison and Seeley come, don't let anybody butt in on me."

"You know who are really the responsible crowd in the M. & N.?" Luke persisted. His manner was the sleepy manner that had grown upon him for the past twelvemonth, but his eyes were keen.

"Yes," said Leighton absently. He ran his fingers through his always disordered hair. "Yes I know, but we couldn't prove it." He looked at his watch. "Don't forget," he concluded, "you're to head off anybody that comes after three o'clock, and if you're busy, then turn them over to one of the other fellows."

§2. At half-past four Luke's office-boy announced James T. Rollins.

Luke looked up heavily from the latest edition of the Evening World.

"Who's James T. Rollins?" he inquired.

The boy did not know. "But he looks like he owned the Stock Exchange," he said. "Wanted the Boss: I told him he was busy."

Luke wearily laid aside his paper.

"Very well, bring him in."

The boy went out and straightway reopened the door to admit the visitor.

Dressed in a russet brown, Rollins was short and stout; his eyebrows were bushy, and he made an effort to keep his thick lips drawn in a firm line. He so much resembled the pictures of the man just then predominant in Luke's mind that the assistant District-Attorney was startled.

"Mr. Rollins?"

The visitor tried to speak, but seemed to be unable to accomplish articulation. He nodded. He stood erect in the attitude of one accustomed to receive orders, and his right hand tapped his stiff hat against his thigh.

Luke indicated a chair beside his desk.

"Sit down."

Rollins complied. He sat far forward in the chair, as if expecting to be ordered out of it at the next moment. Both hands now clutched the brim of his hat, which he held between his fat, outspread knees.

"You wanted to see Mr. Leighton?" inquired Luke.

Rollins coughed.

"Yes, sir."

"I'm sorry." Luke was accustomed to callers of the hesitant sort: he wished that this one would go and leave him alone with the new idea that was growing in his brain; but Leighton, like the good politician that he was, had always given strict orders that every caller should be well received. "I'm afraid Mr. Leighton's very busy now. He has some most important business in hand."

Rollins made an effort toward dignity; his words succeeded, but his manner of uttering them failed:

"My business is important, too."

"And immediate?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then perhaps I can attend to it for you."

Rollins shook his head.

"I've got to see the District-Attorney."

"But I am his assistant."

"Yes, sir, I know. But this is confidential."

Luke began to lose patience.

"Well," he said, "as I told you, I'm sorry, but you can't see him."

In spite of Leighton's orders and his own customary obedience to them, Luke's voice had become sharp. It was just then only the sharpness of an underling; but, because Rollins himself was an underling, the visitor resented it, and this resentment gave him the courage he wanted. He stood up, and he bore himself with an erectness which had a fresh character.

"It's him that will be sorry," he said. "I came here to give him information that'd re-elect him."

Notwithstanding the man's new attitude, Luke thought he scented the crank. All sorts of cranks infested the District-Attorney's office, and every sort was certain it could purge the city or re-elect Leighton. Luke lost his temper. He spoke with the drawl with which he commonly spoke, but his tone was bitter. His tongue laid hold of the uppermost thought in his head.

"I suppose," he said, "you've come here to place the blame for the North Bridge wreck?"

The breath caught in Rollins's throat.

"How did you know?" he demanded.

It was not a crank that asked that question: it was a sane man badly startled. Luke recognized the distinction and instantly resolved to push the advantage he had fortuitously gained. He rose, smiling slowly.

"You've told me you knew I was one of the assistant district-attorneys of New York," he drawled. "I would advise you to act on the knowledge, Mr. Rollins, and not to lose any time about it."

"I——" began Rollins; but bluster came to the aid of his timidity. "No," he said, "I've got to see Mr. Leighton."

Luke had no idea who his visitor was or what information he might possess, but he was now certain that worth-while information was in Rollins's possession. Without further fencing, the lawyer, therefore, resorted to an old stratagem that he had learned when he first entered the District-Attorney's office: on the bare chance that the evidence might be documentary and within reach, he took a quick stride towards Rollins, raising his right hand as if to seize him. At once the right hand of Rollins shot upward and stopped protectingly over his breast.

"Now then," said Luke, "hand me those papers that you've got in your breast-pocket."

"No," said Rollins; "no; they're for Mr. Leighton."

"Hand them over.'"

"They're mine."

"If you don't hand them over," said Luke lazily, "I shall take them."

"You've got no right to!"

"You'd better save yourself trouble, Mr. Rollins."

"I won't!"

From under his lazy lids, Luke saw that the man was only frightened. With a flash of inspiration, the lawyer guessed something of the truth. This fellow was probably a clerk in the M. & N. offices.

"You won't be arrested for robbing the office-files, if that's what you're scared about," he said; "and you won't be told on and discharged."

Rollins was visibly relieved.

"You give me your word, Mr. Huber?"

"I do. Come on now: let's see what you've got."

"And—I'm not a rich man, Mr. Huber."

Luke's face showed his disgust.

"I shan't pay you a cent," he said; "but I daresay Leighton won't mind paying. Only even he won't buy a pig in a poke. Give me those papers. If they're worth anything, I'll take you into the District-Attorney's room right away—or, if there's somebody in there, I'll have him out here."

Rollins realized that Luke meant what he said. He believed, moreover, that his inquisitor was merely cautious.

"All right," he agreed, though with some reluctance. "This is a letter from my employer to a man that always had to return such letters after he's read them. The other letter is the letter from the rail manufacturers that's referred to in the first one. I got them both by——"

"I can guess how," said Luke.

He put out his hand and into it Rollins placed two sheets of paper, that were headed on top simply by an embossed Wall Street address and dated almost five years before.

Luke read:

"DEAR MR. DOHAN:

"I understand that the bill of which you have spoken to me will be passed and become a law to-day. I have just seen Messrs. Hallett and Rivington and have secured their agreement to the plan outlined in my personal conversation with you last week. In view of the favors that you have done me in the past, I think it fair to tell you, for your own use only, that my friends have decided that they and I ought to do what you thought they might decide, viz.: unload at the end of five years. Considering your contemplated resignation next year, this will not affect you, except favorably in case you care to manipulate your own holdings in accordance with this news.

"I note what you say about the estimate submitted by the construction-department; also the letter of the steel-rail manufacturers which you inclosed, in which they say that the grade I suggested might not wear well. I think their use of the word 'dangerous' is absurdly exaggerated. We have used this grade on several of our roads and feel sure from long experience that, with proper repair-gangs, it will wear for five years as well as the best.

"My desire and the desire of my associates is to protect the interests of the stockholders. With that in mind, I should state, what you have probably already gathered, that we feel that the new line must be built and operated with all possible economy."

The signature was the signature that Luke expected.

"Those rails," said Rollins, "weren't replaced. Dohan resigned, and these letters have been in our office ever since. The crowd was planning to unload in November."

"Yes," said Luke dryly. His face was immobile and his voice calm, but his heart seemed to beat against his ribs, demanding freedom. "Come on in here to Mr. Leighton's office."

§3. He had forgotten Seeley and Ellison, but they were already gone, and Leighton was alone. Apparently the conference had been satisfactory, for the District-Attorney's face was a little less careworn.

"Mr. Leighton," said Luke, closing the door, "this man"—he indicated Rollins by a lazy movement of his hand—"is a secretary in the employ of the person to whom these letters belong—or belonged." He held out the letters that Rollins had given him.

