Mollie's Substitute Husband

[Transcriber's note: The frontispiece was missing from
the source book]

MOLLIE'S SUBSTITUTE
HUSBAND

BY

MAX McCONN

WITH FRONTISPIECE BY
EDWARD C. CASWELL

THE RYERSON PRESS
TORONTO
1920

COPYRIGHT, 1920
BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC.

PRINTED IN U. S. A.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I ["The Professor" on a Spree]
II [The Prettiest Girl]
III [Friendly Strangers]
IV [An Unscrupulous Reformer]
V [Alicia and the Motives of Men]
VI [Stage-Setting]
VII [Boy and Girl]
VIII [Passages with Mayor Black]
IX [Aunt Mary]
X [A Senator Missing]
XI [Confessions of Waiter No. 73]
XII [Grapefruit and Telegrams]
XIII [A Change of Management]
XIV [Holding the Fort]
XV [Council of War]
XVI [The Senatorial Dinner]
XVII [A Devious Journey]
XVIII [Jennie]
XIX [A New Antagonist]
XX [An Eventful Supper Party]
XXI [Flash Lights]
XXII [Virtue Triumphant]
XXIII [Return]
XXIV [The Reform League]
XXV [Second Council of War]
XXVI [The Business of Being an Impostor]
XXVII [The Code Telegram]
XXVIII [Simpson as Detective]
XXIX [The Final Dilemma]
XXX [Mollie June]

MOLLIE'S SUBSTITUTE HUSBAND

CHAPTER I

"THE PROFESSOR" ON A SPREE

John Merriam, Principal of the High School at Riceville, Illinois--"Professor" Merriam, as he was universally called by the citizens of Riceville--was wickedly, carnally, gloriously happy. He was having an unwonted spree.

I fear the reader will be shocked. The principal of a high school, he will say, has no right to a spree, even an occasional one. The "Professor" has girl students in his classes--mostly girls, indeed, and usually the prettiest ones in town--and women teachers under his supervision. Every seventh day he teaches a young people's class in a Sunday School. He makes addresses at meetings of the Y.P.S.C.E., the Y.M.C.A., and other alphabetically designated societies that make for righteousness and decorum. He should at all times and in all places be a model, an exemplar, to the budding young men and women of the community in general and his school in particular.

In this reasoning the reader is in strict accord with what the sentiment of all Riceville would have been if it had known--if it could have known.

Nevertheless, it is the regrettable and shocking fact that John Merriam was sitting on that pleasant April evening in the Peacock Cabaret of the Hotel De Soto in the wicked city of Chicago. He was attired in evening clothes, a fact which, in itself would have seemed both odd and reprehensible to Riceville, and he was alone at a tiny table with a yellow-silk-shaded lamp. He had just been guided to that table, and pending the arrival of a waiter, he was gazing eagerly, boyishly about him at such delights as the somewhat garish Peacock Cabaret displayed.

For John Merriam, though a "professor," was young. He was only twenty-eight. He was tall and blond and athletic, as young men who grow up on farms in the Middle West and then go to college have a way of being. And after his season of strenuous and highly virtuous labours at Riceville he was really hungry, keen, for something--well, just a little less virtuous.

A distinguished looking gentleman in a dinner jacket, conspicuously labeled with a number, somewhat haughtily and negligently approached, bearing a menu card.

About three paces away this gentleman, having glanced at young Merriam, fairly stopped and stared at him. An odd expression showed upon his face--an expression, one would almost have said, of intense animosity. Then, as he still stared, one might have decided that his look betokened perplexity. He winked his eyes several times and once more scrutinised his waiting guest. At length--perhaps ten seconds had passed--his face slowly, wonderingly cleared, his usual air of vacant indifference returned, and he advanced and placed the menu card in Merriam's hands. The latter, still drinking in the sights and sounds of his unaccustomed environment, had noticed nothing.

Now it is always prudent to note a waiter's number when he first presents himself, for in case he should decide to begin his summer vacation immediately after taking your order you may need to mention his number to the head waiter. In this case the number was 73.

The hauteur and negligence displayed were partly habitual--professional, so to speak--but were intensified perhaps by the reaction from the emotion, whatever it was, which he had apparently just experienced--perhaps also by the look of alert and genuine pleasure on Merriam's face. Such a look did not wholly commend itself or him to a sophisticated metropolitan taste. What right had a patron of the Peacock Cabaret to look really pleased? It was hardly decent--and argued a small tip.

Inwardly Merriam, now aware of the waiter's presence, reacted acutely to this clearly perceptible disdain. Which shows how young and how rural he was. We maturer, urban folk are never, of course, in the least nonplused by those contemptuous, blasé silences of waiters who possess the bearing and manner of a governor or a capitalist.

But John Merriam had been excellent in amateur dramatics at college, and he now roused himself to a magnificent histrionic effort in the rôle of "man of the world."

He pushed the menu card aside without looking at it.

"A clam cocktail, please, and a stein of beer," he murmured, low enough to force the distinguished one to unbend slightly in order to catch the words.

"Yes, sir," said Waiter No. 73, with a tentative suggestion of respect in his tone. A customer who did not bother to look at the menu might be worth while after all.

"And then what?"

"I'll see how I feel then," said Merriam with a half yawn.

"Yes, sir," said Waiter No. 73, almost courteously, and departed at a pace slightly quickened over that of his approach, as a man strolling at complete leisure will instinctively increase the tempo of his step if he chances to recall a definite engagement on the day after to-morrow.

Merriam grinned delightedly. He had put it across--his little piece of acting. He had measurably imposed his rôle on his audience of one; at least he had shaken him.

And then--I shudder when I recall the views on nicotine of the Board of Education at Riceville--he drew from his pocket a package of cigarettes, and took a match from the table, and lit a cigarette, and sent a volume of smoke out through his nostrils--proving, alas, that it was not his first indulgence,--and, with a sigh that might almost be described as ecstatic, turned his attention again to the scene about him.

That scene was piquant to him--after the ugly dining room of his boarding house at Riceville and the barren assembly hall of the High School--to a degree almost incredible to persons more habituated to the Peacock Cabaret and similar resorts. Not being quite so fresh from Riceville, nor yet the advertising manager of the Hotel De Soto, I cannot, I fear, paint the prospect as Merriam saw it. I shall not be able to conceal some mental reservations as to its charms. The purple peacocks upon the walls and ceiling, from which the restaurant took its name, were certainly a trifle over-gorgeous, just as the music which the orchestra intermittently dispensed was too much syncopated. Again, the scores of small tables, each with its silk-shaded lamp, its slim glass vase for a single rosebud, its water bottle bearing the arms of the Chevalier De Soto, and its ash receptacle--all alike as shoe boxes in a shoe shop are alike,--might to a tired fancy suggest a certain monotony of pleasure, a too-much-standardised, ready-made brand of bliss. The small, skimped stage, with its undeniably banal curtain, and the crowded dancing floor did not really promise unlimited delights. Some perception of all this was apparent in the faces and bearing of many of the white-shirt-fronted men who sat at the scores of tables and of the women who were with them, however bird-of-paradise-like the raiment of the latter might be. Not a few indeed displayed an air of languor and ennui that might have won approval even from Waiter No. 73.

But in speaking thus of the Peacock Cabaret I am stepping outside my story, violating unity of point of view--in short, committing a heinous literary crime. For to Merriam at that moment the screaming purple peacocks, the regiments of rosebuds, the musical comedy melodies, the gay attire and bare shoulders of the women, and even the tired look of his fellow-diners, which he interpreted as sophistication rather than simple boredom, were thrillingly symbolical of all the delights which the great world held and which were absent from Riceville. And when Waiter No. 73 leisurely returned, to find him outwardly almost too near asleep to keep his cigarette going, and deposited his clam cocktail and the wicked stein before him, and at the same moment the orchestra became more noisy than ever, and all the lights except those upon the tables went out, and the stage curtain rose upon a short-skirted chorus, he was really in a sort of Omar Khayyam paradise. It was lucky that Waiter No. 73 had again departed to those unknown regions where waiters spend the bulk of their time, for Merriam could not have concealed the zest with which he alternately ate and drank and surveyed the moderately comely demoiselles upon the little stage.

Having finished his cocktail and drunk some of his beer and seen the curtain descend on the first "act" of the cabaret's dramatic entertainment, Merriam lit another cigarette, shifted his chair, and settled himself to await the probable future return of his servitor. His thoughts dwelt contentedly on the evening before him. For after his meal he would have a stroll with a cigar in the spring twilight (it was barely six-thirty then) through the noisy, brightly lighted streets of the Loop, which never failed to thrill him with a sense of a somehow wicked vastness, power, and riches in the great city of which they were the center. And then he was going to the "Follies." He fingered the small envelope in his pocket which held his ticket. And after the show he would have a supper in another cabaret.

Beyond that he did not let his fancy wander. For after that there was nothing for it but to catch the 2:00 A.M. train on the Illinois Central that would carry him back to Riceville for the remaining six weeks of the school year. He had come up to Chicago on this spring day--a Tuesday it was--to attend a convention of high-school principals and to engage a couple of new teachers for the next year, to replace two that were to be married in June. And he had faithfully done these things. And now he was giving himself just this one evening of amusement--two cabaret meals and a "show," sauced, so to speak, with a little tobacco and beer and the wearing of his evening clothes. Surely whatever Riceville might have thought, he will not seem to most of us very derelict from the austere ideals of his profession.

The only real point against him--most of us might argue--lies in the fact that when, you touch even the outermost fringes of the night life of a city, you are never quite certain what may come to you. For there are things happening all about you, under the conventional, monotonous surface--things amusing and things terrible--men and women playing with the fire of every known human passion,--and if the finger of some adventure reaches out for you you may not be able to resist its lure, perhaps even to escape its clutch.

CHAPTER II

THE PRETTIEST GIRL

I have said that Merriam had shifted his chair a little as he lit his second cigarette. A moment later he was looking very hard at a certain pretty woman at a table half way across the room. His heart stopped. At least that is the phrase a novelist seems to be required to use to indicate the sudden pulse of amazement and pleasure and alarm which he certainly felt.

The young woman at whom he was staring had a name which is very important for this story and which I shall presently tell you, but in John Merriam's mind her name was "the prettiest girl," and her other name, which he seldom dared whisper to his heart, was "Mollie June." She was from Riceville--hence the alarm with which his pleasure was mixed,--and during his first four months of teaching, three years before, she had been in his senior class in the High School--the "prettiest girl" in the class and in the school and in the town--and in the State and the United States and the world, if you had asked John Merriam. Advanced algebra with Mollie June in the class had been the most golden of sciences--pleasure squared, delight cubed, and bliss to the nth power. I am not myself absolutely convinced of Mollie June's proficiency in solving quadratic equations, yet the official records of the Riceville High School show that she received the highest mark in the class.

But she was the daughter of James P. Partridge, the owner of all Riceville; that is to say, of the coal mines outside the town, of the grain elevator, of the street car and electric light company, and of the First National Bank. Who was John Merriam, the son of a poor farmer in a southern county, who had worked his way through college and come out with nothing but a B.S. degree, a football reputation that was quite unnegotiable, and three hundred dollars of fraternity debts--an enormous sum,--to mix anything warmer or livelier than a^2-b^2 in his thoughts of a class to which Mollie June Partridge deigned to belong? Even if Mollie June herself did come up to his desk in the assembly room two or three times a week for help in her algebra and spend most of the time asking him about college instead, and join his Young People's Class, which she had previously refused to attend, and allow him to "see her home" from church sociables, and compel that docile magnate, John P. Partridge, her father, to invite the new "professor" to dinner twice during the half year? As well almost might a humble tutor in the castle of a feudal lord have raised his eyes to the baron's daughter.

Almost, but not quite. After all this is a free republic. Even a poor pedagogue is a citizen with a vote and a potential candidate for the presidency--which at least two poor pedagogues have attained. So John Merriam permitted himself to be very happy during those four months and was not in the least hopeless. Only he saw that he must bide his time.

But early in January Mollie June left school, and in a few days it came out that she had left to be married--married to Senator Norman!

Senator Norman was the famous "boy senator" from Illinois--at the time of his election the youngest man who had ever sat in the upper house of Congress. The ruddiness of his cheeks, the abundance of his wavy blond hair, and the athletic jauntiness of his carriage won votes whenever he stumped the State. They went far to counteract malicious insinuations as to the means by which he was rolling up a fortune and his solidity with "interests" which the proletariat viewed with suspicion.

And now, having been a widower for eighteen months--his first wife was older than he and had brought him money,--he had stayed for a week-end during the Christmas holidays with James P. Partridge, who was a cousin of the Senator's first wife and his political lieutenant for a certain group of counties, and had seen Mollie June and wanted her and asked for her and got her, as George Norman always asked for and got whatever he wanted.

All this was, of course, in John Merriam's mind as he gazed across a dozen tables in the Peacock Cabaret at the unchanged profile of the prettiest girl--that is to say, Mrs. Senator Norman. And with it came an acute revival of the desolation of that January and February at Riceville, when he had perceived with the Hebrew sage that "in much learning"--or in little, for that matter--"is much weariness," and that algebra should have been buried with the medieval Arabians who invented it--when even the State championship in basket ball, won by the Riceville Five under his coaching, was only a trouble and a bore.

There is no doubt he stared rudely. At least it would have been rudely if his eyes had held the look which eyes that stare at pretty women commonly hold. But such a look as stood in Merriam's eyes can hardly be rude, however intent and prolonged it may be.

He was merely entranced in the literal sense of that word. Her girlish white shoulders--he had never seen her shoulders before--in Riceville women no more have shoulders than they have legs--the soft brown hair over her ears--even the mode of the day, which called for close net effects and tight knobs, could not conceal its fine softness--the colour in her cheeks, which unquestionably shamed all the neighbouring rosebuds--the quite inexplicable deliciousness of those particular small curves described by the lines of her nose and chin and throat as he saw them in half profile--were more than he could draw his eyes away from for an unconscionable number of seconds. Of her charmingly simple and unquestionably very expensive frock as a separate fact, and of the thin, pale, and elderly, but gorgeously arrayed woman who was her companion, he had no clear perception, but undoubtedly they both contributed, along with the lights and colours and music of the Peacock Cabaret, to the deplorable confusion of his mind.

Out of that confusion there presently arose certain clear images and tones and words, which made up his memory of the last time he had seen and spoken with the present Mrs. Senator Norman.

It was at and after a miscellaneous kind of young people's entertainment which occurred at the Methodist Church on the evening of that bitter day on which the news of her engagement to Senator Norman had run like a prairie fire through the streets and homes of Riceville, fiercely incinerating all other topics of conversation, and consuming also the joy in life, the ambition, the very youth, it seemed to him, of John Merriam. He would not have gone to that entertainment if he could have escaped. But there were to be charades, and he had arranged and coached most of them and was to be in several. He "simply had to go," as Ricevillians might have said.

She was there with her mother. When had she ever come just with her mother, that is to say, without a male escort, before? That fact alone was symbolical of the closing of the gates of matrimony upon her. Naturally, in his pain he followed his primitive and childish instincts and avoided her.

But he was aware--he was almost sure--of her eyes continually following him throughout the evening, and during "refreshments" she deliberately came up to him and said that her mother was obliged to leave early, and would he see her home? Well, of course, if she asked him, he had to. I am afraid that the tone if not the words of his reply said as much, and Mollie June had turned away with quick tears in her eyes. Yet I question whether she was really hurt by his rudeness. For why should he be rude to-night when he had never been so before unless he--to use the most expressive of Americanisms--"cared"?

For the rest of the evening, as a result of those tears, which he had seen, it was his eyes that followed her, while hers avoided him. But he did not speak with her again until "seeing-home" time arrived.

Mollie June lingered till the very end of everything. Perhaps the little girl in her--for she was barely eighteen--clung to this last shred of the familiar, homely social life of her girlhood before she should be plunged into the frightful brilliance of real "society" in terrific places known as Chicago and Washington--as a senator's wife!

But at last they were walking together towards her home.

"Take my arm, please," said Mollie June.

The boys in Riceville always take the girls' arms at night, though never in the daytime. John ought to have taken her arm before. He took it.

"Have you heard that I am going to be married?" asked Mollie June--as if she did not know that everybody in the county knew it by that time.

"Yes," said John, his tone as succinct as his monosyllable.

But girls learn early to deal with the conversational difficulties and recalcitrances of males under stress of emotion.

"It means leaving school and Riceville and--everything," said Mollie June.

