"I am going South," Francisco told his son. "I cannot bear this."
On May 21, the United Railway Company received a franchise to electrize any of its street-car routes, "where grades permitted."
At once ensued a public uproar. From the press, the pulpit and the rostrum issued fiery accusations that the city was betrayed. In the midst of it Mayor Schmitz departed for Europe.
Frank met Ruef at the Ferry, where the former had gone to see Aleta off on a road tour with her company. The little boss was twisting his moustache and muttering to himself.
"So His Honor's off on a lark," said the newsman, meaningly.
Ruef glared at him, but made no answer.
Afterward Frank heard that they had quarreled. Ruef, he learned, had charged the mayor with ingratitude; had threatened, pleaded, warned--without success.
Schmitz had gone; his was the dogged determination which easily-led men sometimes manifest at unexpected moments. One heard of him through the press dispatches, staying at the best hotels of European capitals, making speeches when he had a chance. He was like a boy on a holiday. But at home Ruef sensed the stirring of an outraged mass and trembled. He could no longer control his minions. And, worst of all, he could not manage Langdon. "Big Jim" Gallagher, now the acting mayor, was docile to a fault, however. He would have put his hand into the fire for this clever little man, whom he admired so immensely. Once they discussed the ousting of Langdon.
"It would be quite legal," Ruef contended. "The Mayor and Board have power to remove a district attorney and select his successor."
Henry Ach, advisor of the boss, looked dubious. "I'm not sure of that. Moreover, it's bad politics. It would be better seemingly to cooperate with Langdon. He has the public confidence. We've not.... Besides, whom would we put in Langdon's place?"
"Ruef," said "Big Jim," with his ready admiration. "He's the man."
"Hm!" the little boss exclaimed, reflectively. "Well we shall see."
Frank liked Langdon. He was rather a slow-thinking man; not so clever at expedient as Ruef. But he was grounded in the Law--and honest. Moreover, he had courage. Powerful enemies and their machinations only stirred his zest.
Single-handed Langdon might have been outwitted by the power and astuteness of his foes. But another mind, a keener one was soon to add its force to Langdon's. Francis J. Heney, special investigator of the Roosevelt government, who had unmasked and overthrown corruption in high places, was in town.
Frank knew that he had come to San Francisco for a purpose. He met this nervous, wiry, sharp-eyed man in the managing editor's office now and again. Once he had entered rather unexpectedly upon a conference of Heney, former Mayor James D. Phelan, Rudolph Spreckels, son of the sugar nabob, and William J. Burns. Frank, who guessed he was intruding, made a noiseless exit; not, however, till he heard that there would be a thorough, secret search into the trolley franchise and some other actions of the Ruef administration. Spreckels and Phelan guaranteed to raise $100,000 for this purpose. Burns and his detectives had for several months been quietly at work.
On October 24 District Attorney Langdon publicly announced the appointment of Francis J. Heney as his assistant, stating that a thorough and fearless search into the actions of the city government would ensue.
On October 25 the Supervisors met. Frank, himself, went to the council chamber to learn what was afoot. He suspected a sensation. But the Board met quietly enough at 2:30 o'clock, with Jim Gallagher in the chair. At 2:45 a special messenger called the acting Mayor to Ruef's office. Three hours later he was still absent from the angry and impatient Board.
That some desperate move was imminent Frank realized. Here was Ruef between two bodeful dates. Yesterday had come the news that Langdon had appointed Heney--the relentless enemy of boodlers--to a place of power. Tomorrow would begin the impaneling of a Grand Jury, whose avowed purpose it was to "investigate municipal graft."
"What would I do if I were Ruef?" Frank asked himself. But no answer came. He paced up and down the corridor, pondering the situation. At intervals he paused before the Supervisors' chamber. Once he found the door slightly ajar and listened shamelessly. He saw Big Jim Gallagher, red-faced, excited, apparently much flustered, reading a paper. He thought he heard Langdon's name and Heney's. There seemed to be dissension in the board. But before he learned anything definite a watchful attendant closed the portal with an angry slam. Frank resumed his pacing.
Finally he went out for a bite to eat.
