"What are you doing to one McAlister?" she asked. "A street contractor, I believe he is." "Nothing, as yet. Why?" asked the city attorney. "Well, he's just left me," replied the mayor. "Says you are going to 'rip his contract up the back,'--to quote him literally." "Aha!" said Bailey. "Then he's afraid, is he? I've done nothing as yet, but I heard something the other day that caused me to suspect trouble in that direction. See here, Gertie, just how far do you want me to go in this 'ripping-up-the-back' business? I'm positive if we once begin we'll find graft on every side of us. Then trouble will begin, you know,--trouble for you, I mean." "Never mind me," she answered. "What am I here for if it is not to purify city government? I don't expect to make friends in the process; but if I can serve the city--and thereby my state and my country, why,--" She stopped and looked fearlessly at Armstrong. "Then I shall go ahead--looking into the matter of contracts and appropriations?" he asked. "Certainly," she replied. "No matter whom it hits, investigate every department of the administration." "Bravo!" said he. "You're a chip of the old block all right." Gertrude remembered with a twinge of apprehension what McAlister had said about her father's "pile." "But you must be prepared for war--underhanded, tricky, politicians' war," added Bailey. A week later he appeared again at her office and asked for a private interview. "Gertrude," he began, "it's as I feared about McAlister. He has an infamous contract--or, rather, a whole set of them--and he is fleecing the city with every yard of pavement he puts down." "That doesn't surprise me," replied the Mayor. "It's the scared bird that flutters." "He has a separate contract for every 300 square yards of pavement he lays," said Armstrong. "Instead of accepting the terms of the lowest bidder, the board of aldermen let him these contracts. It is a wrong system from the start. We ought to have a competitive system and award our contracts to the lowest bidder who will do good work. Instead of that, there seems to have been some sort of chicanery by which McAlister was given all these little contracts,--on every one of which he makes a big profit,--while the other bidders were not even considered." "Who has the giving out of contracts, anyway? Oughtn't there to be a regular system about it?" "There should be a law about it," said Bailey. "But I find nothing in the city charter. And I find that contracts have been given out by aldermen, councilmen or mayor, just as happened to suit their notions best."