Port O' Gold Part 66

"Lord! What a tangle," Frank ruminated. "How will they straighten it out?"

"Remove the Mayor--if they can convict him of felony."

"Suppose they do. What then?"

"The prosecution forces can then use their power over the boodlers--force them to appoint a Mayor who's to Langdon's liking.

Afterward they'll force the Supervisors to resign and the new Mayor will put decent people in their stead."

"Justice!" apostrophized Frank, "thy name is Red Tape!"

Heney alone was to enter the lists against Delmas and Coogan in the trial of Louis Gla.s.s. The charge was bribing Supervisor Boxton to vote against the Home telephone franchise.

Frank had seen Gla.s.s at the Press Club, apparently a sound and honest citizen. A little doubt crept into Frank's mind. If men like that could stoop to the bribing of Supervisors, what was American civilization coming to?

He looked in at the Ruef trial to see if anything had happened. For the past two months there had been nothing but technical squabbles, interminable hitches and delays.

Ruef was conferring with his attorneys. All at once he stepped forward, holding a paper in his hand. Tears were streaming down his face. He began to read in sobbing, broken accents.

The crowd was so thick that Frank could not get close enough to hear Ruef's words. It seemed a confession or condonation. Scattered fragments reached Frank's ears. Then the judge's question, clearly heard, "What is your plea?"

"Guilty!" Ruef returned.

Ruef's confession served to widen the breach between Cla.s.s and Ma.s.s. He implicated many corporation heads and social leaders in a sorry tangle of wrongdoing. Other situations added fuel to the flame of economic war.

The strike of the telephone girls had popular support, a sympathy much strengthened by the charges of bribery pending against telephone officials.

[Ill.u.s.tration: All at once he stepped forward.... Tears were streaming down his face. Then the judge's question, clearly heard, "What is your plea?" "Guilty!" Ruef returned.]

Ten thousand ironworkers were on strike at a time when their service was imperative, for San Francisco was rebuilding feverishly. Capital made telling use of this to bolster its impaired position in the public mind.

While "pot called kettle black," the city suffered. The visitation of some strange disease, which certain physicians hastened to cla.s.sify as bubonic plague, very nearly brought the untold evils of a quarantine.

A famous sanitarian from the East decided it was due to rats. He came and slew his hundred-thousands of the rodents. Meanwhile the malady had ceased. But there were other troubles.

Fire had destroyed the deeds and t.i.tles stored in the Recorder's office, as well as other records. Great confusion came with property transfer and business contracts. But, worst of all, perhaps, was the street car strike.

"It seems as though the Seven Plagues of Egypt were being repeated,"

remarked Frank to his uncle as they lunched together. They had come to be rather good companions, with the memory of Bertha between them. For Frank, within the past twelve months, had pa.s.sed through much illuminating experience.

Robert Windham, too, was a changed man. He cared less for money. Frank knew that he had declined big fees to defend some of the "higher ups"

against impending charges of the graft prosecution. Windham smiled as he answered Frank's comment about the Seven Plagues.

"We'll come out of it with flying colors, my boy. A city is a great composite heart that keeps beating, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, but the healthy blood rules in the main; it conquers all pa.s.sing distempers."

Market street was queer and unnatural without its rus.h.i.+ng trolley cars.

All sorts of horse-drawn vehicles rattled up and down, carrying pa.s.sengers to and from the ferry. Many of the strikers were acting as Jehus of improvised stages. Autotrucks, too, were impressed into service. They rumbled along, criss-crossed with "circus seats,"

always crowded.

Frank made his way northward and east through the ruins. Here and there little shops had opened; eating houses for the army of rehabilitation.

They seemed to Frank symbols of renewed life in the blackened waste, like tender, green shoots in a flame-ravaged forest. Sightseers were beginning to swarm through the burned district, seeking relics.

A large touring car honked raucously almost in Frank's ear as he was crossing Sutter street, and he sprinted out of its lordly course, turning just in time to see the occupant of the back seat, a large man, rather handsome, in a hard, iron-willed way. He sat stiffly erect, unbending and aloof, with a kind of arrogance which just escaped being splendid. This was Patrick Calhoun, president of the United Railroads, who had sworn to break the Carmen's Union. It was said that Calhoun had sworn, though less loudly, to break the graft prosecution as well.

On Montgomery street several financial inst.i.tutions were doing business in reclaimed ruins. One of these was the California Safe Deposit and Trust Company, which had made spectacular history of late. It was said that spiritualism entered into its affairs. Frank had been working on the story, which promised a sensation.

As he neared the corner of California and Montgomery streets, where the crumbled bank walls had been transformed into a temporary habitation, he saw a crowd evidently pressing toward it. The bank doors were closed, though it was not yet three o'clock. Now and then people broke from the throng and wandered disconsolately away. One of these, a gray-haired woman, came in Frank's direction. He asked her what was wrong.

"They're busted ... and they've got me money," she wailed.

Hastily Frank verified her statement. Then he hurried to the office, found his notes and for an hour wrote steadily, absorbedly a spectacular tale of superst.i.tion, extravagance and financial chaos. As he turned in his copy the editor handed him a slip of paper on which was written: "Call Aleta Boice at once." He sought a telephone, but there was no response. He tried again, but vainly. A third attempt, however, and Aleta's voice, half frantic, answered his.

"He's killed himself," she cried. "Oh, Frank, I don't know what to do."

"He? Who?" Frank asked startled.

"Frank, you know! The man who wanted me to--"

"Do you mean the Supervisor?"

"Yes.... They say it was an accident. But I know better. He lost his money in the safe deposit failure.... Oh, Frank, please come to me, quick."

CHAPTER Lx.x.xVI

A NEW CITY GOVERNMENT

Frank found Aleta, dry-eyed, frantic, pacing up and down her little sitting room which always looked so quaintly attractive with its jumble of paintings and bric-a-brac, its distinctive furniture and draperies--all symbolic of the helter-skelter artistry which was a part of Aleta's nature. She took Frank's hand and clung to it.

"I'm so glad you've come," she whispered. "I'm so glad you've come."

It was a little time ere she could tell him of the tragedy. The man had been run over, quickly killed. Witnesses had seen him stagger, fall directly in the path of an advancing car. A doctor called it apoplexy.

"But I know better," sobbed Aleta, for the tears had come by now. "He never was sick in his life. He thought he'd lost me when the money went ... his money in the California Safe Deposit Company."

Frank took a seat beside her on the couch, whose flaming, joyous colors seemed a mockery just then. "Aleta," he said, "I wish I could help you.

I wish I knew how, but I don't."

She lifted her tear-stained eyes to his with a curious bitterness. "No ... you don't. But thank you. Just your coming's helped me, Frank. I'm better. Go--and let me think things over." She tried to smile, but the tears came.

"Life's a hideous puzzle. Perhaps if I'd gone with him, all would have come right.... I'd have made him happy."

"But what about yourself?"

Again that bitter, enigmatic look came to her eyes. "I guess ... that doesn't matter, Frank."