Page:The American Magazine volume LXIV.djvu/617

Rh on and scare him. He was easily frightened. Burns soon had Mr. Kribs flying to Heney. And he came whispering. Burns and Rittenhouse, the stenographer, were present when Kribs greeted Heney, and they saw him speak into his ear.

"Oh, no," said Heney aloud. "You can't see me alone."

The confession that followed was the story of a briber who believed and had found that every man had his price. "He told me how he corrupted every Federal, state and city official that he ever had had to do business with," says Heney. He used checks, too, and upon his testimony with his checks as exhibits Heney removed more special agents, registers, and other Federal officeholders than on any other evidence whatever. Fred Kribs has not reformed; he was not put on trial; but he rendered a great service to the United States. This habitual briber "delivered" United States Senator Mitchell, Binger Herrman and many other politicians. Mr. Kribs might have delivered his principals back in Minnesota and other big business corruptionists, but Heney preferred the politicians. He has learned since to take the business men, as we shall see in San Francisco, but that is because Oregon taught him where the roots of our evil lay. While he was at work in Oregon on a Federal job. United States Senators looked bigger to him than the business men that keep the Mitchells, Fultons and Aldrichs in the Senate.

With Kribs's evidence, and Puter's, Heney went after Mitchell and Herrman—^under difficulties. When it leaked out that Heney was trying to indict Mitchell, not only the politicians and business grafters — all society in Oregon faced Heney with a solid frowning front.

John Mitchell Hippel, alias John H. Mitchell, was loved in Oregon. It was a corrupt love. When I was up there this year, many men and women still mourned the fate of this remarkable man, and the reason they gave was that he had got something out of the Government for them or their friends or the state. Sometimes the land or the office or the favor was right; oftener it was wrong. He must have been a most kind man, and, as a Senator, most industrious in the betrayal of all of the people to some of the people. He was a traitor, Senator Mitchell was; lovable. but not clean; generous, but with public property; he betrayed the United States to Oregon and he betrayed Oregon to the railroads. For the Southern and Northern Pacific railroads "kept" Senator Mitchell. It was proven that he was under a salary of $6000 a year from the Southern Pacific. Senator Mitchell presented graft and corruption.

And when Frank Heney, representing the people vs, graft, accused Senator Mitchell, Oregon turned against Heney, and the real fight was on. Heney's life was in danger. Desperate plots were laid to kill him. This was generally known before Heney heard of it. He received warnings, but he paid no heed to them till one day hie noticed that he was followed. Whirling about on the "shadow," he learned that he was a Burns man. Heney was angry, and Burns had an unpleasant time explaining how he had learned that a couple of men, gun-men whom he (Burns) knew to be willing to do murder, were in town under contract to shoot him at a certain comer or to pick him off through his hotel window. So well known was this that once when Heney was talking at his window with a friend, the man's wife drew him away, out of danger.

I think Heney enjoys physical danger. He quarreled with Bums for putting a guard on him and took no precautions whatsoever, excepting that he k^t his own "gun" clean and handy. But an attack made at the time on his character aroused his fiercest wrath. Bums learned that some men and women of the under-world had been hired to swear that Heney had gone to a road house with Marie Ware. Bums ran out the whole plot and Heney called Marie Ware before the Grand Jury. She confessed that she had been asked to "put up this job," and Heney summoned everybody concerned directly in the plot—bankers, railroad attorneys, senators and other officials, touts and women; he produced the evidence of his innocence and of their guilt and—this is how he indicted ex-United States Attorney Hall (among others) for "conspiracy to defeat the administration of justice." For, of course, this obscene scheme was laid, not primarily to hurt Heney, but, through his downfall, and disgrace, to save graft, the grafters and beat the law.