Judge Walters had granted the request of Wright and Fitch,
the Indianapolis attorneys, for a postponement of the trial of a damage
suit against the Sycamore Company in which Waterman represented the
plaintiff, and this now assumed new significance in the lawyer's mind.
If he got before a mass meeting with a chance to arraign the courts for
their subservience to corporations, he was confident that it would
redound to his credit at the fall election. His affairs were in such
shape that some such miracle as his election to Congress was absolutely
necessary to his rehabilitation.

"You don't think the First National's going under, do you? Bill isn't
fool enough to let it come to that?"

Holton winked knowingly to whet his auditor's appetite.

"I don't think it; I know it! Kirkwood's a merciless devil, and he's got
Bill and my hopeful nephew Charlie where the hair's short. If Sam had
lived he'd have taken care of this traction business; Sam was a genius,
all right. Sam could sell lemons for peaches, and when people made faces
he sugared the lemons and proved they were peaches. Sam was no
second-story man; he worked on the ground floor in broad daylight. Good
old Sam!"

* * * * *

A Chicago newspaper had given currency to a rumor that the Sycamore line
was soon to be put into the hands of a receiver, and while Kirkwood
denied this promptly, there were many disquieting stories afloat as to
the fate of the road.

The reports of an expert as to the road's physical condition had been
reassuring, on the whole, and a thorough audit had placed Kirkwood in
possession of all the facts as to the property and its possibilities.
Some of the most prominent men in the State had been stockholders in the
Sanford Construction Company. Samuel Holton had enrolled in that
corporation his particular intimates, who had expected him to "take care
of them" as he was in the habit of doing. The list included several
former state officials and the benevolent bosses who manipulated the
legislature by a perfectly adjusted bi-partisan mechanism. It was with a
disagreeable shock that they found that Samuel had departed this life,
leaving them to bear the burden of his iniquities.

Tom Kirkwood had assembled these gentlemen in the inner room of Wright
and Fitch's offices and laid the incontrovertible figures before them,
with an alternative that they return their respective shares of the
plunder or answer to an action