“Will he testify?” he asked.

Kent’s rejoinder was definitive.

“He has put himself entirely in my hands.  He is a ruined man, politically and socially, and he is desperate.  While I couldn’t make him give me any of the details in the Trans-Western affair, he made a clean breast of the oil field deal, and I have his statement locked up with the other papers in the Security vaults.”

It was Penelope who gave David Kent his due meed of praise.

“I am neither a triumphant politician nor a successful detective, but I recognize both when they are pointed out to me,” she said.  “Mr. Kent, will you serve these gentlemen up hot for dinner, or cold for luncheon?”

“Yes,” Portia chimed in.  “You have outrun your pace-setters, and I’m proud of you.  Tell us what you mean to do next.”

Kent laughed.

“You want to make me say some melodramatic thing about having the shackles forged and snapping them upon the gubernatorial wrists, don’t you?  It will be prosaic enough from this on.  I fancy we shall have no difficulty now in convincing his Excellency of the justice of our proceedings to quash Judge MacFarlane and his receiver.”

“But how will you go about it?  Surely you can not go personally and threaten the governor of the State!” this from Miss Brentwood.

“Can’t I?” said Kent.  “Having the score written out and safely committed to memory, that will be quite the easiest number on the programme, I assure you.”

But Loring had something to say about the risk.

“Thus far you have not considered your personal safety—­haven’t had to, perhaps.  But you are coming to that now.  You are dealing with a desperate man, David; with a gang of them, in fact.”

“That is so,” said Ormsby.  “And, as chairman of the executive committee, I shall have to take steps.  We can’t afford to bury you just yet, Kent.”

“I think you needn’t select the pall-bearers yet a while,” laughed the undaunted one; and then Miss Van Brock gave the signal and the “executive committee” adjourned to the drawing-room.  Here the talk, already so deeply channeled in the groove political, ran easily to forecastings and predictions for another electoral year; and when Penelope began to yawn behind her fan, Ormsby took pity on her and the party broke up.

It was at the moment of leave-taking that Elinor sought and found her chance to extract a promise from David Kent.

“I must have a word with you before you do what you say you are going to do,” she whispered hurriedly.  “Will you come to see me?”

“Certainly, if you wish it.  But you mustn’t let Loring’s nervousness infect you.  There is no danger.”

“There is a danger,” she insisted, “a much greater danger than the one Mr. Loring fears.  Come as soon as you can, won’t you?”

It was a new thing for her to plead with him, and he promised in an access of tumultuous hope reawakened by her changed attitude.  But afterward, when he was walking down-town with Loring, the episode troubled him a little; would have troubled him more if he had not been so deeply interested in Loring’s story of the campaign in the East.