he talks about them. If he has an idea
that satisfies his judgment, he makes it a reality in the quickest
possible time. That is why the fellows around town who hate Hedrick call
him the rattlesnake, and those who admire him call him the Wrath of
God. When he put up the telephone receiver he reached for his hat and
bolted from the office under a full head of steam. He went directly to
John Markley's back office, got the check that Markley had given to
Handy, dictated a letter in the anteroom of Markley's office to a Kansas
City plate-maker, inclosed fifty dollars as he passed the draft counter,
and, as he swung by the post-office he mailed the Handy check with
instructions to have ten photographic half-tone cuts made of the check
and mailed back to Hedrick in four days.

Then he went to Mrs. Worthington, told her his story, as a lawyer puts
his case before a jury--had her raging at Ab Handy--and got an order on
the bank for the check she had given to Handy. This also he sent to the
plate-maker, and in an hour was back at his desk dictating a half-page
advertisement to go into every Republican weekly newspaper in the
district. He sent that advertisement out with the half-tone cuts Monday
morning, and it appeared all over the district that week. The
advertisement was signed by Hedrick, and began:

"Browning has a poem made after visiting a dead house, and in it he
describes the corpse of a suicide, and says 'one clear, nice, cool
squirt of water o'er the bust,' is the 'right thing to extinguish lust.'
And I desire this advertisement to be 'one clear, nice, cool squirt of
water' over the political remains of Honourable Abner Handy, to
extinguish if possible his fatal lust for crooked money." After this
followed the story of Handy's perfidy in the hitching rack case, a
petition in disbarment proceedings, and the copy of the warrant for his
arrest charged with a felony in the case sworn to by Hedrick himself.
But the effective thing was the pictures, showing both sides of the two
checks, each carefully inscribed by the two makers "for legal services
in the hitching rack case," and each check indorsed by Handy in his big,
brazen signature.

Hedrick saw to it also that, on the day the country papers printed his
advertisement, the Kansas City and Topeka papers printed the whole
story, including the casting out of Handy from Hedrick's office. It did
Handy little good to go to Topeka in his flashy clothes and give out a
festiv