John could not fail to catch the note of pitifulness in her sentence. If the prospective marriage had been with any one less dazzling than George Norman, he might have reacted more properly. As it was, he replied with a stilted impersonality which might have been caught from the bright stars shining through the bare branches under which they walked.

"You will have a very rich and brilliant life," he said.

"I suppose so," said Mollie June.

They walked on, he still obediently clutching her arm, in silence; conversation not accompaniable with laughter is so difficult an art for youth.

Presently Mollie June tried again.

"Aren't you sorry I'm leaving the school--Mr. Merriam?"

"I'm very sorry indeed," responded "Professor" Merriam. "You ought to have stayed to graduate."

"I don't care about graduating," said Mollie June.

Again their footsteps echoed in the cold January silence.

Then Mollie June made a third attempt:

"You look ever so much like Mr. Norman."

"I know it," said Merriam. "We're related."

"Oh, are you?"

"On my mother's side. We're second cousins. But the two branches of the family have nothing to do with each other now."

"He has the same hair and the same shape of head and the same way of sitting and moving," Mollie June declared with enthusiasm, "and almost the same eyes and voice. Only his are----"

"Older!" said John Merriam rudely.

"Yes," said Mollie June.

Distances are not great in Riceville. For this reason the ceremony of "seeing home" is usually termed by a circuitous route, sometimes involving the entire circumference of the "nice" part of the town. But on this occasion John and Mollie June had gone directly, as though their object had been to arrive. They reached her home--a matter of two blocks from the church-before another word had been said.

There Mollie June carefully extricated her arm from his mechanical grasp and confronted him.

He looked at her face, peeping out of the fur collar of her coat in the starlight, and for one instant into her eyes.

She was saying: "I am very grateful to you, Merriam, for all the help you have given me--in--algebra."

He ought to have kissed her. She wanted him to. He half divined as much--afterwards.

But the awkward, callow, Anglo-Saxon, rural, pedagogical cub in him replied, "I am glad if I have been able to help you in anything."

That, I judge, was too much for Mollie June. She held out her little gloved hand.

"Good-bye, Mr. Merriam!"

He took her hand. And now appears the advantage of a college education, including amateur dramatics and courses in English poetry and romantic fiction. He did what no other swain in Riceville could have done. He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it! At least he kissed the glove which tightly enclosed the hand.

"Good-bye, Mollie June!" he said, using that name for the first time.

Then he dropped her hand, somewhat suddenly, I fear, turned abruptly, and walked rapidly away.

As to what Mollie June said or thought or felt, how should I know? There was nothing for her to do but to go into the house, and that is what she did.

CHAPTER III

FRIENDLY STRANGERS

John Merriam raised his eyes from the table-cloth on which they had rested while these images from the distant past--two and one-half years ago--moved across the screen of his memory. To his now mature perceptions the stupidity and gaucherie of his own part in that scene--save for the redeeming kissing of the glove--were clearly apparent, and were for the moment almost as painful to him as the fact that Mollie June was another man's wife.

He glanced around, avoiding only the table at which Mrs. Senator Norman sat. The glory was gone from the Peacock Cabaret. The garishness of the peacocks, the tin-panniness of the music, the futility of beer and cigarettes and evening clothes, were desolatingly revealed to him. He put his cigarette aside, to smoke itself up unregarded on the ash tray.

It had been his duty to "forget," and it is neither more nor less than justice to say that after a fashion he had succeeded in doing so. His winter and spring, three years ago, had been miserable; but he had undeniably enjoyed his summer vacation, and had found interest in his work again in the fall. To be sure, the edge was gone from his ambition. He had stuck ploddingly at teaching, too indifferent to try to better himself. Still he had not been actively unhappy. But now----

He was diverted by the return of Waiter No. 73. No need of play-acting now to conceal any unsophisticated delight in his surroundings. But he must pull himself together. He must not exhibit to the world, as incarnated in Waiter No. 73, a depression as boyish as his previous pleasure. He must still be the stoical, tranquil man of the world, who knows women and tears them from his heart when need be. It was the same rôle--with a difference!

"What next, sir?"

Merriam glanced hastily at the menu card and ordered a steak with French fried potatoes and a lettuce-and-tomato salad. He was not up to an attack on any unfamiliar viands.

As he gave his order he was aware of a party of three persons, seated a little to his left--the opposite direction from the fateful spot inhabited by Mollie June,--who seemed to be taking particular note of him. And as he lit another cigarette after the waiter had left him he noticed them again. Unquestionably they were furtively regarding him. Now and then they exchanged remarks of which he was sure he was the subject.

The three persons included a square-jawed man of about forty-five, a pale, benevolent-looking priest and a very beautiful woman. The woman had not only shoulders and arms but also a great deal of bosom and back, all dazzlingly, powderedly fair and ideally plump. She had black hair and eyes--brilliantly, even aggressively, black. Her gown was a lavender silk net with spangles. Her age--well, she was certainly older than Mollie June and certainly within, safely within, "the age at which women cease to be interesting to men," whatever that age may be.

Our youthful man of the world was a little embarrassed at first by the scrutiny of this gorgeous trio. He glanced quickly down at his own attire, as a girl might have done. But there could be nothing wrong with his evening clothes. (A man is so safe in that respect.) They were only five years old, having been acquired, in a heroic burst of extravagance, during his senior year in college. He wanted to put his hand up to his white bow to make sure it was not askew, but restrained himself.

Presently Merriam began to enjoy the attention he was receiving. If one must play a part, it is pleasant to have an audience. It helped him to keep his eyes off Mollie June. He began to give attention to the smoking of his cigarette. He handled it with nonchalant grace. He exhaled smoke through his nostrils. He recalled an envied accomplishment of his college days and carefully blew a couple of tolerably perfect smoke rings. And he wished that Mollie June would turn and see him in his evening clothes.

Presently the clerical gentleman, after an earnest colloquy with the square-jawed one, rose and came across to Merriam's table, while the other two now openly watched.

The priest rested two white hands on the edge of the table and bent over him with a friendly smile.

"Will you pardon a frank question from a stranger?" he asked.

"I guess a question won't hurt me," said Merriam.

At this simple reply the cleric straightened up quickly as if startled and looked at Merriam closely and curiously. Then he said:

"Are you by any chance related to Senator Norman?"

"Yes, I am," said Merriam.

"May I ask what the relationship is?"

Merriam told him.

"Thank you," said the priest. "The resemblance is really remarkable. And we saw you looking at Mrs. Norman. Do you know her?"

"Yes. I knew her before--before she--was married."

"I see. Thank you so much."

The inquisitive priest returned to his friends, who appeared to listen intently to his report.

At the same time Waiter No. 73 arrived with Merriam's steak and salad.

He ate self-consciously, feeling himself still under observation from the other table. But when he was half way through his salad his attention was effectually distracted from those watchers. For Mollie June and her companion had risen to go.

Merriam put down his fork and looked at her. She was really beautiful to any eyes--so fresh and young and alive amid the tawdry ennui of her surroundings, a human girl among the labouring ghosts of a danse macabre. To Merriam she was--what you will--radiant, divine. He wished he had not lost a moment from looking at her since he first saw her.

A waiter had brought a fur cloak and now held it for her. As she adjusted it about her shoulders she glanced around and saw Merriam.

For a moment she looked straight at him. Merriam would have sworn that her colour heightened ever so little and then paled. She smiled a mechanical little smile, bowed slightly, spoke to her companion, and threaded her way quickly among tables to an exit.

"I beg your pardon!"

Merriam started and looked up--to find the black-eyed, white-bosomed woman from the other table standing beside him. He was conscious of a faint fragrance, which a more sophisticated person would have recognised as that of an extremely expensive perfume, widely advertised under the name of a famous opera singer.

He rose mechanically, dropping his napkin.

"No, no," she smiled. "Won't you sit down--and let me sit down a moment, too?"

She took the chair opposite him.

"My name is Alicia Wayward," she said. There was a kind of deliberate sweetness in her tone.

John Merriam got back somehow into his chair and looked at her, but did not reply. His eyes saw the face of Mollie June, peeping out of her furs, as on that last night at Riceville, her changing colour, her mechanical smile, and the hurrying away without giving him a chance to go to her for a single word.

"Won't you tell me your name?" said Alicia, with the barest suggestion in her voice of sharpness in the midst of sweet.

"John Merriam."

"And you are a second cousin of Senator Norman?"

"Yes."

"I am an old friend of Senator Norman's," said Alicia. "We are all friends of his." She nodded towards the other table. "And we should very much like to have a little private talk with you about a very important matter.--How do you do, Simpson?"

Merriam looked up again. Waiter No. 73 was standing over them. But he was a transformed being. The ramrod had somehow been extracted from his spine, and his stern features were transfigured in an expression of happy and ingratiating servility.

"Very well, Miss Alicia," he said.

"Simpson used to be my father's butler," explained Miss Wayward. "We've never had so a butler since."

"Thank you, Miss Alicia," said Simpson fervently.

"Send me the head waiter," said Miss Wayward.

"Yes, Miss Alicia," and Simpson departed almost with alacrity.

"You are just ready for your dessert, I see," said Alicia. "I am going to ask the head waiter to change us both to one of the private rooms and give us Simpson to wait on us. Then I can present you to my friends, and we can have the private talk I spoke of. You don't mind, do you?"

Merriam thought of the "Follies." But the idea of the "Follies" bored him after seeing Mollie June. And one cannot refuse a lady. He recaptured some fraction of his manners.

"I shall be pleased," he said.

"Thank you," said Alicia, with augmented sweetness.

CHAPTER IV

AN UNSCRUPULOUS REFORMER

The head waiter arrived. Could they be removed to a private dining-room? Most certainly they could. Yes, Simpson should serve them. Obviously anything that Miss Alicia Wayward desired could be done, must be done, and it was done.

They ordered ices and café noir.

"And a liqueur?" suggested Alicia.

Merriam assented.

"What should you prefer?"

Now Merriam knew the name of just one liqueur. He made prompt use of that solitary scrap of information.

"Benedictine, perhaps," he suggested, as who should say, "Out of all the world's vintages my mature choice among liqueurs is Benedictine."

"Good," smiled Alicia. (I am afraid she was not effectually deceived.)

Merriam was introduced first to Father Murray.

"He isn't a real Father," said Alicia. "He's not a Romanist. Only a paltry Anglican. But he's so very, very High Church that a layman can hardly tell the difference."

Father Murray was deprecatory but unruffled. A Christian priest must forgive all things.

"This is Mr. Philip Rockwell of the Reform League," said Alicia. "His fame has doubtless reached you. 'One-Thing-at-a-Time Rockwell.'"

His fame had not reached Merriam, but the latter bowed and shook hands as though it had, instinctively meeting the stare in the other man's eyes with an unblinking steadiness of his own.

After the introductions Merriam glanced about him with perhaps insufficiently concealed curiosity. He had never been in a private dining-room before, and this adventure was beginning to interest him. It was better than spending his evening--his one evening--in sad thoughts of Mollie June.

The room was just large enough to afford comfortable space for a table for four persons, with a small sideboard to serve from. It was really rather pretty. Subdued purple hangings at the door and windows and a frieze of small peacocks above the plate rail indicated its affiliation, so to speak, with the Peacock Cabaret. There were attractive French prints in garland frames on the walls. The table was charmingly laid, with a bowl of yellow roses in the center, and the ices were already served. On the sideboard the coffee in a silver pot was bubbling over an alcohol flame, and there was a long bottle which Merriam correctly interpreted as the container of his choice among liqueurs.

"This is much cosier, isn't it?" said Alicia.

She took the head of the table.

"Father Murray shall sit opposite me," she said, "to see that I behave. You, Mr. Merriman, shall sit on my right, as the guest of honour. That leaves this place for you, Philip. Reformers must be content with what they can get."

Merriam mustered the gallantry to hold Alicia's chair for her, and was warmed by the approving smile with which she thanked him. He had not especially liked Alicia at first, but she grew upon him.

They consumed ices, and Alicia conversed, in the sprightly fashion she affected, with Merriam. The other two men hardly participated at all.

In the course of that conversation Alicia artlessly, tactfully, but efficiently pumped Merriam. By the time Simpson was pouring the sweet-scented wine into thimble-like glasses she--and her companions--were in possession of all the substantial facts of his brief biography and had guessed the secret of his heart. They knew of his boyhood on the farm, of his father's death, and his mother's a few years later, of his college days, with something of their athletic, dramatic, and fraternity incidents, of his teaching at Riceville, of the Riceville football and basket-ball teams, of the occasion for this trip to Chicago--and of Mollie June.

At length the sherbet glasses were removed and some of the coffees, including Merriam's, refilled, and they all lit cigarettes. Merriam was pleasantly startled when Alicia too took a cigarette. He had read, of course, of women smoking, but he had never seen it, or expected to see it with his own eyes, except on the stage. It was more shocking to his secret soul than any amount of bosom and back.

"You need not wait, Simpson," said Alicia. "We'll ring if we need you again."

When the waiter had withdrawn Philip Rockwell took the center of the stage. He tilted back in his chair and abruptly began to talk. Part of the time he looked straight ahead of him as if addressing an audience, but now and again he turned his head and aimed his discourse straight at Merriam. He made only a pretence of smoking.

"Mr. Merriam," he said, "by a curious chance--a freak of nature, as it were--you, who have thus far taken no part in the politics of the State and Nation, are in a position to render a great service this very night to the cause of Reform and incidentally to Senator and Mrs. Norman."

"How so?" said Merriam. He was rather on his guard against Mr. Philip Rockwell.

"It is a long story, perhaps," said that gentleman. "I gathered when we were introduced that you had heard of me. But I was not sure how much you have heard. I am at the present time the President of the Reform League of this city and its guiding and moving spirit."

"And endowed with the superb modesty so characteristic of reformers," interjected Alicia.

The reformer paid no attention to this frivolous parenthesis.

"Miss Wayward," he continued, "alluded earlier to my sobriquet--'One-Thing-at-a-Time Rockwell.' The epithet was first applied to me derisively by opposition newspapers. But it is a true description. Indeed it was derived from my frequent use of the phrase in my own speeches. I believe that to be successful, practically successful, Reform must center its efforts on one thing at a time--not waste its energies, its munitions, so to speak, by bombarding the whole entrenched line of evil and privilege at once, but concentrate its fire on one exposed position after another--take that one position--accomplish finally one definite thing--and then go on to some other one definite thing. Do you get me?"

Merriam signified that he comprehended.

Father Murray was more enthusiastic. "It is a truly splendid idea," he volunteered. "Since we have adopted it, under the leadership of Mr. Rockwell, the Reform League has really begun to do things. To do things!" he repeated, with an almost mysterious emphasis.

"At the present time," Rockwell resumed, "the one thing which the Reform League is undertaking to do is to secure decent traction conditions in this city--adequate service. We have so far succeeded that we have forced an unfriendly city council to pass the new Traction Ordinance. You are familiar with the new Ordinance, Mr. Merriam?"

"Yes," said Merriam. By which we must suppose he meant that he had read headlines about it in the Chicago papers.

"Those rascals," continued Rockwell, "never would have passed it--the men who own them would never have permitted them to pass it, no matter how unmistakable the demand of the people might be,--if they had not counted on one thing."

Merriam perceived that an interrogation was demanded of him and took his cue.

"What is that?" he asked.

"They are counting," said Rockwell impressively, "they are counting on Mayor Black. They have believed the whole time that he can be depended on to veto it. And they are right! The scoundrels usually are. The Mayor, as every one knows, is a mere puppet. He will do as he is told. Only, the League has made such a stir, the people are so tremendously aroused, that he is frightened. And so, before acting, before writing the veto, which he has sense enough to see is likely to mean political suicide, he is coming here to-night to see Senator Norman, to get his instructions. That's what it amounts to. Norman holds the State machine in the hollow of his hand. If Norman tells him to veto, Black will veto. It may be bad for him with the voters if he does it, but it would be certain political death for a man like him to cross Norman. And Norman will say, 'Veto!'"

"I see," said Merriam.

Which was hardly true; he did not as yet see an inch ahead of his nose into this thing, but he thought it sounded well.

"Where do I come in, though?" he added, belying his assumption of sagacity.

"That's my very next point," said Rockwell.

His chair came down on all fours. He squared it to the table, laid his neglected cigarette aside, put his arms on the cloth, and looked very straight at Merriam.

"Are you aware, Mr. Merriam, that you bear a most striking physical resemblance to Senator Norman?"

