“The date for the various county conventions has not been formally set. It is unofficially given as a week from Saturday. Instead, the caucus will be held in three of the eight counties _next_ Saturday. The Machine’s men know this. The League’s don’t. It will be sprung as a surprise, with two days’ notice instead of the customary seven. This will keep many of the League’s people from attending. At the Bowden and Jericho caucuses telegrams will be received saying you have withdrawn. “At Matawan and Haldane the regular delegates will be notified to meet at the town halls. While they are waiting outside the locked front doors, the county chairman and his own crowd will step in the back way and hold their caucus and elect their delegates. Floaters will be brought into several counties. In Wills County the chairman will fail to hear the names of your delegates. Have your manager arrange for the Wills men to bolt at the right time. Force the State Committee _at once_ to declare the date for the county conventions. Notify the League’s men at Matawan and Haldane of the ‘back door’ trick, and have the telegraph operators at Jericho and Bowden warned not to receive or transmit any fake message of your withdrawal. “On your State tour you will find newspapers closed to your speeches and advertisements, and a number of the halls engaged before you get to the town. Arrange for injunctions restraining the papers from barring your notices, and have someone go ahead of you to secure halls. And arrange for police protection to break up rowdyism at your meetings.” Clive Standish read and re-read this remarkable epistle. That it had come from the Conover camp he could not doubt. He had heard, before Caleb’s hint of the previous afternoon, that there was a certain discontent and vague rumor of treachery, in more than one of the multifarious branches of the Boss’s business and political interests. For the unexpected strength developed by the Civic League and the eloquence of its candidate had shaken divers of the enemy’s less resolute followers, and more than one of these might readily seek to curry future favor with the winning side by casting just such an anchor to windward. In any case, there was the letter. Its author’s identity, for the moment, was of no great matter. “Anonymous!” mused Standish, eyeing the missive with strong distaste. “Is it a trick of Conover’s or a bit of treachery on the part of one of the men he trusts? In either case, there’s only one course a white man can take with a thing of this kind.” Picking up the letter, he crumpled it into a ball and threw it into the fireplace. “Better not say anything about it to Ansel,” he decided as he watched the paper twist open under the heat and break into a blaze. “He’d only call me a visionary crank again. And if it’s a trap, the precautions he’d take would play straight into Conover’s hand.”