Allingham. "Evidently they had one."

"Not a word. I was in the office yesterday. We talked things over, some.
I asked her--" Bailey stopped. "Say, she was going to telephone Newton
Fitzgerald to come up. You don't suppose he's in it?"

"Let's go over to his saloon," said Allingham. "Here's a car coming
now."

But when they got over there, Fitzgerald was declaiming loudly gainst
the rotten politics of Roma.

"I've known her since she was a kid," he was saying to a gang of beery
individuals around his door, "and she's been an angel of light to me an'
mine. I voted for her--yes, I'm proud to say I did, against the party
though it was. And I shall do it again, if she comes back alive. Why, I
found a note on my desk this morning when I came in, that my barkeeper
put there, saying she'd telephoned for me to come up to the Hall
yesterday afternoon. I'd a' gone, only I was out of town and didn't get
back here last night at all. Mebbe I'd 've been of use to her some way
if I'd been on time. Anyway, I'm going on a still hunt for her tomorrow,
all by my lonesome."

"He's sincere enough," remarked Bailey. "Newton's a good-hearted fellow.
He always liked Gertrude."

They walked back and soon separated for the night, but neither of them
slept, for thinking of those two, so suddenly and mysteriously snatched
away.

As John Allingham walked home he lived over again the exciting evening
before election. He recalled the moonlit night, the rushing automobile,
the ghostly shadows chasing themselves in swift procession ever behind
him. He remembered the shock and the overturn and finding himself face
to face with Gertrude Van Deusen on the pine-shaded road. He lived again
through the rushing ride home, hearing again her silvery voice as she
talked, and feeling again the indefinable charm of her presence. He
forgot--that she was doing a man's work; he thought only of her
femininity and grace and beauty. Then, realizing afresh the calamity
that had befallen the city, he groaned aloud.

"Oh, my God!" he muttered. "If she is lost--"

Then he knew, all suddenly and with a great heartache, that he loved a
woman--that she was Gertrude Van Deusen--and that she was lost, and that
she might be dead, or in great misery and sorrow.

"Good God," he cried, "what can I do to help her?"

CHAPTER XIX

The Boodlers Score

A week later, there was a meeting of the city council, at the mayor's
office, called by the chairman of the boa