The Phantom Factory and the Million-Dollar Dog

HIS is the story of the phantom factory and the million-dollar dog which the policemen tell to one another confidentially out corners of their mouths on late, wet, lonely nights in the great city of Chibosh—that marvelous modern metropolis which was governed a press agent; of the million-dollar dog, and the most carefully unknown man in the great city, and the last phantoms he turned out—the phantom women—and how in the end they rose to ruin him.

He was going to his work as usual on that Tuesday morning—at ten o'clock on the fourth Tuesday in January. He wore his green velours hat and his seal-collared coat as usual and he looked, as usual, straight ahead, with an exceedingly calm face, as he came into the dirty-floored corridor of the second-class office building which lies across from the big stone city hall.

Without speaking even the number of his floor—which the elevator man knew—he shot upward, was deposited on the ninth story and walked forward through the narrow hallway of the second-rate office building to the front that is opposite city hall, and stopped before an office door.

This door was numbered 913; on the ground glass below that number was the name, People's Political Forum. The man in the seal-collared overcoat and velours hat, with the exceedingly calm face, walked in.

“Good morning, Mr. Melody,” said a woman's voice, without expression.

“Good morning,” he answered, with no more.

He stood now within a blank inclosure, walled with a light oak wainscoat [sic] and ground glass. In this, before him and to his right, three unlettered doors appeared. Near the entrance through which he had come, the only occupant of cheerless and nameless lobby—a sallow, black-haired young woman with a highly impervious face—sat at a light oak telephone desk.

“What's on today?” inquired Mr. Melody of her in a crisp businesslike voice.

“They are calling you all the morning from the mayor's office.”

“Let them call. I'm not yet—till I tell you so,” said Mr. Melody. “Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

Removing a yellow glove, the man who told the mayor's office of the great city when and how long to wait passed deliberately through the first unlettered door to his right into what was evidently his own private office.

It was a fair-sized room with scant but unusual furnishings. On the side walls, dominating as saintly images in a shrine, hung two more than life-sized poster portraits of a face—a man's face, with sleek hair, a heavily Roman nose, a meaty ejaw, a thick mid-Victorian mustache, and an air of virtue never seen outside of either a shrine or a campaign headquarters. Beneath the one to the right appeared the heavy black inscription:

On the left, beneath an absolutely identical portrait, appeared the more definite caption:

Between these two tremendous and brooding likenesses stood a broad, flat-topped desk, the chief furniture of the room. Upon it was a small card catalogue, a box of matches and two telephones designed for ease in long-sustained conversations. A box of cigars was in the slightly opened right-hand upper drawer. And a few chairs and a cheap sectional bookcase containing directories of various kind completed the equipment of the room.

Such was the People's Political Forum, the so-called Phantom Factory of Mayor True, which, having put him over at the last election, now ruled through him the great city of Chibosh—an advanced example of that immense new power, that new invisible government of the world, which all have felt since the last great war, as it leads onward cities, nations, continents, mankind to the new democracy for God and the good by the use of the printed word.

It was from this guarded and secret room, from the trained hand of Michael F. Melody—the most carefully unknown man in Chibosh—that there went forth the phantom organizations, not unknown to modern campaigning, which had first elected Mayor True the guardian of the people, and now so largely governed through him the great metropolis of Chibosh.

The Herman J. True Merchants and Manufacturers' Association, without merchants or manufacturers; the True Mothers' League, without mothers; the Herman J. True Neighborhood Associations, which never met in any neighborhood but this—all these and many more had been brought to life and kept living as long as needed for the purposes of the new politics in this carefully secluded institution, the so-called Phantom Factory, which created or revived these intangible instruments of popular government as it needed them. And now, at length, on this last Tuesday in January, the time had come for putting out the new women voters' organization—the last of the phantoms to go forth from the Phantom Factory of Herman J. True, the unbought, uncontrolled, unmanaged mayor of the plain, honest, common people.

Mr. Melody, the manager of this agency, divested of his green hat and seal-collared coat, seated himself deliberately at the flat-topped desk and pressed without delay at a push button. A tall, thin, pale-faced young man in a soft and wrinkled collar and a soft and wrinkled suit appeared, a cigarette in his lips and a sheaf of newspaper clippings in his hand. Stillman Nott, this man's name was. Like his chief, a previous and experienced newspaper worker, his line was to clip the papers and, with Mr. Melody, to write the various letters, interviews and speeches which composed so great a share of the activities of the Phantom Factory in its government of the great city.

“Good morning, Still,” said Mr. Melody.

“Good morning, chief.”

“What's he yelping about this morning?”

“That North Side Women Voters' Club is loose.”

To these words, delivered in a monotonous and morose voice, the face of Mr. Melody gave no recognizable reaction.

“With their show, you mean? That Taxpayers' Pageant in Great American Hall?” he asked.

“All over the first page—in everything!” his assistant confirmed him.

