“I suspect that it is Richard Percival,” said Ellery with a whimsical glance of affection.
“This, as I read it, is the history,” Dick went on. “Six years ago, when you and I were sub-freshmen, and unable to take an active part, there was a brief spasm of reform. It was a short episode of fisticuffs and fighting, which is for a day—a very different thing from governing, which goes steadily on from year to year. But this reform movement did result in giving the city a good charter.”
“The Garden of Eden was once fitted out with an excellent system of government.”
“Exactly. Charters, left to themselves, do not regulate human nature. The good citizens of St. Etienne went their own busy business way and left the less occupied bad citizens to adapt the charter to the needs of life; and that was an easy job, so easy that it has apparently been possible for one man to manage it. The charter put great power into the hands of the mayor. There have been three mayors elected under it, and they have all been ‘friends’ of Billy Barry.”
“I wonder if the next will be,” queried Ellery thoughtfully.
“And the majority of every working committee appointed by the city council is made of ‘friends’ of Piggy, who shows a fine disregard of party lines in his affiliations. William is one more product of this horseless wireless age—a crownless king.”
“What makes you think that he isn’t the power he seems?”
“A lot of things. The business interests behind him do not seem to be wholly his. That is another field for investigation.”
“You started yesterday to tell me about a big policeman.”
“Yes, Olaf Ericson, with the eyes and mustache of a viking above a blue uniform. When I met him last he had just had the melancholy duty of cutting down a poor wretch that had hung himself, and of sending for the coroner. He told me that the pathetic part of it was that the dead man was a total stranger in the city; and then he winked and asked if I knew that though the city paid the coroner his salary, the state guaranteed an extra fee of ‘saxty dollar’ to that official for every stranger who met with sudden death within our limits? I didn’t know, but I do now. I took pains to look up last year’s records and, curiously enough, out of one hundred and seventy-six cases that required the services of a coroner, one hundred and fifty-one were those of strangers. That would add about nine thousand dollars to a quite moderate salary. Another queer thing is that Doctor Niger—the coroner, you know—is Billy Barry’s brother-in-law.”