ctions Company scandal. Pooh!"

"You got out all right, Varnum. You won't be locked up," said Mr.
Plimpton, banteringly.

"So did you," retorted Varnum.

"So did Ferguson, so did Constable."

"So did Eldon Parr," remarked another man, amidst a climax of laughter.

"Langmaid handled that pretty well."

Hodder felt Everett Constable fidget.

"Bedloe's all right, but he's a dreamer," Mr. Plimpton volunteered.

"Then I wish he'd stop dreaming," said Mr. Ferguson, and there was more
laughter, although he had spoken savagely.

"That's what he is, a dreamer," Varnum ejaculated. "Say, he told George
Carter the other day that prostitution wasn't necessary, that in fifty
years we'd have largely done away with it. Think of that, and it's as
old as Sodom and Gomorrah!"

"If Hubbell had his way, he'd make this town look like a Connecticut
hill village--he'd drive all the prosperity out of it. All the railroads
would have to abandon their terminals--there'd be no more traffic, and
you'd have to walk across the bridge to get a drink."

"Well," said Mr. Plimpton, "Tom Beatty's good enough for me, for a
while."

Beatty, Hodder knew, was the "boss," of the city, with headquarters in a
downtown saloon.

"Beatty's been maligned," Mr. Varnum declared. "I don't say he's a
saint, but he's run the town pretty well, on the whole, and kept the vice
where it belongs, out of sight. He's made his pile, but he's entitled to
something we all are. You always know where you stand with Beatty. But
say, if Hubbell and his crowd--"

"Don't worry about Bedloe,--he'll get called in, he'll come home to roost
like the rest of them," said Mr. Plimpton, cheerfully. "The people can't
govern themselves,--only Bedloe doesn't know it. Some day he'll find it
out." . . .

The French window beside him was open, and Hodder slipped out, unnoticed,
into the warm night and stood staring at the darkness. His one desire
had been to get away, out of hearing, and he pressed forward over the
tiled pavement until he stumbled against a stone balustrade that guarded
a drop of five feet or so to the lawn below. At the same time he heard
his name called.

"Is that you, Mr. Hodder?"

He started. The voice had a wistful tremulousness, and might almost
have been the echo of the leaves stirring in the night air. Then he
perceived, in a shaft of light from one of the drawing-room windows near
by, a girl standing beside the balustrade; and as she came towards him,