“Let's take a look,” said Mr. Melody, extending his hand for the newspaper clippings which formed such a critical feature of the Phantom Factory's daily work. Laying them upon the desk, he stared down at the first headline with calm, round, prominent blue eyes:

“So the women think they'll enter politics, huh?” said Mr. Melody in a calm, emotionless voice. “In Chibosh?”

“That's nothing,” said Stillman Nott, the first assistant in Mayor True's Phantom Factory. Removing the first headline, he replaced it with one of much deeper black, followed by a striking full-page picture of a striking and large-featured woman, carrying in her arms a tiny dog

“They're helping hang that Central Bridge horror graft scandal on us, huh?” said Mr. Melody. “That Peters Federal investigation campaign.”

“I hear they're out boosting Peters for mayor,” replied Mr. Nott.

“Now ain't they sweet!” his chief replied.

The two bent over, examining the last clipping, the assistant casually, the manager of the Phantom Factory with his eyes fastened on its contents. Above them the brooding identical campaign portraits of the Hon. Herman J. True, the mayor of Chibosh, looked down as well in heavily mustached sincerity, dominating their work with his air of preternatural virtue. The readers underneath did not sense this, busy with their daily tasks.

“That's the one, huh?” asked Mr. Melody, pressing his third finger, which bore his larger diamond ring, upon the portrait of the woman in the plumed hat, with the vivacious looking toy dog. “The president of the outfit?”

“That's the one,” said Mr. Stillman Nott.

“Prancing around, in and out, all over the place, with her sables and her invisible dog.”

“You've told it.”

“Good! Fine business!” said Mr. Melody.

His face was, as always, calm. But his voice showed both enthusiasm and satisfaction. The face of Mr. Nott was not warmed by it.

“He's dancing circles round the royal throne room all the morning,” he volunteered in an entirely negative voice, evidently changing the subject of conversation.

“Let him dance,” said his superior calmly.

At these words it almost seemed that the eyes of the serious and heavily Roman-nosed portraits concentrated with silent rectitude upon the speakers, aghast at such figures of speech in such a connection.

“He's says you've got to chase them off the front page. Tomorrow!”

To this announcement the sincere identical campaign portraits seemed almost to nod their confirmation.

“That's nothing to what we're going to do to them,” replied Mr. Melody calmly but very positively.

“Yeah?” inquired the unemotional Mr. Nott.

“They're out looking for serious moral stuff—the women. We'll give them a real issue with a wallop.”

Mr. Nott merely looked at him, even the angle of his cigarette unchanged. It was, of course, the almost daily business of the Phantom Factory to turn out issues with a wallop—strong, gripping, moral enough to catch and hold the great, alert, sophisticated population of Chibosh for the new democracy through the printed word.

“And then we'll pull that new mayor's women voters thing,” continued his chief.

“You will?” asked Mr. Nott.

A faint shadow of curiosity, of doubt—such as is often aroused today by the mention of women's public activities of all kinds—touched his face, it seemed, and was gone.

“Send out for Bart Foley,” directed Michael F. Melody, and turned as the other left the room to the routine detail of the Phantom Factory

T WAS early Tuesday afternoon in the Phantom, or Publicity, Factory of Herman True. Mr. Melody, its manager, sat at his desk looking up at a youngish man in a derby hat, who stood at his right, toward the portrait of Mayor True, when on guard for the people.

“Can you steal the dog?” asked Mr. Melody in a crisp and businesslike tone.

“Why not?” asked the man in the derby hat nonchalantly in return.

“This afternoon?”

“Why not?” asked the visitor dispassionately a second time.

He was a square-set, youngish man of medium height He wore a dark, shiny but carefully brushed and buttoned coat, shoes not new but brilliantly polished, and what was apparently a trained hat; for otherwise, how could it have stayed on? His round face, entirely devoid of emotion, gave the impression of having recently been sandpapered.

“There won't be any fumbles?” the chief of the Phantom Factory asked again, still gazing steadily at his agent.

“Take it easy, chief,” returned the latter in a voice of perfect confidence and poise—his derby, it almost seemed, changing to a still more careless angle, in correspondence with his thought. “It's all framed, just waiting the word from you.”

“The chauffeur is fixed?”

“He's a rummy. He'll follow you twenty blocks for a drink, baying like a staghound.”

“And the maid with the dog?”

“Chief, I'm making love to her myself,” said the man in the derby hat earnestly.

“And it's all worked out where you turn the dog over at the corner to Sergeant Deever, of the Headquarters Squad?”

“Everything just like you said, boss. I know my line,” protested the veteran agent of the Phantom Factory, a touch of justified grievance now stealing into his tone of voice and the attitude of his hat.

“All right,” conceded his employer. “I guess you do. Go after it.”

Mr. Foley changed his stance somewhat heavily instead of going at once, his round, red, unblinking eyes set upon his superior's face.

“Say, listen,” he asked, “when do I get my fifty?”

“When you deliver the dog,” replied Mr. Melody coldly

“I got to eat,” suggested the man with the trained hat. Mr. Melody gazed with his shallow, round, blue eyes, blandly silent. “You know that,” insisted the other in a hollow and accusing voice.

