"But no one of them with half my obstinacy, Hildreth. It can be done, and I am going to do it."

The night editor laughed again.

"If you can show that gang up, Kent, nothing in this State will be too good for you."

"I've got it to do," said Kent. "Afterward, perhaps I'll come around for some of the good things. I am not in this for health or pleasure. Can I count on you after the mud-slinging begins?"

Hildreth reflected further, disregarding the foreman's reproachful calls for copy.

"I'll go you," he said at last; "and I'll undertake to swing the chief into line. But I am going to disagree with you flat on the project of a sudden expose. Right or wrong, Bucks has pup-popular sentiment on his side. Take the Trans-Western territory, for example: at the present speaking these grafters--or their man Guilford; it's all the same--own those people down there body and soul. You couldn't pry Bucks out of their affections with a crowbar--suddenly, I mean. We'll have to work up to it gradually; educate the people as we go along."

"I concede that much," said Kent. "And you may as well begin on this same Trans-Western deal,"--wherewith he pieced together the inferences which pointed to the stock-smashing project behind the receivership.

"Don't use too much of it," he added, in conclusion.

"It is all inference and deduction as yet, as I say. But you will admit it's plausible."

The editor was sitting far back in his chair again, chewing absently on the extinct cigar.

"Kent, did you fuf-figure all that out by yourself?"

"No," said Kent, briefly. "There is a keener mind than mine behind it--and behind this oil field business, as well."

"I'd like to give that mind a stunt on the _Argus_," said the editor. "But about the Belmount mix-up: you will give us a stickful now and then as we go along, if you unearth anything that the public would like to read?"

"Certainly; any and everything that won't tend to interfere with my little intermediate scheme. As I have intimated, I must bring Bucks to terms on my own account before I turn him over to you and the people of the State.

But I mean to be in on that, too."

Hildreth wagged his head dubiously.

"I may be overcautious; and I don't want to seem to scare you out, Kent.

You ought to know your man better than I do--better than any of us; but if I had your job, I believe I should want to travel with a body-guard. I do, for a fact."

David Kent's laugh came easily. Fear, the fear of man, was not among his weaknesses.

"I am taking all the chances," he said; and so the conference ended.

Two days later the "educational" campaign was opened by an editorial in the _Argus_ setting forth some hitherto unpublished matter concerning the manner in which the Trans-Western had been placed in the hands of a receiver. In its next issue the paper named the receivership after its true author, showing by a list of the officials that the road under Major Guilford had been made a hospital for Bucks politicians, and hinting pointedly that it was to be wrecked for the benefit of a stock-jobbing syndicate of eastern capitalists.

Having thus reawakened public interest in the Trans-Western affair, Hildreth sounded a new note of alarm pitched upon the efforts of the Universal Oil Company to establish itself in the Belmount oil region; a cry which was promptly taken up by other State editors. This editorial was followed closely by others in the same strain, and at the end of a fortnight Kent was fain to call a halt.

"Not too fast, Hildreth," he cautioned, dropping into the editor's den late one night. "You are doing mighty good work, but you are making it infinitely harder for me--driving the game to deeper cover. One of my men had a clue: Bucks and Meigs were holding conferences with a man from the Belmount field whose record runs back to New York. But they have taken the alarm and thrown us off the track."

"The secretary of State's office is the place you want to watch," said Hildreth. "New oil companies are incorporating every day. Pretty soon one of these will swallow up all the others: that one will be the Universal under another name, and in its application for a charter you'll find askings big enough to cover all the rights and privileges of the original monopoly."

"That is a good idea," said Kent, who already had a clerk in the secretary of State's office in his pay. "But how are we coming on in the political field?"

"We are doing business there, and you have the _Argus_ to thank for it.

You--or your idea, I should say--has a respectable following all over the State now; as it didn't have until we began to leg for it."

Again Kent acquiesced, making no mention of sundry journeys he had made for the sole purpose of enlisting other editors, or of the open house Miss Van Brock was keeping for out-of-town newspaper men visiting the capital.

"Moreover, we've served your turn in the Trans-Western affair," Hildreth went on. "Public interest is on the _qui vive_ for new developments in that. By the way, has the capitol gang any notion of your part in all this upstirring?"

Kent smiled and handed the editor an open letter. It was from Receiver Guilford. The post of general counsel for the Trans-Western was vacant, and the letter was a formal tender of the office to the "Hon. David Kent."

"H'm," said the editor. "I don't understand that a little bit."

"Why?"

"If they could get you to accept a general agency in Central Africa or New Zealand, or some other antipodean place where you'd be safely out of the way, it would be evident enough. But here they are proposing to take you right into the heart of things."

Kent got a match out of the editor's desk and relighted his cigar.

"You've got brain-f.a.g to-night, Hildreth. It's a bribe, pure and simple.

They argue that it is merely a matter of dollars and cents to me, as it would be to one of them; and they propose to retain me just as they would any other attorney whose opposition they might want to get rid of. Don't you see?"

"Sure. I was thinking up the wrong spout. Have you replied to the major?"

"Yes. I told him that my present engagements preclude the possibility of considering his offer; much to my regret."

"Did you say that? You're a cold-plucked one, Kent, and I'm coming to admire you. But now is the time for you to begin to look out. They have spotted you, and their attempt to buy you has failed. I don't know how deeply you have gone into Bucks' tinkering with the Universal people, but if you are in the way of getting the grip you spoke of--as this letter seems to indicate--you want to be careful."

Kent promised and went his way. One of his saving graces was the ability to hold his tongue, even in a confidential talk with as good a friend as Hildreth. As for example: he had let the suggestion of watching the secretary of State's office come as a new thing from the editor, whereas in fact it was one of the earliest measures he had taken.

And on that road he had traveled far, thanks to a keen wit, to Portia Van Brock's incessant promptings, and to the help of the leaky clerk in Hendricks' office; so far, indeed, that he had found the "stool pigeon"

oil company, to which Hildreth's hint had pointed--a company composed, with a single exception, of men of "straw," the exception being the man Rumford, whose conferences with the governor and the attorney-general had aroused his suspicions.

It was about this time that Hunnicott reported the sale of the Gaston lots at a rather fancy cash figure, and the money came in good play.

"Two things remain to be proved," said Portia, in one of their many connings of the intricate course; "two things that must be proved before you can attack openly: that Rumford is really representing the Universal Oil Company; and that he is bribing the junto to let the Universal incorporate under the mask of his 'straw' company. Now is the time when you can not afford to be economical. Have you money?"

Since it was the day after the Hunnicott remittance, Kent could answer yes with a good conscience.

"Then spend it," she said; and he did spend it like a millionaire, lying awake nights to devise new ways of employing it.

And for the abutments of the arch of proof the money-spending sufficed. By dint of a warm and somewhat costly wire investigation of Rumford's antecedents, Kent succeeded in placing the Belmount promoter unquestionably as one of the trusted lieutenants of the Universal; and the leaky clerk in the secretary of State's office gave the text of the application for the "straw" company charter, showing that the powers asked for were as despotic as the great monopoly could desire.

But for the keystone of the arch, the criminal implication of the plotters themselves, he was indebted to a fit of ill-considered anger and to a chapter of accidents.

XVII

THE CONSPIRATORS