ow had this been accomplished? Into the
_Star_ office had come rumors, a few days back, of the proposed payment
of a big bribe at the inn on Baldpate Mountain. The paper had decided
that one of its representatives must be on the ground. It had debated
long whom to send. Miss Evelyn Rhodes, its well-known special writer,
had got the tip in question; she had pleaded to go to the inn. The
editor, considering her sex, had sternly refused. Then gradually he had
been brought to see the wisdom of sending a girl rather than a man. The
sex of the former would put the guilty parties under surveillance off
guard. So Miss Rhodes was despatched to the inn. Here was her story. It
convicted Cargan beyond a doubt. The very money offered as a bribe was
now in the hands of the _Star_ editor, and would be turned over to
Prosecutor Drayton at his request. All this under the disquieting title
"Prison Stripes for the Mayor".

The girl's story told how, with one companion, she had gone to Upper
Asquewan Falls. There was no mention of the station waiting-room, nor of
the tears shed therein on a certain evening, Mr. Magee noted. She had
reached the inn on the morning of the day when the combination was to be
phoned. Bland was already there, shortly after came the mayor and Max.

"You got to get me out of this," Magee heard Max pleading over Cargan's
shoulder.

"Keep still!" replied the mayor roughly. He was reading his copy of the
_Star_ with keen interest now.

"I've done your dirty work for years," whined Max. "Who puts on the
rubber shoes and sneaks up dark alleys hunting votes among the garbage,
while you do the Old Glory stunt on Main Street? I do. You got to get me
out of this. It may mean jail. I couldn't stand that. I'd die."

A horrible parody of a man's real fear was in his face. The mayor shook
himself as though he would be rid forever of the coward hanging on his
arm.

"Hush up, can't you?" he said. "I'll see you through."

"You got to," Lou Max wailed.

Miss Rhodes' story went on to tell how Hayden refused to phone the
combination; how the mayor and Max dynamited the safe and secured the
precious package, only to lose it in another moment to a still different
contingent at the inn; how Hayden had come, of his suicide when he found
that his actions were in danger of exposure--"a bitter smile for
Kendrick in that" reflected Magee--and how finally, through a strange
series of accidents, the money came into the hands of the wr