Leighton's face clouded.

"Office business? I thought I told you I had some personal matters to think over."

Luke choked an impulse of resentment.

"If you'll look at these letters," he said, "I believe you'll find they apply to—both sorts of duties."

Leighton took the papers with a gesture of annoyance, but when he saw the signature to the more important of them, his eyes shone, and he looked up quickly.

"Where did you get these?" He flung the question at Rollins.

The informer had been standing behind Luke, as if seeking his shelter. His breath came heavily.

"I found them in the office-files," he mumbled.

"He stole them," said Luke quietly.

"Oh, Mr. Huber, if you're going to talk like that——"

"He stole them," Luke pursued—"or so he says. The only question in my mind is: are they genuine?"

Rollins showed signs of resenting this suggestion more keenly than the declaration that he was a thief. Leighton, however, interrupted: he was squinting at the letter that Luke had read in full.

"No," he said, "this is real enough. I know the signature."

"You know it?" Luke was surprised.

"Yes, yes." Leighton read the letter through; then turned upon Rollins with a resumption of his cross-examining manner. "How much d'you want for these?"

Rollins beat his hat upon his thigh.

"Well," he said, "they ought to be worth a good deal to you, Mr. Leighton."

"I'll give you five hundred dollars."

"Mr. Leighton!" Rollins was deprecating. "Five hundred dollars!"

"What do you want, then? Speak up."

"Five thousand would be nearer value, Mr. Leighton."

Luke turned away. This was the part of the business that he loathed.

"I'll give you two thousand and not a cent more," said Leighton.

Rollins thought himself now in a commanding position.

"I can't consider that," he said with the nearest approach to firmness he had yet shown.

"All right," said Leighton. "Huber!" He handed the letters to Luke. "Put these in your safe while I telephone this fellow's employer."

"Mr. Leighton!" Rollins bounded forward. His fat face worked with rage, disappointment, and fear. "You wouldn't do that. This is robbery. It's blackmail! For God's sake, Mr. Leighton——"

"Two thousand dollars," said Leighton.

"But think a minute, Mr. Leighton! I've been in my job for seven years—worked up to it from office-boy. I could any time have sold tips along the street for twice that money, and yet this is the first time I've ever—ever——"

"Ever double-crossed your boss. Well, why'd you do it?"

"I don't know. It was because this wreck is so awful."

"And what else?"

"Nothing else."

Leighton thrust a forefinger into the informer's face.

"What else?"

Rollins jumped back.

"Well, he—he didn't raise my pay. I've got a big family, and there's a mortgage on my little house in Roseville, and a man in my position has to live well, or people'd talk."

Leighton relaxed. He swung back in his chair and cocked his feet on the desk.

"I'll make it two thousand five hundred for your family's sake. That's my last word."

Luke, who had again turned his back on the hagglers, the letters safely buttoned in an inside pocket of his coat, wondered how his chief could afford such an outlay.

"Is that really the best you can do?" whined Rollins.

"It is the best I will do," said Leighton. Without lowering his feet, he pulled toward him the telephone, which was attached to his desk by an arm that could be lengthened or shortened at the user's will. "Now, then, your boss has gone home long ago; but I can get him at his house; do you want to lose your job or make this money?"

Rollins surrendered.

"I guess I'll have to take your price," he said. "But it's almost a charity I'm doing."

"Right!" Leighton released the telephone, quickly swung his legs from the desk and sat straight.

"And you'll promise nobody'll ever know where you got these letters?"

"Certainly."

Rollins looked toward Luke's significant back.

"And Mr. Huber, too?"

Luke turned.

"I've already promised you that," he said.

Leighton smiled faintly as he said to Luke:

"I guess you don't happen to have two thousand five hundred in loose change about you, do you, Huber?"

"No," said Luke. He saw nothing humorous anywhere in the situation.

"Well, this is no affair for checks, and my bank's uptown," Leighton continued. "I don't suppose," he said to Rollins, "you would care to give credit, my dear sir?"

Rollins could smile, if Luke could not. He shook his head.

"My bank," said Luke, anxious to end the scene, "is just around the corner. It's closed, but the clerks will still be there. They know me. I can get them to let me in the side door, and I know they'll do me a favor. I've got just about that much on deposit." He looked at Leighton. "Shall I take Rollins along?"

"Rollins? Yes." Leighton's good-humor seemed to have returned to stay. "Then hurry back here—alone. I'll want to talk this thing over with you."

§4. Luke paid and dismissed Rollins. Returning, he found Leighton walking rapidly up and down his office.

"Shut the door," said the District-Attorney. His face was flushed; he spoke quickly.

Luke shut the door.

Leighton came forward and brought his hand down on Luke's shoulder with a resounding smack.

"Do you know what this means?" he cried. His mouth was wide with laughter; the whole man exulted. "This re-elects me! Nothing can keep us out now, Huber—not a thing on God's green footstool. All we've got to do is use these letters and then sit back and fold our arms and attend to office business. Politics? These two pieces of paper will play all the politics we need, and more besides. I could shout, Huber; I could sing a regular Song of Deborah. What about Mr. Timothy Heney, now? And his Tammany? Gone the way of Sisera, my boy. Tim Heney! 'At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down; at her feet he bowed, he fell: where he bowed, there he fell down dead!'"

Luke's old enthusiasm was rekindled. He thought that he had been misjudging Leighton. Of course the man had been discouraged: he had never before been able to seize an efficient weapon with which to shatter the forces of wrong; even at this time it was only reasonable that his first thought should be of his immediate political opponents; but the weapon was put into his hand at last, the blow would be given against both Tammany and Wall Street; it would be the blow that Luke had hoped for when he read the first accounts of the North Bridge wreck.

"There must be a special Grand Jury to investigate the disaster," said Luke, his words falling over one another much as Leighton's had done. "We must keep the letters dark till it's in session, and then produce them. We can give them to the papers right afterward. It will be jail for the lot of them. Big as they are, it'll be that. It'll be the end of the whole crowd!"

Leighton drew away. His face changed. His entire attitude altered.

"What are you talking about?" he asked dryly.

"Why"—Luke was amazed—"about these letters, of course."

"Well, do you think I'm green enough to waste them on a jury? Not much!"

Luke began to comprehend. He felt unsteady. He was standing close to Leighton's desk, and he put out a hand and gripped the edge of its top shelf.

"Not give them to the jury?" But perhaps he was wrong. Of course he was wrong. "Oh, I see," he said; "maybe it's better not to risk any more lives by waiting. You're going to force this crowd to put down a decent road-bed? Only if you do that—— Well, it's fine of you, but you'll not be any better off politically."

Leighton turned his swivel-chair and sat down in it. His manner became that of an employer trying to be calm and to instill reason into an annoying employee.

