he said; and he did spend it like a millionaire, lying
awake nights to devise new ways of employing it.

And for the abutments of the arch of proof the money-spending sufficed. By
dint of a warm and somewhat costly wire investigation of Rumford's
antecedents, Kent succeeded in placing the Belmount promoter
unquestionably as one of the trusted lieutenants of the Universal; and the
leaky clerk in the secretary of State's office gave the text of the
application for the "straw" company charter, showing that the powers asked
for were as despotic as the great monopoly could desire.

But for the keystone of the arch, the criminal implication of the plotters
themselves, he was indebted to a fit of ill-considered anger and to a
chapter of accidents.

XVII

THE CONSPIRATORS

It was chiefly due to Portia's urgings that Kent took Ormsby into his
confidence when the campaign was fairly opened. She put it diplomatically
on the ground of charity to an exiled millionaire, temporarily out of a
job; but her real reason went deeper. From its inception as a one-man
fight against political chicanery in high places, the criticism of the
Bucks formula was beginning to shape itself in a readjustment of party
lines in the field of State politics; and Miss Van Brock, whose designs
upon Kent's future ran far in advance of her admissions to him, was
anxiously casting about for a managerial promoter.

A little practice-play in municipal politics made the need apparent. It
came in the midst of things, basing itself upon the year-gone triumph of
agrarianism in the State. In the upheaval, the capital city had
participated to the extent of electing a majority of the aldermen on the
People's Party ticket; and before long it developed that a majority of
this aldermanic majority could be counted among the spoilsmen--was in fact
a creature of the larger ring.

[Illustration: HE JAMMED THE FIRE END OF HIS CIGAR AMONG THE FINGERS OF
THE GRASPING HAND.]

Late in the summer an ordinance was proposed by the terms of which a
single corporation was to be given a franchise granting a complete
monopoly of the streets for gas and water mains and transit rights of way.
Thereupon a bitter struggle ensued. Party lines were obliterated, and men
who shunned the primaries and otherwise shirked their political duties
raised the cry of corruption, and a Civic League was formed to fight the
ring.

Into this struggle, as giving him the chance to front the e