The two identical posters of Herman J. True gazed down with judicial fairness during a further silence.

“Here's ten then,” conceded Mr. Melody at length.

“When do I get the rest?” inquired his agent in a hardening voice.

His hat—of course, through some illusion—seemed to adopt a belligerent angle with the more aggressive tone For he could see, of course, by the way the Phantom Factory was putting out money on this thing that it was an important play.

“You'll get it,” reasserted Mr. Melody firmly, “when the dog's passed over and I get the slip from the sergeant saying so. Now peg along. Get busy,” he concluded in a sharp, snappy voice, sending him along before he struck him for more money.

For a moment his agent waited, eying first him and then the bill in his own hand. His hat hesitated on its round support as if in doubt, but finally, in an attitude of accepting the inevitable, turned and passed with him slowly from the room. The grave eyes of the sincere, virtuous Roman-nosed portraits followed him as he finally closed the door and left them alone again with Mr. Melody, busily at work upon the many activities of the so-called Phantom Factory.

It was nearly four o'clock before the voice of Mr. Foley came in across the wire—that unknown and guarded wire of the Phantom Factory whose number has never been recorded in the telephone book.

“She's stole,” it reported briefly.

“And passed along?”

“She's already down at police headquarters—by this time.”

“And you've got your slip from the sergeant?”

“I got my hand on it right now.”

“Come on over and get your forty,” directed the chief of the Phantom Factory. “Miss Casnovara'll give it to you at the door—when you hand her the slip. I'll be busy when you get here.”

Clapping down his receiver, he began at once to make good his statement. He placed his thumb upon a button, and a tall, dark, reedlike stenographer with jade earrings, an incandescent complexion and deep Oriental eyes appeared in the doorway.

“Take an ad, Miss Spielberg,” directed Mr. Melody

Miss Spielberg was already seated, with her notebook at attention, when he started his dictation

“You're to get that to the morning papers only. Understand?”

Miss Spielberg fixed her large dark eyes upon him in silent answer

“Good display. Not just plain Lost and Found. Three days. And pay cash for it—by messenger. Understand?”

Miss Spielberg again answered with her fine eyes.

“And when you go out tell Miss Casnovara to get me police headquarters on the wire.“”

Miss Spielberg nodded sharply in reply, efficient beyond the need of speech. Her jaws did not move until she was practically out of the door. Tall, well dressed and refined, she never chewed her gum when any men were around. At her going Mr. Melody briskly pressed a second push button.

“Listen,” he said as his assistant, Mr. Nott, came in. “Is it all ready—the dope about the dog?”

A nod was his answer.

“All right. Get ready to slip it over to the boys for the morning papers.”

“It's pulled, huh?” asked Mr. Nott

As he inquired this the telephone rang.

“It's all right then?” Mr. Melody was asking, after a long period of attention.

The answer over the wire, it seemed was affirmative. Closing the receiver, Mr. Melody now turned to his assistant.

“The dog is there,” he said; “at police headquarters. Release the dope.”

Another issue with a wallop loosed from the Phantom Factory of Mayor True—a great plain moral for all the people, suited to grasp a new moral issue for all the people, suited to grasp and hold the minds and hearts of all the restless teeming millions of Chibosh for the new democracy through the medium of the printed word.

T WAS Wednesday morning in Chibosh. The last editions of the morning journals had roared and rattled from the press several hours before. In the fashionable North Side, far away from the Phantom Factory of Mayor True, three women sat together in a lofty and rococo boudoir, each studying carefully the front page of a paper—of the three great morning newspapers of Chibosh. It was the large, large-featured woman in the costly lavender negligee who spoke first.

“This is outrageous—frightful!” she cried. “If I had known half! If I had had any idea. All over my little dog! All over my poor little Panky Lou! All over the front page!” she cried incoherently.

Another voice succeeded hers.

“Don't! Don't worry so. Please, Mrs. Spillinghast!” it urged. “This is just politics.” Its owner was a dark young woman with dark curly and rather more than bobbed hair. Her voice was clear and eager. The glint of youth was in her dark bright eyes—that fine, healthy interest of normal youth intent forever to try its hand at overturning the varied human institutions which were established before its time and without its advice. “Let's look it in the face,” she advised practically. “Let's read them aloud—the headlines, I mean—in order.”

“Precisely,” said the third member of the group.

Her name was Adelaide Winthrop. An older woman, gaunt, firm, in decidedly square-cut clothes and shoes, and originally from Boston, she replaced her eyeglasses on her nose and stared down again, considering her headline.

“Read yours first, Adelaide,” directed her younger and more eager companion; and the two looked up, listening, as she did so, staring stiffly through her deliberately set glasses at the lines of her front page, the blackest of them all:

Black and unswerving, it marched across the top of the broad page—the front page of the Morning Truth—the paper with the greatest circulation in the great city, which was so firmly cemented by a thousand common interests to the administration of Mayor True. The woman in the gray square-cut tailored suit read on distinctly in a voice of marked and severe unconcern, and passed to the next and smaller headlines at the right of the page:

The large woman in the lavender negligee here interrupted, denying this.

