We are comrades from childhood, and
sort of cousins. He's been as near a brother to me as he could and I've
been fond of him in that kind of way."

"Then you don't love him--not really?" asked Mary; and she could not
entirely suppress a joyous note in her voice.

"Well, yes," blandly replied Gertrude. "I love Bailey in a way. Not the
passionate kind of love one reads of in novels--like this, for
instance;" she indicated the book she had been reading. "The heroine
goes through all sorts of tribulations for love's sake, and the hero
finally renounces everything for her sake; but that is only in books.
People don't love in that violent fashion. Mutual esteem and confidence
are what I see between the happiest married couples of my acquaintance.
Bailey is thoroughly reliable, helpful and honorable. I am tired of
standing up to the world alone. It must be a comfort to have a good
husband to take care of you."

"It must indeed," replied Mary, inscrutably.

CHAPTER XXI

Word From the Missing

"There seems to be something queer about the way the search goes on,"
said Bailey to Allingham. "They don't pull together, some way."

"I think it's because there is no real, efficient head to the
committee," returned Allingham. "Blatchley's afraid of running counter
to Mann; or if not exactly that, he waits for our acting mayor to take
the initiative."

"Which he will never do," retorted Bailey. "It isn't in him--and
besides--"

"I know what you mean," replied Allingham. "You don't have to put it in
words. But something more definite and aggressive has got to be done
than is doing now."

"Right you are," said Armstrong. "The question is--what?"

"The people are getting clamorous, not to say critical," said Allingham,
"Why not call another mass-meeting and put it right to them to demand or
institute a better organized search for the missing mayor?"

"Good idea," said Bailey. "Let's talk it over with Mason and Turner and
Jewett, and see if we can't stir Mann up a bit."

The two men had been lunching together at the club, with a little talk
afterwards, while they smoked their cigars in the lazy summer atmosphere
of the well-kept garden.

"Well, here it is three o'clock," added Bailey; "and I have an
appointment at a quarter-past. So long."

"I must be going, too;" and Allingham followed, walking down street as
far as his office. Once there, he hung up his hat, changed his coat for
a thinner one, and sat down to hi