r down to the shops that sell boiler plate to the country
weeklies with patent insides. Through their concerted influence that
crowd could put the thing over in twenty-four hours. They could line
up the Authors' League, line up the defence societies, line up the
national advertisers, line up organised labour in the printing
trades--line up everybody and everything worth while. Oh, it could be
done--make no mistake about that. Call it a boycott; call it coercion,
mob law, lynch law, anything you please--it's justifiable. And there'd
be no way out for Mallard. He couldn't bring an injunction suit to
make a newspaper publisher print his name. He couldn't buy advertising
space to tell about himself if nobody would sell it to him. There's
only one thing he could do--and if I'm any judge he'd do it, sooner or
later."

[Illustration: THAT'S THE THING HE FEEDS ON--VANITY.]

Young Drayton stood up. His eyes were blazing.

"Do you know what I'm going to do, Quinlan?" he asked. "I'm going to
run up to New York on the midnight train. If I can't get a berth on a
sleeper I'll sit up in a day coach. I'm going to rout Fred Core out of
bed before breakfast time in the morning and put this thing up to him
just as you've put it up to me here to-night. If I can make him see it
as you've made me see it, he'll get busy. If he doesn't see it,
there's no harm done. But in any event it's your idea, and I'll see
to it that you're not cheated out of the credit for it."

The dipsomaniac shook his head. The flame of inspiration had died out
in Quinlan; he was a dead crater again--a drunkard quivering for the
lack of stimulant.

"Never mind the credit, son. What was it wise old Omar said--'Take the
cash and let the credit go'?--something like that anyhow. You run
along up to New York and kindle the fires. But before you start I wish
you'd loan me about two dollars. Some of these days when my luck
changes I'll pay it all back. I'm keeping track of what I owe you. Or
say, Drayton--make it five dollars, won't you, if you can spare it?"

* * * * *

Beforehand there was no announcement of the purpose to be
accomplished. The men in charge of the plan and the men directly under
them, whom they privily commissioned to carry out their intent, were
all of them sworn to secrecy. And all of them kept the pledge. On a
Monday Congressman Mallard's name appeared in practically every daily
paper in America, for it was on th