“I never did,” she cried. “Never in this world!”

“Of course you didn't, Mrs. Spillinghast,” said the youngest woman with the bobbed hair very definitely. “Everybody knows that. This is just politics. Go on, Adelaide!”

“'Uncanny disappearance of genuine toy Mongolian Wee Wah dog—said by experts to be the greatest dog taxpayer in the world,'” read on the older woman, finishing the reading of her headline with a still greater indifference in her voice. The large woman in lavender gave a groan.

“And then there is the picture, of course,” said the unconcerned but conscientious reader. “The line under it: 'The Million-Dollar Playground of the so-called Million-Dollar Dog.'”

“It's a lie—an absolute lie!” cried the president of the North Side Women Voters' Club, her face bright red against her lavender gown.

But the squarely dressed woman read methodically on, into the small print of the text:

“'With a million dollars of the city's most costly real estate walled in for its exclusive playground, making it, it is said, one of the twenty largest taxpayers in the city of Chibosh, the genuine Mongolian Wee Wah toy dog, which was the inseparable companion of Mrs. J. Snuydam Spillinghast, president of the North Side Women Voters' Club, the organization of wealthy and exclusive society women now conducting the remarkable and unique Tax-payers' Pageant for the instruction of women voters in Great American Hall, was either lost or stolen yesterday afternoon from in front of the hall, and its present whereabouts are unknown. Its mistress is inconsolable, and blames the police sharply.

“'This greatest dog taxpayer in Chibosh, so-called, if not the world,'” continued the reader conscientiously, after a proper pause for a paragraph, “'with one-half of one of the city's costliest blocks set aside for its use and pleas'”

At this point the reader stopped, interrupted. The large woman in the negligee reached forward and snatched the heavily headlined and pictured journal from her hands.

“That's all—all I want to hear!” she cried, tearing it into many pieces. “It's a lie, and they know it! I told them so—all the reporters in the hall last evening. It's nothing but just our back yard, the laundry yard, where the maids And yet they go” she cried, and stopped again, while the two others watched her and then each other. In a paroxysm of anger she dashed the Morning Truth, the great paper of all the people of Chibosh, in tattered fragments to the floor. “So this is politics!” she cried. “What you have to go through in politics!”

The two others bowed their heads in silent confirmation.

“Well, what's next? What's in yours?” the questioner asked aggressively of the second reader, the young woman with the curly, closely cut black hair and the eager, critical, uncompromising eyes of youth, who was holding a smaller journal in her hand, the widely circulated Peoples Pictures. Across the narrower top of this, above the patchwork of photographs, stretched a shorter but no less arresting line:

The reader's clear voice passed on from this to the other headlines printed on an inner page:

“Give me that, please,” directed the woman mentioned in the text, with intense politeness, her large face above its lavender setting still redder than before. Snatching the Peoples Pictures, she gazed intently at the various likenesses which ornamented the first page—her own in her sables and plumed hat, holding her lost dog—a portrait which she herself had often previously in happier moments furnished the press. Following this came another picture of her dog, a picture of the million-dollar playground, a picture of her husband, Mr. J. Snuydam Spillinghast, printed over a map of Chibosh, showing the various large real-estate holdings he had inherited from what had once been his Great-Great-Grandfather Snuydam's farm; also an exterior of the Great American Hall, where the North Side Women's Pageant had been staged, with a caption to that effect, and a lesser caption:

Suddenly she crushed and tore this to pieces as she had the first.

“What did you get me into this thing for?” she asked the others fiercely. “To have this done to me?”

“But you have to expect it—this sort of thing in politics today, don't you?” asked the youngest of the group, the greater experience of the young in modern movements speaking in her voice. Her name was Dorothy Jones. She was one of the Dorothy crop which was so large in the last of the 1890's and the first 1900's. A young college graduate, bound upon a thorough exploration of the new intellectual life of adventure for women, she was now, after her three years out of college, a seasoned veteran in women's politics.

“Precisely,” said her older fellow worker in the women voters' field as she gazed at the society leader in the lavender negligee, whose personality and new club they had been using to advertise and further the great and difficult work of properly introducing the women of Chibosh into public affairs.

“But what has my poor little dog got to do with politics?” the social leader asked a little wildly.

“Well, of course,” said the younger speaker, somewhat vaguely—“of course we attacked the mayor, the administration, the Central Bridge horror scandal—everything that these two papers stand for—and the tax rate and the schools and the street cleaning and the police.”

“Suppose we did,” said Mrs. Spillinghast with bitter logic. “What's my dog—your dog—anybody's dog got to do with the mayor or the tax rate or the streets? What's my poor little Panky Lou got to do with the police?”