Frank returned half an hour later to find the reporters' room in an uproar. Big Jim Gallagher had dismissed Langdon from office with the corroboration of the Board of Supervisors, as a provision of the city ordinance permitted him to do. Ruef had been appointed district attorney.
Langdon's forces were not disconcerted by the little boss's coup. Late that evening Frank advised his paper of a counterstroke. Heney had aroused Judge Seawell from his slumbers and obtained an order of the court enjoining Ruef from actual assumption of the title he had arrogated to himself.
Judge Graham upheld it. Langdon remained the district attorney. Though Ruef imposed every possible obstacle, the Grand Jury was impaneled, November 7, and began its work of investigation with such startling celerity that Ruef and Schmitz faced charges of extortion on five counts, a week later.
Meanwhile Schmitz, who had but recently returned from Europe, became officially involved in the anti-Japanese agitation.
"He's summoned East to see the President," said a Burns operative to Frank one morning as they met at Temple Israel. "Lucky devil, that big fellow! Here's the town at sixes and sevens about the 'little brown brother.' Doesn't want him with its white kids in the public schools. The Mikado stirs the devil of a row with Washington about it. And Teddy sends for 'Gene. Just his luck to come back a conquering hero."
But Schmitz fared badly at the Capital, whence Roosevelt dispatched a "big stick" message to the California Legislature. At the same time George B. Keane, the Supervisors' clerk, and a State Senator as well, was working for the "Change of Venus bill," a measure which if passed, would have permitted Ruef to take his case out of the jurisdiction of Judge Dunne. But the bill was defeated. Once more Ruef's straining at the net of Justice had achieved no parting of the strands.
On March 6 Stanley greeted Mayor Schmitz as he stepped from a train at Oakland Mole. Correspondents and reporters gathered round the tall, bearded figure. Schmitz looked tired, discouraged.
Perfunctorily, uneasily, Schmitz answered the reporter's queries. He had done his level best for San Francisco. As for the charges pending against him, they would soon be disproved. No one had anything on him. All his acts were open to investigation.
"Do you know that Ruef has skipped?" Frank asked.
"Wh-a-a-t!" the Mayor set down his grip. He seemed struck all of a heap by the announcement.
"Fact!" another newsman corroborated. "Abie's jumped his bond. He's the well-known 'fugitive from justice.'"
Without a word the Mayor left them. He walked aboard the ferry boat alone. They saw him pacing back and forth across the forward deck, his long overcoat flapping in the wind, one hand holding the dark, soft hat down on his really magnificent head.
"A ship without a rudder," said Frank. The others nodded.
Over the municipal administration was the shadow of Ruef's flight. The shepherd had deserted his flock. And the wolves of the law were howling.
Frank was grateful to the Powers for this rushing pageant of political events. It gave him little chance to grieve. Now and then the tragedy of Bertha gripped him by the throat and shook him with its devastating loneliness. He found a certain solace in Aleta's company. She was always ready, glad to walk or dine with him. She knew his silences; she understood.
But there were intervals of grief beyond all palliation; days when he worked blindly through a grist of tasks that seemed unreal. And at night he sought his room, to sit in darkness, suffering dumbly through the hours. Sometimes Dawn would find him thus.
Robert Windham and his family had returned from the Hawaiian Islands. They had found a house in Berkeley; Windham opened offices on Fillmore street. Robert and his nephew visited occasionally a graveyard in the western part of town. The older man brought flowers and his tears fell frankly on a mound that was more recent than its neighbors. But Stanley did not join in these devotions.
"She is not here," he said one day. "You know that, Uncle Robert."
"She's up above," returned the other, brokenly. "My poor, wronged child!"
Frank stared at him a moment. "Do you believe in the conventional Heaven?"
"Why--er--yes," said Windham, startled. "Don't you, Frank?"
"No," said Stanley, doggedly. "Not in that ... nor in a God that lets men suffer and be tempted into wrongs they can't resist ... makes them suffer for it."
"What do you mean? Are you an atheist?" asked Windham, horrified.
"No ... but I believe that God is Good. And knows no evil. Sometimes in the night when I've sat thinking, Bertha seems to come to me; tells me things I can't quite understand. Wonderful things, Uncle Robert."
