The Grafters
Page 16
XVI
SHARPENING THE SWORD
In the beginning of the new campaign of investigation David Kent wiselydiscounted the help of paid professional spies--or rather he deferred, itto a later stage--by taking counsel with Jeffrey Hildreth, night editor ofthe _Argus_. Here, if anywhere, practical help was to be had; and thetender 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 hisplan. "We are on your side of the fence, and have been ever since Buckswas sprung as a candidate on the convention. But you've no case. Ofcourse, it's an open secret that the Universal people are trying to breakthrough the fence of the new law and establish themselves in the Belmountfield without losing their identity or any of their monopolisticprivileges. And it is equally a matter of course to some of us that theBucks ring will sell the State out if the price is right. But to implicateBucks and the capitol gang in printable shape is quite another matter."
"I know," Kent admitted. "But it isn't impossible; it has got to bepossible."
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 aboutit.
"No, it's purely personal, I guess. I need to get a grip on Bucks and Imean to do it."
Hildreth laughed.
"And, having got it, you'll telephone me to let up--as you did in theHouse Bill Twenty-nine fiasco. Where do we come in?"
"No; you shall come in on the ground floor this time; though I may ask youto hold your hand until I have used my leverage. And if you'll go into itto stay, you sha'n't be alone. Giving the _Argus_ precedence in any itemof news, I'll engage to have every other opposition editor in the Stateready to back you."
"Gad! you're growing, Kent. Do you mean to down the Bucks crowdded-definitely?" demanded the editor, who stammered a little underexcitable provocation. "Bigger men than you have tried it--and failed."
"But no one of them with half my obstinacy, Hildreth. It can be done, andI am going to do it."
The night editor laughed again.
"If you can show that gang up, Kent, nothing in this State will be toogood for you."
"I've got it to do," said Kent. "Afterward, perhaps I'll come around forsome of the good things. I am not in this for health or pleasure. Can Icount on you after the mud-slinging begins?"
Hildreth reflected further, disregarding the foreman's reproachful callsfor copy.
"I'll go you," he said at last; "and I'll undertake to swing the chiefinto line. But I am going to disagree with you flat on the project of asudden expose. Right or wrong, Bucks has pup-popular sentiment on hisside. Take the Trans-Western territory, for example: at the presentspeaking these grafters--or their man Guilford; it's all the same--ownthose people down there body and soul. You couldn't pry Bucks out of theiraffections with a crowbar--suddenly, I mean. We'll have to work up to itgradually; educate the people as we go along."
"I concede that much," said Kent. "And you may as well begin on this sameTrans-Western deal,"--wherewith he pieced together the inferences whichpointed 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 admitit's plausible."
The editor was sitting far back in his chair again, chewing absently onthe 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--andbehind this oil field business, as well."
"I'd like to give that mind a stunt on the _Argus_," said the editor. "Butabout the Belmount mix-up: you will give us a stickful now and then as wego along, if you unearth anything that the public would like to read?"
"Certainly; any and everything that won't tend to interfere with my littleintermediate scheme. As I have intimated, I must bring Bucks to terms onmy 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 ifI 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 hisweaknesses.
"I am taking all the chances," he said; and so the conference ended.
Two days later the "educational" campaign was opened by an editorial inthe _Argus_ setting forth some hitherto unpublished matter concerning themanner in which the Trans-Western had been placed in the hands of areceiver. In its next issue the paper named the receivership after itstrue author, showing by a list of the officials that the road under MajorGuilford had been made a hospital for Bucks politicians, and hintingpointedly that it was to be wrecked for the benefit of a stock-jobbingsyndicate 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 theUniversal Oil Company to establish itself in the Belmount oil region; acry which was promptly taken up by other State editors. This editorial wasfollowed closely by others in the same strain, and at the end of afortnight Kent was fain to call a halt.
"Not too fast, Hildreth," he cautioned, dropping into the editor's denlate one night. "You are doing mighty good work, but you are making itinfinitely harder for me--driving the game to deeper cover. One of my menhad a clue: Bucks and Meigs were holding conferences with a man from theBelmount field whose record runs back to New York. But they have taken thealarm and thrown us off the track."
"The secretary of State's office is the place you want to watch," saidHildreth. "New oil companies are incorporating every day. Pretty soon oneof these will swallow up all the others: that one will be the Universalunder another name, and in its application for a charter you'll findaskings big enough to cover all the rights and privileges of the originalmonopoly."
"That is a good idea," said Kent, who already had a clerk in the secretaryof State's office in his pay. "But how are we coming on in the politicalfield?"
"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 theState now; as it didn't have until we began to leg for it."
Again Kent acquiesced, making no mention of sundry journeys he had madefor the sole purpose of enlisting other editors, or of the open house MissVan Brock was keeping for out-of-town newspaper men visiting the capital.
"Moreover, we've served your turn in the Trans-Western affair," Hildrethwent on. "Public interest is on the _qui vive_ for new developments inthat. By the way, has the capitol gang any notion of your part in all thisupstirring?"
Kent smiled and handed the editor an open letter. It was from ReceiverGuilford. 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 NewZealand, or some other antipodean place where you'd be safely out of theway, it would be evident enough. But here they are proposing to take youright 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 itwould be to one of them; and they propose to retain me just as they wouldany other attorney whose opposition they might want to get rid of. Don'tyou see?"
"Sure. I was thinking up the wrong spout. Have you replied to the major?"
&
nbsp; "Yes. I told him that my present engagements preclude the possibility ofconsidering his offer; much to my regret."
"Did you say that? You're a cold-plucked one, Kent, and I'm coming toadmire you. But now is the time for you to begin to look out. They havespotted you, and their attempt to buy you has failed. I don't know howdeeply you have gone into Bucks' tinkering with the Universal people, butif you are in the way of getting the grip you spoke of--as this letterseems to indicate--you want to be careful."
Kent promised and went his way. One of his saving graces was the abilityto hold his tongue, even in a confidential talk with as good a friend asHildreth. As for example: he had let the suggestion of watching thesecretary of State's office come as a new thing from the editor, whereasin 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 VanBrock's incessant promptings, and to the help of the leaky clerk inHendricks' 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 manRumford, whose conferences with the governor and the attorney-general hadaroused his suspicions.
It was about this time that Hunnicott reported the sale of the Gaston lotsat a rather fancy cash figure, and the money came in good play.
"Two things remain to be proved," said Portia, in one of their manyconnings of the intricate course; "two things that must be proved beforeyou can attack openly: that Rumford is really representing the UniversalOil Company; and that he is bribing the junto to let the Universalincorporate under the mask of his 'straw' company. Now is the time whenyou can not afford to be economical. Have you money?"
Since it was the day after the Hunnicott remittance, Kent could answer yeswith a good conscience.
"Then spend it," she said; and he did spend it like a millionaire, lyingawake nights to devise new ways of employing it.
And for the abutments of the arch of proof the money-spending sufficed. Bydint of a warm and somewhat costly wire investigation of Rumford'santecedents, Kent succeeded in placing the Belmount promoterunquestionably as one of the trusted lieutenants of the Universal; and theleaky clerk in the secretary of State's office gave the text of theapplication for the "straw" company charter, showing that the powers askedfor were as despotic as the great monopoly could desire.
But for the keystone of the arch, the criminal implication of the plottersthemselves, he was indebted to a fit of ill-considered anger and to achapter of accidents.