Port O' Gold Part 67

He left her, a queer ache in his heart. Was she right about the man's committing suicide. Poor devil! He had stolen for a woman. Others had filched his plunder. Then G.o.d had taken his misguided life.

But had He? Was G.o.d a murderer? A pa.s.sive conniver at theft? No, that were blasphemy! Yet, if He _permitted_ such things--? No, that couldn't be, either. It was all an abominable enigma, as Aleta said. Unless--the thought came startlingly--it were all a dream, a nightmare. Thus Kant, the great philosopher, believed. Obsessed by the idea, he paused before a book-store. Its show window prominently displayed Francisco Stanley's latest novel.

Frank missed the mellow wisdom of his father's counsel seriously. He entered the shop, found a volume of Kant and scanned it for some moments till he read:

"This world's life is only an appearance, a sensuous image of the pure spiritual life, and the whole of Sense is only a picture swimming before our present knowing faculty like a dream and having no reality in itself."

Acting upon a strange impulse, he bought the book, marked the pa.s.sage and ordered it sent to Aleta.

A week after Ruef's confession the trial of Mayor Schmitz began. It dragged through the usual delays which clever lawyers can exact by legal technicality. Judge Dunne, sitting in the auditorium of the Bush Street synagogue, between the six-tinned ceremonial candlesticks and in front of the Mosiac tablets of Hebraic law, dispensed modern justice.

Meanwhile the Committee of Seven sprang suddenly into being. A morning paper announced that Schmitz had handed the reins of the city over to a septette of prominent citizens. Governor Gillette lauded this action.

But Rudolph Spreckels disowned the Committee. Langdon and Heney were suspicious of its purpose. So the Committee of Seven resigned.

At this juncture the Schmitz trial ended in conviction of the Mayor which was tantamount to his removal from office. It left a vacancy which, nominally, the Supervisors had the power to fill. But they were under Langdon's orders. Actually, therefore, the District Attorney found himself confronted by the task of naming a new mayor.

Unexpectedly the man was found in Edward Robeson Taylor, doctor of medicine and law, poet and Greek scholar. The selection was hailed with relief. Frank hastened to the Taylor home, a trim, white dwelling on California street near Webster. He found a genial, curly-haired old gentleman sitting in a room about whose walls were thousands of books.

He was reading Epictetus.

Stanley found the new mayor likeable and friendly. He seemed a man of simple thought. Frank wondered how he would endure the roiling pa.s.sions of this city's politics. Dr. Taylor seemed undaunted by the prospect, though.

Without delay he was elected by the Supervisors. Then began the farcical procedure of their resignations. One by one the new chief named good citizens as their successors.

But the real fight was now beginning. Halsey's testimony had not incriminated Gla.s.s beyond a peradventure. There remained a shade of doubt that he had authorized the outlay of a certain fund for the purposes of bribery. The jury disagreed. The Prosecution's first battle against the "higher-ups" had brought no victory.

Ruef was failing Heney as a witness for the people. After months of bargaining the special prosecutor withdrew his tacit offer of immunity.

Heney's patience with the wily little Boss, who knew no end of legal subterfuge, was suddenly exhausted. Frank heard that Ruef was to be tried on one of the three hundred odd indictments found against him.

Schmitz had been sentenced to five years in San Quentin. He had appealed.

Several times Frank tried to reach Aleta on the telephone. But she did not respond to calls, a fact which he attributed to disorganized service. But presently there came a letter from Camp Curry in the Yosemite Valley.

"I am here among the everlasting pines and cliffs," she wrote, "thinking it all out. I thank you for the book, which has helped me. If only we might waken from our 'dream'! But here one is nearer to G.o.d. It is very quiet and the birds sing always in the golden suns.h.i.+ne.

"I shall come back saner, happier, to face the world.... Perhaps I can forget myself in service, I think I shall try settlement work.

"Meanwhile I am trying not to think of what has happened ... what can never happen. I am reading and painting. Yesterday a dog came up and licked my hand. I cried a little after that, I don't know why."

In his room that evening, Frank re-read the letter. It brought a lump to his throat.

CHAPTER Lx.x.xVII

NORAH FINDS OUT

Very soon after the appointment of Mayor Taylor, the second trial of Louis Gla.s.s ended in his conviction. He was remanded to the county jail awaiting an appeal. The trial of an official of the United Railways began. Meanwhile the politicians rallied for election.

