Skirmishing
When Gertrude returned to her office a man sat waiting for her, a big, burly looking man with an evil-looking eye.
"I want to talk with you alone," he said when she had taken her seat. "Can't you send the others out?"
She was surprised at the request and started to say that her private secretary must be present at all interviews; when she thought better of it and motioned the stenographer and Miss Snow to go out.
"Now we can talk business," said the man, drawing his chair up closer. "See here, my name is McAlister. I've the contract for laying out the avenue from Hayden Park to the Boulevard."
"And you are doing the work?" asked Gertrude.
"Yes, I'm doing the work all right," returned McAlister. "But this smart Alec you have in the law department may make trouble—and expense for the city," he added.
"Just how, Mr. McAlister?" asked Gertrude so smoothly as to cause the big contractor to take fresh courage.
"Well, you know when a lawyer is put into a public position—city solicitor or district attorney, or whatever—the first thing he does is to look for something that he can rip up the back."
"And what is the matter with your contract?" Her tones were dulcet now.
"Nothing at all. My contract is all right," replied the man. "But Armstrong is putting up a bluff and threatens to have it overhauled."
"But why?" persisted the mayor.
"Now look here, your Honor," urged the man confidentially. "Your father was a politician. He knew all the tricks of the trade. He made his pile all right, one way or another."
"Mr. McAlister!" Gertrude's voice had a new note.
"O, hold yourself close, now," said he. "No harm meant. Senator Van Deusen was as fine a man as Roma ever produced. And if I didn't vote for you—it wasn't because I wouldn't do anything for his daughter. But now,—well, let's make it a mutual thing. You protect me and my interests and I'll stick by you, and where I go, there go several hundred other good voters."
"The scoundrel!" said Gertrude to her inmost soul. But she did not change countenance.
"Well, I will look into the matter," she replied. "If your contract is all right—and you say it is—the city will certainly stand by you. Of course I could not promise anything more definite than that now. But I will look into the matter and advise Mr. Armstrong."
"O, don't take your time to look up a contract a year old," said McAlister. "It won't be worth your while. Take my word,—the word of one who worked night and day for your father,—and just call Armstrong off. He'll find enough in the bridge department to keep him busy, if he must stir things up anywhere."
"I will speak to Mr. Armstrong," said Gertrude, rising and pushing the electric button as a signal for the others to return. There was nothing for McAlister to do but depart, wondering just how much he had gained by the interview.
"If she goes to looking into old contracts—" he muttered as he went down the stairs—and then whistled sharply.
When he was well out of sight, Gertrude sent for Bailey Armstrong.
"What are you doing to one McAlister?" she asked. "A street contractor, I believe he is."
"Nothing, as yet. Why?" asked the city attorney.
"Well, he's just left me," replied the mayor. "Says you are going to 'rip his contract up the back,'—to quote him literally."
"Aha!" said Bailey. "Then he's afraid, is he? I've done nothing as yet, but I heard something the other day that caused me to suspect trouble in that direction. See here, Gertie, just how far do you want me to go in this 'ripping-up-the-back' business? I'm positive if we once begin we'll find graft on every side of us. Then trouble will begin, you know,—trouble for you, I mean."
"Never mind me," she answered. "What am I here for if it is not to purify city government? I don't expect to make friends in the process; but if I can serve the city—and thereby my state and my country, why,—" She stopped and looked fearlessly at Armstrong.
"Then I shall go ahead—looking into the matter of contracts and appropriations?" he asked.
"Certainly," she replied. "No matter whom it hits, investigate every department of the administration."
"Bravo!" said he. "You're a chip of the old block all right." Gertrude remembered with a twinge of apprehension what McAlister had said about her father's "pile." "But you must be prepared for war—underhanded, tricky, politicians' war," added Bailey.
A week later he appeared again at her office and asked for a private interview.
"Gertrude," he began, "it's as I feared about McAlister. He has an infamous contract—or, rather, a whole set of them—and he is fleecing the city with every yard of pavement he puts down."
"That doesn't surprise me," replied the Mayor. "It's the scared bird that flutters."
"He has a separate contract for every 300 square yards of pavement he lays," said Armstrong. "Instead of accepting the terms of the lowest bidder, the board of aldermen let him these contracts. It is a wrong system from the start. We ought to have a competitive system and award our contracts to the lowest bidder who will do good work. Instead of that, there seems to have been some sort of chicanery by which McAlister was given all these little contracts,—on every one of which he makes a big profit,—while the other bidders were not even considered."