"I have been told so," said Merriam. "My mother often spoke of it. And--Mrs. Norman mentioned it to me before she was married. I have seen his pictures, of course, in the papers. I have never seen him in person." (This was true, for John Merriam had, quite inexcusably, stayed away from Mollie June's wedding.)

"He has never seen you, then?"

"He probably doesn't know of my existence."

"So much the better," said Rockwell. "The only difficulty then is Mrs. Norman. And she can be eliminated."

This facile elimination of Mollie June did not make an irresistible appeal to Merriam, but he held his tongue.

Alicia Wayward saw the reformer's mistake.

"Mr. Rockwell means," she threw in, "that Mrs. Norman can be shielded from the difficulties of the situation."

"Exactly," said Rockwell quickly. "Mr. Merriam," he continued, "if you have never seen the Senator with your own eyes, you can have no realisation of the closeness of your resemblance to him. Hair, eyes, nose, mouth, size, carriage, manner, movement--it is truly wonderful. And it is the same with your voice. Father Murray here says he fairly jumped when you first spoke to him out in the Cabaret when he went over to question you."

"He also says," interrupted Alicia, as if mischievously, "that it is Providential."

"Please do not be irreverent, Miss Alicia," said the priest. "It does surely seem Providential--on this night of all nights. It surely seems so."

"Well," said Merriam, a trifle bluntly perhaps, "I don't know what you mean by that. If my cousin and I look so much alike as you say, no doubt it's quite remarkable. Still such things happen often enough in families. What of it?"

"I have explained," said Rockwell, with an air of much patience, "that Mayor Black is coming here, to this hotel, to-night, to see Senator Norman about the Ordinance, and that Norman will order him to veto it. We thought we had Norman fixed, but he has gone over to the magnates--as he always does in the end! Black will do as he is bid, and it will be a death blow. We can never pass it over his veto. It means the total ruin of five years of work, involving the expenditure of tens of thousands of dollars. And the cause of Reform in this city will be dead for years to come. The League will never survive, if we fail at this last ditch. It will collapse."

"In short," said Alicia sweetly, "Mr. Rockwell himself will collapse."

Rockwell took no heed of her.

"Half an hour ago," he said, "I was sitting yonder in the Cabaret, dining with Miss Wayward and Father Murray. I was eating turtle soup and olives"--he laughed theatrically,--"but I was a desperate man. I had no hope, no interest left in life. Then I looked up and saw you. At first I mistook you for Senator Norman--even I, who have known the old hypocrite for a dozen years. I stared at you, wondering whether I should go over and make one last personal appeal to you--to him. And then I realised that you could not be he. For I knew positively that he was dining in his room. I looked closer. I saw that you were really a younger man--not that massaged, laced old roué. I stared on in my amazement, till Miss Wayward and Father Murray looked too, and Miss Wayward said, 'Why, there's Senator Norman now.' 'By God!' said I, 'perhaps it is!' Do you see, Mr. Merriam?"

"No," said Merriam, "I don't."

"Ah, but you will, you must," said Rockwell. "Listen!" He looked at his watch. "It is now twenty minutes past seven. Norman is dining in his room. There is a man with him, a Mr. Crockett--one of the dozen men who own Chicago. He is as much interested in the Ordinance as I am--on the other side. He is giving Norman his instructions, for the Senator is Crockett's puppet, of course, as much as the Mayor is Norman's. Crockett will leave promptly at a quarter to eight. Mayor Black is due at eight."

"How do you know these things?" interrupted Merriam.

"It is my business to know things," said Rockwell. "The fact is," he added, "I planned to burst in on Norman and Black at their conference and threaten them in the name of the Reform League. It would have done no good, but I owed that much to the League."

"And to yourself," said Alicia softly.

"And to myself, yes!" said Rockwell, infinitesimally pricked at last. But he hurried on:

"At ten minutes to eight, Mr. Merriam, I will telephone Norman. I will pretend to be old Schubert, the Mayor's private secretary. He has a dry, clipped voice that is easy to imitate. I will say that the Mayor is sick at his house. I will imply that he is drunk. He often is. I will say he is not too sick to veto the Ordinance before the Council meets at nine, but that he insists on seeing Senator Norman before he does it and asks that Norman come out to his house. I will say that I am sending a car for him. Norman will curse, but he will go. He is under orders, too, you see. At five minutes to eight we will send up word that Mayor Black's car is waiting for Senator Norman. There will be a car waiting. The driver will be Simpson."

"I can fix it with the hotel people to get him off," said Alicia in response to a look from Merriam. "He was a chauffeur once for a while.--And he will do anything I ask him to," she added.

"Norman will go down and get into that car. He will be driven, not to the Mayor's house, of course, but to--a certain flat, where he will be detained for several hours--very possibly all night."

"By force?" asked Merriam, rather sternly.

"Only by force of the affections," said Rockwell suavely. "The flat belongs, for the time being, to a certain young woman, a manicurist by profession, who is undoubtedly very pretty and in whom Norman--takes an interest. I happen to know that he pays the rent of the flat."

Rockwell paused, but Merriam made no reply. He blushed, subcutaneously at any rate, for Alicia and Father Murray. The latter indeed affected inattention to this portion of Mr. Rockwell's discourse. But Alicia Wayward made no pretence of either misunderstanding or horror.

In Merriam's mind a slight embarrassment quickly gave place to anger. That George Norman after three years--how much sooner who could tell?--should leave Mollie June for a--his mind paused before a word too ancient and too frank for professorial sensibilities.

Rockwell quickly resumed:

"As soon as Norman has gone I will take you to his room. We will put his famous crimson smoking jacket on you and establish you in his big armchair with a cigar and some whiskey and soda beside you. When Black comes he will find Senator Norman--you. All you will have to do is to be curt and sulky, damn him a bit, and tell him to sign the Ordinance. He'll never suspect you. As a matter of fact, he doesn't know the Senator well--never spoke with him privately above three times in his life. We'll have only side lights on. He won't stay. He'll be mightily relieved about the Ordinance and in a hurry to get away. Then you yourself can get away and catch your train for--for----"

"Riceville," supplied Alicia.

"That will be a real adventure for you, young man, and you will have saved the cause of Reform in the city of Chicago!"

John Merriam smiled, frostily.

"The reasons, then, Mr. Rockwell, why I should fraudulently impersonate a Senator of the United States, who happens to be my cousin, and in his name act in an important matter directly contrary to his own wishes are for the fun of the adventure and to save your Reform League from a setback. Is that correct?"

"Philip," said Alicia quickly, "you and Father Murray go for a walk. I want to have a little talk with Mr. Merriam alone. Come back in twenty minutes."

The implication of her last phrase was distinctly flattering to Merriam if he had understood it. Alicia Wayward would not have asked for more than ten minutes with most men.

Rockwell smiled with lowered eyelids--a smile which it was certainly a mistake for him to permit himself, for it could not and did not fail to put Merriam on his guard--against Alicia.

"Come, Murray," said Rockwell rising, "I should like a breath of real air, shouldn't you? And when Miss Wayward commands----" He waved his hand grandly. "Au revoir!"

And he and the priest hastily departed.

CHAPTER V

ALICIA AND THE MOTIVES OF MEN

"Take another cigarette, won't you, Mr. Merriam?" said Alicia, as the curtain at the door fell behind Rockwell and Father Murray.

"Thank you," said Merriam.

He was excited, of course. All the stimulations of his evening, including more coffee than he was used to and an unaccustomed taste of wine and mystery and intrigue, could not fail to tell on the blood of youth. But he felt extraordinarily calm, and he was not in the least afraid of Alicia. He had not fully made up his mind about the proposed adventure, but Alicia knew several things about the wantings of men.

"Let me light it for you," she pursued.

She struck a match, which somehow she already had out of its box, put out a white hand and arm, took the cigarette from his fingers, put it to her own lips and lighted it, and handed it back to him.

"Thank you," said Merriam again, just a little confused. Hesitatingly, with an undeniable trace of thrill, he put the cigarette to his own lips. Poor boy! It was an uneven contest!

Alicia deftly moved her chair to the corner of the table, bringing it not very close but much closer to Merriam's. Close enough for him to catch the faint, unfamiliar perfume. She put out her hand again and drew one of the yellow roses from their bowl. She rested both arms on the table and played with the rose, drawing it through her fingers and up and down one white, rounded forearm.

"Mr. Merriam," she said, "perhaps you have wondered why I am in this thing."

As a matter of fact he had neglected to be curious on that point, but now he was.

"Yes," he said.

"Mr. Rockwell converted me. Oh, I can see you don't like him. You think he is hard and unscrupulous and self-seeking. Well, he is. All men are--at least, almost all men are"--she glanced at Merriam. "But he is a genuine reformer for all that. He is heart and soul for what he calls the People. He works tremendously for them all his time. And he is shrewd and fearless."

Now it is probable that Alicia's little character sketch presented a very just picture of Philip Rockwell. But it did not appeal to Merriam as true, much less as likable. He was too young. He still wanted his heroes all heroic and his villains naught but black and red with almost visible horns and tail.

He did not reply. He could not, however, remove his eyes from the felicitous meanderings of the yellow rose.

"Well," sighed Alicia, "I was going to tell you how Mr. Rockwell converted me. You see, my father--but you don't know who my father is, do you? The newspapers always refer to him us 'the billionaire brewer.' They like the alliteration, I suppose. He's very busy now converting all his plants for the manufacture of near-beer." (She laughed as if that were a good joke.) "His youngest sister, my Aunt Geraldine, was Senator Norman's first wife. So I know George Norman well. I was quite a favourite of his when he used to come to our house before poor Aunt Jerry died. So Philip wanted me to 'use my influence' with Mr. Norman about his precious Ordinance. I wasn't much interested at first. I hadn't ridden in a street car, of course, in years."

"Hadn't you?" said Merriam, quite at a loss.

"No. When I go out I take either the limousine or the electric. So I really didn't know much about conditions, except, of course, from the cartoons about strap-hangers in the newspapers. Philip saw that that was why I was unsympathetic. So he dared me to go for a street-car ride with him. Of course I wouldn't take a dare.

"It was about five o'clock in the afternoon. We took the limousine down to Wabash and Madison. There Philip made me get out on the street corner. It was horrid weather--a cold, blowy spring rain. But Philip was hard as a rock. He told the chauffeur to drive to the corner of Cottage Grove and Thirty-Ninth Street and wait for us. And we waited for a car. It was terrible. We stood out in the street under the Elevated--by one of the posts, you know--for a little protection from the train. We hadn't any umbrella. The wind tore at my skirts and my hair. The trains going by overhead nearly burst your ears with noise. And automobiles and great motor trucks crashed past within a few inches of us and splashed mud and nearly stifled us with gasoline smells. And a crowd of other people got around us and knocked into us and walked on our feet and stuck umbrellas in our eyes. For a long time no car at all came. Then three or four came together, but they were all jammed full to the steps, so that we couldn't get on.

"I was ready to give up. I told Philip so.

"'Let's go into Mandel's,' I begged, 'and you can call a taxi.'

"'No you don't,' he said. 'Here, we can get on this one.'

"Another car had stopped about twenty feet from us. We joined a kind of football rush for the rear end. I tripped on my skirt when I tried to climb the steps, but Philip caught me by the arm and dragged me on, as though I had been a sack of flour.

"Then for a long time we couldn't get inside but had to stand on the platform wedged like olives in a bottle. It was so dark and cold and noisy, and everybody was so wet and crushed and smelly. A man beside me smelled so strong of tobacco and whiskey and of--not having had a bath for a long time, that I was nearly ill. And I thought a poor little shop girl on the other side of me was going to faint.

"After a long time some people got out at the other end of the car--at Twelfth Street, Philip says,--and some of us squeezed inside into the crowded aisle. Inside it was warm--hot, in fact,--but still smellier. Philip got me a strap, and I hung on to it. I don't care for strap-hanger jokes any more. It's terribly tiring, and it pulls your waist all out of shape.

"'Bet you won't get a seat,' grinned Philip.

"Of course I was bound then that I would. I looked about. Some of the men who were seated were reading papers the way they are in the cartoons. Others just sat and stared in front of them. I didn't blame them much. They looked tired, too. But I had to get a seat to spite Philip. The young man in the one before which I was standing, or hanging, looked rather nice. I made up my mind to get his seat. I had to look down inside his newspaper and crowd against his legs. At last, after looking up at me three or four times, he got up with a jerk as if he had just noticed me and took off his hat, and I smiled at him and at Philip and sat down. But he kept staring at me so that I wished I had let him alone.

"I made the poor little shop girl sit on my lap. Nobody gave her a seat. I suppose she wouldn't work for it the way I did. She was a pretty little thing, too. Just a tiny bit like Mollie June Norman. Not so pretty, of course, but the same type.

"Then there was nothing to do but wait till we got to Thirty-Ninth Street. Ages and ages. They ought to have been able to go to the South Pole and back.

"When we did get there I put the little girl in my seat--she was going to Eighty-First Street, poor little thing,--and Philip and I got out and went home in the limousine, and he told me all about how the Ordinance would better things, and I promised to help him if I could."

"And you did?" said Merriam. He was touched--whether by Alicia's own sufferings in the course of her remarkable exploration or by those of the little shop girl who looked like Mollie June, does not, perhaps, matter. He now quite fully liked Alicia. He saw that, in spite of her extreme décolleté and her cigarettes, she had a generous heart.

"I tried to," replied Alicia. "I saw George Norman, and I did my best--my very best. But he wouldn't promise anything. He only laughed and tried to kiss me."

"Tried to kiss you!" echoed Merriam, naïvely aghast.

"Yes," said Alicia, with her eyes demurely on the rose between her fingers.

And John Merriam, looking at her, grasped clearly the possibility that a "boy senator" with whom Alicia had done her very best might try to kiss her.

"So that is one reason why I am in it to the death," Alicia went on, "because George Norman--wouldn't listen to me. And I don't want Philip to fail."

She laid one hand quickly over one of Merriam's hands, startling him so that he nearly drew his away. "I love him," she said, and her eyes shone effulgently into Merriam's. "He hasn't much money, and he is hard and--and conceited, but he is courageous. He dares anything. He dared to take me on that street-car ride. He would dare to burst in on the Senator and Mayor Black to-night. He dares think up this plan. A woman loves a Man."

There is no doubt that Alicia pronounced "man" with a capital letter, and she looked challengingly at Merriam.

"We are to be married next month," she added.

"Oh!" gasped Merriam, his eyes staring in spite of himself at her hand that lay on his.

The hand flew away as quickly as it had alighted, but he still felt its soft coolness on his fingers as she said:

"Of course all this is why I am in it, not why you should be. You can't do it just to please me. But you really ought to think of all those poor people, like the little shop girl--all the tired men and women--millions of them, Philip says--who have to endure that torture every night after long days of hard work. It's truly awful, and it might all be so much better if we only got the Ordinance. You could get it for them in one little half hour!"

She looked hopefully at Merriam. He was in fact hesitant. To have the fun of the thing, to gratify this strange, attractive Alicia, and to render an important service to the population of a great city--it was tempting.

"There's another thing," Alicia hurried on. "You knew Mollie June Norman. She was one of your students. I think you ought to do it for her sake."

"Why so?" Merriam's question came swift and sharp.

"Because if Senator Norman kills the Ordinance it will be his ruin. It will cost him Chicago's vote in the next election, and he can't win on the Down-State vote alone."

"I thought Rockwell said the League would collapse."

Possibly Alicia had forgotten this. But she only shrugged her shoulders.

"It may or it mayn't. But either way the people are aroused. Philip swears they will beat Norman if he betrays them now. He is sure they can and will. And if the 'boy senator' were unseated and had to retire to private life it would be terrible for Mollie June. He's bad enough to live with as it is."

At this point Merriam was visited by a sudden and splendid idea. Since he did not disclose it to Alicia, I feel in honour bound to conceal it for the present from the reader.

Alicia detected its presence in his eyes and judiciously kept silent.

It took about ten seconds for that idea to grow from nothingness into full flower. For perhaps five seconds longer Merriam inwardly contemplated its unique beauty. Then he said:

"I'll do it!"

CHAPTER VI

STAGE-SETTING

Alicia gave him no time for reconsideration or after-thoughts.

"Good!" she cried, "I was sure you would."

She was on her feet in an instant, and as he got to his she held out her hand. Merriam took it--to shake hands on their bargain was his thought. But Alicia never exactly shook hands. She touched or pressed or squeezed according to circumstances. On this occasion it was a warm, clinging squeeze. Her other hand patted Merriam's shoulder.

