d cared to offer. It was therefore a
case of bringing into camp the most honorable and the most expensive
members of the legislature, and without opportunity for strategy or
manipulation. The sole recourse was rank, flat bribery, and that in full
view of a mutinous following ready at the suggestion of the slightest
favoritism to the new men to become actively hostile. The task was
altogether too fraught with peril, to be undertaken. When they realized how
threatening the situation really was, Whitney and Towle decided to make
terms with the governor. The charter once obtained, they calculated that
the obnoxious clause might be amended out of it at a subsequent session (as
a matter of fact this charter, with its 60-cent clause, was afterward made
the nucleus of the present Massachusetts Gas companies which has just been
floated on a basis of $53,000,000 capital). Besides, the state of feeling
of the legislators and conditions in the stock-market had both to be taken
into consideration. It was not the fault of the legislators who had voted
for the charter that the governor had vetoed it, for they had been given to
understand by Mr. Whitney that he would not oppose it. They had delivered
their goods, and now, if the governor's sanction could be had under any
sort of a compromise, they would certainly hold Towle and Whitney
responsible for failure to make whatever arrangements were necessary.

[11] Towle told me, as he waited impatiently in my office for the gold,
that in addition to the great losses the drop in price of the two stocks
had inflicted on himself and his associates, there were losses on stocks
held by legislators, who had plunged on assurances that the charter would
go through, and that the amounts he would be called on to pay, if he
remained, were far greater than could possibly be met.

CHAPTER XXII

PLUNDERED OF THE PLUNDER

So extraordinary a happening as the disappearance of George H. Towle and
Mr. Patch, you think, should have furnished a national sensation. And
this is the first you have ever heard of it. Bear in mind that here for
the first time the facts of this case are set forth in their proper
relation to one another, and without the fear or favor that has hitherto
prevented them from being understood.

In Boston after the adjournment of the Legislature, however bitter the
feeling of the men who had sold themselves, and those others who had
lost their all in the crash of stock values th