"Young man," said he, "just you listen to me for about two minutes. Those fellows do control this road, but they didn't operate it. In spite of Rollins's blessed letters, you can't absolutely say they operate it. But what they do operate, when they want to, are the politics of this city, and if they tell Tammany, yes, or me, to hold off and let an election go the way they want it, why, hold off Tammany or anybody else has to. Nobody could win if they said 'No.' Now, then"—Leighton punctuated his words with the rise and fall of an index finger—"they're not actually morally responsible for the conduct of the M. & N., but they'll know the publication of these letters would make the public think they were. They'll know the publication would wreck the road they're still interested in, smash all their other stocks and depreciate all their other interests, start a panic that might swamp even them, and maybe begin a public row that would send them close to jail, on general principles, legal evidence or no legal evidence. To stop that, they'd be willing to have me elected, which they weren't yet quite certain about being to-day. I'll go to them quietly, and then I'll surrender these letters, when they've kept their part of the bargain I'll make. And don't you worry about loss of life. That engineer was probably green or drunk, or the signal man got rattled. You'll see the coroner's jury says so. But, anyhow, once I'm safely re-elected, I'll take care the M. & N. is better regulated than it has been. There's no use in a row: a little moral suasion will do the trick."

He tossed back, and clasped his hands behind his head.

The explanation had been too long: it was long enough to allow Luke to master the shock of what it implied. He saw his last illusions concerning Leighton fall under the impact of Leighton's own words. He was aghast. He was ashamed of his master; he was ashamed of himself for ever having served such a master. But he was not crushed. As his chief proceeded, Luke's soul rose through indignation to red revolt. By the time that Leighton ceased speaking, Luke, except for two spots of crimson on his cheeks, was captain of his rage. He leaned against the desk-side indolently, his eyelids lowered, and when he replied it was with an indifferent drawl.

"It doesn't much matter whether the engineer was drunk or the signal man rattled," he said: "the rail flattened, and the bridge fell. The rail was drunk and the bridge was rattled."

Leighton shook himself peevishly.

"You're trying to be humorous," he said.

"No; oh, no," said Luke gently. "What I'm getting at is, it seems to me the men who directly controlled this road were directly responsible for its operation. I mean that the men who authorized that letter, and insisted on the policy it lays down, are guilty. It strikes me they ought to be either reformed or punished."

"Oh, hell!" said Leighton. Heretofore, Luke had always appeared to be on his side, so that the District-Attorney did not know the meaning of his assistant's outward calm. "Those letters aren't legal evidence enough."

"I think they are, Leighton. Besides, I think there are times when moral evidence goes ahead of legal evidence, and ought to—and I think this is one of those times."

"Well," said Leighton, "I don't. So that ends it."

"Of course," Luke calmly pursued, "if you could make these fellows re-lay the road, it might be worth while to do no more than scare them, at least if you don't consider the political ethics and consider only the immediate protection of life."

"I told you I'd take care of the regulation of the road as soon as I was re-elected."

"Ye-es. But could you?"

"Certainly I could."

"I should say that once they'd got their letters back, you'd be in their power."

Leighton got to his feet. He was angry. He faced Luke, who did not shift his lazy pose.

"Look here," he said, "we've been friends, and you've done good work for me, especially this afternoon——"

"Thanks," said Luke.

"But it looks as if the time had come when you'd better understand who's the head of this office."

"You are," Luke assured his chief; and then added: "I'm glad to say."

"Well, then, Huber, I've got to tell you that if you don't act accordingly, we must part company."

Luke raised his listless eyes.

"You've quite made up your mind to do this thing, Leighton?"

"Let you go? Not if you'll only be reasonable."

"I mean this thing about the letters."

"Yes."

"You're going to make use of these fellows' money-power in politics?"

"It's already in politics. It always has been."

"But you are going to try to use it for yourself?"

"Yes, I am. It's my own business."

"Is it? That money is blood-money, Leighton."

"You're a fool!"

"I know I am. But it's you that I'm worried about. You're quite determined?"

"Absolutely."

Luke shrugged his shoulders. He began to move slowly toward the door.

"Here!" said Leighton sharply. "Where're you going?"

Luke scarcely looked at him.

"I'm going to write my resignation."

Leighton was startled, but he tried not to show it.

"Very well," he said, "write it. But don't be too fast: you may hand over those letters first."

"Letters?" Luke seemed never to have heard the word before. "What letters?"

"Why do you try so hard to be an ass, Huber?" The District-Attorney extended his hand for the papers that he had given Luke during the interview with Rollins. "Drop all this resignation rot—My letters, of course."

Luke's face met Leighton's fairly.

"The only letters I have about me," he said with quiet distinctness, "are two that are my property. I bought them with the last two thousand five hundred dollars of my own money."

As the words came home to him, Leighton's face grew purple. His brows met in a knot. At his temples two veins pulsed visibly.

"What's that?" he cried with a straining throat. "What's that? You—— Give them here this minute; they're mine! They're mine. They're mine! You know damned well they're mine!"

He had not counted on this. The unexpected disappointment tossed him from the summit of the hopes to which, that afternoon, he had been so unexpectedly lifted. He made a blind dash at Huber.

Luke's two hands caught both of Leighton's wrists. By the exertion of a superior strength that scarcely showed itself, the assistant forced down the master's arms and held them at his flanks.

"They are my letters," said Luke.

"Let go!" Leighton wrenched at the imprisoning grip; but he wrenched without effect. "Let me go!"

"Certainly," said Luke. He freed the panting man. "I merely wanted to protect myself and show you it wouldn't help you to use force."

Leighton, his face still contorted, tried another tone.

"It isn't fair of you, Huber. I'm sorry I went at you that way; but you know well enough those letters belong to me."

"They belong," said Luke, "to the man that can make the better use of them."

"What use can you make?"

"A better one than you say you will."

"They were brought here for me."

"By a thief."

"Well, you're not going to restore them to their owner, are you?"

"Perhaps."

"What?" Leighton laughed cynically. "So that's what your moral tone's for, is it?"

"Perhaps."

"Oh, come on, Huber, I didn't mean that. Anyhow, you know, I only asked you to lend me the money."

"The letters," said Luke again, "belong to the man that can make the better use of them."

"I'll do the right thing by you, Huber, if you give them back to me."

"Thank you. The real owner of the letters can do more—when I'm for sale."

Leighton bent forward and began to whisper.

"I'll tell you what I'll do for you politically," he began. "I'll——"

"No thank you," said Luke.

"Well, then,"—Leighton, his face now white from fear of loss, appeared to capitulate-"give them back and I'll use them the way you want them used."

The two men's eyes probed one another.

"I don't believe you," said Luke.

It was final, and it drove Leighton back to his purple rage.

"I'll ruin you!" he threatened. "And they'll ruin you. Go ahead and resign. Resign? You can't. You're fired! Do you hear that? You're fired! Now go and try to do something. You can't do a thing but sell those letters to the people they were stolen from. If you try that, I'll show you up, and if you try anything else with those people, they'll bury you so deep nobody ever can dig down far enough to find you. Do you know who you're up against when you buck that crowd? They won't let you walk the same earth with them! Go on. You'll be killed, and I'll be damned glad of it. Fight them, will you? You might as well draw a gun on God Almighty! Now, then, get out of here. Get out, or I'll have you kicked out!"

CHAPTER VI

To his office on the twentieth floor of a Wall Street skyscraper—that office with the mahogany table at its center and the engraving of George Washington between two windows—the master came at his usual time on the morning of the day following the North Bridge wreck. He was dressed neatly, as always, in a suit of russet brown. Breathing visibly, but noiselessly, he passed the resting ticker and walked to one of the windows overlooking the labyrinth. His near-sighted, beady eyes peered toward the web of streets below, on the cross-threads of which the black dots that were hurrying men and women bobbed like struggling flies.

The master rang for his secretary.

