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 change his politics, and stuff five figures in his inside pocket.

“Henry whispers to me and wants the pause in the programme interpreted. I whisper back: “H. P. is up against a bribe, senator’s size, and the coons have got him going.’ I saw Mellinger’s hand moving closer to the package. ‘He’s weakening,’ I whispered to Henry. ‘We’ll remind him,’ says Henry, ‘of the peanut-roaster on Thirty-fourth Street, New York.’

“Henry stooped down and got a record from the basketful we’d brought, slid it in the phonograph, and started her off. It was a cornet solo, very neat and beautiful, and the name of it was ‘Home, Sweet Home.’ Not one of them fifty odd men in the room moved while it was playing, and the governor man kept his eyes steady on Mellinger. I saw Mellinger’s head go up little by little, and his hand came creeping away from the package. Not, until the last note sounded did anybody stir. And then Homer P. Mellinger takes up the bundle of boodle and slams it in the governor man’s face.

“‘That’s my answer,’ says Mellinger, private sec-