"Oh, that's his game!" Jap sat up, his gray eyes wide with astonishment. "How did you get next to it?"
"Your good friend, Wilfred Jones, put me wise. He didn't mean to, but he let it slip out when he wasn't watching. I ran into him over in Barton this morning and he was roasting Bloomtown as usual. Said we were a bunch of Rubes, to fall for a raw proposition like Billy Wamkiss, dressed up as a temperance lecturer. And then he went on to say that my daddy would get richer'n he already is, from his rake-off on the moisture that'll be injected into the town after she goes dry. He said he met Wamkiss in Chicago three years ago, and he's been doing a rattling business all over the country—deliver lectures on the evils of the Demon Rum that'd bring tears to the eyes of a potato; dry up the territory, with the help of the churches; and then fill up the town with drug stores. That's his program, and it's going to work here, thanks to my amiable and honorable father."
Jap was silent. He had no words with which to express his emotions. Bill went out on the street, his reporter's pad under his arm. In half an hour he returned.
"It's worse—I mean more incriminating—than I thought, Jap," he said, as he drew his partner into the private office and shut the door.
"Did you attend that meeting at the Baptist Church?" Jap asked anxiously.
"Yes, and I had to dig out before it was over. I wanted to explode, and blow up the whole bunch of idiots and crooks. Pap and Wamkiss, alias Parsons, have formed some kind of a Templar lodge, and my daddy's got himself elected secretary. They're going to dry up Bloomtown. Fancy it! They did a lot of crooked work over at the Court House, so as to make it look as if all the licenses would expire at the same time. Holmes is the only one that's likely to squeal, because he's paid his second fee, and the others have only a few months to run. They'll make it up to Holmes, I reckon, rather'n have him give the snap away. Of course, Jap, I haven't got the goods for any of this. I just put two and two together while I was listening to the speeches, especially my father's speech."
"Bill"—Jap laid his hand on Bill's arm—"you made the mistake of your career when you picked that owl for a daddy. He has made more trouble than three towns could stand up against. First, he throws the place wide open and takes all the stray saloons and gambling dens to his bosom; and just when we have a reputation for being the toughest town on the road and doing a land-office business in sin, he is—he is fool enough to try to pull off a stunt like this. What becomes of his plea for municipal revenue when he turns saloons into drug stores?"
"Well, the lid's going on," Bill returned. "The preachers and the ladies are strong for it, and the right honorable Mayor announced that he was the Poo Bah that was going to put up the shutters."
"Better order a granite," Jap muttered, as he returned to the composing room.
And his prediction was well founded, for the town had become so used to its "morning's morning" that it fairly ravened for the blood of Mayor Bowers. The Herald office became a forum for indignant orators, while the Mayor strutted proudly up and down Main street, with the black-coated Parsons, feeling that the eyes of the world were glued on him.