"Everybody knows why I pardoned Ilingsworth," he said. "Ilingsworth didn't commit the crime."
The chairman poised his pencil.
"So it was a matter not susceptible of proof, wholly within your own knowledge and the knowledge of no one else?"
"Yes, that is true."
"Come, Leslie," said her father, drawing her away; and turning to Beekman he eyed him severely, and added "The price must have been big! Too thin, Governor—that's too thin!"
The next day the Star and the Reporter took up the hue and cry against him. "Too thin" was the Star's headline, while the Reporter denounced Beekman in scathing language; contended that in pardoning such a man as Ilingsworth the Governor had deliberately let loose on the community a murderer and an anarchist; and assured its readers that in refusing clemency to Wilkinson the Governor had in cowardice yielded to the popular clamour that someone should be made to suffer for the iniquitous methods of the great financiers of the present day.
"The present incumbent at Albany is a blot on the escutcheon of the Empire State," the editorial concluded. "The sooner the blot is wiped out the better."
The next day public opinion was swinging strongly against the Governor. And, on his own motion, Beekman was suspended from office until the charges against him had been tried.
The next day Ougheltree's denial was ridiculed. What is more, the Morning Mail, Ougheltree's paper, did not dare to take up the cudgels in the Governor's behalf: it could no longer defend a man who was charged with being implicated with its chief, since to do so would be to admit its owner's part in the conspiracy. And yet Ougheltree was as innocent as a new-born babe of having written the incriminating letter.
In short, Beekman was doomed. He had climbed the hill and for an instant had stood in the glory of the sunlight, only to find himself suddenly dashed down to the bottom at break-neck pace.