assed making YOU put
fire-extinguishers in YOUR opera house, and compel YOU to buy them of
HIM. But you will not use your huge influence with Mayor Stitz and the
city council. You hesitate."

Toole shook his head sadly; he almost wept out the last word, he seemed
so heartbroken to see the Colonel hesitate.

"Why hesitate?" he asked. "If I were not a stranger in town, as I may
say, I should beg you not to hesitate. I should beg you to act. I should
beg you to think of the lives of poor, helpless women and children. I
should beg you, for humanity's sake, to go to the honorable mayor and
city council, and appeal to them to pass an ordinance compelling this
Skinner to buy nickel-plated fire-extinguishers. To compel him, Colonel!
But I have nothing to say."

He shuffled the legal-looking papers that littered his desk. The
Colonel's eyes had narrowed to fine points of hate-instilled cunning as
the attorney proceeded.

"What have we come to," asked the attorney sadly, "when the leading
citizens of a town like Kilo neglect their duty? Are there no true
citizens left to show the mayor and city council their plain duty?"

When the Colonel had the thing put to him in this light he did not
hesitate. He knew Stitz, the mayor, and he knew that Stitz had full
control of the city council. What Stitz told it to do the city council
did, and the Colonel believed he had a right to dictate what Stitz
should tell it, for he had suggested the name of Stitz as candidate for
mayor, and, with Skinner, had helped elect him. He went at once to the
mayor, and laid the case before him.

Mayor Johann Stitz was an honest, upright shoemaker, and owned his own
building. It had once been a street car in Franklin, and when the horse
cars were superseded by electric cars, Stitz had bought this car at
auction, and had paid ten dollars to have it hauled to Kilo. It had not
been a very good car when it left the shops before it made its first
trip, and the ten years of running off the track and being boosted on
again had not improved it much. It was in pretty bad shape when Stitz
picked it up for eighteen dollars, and it had deteriorated greatly since
it had been doing duty as a cobbler's shop, but Stitz liked it. The tiny
car stove that stood midway of one of the seats was all he needed in
cold weather, and the seats along the sides were a continuous spread of
cobblers' seats. He could cobble all the way up one side of the car and
all the way back the