anxious to
fulfil his promise to Shirley and find what his father could do to
help Judge Rossmore. He had talked about the case with several men
the previous evening at the club and the general impression seemed
to be that, guilty or innocent, the judge would be driven off the
bench. The "interests" had forced the matter as a party issue, and
the Republicans being in control in the Senate the outcome could
hardly be in doubt. He had learned also of the other misfortunes
which had befallen Judge Rossmore and he understood now the reason
for Shirley's grave face on the dock and her little fib about
summering on Long Island. The news had been a shock to him, for,
apart from the fact that the judge was Shirley's father, he
admired him immensely as a man. Of his perfect innocence there
could, of course, be no question: these charges of bribery had
simply been trumped up by his enemies to get him off the bench.
That was very evident. The "interests" feared him and so had
sacrificed him without pity, and as Jefferson walked along Central
Park, past the rows of superb palaces which face its eastern wall,
he wondered in which particular mansion had been hatched this
wicked, iniquitous plot against a wholly blameless American
citizen. Here, he thought, were the citadels of the plutocrats,
America's aristocracy of money, the strongholds of her Coal,
Railroad, Oil, Gas and Ice barons, the castles of her monarchs of
Steel, Copper, and Finance. Each of these million-dollar
residences, he pondered, was filled from cellar to roof with
costly furnishings, masterpieces of painting and sculpture,
priceless art treasures of all kinds purchased in every corner of
the globe with the gold filched from a Trust-ridden people. For
every stone in those marble halls a human being, other than the
owner, had been sold into bondage, for each of these magnificent
edifices, which the plutocrat put up in his pride only to occupy
it two months in the year, ten thousand American men, women and
children had starved and sorrowed.

Europe, thought Jefferson as he strode quickly along, pointed with
envy to America's unparalleled prosperity, spoke with bated breath
of her great fortunes. Rather should they say her gigantic
robberies, her colossal frauds! As a nation we were not proud of
our multi-millionaires. How many of them would bear the searchlight
of investigation? Would his own father? How many millions could
one man make by honest methods? America w