"I was sure you would," she repeated. "No Man"--again the capital letter was unmistakable--"could have resisted--the--the opportunity."

The curtain at the door was lifted, and Philip Rockwell's voice said: "May I come in? The twenty minutes are up."

They were. Just up. Alicia had done her part in exactly the fraction of an hour she had given herself. No vaudeville act could have been more precisely timed.

"Yes. Come in, dear," said Alicia. "Mr. Merriam will do it. We were just shaking hands on it."

Rockwell crossed the room in a rush and caught Merriam's hand as Alicia relinquished it. He pumped vigorously. In his eyes shone the unmistakable light of that genuine enthusiasm which Alicia had described to her skeptical auditor.

"You're the right sort," he cried. "You are doing a great thing, Mr. Merriam. You will never regret it. But I can't thank you now," he added, dropping Merriam's hand in mid-air, so to speak. "It's ten minutes of eight. That money-bag, Crockett, came out of the elevator just before I came back. I have a car at the Ladies' Entrance."

"With Simpson?" asked Alicia.

"Yes. I had to get things ready. The time was so short. I fixed the head waiter. Simpson seemed ready enough. Has some old grudge against Norman, I think."

"Yes," said Alicia, "he has. I'm a little afraid--I wish I could have seen him. Never mind. It can't be helped. Where's Father Murray?"

"Watching to buttonhole the Mayor if he should come too soon."

He looked critically for a moment at Merriam, seemed satisfied, and crossed to the telephone on the sideboard.

"I'll ring up the curtain," he said.

He laughed boyishly in his excitement and new hope. He seemed very different now from the hard-eyed, middle-aged fellow of an hour ago. Merriam saw how Alicia might admire him.

"Give me Room Three-Two-Three," he said into the telephone, his eyes smiling at them.

A moment later a harsh, dry old man's voice was saying:

"Is this Senator Norman?--This is Mr. Schubert, private secretary to Mayor Black. The Mayor is sick.--I can't help it, sir. He's sick all right. He's out here at his house.--Yes, he can veto the Ordinance all right if it's necessary. But he won't do it without seeing you first. He wants you to come out. He's sent a car for you. It ought to be down there at the Ladies' Entrance by now.--No, it won't do any good to call him up. I'm here at his house now. He's in bed. And he won't veto unless he sees you. Really, sir, if you'll pardon me, you'd better come.--Thank you, sir!"

Rockwell clicked the receiver triumphantly into its hook.

"That's done," he said. "Alicia, dear, go up to the lobby on the women's side and watch the hallway leading to the Ladies' Entrance. Norman should pass out that way within five minutes. Follow him far enough to make sure that Simpson gets him. And then let us know. Meanwhile I'll coach Mr. Merriam a little."

"Right," said Alicia.

She moved to the door. The eyes of both men followed her. When Alicia moved the eyes of men did follow. And she knew it. At the doorway she turned and blew a kiss, which might be said to fall with gracious impartiality between her lover and the younger man. It was a pretty exit.

"She's a splendid girl," said Rockwell, his eyes lingering on the curtain that had cut her off from them.

"Yes," said Merriam.

Rockwell, still by the sideboard, reached for the long bottle.

"Have another glass of this?"

"I don't mind," said Merriam. The fact is, a bit of stage fright had come in for him when Alicia went out.

"There's not much I can tell you," Rockwell said, as he poured out the yellow fluid. "You'll have to depend mostly on the inspiration of the moment. You look the part all right. Your voice is all right, too. Act as grumpy as you like. Damn him about a bit.--You can swear?" he asked hastily. A sudden horrible doubt of pedagogical capabilities had crossed his mind.

Now Merriam was not a profane man, but some of his fraternity brethren had been. Also he remembered the vituperative exploits of his football coach between halves when the game was going badly.

"Swear?" he cried, as harshly as possible. "Of course I can swear, you damn fool!"

For three seconds Rockwell was startled. Then he laughed.

"Fine!" he cried. "You'll do it! All there is to it, really, is to tell him to sign the Ordinance and to get out. He may ask about Crockett. If he wants to know why he's changed his mind, tell him it's none of his damn business. If he refers to a Madame Couteau, you must look pleased. She's the pretty little manicurist whom Norman will be on his way to visit. Black knows of that affair, and he knows Norman likes to talk about it. So he may drag it in with the idea of getting on your blind side. You can tell him to shut up, of course, but you must act gratified."

"Yes," said Merriam in a noncommittal tone.

But Rockwell did not notice. He was sipping the Benedictine, with his mind on his problem.

"That's all I can think of," he said in a moment. "I'll be in the next room--the bedroom of the suite, you know,--and if you should get into deep water, I'll burst in, just as I meant to on the real Senator, and pull you out. We ought to get it over in fifteen minutes at the outside and get you off. There's just the least chance in the world, of course, that Senator Norman might get away from Simpson and come back. And there's Mrs. Norman."

"Where will she be?" asked Merriam as he took a rather large sip of his cordial.

"She's in the lobby now with Miss Norman--the Senator's sister, you know,--listening to the orchestra." (Merriam vaguely recalled the elderly woman whom he had seen with Mollie June in the Cabaret.) "The Senator was going to take them to the theater after he had finished with Black."

"What will they do when he doesn't show up?" Merriam inquired; but to all appearances he was chiefly interested at the moment in the best of liqueurs.

"Probably go without him. She's used to George Norman's broken engagements by now."

"I see," said Merriam without expression.

"Alicia and Murray will keep an eye on them, of course," Rockwell added.

And then both men jumped. It was only the telephone, but conspiracy makes neurasthenics of us all.

Rockwell answered it.

"Yes.--Good.--That's all right.--Oh!--Yes, we'll go at once."

He turned excitedly to Merriam.

"It's Alicia. Norman has come down and got into Simpson's car. Mrs. Norman is still in the lobby. And the Mayor has come in. Murray's got him, but he won't be able to hold him long. We must go right up to the room. Come--Senator!"

Merriam followed out of the private dining-room and down the corridor at a great pace into a main hallway and to an elevator.

Several people looked hard at Merriam. One important-looking elderly man stopped and held out his hand:

"How are you, Senator?"

But Rockwell crowded rudely between them.

"Excuse me, Colonel, but we must catch this car.--Very urgent!" he called as the door clicked.

And Merriam had the presence of mind to add, "Look you up later!"

"Good----" Rockwell began as they stopped at the main floor, but he paused on the first word with his mouth open.

A very large man, large every way, in evening clothes, with a fine head of white hair and an air of conscious distinction, was stepping into the car. He saw Merriam and Rockwell. Then instantly he appeared not to have observed them, hesitated, backed gracefully out of the little group that was entering the elevator, and was gone.

The car smoothly ascended.

"Three!" said Rockwell to the elevator man. Then to Merriam he whispered, "That was the Mayor! He's got away from Murray."

"Ask for your key," whispered Rockwell, as they stepped out.

For five protracted steps Merriam's mind struggled frantically after the room number. He had just grasped it (3-2-3!) when he perceived that his perturbation had been unnecessary.

For the floor clerk--a pretty blonde of about thirty--was looking at him with her sunniest smile.

"Your key, Senator?"

"Yes, please," he managed to say.

As she handed him the key her fingers lightly touched his for a second, and she said in a low tone, "The violets are lovely."

He saw that she was wearing a large bunch of those expensively modest flowers at her waist and understood that his cousin's extra-marital interests might not be limited to Madame Couteau.

He lingered just a moment and replied in a tone as low as her own, "They look lovely where they are now."

But an appalling difficulty loomed over him even as he murmured. For he did not know whether Room 323 lay to the right or the left, and if he should start in the wrong direction----

But Rockwell knew and was already moving to the left. Merriam followed. In his relief he smiled brightly back at the floor clerk.

At the corner where the hall turned Rockwell stopped, and Merriam, coming up with him, read "323" on the door before them. Both men looked up at the transom. It was dark.

"In!" said Rockwell.

Merriam inserted the key, turned it, and cautiously opened the door a couple of inches, becoming, as he did so, thrillingly conscious of the burglarious quality of their enterprise.

No light or sound came from within.

For only three or four seconds Rockwell listened. Then he pushed the door wide, stepped past Merriam, and felt for the switch.

"You haven't invited me in, Senator," he said as the room went alight, "but I'm a forward sort of fellow.--Come inside, and close the door," he added.

Merriam pushed the door shut behind him and stared about. The apartment was probably the most gorgeous he had ever seen. The walls were a soft cream colour, the woodwork white, the carpet and hangings and lampshades rose. Most of the furniture was mahogany, some of it upholstered in rose-coloured tapestry. On a table half way down one side of the room stood a bowl of red roses. In the wall opposite Merriam, between the windows, was a fireplace of white marble, containing a gas log, with a large mirror above the mantel in a frame of white and gold. Before this fireplace stood a huge upholstered easy chair, with a pink-shaded floor lamp on one side of it and a small mahogany tabaret on the other.

While Merriam was endeavouring to appreciate this magnificence, Rockwell quickly crossed the sitting room and passed through a door at one side. After a moment he returned, crossed the room again, and disappeared through a second door. Reëmerging, he announced triumphantly, "No one in the bedrooms!"

But Merriam's eyes rested, fascinated, on a garment which Rockwell had brought back with him from the second bedroom--a luxurious smoking jacket of a most lurid crimson colour, which clashed outrageously with the rose and pinks of the senatorial sitting room.

Rockwell grinned at the look on Merriam's face.

"A historic garment, sir," he declared. "The Boy Senator's crimson smoking jacket is a household word with most of the six million souls of this commonwealth of Illinois. Off with your tails, sir, and into it!"

"Hurry!" he cried, as Merriam hesitated. "The Mayor will be here any minute."

"Why didn't he come up in the elevator with us?" Merriam asked while changing.

"All because of me, sir," replied Rockwell, in excellent spirits. "The Mayor abhors me and all my works so sincerely that I feel I have not lived in vain.--Now, then, sit in that big chair before the fireplace. Here, light this cigar. I'll start the gas log going and bring in the tray with the siphon and glasses and rye that I saw in the other room.--Ah!"

The telephone had rung, and Merriam had leapt out of his chair.

"Answer it," said Rockwell.

Merriam stepped to the telephone, which was on the wall, laid down his cigar, gripped his nerve hard, and put the receiver to his ear:

"Hello!"

A deep voice, boomingly suave, replied:

"Senator Norman?"

"Yes."

"This is Mr. Black. Have you got rid of Rockwell yet?"

"No, not yet."

"Well, can't you throw him out? I am due at the Council meeting at nine, of course. And I don't care to discuss--matters--with you in his presence, naturally. When shall I come up?"

Now the Mayor's rather long speech had given Merriam time to think. He recalled his great idea, and a new inspiration, as to ways and means, came to him.

"Eight-thirty," he replied curtly.

"But, good God!" cried the Mayor, "that gives us so little time. Can't you----"

"I said eight-thirty, damn you!"

And Merriam hung up and turned to face Rockwell at his elbow.

"But why eight-thirty?" demanded the latter as soon as he understood that it had been the Mayor. "Man alive, we ought to be gone by then! What are we to do with the next twenty minutes? You must have lost your head. Call him again. Call the desk and have him paged and told to come right up."

Without a word Merriam turned to the telephone again and asked for the desk.

But a moment later he gave Philip Rockwell one of the major surprises of the latter's life. For what he said was:

"Please page Mrs. George Norman, with the message that Senator Norman would like to see her right away in their rooms. Repeat that, please.--That's right. Thank you!"

"What in hell!" cried Rockwell, belatedly released by the click of the receiver from a paralysis of astonishment.

Merriam picked up his cigar, walked back to the easy chair, and seated himself comfortably. He was excited now to the point of a quite theatrical composure.

"Nothing in hell," he said. "Quite the contrary, in fact. I want to have a few minutes' conversation with Mrs. Norman. That's all."

"See here!" said Rockwell. "What funny business is this? I won't have----"

"Won't you? All right. Just as you say. If you don't like the way I'm playing my part, I'll drop it and walk right out of that door. I have a ticket for the theater to-night. I can still be in time."

The other man stared and gulped. It was hard for him to realise that this young cub was master of the situation, and not he, Rockwell.

"But this is serious!" he cried. "The Ordinance! The Reform League! The whole city of Chicago! You can't risk these for----"

He stopped. Then:

"Do you realise, you young fool, that if we're caught in this room, it will mean jail for both of us?"

But Merriam in his present mood was incapable of realising anything of the sort. In his mind's eye he saw Mollie June stepping into the elevator and saving in a voice of heavenly sweetness to the happy elevator man, "Three, please!"

An outer crust of his consciousness made pert reply to Rockwell:

"That would be bad for the Reform League, wouldn't it?" and added, "But you're willing to risk it for the Ordinance?"

"Yes, I am," began Rockwell, "but----"

"Would you risk it for Alicia?" Merriam interrupted.

"What has Alicia got to do with it?"

But he understood, and knew that argument was useless, and stared in helpless anger and alarm while the younger man carefully, grandly blew a beautifully perfect smoke ring into the air.

It was the youngster who spoke, still theatrically calm:

"You'd better go into the bedroom. She'll be here in a moment. Shut the door, please. And keep away from it!"

It was one of the secrets of Philip Rockwell's success in politics that, masterful as he was, he knew when to yield. He took a step towards one of the bedrooms.

"Make it short," he pleaded.

"Eight-thirty!" said Merriam.

A gentle knocking sounded at the door.

Merriam was on his feet without volition of his own, while Rockwell, almost as instinctively, slipped into the bedroom.

Then the younger man recovered himself, sat down, his feet to the gas log and his back to the door, and called, "Come in!"

CHAPTER VII

BOY AND GIRL

The door was opened and closed. John Merriam's straining ears could catch no definite sound of footsteps or skirts, and he did not dare to look around. Yet by some sixth sense, it seemed, he was aware of Mollie June's progress half way across the room and aware that she had stopped, some feet away from him.

"What is it--George?" she asked.

It was only too clear that Mollie June's lord and master was not in the habit of sending for her.

"Where is--Miss Norman?"

Merriam was conscious that Senator Norman probably did not refer to his sister in that fashion, but he did not know her given name.

"Aunt Mary? I left her in the lobby. Did you want her too?"

There was a note of eagerness in the question.

"No!"

Silence. Mollie June stood waiting in the center of the room. The significance of her failure to approach her husband was unmistakable.

Then he said: "Would you very much mind if you should miss the theater to-night?"

"Why--no. Is there anything the matter, George?"

"Not for me," said Merriam, and he rose and faced her.

"I was afraid--" She stopped, looked hard.

"George, you look--oh!"

She passed her hand across her eyes. It was a stage gesture, but when stage situations occur in real life the conventional "business" of the boards is often justified.

She looked again.

"Mr. Merriam!"

John Merriam stepped quickly forward. It occurred to him that she might faint. He had read many novels.

But Mollie June did nothing of the sort.

"Mr. Merriam!" she cried again. "How do you come here? Where is--Mr. Norman? How did you get in that?"

She pointed to the famous smoking jacket. Her bewilderment was increasing. She looked nervously about, as if suspecting that Merriam, for the sake of the crimson garment, had murdered her husband and concealed his body.

Merriam had stopped. Almost he might have wished that she had fainted. It would have been delicious to carry her in his arms and place her in the Senator's easy chair and bring water and when her eyes opened wonderingly upon him softly whisper her name. As it was he could only say formally:

"Let me take your cloak--Mrs. Norman--won't you? And sit down."

Mechanically she let him take the opera cloak from her shoulders, and when he caught hold of the senatorial chair and swung it around and pushed it towards her she sat tremblingly erect on the edge of it. Her eyes dwelt upon his face as if fascinated.

"Isn't it funny you look so much alike? I never realised it--so much. But--where is he? Why----?"

Merriam caught up a small chair, placed it in front of hers, and sat down.

"Listen, Mollie June," he said pleadingly, using unconsciously the name that ran in his thoughts.

His plan, as it had taken shape while he talked with Mayor Black on the telephone, was to tell her in advance of Rockwell's plot and to carry it through only with her approval or consent--for was not his first loyalty to her? His original idea, and his real motive, of course, had been only to see her. And now that he had her there he found he hated to waste time on explanations. But there was nothing for it. She could not be at ease or clear in her mind until she understood. So, rapidly and candidly, he related how at the instance of Mr. Rockwell the Senator had been decoyed away, while he was there to impersonate him with Mayor Black, so that the latter should sign instead of vetoing the Traction Ordinance. Then he waited for he knew not what--amazement, fright, anger, dissuasion.