"Rollins," he said, "what's in the——" He stopped. He had not looked up, yet he asked: "What's the matter with you this morning?"

"Nothing," said Rollins. "I——" He coughed behind his hand. "I didn't sleep well last night."

"Take more exercise," said his master. "What's in the mail?"

"Thirty letters that need your personal attention, sir."

Nimbly the master ran them through his short and stumpy fingers, the tips of which were delicately rounded. He dictated his terse instructions. With the daily routine again in motion, Rollins recaught his employer's calm.

"Simpson has the begging letters?"

"Yes, sir."

"I guess," said the master in his most commonplace tone, "there were more than the usual number of anonymous threats."

"Only ten or twelve more."

"Burn them."

"Yes, sir. I always do."

"And, Rollins, draw up a letter to the cancer hospital and tell the management I have decided to give them a special ward for fibroid tumor cases. Their lawyers may consult with Judge Stein; I gave him the details last evening. Bring me the letter for revision."

"Yes, sir."

The master proceeded through his customary schedule.

"Rollins," he said, when it was at last completed and the secretary had been recalled. "Mr. Hallett and Mr. Rivington will be here"—he consulted his watch—"in five minutes. We are on no account to be disturbed."

Hallett and Rivington came in, five minutes later. Hallett looked angry, and Rivington frightened. Though the hour was early, Hallett's white waistcoat, fresh every morning, showed wrinkles, and its wearer chewed hard at an unlighted cigar; there was a deep perpendicular line over his short, thick nose. Rivington, immaculate, pulled at his slightly gray mustache.

"Good-morning," said their host. His voice was as nearly cheerful as it was ever. "Sit down."

They took their places at the table, where there was a pad of scribbling paper and a freshly sharpened pencil before each. Their host sat at the head of the table, his hands flat upon the table-top, their fingers extended, his elbows pointing ceilingward.

Rivington began at the midst of what worried him.

"It's a terrible thing!" he groaned. "Think of it; twenty-five people—and the women too!"

Hallett's comment was almost a bark.

"As soon as the coroner's jury lets 'em down easy," he said, "we've got to see that everybody's fired, from the division-superintendent to the president of the road; that's what we've got to do. There's one kind of carelessness that's not much better than murder."

"Twenty-five people!" repeated Rivington. The numbers seemed to hypnotize him; he made a futile gesture. "And the morning papers—— Their tone—— I don't like it."

The man at the head of the table watched them both, but said nothing.

"Oh, the newspapers never worry me," said Hallett. "We can stop all but one or two, and nobody cares what they say, anyhow. They've been talkin' for years. They've got to fill their columns."

"Then there's the Board meeting," said Rivington. "Next Thursday—— I don't see—— Really I don't."

"The Board of Directors of the M. & N.'s all right," Hallett reassured him.

"Perhaps. But then, too, there is this new reform element in town. Talk of a fusion movement: a fourth candidate for District-Attorney—— They will be only too eager to get hold of something, and this terrible accident—— It will give them just what they want."

"They can't elect."

"I am not so sure. The people—they aren't what they used to be. Something—I don't know what—has taken possession of them."

Hallett bobbed assent to that.

"Yes," he said, "nowadays as soon as a man gets a vote he stops minding his own business. But we've still got our grip on the wires."

"They may break." Rivington's fingers returned to their tugging at his mustache. "The wires, I mean. It's ugly. Twenty-five dead and a hundred hurt——"

"We didn't hurt 'em."

Rivington looked toward the man at the head of the table, but he sat crouched and silent.

"No," said Rivington; "but——" His sentence ended in a helpless waving of the hand.

"Then what are you worryin' about?" Hallett challenged. "We were only tryin' to keep up dividends. We had to choose between a little risk and protecting the stockholders. Lots of the stockholders are widows and orphans. Besides, it wasn't a real risk; it was a recognized, legitimate business risk. Lots of other roads do it right along. Our own roads do."

"That bridge——" said Rivington.

"The state inspectors passed it a month ago. And they passed the rails, too. It's all up to them."

In his turn, Hallett glanced at the man at the head of the table. He saw the man's hairy hands, fat and white against the mahogany, begin to move as they always began to move before he made a verbal attack upon conversation; but the man did not speak.

"I know," Rivington was saying, "but with the four candidates for the district-attorneyship all looking for vote-getting material——"

"Buy 'em," said Hallett.

"Four?"

"Who's the fourth?"

"They haven't chosen him yet; but——"

"Buy 'em," repeated Hallett.

"Out of the four there might be one we couldn't——"

"Anybody can buy anybody. There are more ways than one. Anyhow, we're not even directors."

"We own the road. Practically——"

"Nobody knows that."

"It seems to me——"

"They don't!" Hallett spat to the floor a bit of tobacco that, bitten from the end of his cigar, had clung to his lips. "They only think they do. It'd be the hardest thing in the world to prove that was ever tried."

"Would it?" Rivington questioned. "I really believe——"

The quick, cold voice of the third man flashed across their talk. It was as if he leaped at them.

"We may own the road," he said; "but we don't operate it. Not one of us has officially any administrative power in the matter of its operation. You gentlemen have forgotten that." He smiled: his teeth were pointed.

"Still," said Rivington, "if the fusion movement——"

He stopped there, not because of his habit of speaking in tangents, but because the door opened, and an old man timidly paused at its threshold.

The master of the office turned his head slowly.

"Simpson?" he said.

"Yes, sir," said the man at the door.

"What does this mean? Where's Rollins?"

"He was using my room to compose that letter about the hospital, and so I took his place."

"Didn't he tell you we were not to be disturbed?"

"Yes, sir; but this man"—Simpson held out an envelope—"got by everybody. He told me you would see him at once if you only received his message."

The man at the head of the table reached for the envelope. He read a card that it had contained.

"Show him in," he said.

He waited until Simpson had left to obey. Then, without wasting a glance on his associates, he explained:

"This is the card of a man called Luke Huber, Assistant District-Attorney. He's written on it: 'Five minutes in regard to the North Bridge wreck and your letters about it.'"

"Letters?" said Hallett. "What letters?"

As he replied, the strong jaw of the man at the head of the table worked as if he were chewing.

"That's what I mean to find out."

"Here? Now?" Rivington gasped.

The man addressed nodded. When a nod could save words, he saved words.

"Is that the careful thing?" asked Hallett.

"I'll bet his card's a bluff and he never expected to get in at all."

"That is precisely why I am having him in."

"Mr. Huber," announced Simpson.

Huber was still a young man. He was so young, and his youth was so ostentatious, that he immediately courted the rebuke once administered to Pitt. Moreover, he seemed to lack energy. He was thin; his face, though pleasant, was white. The lids dropped wearily over eyes that were at first veiled from the three men who looked up, but did not rise at his entrance. His mouth, the lips of which were only a pale pink, might have appeared firm, but would certainly have given the impression of being tired of firmness, and, when he bowed gravely to his host, his bristling head inclined itself so slowly and so slightly that the effort of the inclination, whether mental or physical, was insultingly apparent.

There was no form of presentation. Instead, there was a pause that only Huber seemed not to notice. Rivington drummed on the table with his long fingers. Hallett chewed his cigar. The other man smiled so enigmatically that it was impossible to say whether he intended to welcome or was amused by his friends' discomfiture.

"Bring a chair for Mr. Huber."