The other regarded him silently, curiously. He seemed at a loss.
"I've learned to judge men with less harshness," Frank spoke on. "Ruef and Schmitz, for instance.... Every now and then I see the Mayor pacing on the ferryboat. It's rather pathetic, Uncle Robert. Did God raise him up from obscurity just to torture him? He's had wealth and honor--adoration from the people. Now he's facing prison. And those poor devils of Supervisors; they've known luxury, power. Now they're huddled like a pack of frightened sheep; everybody thinks they're guilty. Ruef's forsaken them. Ruef, with his big dream shattered, fleeing from the law...."
He faced his uncle fiercely, questioning. "Is that God's work? And Bertha's body lying there, because of the sins of her forebears! Forgive me, Uncle Robert. I'm just thinking aloud."
Windham placed a hand upon his nephew's shoulder. "I'm afraid I can't answer you, Frank," he said slowly. "You're a young man. You'll forget. The world goes on. And our griefs do not matter. We fall and we get up again ... just as Ruef and the others will."
"Do you suppose they'll catch him--Ruef, I mean?"
"Not if the big fellows can prevent it. If he's caught there'll be the deuce to pay. Our Pillars of Finance will topple.... No, I think Ruef is safe."
"I don't quite understand," said Stanley.
"Ruef, himself, is nothing; a political boss, a solicitor of bribes. But our corporation heads. The town will shake when they're accused, perhaps indicted. I know what's been going on. We're close to scandals that'll echo round the world."
Frank looked at his uncle wonderingly. Windham was a corporation lawyer. Doubtless he knew. Silently the two men made their way out of the graveyard. Frank determined to ride down town with his uncle, and then telephone to Aleta. He hadn't seen her for a week.
As the car passed the Call building they noted a crowd at Third and Market streets, reading a bulletin. People seemed excited. Frank jumped from the moving car and elbowed his way forward. In the newspaper window was a sheet of yellow paper inscribed in large script: "BURNS ARRESTS RUEF AT THE TROCADERO ROADHOUSE."
Frank discussed the situation with Aleta one evening after Ruef's capture. Her friend, the Supervisor, had brought news of the alarm.
"He says no one of them will trust the other; they're afraid of Gallagher; think he'll turn State's evidence, or whatever you call it. 'Squeal,' was what he said."
"Burns and Heney must be putting on the screws," commented Frank.
"Frank," Aleta laid a hand impulsively upon his arm, "I don't suppose there's any way to save this man ... I--oh, Frank, it would be awful if he went to prison."
He stared at her. "What do you mean, Aleta?"
"I mean," she answered, "that he's done things for me ... because he loves me ... hopes to win me. He's sincere in that.... Oh, can't you see how it would hurt if--"
"If he gets caught--stealing," Frank spoke harshly. "Well, you should have thought of that before, my dear."
A touch of anger tinctured the appeal with which her eyes met his. "One doesn't always reason when the heart is sore. When one is bitter with--well--yearning."
He did not answer. He was rather startled by that look. Finally she said, more gently: "Frank, you'll help him if you can--I know." He nodded.
It was late. Aleta had to hurry to the theatre. Frank left her there and walked down Sutter street.
He turned south toward Heney's office. It was in a little house between Geary and O'Farrell, up a short flight of stairs. Above were the living quarters of Heney and his companion, half clerk, half bodyguard.
There was a light in the office, but the shades of the bay-window were tightly drawn. Frank rang the bell, which was not immediately answered. Finally the bodyguard came to the door. "Mr. Heney's very busy, very busy." He seemed tremendously excited.
"Very well," said Frank; "I'll come tomorrow."
"We'll have big news for you," the man announced. He shut the door hastily and double-locked it.
Frank decided to remain in the neighborhood. He might learn something. The morning papers had been getting the best of it recently in the way of news.
