air,
Hildreth sounded a new note of alarm pitched upon the efforts of the
Universal Oil Company to establish itself in the Belmount oil region; a
cry which was promptly taken up by other State editors. This editorial was
followed closely by others in the same strain, and at the end of a
fortnight Kent was fain to call a halt.

"Not too fast, Hildreth," he cautioned, dropping into the editor's den
late one night. "You are doing mighty good work, but you are making it
infinitely harder for me--driving the game to deeper cover. One of my men
had a clue: Bucks and Meigs were holding conferences with a man from the
Belmount field whose record runs back to New York. But they have taken the
alarm and thrown us off the track."

"The secretary of State's office is the place you want to watch," said
Hildreth. "New oil companies are incorporating every day. Pretty soon one
of these will swallow up all the others: that one will be the Universal
under another name, and in its application for a charter you'll find
askings big enough to cover all the rights and privileges of the original
monopoly."

"That is a good idea," said Kent, who already had a clerk in the secretary
of State's office in his pay. "But how are we coming on in the political
field?"

"We are doing business there, and you have the _Argus_ to thank for it.
You--or your idea, I should say--has a respectable following all over the
State now; as it didn't have until we began to leg for it."

Again Kent acquiesced, making no mention of sundry journeys he had made
for the sole purpose of enlisting other editors, or of the open house Miss
Van Brock was keeping for out-of-town newspaper men visiting the capital.

"Moreover, we've served your turn in the Trans-Western affair," Hildreth
went on. "Public interest is on the _qui vive_ for new developments in
that. By the way, has the capitol gang any notion of your part in all this
upstirring?"

Kent smiled and handed the editor an open letter. It was from Receiver
Guilford. The post of general counsel for the Trans-Western was vacant,
and the letter was a formal tender of the office to the "Hon. David Kent."

"H'm," said the editor. "I don't understand that a little bit."

"Why?"

"If they could get you to accept a general agency in Central Africa or New
Zealand, or some other antipodean place where you'd be safely out of the
way, it would be evident enough. But here they are proposing to take you
right into the he