The New Mayor's Policy The story of the kidnaping spread through the city like wildfire, and surmounted in interest even the result of the election. As usual in such cases, the facts were exaggerated and speculation ran rife as to the principals in the plot. Some people (the more sensible) thought the Burke forces had planned and executed the whole coup, but others believed that it originated with Sam Watt's party and that Armstrong, getting wind of the carrying away of Gertrude Van Deusen, speedily turned the tables on Allingham by hiring another cab and seizing upon him as he was leaving his house alone, to walk down town to the public debate. It leaked out, too, that there were two men with the cab which carried John Allingham, lest,--the people said,--he should try to break the plate glass front and jump from his moving prison. But that the plot was a well-matured one was proven by the fact that outside locks had been placed on the doors to both cabs, so that they could not be forced open from the inside. No definite clue, however, could be obtained to the perpetrators of the kidnaping scheme, although both sufferers from it had put private detectives at work upon the affair. But, like many startling public events, the midnight ride of the two candidates was a "nine days' wonder" and then the public interest centered around the newly elected mayor. Gertrude had need not only of public sympathy, but of all the courage and clear-sightedness which she had inherited. This she realized more fully than ever, when the excitement of campaigning was over. If she had chosen to spend her time and strength and money on automobiles or fine clothes, people would have passed upon her choice as the natural thing, and envied her way of living; but now that she had elected to work hard and to give herself freely to fighting for principle and establishing good government in her city, her friends of different tastes whispered among themselves, "How strange!" "How unwomanly!" "How unnatural for a woman!" "The only motives many people can understand," said Gertrude one day to her cousin, "are the ones by which they themselves are actuated. And not always then. My rich friends may not be able to understand, but the plain people will; the ones who are capable of conviction and of sacrifices for conviction will." "All the same, Gertie," retorted her cousin, "this world is not made up of Savonarolas nor other burn-at-the-stake folks. You are in a bad scrape and I wish you had had sense enough to say no when those women dragged you forth," which only went to prove the axiom that one's relatives are privileged of speech.