"Who has the giving out of contracts, anyway? Oughtn't there to be a regular system about it?"
"There should be a law about it," said Bailey. "But I find nothing in the city charter. And I find that contracts have been given out by aldermen, councilmen or mayor, just as happened to suit their notions best."
"Suppose you go to work, Bailey, and draft me a bill providing that every piece of work to be done for the city shall be open to all bidders. We must have some definite plans of considering and acting on these bids—so that none of the officials can give out contracts without such action and vote as the whole council and the mayor think best. Better make it obligatory that the bids be opened in the presence of all who may wish to be present and in the presence of, or by, the mayor. That would be something I'd like to establish in my term—something to be remembered."
"Not only that," said Armstrong, "but no contract should be considered binding on the city without the mayor's signature of approval."
"Go ahead and draw it up," said the Mayor. "And then we'll have a meeting of the Common Council and get it adopted."
But while it was easy enough to draw up and elaborate the bill, it was not so simple a matter to get it passed. A meeting was called and every one of the Common Council came. Then Gertrude began to count her strength, and to find that a man's pocketbook is next to his heart in more senses than one.
It was a stormy meeting—this first one over which the woman-mayor presided. Mason and Turner and several others of the new members of the city council worked ably to get the proposed amendment to the charter through; but every alderman and a majority of the Council were against it. The debate was hot and turbulent. Several times the mayor had to bring down her gavel sharply, and call to order men much older and better versed in parliamentary tactics than herself. And when it was all over, the assembly had voted to lay the whole matter on the table!
"It all comes to just this, I am afraid," said Gertrude to Armstrong and Mary Snow when it was all over and they were back in the mayor's office. "They all fear exposure of one kind or another. How much do you suppose they want to conceal?"
"There is nothing hid which cannot be found out," retorted Bailey, "and by the great horn spoon, I'll find it out."
"They may wish they had voted 'yes' before they get through with this," said Mary Snow. "For they must know that you have access to every sort of record in the city, if you choose."
"And I choose," responded Miss Van Deusen. "I'll go through every contract, now we're started. That reminds me, Bailey, McAlister hinted that you could find plenty to do in the bridge department, if you must 'rip things up the back'. I would look into that, too, if I were you."
"Yes—and this new franchise the street railway is so nearly concluding," he answered. "O, we'll be enough for them yet. When are you going to appoint a new street commissioner? Perhaps that might precipitate things a little."
"Tomorrow, then, I'll ask for Thalberg's resignation," was the reply. "How would John Allingham do for that place? I've been thinking it might be a good thing all around."
"Splendid," cried Bailey. "He'd like it, too. He likes a good fight—always did."
"Would he, do you think? Under a woman-mayor?" she added.
"I think so. It's different now you are elected, you know. Ever notice how much easier it is to support an innovation after it is well started than before?"
"Then come, Minnie," she said, turning to the stenographer. "Take this to Mr. Thalberg;" and she proceeded to dictate a letter advising him that his resignation, taking effect immediately, would be acceptable to the mayor.
Then she dictated another as follows:
Mr. John Allingham,
Municipal League Rooms; City.
Dear Mr. Allingham:
Will you do me the favor to call at this office Thursday, the seventeenth, at ten a. m., and oblige,
Gertrude Van Deusen,
Mayor of Roma.
Which, when Allingham opened and read it late that afternoon, caused him to give vent to a long, low whistle, and to read it over the second time.
But he wrote, immediately, accepting the appointment; and a dozen times that night he asked himself what she could want of him—and just how much he would be willing to help the woman-mayor.
Then, looking out across the moonlit city from his tower window, he recalled that other night when they rode together in the open country beneath the shining moon—when she was not the candidate, the mayor-elect, the modern strenuous woman—but just a sweet and gracious spirit with a melodious voice and a presence that thrilled him. Then he told himself, "Yes, anything—anything she wants."
And Gertrude, in the silence of her own room, was saying to herself, "Will he come, I wonder? Would I, if I were in his place? If I were a man who had been brought up to believe as he does about women; and then a modern suffragist who had won out over me, had sent for me,—to ask me to come and help—would I go? Oh, how do I know?"