Simpson did as he was bid.

Luke deposited a carefully brushed hat on the table. Then he sank into the proffered chair opposite the leader of the trio and extended his long legs under the mahogany. His feet touched Rivington's, and Rivington jumped.

"Well?" asked the man at the head of the table.

Huber did not raise his heavy lids.

"I am glad I found you three together," he said slowly in a low and extremely gentle voice, "because you are the three men that control the railroad."

Hallett grinned a broad grin. This young fellow talked as if there were but one railroad in which the group was interested.

"What railroad?" he asked.

Luke slowly drew in his legs. He regarded the figure of the Persian rug that happened to be between the points of his patent-leather boots.

"The railroad," said he, "that I suppose you have been talking most about this morning."

"The Manhattan & Niagara?" blurted Rivington.

"We're not directors of that road," said Hallett hurriedly.

"No," agreed Rivington.

"No," said Luke, quite as heartily, "you aren't directors, but you direct it."

"We don't," snapped Rivington.

The man at the head of the table raised a soothing hand. He was still smiling.

"Come, come," he said, with an air of good-nature that his friends had seldom seen him assume during business hours. "We're all gentlemen, I'm sure. Anything that Mr. Huber wants to say to us in confidence——"

Huber interrupted.

"I never talk in confidence," said he; "and I don't want anybody to say anything to me that he would be ashamed to say in public."

His eyes were still hidden, and he still spoke slowly and gently; but the mere import of his words brought up short even the leader of the trio before him. That one's manner changed. He was curt.

"We are busy men, Mr. Huber," he said. "There are not many people in New York that we would have allowed to take up our time this morning. What do you want?"

Luke studied the figure on the rug.

"I want you three," he said in a tone not to be quickened, "to tear up every mile of rails on the M. & N. and replace those pieces of scrap-iron with rails of a grade fit to bear the traffic they have to carry."

Rivington's drumming fingers closed into his palms. Hallett let out an ugly laugh. Only the man at the head of the table, again changing his manner, equaled Luke in tranquillity.

"Really, Mr. Huber," he said pleasantly, "without admitting for a moment that we have the power to do what you suggest, don't you think your request is a rather large one?" He had the air of indulgently correcting a mistaken child.

The young man, gazing at the rug, shook his round head.

"No," he said, "not so large for you as its alternative."

"And that? It is——"

Rivington had put the question, but it was toward the man at the head of the table that Luke as he shot out his sudden reply, raised his eyes.

"Jail," said Luke.

"Do you mean to threaten us?" cried Rivington angrily.

Hallett laughed.

The man at the head of the table only smiled.

"Not at all," said Luke. "I am merely stating a fact. In coming here, the only thing I hesitated about was whether it would be better for the people to have safe transportation immediately guaranteed or to have you three in jail."

"You seem to forget, young man," said Hallett, "who it was elected the man that made you assistant district-attorney."

Luke gave him the briefest of glances.

"It was because I found out who elected him that I resigned the job," he answered. "I have just been offered the Municipal League's nomination for District-Attorney. When I am elected, it will be by the people."

"That will be about 2000 A.D.," sneered Hallett.

Luke shrugged his thin shoulders and returned his gaze toward the leader of the trio.

"A bridge falls on one of your roads in this county," he said. "It kills twenty-five people and wounds a hundred—all passengers in one of your trains. You will say the state inspectors declared the bridge O.K. Maybe they did, though they ought to go to the electric chair for it. That doesn't matter. What I can prove by thirty witnesses is that the train left the bridge before the bridge fell. A rail flattened and threw the train. Instead of sending you men to jail—and only because I think this is better for the safety of the public—I will give you one month to begin laying decent rails on this road—actually get bona fide work under way. If you don't do that, I'll make public the whole truth, get you indicted, go into court as a witness and produce two letters, one forwarded to you and the other signed by you. The first of these is a letter to the president of the road written by the steel manufacturers; it warns him that the cheap rails he's ordered are dangerous: that letter he sent to you. The second is a letter from you to the president of the road in which you say you want the poor-grade rails used because you don't want to increase the running expenses, and you order a general keeping-down of the road's expenses because of a plan for you three to unload your stock along about this December."

Luke rose. He relapsed into the weary young man of ten minutes before.

"You have one month," he said.

He picked up his hat, rubbed it with a caressing hand, and left the room.

The three that he left stared at one another. Then both Hallett and Rivington looked at their leader.

"It's an infamous—it must be an infamous lie!" cried Rivington. "Letters like that—men don't write them!"

Without moving a muscle of his face, the man at the head of the table looked at Rivington.

"All men say they don't," he corrected, "and all men do."

"What?" asked Hallett. "You're joking, and this fellow can't ever make it good. It's a bluff."

"Gentlemen," said the man at the head of the table, "it's the truth."

CHAPTER VII

§1. When Luke, on the afternoon preceding his Wall Street interview, had walked out of Leighton's office and the city's employ, it was with no certain plan for further action. His years of experience as an assistant prosecutor had demonstrated to him that something was drastically wrong with the modern administration of justice and practice of the law; his life in New York had shown him the evil influence of the money-power that seemed to be set in motion by the author of the Rollins letter and certainly corrupted the entire body of the nation, and his political work had discovered to him what he came to consider the inherent rottenness of the organized political parties. The effect of all this was made acute by the horror at the North Bridge wreck and the culmination of his mistrust in Leighton. Luke's sole immediate sensation was that of a man who finds himself in a bog: he did not think of draining the bog for the benefit of future pedestrians; he thought only of extricating himself from the mire.

That night at his club, however, he began to consider the larger aspects of the case. He was in the writing-room, intent on composing for the next evening's papers a statement of his reasons for parting company with Leighton. In formulating these, he found his charges to be precisely the charges recently formulated by the group of municipal reformers who were clamoring for a fusion of the best elements of all parties to elect, by honest methods, honest men that would purge New York of its civic shame. He recalled how this Municipal Reform League, growing steadily, had worried Leighton, and how its promoters prophesied that, if successful in the place of its origin, it might well spread throughout the country. When he first heard of it, Luke had been too deep in the affairs of his chief to be warmed by it; but to-night his vision was cleared.

He telephoned to two of the League's leaders. They came to his club and talked with him until long past midnight, themselves telephoning inquiries and instructions to friends and lieutenants, and summoning other leaders to join them.

Luke told them much. He betrayed no secrets of his recent employer, but he could honorably tell enough to make it clear to them that their belief in the necessity of reform was correct, enough to have weight with the voters should he speak to them in the new cause. His public record, it appeared, had long impressed the reformers; the firmness underlying his slow habit of talk, and the determination imperfectly covered by his lazy manner, impressed them now. He moved and fired them.

The Rollins letter he did not mention. He was more than once tempted, but he had resolved upon provisional silence before ever he sent for these leaders. He weighed carefully the merits of the courses open to him and decided that, large as would be the benefit of a public airing of his charges, and excellent as might prove the salutary example of a prison term for America's chief financiers, the airing might be lessened by those financiers' subtle influences upon popular opinion, the prison term might be escaped through similar influences, and all good results would in any case be long delayed. On the other hand, it was evident to him, in his present frame of mind, that the immediate safety of the M. & N.'s patrons was paramount, and that this safety could probably be secured by threatening those morally responsible for it. Such a threat, with a rigid time-limit, he therefore elected to administer.

