that
its charter gave it immunity from the law requiring all corporations to
have their organizations, officers, and operating headquarters in the
State. By the time the new company was three days old it had quietly taken
up its options and was the single big fish in the pool by virtue of its
having swallowed all the little ones.

Then came the finishing stroke which had set the wires to humming. On the
sixth day it was noised about that Senator Duvall had transferred his
controlling interest to Rumford--otherwise to the Universal Oil Company;
that he had served only as a figurehead in the transaction, using his
standing, social and political, to secure the charter which had been
denied Rumford and his associates.

It had all been managed very skilfully; the capping of the wells by the
Universal's agent, the practical sealing up of the entire district, being
the first public intimation of the result of Duvall's treachery and the
complete triumph of a foreign monopoly.

The storm that swept the State when the facts came out was cyclonic, and
it was reported, as it needed to be, that Senator Duvall had disappeared.
Never in the history of the State had public feeling risen so high; and
there were not lacking those who said that if Duvall showed himself his
life would not be safe in the streets of the capital.

It was after the _Argus_ had gone to press on the night of explosions that
Editor Hildreth sought and found David Kent in his rooms at the Clarendon,
and poured out the vials of his wrath.

"Say, I'd like to know if you cue-call this giving me a fair show!" he
demanded, flinging into Kent's sitting-room and dropping into a chair.
"Did I, or did I not understand that I was to have the age on this oil
business when there was anything fit to print?"

Kent gave the night editor a cigar and was otherwise exasperatingly
imperturbable.

"Keep your clothes on, and don't accuse a man of disloyalty until you have
all the documents in the case," he said. "I didn't know, until I saw your
bulletin a few hours ago, that the thing had been pulled off. In fact,
I've been too busy with other things to pay much attention to the Belmount
end of it."

"The ded-devil you have!" sputtered Hildreth, chewing savagely on the gift
cigar. "I'd like to know what business you had to mix up in other things
to the detriment of my news column. You were the one man who knew all
about it; or at least you did a week or two ago."

"Yes; but