"Your old friend Blodgett seems agitated to-night," said Alvord, as they sat alone in the Turkish room. "He's got to be quite a fellow here on the strength of your friendship. Wish he was a voter. We could use him. Maybe he can help in a quiet, way. Anything wrong with him? Seemed worked up." Smilingly, as if Alvord's remarks had been as plain to him as they were charged with mystery, Brassfield replied that so far as he knew Blodgett was all right, and that he might be of use further along in the campaign. "And now," said he, "tell me what on earth has sent Edgington off on this tangent. He's the man who first suggested to me that I ought to run. It was his scheme. He's my lawyer and my friend. What does it mean?" "Well, I saw Edge, and he's got a list of reasons longer'n an anaconda's dream. He says that since your return from your New York trip you've seemed different. I don't mind saying that there's others say the same thing." "Different?" said Brassfield, in an anxiety rendered painful by the missing time and these strangers whom he was accused of knowing, but who behaved as strangers to him. "How?" "Well," said Alvord, "kind of not the same in manner--offish with the gang, an' sort of addicted to the professor and the hypnotist--no kick from me, old chap, you understand, but I'm filing a kind of bill of exceptions, an' these things go in." "I see," said Brassfield. "Go on!" "Then you'll have to own you've done some funny stunts," continued Alvord. "You've fired old Stevens, and you've been going over your books with this man Blodgett, and talking of selling him an interest----" "Talking of what?" exclaimed Brassfield. "Oh, it's your own business, you know, but a sort of shock to the feelings and finances of the community all the same. Not that it affects me, or that many know of it, but the inner circle is disturbed--and, mind, I'm leading up to Edgington's flop." "I see," said Brassfield. "Go on!" "Well," said Alvord, "the mystery comes in right here. He says he went up to see you and you flew up and took a high moral attitude and said it was a dirty mess, and you wouldn't touch it. He thought it was some of Bess's isms that she brought home from college--civic purity, and all that impractical rot that these intellectual women get, and he says he began hunting for some one to run in to fill the vacancy caused by the declination of E. Brassfield. He was knocked numb when he found out that you were out for the place. You must have said _something_ to him, you know. Now what in the name of Dodd was it?"