It proved a tiresome vigil. And the night was chilly. Frank began to walk briskly up and down the block. A dozen times he did this without result. Then the sudden rumble of a motor car spun him about. He saw two men hasten down the steps of Heney's office, almost leap into the car. Instantly it drove off. Frank, who followed to the corner, saw it traveling at high speed toward Fillmore street. He looked about for a motor cab in which to follow. There was none in sight. Reluctantly he turned toward home. He had been outwitted, doubtless by a watcher. But not completely. For he was morally certain that one of the men who left Heney's office was Big Jim Gallagher. That visit was significant. From his hotel Frank tried to locate the editor of his paper by telephone. He was not successful. He went to bed, disgusted, after leaving a daylight call.
It was still dark when he dressed the next morning, the previous evening's events fresh in his thought.
He had scarcely reached the street before a newsboy thrust a morning paper toward him. Frank saw that the upper half of the front page was covered with large black headlines. He snatched it, tossing the boy a "two-bit piece," and, without waiting or thinking of the change, became absorbed in the startling information it conveyed.
Sixteen out of the eighteen Supervisors had confessed to taking bribes from half a dozen corporations. Wholesale indictments would follow, it was stated, involving the heads of public service companies--men of unlimited means, national influence. Many names were more than hinted at.
Ruef, according to these confessions, had been the arch-plotter. He had received the funds that corrupted an entire city government. Gallagher had been the go-between, receiving a part of the "graft funds" to be divided among his fellow Supervisors.
Each of the crooked sixteen had been guaranteed immunity from imprisonment in consideration of their testimony.
"Well, that saves Aleta's friend, at any rate," thought Frank. He recalled his uncle's prediction that Ruef's capture would result in extraordinary revelations. But it had not been Ruef, after all, who "spilled the beans." Ruef might confess later. They would need his testimony to make the case complete.
As a matter of fact, Ruef had already begun negotiations with Langdon and Heney looking toward a confession.
The Grand Jury acted immediately upon the wholesale confessions of Ruef's Supervisors. They summoned before them the heads of many corporations, uncovering bribery so vast and open that they were astounded. They found that $200,000 had been paid for the trolley franchise and enormous sums for permits to raise gas rates, for telephone franchises, for prize-fight privileges and in connection with a realty transaction.
The trolley bribe funds had been carried in a shirt box to Ruef by the company's attorney. Other transactions had been more or less "covered." But all were plain enough for instant recognition. San Francisco, which had suspected Ruef and his Supervisors with the easy tolerance of a people calloused to betrayal, was aroused by the insolent audacity of these transactions. It demanded blood.
And Heney was prepared to furnish sanguine vengeance. He was after the "higher-ups," he stated. Like a passionate evangel of Mosaic law, he set out to secure it. Louis Glass, acting president of the telephone company, was indicted on a charge of felony, which made a great hallabaloo, for he was a personable man, a clubman, popular and generally esteemed.
A subtle change--the primary index of that opposition which was to develop into a stupendous force--was noted by the prosecution. Heney and Langdon had been welcomed hitherto in San Francisco's fashionable clubs. Men of wealth and standing had been wont to greet them as they lunched there, commending their course, assuring them of cooperation.
But after the telephone indictment there came a cooling of the atmosphere. Glass seemed more popular than ever. Langdon and Heney were often ignored. People failed to recognize them on the street. Even Spreckels and Phelan, despite their wealth and long established standing, suffered certain social ostracisms.
Wealthy evildoers found themselves as definitely threatened by the law as were the Supervisors. But wealth is made of sterner stuff. It did not cringe nor huddle; could not seek immunity through the confessional. Famous lawyers found themselves in high demand. From New York, where he had fought a winning fight for Harry Thaw, came Delphin Delmas. T.C. Coogan, another famous pleader, entered the lists against Heney in defense of Glass.
Meanwhile the drawing of jurors for Ruef's trial progressed, inexorably.
Several weeks passed. Politics were in a hectic state, and people grumbled. Frank discussed the situation with his Uncle Robert. "Why don't they oust these grafters from office?" he asked.
Windham smiled. "Because they daren't, Frank," he answered. "If the prosecution forced the Supervisors to resign, which would be easy enough, do you know what would happen?"
"Why, they'd fill their posts with better men, of course."
"Not so fast, my boy. The Mayor has the power to fill all vacancies due to resignations. Don't you see what would happen? Schmitz could select another board over whom the prosecution would hold no power. Then, if necessary, he'd resign and his new board would fill the Mayor's chair with some one whom Ruef or the Mayor could trust. Then the city government would once more be independent of the law."
