"Yes."
"I just want you to tell the truth about what he's doing, as I've learned it, at a few meetings of good, sympathetic citizens during the next few weeks."
"I'll do it if you're sure it won't hurt Blan in any way," she said.
"I'm positive it won't," Truggles lied.
The Social Standards Protective League was a small organization, composed largely of elderly women and a few men. Masefield Truggles had never meant for it to serve as anything more than a nucleus. Before he lit the flame, he spent a week building up his tinder pile.
He announced, by word of mouth and through the columns of The Clarion, Marston Hill's small daily newspaper, that the Social Standards Protective League would hold a series of special meetings every afternoon for a week. The public would be welcome, he said, and there would be startling revelations of vice conditions in Marston Hill. Truggles rented the city's ancient, rickety auditorium for the meetings, and invited Mayor Ben Sands to speak at the first one.
Lois Forsythe sat on the platform that first afternoon, but Truggles did not call on her. Sands made a routine talk, the kind any mayor of a small town might, on the conscientiousness of Marston Hill's three-man police force, the lack of crime in the town, the recreational facilities and educational methods being utilized to see that the young people did not stray on the wrong path. He received polite applause.
When he had finished, Truggles arose and said:
"Sometimes after talks of this kind, we throw our meetings open to questions from the audience. Instead, I would like to ask Mayor Sands one question. Does he recall that I complained to him not long ago about the activities of Blan Forsythe, and what the tenor of the conversation was?"