The first result of his conference with the reformers was unexpected. At eight o'clock next morning, three of their most prominent men, who had not been with him on the night before, came to his apartments at the Arapahoe in Thirty-ninth Street. They had been in all-night consultation, and they told him that their organization had determined to put a full ticket in the field at the coming municipal election, but to center efforts in a struggle for the district-attorneyship: they had chosen him for their candidate.

Luke, in dressing-gown and pajamas, his unbrushed hair more than ever erect, looked from one of his callers to the other. There was Venable, a man of small but independent means, who had grown gray in the long war for civic betterment, meeting defeat at the polls and, what is harder to bear, disappointment in elected candidates, and again and again emerging to hope and fight on; Nelson, a successful wholesale druggist, whose business seemed divorced from politics, and whose hobby was the improvement of political conditions; and Yeates, a young man of family and fortune who belonged to Luke's club. Luke was flattered and confident, but did not show it.

"Do you really think I can do it?" he asked slowly. "Do you think I am the best man for the job?"

Each of the committee assured him he was. They said he had given a good account of himself as assistant district-attorney, won influential friends in his daily life, and secured, through his political speech-making for Leighton, a strong following among the voters.

"Of course," persisted Luke, "it's unnecessary to ask men of your standing that there shan't be anything but clean politics in our campaign."

Venable tossed his head proudly.

"My record is a guarantee of that," he said.

"No undue influence?" asked Luke. "No outside interests coming in to boss us or affect us in any way?"

"Rot!" said Yeates.

"And I am to have an absolutely free hand?"

They assured him of that.

Luke's lowered lids hid his eyes, but his eyes gleamed. Here, at last, was his Great Chance. Here was what he had lived and hoped for. He wanted to shout his war-cry, to go out and fight at once. Would he be worthy? The wing of that doubt brushed the farthest edges of his conscience, but he was young, and he did not heed it. He thought of all that he could do with this opportunity; and he thought, too, of Betty Forbes.

He had not seen much of Betty for some weeks. The lethargy that the slow process of his recent disillusionment flung over him, had left him despairing of her, kept her beyond his reach. But now he saw the way—saw that the way to win his ideals of honorable victory was also the way to win her.

He asked again a hundred questions, some that he had asked of his other counselors the night before and more that he had not: questions about purpose, ways-and-means, finances, organization, headquarters, district leaders, probable support, the temper of the public mind. To all of them he received sanguine answers.

"And your other candidates?" asked Luke. "The Mayor? Comptroller? President of the Board of Aldermen and the Borough Presidents?"

They gave him the names of known and honest men.

Luke stood up, but his air was the languid air that had become part of him.

"Good," he said, "of course, I'm pleased that you think of me as you do, and I accept."

§2. He would be a busy man now, but he must have that morning and afternoon to himself. However much he might want to start his campaign, he must make that visit to Wall Street, and after luncheon he intended to go to Betty.

The Wall Street interview seemed to him as successful as he could have expected. He was unterrified by the strength of the fortress to be attacked, but he had not looked forward to speedy surrender, so he was satisfied with the conviction that he affected the three financiers more than they cared to show. If they did not obey him, he would make the Rollins letters a part of his appeal to the electors; but he felt that, in the end, he would be offered obedience.

He lunched leisurely in the café attached to his apartment house, and then went to his own room to change his clothes before seeking Betty. He had completed the change and was about to leave when the telephone rang and the voice of the clerk below stairs announced a visitor:

"Judge Marcus F. Stein."

It had begun already. Luke knew who Stein was, though the two had never met. The man's title had been earned by a political appointment to fill the unexpired term of a judge that died while on the bench. Stein had begun his career as a young lawyer who specialized in damage suits against the N. Y. & N. J. railway. He was once charged, before the Bar Association—though the charges were never proved—with being a "hospital runner": that is, with employing men to hurry to the hospital, or the scenes of accidents, and induce victims to retain Stein to press their claims for damages against the railroad on which they had been injured. By devoting his best efforts against the N. Y. & N. J., he tried to make the corporation realize that it would be cheaper to employ him than to fight him, and he was, indeed, at last given a place on the legal staff of the company's claim department. There was an ugly story to the effect that, for a brief time before this charge was openly announced, he received a salary from the road while apparently acting for claimants against it and inducing them to compromise their claims for trivial sums.

It was a subject of common rumor at the New York Bar. Stein soon worked his way to the head of the claim department and thoroughly reorganized it. He used old tactics for his new employers: he had the news of all accidents immediately communicated to him, whereupon he would despatch his agents, with no loss of time, to the hospital, there to persuade the wounded, half stupefied by pain or drugs, to sign releases in return for pittances in ready money. It was said he built up a secret service, composed of men and women from private detective agencies, whose duty it was to discover discreditable secrets in the lives of such claimants as refused to compromise, or, failing in discovery, to manufacture or invent such incidents. One married woman from Syracuse, who had been injured in a wreck in New York and came there to press her suit, was inveigled into a friendship with a woman detective commissioned to engage a neighboring room in the house where the plaintiff took temporary lodgings. The detective succeeded in getting the claimant drunk and brought her, in this condition, with two of the road's employees, to a house in which, when the four were partially unclothed, another detective took a flashlight photograph of them. Then when the victim's case was called for trial, she was told that, unless she dropped her suit, the picture would be shown to her husband. By methods of this sort, Stein was said to have reduced his road's expenses for damages by two-thirds in three years.

Directly from his desk in the offices of the N. Y. & N. J., Stein was appointed to the bench, where he did not cease his usefulness to his employers. When his brief judicial term had ended, he took offices of his own, and cultivated the higher branches of corporation law. The men controlling the N. Y. & N. J. controlled many other corporations and saw to it that Stein received a regular annual retainer as a consulting lawyer from each of these. His business was not to win cases, but so to aid in directing his clients' plans that they would avoid litigation; he, therefore, rarely nowadays appeared in court and, though not one of the most learned men so engaged by his principals, he was one of the most serviceable, because to his merely crafty skill in the law he added a deep knowledge of practical politics and a wide intimacy with politicians.

Luke's first impulse was to deny himself to this caller, for he wanted to hurry to Betty and he thought there might be a strategic value in refusing to negotiate with any emissary. Curiosity, however, proved strong, and he reflected that the emissary might just possibly come with a word of complete capitulation.

"Show him up," said Luke into the telephone.

The ex-Judge was an imposing figure. He was big and broad and frock-coated, and he moved with befitting gravity. His hair was plentiful and white, his face clean-shaven. He had a strong nose and a wide, firm mouth, and his eyes were large and benevolent. His air was that of a man who has dealt with great interests for so many years that they have become the weighty commonplaces of his existence.

Luke had resolved not to shake hands with his visitor, but the Judge gave him no opportunity for refusal. He bowed courteously, smiled politely, and settled into the most comfortable of Luke's chairs, which he deliberately turned so that the light from the windows fell full on his own face, thus leaving Luke to front him from the shadow.

Luke, who had been prepared for the contrary move, managed to show no surprise. He sat down, extended his legs, and lowered his eyes. He made no inquiry concerning the reason of the Judge's call: he wanted the Judge to begin the talk.

Stein required no urging.

