“Do you know that Aleta Boice loves you?”

He looked at her annoyed and disturbed by the question.

“No, I don’t,” he answered slowly.  “Nor do I understand just what you’re driving at, Miss France.”

“If you’ll forgive me,” her eyes were upon him, “I am driving at masculine obtuseness ... and Aleta’s happiness.”

“Then you’re wasting your time,” he spoke sharply.  “Aleta loves another....  She’s told me so.”

“Did she tell you his name?”

“No, some prig of a professor, probably....  Thinks he’s ‘not her kind.’”

“Yes ... let’s have another cup of coffee.  Yes, Aleta told me that.”

Frank signalled to the waiter.  “She’s anybody’s kind,” he said, forcibly.

“But not yours, Mr. Stanley.”

“Mine?  Why not?”

“Because you don’t love her.”  Norah’s tone was sad, half bitter.  “Will you forgive me?  I’m sorry I provoked you....  But I had to know....  Aleta’s such a dear.  She’s been so good to me.”

The Christmas holidays brought handsome stock displays to all the stores.  San Francisco was still flush with insurance money but there was a pinch of poverty in certain quarters.  The Refugee Camps had been cleared, public parks and squares restored to their normal state.

Langdon and Heney worked on.  Another jury brought a verdict of “not guilty” at the second trial of a trolley-bribe defendant.  Some of the newspapers had changed by almost imperceptible degrees, were veering toward the cause of the defense.

Then, like a thunderbolt, in January, 1908, came news that the Appellate Court had set aside the conviction of Ruef and Schmitz.  Technical errors were assigned as the cause of this decision.  The people gasped.  But some of the newspapers defended the Appellate Judges’ decree.

CHAPTER LXXXVIII

THE SHOOTING OF HENEY

Heney and Langdon, who had had, perhaps, some inkling of an adverse decision, went grimly on.  Enemies of Prosecution, backed by an enormous fund, were setting innumerable obstacles in their way.  Witnesses disappeared or changed their testimony.  Jurors showed evidence of having been tampered with.  Through a subsidized press an active propaganda of Innuendo and Slander was begun.

Calhoun’s trial still loomed vaguely in the distance.  Heney, overworked and harassed in a multitude of ways—­keyed to a battle with ruffians, gun-men and shysters as well as the ablest exponents of law, developed a nervousness of manner, a bitterness of mind which sometimes led him to extremes.

“He isn’t sleeping well,” his faithful bodyguard confided to Frank one afternoon when they met on Van Ness avenue.  “He comes down in the morning trying to smile but I know he feels as though he’d like to bite my head off.  I can see it in his eyes.  He needs a rest.”

“Mr. Calhoun evidently thinks so, too,” retorted Stanley.  “The Honorable Pat is trying to retire him.”