"Lord! What a tangle," Frank ruminated. "How will they straighten it out?"
"Remove the Mayor--if they can convict him of felony."
"Suppose they do. What then?"
"The prosecution forces can then use their power over the boodlers--force them to appoint a Mayor who's to Langdon's liking. Afterward they'll force the Supervisors to resign and the new Mayor will put decent people in their stead."
"Justice!" apostrophized Frank, "thy name is Red Tape!"
Heney alone was to enter the lists against Delmas and Coogan in the trial of Louis Glass. The charge was bribing Supervisor Boxton to vote against the Home telephone franchise.
Frank had seen Glass at the Press Club, apparently a sound and honest citizen. A little doubt crept into Frank's mind. If men like that could stoop to the bribing of Supervisors, what was American civilization coming to?
He looked in at the Ruef trial to see if anything had happened. For the past two months there had been nothing but technical squabbles, interminable hitches and delays.
Ruef was conferring with his attorneys. All at once he stepped forward, holding a paper in his hand. Tears were streaming down his face. He began to read in sobbing, broken accents.
The crowd was so thick that Frank could not get close enough to hear Ruef's words. It seemed a confession or condonation. Scattered fragments reached Frank's ears. Then the judge's question, clearly heard, "What is your plea?"
"Guilty!" Ruef returned.
Ruef's confession served to widen the breach between Class and Mass. He implicated many corporation heads and social leaders in a sorry tangle of wrongdoing. Other situations added fuel to the flame of economic war. The strike of the telephone girls had popular support, a sympathy much strengthened by the charges of bribery pending against telephone officials.
All at once he stepped forward.... Tears were streaming down his face. Then the judge's question, clearly heard, "What is your plea?" "Guilty!" Ruef returned.
Ten thousand ironworkers were on strike at a time when their service was imperative, for San Francisco was rebuilding feverishly. Capital made telling use of this to bolster its impaired position in the public mind. While "pot called kettle black," the city suffered. The visitation of some strange disease, which certain physicians hastened to classify as bubonic plague, very nearly brought the untold evils of a quarantine. A famous sanitarian from the East decided it was due to rats. He came and slew his hundred-thousands of the rodents. Meanwhile the malady had ceased. But there were other troubles.
Fire had destroyed the deeds and titles stored in the Recorder's office, as well as other records. Great confusion came with property transfer and business contracts. But, worst of all, perhaps, was the street car strike.
"It seems as though the Seven Plagues of Egypt were being repeated," remarked Frank to his uncle as they lunched together. They had come to be rather good companions, with the memory of Bertha between them. For Frank, within the past twelve months, had passed through much illuminating experience.
Robert Windham, too, was a changed man. He cared less for money. Frank knew that he had declined big fees to defend some of the "higher ups" against impending charges of the graft prosecution. Windham smiled as he answered Frank's comment about the Seven Plagues.
"We'll come out of it with flying colors, my boy. A city is a great composite heart that keeps beating, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, but the healthy blood rules in the main; it conquers all passing distempers."
Market street was queer and unnatural without its rushing trolley cars. All sorts of horse-drawn vehicles rattled up and down, carrying passengers to and from the ferry. Many of the strikers were acting as Jehus of improvised stages. Autotrucks, too, were impressed into service. They rumbled along, criss-crossed with "circus seats," always crowded.
Frank made his way northward and east through the ruins. Here and there little shops had opened; eating houses for the army of rehabilitation. They seemed to Frank symbols of renewed life in the blackened waste, like tender, green shoots in a flame-ravaged forest. Sightseers were beginning to swarm through the burned district, seeking relics.
A large touring car honked raucously almost in Frank's ear as he was crossing Sutter street, and he sprinted out of its lordly course, turning just in time to see the occupant of the back seat, a large man, rather handsome, in a hard, iron-willed way. He sat stiffly erect, unbending and aloof, with a kind of arrogance which just escaped being splendid. This was Patrick Calhoun, president of the United Railroads, who had sworn to break the Carmen's Union. It was said that Calhoun had sworn, though less loudly, to break the graft prosecution as well.