But Mollie June did not seem much interested in traction ordinances. Presumably Senator Norman had not cared to educate his young wife about political matters.

"Why did you send for me?" she asked.

Her question was almost too direct for him. He could not say, to ask her approval of the plan against her husband.

"I had to see you," was all he could reply.

"Why?"

But she knew the real reason. The turning of her eyes away from him confessed it.

It was his chance to say, "Because I love you." An older man might have said it. But the young are timid and conventional--not bold and reckless, as is alleged. He remembered that she was another man's wife and only spoke her name:

"Mollie June!"

Perhaps that did as well. In fact it was, in the reticent dialect of youth, the same thing.

She looked at him a moment, then quickly away again.

"You never called me that but once before--to-night," she said.

At first he found no answer. His mind scarcely sought one. He was absorbed in merely looking at her. She was indeed girlishly perfect as she sat there, almost primly upright, in her white frock, her slender figure framed in the rose-coloured tapestry of the big chair's back and arms, which gave an effect as of a blush to her cheeks and to the white shoulders which he had never seen before except across the spaces of the Peacock Cabaret. To the eyes of middle age she would have been, perhaps, merely "charming." In his she shone with the divine radiance of Aphrodite. And his were right, of course.

He was almost trembling when at length he said:

"That was on--that last night."

"Yes," said Aphrodite, who is always chary of speech.

Suddenly he saw that her averted face was wistful, sad.

"Are you happy, Mollie June?" he cried.

Though she turned only partly to him he saw that her eyes were more a woman's eyes than he had known them and were full of tears.

"Not--very," she said.

He sat dumbly on his chair, full of pain for her, yet not altogether saddened that she should not be entirely happy with another man.

But now her face was fully towards him, and her eyes had become dry and looked past him.

"Oh, Mr. Merriam--you don't know! I can't tell you----"

He was filled with horror--almost boyishly terrified--by such dim visions as a man may have of what her lot might be.

"If I could only help you!" he cried, as earnestly as all the other separated lovers in the world have said those very words.

The eyes that looked beyond him came back to his face. The Mollie June whom he had known had had her girlish poise, and this more tragic Mollie June did not lose her self-control for long.

"You have helped me--Mr. Merriam. Oh, I am glad you brought me here! When I saw you in--the Cabaret, I just ran away from you. I couldn't even let you speak to me. Afterwards I waited upstairs in the lobby. I thought--I might see you there. But you didn't come. Then I thought George had sent for me!"

She stopped as if that was a climax.

Merriam leaned forward. He wanted to put his hand over one of hers that lay on the arm of her chair, but did not dare to. His tongue, however, was released at last.

"If ever I can help you in any way, Mollie June, you must let me know. I would do anything for you. I will always be ready."

He paused abruptly, though only for a second. A dark thought had crossed his mind: after all the "Boy Senator" was an old man (from the standpoint of twenty-eight), and leading a life unhealthy for old men. He hurried on:

"I will wait for you always. Perhaps some day----"

Did she comprehend his meaning? He could not tell, and he did not know whether to hope she did or did not. But stress of conflicting emotions made him venturesome. He did put his hand over hers.

Hers did not move.

His fingers slipped under hers, ready to raise her hand.

"That last night in Riceville, Mollie June, I kissed your--glove. To-night I want to kiss your hand--to make me yours--if you should need me."

She did not draw her hand away, but she said:

"You oughtn't to--now--Mr. Merriam."

The formal name by which she had continually addressed him pricked.

"Won't you call me 'John,' Mollie June, just for this quarter of an hour before the Mayor comes?"

"Oh, the Mayor!" she cried in alarmed remembrance.

"Call me 'John,' dear--for fifteen minutes!"

In his voice and eyes were both entreaty and command, and Mollie June could not resist them.

"John!" she whispered.

And he raised her hand and bent quickly forward, and his lips pressed her fingers. A bare second. Yet it was in his mind a solemn, a sacramental kiss. He straightened up triumphant, happy. Youth asks so little.

"Now you know you have a right to me!" he cried. "To send for me. To use me any way, any time!"

There came a loud knocking at the door.

Mollie June started half way out of the chair and then sank back. Merriam, on his feet and part way across the floor, stopped confused. He perceived that he ought to get Mollie June out of the room.

The knocking resounded again. And immediately the door was tried and opened, and a man stepped in. It was the large man with the white hair who had started to enter the elevator--Mayor Black.

CHAPTER VIII

PASSAGES WITH MAYOR BLACK

Mayor of the great city of Chicago was hurriedly apologetic:

"I beg your pardon, Senator. You said eight-thirty, you know, and it's that now. I came up and knocked. Evidently you did not hear. A man I met in the lobby told me that you had left the hotel in a taxi half an hour ago. He said he saw you go. So I tried the door and when it opened stepped in, just to make sure. I am sorry to have intruded."

Apparently, however, he did not intend to withdraw.

Mollie June crouched frightened in her chair, but Merriam was rapidly pulling himself together.

"It is I who should apologise for keeping you waiting, Mayor Black," he said. "I will ask Mrs. Norman to excuse us. Will you step into the next room for a few minutes, Mollie June? We shall not be long."

He went back to her chair and held out his hand.

She took it and rose. Her spirit, too, was reasserting itself. She faced the Mayor with a smile:

"Good evening, Mr. Black."

"Good evening, Mrs. Norman." He bowed gallantly. "I am very sorry----"

"Oh," she cried lightly, one would have said happily, "business is business, I know." Then to Merriam: "You won't belong?"

"Only a minute--dear."

(Perhaps we can hardly blame him for profiting by the license his rôle gave him to address her so.)

He moved to the door opposite to that through which Rockwell had slipped away fifteen minutes earlier and opened it for her. She passed through into the darkness of the other room. He felt for the switch and pushed it.

As the light went on she turned and smiled at him:

"Thank you."

For an instant it seemed to him--perhaps to both of them--that she was really his wife, who was leaving him for a few minutes only, whom he would soon rejoin.

Then he turned to face Mayor Black.

"I need stay only a minute, Senator," the Mayor was saying. "If I had known you were engaged with Mrs. Norman, I shouldn't have bothered you. It wasn't really necessary. I met Mr. Crockett downstairs while I was waiting. He told me the answer. But since I had the engagement with you I came up. If I may, I'll write the veto right here, and then I can go on to the Council meeting."

As he spoke he drew a thick roll of paper from his overcoat pocket, unfolded it, opened it at the last sheet, and laid it on a small writing table.

"I shan't give any reasons," he added, sitting down and picking up a pen. "Least said, soonest mended--eh, Senator?"

"But you're not to veto! You're to sign!" cried Merriam.

Perhaps if he had more fully grasped the significance of the other's statement about Mr. Crockett he would have been less abrupt; but that mighty financier was only a dim name to his mind.

"What?" said Black, turning in his chair.

The Mayor's tone gave Merriam some realisation of the seriousness of the new situation. But he could only stand to his guns.

"You're to sign! I don't care what Crockett said. I don't care a damn what he said," he corrected himself. "You do what I say, damn you!"

"But how is this?" exclaimed the Mayor. "Crockett said you fully agreed that the best interests----"

He stopped, looking intently at Merriam.

In the excitement of the dialogue which had followed Merriam's sending for Mollie June Rockwell had neglected the precaution he had had in mind of having only side lights on. Rockwell had planned, also, that Merriam should sit facing the gas log with his back to the room and look at the Mayor as little as possible. Now the boy stood where the full glare of the chandelier shone on his face. Perhaps, too, the emotions of a youthful love scene, such as he had just passed through, were not the best preparation in the world for counterfeiting the slightly worn cheeks and slightly tired eyes of an elderly if well-preserved politician.

"Who in hell are you?" gasped the Mayor.

Merriam was certainly startled. Perhaps he showed it just a little. But he stood up bravely.

"You know damn well who I am. And you do as I say or get out of Chicago politics. I'll attend to Crockett," he added. "That's my affair."

"Is that so? Well, I guess it's my affair who makes a monkey of me! I----"

Again the Mayor stopped abruptly and stared. Then suddenly he rose.

"I was told the Senator had left the hotel. I think I was correctly informed. What sort of a trick is this? Who are you?"

"Damn you----" Merriam began, with realistic sincerity, but with the vaguest ideas as to what more substantial statement should follow.

At this moment, however, Rockwell opened his door and stepped into the room.

"Aha!" cried the Mayor. No stage villain could have said it better. "Mr. Rockwell! Of the Reform League, I believe!" He bowed sardonically. "'One-Thing-at-a-Time Rockwell!' Well, one thing at a time like this"--he pointed at Merriam--"ought to be enough for a reformer!"

"Good evening, Mayor Black," said Rockwell. "I believe you were about to sign the Ordinance."

"I was not. In spite of the Senator here. I don't get a chance to defy Senator Norman every day. I rather enjoy it!--And let me tell you," he added, "if you and your friends in that damned League make any more trouble for me or Senator Norman or the Ordinance or anything else after this--if you don't shut up and lie low and keep pretty damn quiet, we'll show you up, my boy. This would make a pretty little story for the newspapers--and for the State's Attorney, too! We might call it 'The Ethics of Reform!' Oh, we have you where we want you now, Mr. Reformer! As for this young impostor here, we'll have to look him up a bit. A very promising young gentleman!"

The Mayor evidently enjoyed the center of the stage. He towered tall and imposing and righteous, and looked triumphantly from Rockwell to Merriam and back again.

"I really think you'd better sign it," said Rockwell. He spoke rather low.

"What do you mean?" cried the Mayor.

Then he thought he saw.

"Oh, it's strong-arm work next, is it?"

There was a note of alarm mingled with his irony, and the magnificence of his pose weakened a little. Rockwell was a determined-looking fellow, and there was Merriam to help him, and the Mayor was not really a very brave man. But he went on talking to save his face:

"You certainly are a jewel of a reformer, Rockwell!"

Then he saw a point and quickly recovered his full grandeur.

"I don't quite see how you're going to manage, though. Of course, if it were a case of preventing me from signing, you might do it--the two of you! But signing's rather different, isn't it? You can lead a horse to water---- Of course, you can club me or hold a revolver to my head. But, you see, I know you wouldn't dare to fire a revolver here in this room. So just how will you force my fingers to form the letters? Or perhaps you will try forgery? Is forgery the next act, Mr. Reformer?"

Rockwell smiled. He was in no hurry to reply. Merriam still stood, as he had throughout this unforeseen dialogue, a rigid spectator.

Then, in the moment's silence, very inopportunely, a clock, somewhere outside, struck the hour--a quarter to nine.

Rockwell tried to drown it, saying, "I'm hardly so versatile as that."

But the Mayor had heard and understood.

"Oh, that's it!" he cried.

"Yes, that's it!" said Rockwell, and the center of the stage automatically shifted to him. "If that Ordinance is not returned to the Council with your veto by nine o'clock to-night, it becomes a law whether you sign it or not! You're a bit slow, Mr. Mayor, but you've got it at last!"

The Mayor did not answer. He shifted slightly on his feet. His hand shot out. He grabbed the Ordinance from the waiting table and rushed for the door.

"Catch him!" shouted Rockwell. "Hold him!"

Merriam had been a football player. As if released from a spring he darted after the Mayor. From habit he tackled low. They went down with something of a crash, knocking over an ash stand as they fell, and the Mayor gave a groan. If he had ever known how to fall properly, he had forgotten. Merriam hoped there were no bones broken.

But Rockwell was wasting no thoughts on commiseration. He was kneeling over the fallen ruler of the city with his hands clapped over his mouth--to prevent further groans or other outcry.

"Get the paper!" he said.

Merriam scrambled forward and tried to pull the Ordinance from the hand at the end of the outstretched arm. It was held tight. He was afraid of tearing it.

"Twist his arm," said Rockwell.

A very little twist sufficed. The Mayor gave up. Merriam rose to his feet with the document.

"Will you be quiet?" Rockwell demanded in the Mayor's ear, and released his mouth enough to enable him to answer.

"Yes," said the Mayor feebly. "Let me up."

"All right. That's better. If you make any rumpus we'll down you again, you know, and tie you up and gag you.--Give me the paper," he added to Merriam, "and help him up, will you?"

He stood watching while the younger man assisted the Mayor in the ponderous job of getting on his feet.

"I hope you aren't hurt, sir," said Merriam.

The Mayor looked sourly at him. "Thanks!" He felt of his arms and passed his hands up and down over his ribs. "I guess I'm all right--except my clothes."

In fact his white shirt front was crumpled and his broadcloth coat and trousers were dusty with cigar ash from the fallen stand. Merriam was in little better condition. They were not dressed for football practice. Rockwell only was still immaculate.

"I'll get a brush," said Merriam. No longer a Senator, he felt very boyish and anxious to be useful.

As he spoke he turned to the room--the fall had occurred near the door into the hall--and stopped nonplused. For in her bedroom door stood Mollie June, her eyes full at once of eagerness and of apprehension.

How much she had heard I do not pretend to know. Perhaps some of Merriam's unprofessorial profanity, possibly the Mayor's triumphant irony, certainly Rockwell's shout, "Catch him!" and the fall. Doubtless the silence after that thud had been too much for her self-control.

The Mayor's rueful gaze travelling past Merriam also rested on Mollie June. A light came into his eyes. He drew himself up.

"Come in, Mrs. Norman," he said. "Your husband"--with a significant emphasis on the word--"has been giving a demonstration of his athletic prowess. He is indeed the Boy Senator and a suitable mate for a woman as young and pretty as yourself."

He paid no attention to Merriam's angry and threatening glance but turned to Rockwell.

"Mr. Rockwell," he said, "I think you'd better give me that Ordinance after all."

Rockwell spoke in a low tone to Merriam:

"Get her out!"

The Mayor had no objection to that. The older men watched while Merriam walked rapidly across the room to Mollie June.

"You'd better go into the other room again, dear," he said.

But Mollie June's eyes were bright and her colour high and her white shoulders very straight.

"No!" she said.

"You really will oblige us greatly, Mrs. Norman," said the Mayor, "if you will withdraw for a moment longer."

"No!" said Mollie June. "This is my room. I have a right to be here. And I don't like scuffling."

She cast a disdainful glance at their crumpled shirts and dusty trousers. And, womanlike, she sought a diversion.

"What a mess you are in!" she cried. "Mr.--George,--get the whisk broom from the bedroom there!"

It was an almost haughty command. And Merriam rejoiced to obey this new mistress of the situation. He darted into the bedroom.

The two older men looked at each other. Rockwell was content: time was passing. When the Mayor started to speak he forestalled him.

"She's really right," he said. "You can't leave like this. And some one might come in."

Merriam was back with the whisk broom.

"Come under the light," ordered Mollie June, addressing the Mayor.

That dignitary reluctantly advanced.

"Turn around. Now, George, brush him."

Merriam sought diligently to remove the ashes from the Mayor's garments. It required vigorous work, for the dust was rubbed deeply into the cloth. Mollie June superintended closely. The Mayor had to turn about several times and raise an arm and then the other arm. He could not make much progress in the regaining of his dignity; and he, no less than Rockwell, was conscious of the fleeing moments. But, glancing again and again at Mollie June, girlishly imperious and intent, he could not as yet muster his brutality for what he saw the next move in his game must be. Rockwell waited serenely in the background, the Ordinance in his hand.

At last the Mayor's broadcloth was fairly presentable. Nothing could be done, of course, with his shirt front.

"Now, George," said Mollie June, "it's your turn. Give me the broom."

"No, no!"

"Give me the broom!" She took it from his hand. "Turn around!"

And with her own hands and in the manner of wifely solicitude she began to dust his collar and lapels.

This was not unpleasant for Merriam, but it prompted the Mayor to take his cue. As he watched his eyes hardened, and in a moment he said:

"You take good care of your husband, don't you, Mrs. Norman?"

"I try to," said Mollie June rather pertly, dusting away. Evidently she had not heard enough to know that Merriam had been found out.

"It must be pleasant," said the Mayor, "to have such a nice young husband."

Mollie June stopped her work and looked at him in sudden alarm.

"What do you mean?" she said.

Rockwell stepped forward and caught her arm:

"Let me lead you into the next room, Mrs. Norman. You must let us talk with the Mayor."

"No!" she cried, snatching her arm away, and turning eyes of angry innocence on Mayor Black, "What do you mean?"

