e.

"Well?" he said.

Mr. Hendrick's face became serious and very thoughtful. "I don't know
that I have ever made it clear to you, Cameron," he said, "but I've got
a peculiar feeling for this city. I like it, the way some people like
their families. It's--well, it's home to me, for one thing. I like to
go out in the evenings and walk around, and I say to myself: 'This is my
town.' And we, it and me, are sending stuff all over the world. I like
to think that somewhere, maybe in China, they are riding on our rails
and fighting with guns made from our steel. Maybe you don't understand
that."

"I think I do."

"Well, that's the way I feel about it, anyhow. And this Bolshevist stuff
gets under my skin. I've got a home and a family here. I started in to
work when I was thirteen, and all I've got I've made and saved right
here. It isn't much, but it's mine."

Willy Cameron was lighting his pipe. He nodded. Mr. Hendricks bent
forward and pointed a finger at him.

"And to govern this city, who do you think the labor element is going
to put up and probably elect? We're an industrial city, son, with a
big labor vote, and if it stands together--they're being swindled into
putting up as an honest candidate one of the dirtiest radicals in the
country. That man Akers."

He got up and closed the door.

"I don't want Edith to hear me," he said. "He's a friend of hers. But
he's a bad actor, son. He's wrong with women, for one thing, and when I
think that all he's got to oppose him is Howard Cardew--" Mr. Hendricks
got up, and took a nervous turn about the room.

"Maybe you know that Cardew has a daughter?"

"Yes."

"Well, I hear a good many things, one way and another, and my wife likes
a bit of gossip. She knows them both by sight, and she ran into them one
day in the tea room of the Saint Elmo, sitting in a corner, and the girl
had her back to the room. I don't like the look of that, Cameron."

Willy Cameron got up and closed the window. He stood there, with his
back to the light, for a full minute. Then:

"I think there must be some mistake about that, Mr. Hendricks. I have
met her. She isn't the sort of girl who would do clandestine things."

Mr. Hendricks looked up quickly. He had made it his business to study
men, and there was something in Willy Cameron's voice that caught his
attention, and turned his shrewd mind to speculation.

"Maybe," he conceded. "Of course, anything a Cardew does is likely to
be magnifie