"Haven"t I just been showing you that I am not?"
"You have been showing me that you can not always out-plan, the other person. That is a lack, but it is not fatal. Are you great enough to run fast and far when it is a straight-away race depending only upon mere man-strength and indomitable determination?"
Her words fired him curiously. He recalled the little thrill of inspiration which a somewhat similar appeal from Elinor had once given him, and tried to compare the two sensations. There was no comparison. The one was a call to moral victory; the other to material success. None the less, he decided that the present was the more potent spell, perhaps only because it was the present.
"Try me," he said impulsively.
"If I do ... David, no man can serve two masters--or two mistresses. If I do, will you agree to put the sentimental affair resolutely in the background?"
He took his head in his hands and was a long minute making up his mind.
But his refusal was blunt enough when it came.
"No; at least, not until they are married."
It would have taken a keener discernment than Kent"s or any man"s to have fathomed the prompting of her laugh.
"I was only trying you," she said. "Perhaps, if you had said yes I should have deserted you and gone over to the other side."
He got up and went to sit beside her on the pillowed divan.
"Don"t try me again, please--not that way. I am only a man."
"I make no promises--not even good ones," she retorted. And then: "Would you like to have your _quo warranto_ blind alley turned into a thoroughfare?"
"I believe you can do it if you try," he admitted, brightening a little.
"Maybe I can; or rather maybe I can put you in the way of doing it. You say Mr. Meigs is obstinate, and the governor is likely to prove still more obstinate. Have you thought of any way of softening them?"
"You know I haven"t. It"s a stark impossibility from my point of view."
"Nothing is impossible; it is always a question of ways and means." Then, suddenly: "Have you been paying any attention to the development of the Belmount oil field?"
"Enough to know that it is a big thing; the biggest since the Pennsylvania discoveries, according to all accounts."
"And the people of the State are enthusiastic about it, thinking that now the long tyranny of the oil monopoly will be broken?"
"That is the way most of the newspapers talk, and there seems to be some little ground for it, granting the powers of the new law."
She laid the tips of her fingers on his arm and knotted the thread of suggestion in a single sentence.
"In the present state of affairs--with the People"s Party as yet on trial, and the public mind ready to take fire at the merest hint of a foreign capitalistic monopoly in the State--tell me what would happen to the man who would let the Universal Oil Company into the Belmount field in defiance of the new trust and corporation law?"
"By Jove!" Kent exclaimed, sitting up as if the shapely hand had given him a buffet. "It would ruin him politically, world without end! Tell me; is Bucks going to do that?"
She laughed softly.
"That is for you to find out, Mr. David Kent; not by hearsay, but in good, solid terms of fact that will appeal to a level-headed, conservative newspaper editor like--well, like Mr. Hildreth, of the _Argus_, let us say. Are you big enough to do it?"
"I am desperate enough to try," was the slow-spoken answer.
"And when you have the weapon in your hands; when you have found the sword and sharpened it?"
"Then I can go to his Excellency and tell him what will happen if he doesn"t instruct his attorney-general in the _quo warranto_ affair."
"That will probably suffice to save your railroad--and Miss Brentwood"s marriage portion. But after, David; what will you do afterward?"
"I"ll go on fighting the devil with fire until I have burned him out. If this is to be a government of dictators, I can be one of them, too."
She clapped her hands enthusiastically.
"There spoke the man David Kent; the man I have been trying to discover deep down under the rubbish of ill-temper and hesitancy and--yes, I will say it--of sentiment. Have you learned your lesson, David mine?"
It was a mark of another change in him that he rose and stood over her, and that his voice was cool and dispa.s.sionate when he said:
"If I have, it is because I have you for an inspired text-book, Portia dear."
And with that he took his leave.
XVI
SHARPENING THE SWORD
In the beginning of the new campaign of investigation David Kent wisely discounted the help of paid professional spies--or rather he deferred, it to a later stage--by taking counsel with Jeffrey Hildreth, night editor of the _Argus_. Here, if anywhere, practical help was to be had; and the tender of it was cheerfully hearty and enthusiastic.
"Most a.s.suredly you may depend on the _Argus_, horse, foot and artillery,"
said the editor, when Kent had guardedly outlined some portion of his plan. "We are on your side of the fence, and have been ever since Bucks was sprung as a candidate on the convention. But you"ve no case. Of course, it"s an open secret that the Universal people are trying to break through the fence of the new law and establish themselves in the Belmount field without losing their ident.i.ty or any of their monopolistic privileges. And it is equally a matter of course to some of us that the Bucks ring will sell the State out if the price is right. But to implicate Bucks and the capitol gang in printable shape is quite another matter."
"I know," Kent admitted. "But it isn"t impossible; it has got to be possible."
The night editor sat back in his chair and chewed his cigar reflectively.
Suddenly he asked:
"What"s your object, Kent? It isn"t purely _pro lono pullico_, I take it?"
Kent could no longer say truthfully that it was, and he did not lie about it.
"No, it"s purely personal, I guess. I need to get a grip on Bucks and I mean to do it."
Hildreth laughed.
"And, having got it, you"ll telephone me to let up--as you did in the House Bill Twenty-nine fiasco. Where do we come in?"
"No; you shall come in on the ground floor this time; though I may ask you to hold your hand until I have used my leverage. And if you"ll go into it to stay, you sha"n"t be alone. Giving the _Argus_ precedence in any item of news, I"ll engage to have every other opposition editor in the State ready to back you."
"Gad! you"re growing, Kent. Do you mean to down the Bucks crowd ded-definitely?" demanded the editor, who stammered a little under excitable provocation. "Bigger men than you have tried it--and failed."