Page:Earl Derr Biggers - Seven Keys to Baldpate (1913).djvu/248

228 you re out after old Jim Cargan's scalp again, are you? I thought that now, seeing stories on the corruption of the courts is so plentiful, you'd let the shame of the city halls alone for a while. But—well, I guess I'm what you guys call good copy. Big, brutal, uneducated, picturesque—you see I read them stories myself. How long will the American public stand being ruled by a man like this, when it might be authorizing pretty boys, with kid gloves to get next to the good things? That's the dope, ain't it—the old dope of the reform gang—the ballyhoo of the bunch that can't let the existing order stand? Don't worry, I ain't going to get started on that again. But I want to talk to you serious like a father. There was a young fellow like you once—"

"Like me?"

"Exactly. He was out working on long hours and short pay for the reform gang, and he happened to get hold of something that a man I knew—a man high up in public office—wanted, and wanted bad. The young fellow was going to get two hundred dollars for the article he was writing. My friend offered him twenty