t. Two minutes later he was in the
upper corridor of the capitol, striding swiftly to the door of the lighted
room.

Recalling it afterward he wondered if the occult prompting which had
dragged him out of his chair on the Brentwcod porch saw to it that he
walked upon the strip of matting in the tile-paved corridor and so made
his approach noiseless. Also, if the same silent monitor bade him stop
short of the governor's office: at the door, namely, of the public
anteroom, which stood ajar?

A low murmur of voices came from beyond, and for a moment he paused
listening. Then he went boldly within, crossing the anteroom and standing
fairly in the broad beam of light pouring through the open door of
communication with the private office.

Four men sat in low-toned conference around the governor's writing-table,
and if any one of them had looked up the silent witness must have been
discovered. Kent marked them down one by one: the governor; Hendricks, the
secretary of State; Rumford, the oil man; and Senator Duvall. For five
pregnant minutes he stood looking on, almost within arm's reach of the
four; hearing distinctly what was said; seeing the papers which changed
hands across the table. Then he turned and went away, noiselessly as he
had come, the thick-piled carpet of the anteroom muffling his footfalls.

It was midnight when he reached his quarters in the Clarendon and flung
himself full length upon the bed, sodden with weariness. For two hours he
had tramped the deserted streets, striving in sharp travail of soul to fit
the invincible, chance-given weapon to his hand. When he came in the thing
was done, and he slept the sleep of an outworn laborer.

XVIII

DOWN, BRUNO!

For six days after the night of revelations Kent dived deep, personally
and by paid proxy, in a sea of secrecy which, but for the five pregnant
minutes in the doorway of the governor's office, might easily have proved
fathomless.

On the seventh day the conflagration broke out. The editor of the Belmount
_Refiner_ was the first to smell smoke and to raise the cry of "Fire!" but
by midnight the wires were humming with the news and the entire State was
ablaze.

The story as it appeared under the scare headlines the next morning was
crisply told. An oil company had been formed with Senator Duvall at its
head. After its incorporation it was ascertained that it not only held
options on all the most valuable wells in the Belmount region, but