"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."