"About time you came," began Bailey. "Here I am occupying one of the seats of the high and mighty, and you make off as if I were nobody. I've a mind to take it out of you somehow." "If you dared," returned Allingham. "But you can't. You've a character to maintain and I'm a guest. I say--was it you who put it into Miss Van Deusen's head that I'd take any little plum she chose to offer me? Because I won't, you know." "O, yes, you will," said Bailey, "when it's _pro bono publico_. And say, if you've any civic pride whatever--if you want to discover graft in its most rampageous form and help to suppress or expose it--here's your chance. And you a boasted 'Municipal Reformer!'" "What do you mean?" asked Allingham. "Well, just this. One of Burke's contractors came into the Mayor's office the other day and complained that I was about to 'rip his contracts up the back,'--at least, that's the classic language in which he chose to present his ideas to a lady. I hadn't begun to look into these matters at all; but what he said led Miss Van Deusen to send for me and we have since been looking him up. I find that he is paving several streets--or will do so--on no end of little contracts of three hundred yards for each. He makes a nice fat sum on each,--an aggregate of several thousand dollars, I won't undertake to say how much. That sets us to thinking and investigating some more. Say, Jack, remember the franchise the Boulevard Railway asked for and almost got last year? It's still pending, you know. Well, I've reason to think the Mayor was in on it--and Burke--for no end of boodle. That's why he wanted to be mayor. So you see, 'there's a reason' why a man like you should be willing to take the job of street commissioner this year. It will be no 'plum' this time, I can assure you. It looks now, as if it would be a fight instead--and perhaps a good hot one." "That puts a different look to it," said Jack. "You know I'm not afraid of a fight--a good one." "Don't I know it?" retorted Bailey. "Haven't I gone to bed sore and stiff, too many times, as a boy, to forget it? It's because you are a fair fighter and not a boodler that we want you at the head of the street department now. Come, Jack, will you do it?" "You can be sure of it, Bailey," returned Allingham. "I'll accept at once. Tell me more of what you are finding out. That is, if you think she won't mind." "She won't mind your knowing some of it anyhow, because you'll be expected to help us look into certain matters," said Bailey. They talked together for an hour or so, and when John Allingham finally departed he felt a deeper interest in city reform than ever, and believed the time had come when he could be of real use to his community. "By the way, Jack," said Armstrong, as he was leaving, "have you found out anything more about the originators of your strange ride the night before election?"