"I mean," he said, with smiling suavity--he was not to be daunted now, and, short of violence there was no way of stopping him,--"that you are a young woman. This gentleman--whose name I do not have the honour of knowing--is also young, and rather handsome. The Senator, of course, is getting old. I find you two alone in your husband's rooms, your husband having been tricked away. You can hardly expect me to believe that you mistook him for your husband. You display no dislike for his person. I draw my own conclusions. Every one in Chicago will draw the same conclusions if this interesting situation, quite worthy of Boccaccio, should become known. That's why I think"--he turned suddenly to Rockwell--"that you'd better give me the Ordinance after all."

Mollie June's cheeks were blazing. Merriam's also; he could not look at her. But Rockwell pulled his watch from his pocket.

"It is now two minutes past nine," he said. "The Ordinance has become law. You can have it now, Mr. Mayor." He held out the document.

The Mayor snatched it.

"It's not legal!" he cried. "And it won't stand. I can prove that I was prevented by foul means--by foul means," he repeated, "from exercising my charter right of veto. I'll take out an injunction, and I'll fight it to the Supreme Court. And in the process all Chicago--the whole United States--shall be entertained with the piquant story of these young people"--he waved a hand towards Merriam and Mollie June,--"aided and abetted by Mr. Reformer Rockwell. I'll ruin them, and you and your League, whatever else comes of it. Oh, you're a clever lot, you--you reformers!"

He paused out of breath. Then, dramatically, for he was always self-conscious and inclined to pose:

"Madame and gentlemen!"--but the effectiveness of his bow was somewhat marred by the sorry state of his shirt front--"I wish you a very good evening!"

But Rockwell was before him with his back to the hall door.

"You've forgotten your hat, Mayor," he said.

(In fact, his tall hat still stood on the writing table where he had set it down before he spread out the Ordinance there to write his veto.)

"Damn my hat! Let me go!"

"Presently, presently. I still think you'd better sign the Ordinance."

"Do you mean to knock me down again?"

"I'd like nothing better, you--cad!" cried Merriam, who had stood bursting with outrage a minute longer than he could endure.

The Mayor almost jumped at the savage sincerity of this threat in his rear. Rockwell smiled at the startled look on his face, but he spoke quietly:

"No violence. I hope to convince you that it would be to your best interests to sign it. Since it has become a law anyway."

"Never!" cried the Mayor. "Do you think I would be a traitor to--to--my party? And I mean to get even with this gang, whatever else I do!"

But the next instant he jumped indeed. A new voice spoke--a woman's.

"Mayor Black," it said, "you're a fool!"

CHAPTER IX

AUNT MARY

All four of the actors in the little scene turned, and Mollie June uttered an exclamation:

"Aunt Mary!"

In the doorway from which Rockwell had emerged a few minutes earlier stood the thin, pale, elderly woman whom Merriam had seen with Mollie June in the Peacock Cabaret. She wore a black evening gown, rather too heavily overlaid with jet, was tall and very erect, and had streaked gray hair, a Roman nose, and a firm mouth. The effect as she stood there, framed in the door, was decidedly striking--sibylline.

Mollie June ran to her.

"Oh, Aunt Mary!" she cried.

Merriam was afraid that Mollie June would burst into tears. Very possibly she would have liked to do so, but Aunt Mary gave her no opportunity.

"Lock the door, Mr. Rockwell," she said, putting an arm about Mollie June's waist. Her tone and manner were vigorous and dominant.

"Good evening, Mr. Black," she continued, while Rockwell hastened to obey her. And to Merriam: "Good evening, Mr.--Wilson. Now I think we had better all sit down and talk it over."

"I can't," said the Mayor. "I'm late for the Council meeting already. I've been shamefully tricked, Miss Norman."

"I think you have," returned Aunt Mary, releasing Mollie June and advancing a step or two into the room. "But that's the very reason why you need to consider your position at once. You're in a mess. So are we. Perhaps we can help each other out. The Council can wait. 'Phone them that you've been detained. They can go ahead, I suppose. Really, Mr. Black, I see a point or two in this business that I think will interest you."

Mayor Black met Mary Norman's direct, purposeful gaze. He was impressed by her air of command and intelligence. He recalled gossip to the effect that it was really she who ran George Norman's campaigns, that she even wrote some of his speeches.

"Very well," he said, "I'll stay ten minutes. Never mind 'phoning."

"Good," said Aunt Mary. "There are seats for all of us, I believe. Take that one, Mayor."

She indicated the large armchair with the rose-coloured tapestry in which Mollie June had been ensconced half an hour before, and laid her own hand on the back of the smaller one close by in which Merriam had sat.

Then she turned to Mollie June:

"Do you wish to leave us, dear, or to stay?"

"I'll stay!" said Mollie June. Her colour was still high, and the glance she threw in the Mayor's direction was distinctly hostile, but she had recovered her self-control. We shall be able to forgive young Merriam a throb of admiration at her spirit.

"Very well," said Aunt Mary. "Sit over there, then. Mr.--Wilson," she added, to Merriam, "on that table yonder you will find a humidor. Pass the cigars, please. And pick up that ash stand and set it here by the Mayor."

She and the Mayor and Mollie June sat down. Rockwell remained standing. Merriam, though somewhat confused at having turned from Norman into Wilson, hastened to do as he was bid. He picked up the ash stand, straightening the box of matches into place, and brought it and set it by the Mayor's chair. Then he got the humidor, opened its heavy lid, and passed the gold-banded perfectos therein to the Mayor and to Rockwell.

"Are you leaving me out, young man?" demanded Aunt Mary, who had watched him in appraising silence.

Merriam turned to her with the humidor, hesitating.

"There don't seem to be any cigarettes," he said.

"I have some in my pocket."

But Aunt Mary leaned forward and took from the humidor a package of "little cigars" that had been slipped in at one end of the box of perfectos.

"No cigarettes for me," she said. "I smoke when I'm with men so as to be one of them. A cigarette leaves me a woman. A cigar, even one of these little ones, makes a man of me. Give me a match, please."

With what seemed to himself amazing self-control, Merriam took a match from the ash stand, struck it, and would have held the light for her. But Aunt Mary took it from him and, looking all the while amazingly like his own mother, deliberately and efficiently ignited the "little cigar."

Then she looked up quizzically at Merriam, blew out the match, handed it to him, and said, "Sit down, Mr. Wilson."

Having seated himself, Merriam found Aunt Mary looking intently at the Mayor, who was smoking and returning her gaze.

But Rockwell broke in:

"How much do you know, Miss Norman? And how do you know it?"

"As to how I know it," said Aunt Mary, "that's my own business for the present. Not because there need be any secret about it, but because we haven't time for explanations." She puffed at her little cigar. "As to how much I know, I believe I understand the whole affair--except how Mrs. Norman came into it." She looked at Rockwell.

That gentleman did not reply. Merriam broke the silence:

"I sent for her."

He said it very well--not defiantly, but as a plain, necessary statement of fact.

Aunt Mary turned in her chair to look at him.

"Ah!" she said.

He felt that he was colouring under her gaze. Perhaps that colour answered her obvious next question as to why he had done so. She did not ask that question, but turned back to the Mayor:

"I overheard a little of your conversation from the doorway before I spoke. Mr. Rockwell was saying he thought that, as things stand now, it would be best for you to sign the Ordinance. I think so too."

The Mayor would have interrupted, but she waved her little cigar at him.

"You can, of course," she continued, "explain that you were tricked. But how much would that help you with Mr. Crockett or any of his cronies and allies? They would only think the worse of you and throw you over the more quickly. A man of your age and standing cannot afford to be tricked. If he is, he had better conceal the fact. And how about the people of Chicago, before whom you come up for reëlection in the fall? Will their sympathies be with you or with the persons who tricked you into giving them the Ordinance they wanted? The American people love a clever trick. And a trick is clever if it succeeds. As for the illegality, they won't care a picayune for that. You said you would fight it in the courts. Well, you might. But it would be a long fight. You yourself mentioned the Supreme Court. And in the meantime it is a law and goes into effect at once. Unless, of course, you take out an injunction. And if you do that, you will make yourself so unpopular that you can never even be nominated again. Let us suppose it goes into effect. Then by the time your fight was won, if you won it, the new conditions would be established, and nobody would dare try to unscramble the eggs. The Council would simply have to pass it over again, and you--or your successor, rather, for you would be out by then--would promptly sign it. No, my friend, there is no road for you in that direction. You would lose out both ways--with the bosses, who would have no more use for a man who had allowed himself to be fooled at a critical juncture, and with the people. Your only chance--unless you wish to retire quickly and ignominiously to private life--is to cut loose from the bosses and throw in your lot with the people--sign the Ordinance, claim the credit, join forces with Rockwell here, defy Crockett, and come out as the people's champion!"

The Mayor was not smoking. He was looking hard at Aunt Mary, as one man looks at another. (Her little cigar had effected that.) There was aroused interest in his eyes.

"Wouldn't you rather like to go into politics as your own boss for a change?" Aunt Mary asked. "Rather than as one miserable little cog in a big, dirty machine?"

The Mayor flushed a little and took refuge behind a puff of smoke.

"Perhaps I would," he said. Then, suddenly: "How about Senator Norman? Do I defy him too?"

"Not at all," said Aunt Mary. "He also will go over to the people."

"Can you answer for him?"

"I think I can. He will be forced to do so in the same way you are. He too has been victimised."

She leaned forward and deposited her small cigar, of which she had really smoked very little, in the ash tray. Sitting erect, she folded her hands in her lap and became forthwith a woman again--a sedate, almost prim, elderly woman.

"That," she explained simply, "is the source of my interest in this matter. I like you, Mayor Black, because you have some of the courtliness of the old school in your manner. I should be sorry to see you in misfortune. But I care much more, naturally, for my brother, George Norman, and more still for the name of Norman"--from her tone she might have referred to the Deity,--"which has been an honourable name in this country for eight generations, and which George, with his spoils politics and his dissipations, is compromising. I have long wanted him to break with his present associates, to live straight, and to become a real leader, as the Normans were in New York State in the early years of the last century. I have tried again and again to get him to do so. Over and over he has promised me he would. But he is weak. He has never done it. Now he will have to do it!"

All the members of the little group looked with some admiration, I fancy, at Aunt Mary, sitting straight, an incarnation of aristocratic, elderly femininity, in her chair. Where a moment or two before she had been an unsexed modern, she looked now like an old family portrait.

Rockwell broke the momentary silence:

"Miss Norman has presented, so much better than I could have done, the argument which I tried to suggest to Mr. Black."

It was probably unfortunate that Rockwell had recalled attention to himself. The Mayor glanced at him with animosity, and at the silent Merriam, and over at Mollie June, listening eagerly in the background. Then at Aunt Mary again. He leaned back, pulling at his cigar, thinking hard.

In the silence a slight noise became audible from the bedroom behind Aunt Mary--a word or two of whispering and then a sound as if some one tiptoeing had stumbled a little.

The Mayor jumped to his feet.

"Who's there?" he cried, pointing.

For an instant Aunt Mary was out of countenance. But only for an instant. Then, without rising or turning her head, she called:

"Come in, Alicia."

A moment's silence. Then a laugh, of a premeditated sweetness which Merriam remembered, and Alicia Wayward stood in the doorway.

The Mayor and Merriam rose. Mollie June, too, jumped up. Only Aunt Mary remained calmly seated.

After a second's pause in the effective framing of the door, Alicia advanced with an air of eager pleasure and held out her hand to the Mayor.

"Good evening, Mr. Black."

The Mayor was a very susceptible male where women like Alicia were concerned. He took her hand.

"Good evening, Miss Wayward." But, still holding the hand, he looked steadily at her and asked, "Who else is in there?"

"Who else?" repeated Alicia, raising her pretty dark eyebrows.

"Or were you whispering to yourself?" pursued the Mayor.

Alicia laughed and drew her hand away. "It's only Father Murray." Then, raising her voice a little: "You'll have to come in, Father Murray, to save my reputation. This is really all of us," she added, as the priest rather sheepishly presented himself. "You can search the room if you like."

She smiled at him in the manner which novelists commonly describe as roguish.

The Mayor smiled back at her, but he turned to the latest arrival.

"Were you in this plot, too, Father Murray?"

"Indeed he was," Alicia answered for him. "He didn't quite approve of it at first. But we quite easily converted him. So, you see, it can't be so black as it first seemed to you, Mr. Mayor. And really," she hurried on, "you ought to do as Miss Norman suggests. It's a splendid chance for you. To really be a--a Man, you know! And I can help."

"How can you help?" asked the Mayor.

"I am quite sure," said Alicia, "that I can get my father to subscribe quite a lot of money--a hundred thousand dollars, say--to your campaign fund--yours and Senator Norman's and the Reform League's."

"Is Mr. Wayward so keen on reform? I should think he had had nearly enough of it. They've practically put him out of business, these reformers."

"He's rather keen on me, you know," said Alicia. "And he likes Mollie June and Miss Norman and George Norman and----"

"Father Murray, I suppose," interrupted the Mayor, "and anybody else you can think of. You mean you can get it out of him." But his appreciative smile made a compliment of the accusation.

Alicia only raised her eyebrows again.

Aunt Mary rose and took the reins of business into her own hands once more.

"I should be willing to subscribe something, too, out of my own income," she said. "And the League can raise plenty of money. You won't lack for funds. Here's my proposition, Mr. Black. You lie low and keep still till noon to-morrow. Don't go to the Council meeting at all. Keep the Ordinance in your own possession. Refuse to see any one. See what the papers say in the morning. And wait for a message from George Norman. If by noon to-morrow he telephones you that he will go with you, will you go over to the League, sign the Ordinance, break with Crockett and the rest of them, and appeal to the people on your own?"

The Mayor looked from Aunt Mary to Alicia's appealing and admiring eyes and back at Aunt Mary. He avoided Rockwell and Merriam and Mollie June.

"That's fair enough," he said. "I'll do that." Then: "You know where Norman is, do you?"

"Yes," said Aunt Mary. It was plain, however, that she did not intend to communicate the information.

"And what becomes of this young gentleman?" The Mayor looked at Merriam.

"He will disappear where he came from."

"Well, well," said the Mayor genially, "it has been a very stimulating evening. Rather like a play. You have certainly put me in a box. But I'll admit I'm interested in your suggestion, Miss Norman. I'll think it over carefully. Now I believe I'll call a taxi."

"Let me," said Rockwell, and he stepped to the telephone.

The Mayor addressed himself to Merriam:

"Will you bring me my hat, Mr.--Wilson?"

Merriam was near the writing table on which the hat stood. He picked it up and brought it.

"The resemblance is marvellously close," said the Mayor, studying his face. "And you did your part very well, young man. But let me advise you to keep away from the neighbourhood of Senator Norman. You might get into serious trouble."

Merriam did not reply or smile but handed him the hat.

"There's a taxi ready," said Rockwell, turning from the telephone into which he had been speaking.

"Thank you," said the Mayor. He looked at Mollie June, who stood some distance from him:

"I hope you will forgive me, Mrs. Norman, for my--rudeness earlier this evening. I am afraid I was too angry then to know what I was saying."

Like Merriam, Mollie June did not answer or smile. Possibly she was imitating his demeanour. But she bowed slightly.

"Really," interjected Alicia, "Mollie June had never seen Mr.--Mr. Wilson since before she was married until five minutes before you came in."

"Quite so. Of course," said the Mayor. He held out his hand to Aunt Mary. "You are a wonderful woman, Miss Norman."

"George shall telephone before noon," she replied, shaking hands like a man.

"Till then at least you can depend on me."

He turned to Alicia.

Alicia kept his hand a long minute. "We have always liked you, Mr. Black--we women," she said. "In your new rôle we shall admire you so much!"

"I would do much to win your admiration," returned the Mayor, somewhat guardedly gallant. "Good night, Father Murray. Good night, Rockwell--you precious reformer! Good night, Mr. Wilson. That's only a stage name, isn't it? Well, good night, all!"

The suave politician bowed himself out.

CHAPTER X

A SENATOR MISSING

The members of the group that remained looked at one another. Alicia dropped into a chair.

"Whew!" she said.

Father Murray crossed quickly from the doorway, where he had stood silent ever since his shamefaced entrance, to Aunt Mary's side.

"Wonderful, Miss Norman!" he cried.

Aunt Mary smiled at him--her first smile in that scene. "Thank you, Arthur," she said.

But she added instantly to Rockwell:

"See if George is there. Telephone. He must be by now. Then you and Arthur must take a taxi and go after him and bring him back here. The number is Harrison 3731."

Rockwell turned back to the telephone.

Merriam walked over to Mollie June and put his hands on the back of the chair in which she had been sitting prior to the entrance of Alicia.