"I have never had the pleasure of meeting you before, Mr. Huber," he said, speaking with what was evidently no more than characteristic deliberation, "but I have watched your career with a great deal of interest—a very great deal. It reminded me so much of my own early struggles." He was looking steadily at Luke, whose eyes remained lowered. "You will forgive an old man who is a scarred veteran of the law for speaking frankly with you and for taking such an interest, I'm sure."

"Very kind of you, indeed," Luke murmured.

"I thought," said the Judge, "that you handled that Maretti case excellently, and the Dow trial, too; you showed an original cleverness there. More than that, Mr. Huber, you showed promise. There has been a great deal of promise in your professional work, and I thought I detected the same promise in the reports of your political speeches. With influential friends—for, of course, everybody needs influential friends in these days: people of real and solid standing—you ought to go far."

"Thank you," said Luke.

"Now," the Judge pursued, "I see by the early evening papers you may be offered the candidacy for District-Attorney on the Municipal League ticket."

"I believe there is some talk of that, Judge."

"Well, we need such a movement as this reform movement: we need it badly. With proper backing, you ought to win. With proper backing, of course."

Luke gave no sign of hearing this. Quite out of the air he drawled:

"I suppose you came about those letters, Judge Stein?"

For all the disturbance that he produced, he might as well have said that it was a pleasant day, or that he expected rain. When his eyes at this question were raised to meet the Judge's, the benevolent eyes of the Judge did not quiver: like his voice, they were steady and deliberate.

"Yes," said the Judge, "and I had them in mind when I spoke of your career. Now, Mr. Huber, my friends think, and I think, that you have been a little hasty and unreasonable because—and remember, it is an old man who tells you so—you are still rather young. But because I know you are an able young man, I have told them I was sure you would see your haste and unreasonableness when you came to consider the matter. As their friend and as a lawyer who has watched your career and remembers his own start in life, I undertook to say so to you and to offer my advice."

Luke's eyelids were again lowered. His hands were clasped in his lap. To a less astute man than Stein, he might have seemed asleep.

"I shall be glad," continued Stein, "if I can help you out of your embarrassing position."

"Who are your friends, Judge?" asked Luke.

The Judge smiled tolerantly.

"Come, come, Mr. Huber," he said; "you don't expect me to mention names, I know. All I will say on that point—all you can justly ask me to say—is that I don't come from them in my professional capacity. They haven't retained me to do this. They haven't even asked me to do it. I am acting entirely of my own volition, and on my own initiative, out of good will for all the parties concerned and not least of all for you."

"Yet you seem prepared to plead their case."

"I am—on my own initiative, I am, because their case is the right one, as I am sure you will end by seeing. In the first place, these letters are their property."

"I doubt," said Luke, "whether they would go into court to prove property."

"I do not think," said the unruffled Judge, "that they will go into court for any purpose—unless their burden of good nature is rendered intolerable. They can afford to appeal to their own conscience, because they are morally clear."

"Of the North Bridge wreck?"

"Of the North Bridge wreck, Mr. Huber. Granting that those letters are admissible evidence—which I shouldn't grant, if I were in the case—the one is not an expert declaration; it is merely an expression of opinion from persons with many grades of rails to sell and naturally anxious to sell their most expensive and most profitable grade. As for the other letter, it is informed by the knowledge of what prompted the rail-makers' opinion, and in itself offers only a counter-opinion based on the writer's long and successful experience with the cheaper rails."

"Yes—but the accident happened."

"Exactly: it merely happened and it was an accident. In other words, it was something unforeseen and contrary to the experience of the writer of the second letter."

The Judge waited a moment for a reply but, as Luke gave none, presently continued:

"Now, the course I propose—quite personally, you will understand—is honorable, harmless, and in the best interests of all concerned: you, us, and even the public."

"What is it?" asked Luke.

"All that I would grant my friends is the return of those letters, which are their own property, and are not admissible evidence in a court of law. That is all I would grant them. On their part, I should exact a pledge from them to have better rails laid throughout the suspected sections of the M. & N. road."

Luke's eyes opened.

"That's all I asked them to do," he said.

"Ah, yes; but to do it at once would be taken as a public confession of guilt—and my friends are not guilty. You will see that the coroner's jury says so."

Luke relapsed.

"It will," he said. "I'm sure of it."

"Therefore, the thing must be done slowly and discreetly, and meanwhile we must protect the public by an increase of track-walkers and road-inspectors."

"Would your friends," inquired Luke, "instruct the road not to fight the damage claims growing out of the wreck?"

"Of course not," chuckled Stein. "You are too good a lawyer to expect that, Mr. Huber, and too good a lawyer not to know how the sorrow or wounds of the claimants—yes, and the big appetites of their attorneys, too, I'm afraid—exaggerate their losses on the one hand and the riches of the company on the other. No, no; the most we could get for them would be liberal settlements. We mustn't bankrupt the road. There are more widows owning stock in it than there are widows caused by this wreck."

"Well," said Luke, "I'm afraid you don't convince me, Judge."

"Not if I could promise all this?"

"No. You see, there was a smaller wreck some months ago, and the additional track-walkers and inspectors were promised the public then."

Undisturbed, the Judge repeated all his arguments. "I really think you must see this as I do," he concluded. "And all we want is the letters——. By the way, Mr. Huber, I congratulate you on getting hold of them. That was a clever piece of work. How did you manage it?"

Luke grinned.

"I found them growing on an apple tree in Madison Square," he said.

The Judge nodded a smiling approval.

"At any rate," he submitted, "you will not mind telling me if any other person knows of their existence?"

"No, I don't mind. Except you and your friends and me and the apple tree, there is only one other person that knows as yet, and he's in no position to mention them." Luke rose as if to end the interview. "I've told nobody because I keep my bargains, Judge. But I do keep my bargains to the letter. You haven't convinced me, and you can't. I've given your clients——"

"My friends," Stein suavely corrected.

"Your friends, then; I've given them one month. If they don't do as I've suggested——"

The judge raised a hand gravely.

"I think you mean 'ordered,' Mr. Huber," said he.

"Thank you. Yes, of course, I meant 'ordered.' If they don't begin to do as I've ordered by one month from to-day, and do it in a way that convinces everybody of their intention to finish the job—yes, and their consciousness of guilt—I'll make those letters public."

The Judge remained seated. He looked at Luke sadly, and his voice rang true as he said:

"I wonder if you have fully considered, I shall not say the dangers, but the difficulties and annoyances your course may expose you to—may very well expose you to?"

"No," said Luke shortly. "I'm too busy."

"A great many men have tried what you are trying," the Judge went on, "and they have all failed. I tried it once myself. None has succeeded; not one. Some of them, of course, entirely through their own faults, were ruined by it, Mr. Huber."

"I dare say," said Luke, unmoved.

"And you," warned the Judge, "have the success of a new and valuable political movement in your hands. You are responsible for it and to it. This might end by losing you the nomination."

"I can stand that."

"It might even hurt the men in the movement that have trusted you."

"I sha'n't blame myself for it, if it does."

"And if it did not do these things, it would surely wreck the faction at the polls—a faction that you believe in and that, if successful, could do such a wide public good."

Luke was standing above his caller, his hands deep in his pockets.

"Look here, Judge," he drawled, "are you by any chance threatening me?"

