Page:Earl Derr Biggers - Seven Keys to Baldpate (1913).djvu/253

Rh about the fire. Quickly the eyes of Miss Norton met Magee's. She was trembling with excitement. Cargan, huge, red, cheery, got in Magee's path once more.

"I'll annihilate this man," thought Magee.

"I've been figuring," said the mayor, "that was one thing he didn't have to contend with. No, sir, there wasn't any bright young men hunting up old Napoleon and knocking him in the monthly magazines. They didn't go down to Sardinia and pump it out of the neighbors that he started business on borrowed money, and that his father drank more than was good for him. They didn't run illustrated articles about the diamonds he wore, and moving pictures of him eating soup."

"No, I guess not," replied Magee abstractedly.

"I reckon there was a lot in his record wasn't meant for the newspapers," continued Cargan reflectively. "And it didn't get there. Nap was lucky. He had it on the reformers there. They couldn t squash him with the power of the press." Mr. Magee broke away from the mayor's rehashed history, and hurried to Miss Norton.