It was after the _Argus_ had gone to press on the night of explosions that Editor Hildreth sought and found David Kent in his rooms at the Clarendon, and poured out the vials of his wrath.

"Say, I'd like to know if you cue-call this giving me a fair show!" he demanded, flinging into Kent's sitting-room and dropping into a chair.

"Did I, or did I not understand that I was to have the age on this oil business when there was anything fit to print?"

Kent gave the night editor a cigar and was otherwise exasperatingly imperturbable.

"Keep your clothes on, and don't accuse a man of disloyalty until you have all the doc.u.ments in the case," he said. "I didn't know, until I saw your bulletin a few hours ago, that the thing had been pulled off. In fact, I've been too busy with other things to pay much attention to the Belmount end of it."

"The ded-devil you have!" sputtered Hildreth, chewing savagely on the gift cigar. "I'd like to know what business you had to mix up in other things to the detriment of my news column. You were the one man who knew all about it; or at least you did a week or two ago."

"Yes; but other and more important things have intervened. I have been desperately busy, as I say."

"Well, you've lost your chance to get your grip on the capitol gang, anyway; that is one comfort," growled the editor, getting what consolation he could out of Kent's apparent failure. "They played it too fuf-fine for you."

"Did they?" said Kent.

"It looks pretty much that way, doesn't it? Duvall is the scapegoat, and the only one. About day after to-morrow Bucks' organ, the _Tribune_, will come out with an 'inspired' editorial whitewashing the entire capitol outfit. It will show how Rumford's application for the charter was refused, and how a truly good and beneficent state government has been hoodwinked and betrayed by one of its most trusted supporters."

Kent threw off his street coat and went to get his dressing-gown from the wardrobe in the bedroom. When he came back he said: "Hildreth, you have taken me at my word thus far, and you haven't had occasion to call me either a knave or a fool. Do it a little longer and I'll put you in the way of touching off a set-piece of pyrotechnics that will double discount this mild little snap-cracker of the Belmount business."

"Can't you do it now?"

"No; the time isn't ripe yet. We must let the _Tribune's_ coat of whitewash dry in first."

Hildreth wriggled in his chair.

"Kent, if I thought it would do any good, I'd cuc-curse you out; I would for a fact. You are too blamed close-mouthed for any ordinary newspaper use."

But Kent only laughed at him. Now that the strain was in some measure relaxed he could stand any amount of abuse from so good a friend as the night editor.

"Turn on the hot water if you want to, and if it will relieve the pressure. I know about how you feel; and I'd be as sore as you are if I didn't know that I am going to make it up to you a little later on. But about this oil blaze and to-morrow's--or to-day's--issue of the _Argus_. I hope you haven't said too much."

"I haven't sus-said anything. The stuff trickled in by a.s.sociated wire at the last minute, and we had to cut and slash for s.p.a.ce and run it pretty much as it came--the bare story."

"All right; that's better. Now suppose you hint darkly that only half of the truth has come out; that more--and more startling--developments may be safely predicted in the immediate hence. Hit it up hard toward the capitol, and don't be afraid of libeling anybody."

Hildreth's eyes narrowed.

"Say, Kent; you have grown a lot in these last few weeks: what is your diet?"

"Hard work--and a determination to make my brag good."

"To down the ring, you mean?"

"Yes; to down the ring."

"Are you any nearer to it than you were when you began?"

"A good many parasangs."

"By Jove! I more than half believe you've got hold of something ded-definite at last!"

"I have, indeed. Hildreth, I have evidence--printable evidence--enough to dig a dozen political graves, one of them big enough to hold Jasper G.

Bucks' six-feet-two."

"Let me see it!" said the night editor, eagerly; but Kent laughed and pushed him toward the door.

"Go home and go to bed. I wouldn't show it to you to-night if I had it here--as I have not. I don't go around with a stick of dynamite in my pocket."

"Where is it?" Hildreth asked.

"It is in a safety-deposit box in the vault of the Security Bank; where it is going to stay until I am ready to use it. Go home, I say, and let me go to bed. I'm ragged enough to sleep the clock around."

In spite of his weariness, which was real enough, Kent was up betimes the next morning. He had a wire appointment with Blashfield Hunnicott and two others in Gaston, and he took an early train to keep it. The ex-local attorney met him at the station with a two-seated rig; and on the way to the western suburbs they picked up Frazee, the county a.s.sessor, and Orton, the appraiser of the Apache Building and Loan a.s.sociation.

"Hunnicott has told you what I am after," said Kent, when the surrey party was made up. "We all know the property well enough, but to have it all fair and above-board, we'll drive out and look it over, so that our knowledge may be said to be fully up to date."

Twenty minutes afterward the quartet was locating the corners of a square in Gaston's remotest suburb; an "addition" whose only improvements were the weathered and rotting street and lot stakings on the bare, brown plain.

"'Lots 1 to 56 in Block 10, Guilford & Hawk's Addition,'" said Kent, reading from a memorandum in his note-book. "It lies beautifully, doesn't it?"

"Yes; for a chicken farm," chuckled the a.s.sessor.

"Well, give me your candid opinion, you two: what is the property worth?"

The Building and Loan man scratched his chin.

"Say fifty dollars for the plot--if you'll fence it."

"No, put it up. You are having a little boom here now: give it the top boom price, if you like."

The two referees drew apart and laid their heads together.

"As property is going here just now, fifty dollars for the inside lots, and one hundred dollars apiece for the corners; say three thousand for the plot. And that is just about three times as much as anybody but a land-crazy idiot would give for it." It was Frazee who announced the decision.

"Thank you both until you are better paid. Now we'll go back to town and you can write me a joint letter stating the fact. If you think it will get you disliked here at home, make the figure higher; make it high enough so that all Gaston will be dead sure to approve."

"You are going to print it?" asked the Building and Loan appraiser.

"I may want to. You may shape it to that end."

"I'll stand by my figures," said Frazee. "It will give me my little chance to get back at the governor. I had it a.s.sessed as unimproved suburban property at so much the lot, but he made a kick to the board of equalization and got it put in as unimproved farm land at fifty dollars an acre." Then, looking at his watch: "We'd better be getting back, if you have to catch the Accommodation. Won't you stay over and visit with us?"

"I can't, this time; much obliged," said Kent; and they drove to the Building and Loan office where the joint letter of appraisal was written and signed.

Kent caught his train with something to spare, and was back at the capital in good time to keep a dinner engagement at Miss Van Brock's. He had understood that Ormsby would be the only other guest. But Portia had a little surprise in store for him. Loring had dropped in, unannounced, from the East; and Portia, having first ascertained that Mrs. Brentwood's asthma was prohibitive of late dinings-out, had instructed Ormsby to bring Elinor and Penelope.

Kent had been saving the results of his deep-sea divings in the oil-field investigation to spread them out before Miss Van Brock and Ormsby "in committee," but he put a padlock on his lips when he saw the others.