ocured a printed copy, searching it diligently
for the hidden menace he was sure it embodied.

When the search proved fruitless, he had seen the bill pass the House by a
safe majority, had followed it to the Senate, and in a cunningly worded
amendment tacked on in the upper house had found what he was seeking.
Under the existing law foreign corporations were subject to State
supervision, and were dealt with as presumably unfriendly aliens. But the
Senate amendment to House Bill Twenty-nine fairly swept the interstate
corporations, as such, out of existence, by making it obligatory upon them
to acquire the standing of local corporations. Charters were to be refiled
with the secretary of State; resident directories and operating
headquarters were to be established within the boundaries and jurisdiction
of the State; in short, the State proposed, by the terms of the new law,
to deal only with creatures of its own creation.

Kent saw, or thought he saw, the fine hand of the junto in all this. It
was a still hunt in which the longest way around was the shortest way
home. Like all new-country codes, the organic law of the State favored
local corporations, and it might be argued that a bill placing the foreign
companies on a purely local footing was an unmixed blessing to the aliens.
But on the other hand, an unprincipled executive might easily make the new
law an engine of extortion. To go no further into the matter than the
required refiling of charters: the State constitution gave the secretary
of State quasi-judicial powers. It was within his province to pass upon
the applications for chartered rights, and to deny them if the question
_pro bono publico_ were involved.

Kent put two and two together, saw the wide door of exactions which might
be opened, and passed the word of warning among his associates; after
which he had watched the course of the amended House Bill Twenty-nine with
interest sharp-set, planning meanwhile with Hildreth, the editor of the
_Daily Argus_, an expose which should make plain the immense possibilities
for corruption opened up by the proposed law; a journalistic salvo of
publicity to be fired as a last resort.

The measure as amended had passed the Senate without debate, and had gone
back to the House. Here, after the second reading, and in the very hour
when the _Argus_ editorial was getting itself cast in the linotypes, there
was a hitch. The member from the Rio Blanco, favoring the measure in