The Judge was not at all threatening him. "I am only telling you," he frankly explained, "what a long life in New York has shown me. I like you, Mr. Huber; I believe you could make a great success in life if you were less hot-headed; but I believe your hot-headedness can ruin you at the bar, can ruin you socially and financially, and can put a stop to your political career forever. I knew one man that attempted something such as you are attempting and never had another client afterward. I knew another that people heard a nasty story about and shut all their doors against. I knew a dozen that became political corpses, and I knew more that went bankrupt."

Luke smiled.

"And some," he suggested, "disappeared altogether, I dare say?"

The Judge looked him full in the eyes.

"I have heard so," said he. Then he brightened somewhat. "But you will not defy the lightning," he continued. "You are too practical. I am quite sure you must see how very right I am and how very well disposed my friends are toward you, Mr. Huber. Think what they could do for you, socially, financially, politically. Think what they could do for you personally and for this reform movement."

Luke's smile broke into a laugh.

"Help the reform?" he exploded. "Oh, Lord!" Then, as quickly, the laugh ended. "In plain terms," he said, "what have you been telling me?" His languor had disappeared, and a sharp rage succeeded it. His words cracked like a whip. "You've been telling me that if I handed the safety of the M. & N. patrons over to the men that hire you, and let those men go free on the strength of a promise already broken, they would make me rich, elect me District-Attorney to do their work for them, advance me in their own social set and maybe, if I kept on doing all they asked, turn me into a Judge or a Governor or a millionaire! And you've been saying if I don't do it, they'll have me forced out of politics, out of the practice of the law, out of decent people's houses—and maybe knocked over the head or shot in the back at a dark corner. Well, here's my answer: I don't believe they would help me, I don't believe they can hurt me, and I don't care a damn, one way or the other!"

The Judge bowed. He rose. He knew the world too well to give way to anger: he never lost his temper; he only sometimes advisedly loosed it.

"Is this," he asked, "your final decision, Mr. Huber?"

"Yes," raged Luke; "and you may bet your last cent on that. It's my final decision, and it's a plain 'No.' If these fellows don't do what I've ordered, I'll show them up—the whole bunch of them. I'll do it—why, I'd do it if they were the seraphim and cherubim, and all the Thrones, Dominions, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, and Archangels rolled into one!"

CHAPTER VIII

§1. Ex-Judge Marcus Stein had mastered, in common with most truly dignified men, the art of acting quickly without hurrying. Upon leaving Luke's apartments, he exercised this art.

His motor-car was waiting for him at the door. He climbed into it with a judicial deliberation and gave his order to the chauffeur. The car started noiselessly. By proceeding with an even speed that avoided blind dashes into the back-waters of the traffic-stream, it made better time than its more impetuous peers and, without jolt or pause, bore its occupant quickly to the building in which the firm of Stein, Falconridge, Falconridge & Perry had their offices.

As Judge Stein passed through the outer room of the suite, he spoke to the girl who was seated at the firm's telephone switchboard:

"Good-afternoon, Miss Weston."

The girl's neurasthenic face lighted with pleasure: Marcus Stein was liked and respected by his office-force.

"Good-afternoon, Judge Stein," she said.

"I think," said the Judge, "that you might see if you can get Mr. Hallett on his private wire, and connect him with my telephone. Will you, please?"

Miss Weston always felt that the Judge conferred a favor when he asked one. Consequently, she made a practice of giving his calls precedence over those of anybody else connected with the firm.

"Right away," she said. "And if he's left his office, shall I try his house or his club?"

"Both, please, Miss Weston. But I have an idea that he will be at his office."

The Judge passed on to his own handsome room overlooking the turmoil of lower Broadway. He had scarcely reached his desk, and was just bending to smell of the two Abel Chatney roses that stood in a vase there, when the soft bell of his telephone tinkled.

"Stein?" asked Hallett's voice through the black receiver that the Judge placed to his ear.

"Yes. This is Mr. Hallett?"

"Yes."

"I was about to telephone you, and I have just been to see our young friend."

"Well—well?"

"It is no use, Mr. Hallett."

Hallett's voice was incredulous: "The fool won't give up?"

"Not yet."

"How much does he want?"

"Nothing."

"Well, but didn't you throw the fear of God into him?"

"We can't purchase and we can't coerce—at least not by mere threats."

"Then, we've got to frighten him by something else, Stein. How'd he get those things that he's got?"

"He wouldn't say. I scarcely expected that he would."

"Did you put on the political screws?"

"I put on all, as far as was wise. He is a clever young man, and he knows we can't hurt him so long as he has certain things in his possession."

The situation apparently passed Hallett's comprehension: it was outside of his experience.

"But what does he want? He must want something."

"I'm afraid not," the Judge sighed.

"Hell! Of course, he must. Everybody does."

"If he does, I couldn't find it out."

"Well, then," asked Hallett, "what's he goin' to do?"

"Nothing—for a month."

"You don't think he'll keep his word?"

"I'm sure of it."

"Wait a minute," said Hallett.

The Judge waited fifteen minutes. At the end of that time, Hallett's voice, regretful, but firm, sounded again in the telephone:

"Well," he said, "we've got to get those things he's got. We're all agreed on that. Understand?"

"Yes?"

"Yes—and it's up to you, Judge."

"Have you any course to suggest?"

"No, we haven't, and we don't want to know anything about courses. That's your job."

As if Hallett were in the room, Stein bowed his white head to him.

"Very well," he said, and hung up the receiver.

He bent to the pink roses again, and again inhaled their cultivated fragrance. His face was not perplexed, but it was sad.

"I am sorry," he seemed to be saying. "A nice young man. I am very sorry, indeed."

He returned the telephone-receiver to his ear.

"Miss Weston?"

"Yes, Judge Stein?"

"Thank you for getting that call so promptly. Now, will you please get me Mr. Titus?"

"Mr. William Titus, or Titus & Titherington, the mercantile agency?"

"Mr. Alexander Titus, of Titus & Titherington: the one that I was speaking to before I went out to luncheon."

"Yes, Judge Stein. Just a minute."

There was no long wait before Titus, who owed half of his business as a financial-agent to Stein and Stein's chief employer, was in conversation with the Judge.

"Have you secured that report yet?" asked Stein.

"Which one, Judge?"

"The one I asked you for at lunch-time."

"It's being typed now. I'll send it over as soon as it's finished."

"I wish you would. Meantime, get the chief points from the man that looked into the matter and 'phone them to me."

"All right, Judge."

"Call me up. I have somebody to talk to while I'm waiting."

The Judge rang off and then another time spoke to Miss Weston.

"Is Mr. Irwin in his office?"

Miss Weston said he was.

"Then, please ask him to step in to see me for a moment."

Mr. Irwin was a member of the Judge's firm whose name did not appear upon its letter-heads, although he had been attached to it for more years than Mr. Perry or even the younger Mr. Falconridge. He was a little man with a gray Vandyck beard, pink cheeks, and twinkling blue eyes.

In the fewest possible words, Stein gave him a description of the letters that were in Luke Huber's possession. He did not say who wanted these letters, or why they were wanted, but he left no doubt about the urgency of the commission he was delivering.

"It is rather a difficult assignment," he concluded, "but it must be done. There are great interests at stake."

"I think I can manage it," said Irwin cheerfully.

"I am afraid you will have to manage it," said the Judge.

"I'll simply tell my friend——"

The Judge raised his hand and smiled.

"No details, please," said he.

"Very well," Irwin, still cheerful, agreed.

"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.

§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.

§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.