Finally he went out for a bite to eat.

Frank returned half an hour later to find the reporters’ room in an uproar.  Big Jim Gallagher had dismissed Langdon from office with the corroboration of the Board of Supervisors, as a provision of the city ordinance permitted him to do.  Ruef had been appointed district attorney.

Langdon’s forces were not disconcerted by the little boss’s coup.  Late that evening Frank advised his paper of a counterstroke.  Heney had aroused Judge Seawell from his slumbers and obtained an order of the court enjoining Ruef from actual assumption of the title he had arrogated to himself.

Judge Graham upheld it.  Langdon remained the district attorney.  Though Ruef imposed every possible obstacle, the Grand Jury was impaneled, November 7, and began its work of investigation with such startling celerity that Ruef and Schmitz faced charges of extortion on five counts, a week later.

CHAPTER LXXXIII

IN THE TOILS

Meanwhile Schmitz, who had but recently returned from Europe, became officially involved in the anti-Japanese agitation.

“He’s summoned East to see the President,” said a Burns operative to Frank one morning as they met at Temple Israel.  “Lucky devil, that big fellow!  Here’s the town at sixes and sevens about the ’little brown brother.’  Doesn’t want him with its white kids in the public schools.  The Mikado stirs the devil of a row with Washington about it.  And Teddy sends for ’Gene.  Just his luck to come back a conquering hero.”

But Schmitz fared badly at the Capital, whence Roosevelt dispatched a “big stick” message to the California Legislature.  At the same time George B. Keane, the Supervisors’ clerk, and a State Senator as well, was working for the “Change of Venus bill,” a measure which if passed, would have permitted Ruef to take his case out of the jurisdiction of Judge Dunne.  But the bill was defeated.  Once more Ruef’s straining at the net of Justice had achieved no parting of the strands.

On March 6 Stanley greeted Mayor Schmitz as he stepped from a train at Oakland Mole.  Correspondents and reporters gathered round the tall, bearded figure.  Schmitz looked tired, discouraged.

Perfunctorily, uneasily, Schmitz answered the reporter’s queries.  He had done his level best for San Francisco.  As for the charges pending against him, they would soon be disproved.  No one had anything on him.  All his acts were open to investigation.

“Do you know that Ruef has skipped?” Frank asked.

“Wh-a-a-t!” the Mayor set down his grip.  He seemed struck all of a heap by the announcement.

“Fact!” another newsman corroborated.  “Abie’s jumped his bond.  He’s the well-known ‘fugitive from justice.’”

Without a word the Mayor left them.  He walked aboard the ferry boat alone.  They saw him pacing back and forth across the forward deck, his long overcoat flapping in the wind, one hand holding the dark, soft hat down on his really magnificent head.