Kilo. Part 18

"I hope Miss Sally like the little token of esteem; the box of candy;"

he said, looking up into Mrs. Smith's face anxiously, "it isn't as if I was used to such matters. My preference would have been a book; a good book; a book that I could recommend to man, woman or child, containing in a condensed form all the world's knowledge, from the time of Adam to the present day, with an index for ready reference, and useful information for every day of the year. It was my intention to have given her such a book, which would have been a proper vehicle to convey to her my--my regard, but I learned only last night that she already had a copy of that work, without which no home is complete, and which is published by Jarby & Goss, New York, five dollars, bound in cloth; seven fifty, morocco. I learned that she already had one."

"She told you I had given her my copy?" asked Mrs. Smith.

"Yes," said Eliph' simply. "So I could not present her with a copy of that work. My preference was to give a work of literature; I am a worker in the field of literature, and it would have been more appropriate.

But I could give her nothing but the best of its kinds, and where find another such book as Jarby's Encyclopedia of Knowledge and Compendium of Literature, Science and Art? Nowhere! There is no other. This book combining in one volume selections from the world's best literature, recipes for the home, advice for every period of existence, together with one thousand and one other subjects, forms in itself a volume unequaled in the history of literature. No person should be without it."

"I know, Mr. Hewlitt," pleaded Mrs. Smith, smiling, "but I have already bought two copies. Don't you thing you ought to let me off with that?"

"I was not trying to sell you one," said Eliph' with embarra.s.sment. "I hoped----" He paused and coughed behind his hand again. "You know my intention in sending a present to Miss Briggs," he said bravely. "I admire her greatly. I--to me she is, in fact, a Jarby's Encyclopedia of Knowledge and Compendium of Literature, Science and Art among women."

"Dear Mr. Hewlitt," said Mrs. Smith, taking his hand, "I understand. And I wish you all the good fortune in the world. I shall do all I can to help you."

"Thank you," said Eliph', shaking her hand as if she was an old acquaintance he ad met after long years of separation. "So you understand that I can feel the same to no other woman. Not even to--to anyone." He wiped his forehead with his disengaged hand. "So I feel that you will not misunderstand me if I ask you to accept a copy of Jarby's Encyclopedia of Knowledge and Compendium of Literature, Science and Art, bound in morocoo, seven fifty. I mean gratis. No home should be without one."

"Why, it is very kind of you to suggest such a thing," said Mrs. Smith, "and I'm sure I'll be glad to own a copy."

"I'm glad to have you," said Eliph'. "I wanted to give you one, but I didn't want you to think I meant it in the way I meant what I sent to Miss Sally. I was afraid you might, or that Miss Sally might. But I don't mean it that way."

"I know you don't," said Mrs. Smith heartily. "And if Miss Sally is jealous I will tell her she is quite mistaken. But if you will let a woman that has had a little experience advise you, do not be too hasty.

Do not try to hurry matters too much. It would spoil everything if you pressed for an answer too soon and received an unfavorable one. And I'm afraid it would be an unfavorable one if you put it to the test now."

Eliph's countenance fell. It said plainly enough that he understood her to mean that the Colonel and Skinner were more apt to be favorably received.

"I'm afraid so," said Mrs. Smith regretfully. "You know they are older acquaintances, and Miss Sally is not one of those who think new friends are best."

"I was coming again to-night," said Eliph'. "Perhaps I'd better not say anything to-night. Perhaps I had better wait until to-morrow."

"Wait until next month, or next year," advised Mrs. Smith. "There is no hurry. Something may turn up."

CHAPTER XIV. Something Turns Up

Something turned up the very next day. It turned all Kilo upside down as nothing had for years, and created such a demand for the TIMES that J.

T. Jones had to print an extra edition of sixty copies, and he would have printed ten more if his press had not broken down.

Across two columns--the TIMES never used over one column headlines except for the elections--blazed the work "GRAFT," and beneath, in but a size or two smaller, stared the "sub-head" "OFFICIAL OF KILO CORRUPTED.

