hout as loudly for reforms as the
Republicans, only instead of assailing Cowperwood and McKenty they were
to point out that Schryhart's Chicago City Railway was far more
rapacious, and that this was a scheme to give it a blanket franchise of
all streets not yet covered by either the Cowperwood or the
Schryhart-Hand-Arneel lines. It was a pretty argument. The Democrats
could point with pride to a uniformly liberal interpretation of some
trying Sunday laws, whereby under Republican and reform administrations
it had been occasionally difficult for the honest working-man to get
his glass or pail of beer on Sunday. On the other hand it was possible
for the Republican orators to show how "the low dives and gin-mills"
were everywhere being operated in favor of McKenty, and that under the
highly respectable administration of the Republican candidate for mayor
this partnership between the city government and vice and crime would
be nullified.

"If I am elected," declared the Honorable Chaffee Thayer Sluss, the
Republican candidate, "neither Frank Cowperwood nor John McKenty will
dare to show his face in the City Hall unless he comes with clean hands
and an honest purpose.

"Hooray!" yelled the crowd.

"I know that ass," commented Addison, when he read this in the
Transcript. "He used to be a clerk in the Douglas Trust Company. He's
made a little money recently in the paper business. He's a mere tool
for the Arneel-Schryhart interests. He hasn't the courage of a
two-inch fish-worm."

When McKenty read it he simply observed: "There are other ways of going
to City Hall than by going yourself." He was depending upon a
councilmanic majority at least.

However, in the midst of this uproar the goings to and fro of Gilgan,
Edstrom, Kerrigan, and Tiernan were nor fully grasped. A more urbanely
shifty pair than these latter were never seen. While fraternizing
secretly with both Gilgan and Edstrom, laying out their political
programme most neatly, they were at the same time conferring with
Dowling, Duvanicki, even McKenty himself. Seeing that the outcome was,
for some reason--he could scarcely see why--looking very uncertain,
McKenty one day asked the two of them to come to see him. On getting
the letter Mr. Tiernan strolled over to Mr. Kerrigan's place to see
whether he also had received a message.

"Sure, sure! I did!" replied Mr. Kerrigan, gaily. "Here it is now in
me outside coat pocket. 'Dear Mr. Kerrigan,'" he read,