way to a window. Over his
shoulder Magee noted the troubled eyes of Miss Norton following. "Sit
down. I've been trying to dope you out, and I think I've got you. I've
seen your kind before. Every few months one of 'em breezes into Reuton,
spends a whole day talking to a few rats I've had to exterminate from
politics, and then flies back to New York with a ten-page story of my
vicious career all ready for the linotypers. Yes, sir--I got you. You
write sweet things for the magazines."

"Think so?" inquired Magee.

"Know it," returned the mayor heartily. "So you're out after old Jim
Cargan's scalp again, are you? I thought that now, seeing stories on the
corruption of the courts is so plentiful, you'd let the shame of the
city halls alone for a while. But--well, I guess I'm what you guys call
good copy. Big, brutal, uneducated, picturesque--you see I read them
stories myself. How long will the American public stand being ruled by a
man like this, when it might be authorizing pretty boys with kid gloves
to get next to the good things? That's the dope, ain't it--the old dope
of the reform gang--the ballyhoo of the bunch that can't let the
existing order stand? Don't worry, I ain't going to get started on that
again. But I want to talk to you serious--like a father. There was a
young fellow like you once--"

"Like me?"

"Exactly. He was out working on long hours and short pay for the reform
gang, and he happened to get hold of something that a man I knew--a man
high up in public office--wanted, and wanted bad. The young fellow was
going to get two hundred dollars for the article he was writing. My
friend offered him twenty thousand to call it off. What'd the young
fellow do?"

"Wrote the article, of course," said Magee.

"Now--now," reproved Cargan. "That remark don't fit in with the estimate
I've made of you. I think you're a smart boy. Don't disappoint me. This
young fellow I speak of--he was smart, all right. He thought the matter
over. He knew the reform bunch, through and through. All glory and no
pay, serving them. He knew how they chased bubbles, and made a lot of
noise, and never got anywhere in the end. He thought it over, Magee, the
same as you're going to do. 'You're on,' says this lad, and added five
figures to his roll as easy as we'd add a nickel. He had brains, that
guy."

"And no conscience," commented Magee.

"Conscience," said Mr. Cargan, "ain't worth much except as an excuse for
a man that hasn'