CITIZENS' PARTY ROTTEN TO THE CORE. PROMINENT CITIZEN IMPLICATED."

Beneath this followed the moral of it, "The City, as Predicted in These Columns, Suffers for Departing from The Beneficent Rule of the Republican Party."

Attorney Toole was sitting in his office when the boy from the TIMES delivered the paper to him. He smiled as he opened the damp sheet, for he extracted more amus.e.m.e.nt than news from the little paper, but as he turned it the headlines caught his eye, and instantly he was deep in the columns. Someone had sprung his mine before he had intended--it had exploded prematurely and with, what seemed to him, as he read on, a futile insipidity.

There were full two columns of it. There were hints and innuendoes, too well veiled, but no names mentioned. The specific act of graft was not brought to the surface. It was as if the writer had a "spread" of some vaguely uncertain rumor, and yet there was not doubt that Colonel Guthrie and Mayor St.i.tz and the fire-extinguishers were meant. The attorney could see that, and he had an idea that the writer had meant to tell more than he really did tell. The veiled allusions were so thoroughly veiled in words that they were buried as if under mountains of veils. Each slight hint was swamped in mora.s.ses of quotations and fine flourishes, overgrown and hidden by tropical verbiage, and covered up by philosophical and political phrases until nothing of the hint could be seen. As he read on the attorney could see Doc Weaver talking, as plainly as if he stood before him; he could see him at his desk in a frenzy of composition, and he recognized the apt quotations from Shakespeare that were Doc's specialty. Doc Weaver had written it.

The attorney laid the paper down and studied the matter. How could Doc have learned of the affair? Skinner, angry as he had been at having to buy the four fire-extinguishers, would never have dared to wreck the party he had helped to create. The Colonel would have been no such fool.

St.i.tz? He would hardly accuse himself. Who then?

One pa.s.sage set the attorney thinking again as he re-read the article.

"'Thinks are seldom what they seem,' as the poet says, which is as true as that 'Honesty is the best policy.' And as Shakespeare says, 'To what base ends,' for all this disreputable graft centers around certain brilliant objects that are not what the guilty bribers and bribees suppose them to be. While we shudder with horror at the temerity of the sinners we shake with laughter as we think of their faces as they will be when they realize that they are mortals to whom the immortal bard refers when he enunciates the truth, 'What fools these mortals be!'"

"Certain brilliant objects" could mean nothing but the lung-testers.

Eliph' Hewlitt had that secret, and Eliph' Hewlitt boarded with Doc Weaver. The attorney felt a sudden rush of anger. It was to this intermeddling book agent, then, that he owed the premature explosion of the mine that was to have blown the Citizens' Party to fragments, and to have landed the fragments in the basket held ready by Attorney Toole?

The distribution of that week's TIMES acted like a tonic on the town streets. New life followed in the wake of the boy as he carried the paper from door to door. It began at the corner of Main and Cross Streets, and as the boy proceeded, the merchants, the loafers, and the customers came from the stores and gathered in knots that formed quickly and dissolved again as the parts pa.s.sed from one group to another, questioning, arguing, and guessing. The attorney looked out of his window. Across the street he could see the office of the TIMES, and T.

J. already besieged by questioners, to whom he was evidently giving a kind but decided refusal of further information. The editor was waving them away with his hands. Some of the editor's visitors handed T. J.

money, and carried away copies of the TIMES, but all went, gently urged by the editor, and joined one or another of the groups below. The attorney drew on his coat. He would postpone his interview with Eliph'

Hewlitt; Thomas Jefferson Jones was the man he wanted to see at that moment.

It was difficult for the attorney to retain his enigmatical smiles as he climbed the stairs to the TIMES office. He was angry, but he knew the value of that irritating smile that hinted superiority and a knowledge of hidden details. He needed it in his talk with the editor.

