gained an entrance to the jail and took
their prisoners back without a struggle.

* * * * *

Broderick and Windham, en route to the latter's ranch that afternoon,
heard the Monumental bell toll slowly, solemnly. "What's up?" asked
Broderick, startled.

"It means," Benito answered, "that the Vigilance Committee still rules.
Two more scoundrels have been punished."

CHAPTER XXXVI

FEVERS OF FINANCE

Four years had passed since the Vigilance Committee ceased active
labors. Some said they preserved a tacit organization; theirs was still
a name to conjure with among evil doers, but San Francisco, grown into a
city of some 50,000, was more dignified and subtle in its wickedness.
Politics continued notoriously bad. Comedians in the new Metropolitan
Theatre made jokes about ballot-boxes said to have false bottoms, and
public officials who had taken their degrees in "political economy" at
Sing Sing.

"Honest Harry" Meiggs and his brother, the newly-elected City
Controller, had sailed away on the yacht "American," leaving behind them
an unpaid-for 2000-foot wharf and close to a million in debts; forged
city warrants and promissory notes were held by practically every large
business house in San Francisco.

It was concerning this urbane and gifted prince of swindlers that Adrian
Stanley talked with William Sherman, manager of the banking house of
Turner, Lucas & Company.

Sherman, once a lieutenant in the United States Army, had returned,
after an Eastern trip, as a civilian financier. In behalf of St. Louis
employers, he had purchased of James Lick a lot at Jackson and
Montgomery streets, erecting thereon a $50,000 fire-proof building. The
bank occupied the lower floor; a number of professional men had their
offices on the second floor; on the third James P. Casey, Supervisor,
journalist and politician, maintained the offices of _The Sunday Times_.
He passed the two men as they stood in front of the bank and shouted a
boisterous "hello." Adrian, ever courteous and good-natured, responded
with a wave of the hand while Sherman, brusk and curt, as a habit of
nature and military training, vouchsafed him a short nod.

"I have small use for that fellow," he remarked to Stanley, "even less
than I had for Meiggs." The other had something impressive about him,
something almost Napoleonic, in spite of his dishonesty. If business had
maintained the upward trend of '51 and '52, Meiggs would ha