he Municipal League rooms. Returns came in
slowly and the crowds on the street clamored for news faster than the
bulletins could be given out.

At ten o'clock John Allingham was obliged to retreat and go home,
physically worn out. The accident of the previous evening, combined with
the excitement of the day, had proved too much for him. He was already
in bed when the final returns reached him by telephone. Then he shut and
locked his door, refusing to speak to another soul that night,--not even
to his mother when she came up to see if he had taken the doctor's
medicine.

Gertrude Van Deusen, too, remained in her room alone. Face to face with
the decisive moment of victory or defeat, she could not see anyone. She
was too tired to care much whether she had won or lost, although she
recalled now, as a hopeful augury, that she had never yet been defeated
for any office for which she had run in the various women's societies to
which she belonged.

"Let John Allingham have the place, if he can get it," she was saying to
herself for the fiftieth time, as the mantel clock chimed out the
half-past ten. "I am swept under by a queer psychological wave of
repulsion. I hope I shall lose."

But she was aroused just then by the sound of women's voices on the
stairs,--laughing and chattering,--and she felt the note of triumph
ringing through her brain as they came up to her door.

"Hurrah for Roma's Woman Mayor!" cried the first one to enter. "Here's
to Her Honor the Mayor."

At the same moment John Allingham and Barnaby Burke were saying to
themselves with a choice of words befitting their habitual language:

"Defeated! and by a Woman!"

And Burke added:

"I wonder now, just what happened in that cab last night. That was a
mistake."

CHAPTER X

The New Mayor's Policy

The story of the kidnaping spread through the city like wildfire, and
surmounted in interest even the result of the election. As usual in such
cases, the facts were exaggerated and speculation ran rife as to the
principals in the plot. Some people (the more sensible) thought the
Burke forces had planned and executed the whole coup, but others
believed that it originated with Sam Watt's party and that Armstrong,
getting wind of the carrying away of Gertrude Van Deusen, speedily
turned the tables on Allingham by hiring another cab and seizing upon
him as he was leaving his house alone, to walk down town to the public
debate. It leaked out, too, tha