As if to answer her own question, her eye fell upon the headlines—the more modest single-column headlines of the third paper, the Chronicle, the most conservative paper of Chibosh, which lay in her own lap. It seemed in a way slightly to pacify her. “Of course,” she said, “it is true. If we'd had any decent police—if there'd been any police department in the city—things like this would never happen; just as I said to the reporters yesterday; just the way they've got it here,” she said in a tone of more satisfaction, gazing down at the more conservative headlines:

At this point she paused in her reading, staring. A perfect astonishment showed in her well-fed face.

“'Five thousand dollars reward offered!'” she read slowly on, her eyes dilated. “What?”

The two others gazed at her as one, with evident expectation shining in their eyes.

“What reward?” she asked them.

“Why, this!” said the younger and prompter minded of the two, and read aloud from a clipping she had evidently been holding in her hand, the identical advertisement which had appeared in all the morning papers of Chibosh on that morning:

“So that's it!” said Mrs. Spillinghast, speaking finally.

“What?”

“All these people calling up with dogs; thousands of them almost—since six o'clock this morning—till the servants are almost mad.”

“But” began Miss Jones, bright-eyed younger woman.

“Do you think I would put in an advertisement like that? Do you imagine? Why, I never saw that in my life before!” exclaimed Mrs. J. Snuydam Spillinghast loudly and crossly, her full-fed face now darkly crimson against her lavender. “Who would dare?” she asked, and stopped.

The two others for the moment did not reply but gazed at each other with a glance of question and suspicion. A sense of helplessness and foreboding, of the influence of an immense, mysterious, sticky force enveloping them, which so many have felt in the years following the great development of the use of the printed word for the new democracy since the Great War, was distinctly felt by every person in the room—and not without reason. For already, at this time, Michael F. Melody, the most carefully unknown man in Chibosh, was taking the second step toward the formation of the phantom women in the publicity factory of Mayor Herman J. True.

The million-dollar dog was about to be returned to its owner and the letter of Mayor True to the chief of police of Chibosh in recognition of this act was already being dictated by Mr. Melody for the morning papers:

“How many copies?” asked the efficient and well-dressed Miss Spielberg as she arose at the conclusion of Mr. Melody's dictation.

“Twenty.”

“Does the mayor get a copy first?”

“No!” said Mr. Melody. “Send him one when the rest go.”

Dismissing her, he was engaged in the routine of the Phantom Factory until the copy was ready to go out. It was then late afternoon. Turning, Mr. Melody called upon the telephone for the chief of the police department.

“Hello, Spoof,” said the brisk voice of Michael F. Melody across the wire.

A heavy bass growl came back.

“I'm sending you the letter from the mayor—and the copies to the papers.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And you'll look out for the photograph?”

“Yeah.”

“All right then. Send home the dog about seven o'clock.”

“About seven?”

“Yeah; with the letter to its owner that I sent you earlier; and release the story for the morning papers—the mornings, you understand. Nothing for the evenings. Get me?”

“I do.”

“All right, let her loose,” said Mr. Melody.

The second step had been taken by the Phantom Factory of Mayor True toward the creation of the phantom women.

T WAS Thursday morning in the great city of Chibosh. The alert, restless-minded citizens of that metropolis were now fast rousing to the great new sensational issue of the week. For today again upon the first page of every journal appeared in jutting type the great new development in the political history of the city the finding and return of the million-dollar dog by the police department of Chibosh, and the great new public questions and reflections this naturally aroused.

Thousands, perhaps millions, saw and read the huge headline announcement in the paper of the people, the Morning Truth:

Thousands, perhaps millions more, scanned the outside and inside headlines in Peoples Pictures:

They also saw on the first page the picture of the sturdy chief, with the tiny million-dollar dog in his arms; and across and balancing it the portrait of Mrs. J. Snuydam Spillinghast in her sables, also carrying her costly pet. Below were pictures of Mrs. Spillinghast in her slightest bathing suit at Palm Beach, in evening dress in Chibosh, with her famous rope of pearls, and at Bar Harbor in her largest plumed superhat; a new picture of the Spillinghast walled back yard, the so-called castle of the million-dollar dog; also a picture of Mayor True, taken while speaking above an American flag in its defense, his right arm uplifted, his mouth opened and his lips protruding outward in the exercise of sincere oratory; also a picture of the entrance of Great American Hall, showing the immense crowd of the previous day awaiting the possible return of the million-dollar dog, including many with dogs which they wrongly believed to be the lost one and were offering for the alleged five-thousand-dollar reward.

Many, though fewer thousands of readers, saw the one-column headlines of the third and more conservative morning paper:

It carried also, as did the others, the full letter of Mayor True in praise of Chief Spoofenberger and in defense of the city; and, together with the remainder of the press, an editorial comment.

The editorial in the Morning Truth, the organ and defender of the administration, carried the longest and plainest comment under the caption:

Printed in heavily italicized type, it was illustrated with a small starving child looking up wonderingly and wistfully at a proud and prosperous pet dog of pompous proportions standing upon a sumptuous velvet cushion.