On Montgomery street several financial institutions were doing business in reclaimed ruins. One of these was the California Safe Deposit and Trust Company, which had made spectacular history of late. It was said that spiritualism entered into its affairs. Frank had been working on the story, which promised a sensation.
As he neared the corner of California and Montgomery streets, where the crumbled bank walls had been transformed into a temporary habitation, he saw a crowd evidently pressing toward it. The bank doors were closed, though it was not yet three o'clock. Now and then people broke from the throng and wandered disconsolately away. One of these, a gray-haired woman, came in Frank's direction. He asked her what was wrong.
"They're busted ... and they've got me money," she wailed.
Hastily Frank verified her statement. Then he hurried to the office, found his notes and for an hour wrote steadily, absorbedly a spectacular tale of superstition, extravagance and financial chaos. As he turned in his copy the editor handed him a slip of paper on which was written: "Call Aleta Boice at once." He sought a telephone, but there was no response. He tried again, but vainly. A third attempt, however, and Aleta's voice, half frantic, answered his.
"He's killed himself," she cried. "Oh, Frank, I don't know what to do."
"He? Who?" Frank asked startled.
"Frank, you know! The man who wanted me to--"
"Do you mean the Supervisor?"
"Yes.... They say it was an accident. But I know better. He lost his money in the safe deposit failure.... Oh, Frank, please come to me, quick."
Frank found Aleta, dry-eyed, frantic, pacing up and down her little sitting room which always looked so quaintly attractive with its jumble of paintings and bric-a-brac, its distinctive furniture and draperies--all symbolic of the helter-skelter artistry which was a part of Aleta's nature. She took Frank's hand and clung to it.
"I'm so glad you've come," she whispered. "I'm so glad you've come."
It was a little time ere she could tell him of the tragedy. The man had been run over, quickly killed. Witnesses had seen him stagger, fall directly in the path of an advancing car. A doctor called it apoplexy.
"But I know better," sobbed Aleta, for the tears had come by now. "He never was sick in his life. He thought he'd lost me when the money went ... his money in the California Safe Deposit Company."
Frank took a seat beside her on the couch, whose flaming, joyous colors seemed a mockery just then. "Aleta," he said, "I wish I could help you. I wish I knew how, but I don't."
She lifted her tear-stained eyes to his with a curious bitterness. "No ... you don't. But thank you. Just your coming's helped me, Frank. I'm better. Go--and let me think things over." She tried to smile, but the tears came.
"Life's a hideous puzzle. Perhaps if I'd gone with him, all would have come right.... I'd have made him happy."
"But what about yourself?"
Again that bitter, enigmatic look came to her eyes. "I guess ... that doesn't matter, Frank."
He left her, a queer ache in his heart. Was she right about the man's committing suicide. Poor devil! He had stolen for a woman. Others had filched his plunder. Then God had taken his misguided life.
But had He? Was God a murderer? A passive conniver at theft? No, that were blasphemy! Yet, if Hepermittedsuch things--? No, that couldn't be, either. It was all an abominable enigma, as Aleta said. Unless--the thought came startlingly--it were all a dream, a nightmare. Thus Kant, the great philosopher, believed. Obsessed by the idea, he paused before a book-store. Its show window prominently displayed Francisco Stanley's latest novel.
Frank missed the mellow wisdom of his father's counsel seriously. He entered the shop, found a volume of Kant and scanned it for some moments till he read:
"This world's life is only an appearance, a sensuous image of the pure spiritual life, and the whole of Sense is only a picture swimming before our present knowing faculty like a dream and having no reality in itself."
Acting upon a strange impulse, he bought the book, marked the passage and ordered it sent to Aleta.
A week after Ruef's confession the trial of Mayor Schmitz began. It dragged through the usual delays which clever lawyers can exact by legal technicality. Judge Dunne, sitting in the auditorium of the Bush Street synagogue, between the six-tinned ceremonial candlesticks and in front of the Mosiac tablets of Hebraic law, dispensed modern justice.
Meanwhile the Committee of Seven sprang suddenly into being. A morning paper announced that Schmitz had handed the reins of the city over to a septette of prominent citizens. Governor Gillette lauded this action. But Rudolph Spreckels disowned the Committee. Langdon and Heney were suspicious of its purpose. So the Committee of Seven resigned.