"Hadn't you better sit down?" he said.

"Yes, if you'll move it up a little." She wanted to be closer to the rest of the group.

He pushed the chair forward, and she sat and smiled up at him:

"Thank you!"

A woman's eyes are never so appealingly beautiful as in a quick upward glance. Merriam fell suddenly more deeply in love with her than he had ever been. And he was for the moment very happy. There was something between them, something very slight, as tenuous and as innocent as youth itself, but existent and precious.

Rockwell turned from the telephone.

"He's not there," he said, "and he's not been there."

(There was a tacit conspiracy among them, on account of Mollie June, not to refer more definitely to George's destination.)

"Not!" exclaimed Aunt Mary. Like the men, she was still standing. She looked at Alicia. "The driver was instructed to go directly there?"

"Yes," said Alicia. Then she added in a low tone:

"The driver was Simpson."

"Simpson!" Aunt Mary echoed. "That's dangerous. Why didn't you tell me that before?"

The reader will have guessed the explanation of Aunt Mary's presence, and Alicia's and Father Murray's, and I insert it here only to gratify his sense of acumen: that Alicia and Murray, "keeping an eye on" Mollie June and Aunt Mary in accordance with Rockwell's plan, in the hotel lobby, had witnessed the former's unexpected departure in response to Merriam's summons, and had joined Miss Norman to find out what had happened; and that Aunt Mary, who was more than a match for both of them, especially in their alarm over Mollie June's being dragged into the affair, had obtained first an inkling and presently the whole story of the plot, and had insisted on coming upstairs, and had entered through the bedroom.

Alicia did not reply to Aunt Mary's question. Indeed she hardly had time to do so, for Aunt Mary followed it quickly with another of a more practical character:

"What time is it?"

Merriam was the most prompt in producing his watch. "Ten o'clock," he said.

"And it was barely eight when George left the hotel. How long should it have taken to get there?"

"Less than half an hour," said Rockwell.

"Are you sure he's not there? They might have lied to you."

"They might. But I didn't think so."

"Mr. Rockwell and I can go and see," volunteered Father Murray, who seemed very eager to be helpful.

While Aunt Mary was considering this suggestion, Merriam had an idea.

"My voice is very like Senator Norman's?" he asked.

"Yes, it is," said Aunt Mary.

"Then let me telephone."

"Good!" cried Rockwell. "From the bedroom." This was, of course, to spare Mollie June.

"Very well," said Aunt Mary.

The two men stepped into George Norman's bedroom--the one into which Mollie June had earlier retreated. As they did so, Aunt Mary's eyes followed Merriam with the appraising look which they had held whenever she regarded him throughout the evening.

Rockwell shut the door.

"Harrison 3731," he said. "Say, 'This is George Norman,' and ask for 'Jennie.'"

The telephone was on the night table. Merriam sat down on the edge of the bed and raised the instrument. He realised that he had not the slightest idea what to expect. Rockwell sat beside him, close enough to hear what should come through the receiver.

In a moment Merriam had the connection. A not unmusical voice said: "Who is it, please?"

"This is George Norman. Is Jennie there?"

"Why, Georgie, boy! Don't you know me? You always do. And you ought to!" A tender little laugh followed, which thrilled Merriam in spite of himself.

"I didn't at first," he answered and stopped at a loss.

Rockwell put his mouth close to Merriam's ear and formed a tunnel from the one orifice to the other with his hands. "Can I see you to-night, dearie?" he prompted.

"Can I see you to-night, dearie?" Merriam obediently repeated.

"Oh, can you come? Goodie! But"--the unmistakably loving voice was lowered--"you must be careful, Georgie."

"Careful?" Merriam queried cautiously.

"Yes. Some one thinks you're here already."

"Who?"

"I don't know. Some man. He wouldn't tell me who he was. He called up just a minute ago. He was awfully sure you were here. He wouldn't believe me when I said you weren't. Is it dangerous?" There was a touching note of anxiety in Jennie's voice.

"I guess not."

"Can you come anyway?" eagerly.

"I'm not sure. Don't wait for me long. I'll come within an hour if I can get away."

"You'll telephone again?"

"Yes--if I can."

"Georgie, boy!" There followed a little sound of lips moved in a certain way--unmistakably a kiss.

John Merriam played up with an effectiveness that surprised himself very much.

"Dearie!" he whispered tenderly into the telephone, "good night!"--and abruptly hung up.

"You don't need much prompting!" exclaimed Rockwell, rising. "Well, she didn't lie to me."

"No," Merriam assented confusedly. Whatever else he had anticipated from Norman's mistress, the disreputable manicurist, it had not been that note of sincere affection or that he himself would be for an instant carried off his feet. As he automatically followed Rockwell, who made for the sitting room, he was unwillingly conscious of a new charity for George Norman.

"He's not there," Rockwell reported. "And he hasn't been."

"Sure?" Aunt Mary looked at Merriam.

Our hero nodded. He could not speak. And he dared not look at Mollie June, of whose bright eyes fixed on his face he was nevertheless acutely aware.

In a moment, however, it was of Aunt Mary's gaze that he was sensible. She seemed to read him through. He thought, ridiculously, that that momentary telephonic tenderness could not be hid from her.

But when she spoke her question both relieved and startled him.

"At what hour in the morning does your train go?"

"It goes to-night. At 2:00 A.M."

"If George is back here by then, it does," said Aunt Mary. "If not, you stay."

"But I must go to-night," cried Merriam, suddenly awakened to realities and feeling as though the curtain had descended abruptly on some mad combination of melodrama and farce. "I must meet my classes in the morning!"

Aunt Mary, who must have sat down while the two men were telephoning, rose and walked up to Merriam.

"Mr. Merriam," she said, "you more than any one else are responsible for the present situation--because of your sending for Mrs. Norman. I don't ask why you did that, but you did it. If you hadn't stepped outside your part that way, I verily believe, when I look at you, that the trick could have been played as Mr. Rockwell planned it. The Mayor would not have seen Crockett downstairs. I don't believe he would have recognised you. He would have signed the Ordinance and gone away committed and ignorant of the deception. Now he's only half committed, and he has recognised you as an impostor. If he doesn't hear from George Norman by noon to-morrow as I promised, if he turns against us and tells his story, he can ruin us--all." (She said "all," but she glanced at Mollie June.) "And now we don't know where George is. As soon as we find him, you can go. But Mayor Black must get a message from Senator Norman before noon to-morrow--from the true one or the false one! Do you see? Until we find George you must stay."

"Yes, by Jove!" cried Rockwell. "You can't back out now. You can telegraph to--where is it?"

"Riceville," said Alicia, who was leaning excitedly forward in her chair. "Oh, you will!"

Merriam looked at Alicia. The same combination of appeal and admiration in her eyes which he had seen her work a few minutes before on the Mayor did not move him.

His eyes travelled to the face of Mollie June. She was not leaning forward, but sat erect on the edge of her chair. There was a flush of excitement--was it eagerness?--on her cheeks. Unwillingly he compared her with the warm seductiveness of the voice on the telephone. She was not like that,--though perhaps she could be. But she was radiantly bright and pure, a girl, a woman, to be worshipped--and protected from all evil. He remembered how he had wished to help her. He had said he would be always ready. Now was his chance. And he desired passionately to expiate his involuntary infidelity of feeling and tone over the telephone. He rose superior to the cares, the duties, of a "professor," even before she spoke.

"Oh, please--Mr. Merriam," she said.

Merriam smiled at her, but looked back at Aunt Mary.

"You think it very necessary?" he asked--not because he had not decided but to avoid any shadow of compromising Mollie June by seeming to yield directly to her.

"I do," said Aunt Mary.

"Then of course I'll stay," said Merriam.

CHAPTER XI

CONFESSIONS OF WAITER NO. 73

From a sleep which had been heavy but was becoming restless and dreamful, Merriam was awakened about seven o'clock the next morning by a knocking at his door. He leaned over and pulled the little chain of the night lamp, and as the light glowed asked, "Who is it?"

"Rockwell," came the answer.

By a rather athletic bit of stretching Merriam was able to turn the key in his lock without getting out of bed. "Come in," he called.

Rockwell entered, closed the door behind him, and stood looking down at Merriam, who had lain back on his pillow.

"Slept well?" he asked.

"Like a football player," laughed Merriam, somehow ashamed of this fact.

"Feeling fit?"

"Certainly. Always feel fit."

For a moment longer Rockwell looked, with perhaps a touch of an older man's envy of the unconscionable imperturbability of youthful health. Then he said:

"Well, I have news."

Merriam waited.

"About half an hour ago I called up 'Jennie' again. When I said I was a friend of Norman's, she admitted he was there. By asking a good many questions I learned that he turned up about two o'clock this morning and that he was very drunk. I judge he's having a touch of D.T. 'Jennie' was evidently rather disgusted at his arriving so late and in that condition--after your affectionate tone earlier in the evening, you know."

Merriam evaded this thrust with a question:

"Where can he have been in the meantime?"

"That is a point on which we shall have to seek information from our friend Simpson. Since telephoning I have seen Miss Norman, and we have agreed to order breakfast for all of us in Senator Norman's rooms with Simpson to serve us. He goes on duty again at seven o'clock, and I have asked that he be sent here as soon as he reports to take a breakfast order."

"Why here?"

"Well, he will be more likely to talk freely to you and me alone than to you and me and Miss Norman--to say nothing of Mrs. Norman. And, if he has played some trick on us, he might refuse to go to Senator Norman's suite, but this room will mean nothing to him. Of course, he may not show up at all this morning. Ah, there he is, I hope!"

A vigorous knock had sounded at the door. It proved, however, to be only a porter with Merriam's suit case and hand bag, for which the industrious Rockwell had also sent so early that morning to the more modest hotel at which Merriam had been registered.

"Now I can dress," said Merriam. "I was afraid I should have to turn waiter myself, having only evening clothes to put on."

"Yes, get into your things," said Rockwell, "and let me think some more. This conspiracy business takes a lot more thinking than mere Reform!"

Merriam hurried through a bath--a tubful of hot water early in the morning was so unwonted a luxury to a citizen of Riceville that he could not bring himself to forego it even on this occasion--and began to dress carefully, realising with pleasant excitement that he was to have breakfast with Mollie June.

He had no more than got into his trousers when another knock came at the door.

Rockwell motioned to Merriam to step into the bathroom and himself went to the door. "Come in," he said and opened it, keeping behind it.

Sure enough, Simpson stepped into the room with his napkin and order pad.

Rockwell promptly closed the door behind him, locked it, and stood with his back against it. He also pushed the switch for the center chandelier--for only the dim night lamp had been on.

In the sudden light Simpson whirled with a startled and most unprofessional agility to face Rockwell.

"Good morning, Simpson."

The waiter fairly moistened his lips before he could answer.

"Good morning, Mr. Rockwell."

The man's face was certainly haggard. His eyes even were a trifle bloodshot. It was clear he had had a strange night. But after a moment of hostile confrontation the professional impassivity of a waiter--which is perhaps the ultimate perfection of sang froid--descended about him like a cloak and mask.

"I was sent to this room--Mr. Wilson's room, I understood--to take a breakfast order."

"Right, Simpson!" cried Merriam cheerily, emerging from the bathroom in his shirt sleeves.

For a moment the human gleamed again through the eyes of the functionary.

"Are you Mr. Wilson?" he asked. His manner was perfect servility, but there was mockery and malice in the tone.

"Yes, Simpson," said Merriam. "This morning I am Mr. Wilson. I have read of an English duke who puts on a new pair of trousers each morning. But I go him one better. I put on an entire new personality each morning."

"Very good, sir," was the ironical, stage-butler reply to this sally. "The grapefruit is very good this morning. Will you have some?"

Merriam glanced at Rockwell.

"Very likely we'll have some," said the latter, "but we want something else first."

"Before the grapefruit?" inquired Simpson.

"Yes, before the grapefruit," said Rockwell, a trifle sharply. "And what we propose to have before the grapefruit is a bit of talk with you, Mr. Simpson--about last night. Do you care to sit down?" He pointed to a chair.

Simpson was undoubtedly agitated, but he controlled himself excellently. He even lifted his eyebrows:

"I hope I know my place, sir."

He raised his pad and wrote on it.

"Grapefruit," he said with insolent suavity. "For two? And then what? We have some excellent ham."

"Damn your ham!" cried Rockwell. He snatched the man's pad and threw it on the floor. "Sit down in that chair and drop this damned pose! We're going to talk to you man to man."

But Simpson only stooped and picked up his pad.

"Mr. Rockwell," he said, "I know my place. It is a very humble one. It is to take orders--for meals, to be served in this hotel. So long as that is what you want I am yours to command. But"--the American citizen stood up in him; no European waiter could have said it--"outside of that I am my own master as much as you are. When you call me 'Mr. Simpson' and tell me to sit down, I don't have to do it. And I don't have to talk of my personal affairs unless I choose, any more than any one else!"

For an instant he glared at Rockwell as one angry man at another, his equal. Then he quietly became the waiter again. He lifted his pad and poised his pencil:

"Shall we say some ham?"

Rockwell looked at him a moment longer. Then he laughed: "Ham let it be!"

"Yes, sir," said Simpson, deferentially writing. "And some baked potatoes, perhaps? And coffee?"

"Yes," said Rockwell, "and the telephone book. Hand me the telephone book, please."

Simpson hesitated, but this was clearly within the line of his duties.

"Yes, sir," he said, and stepped towards the stand on which the book lay.

"Wait!" said Rockwell. "Perhaps it isn't necessary. I think you can tell me the number I want."

He paused a moment to let this sink in. Then:

"Miss Alicia Wayward's number. I see I shall have to bring her here. You see," he explained pleasantly, "I have locked the door. There are two of us against you."

He indicated Merriam, who still stood in the bathroom door, following the progress of the interview with excited interest.

"We are going to keep you here, not by any authority that we as guests of this hotel may have over you--as you have very well pointed out, we have none in such a matter,--but by simple force, till Miss Wayward can come down. We shall see whether she can make you talk."

To Merriam's astonishment the waiter, with a sound somewhere between a sigh and a groan, sank into the chair which he had thus far so pertinaciously refused to take. For a moment he stared at the floor. Then he raised his eyes to Rockwell:

"What do you want to know?"

"That's better," said Rockwell, leaving the door and preparing to sit down opposite Simpson. "Will you have a cigar?"

Simpson shook his head and repeated his question.

"What do you want?"

Rockwell dropped into his chair and glancing at Merriam pointed to another seat. Merriam was too much excited to care to sit down, but he came forward and leaned on the back of the chair.

"We want to know about last night, of course," said Rockwell. "At five minutes to eight Senator Norman got into the taxi which you were driving. At about two o'clock this morning he tumbled into Madame Couteau's, delirious with drink. We want the whole story of what happened between eight and two."

Simpson sat on the edge of his chair, his hands on his knees. His order pad was under one hand, and its flexure showed that he was exerting intense pressure. His napkin dangled loosely half off his arm. He was looking at the floor again.

He remained in this position for a number of seconds, the other two men intently regarding him. Then he straightened up, pushed himself farther back in his chair, and looked at Rockwell.

"You shall have it," he said.

For a moment he stared. Then:

"I hate Senator Norman--enough to kill him."

The reader will observe that I use no exclamation points in punctuating Simpson's sentence. There were none in his delivery of it. But it was the more startling on that account.

"Do you know why?" he unexpectedly demanded.

"No," said Rockwell.

"Five years ago I was butler to Mr. Wayward. The--the-girl you call Madame Couteau was the parlour maid there. Her real name is Jennie Higgins. I was in love with her, and she had promised to marry me. I had a little money saved up. At that time Senator Norman's first wife was still alive, who was Mr. Wayward's sister, you know, Miss Wayward's aunt. Senator Norman came often to the house. He took a fancy to Jennie and turned her head. The fact that she was in his own brother-in-law's house made no difference to him. She--went off with him--on a lake cruise, in his yacht. When they came back he set her up in that flat and got her work as a manicurist. Ever since he has been her paramour!"

The odd, old-fashioned word, which Simpson must have gleaned from some novel, came out queerly. But it served to express his bitterness as no ordinary word could have done.

"That's all. A parlour maid ruined. A butler cheated of his wife. It's nothing, of course."

He was looking down again. Neither Rockwell nor Merriam ventured to speak. When he raised his eyes there was a gleam in them.