Engaged in reading over all this, in telephoning, in dictating the other interviews, letters and literature required in the routine of the Phantom Factory, Mr. Melody found it afternoon before he received the really important news of the day for which he had been waiting.

“They've closed them up,” said his laconic assistant, Mr. Nott, to him, as he entered the door of Number 913 after luncheon.

“When?”

“Just before noon.”

It was true. Reading continually, their minds and imaginations stimulated by the great natural human desire to see a dog with a million-dollar playground, the great reading public of Chibosh had so overwhelmed and besieged and jostled, and finally hooted and cat-called the Taxpayers' Pageant of the North Side Women Voters' Club that it had been found expedient and really necessary for the police department of the great city to close the hall and the exhibit.

Receiving this information, Mr. Melody turned at once sharply to Mr. Nott, questioning him.

“How are you getting on with your letters?” he asked him.

“Oh, all right,” said the veteran and disillusioned Mr. Nott in a more than usually weary voice.

It had been indeed a busy period in the Phantom Factory. The grave, sincere, identical portraits of the mayor had gazed down on a practically continuous day of letter writing. For the time was ripe again for the phantoms once more to fulfill the purposes for which they were created—for the great variety of organizations which had their headquarters there to send out their letters of protest and suggestion to Mayor Herman J. True concerning the issue of the day.

“The Herman J. True Merchants and Manufacturers' letter is done,” said Mr. Nott, reporting in detail. “And the True Taxpayers' League, and the Herman J. True Neighborhood Association's and practically all the rest—all but the True Mothers' League.”

“Finish that up and come back,” directed his superior, and set himself to work on the next step toward his goal.

Pressing his push button, Mr. Melody himself was at once dictating to Miss Spielberg the answer of Chief Spoofenberger, the letter which was about to lead up to the formation of the new women's organization—the last addition to the phantom organizations of Mayor True; a letter of answer to the mayor's praise, couched in the brief, blunt, manly style which the public had come to expect from gruff old honest Charley Spoofenberger. It said:

Having dictated this, Mr. Melody urged haste upon Miss Spielberg, his stenographer.

“Get it out for the evenings right away!”

The efficient Miss Spielberg was almost out the door before he had finished.

“And send in Mr. Nott,” he called after her.

His morose assistant was at once in his room.

“What are we going to call this one?” Mr. Melody asked him.

“I thought you said the True Women Home Defenders.”

“Well, all right. I guess so,” said Mr. Melody after a moment's thought. “And who'll be the head of it?”

“What about Mrs. Bertha J. Spiggott?”

“The millionaire corset manufacturer's wife?”

“Yeah.”

“Would she come along when we wanted her to?”

“She'd stand on her head, chief, on the dome of city hall, to get her name in the papers. And there might be something on the side, chief, for you and me,” said Mr. Nott with an unusual earnestness and interest, “for handing it to her.”

“You think so, huh?” asked Mr. Melody thoughtfully.

“I know so, chief,” said Mr. Nott. “I've gone all over it with her social secretary.”

“Well, all right,” said Mr. Melody. “You go ahead and frame the letter for her—from her to the mayor. I'll get out his back to her.

The last step was taken. The phantom women were about to be born.

T WAS Friday morning in the city of Chibosh. The great issue of the million-dollar dog had reached its height, rousing all the hearts and minds of those restless millions to one common thought. New wars growled over prostrate Europe, Asia toppled reluctantly into universal ruin and starvation. Three women in Chibosh had shot men other than their husbands. Yet all eyes in that great metropolis focused feverishly upon that matter of chief public concern, in which Mayor Herman J. True and old Chief Charley Spoofenberger stood fast for the plain honest people and the good name of Chibosh against their remorseless and predatory enemies on the first pages of all the great journals of the city.

In cars, in offices, in apartments and detached homes, all eyes fed fiercely on this great drama of the new politics; but none more keenly than those of the two women who read it together in their quarters, in one of the older and now less stylish sections of the city, given over now to reasonably priced but highly respectable rooms and small apartments.

They sat in a room which apparently served the double purpose of residence and office. The influence of the home was indicated by the books, the furniture and various bulging and spindling and advanced sketches of the last new art upon the walls; the business influence by the substantial central desk and a card-catalogue cabinet of commanding size which stood against the wall.

The older woman, in the square-cut, blue-gray, tailor-made suit was reading aloud with great unconcern but great precision the headlines of Peoples Pictures:

She paused now, looking over the illustrations underneath. The younger woman with the short curly hair beside her on the divan before the old-fashioned fireplace gave an exclamation between extreme anger and loathing.

“A dog!” she exclaimed, and turned also to study, over her companion's shoulder, the illustrations of the Peoples Pictures.