At this juncture the Schmitz trial ended in conviction of the Mayor which was tantamount to his removal from office. It left a vacancy which, nominally, the Supervisors had the power to fill. But they were under Langdon's orders. Actually, therefore, the District Attorney found himself confronted by the task of naming a new mayor.
Unexpectedly the man was found in Edward Robeson Taylor, doctor of medicine and law, poet and Greek scholar. The selection was hailed with relief. Frank hastened to the Taylor home, a trim, white dwelling on California street near Webster. He found a genial, curly-haired old gentleman sitting in a room about whose walls were thousands of books. He was reading Epictetus.
Stanley found the new mayor likeable and friendly. He seemed a man of simple thought. Frank wondered how he would endure the roiling passions of this city's politics. Dr. Taylor seemed undaunted by the prospect, though.
Without delay he was elected by the Supervisors. Then began the farcical procedure of their resignations. One by one the new chief named good citizens as their successors.
But the real fight was now beginning. Halsey's testimony had not incriminated Glass beyond a peradventure. There remained a shade of doubt that he had authorized the outlay of a certain fund for the purposes of bribery. The jury disagreed. The Prosecution's first battle against the "higher-ups" had brought no victory.
Ruef was failing Heney as a witness for the people. After months of bargaining the special prosecutor withdrew his tacit offer of immunity. Heney's patience with the wily little Boss, who knew no end of legal subterfuge, was suddenly exhausted. Frank heard that Ruef was to be tried on one of the three hundred odd indictments found against him. Schmitz had been sentenced to five years in San Quentin. He had appealed.
Several times Frank tried to reach Aleta on the telephone. But she did not respond to calls, a fact which he attributed to disorganized service. But presently there came a letter from Camp Curry in the Yosemite Valley.
"I am here among the everlasting pines and cliffs," she wrote, "thinking it all out. I thank you for the book, which has helped me. If only we might waken from our 'dream'! But here one is nearer to God. It is very quiet and the birds sing always in the golden sunshine.
"I shall come back saner, happier, to face the world.... Perhaps I can forget myself in service, I think I shall try settlement work.
"Meanwhile I am trying not to think of what has happened ... what can never happen. I am reading and painting. Yesterday a dog came up and licked my hand. I cried a little after that, I don't know why."
In his room that evening, Frank re-read the letter. It brought a lump to his throat.
Very soon after the appointment of Mayor Taylor, the second trial of Louis Glass ended in his conviction. He was remanded to the county jail awaiting an appeal. The trial of an official of the United Railways began. Meanwhile the politicians rallied for election.
Schmitz had been elected at the end of 1905. His term, which Dr. Taylor was completing, would be terminated with the closing of the present year. And now the Graft Prosecution was to learn by public vote how many of the people stood behind it.
Union Labor, ousted and discredited by venal representatives, was not officially in favor of the Taylor-Langdon slate. P.H. McCarthy, labor leader and head of the Building Trades Council, was Labor's nominee for Mayor.
Frank met McCarthy now and then. He posed as "a plain, blunt man," but back of the forthright handgrip, the bluff directness of manner, Frank scented a massive and wily self-interest. He respected the man for his power, his crude but undeniable executive talents.
The two opponents for the Mayoralty were keenly contrasted. Taylor was quiet, suavely cultured, widely read but rather passive. Some said he lacked initiative.
Frank MacGowan was Langdon's foeman in the struggle for the district attorneyship. Little could be said for or against him. A lawyer of good reputation who had made his way upward by merit and push, he had done nothing big. He was charged with no wrong.
The "dark horse" was Daniel Ryan.
Ryan was a young Irishman, that fine type of political leader who approximates what has sometimes been called a practical idealist. He had set out to reform the Republican Party and achieved a certain measure of success, for he had beaten the Herrin or Railroad forces at the Republican Convention. Ryan was avowedly pro-prosecution. It was believed that he would deliver his party's nomination to Taylor and Langdon.
But he astonished San Francisco voters by becoming a candidate for mayor.