"Last night I had him in my power." (One sensed novels again.) "In my taxi, not knowing who I was. I was minded to kill him. You had told me to drive him directly to--to Jennie's. Not much! I drove as fast as I dared out Michigan Avenue. For a long time he suspected nothing. He thought he was on his way to the Mayor's, and that was the right direction. But when I turned into Washington Park he got scared. He called through the tube to know where in hell I was going. I answered, 'This is Simpson. You can try jumping, if you like--into hell!' I put the machine up to forty miles an hour. He opened the door once, but I guess he didn't dare try it. He shut it again. Of course, it was pure luck I didn't get stopped for speeding. But I got through Washington Park and across the Midway and out into a lonely place at the south end of Jackson Park. Then I stopped and got down and opened the door and ordered him out."

The man stopped. When he spoke again there was more contempt than hatred in his voice.

"The coward. He went down on his knees on the wet road and cried and begged me not to hurt him. He said he was sorry, and he didn't know I cared so much, and he would make it all right yet. He would give me a lot of money and get me up in a business, and I could marry Jennie after all, and wouldn't I forgive him and go back to town and have a drink? The worm! I could have spit on him. Senator Norman!

"He saved his life all right," he added reflectively. "If he had showed fight I would have strangled him and thrown his body in the Lake." Simpson shuddered a little. "But you couldn't strangle a crying baby. I kicked him once or twice. But what more could I do? He kept begging me not to hurt him but to go back to town and have a drink. That gave me an idea. I jerked him up and pitched him into the car and drove back to a saloon. We sat at a table and drank, and he kept offering me money and saying I should marry Jennie. As if I would take his leavings! He drank a lot. I only took one or two to steady my nerves--poured out the rest. But he drank four or five cocktails. Then we went on in the taxi to another saloon and did it again. And then to another. And about midnight we ended up at a cheap dance hall on the West Side, and I turned him loose among the roughnecks and the women there.

"He was pretty drunk--told everybody who he was and showed his money,--and in a few minutes a lot of the girls were around him to get the money away from him. Most of the men they were with didn't mind--egged them on. Pretty soon he had a dozen couples in the bar with him and was paying for drinks all around. But one big foreigner, who was with the prettiest girl in the room, was ugly. When Norman, after buying a second round of drinks, tried to kiss his girl, he roared out at him and knocked him down. But Norman only stumbled up again with his lip bleeding and begged his pardon and handed the girl a fifty-dollar bill and bought drinks again. And then he got his arm about another girl and took her out to dance. It was an hour before I found him again. He was sitting on the stairs, with his collar off, crazy drunk--seeing things--and all cleaned out as to money.

"I though then he was about ripe for what I wanted. I carried him downstairs and put him in the taxi and drove to--Madame Couteau's! There I carried him up to her flat and propped him against the door and knocked and then waited part way down the stairs. When the door was opened he fell in, and I ran downstairs and took my taxi home."

Evidently Simpson had finished his tale. And it had done him good to tell it. He was much less agitated than when he began. He looked steadily rather than angrily at Rockwell.

"That's the story you wanted," he said. "Of course now you can get me fired and blacklisted. It's little I'll care."

Rockwell had let his cigar go out while Simpson talked. Now he lit it again with a good deal of deliberation. He was evidently thinking. Even Merriam perceived the point that was uppermost in his mind, namely, that with Norman still at Jennie's they had need of Simpson's silence and would be likely to need his help again. They must try to conciliate him and win his loyal support.

"I see no reason why I should do anything like that," Rockwell began, referring to Simpson's defiant suggestion. "I can hardly pronounce your conduct virtuous. But it was very natural--very excusable. It's lucky you did no worse!"

(Merriam had a sudden vision of the horrid predicament they would have been in if Norman had actually been murdered in Jackson Park at the very time when he was impersonating him at the hotel.)

"Still," continued Rockwell, "I think you made a mistake."

"A mistake!" echoed Simpson.

"Yes.--Do you still love--Miss Higgins?"

"What's that to you?"

"Evidently you do. Why didn't you take his offer--his money, and marry her? It would have been the sensible thing to do and the kind thing to her. You might be happy after all. Of course, if you're too stern a moralist!"

The man's face worked queerly. "It's not that. But she wouldn't have a waiter now. And he wouldn't have done it--let her alone."

"Well, perhaps not, as things stood. But he will now. Have you seen the morning papers?"

"The papers? No, sir."

"If you'll read them you'll find that Senator Norman has broken with all his old life and turned over a new leaf entirely, which he can't turn back. You have helped him do it, in fact!"

"What's the idea?" growled Simpson suspiciously.

"Listen, Mr. Simpson."

Rapidly Rockwell sketched the principal events which had taken place at the hotel while the waiter was driving his enemy about Chicago: Merriam's impersonation, the Mayor's failure to veto the Ordinance in time, and the necessity which both the Mayor and Norman were now under of breaking with the "interests" and coming out as the candidates of the Reform League.

"In that rôle," he concluded, "George Norman will have to lead a strictly virtuous life. It will be the business of his friends and backers--my business, for example--to see that he does so. I will personally undertake to see that you get the money he promised you. All you will have to do is to make it up with Jennie. You may not be able or willing to do that right away. But in a few months---- There's no reason why you shouldn't be set up in a nice little business of your own--a delicatessen or caterer's, or a taxicab firm, or whatever you would like--in some other city, with Jennie for your wife. Will you think it over?"

Simpson looked at Rockwell and then at Merriam.

"You certainly are as like as two plates," he said irrelevantly to the latter.

"Won't you think it over?" returned Merriam, as persuasively as if he had been reasoning with some irate patron of the Riceville High School.

"Yes," said Simpson after a bit, "I'll think it over."

"In the meantime," said Rockwell, "you must keep still about all this, of course. And we may need your help again--for taxi driving and so forth."

"What if I choose to blow the whole thing?"

"In that case you will do more than any one else could to help Norman to the thing he will most want--a reconciliation with Crockett and the rest of the gang. And he will go on in his old ways--Jennie included."

Rockwell let Simpson digest that for a moment, and then said:

"Well, think it over as you have promised. And now we really do want breakfast."

Simpson got to his feet. He straightened the napkin on his arm and mechanically enunciated his servile formula:

"Yes, sir."

"And, Simpson!"

"Yes, sir?"

"I will talk with you again this afternoon. Till then, at least, keep your mouth shut and think. Think sensibly."

"Very good, sir."

Waiter No. 73 bowed gravely and left the bedroom.

CHAPTER XII

GRAPEFRUIT AND TELEGRAMS

When the door closed behind Simpson, Rockwell and Merriam naturally looked at each other.

"Poor fellow!" said Merriam.

In spite of himself his mind was visited by a tantalising recollection of Jennie's voice as it had come to him over the telephone. With no more evidence than that he was inclined to think that Simpson was right in saying that she would not have a waiter now. But it was impossible to speak of this to Rockwell.

The latter had apparently dismissed the incident and was looking at his watch.

"It's nearly eight o'clock," he said. "Put the rest of your things on and go down to Norman's rooms on the next floor. You're to have breakfast there with Miss Norman and Mrs. Norman. You'd better go down the stairs rather than in the elevator; you will be less likely to meet some one who will take you for the Senator. I am going to hunt up Dr. Hobart, the house physician here, and take him with me to this Madame Couteau's, or Jennie's, to see Norman. We must get him on his feet at once. A hotel physician will be the very man for that."

"I must shave," said Merriam.

"Oh, never mind that. Time is precious."

Merriam thought of the train which he now planned to take. It left at nine-fifteen and would get him to Riceville a little after noon. He remembered, too, that he must telegraph to his assistant principal that he would miss the morning session. And he thought of the coming breakfast hour with Mollie June. Certainly time was precious to him. Nevertheless he said decidedly:

"I'm going to shave all the same."

Rockwell looked at him with a comprehending smile. "All right, my boy," said the older man. "Doubtless it's very necessary. Hurry up and try not to cut yourself. I'll run along with the doctor."

He moved to the door, stopped with his hand on the knob to say, "I shall probably drop in at the rooms before you're through breakfast," and was gone.

Merriam sighed a certain relief and went into the bathroom to shave.

A few minutes later, following Rockwell's injunction, he descended to the floor below by the stairs rather than the elevator. He forgot even to look at the pretty floor clerk on Floor Three, who last night was wearing his--Norman's--violets.

When he knocked at the door labeled 323 it was the voice he most desired to hear that said, "Come in."

He opened the door. The rose-and-white room was bright with morning sunshine, and half way down its length Mollie June, in a blue satin breakfast coat, with a lacy boudoir cap covering her hair, was standing before the little table which held the bowl of roses.

"Good morning, Mr.--John," she said.

He half perceived that her voice sounded tired and a little sad. But the daintiness of breakfast coats and boudoir caps was as strange in Merriam's world as white shoulders were. His eyes drank it in delightfully. In his pleasure her note of sadness escaped him. He answered almost gaily:

"Good morning--Mollie June!"

His tone probably betrayed his mood, and I dare say Mollie June guessed the reason for his happiness. But she ignored both mood and reason. She had turned back to the roses.

"Come and help me," she said. "These flowers must have fresh water."

Merriam pushed the door shut behind him and advanced rapidly. I am almost afraid he might have taken her in his arms. But Mollie June was already half way across the room with the roses, to lay them on a newspaper which she had previously spread on the seat of a straight-backed chair. So all that Merriam got his hands on was the bowl.

"Empty it in there," said Mollie June, indicating the bathroom between the sitting room and Norman's empty bedroom, "and fill it with cold water."

Thankful that no reply was immediately demanded, Merriam did as he was bid.

When he reëntered the sitting room with the fresh water, Mollie June stooped over the chair, gathered up the roses, and came towards him.

"Set it back in the same place," she said.

Merriam did so, and she came up to him--that is to say, to the bowl--and inserted the stems all together, and with her pink fingers wet from the cool water deftly arranged the blossoms. Then, drying her finger tips on a very small handkerchief, she turned and raised her eyes to him gravely. He saw at last that she was pale--that she had been wakeful. Perhaps she had been crying. In sudden concern he stood dumb.

"Did you sleep well?" she asked.

He mustered his forces to reply.

"I am afraid I did," he said, ashamed.

She looked at him forgivingly.

"Of course you must have been dreadfully tired," she said. "I hardly slept at all," she added. "I am terribly worried about George. We didn't even know where he was until--a little while ago." Evidently Rockwell had already reported some part, at least, of Simpson's disclosure.

For a moment they stood silent, tacitly avoiding reference to George Norman's ascertained whereabouts.

Then Mollie June raised her eyes again.

"I'm worried, too, about--what we did last night. We mustn't do--so, again."

She met his eyes, very serious.

"No!" Merriam assented.

"I can't call you 'Mr. Merriam,' though," she cried. "And I mustn't call you 'John.' I've decided to call you 'Mr. John'!"

"Thank you," said Merriam gravely. He was deeply touched by the unconscious confession.

Mollie June turned away. "I must tell Aunt Mary you are here."

Just then there came a knocking at the hall door.

For an instant the boy and girl stared at each other as though in guilty alarm. Merriam started to go to the door. But Mollie June had recovered her wits.

"No," she said. "You must be careful about being seen. Sit there." She pointed to the armchair which still faced the gas log between the windows at the end of the room farthest from the hall. "I'll see who it is."

It proved to be no one more dangerous than Simpson, who with an assistant was prepared to set up a table in the sitting room and serve the grapefruit.

And even while Mollie June was bidding him come in, Aunt Mary entered from the bedroom. With her was Miss Alicia Wayward, apparently much excited, with her hands full of newspapers.

Merriam stood up, and Alicia, catching sight of him, dropped on the floor the paper she held in her right hand and advanced with an air of eagerness.

"Oh, Mr.----," she began. Then, as Merriam took her hand, she stopped short in her sentence, laughed, and said, "Who are you this morning?"

Merriam, whom Alicia always stimulated to play up, bowed over her hand as elegantly as he could and replied:

"Senator Norman, I believe--at your service. Good morning, Miss Norman," he added, politely, to the older woman.

Aunt Mary merely nodded, rather grimly, and turned away as if to inspect Simpson's preparation of the breakfast table. Merriam wondered how much of Simpson's confession Rockwell had found time to report to her.

But Alicia gave him little time for speculation.

"Well, Senator," she rejoined, withdrawing her hand (you were always conscious when Alicia gave her hand and when she withdrew it), "you and the Mayor have made quite a noise in the world this morning. See!"

She displayed the newspaper which she still held in her left hand. It was one of the leading Chicago dailies, which invariably prints one bold black headline across the top of the entire front page. The topic may be a world war or a dog fight, but the headline is always there in the same size and startling blackness of type. This morning it read:

Mayor Black Signs Ordinance

And one of the columns below carried the further head:

The Mayor and Senator Norman
Reported to Have Broken
With Traction Interests

"Oh!" exclaimed Mollie June, who had approached and read these captions. She looked at Merriam with wide-open eyes. I surmise that the newspaper headlines gave her, as indeed they gave to Merriam himself, the first actual realisation of the public interest attaching to what they had really felt to be a little private drama of their own.

Aunt Mary had joined them.

"Mr. Black has definitely signed it, you see," she said, with a touch of triumph in her tone.

It appeared that the Mayor had not gone to the Council meeting at all, and the paper did not fail to point out that the Ordinance had become law without his signature, under the provisions of the City Charter, at nine o'clock; but late in the evening, shortly before the Council adjourned, the document had arrived by a messenger, with the Mayor's signature attached.

Reporters had immediately set out in relentless pursuit and had routed the Mayor out of bed at his house between twelve and one o'clock and obtained a brief interview; the substance of which was that the public interest of the city demanded the improved conditions which the new law would insure, and that he was proud to complete with his approval the public-spirited action of the Councilmen in passing it.

The rest was mere rumour and speculation, interlarded with many prudent "it is said's," but it seemed that some if not all of it must have been inspired by the Mayor. "It was said" that an important representative of the Traction interests had seen Senator Norman in his rooms at the Hotel De Soto early in the evening and pleaded with him the cause of the interested bondholders and stockholders, whose investments would be imperilled by the changes involved, but that he had stood firm on the ground of the public welfare. "It was said," too, that later Mayor Black had had a long conference with the Senator--well, it had been rather long,--and that they had agreed that the interests of the plain people of Chicago must at all costs decide the issue. "It was said," finally, that both Senator Norman and Mayor Black would probably join forces with the Reform League, whose program they had finally so powerfully supported, in demanding and obtaining other needed improvements in municipal conditions.

From all of which it seemed to be clear that the Mayor, having taken an hour or so to think over the situation in which he found himself, had become convinced of the soundness of Aunt Mary's logic and had decided, without waiting for any further communication from the Norman camp, to claim the credit for the Ordinance and appeal for popular support thereon, taking care, however, to involve Senator Norman's name so that the real Norman should be compelled to join forces with him in his new departure.

By the time the column of news and comment and a brief and cautious editorial on the occurrence had been read out by Alicia and one or two other papers glanced at, Simpson had set up and laid his table and had his first course served. He respectfully approached and inquired if they were ready for breakfast.

"Certainly!" said Aunt Mary.

Merriam looked at his watch. It was half past eight.

"I ought to send my telegram to Riceville first," he said, "to let them know I shall be there on the noon train."

"After the grapefruit," said Aunt Mary, with a decided note in her voice which led Merriam to look at her inquiringly.

But he desired to exhibit the coolness of a man of the world, to whom telegrams were customary incidents of daily living and who habitually ran close to the wind in the matter of trains. So he acquiesced with a bookish "As you please," and moved with the others to the table.

Simpson had decorated the center of the board with one of the hotel's slim glass vases holding a couple of pink carnations. Mollie June regarded this ornament with disfavour.

"Let's have the roses instead, Mr. John," she said.

And Merriam, to the scandal of Simpson, himself removed the carnations and set the bowl of roses in their place.

They said little over the grapefruit. Alicia added a few humorous comments on points in the newspaper article, but Aunt Mary was divided between an anxious absent-mindedness and a curious questioning scrutiny of Merriam, and Merriam was distracted between a suppressed worry over his telegram and approaching train time and the delight of stolen glances at--Mrs. Senator Norman. As for Mrs. Senator Norman, she devoted herself chiefly to the fruit. Once or twice, in looking up, she almost unavoidably intercepted one of Merriam's guilty glances. When this happened, she met his eyes frankly but with a gravity that was pathetically, forgivingly rebuking.

Presently Simpson was removing the fruit rinds and placing finger bowls. Merriam looked quickly at his watch again and spoke to the waiter:

"Bring me a telegraph form, please."

Aunt Mary's absent-mindedness instantly vanished.