First appeared Mrs. J. Snuydam Spillinghast, a snapshot taken against her will just after her resignation, with her sables and plumes, but without her dog. Beside or below this came the limousine in which the dog was thought by some to have been concealed, with a cross opposite the back seat; the immense throng of citizens before the entrance of Great American Hall; the turning in of the riot call for more police; the corps of ambulances for the bruised and injured; the appearance of Chief Charles Spoofenberger in the act of closing the exhibit in the interests of public safety; the double cordon of police through which Mrs. Spillinghast and her staff—some of them weeping—passed from the hall to her limousine, protected from the eager press of citizens and voters of Chibosh watching sharply to see where the million-dollar dog was concealed.

At the sight of the weeping figures the resentful voice of the younger woman spoke out again. “A dog!” it repeated in a tone between wonder and disgust; and ceased as her companion methodically put aside the pictured page and started to read aloud, carefully, in a voice adjusted to extract their full intellectual flavor, the headlines of the Morning Truth, the organ of Mayor True and the plain honest common people:

“Smeared! Smothered!” exclaimed the reader's companion sketchily, and ceased as the former methodically turned to the last, or editorial, page.

At the center of the top of this the recumbent figure of a lovely, languorous Roman lady, greatly enlarged, caressing a greatly enlarged pet dog, gazed through a columned court upon the smoking ruins of a city. At one side of this, explaining it, came the headlines of the leading editorial of the day:

Reading accurately, aloud, the elder woman began with the opening words:

“'Mrs. Spillinghast, the wealthy dog owner and operator of educational political exhibits for other women with more children and less leisure, asks what pet dogs have to do with taxes.'”

Showing this connection quite clearly, in direct and simple words on taxes, dogs and luxuries, the editorial writer passed steadily and logically to his last quotation—the one from Slavonius:

“'It was Slavonius, the great slave philosopher of Xanthia, of whom these wealthy women probably never heard, who said over two thousand years ago, “It is in the heart of the true woman to be true to her home and her city.”'”

At this point the voice of the younger woman rang out in the sharp accents of one unable to bear more.

“Smeared!” it cried. “Smeared with a dog!”

Although in itself peculiar, this statement seemed to both in a way true, and even accurate. Like so many since the Great War of humanity for humanity's sake, they felt smeared. All around them, restricting and clogging every individual judgment or action, they felt that great, new, invisible power—that great, new, unseen, sticky influence—upon which the nations stand helpless, trembling and afraid, like flies upon the surface of fly paper; all individual movement, moral, mental and physical, checked and forbidden by the power of the higher publicity which now, through the sweet adhesive persuasion of the printed word, firmly and continually holds in its grip mankind, from Moscow to Chibosh, stuck fast through its highest motives, day after day—even if it has to steal a dog to do so. The older woman, however, did not stop to discuss this.

“Wait,” she said. “That is not all,” and read on to the close of the editorial of the Morning Truth, in the tone of one prepared to know the worst and face it squarely:

“'To those women and men who are interested in their city or their home we recommend the reading of Mayor True's strong letter, ably summarizing the situation, and pointing out clearly the really valuable way of using the great new public force of women's spirit, which is so easily wasted in such ventures as the recent and disastrous so-called educational exhibit in Great American Hall, through the union of all the really right-thinking and representative women of Chibosh for the upbuilding and defending and furthering of the interests of the great city which is their home.'”

On hearing this, a new expression of anger and disgust came from the younger woman.

“Beaten! Just when we thought we were getting started! By a dog! And a political press agent!” she exclaimed, and stopped when she saw that the methodical reader beside her had turned to the page bearing the letter of Mayor True—the final letter establishing the phantom women home defenders of Chibosh. It was headed by the picture of Mayor True while defending the American flag, and the caption:

Following this came the letter of Mayor True, addressed to Mrs. Bertha J. Spiggott:

An ominous pause succeeded the reading of this letter, followed by another bitter comment from the angered younger woman.

“Another one of those fake publicity organizations!” she said.

The older woman gazed steadily at her, waiting for her to speak on. She did so, after walking rapidly up and down the room.

“Do you know what we are going to do?” she asked now, suddenly stopping beside the other, seated on the divan.

“What?” asked the older very coolly.

“We are going to take over this fake society and run it ourselves!”

“Run it!”

“Yes; the simplest thing in the world.” The other merely stared. “Simplest! Yes, like taking a dear little toy balloon from a dear little lone child on circus day. You know there aren't any members in these organizations, only a few temporary officers, especially when they are first started.”

“Well?” said the older woman, apparently granting her statement.

“And then, after that, we'll seize this press agent,” she said, continuing her ambitious plans.

“Seize the press agent!”

“Yes; and have him run it for us.”

“Seize him!” persisted the other. “How?”

Instead of answering, the younger woman strode rapidly to one side of the room and, standing there, opened a right-hand compartment in the tall card-catalogue cabinet which stood there.

“M,” she was saying half aloud to herself, “Mel—Melody!”

Taking out the card, she handed it to her friend, roommate and political partner.

“Can we seize him or can we not?” she asked.

“Blackmail?” said the other, slightly recoiling.

“Blackmail! Yes,” said the other one strongly. “Murder if necessary!”

The other stared at her, but apparently with sympathy.

“If they want dirty political tricks”

“As the men always do in politics,” broke in the older in a hard voice.