Schmitz had been elected at the end of 1905. His term, which Dr. Taylor was completing, would be terminated with the closing of the present year. And now the Graft Prosecution was to learn by public vote how many of the people stood behind it.

Union Labor, ousted and discredited by venal representatives, was not officially in favor of the Taylor-Langdon slate. P.H. McCarthy, labor leader and head of the Building Trades Council, was Labor's nominee for Mayor.

Frank met McCarthy now and then. He posed as "a plain, blunt man," but back of the forthright handgrip, the bluff directness of manner, Frank scented a ma.s.sive and wily self-interest. He respected the man for his power, his crude but undeniable executive talents.

The two opponents for the Mayoralty were keenly contrasted. Taylor was quiet, suavely cultured, widely read but rather pa.s.sive. Some said he lacked initiative.

Frank MacGowan was Langdon's foeman in the struggle for the district attorneys.h.i.+p. Little could be said for or against him. A lawyer of good reputation who had made his way upward by merit and push, he had done nothing big. He was charged with no wrong.

The "dark horse" was Daniel Ryan.

Ryan was a young Irishman, that fine type of political leader who approximates what has sometimes been called a practical idealist. He had set out to reform the Republican Party and achieved a certain measure of success, for he had beaten the Herrin or Railroad forces at the Republican Convention. Ryan was avowedly pro-prosecution. It was believed that he would deliver his party's nomination to Taylor and Langdon.

But he astonished San Francisco voters by becoming a candidate for mayor.

Aleta had returned from Camp Curry. There was a certain quiet in her eyes, a greater self-control, a better facing of Life's problems. They spoke of Kant and his philosophy. "The Nightmare is less turbulent,"

she said.

One evening at her apartment Frank met a young woman named France, a fragile, fine-haired, dreamy sort of girl, and he was not surprised to learn that she wrote poetry.

"Norah's been working as a telephone operator," explained Aleta. "She's written a story about it--the working girl's wrongs.... Oh, not the ordinary wail-and-whine," she added hastily. "It's real meat. I've read it. The Sat.u.r.day Magazine's considering it."

Miss France smiled deprecatingly. "I have high hopes," she said. "I need the money."

"It will give you prestige, too," Frank told her, but she shook her head.

"Norah hasn't signed her name to it," Aleta disapproved. "Just because a friend, a well known writer in Carmel, has fixed it up for her a little."

"It doesn't seem like mine," the girl remarked. Aleta rose. "This is election night," she said; "let's go down and watch the returns."

They did this, standing on the fringe of a crowd that thronged about the newspaper offices, watching, eager, but patient, the figures which were flashed on a screen.

The crowd was less demonstrative than is usual on such occasions. A feeling of anxiety prevailed, a consciousness of vital issues endangered and put to the test. Toward midnight the crowd grew thicker. But it was more joyous now. Taylor and Langdon were leading. It became evident that they must win.

Suddenly the restless stillness of the throng was broken by spontaneous cheering. It was impressive, overwhelming, like a great burst of relieved emotion.

Norah France caught Frank's arm as the celebrants eddied round them. The press was disbanding with an almost violent haste. "Where's Aleta?"

asked the girl.

Frank searched amid the human eddies, but in vain. "She got separated from us somehow," he said rather helplessly. They searched farther, without result. Aleta doubtless had gone home.

"I wonder if you'd take me somewhere ... for a cup of coffee," said Miss France. The hand upon his arm grew heavy. "I'm a little faint."

"Surely." He suggested a popular cafe, but she shook her head. "Just some quiet little place ... a 'chop house.' That's what the switch-girls call them."

So they entered a pair of swinging doors inscribed "Ladies" on one side and "Gents" on the other. Miss France laughingly insisted that they pa.s.s each on the proper side of this divided portal. She was a creature of swift moods; one moment feverishly gay, the next brooding, with a penchant for satire. He wondered how she endured the hard work of a telephone switch-operator. But one felt that whatever she willed she would do. Eagerly she sipped her steaming coffee from a heavy crockery cup, nibbling at a bit of French bread. Then she said to him so suddenly that he almost sprang out of his chair.