trombones, I suppose."

"Until you get your work systematized you'll have no time for skipping.
Within six months, if you're not sandbagged or jailed on fake libel
suits, you'll have a unique bibliography of swindles. Then I'll begin to
come and buy your knowledge to keep my own columns clean."

The speaker looked up to meet the gaze of an iron-gray man with a harsh,
sallow face.

"Excuse my interrupting," said the new-comer.

"Just one question, Waldemar. Who's going to be the nominee?"

"Linder."

"Linder? Surely not! Why, his name hasn't been heard."

"It will be."

"His Federal job?"

"He resigns in two weeks."

"His record will kill him."

"What record? You and I know he's a grafter. But can we prove anything?
His clerk has always handled all the money."

"Wasn't there an old scandal--a woman case?"' asked the questioner
vaguely.

"That Washington man's wife? Too old. Linder would deny it flatly, and
there would be no witnesses. The woman is dead--killed by his brutal
treatment of her, they say. But the whole thing was hushed up at the
time by Linder's pull, and when the husband threatened to kill him
Linder quietly set a commissioner of insanity on the case and had
the man put away. He's never appeared since. No, that wouldn't be
politically effective."

The gray man nodded, and walked away, musing.

"Egbert, the traction boss," explained Waldemar. "We're generally on
opposite sides, but this time we're both against Linder. Egbert wants a
cheaper man for mayor. I want a straighter one. And I could get him this
year if Linder wasn't so well fortified. However, to get back to our
project, Mr. Jones--"

Get back to it they did with such absorption that when the group broke
up, several hours later, Average Jones was committed, by plan and rote,
to the new and hopeful adventure of Life.

In the great human hunt which ever has been and ever shall be till "the
last bird flies into the last light"--some call it business, some call
it art, some call it love, and a very few know it for what it is, the
very mainspring of existence--the path of the pursuer and the prey often
run obscurely parallel. What time the Honorable William Linder matured
his designs on the mayoralty, Average Jones sat in a suite of offices
in Astor Court, a location which Waldemar had advised as being central,
expensive, and inspirational of confidence, and considered, with a
whirling brain, the minor woes of humanity. Other peop