Aleta had returned from Camp Curry. There was a certain quiet in her eyes, a greater self-control, a better facing of Life's problems. They spoke of Kant and his philosophy. "The Nightmare is less turbulent," she said.
One evening at her apartment Frank met a young woman named France, a fragile, fine-haired, dreamy sort of girl, and he was not surprised to learn that she wrote poetry.
"Norah's been working as a telephone operator," explained Aleta. "She's written a story about it--the working girl's wrongs.... Oh, not the ordinary wail-and-whine," she added hastily. "It's real meat. I've read it. The Saturday Magazine's considering it."
Miss France smiled deprecatingly. "I have high hopes," she said. "I need the money."
"It will give you prestige, too," Frank told her, but she shook her head.
"Norah hasn't signed her name to it," Aleta disapproved. "Just because a friend, a well known writer in Carmel, has fixed it up for her a little."
"It doesn't seem like mine," the girl remarked. Aleta rose. "This is election night," she said; "let's go down and watch the returns."
They did this, standing on the fringe of a crowd that thronged about the newspaper offices, watching, eager, but patient, the figures which were flashed on a screen.
The crowd was less demonstrative than is usual on such occasions. A feeling of anxiety prevailed, a consciousness of vital issues endangered and put to the test. Toward midnight the crowd grew thicker. But it was more joyous now. Taylor and Langdon were leading. It became evident that they must win.
Suddenly the restless stillness of the throng was broken by spontaneous cheering. It was impressive, overwhelming, like a great burst of relieved emotion.
Norah France caught Frank's arm as the celebrants eddied round them. The press was disbanding with an almost violent haste. "Where's Aleta?" asked the girl.
Frank searched amid the human eddies, but in vain. "She got separated from us somehow," he said rather helplessly. They searched farther, without result. Aleta doubtless had gone home.
"I wonder if you'd take me somewhere ... for a cup of coffee," said Miss France. The hand upon his arm grew heavy. "I'm a little faint."
"Surely." He suggested a popular cafe, but she shook her head. "Just some quiet little place ... a 'chop house.' That's what the switch-girls call them."
So they entered a pair of swinging doors inscribed "Ladies" on one side and "Gents" on the other. Miss France laughingly insisted that they pass each on the proper side of this divided portal. She was a creature of swift moods; one moment feverishly gay, the next brooding, with a penchant for satire. He wondered how she endured the hard work of a telephone switch-operator. But one felt that whatever she willed she would do. Eagerly she sipped her steaming coffee from a heavy crockery cup, nibbling at a bit of French bread. Then she said to him so suddenly that he almost sprang out of his chair.
"Do you know that Aleta Boice loves you?"
He looked at her annoyed and disturbed by the question.
"No, I don't," he answered slowly. "Nor do I understand just what you're driving at, Miss France."
"If you'll forgive me," her eyes were upon him, "I am driving at masculine obtuseness ... and Aleta's happiness."
"Then you're wasting your time," he spoke sharply. "Aleta loves another.... She's told me so."
"Did she tell you his name?"
"No, some prig of a professor, probably.... Thinks he's 'not her kind.'"
"Yes ... let's have another cup of coffee. Yes, Aleta told me that."
Frank signalled to the waiter. "She's anybody's kind," he said, forcibly.
"But not yours, Mr. Stanley."
"Mine? Why not?"
"Because you don't love her." Norah's tone was sad, half bitter. "Will you forgive me? I'm sorry I provoked you.... But I had to know.... Aleta's such a dear. She's been so good to me."
The Christmas holidays brought handsome stock displays to all the stores. San Francisco was still flush with insurance money but there was a pinch of poverty in certain quarters. The Refugee Camps had been cleared, public parks and squares restored to their normal state.
Langdon and Heney worked on. Another jury brought a verdict of "not guilty" at the second trial of a trolley-bribe defendant. Some of the newspapers had changed by almost imperceptible degrees, were veering toward the cause of the defense.
Then, like a thunderbolt, in January, 1908, came news that the Appellate Court had set aside the conviction of Ruef and Schmitz. Technical errors were assigned as the cause of this decision. The people gasped. But some of the newspapers defended the Appellate Judges' decree.