It is odd how common interests will bring men together. And sometimes how common interests will not. The attorney and the editor had been as one man in polite attentions to Susan Bell, Mrs. Smith's protegee, at first, but as their acquaintance with her grew they seemed to like each other less. They no longer consulted each other on the best methods of bringing Republican rule back to Kilo. They did not consult together at all. The attorney coldly ignored the editor, and his irritation, beginning in this rivalry, was increased by the growing suspicion that the editor dared look toward the leaders.h.i.+p of the Republican party in Kilo.

It all angered the attorney. What right had a country editor to compete with a man of talent, with a member of the bar, with Attorney Toole? Was this the thanks a rising lawyer should receive for leaving the superior culture of Franklin and bringing his talents to add l.u.s.ter to the bleak unimportance of Kilo? The very impertinence of it angered him. Toole, a man whose name would one day ring in the hall of Congress and perhaps stand at the head of the nation's officers as chief executive, to be bothered by the interference of a Jones! By the interference of a man who spent his time collecting news of measles and hog cholera! It was about time T. J. Jones was told a few things.

As Toole entered the printing office T. J. was handing a copy of the TIMES to a customer, and the editor turned, and, seeing who his visitor was, held up his hand playfully.

"No use!" he exclaimed. "I can't say anything about it, except what's in the paper. Contributed article, and the editor sworn to silence, you know."

The attorney seated himself on the editor's desk, pus.h.i.+ng a pile of papers out of his way.

"That's all right, Jones," he said. "That's for the"--he waved his hand toward the window--"for the fellow citizens; for the populace. This is between ourselves."

"I'd like to," said Jones, "but really, I can't say anything about it. I promised faithfully I would not betray my contributor's confidence."

"Now, do I look so green as that?" asked Toole. "Nonsense! Doc Weaver wrote that rot." He smiled. "He spread himself, didn't he?"

The editor remained motionless.

"I have nothing whatever to say," he remarked, noncommittally.

"Well, I have!" cried the attorney. "I'll tell you that it is poor work for you to steal my thunder and attempt to use it without consulting me! It is poor work, and mean work. You want to be boss of this party in Kilo county, that's what you want. And you haven't the capacity. You have proved it right here, right here in this silly sheet of yours.

You hit on a big thing, and you spoil it. You are so anxious that Toole shall get no credit that you rush it into print and make a fizzle of it.

I know who the traitors to the party are--you are one. Doc Weaver with his elegant style and his Shakespeare is another. And that miserable intermeddling little book agent is another. You make me sick."

The editor stood like a statue, and his face was as white. The attorney dropped his words slowly from lips that still wore the tantalizing smile.

"The childishness amuses me," said the attorney. "It makes me smile. Why didn't you give names, since you had them? Why didn't you tell it all, and do the party some good, as well as doing me some harm, if that was what you were after--and I don't know what you were after if it wasn't that? Why don't you get a schoolboy to edit your paper for you?"

T. J. ground his nails into the palms of his hands. He meant to retain possession of his temper, but it was boiling within. He said nothing as the attorney indolently arose from his seat on the desk; he was resolved to do nothing, but when the attorney brushed against him in pa.s.sing, turning his superior smile full in his face, he raised his arm. The next moment the two men were lying beside the press, struggling and gasping, locked fast and fighting for advantage, legs intertwined and each grasping the other by a wrist. The editor was on top, but the heavier attorney was working with the energy of hate, and as they panted and struggled the door opened and Eliph' Hewlitt entered.

There was strength in his wiry arms, and he threw himself upon the upper man and dragged him backward. The attorney loosened his hold and the two men stood up, panting and gulping, and soon began to brush their clothes and look at the floor for dropped articles, as men do who have fought inconclusively and are not sorry to have been parted. The only real damage seemed to have been done to Eliph's spectacles, which he had shaken off in his efforts, and which had been crushed beneath a heel.

The attorney presently smiled, but it was a silly smile, and then he went out of the door and down the street.

Eliph' coughed gently behind his hand, as if to excuse his intrusion.

"Quarreling?" he suggested. "I used to wrestle some when I was a boy.