She laid the tips of her fingers on his arm and knotted the thread of suggestion in a single sentence.

“In the present state of affairs—­with the People’s Party as yet on trial, and the public mind ready to take fire at the merest hint of a foreign capitalistic monopoly in the State—­tell me what would happen to the man who would let the Universal Oil Company into the Belmount field in defiance of the new trust and corporation law?”

“By Jove!” Kent exclaimed, sitting up as if the shapely hand had given him a buffet.  “It would ruin him politically, world without end!  Tell me; is Bucks going to do that?”

She laughed softly.

“That is for you to find out, Mr. David Kent; not by hearsay, but in good, solid terms of fact that will appeal to a level-headed, conservative newspaper editor like—­well, like Mr. Hildreth, of the Argus, let us say.  Are you big enough to do it?”

“I am desperate enough to try,” was the slow-spoken answer.

“And when you have the weapon in your hands; when you have found the sword and sharpened it?”

“Then I can go to his Excellency and tell him what will happen if he doesn’t instruct his attorney-general in the quo warranto affair.”

“That will probably suffice to save your railroad—­and Miss Brentwood’s marriage portion.  But after, David; what will you do afterward?”

“I’ll go on fighting the devil with fire until I have burned him out.  If this is to be a government of dictators, I can be one of them, too.”

She clapped her hands enthusiastically.

“There spoke the man David Kent; the man I have been trying to discover deep down under the rubbish of ill-temper and hesitancy and—­yes, I will say it—­of sentiment.  Have you learned your lesson, David mine?”

It was a mark of another change in him that he rose and stood over her, and that his voice was cool and dispassionate when he said: 

“If I have, it is because I have you for an inspired text-book, Portia dear.”

And with that he took his leave.

XVI

SHARPENING THE SWORD

In the beginning of the new campaign of investigation David Kent wisely discounted the help of paid professional spies—­or rather he deferred, it to a later stage—­by taking counsel with Jeffrey Hildreth, night editor of the Argus.  Here, if anywhere, practical help was to be had; and the tender of it was cheerfully hearty and enthusiastic.

“Most assuredly you may depend on the Argus, horse, foot and artillery,” said the editor, when Kent had guardedly outlined some portion of his plan.  “We are on your side of the fence, and have been ever since Bucks was sprung as a candidate on the convention.  But you’ve no case.  Of course, it’s an open secret that the Universal people are trying to break through the fence of the new law and establish themselves in the Belmount field without losing their identity or any of their monopolistic privileges.  And it is equally a matter of course to some of us that the Bucks ring will sell the State out if the price is right.  But to implicate Bucks and the capitol gang in printable shape is quite another matter.”