o accept a position which would entail so great an
obligation to the city--and to her. Yes, to her! That was it, he knew.

And yet--to her? Why not? How capable and strong and self-reliant she
had looked that morning in the mayor's chair. How different from any
other women he had ever seen! What must she have been made of--this
woman who had been the social equal of the best people in Washington,
that she could lay aside for the moment all social preferences, all
refined and educated tastes, to become mayor of such a city as Roma?--to
sit there in the temple of the money-changers and try to wrestle with
its problems. Bah! he had no taste for such modern women, or for such--

But he had promised to do everything he could to help her,--and to see
Armstrong. Pshaw! He would go back and have it out with Bailey.

He turned and climbed the stairs to the city solicitor's office.
Armstrong welcomed him with a cordial bluffing way the two always used
towards each other.

"About time you came," began Bailey. "Here I am occupying one of the
seats of the high and mighty, and you make off as if I were nobody. I've
a mind to take it out of you somehow."

"If you dared," returned Allingham. "But you can't. You've a character
to maintain and I'm a guest. I say--was it you who put it into Miss Van
Deusen's head that I'd take any little plum she chose to offer me?
Because I won't, you know."

"O, yes, you will," said Bailey, "when it's _pro bono publico_. And say,
if you've any civic pride whatever--if you want to discover graft in its
most rampageous form and help to suppress or expose it--here's your
chance. And you a boasted 'Municipal Reformer!'"

"What do you mean?" asked Allingham.

"Well, just this. One of Burke's contractors came into the Mayor's
office the other day and complained that I was about to 'rip his
contracts up the back,'--at least, that's the classic language in which
he chose to present his ideas to a lady. I hadn't begun to look into
these matters at all; but what he said led Miss Van Deusen to send for
me and we have since been looking him up. I find that he is paving
several streets--or will do so--on no end of little contracts of three
hundred yards for each. He makes a nice fat sum on each,--an aggregate
of several thousand dollars, I won't undertake to say how much. That
sets us to thinking and investigating some more. Say, Jack, remember the
franchise the Boulevard Railway asked for and almost got las