"No," said Venable, "I won’t do it. I can’t. I’m pretty old to be poor, but I’m too old to change my opinions." He was still talking in this manner when they entered the League’s quarters and were greeted with the news that burglars had been there the night before. "Nothin’s been touched in any of the offices but yours, Mr. Huber," said the breathless clerk who poured out this story to them; "but there the safe’s been blown open, and I don’t know what’s missin’. I sent for the police right away." "The police?" said Luke. "Stop your joking, Charley." "I’m not jokin’, Mr. Huber. I did send for them. They’ve been here. They said they’d have a detective over from headquarters before long." Luke hurried to his office. Bits of charred blanket and several match-ends lay about the floor. The door of the safe swung lamely upon a single hinge. Inside was a tumbled mass of papers. Otherwise the room seemed undisturbed. Quickly, Luke ran over the papers in the yawning safe. He looked up at Venable. "Everything’s here," he said. "Are you sure?" asked Venable. "Quite." Luke went to his desk. Its lock had been forced. There had been a rude attempt to restore the contents to the order in which Luke had left them when he quitted the office the day before, but he saw at once that everything had been examined. "And they didn’t get anything from here, either," he added. "I wonder what they were after?" said Venable. "So do I," said Luke acridly. "At any rate, they didn’t get it." The telephone rang as he bent beside it. He took the receiver from its hook. "Yes?" he said. "Oh, Mr. Venable? Yes, he’s here—right: he’s here in my office, I say. Want to talk to him?" He held up the receiver. "It’s that new worker, Jarvie," he explained. "He wants to talk to you." Rapidly as events had of late happened to Luke and the Municipal Reform League, they were happening this morning with a speed theretofore unequaled. Venable had not exchanged a dozen sentences over the telephone before he told Jarvie to wait a minute and, ringing off, faced Luke, with his cheeks gone gray. "This—this is the worst thing yet!" he gasped. Luke was leaning against the desk, his hands closed over its edge. "What is?" "This, that Jarvie says. It’s—Oh!" Venable flung up his hands. "It’s too much!" Luke’s grip tightened. "Tell me what it is." Venable crumpled into the chair before the telephone. "A couple of the Progressives’ detectives have caught Jarvie trying to buy one of Heney’s lieutenants." "What?" cried Luke. The veins stood out, big and blue, on his gripping hands. "Of course the Heney man was really working with the detectives," moaned Venable; "but that won’t help. They had a dictaphone in the hotel room——" "In what hotel room?" "The one that Jarvie was to meet the Heney man in. I thought he’d be more careful. I told him——"