In the beginning of the new campaign of investigation David Kent wisely
discounted the help of paid professional spies--or rather he deferred, it
to a later stage--by taking counsel with Jeffrey Hildreth, night editor of
the _Argus_. Here, if anywhere, practical help was to be had; and the
tender of it was cheerfully hearty and enthusiastic.
"Most assuredly you may depend on the _Argus_, horse, foot and artillery,"
said the editor, when Kent had guardedly outlined some portion of his
plan. "We are on your side of the fence, and have been ever since Bucks
was sprung as a candidate on the convention. But you've no case. Of
course, it's an open secret that the Universal people are trying to break
through the fence of the new law and establish themselves in the Belmount
field without losing their identity or any of their monopolistic
privileges. And it is equally a matter of course to some of us that the
Bucks ring will sell the State out if the price is right. But to implicate
Bucks and the capitol gang in printable shape is quite another matter."
"I know," Kent admitted. "But it isn't impossible; it has got to be
possible."
The night editor sat back in his chair and chewed his cigar reflectively.
Suddenly he asked:
"What's your object, Kent? It isn't purely _pro lono pullico_, I take it?"
Kent could no longer say truthfully that it was, and he did not lie about
it.
"No, it's purely personal, I guess. I need to get a grip on Bucks and I
mean to do it."
Hildreth laughed.
"And, having got it, you'll telephone me to let up--as you did in the
House Bill Twenty-nine fiasco. Where do we come in?"
"No; you shall come in on the ground floor this time; though I may ask you
to hold your hand until I have used my leverage. And if you'll go into it
to stay, you sha'n't be alone. Giving the _Argus_ precedence in any item
of news, I'll engage to have every other opposition editor in the State
ready to back you."
"Gad! you're growing, Kent. Do you mean to down the Bucks crowd
ded-definitely?" demanded the editor, who stammered a little under
excitable provocation. "Bigger men than you have tried it--and failed."
"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 exposé. 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-fag 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.