A Woman for Mayor: A Novel of To-day

by Helen M. Winslow

And yet—to her? Why not? How capable and strong and self-reliant she had looked that morning in the mayor's chair. How different from any other women he had ever seen! What must she have been made of—this woman who had been the social equal of the best people in Washington, that she could lay aside for the moment all social preferences, all refined and educated tastes, to become mayor of such a city as Roma?—to sit there in the temple of the money-changers and try to wrestle with its problems. Bah! he had no taste for such modern women, or for such—

But he had promised to do everything he could to help her,—and to see Armstrong. Pshaw! He would go back and have it out with Bailey.

He turned and climbed the stairs to the city solicitor's office. Armstrong welcomed him with a cordial bluffing way the two always used towards each other.

"About time you came," began Bailey. "Here I am occupying one of the seats of the high and mighty, and you make off as if I were nobody. I've a mind to take it out of you somehow."

"If you dared," returned Allingham. "But you can't. You've a character to maintain and I'm a guest. I say—was it you who put it into Miss Van Deusen's head that I'd take any little plum she chose to offer me? Because I won't, you know."

"O, yes, you will," said Bailey, "when it's pro bono publico. And say, if you've any civic pride whatever—if you want to discover graft in its most rampageous form and help to suppress or expose it—here's your chance. And you a boasted 'Municipal Reformer!'"

"What do you mean?" asked Allingham.

"Well, just this. One of Burke's contractors came into the Mayor's office the other day and complained that I was about to 'rip his contracts up the back,'—at least, that's the classic language in which he chose to present his ideas to a lady. I hadn't begun to look into these matters at all; but what he said led Miss Van Deusen to send for me and we have since been looking him up. I find that he is paving several streets—or will do so—on no end of little contracts of three hundred yards for each. He makes a nice fat sum on each,—an aggregate of several thousand dollars, I won't undertake to say how much. That sets us to thinking and investigating some more. Say, Jack, remember the franchise the Boulevard Railway asked for and almost got last year? It's still pending, you know. Well, I've reason to think the Mayor was in on it—and Burke—for no end of boodle. That's why he wanted to be mayor. So you see, 'there's a reason' why a man like you should be willing to take the job of street commissioner this year. It will be no 'plum' this time, I can assure you. It looks now, as if it would be a fight instead—and perhaps a good hot one."

"That puts a different look to it," said Jack. "You know I'm not afraid of a fight—a good one."

"Don't I know it?" retorted Bailey. "Haven't I gone to bed sore and stiff, too many times, as a boy, to forget it? It's because you are a fair fighter and not a boodler that we want you at the head of the street department now. Come, Jack, will you do it?"