HE JAMMED THE FIRE END OF HIS CIGAR
AMONG THE FINGERS OF THE GRASPING HAND.
Late in the summer an ordinance was proposed by the terms of which a single corporation was to be given a franchise granting a complete monopoly of the streets for gas and water mains and transit rights of way. Thereupon a bitter struggle ensued. Party lines were obliterated, and men who shunned the primaries and otherwise shirked their political duties raised the cry of corruption, and a Civic League was formed to fight the ring.
Into this struggle, as giving him the chance to front the enemy in a fair field, David Kent flung himself with all the ardor of a born fighter. Mass meetings were held, with Kent as spokesman for the League, and the outcome was a decency triumph which brought Kent's name into grateful public prominence. Hildreth played an able second, and by the time the obnoxious ordinance had been safely tabled, Kent had a semi-political following which was all his own. Men who had hitherto known him only as a corporation lawyer began to prophesy large things of the fiery young advocate, whose arguments were as sound and convincing as his invective was keen and merciless.
Figuratively speaking, Portia stood in the wings and applauded. Also, she saw that her protégé had reached the point where he needed grooming for whatever race lay before him. Hence her urgings, which made a triumvirate out of the council of two, with Brookes Ormsby as the third member.
"You understand, I'm not interested a little bit in the merits of the case," said the newly elected chairman, in his first official interview with Miss Van Brock. "So far as the internal politics of this particularly wild and woolly State are concerned, I'm neither in them nor of them. But I am willing to do what I can for Kent."
"Owing him a good turn?" said Portia, with malice aforethought.
Ormsby's laugh was an Englishman's deep-chested haw-haw.
"So he has been making you his confidante in that, too, has he?"
"There was no confidence needed," she retorted. "I have eyes; and, to use one of your own pet phrases, I was not born yesterday. But let that go: you are willing to help us?"