“they can have them!”

“Exactly,” said the other, warming to the idea.

“And we'll let their own press agent feed them to them.”

The older gazed steadily and purposefully at the other.

“They always have to make the same mistake,” she remarked.

“Who? What?”

“The men. They always have to drive us to extremes, to something they're sorry for afterwards. They did the same thing to themselves in suffrage—in not giving us the vote.”

“I know. Yes,” agreed the other, interrupting her more general considerations with some of more immediate necessity. “Come on now. Let's go. We've got to get started—get busy taking over the True Women Home Defenders.”

For the rest of the day the two women were constantly engaged—upon the telephone, upon the typewriter.

T WAS Saturday upon the front pages of Chibosh. There was a novelty in murder in the great city. A woman, not having secured her divorce, had succeeded, it was alleged, in obtaining her freedom by pounding glass in her husband's ear while he slept. The great gripping issue of the million-dollar dog was fading, and by tomorrow would be gone from the eyes and hearts and memories of the citizen voters of the great city. But not before having achieved its higher purpose—the triumph of the plain honest people and their representative, Mayor True. The letter of acceptance of Mrs. Bertha J. Spiggott of the responsibility of organizing the True Women Home Defenders to preserve the fair name of Chibosh was printed upon the opening pages still, though in a minor place, and quite evidently closing a front-page continued story.

The plain, honest, simple people had won. Their enemies had been repelled and put to shame. The phantom women had been formed and stored away with the other phantoms of Mr. Melody—with the Herman J. True Merchants and Manufacturers' Association, without merchants or manufacturers; the Mayor's Taxpayers' and Real-Estate Guardians, without taxes or real estate; the True Mothers' League, without mothers, and all the other phantom organizations of the new politics, to be used, laid away, revived or disbanded as it served the purposes of Mr. Melody and the higher publicity.

It had been another successful and busy six days for Mr. Michael F. Melody, the most carefully concealed of all the press agents of Chibosh. It was eleven o'clock when he looked up at his green velours hat on his hatrack.

“Let's call it a week's work,” said Michael F. Melody to himself, yawning and starting to rise.

Just at that moment the telephone rang. It was the mayor's office upon the wire.

“Say, what's going on,” they were asking, “in this Women Home Defenders thing?”

“What is?” asked Mr. Melody, his calm face unchanged.

“They're joining it.”

“Who are?” asked Mr. Melody, hitching his chair nearer the desk.

“Women!” said the voice in an intense surprise.

“What?”

“Women! Real women! By the hundreds—thousands!”

“By the thousands!” repeated Mr. Melody, a sharp intonation in his voice.

“You'd think so if you saw the morning's mail and heard the telephone going all yesterday afternoon and today!”

“Real genuine women, huh?”

“I'll say so,” said the under official in the mayor's office.

“Leave it to me,” directed Mr. Melody, and shut off.

His voice was calm, and his face, as it had to be in his business; but he was in fact disturbed and very anxious. This was a new one, an unprecedented thing, that he had never run against in one of these campaigns before.

He sat in a. Naturally it was no purpose of a political press agent's organization to have real members in it beyond the few needful, who were hand-picked. Otherwise, what use would it be for the purposes of the freer, higher publicity?

Mr. Melody was surprised, alarmed, greatly anxious. Could someone be packing Mayor True's Women Home Defenders against him with real women? If so, who could it be? What could be their purpose?

As he sat wondering, worrying, he received another blow—a sudden second blow more unsettling than the first. Someone was calling him upon the phone, that guarded secret telephone of the Phantom Factory. It was a woman, a young woman, with a voice of exceeding and almost excessive politeness.

“Is this Atlanta 179?” asked the extraordinarily polite voice of the woman on the telephone.

At these words—superficially a mistaken telephone number—the calm face of Mr. Melody suddenly changed and grew white. It seemed to him that he must certainly have misunderstood.

“What?” he whispered.

The sweet, softly modulated feminine voice repeated its mysterious but moving question: “Is this Atlanta 179?”

There was no answer. The face of Mr. Melody, usually so calm, turned ashen. His hand shook the receiver against his ear; he could not even whisper back another question at these apparently innocent words.

“If it is,” said the educated, softly modulated feminine voice, “as I am quite sure it must be, will he please be sure not to interfere in any way with the membership drive which is now going on so well for the True Women Home Defenders?”

Mr. Melody croaked an answer.

“Thank you so much,” said the sweet menace of the softly modulated voice, and closed down its receiver.

Michael F. Melody, the most carefully unknown man in Chibosh, sat staring at his transmitter, turning over in his active, subtle but now almost bloodless mind the terrible though sweetly spoken warning upon the telephone.

What was this warning—that was so much like a telephone number? What was the reason of its startling effect on Mr. Melody? What was to be its future influence upon Mr. Melody, the Phantom Factory and the phantom women of Mayor True?

The answer cannot be given here. It will be revealed later in the story of The Milk Bath and The Card Catalogue.