Wallingford and Blackie Daw

Contents

CHAPTER

PAGB

I Tipping It Off

Chapter I

BIG Tim( Measen, jaws and all, came out of the ivy-clad Griswald Art Terra-Cotta Studios, with one-half of his mustache neatly curled and the other half chewed to a kinky tassel.

“What’s the matter, Tim?” hailed Blackie Daw, who was coming up the flower-bordered path with Wallingford.

“I want to borry a bomb,” declared Big Tim, with a vengeful backward glance at the “studios.”

“I get you,” laughed Blackie. “You’ve been cut down on the Griswald campaign contribution.”

“Cut down!” snorted Big Tim. “Cut out!” and his face grew purple.

“I told you the day of graft and corruption was over in my home suburb,” triumphed Blackie. “Jim, this is my friend, Tim Measen, the proprietor of the Tarry ville town council. Tim, shake hands with J. Rufus Wallingford, a business associate of mine.” “Glad to meet you,” husked Tim, giving Walling-

I ford’s hand a crushing grip. “Have you been in business long with Mr. Daw?”

“Don’t get me wrong, Tim,” hastily corrected

Blackie. “Jim isn’t a sucker. He’s been, my regular side-kick for years.”

“Oh !” remarked Big Tim, and shook hands again. “I certainly am glad to know you, Mr. Wallingford. I was just going to tip it off to you that you’d better get wise if you was doing business with Blackie,” and he laughed uproariously at the possibility of his warning a sucker!

“Tim used to run a squeeze spindle next to my shell game at the county fairs,” explained Blackie. “Now he’s my political enemy. Wallingford’s going to buy a house out here, Tim, to help me elect my reform ticket this fall.”

“Stay out of it," warned Tim. “Let me slip you my word that there’s nothing in politics any more. Why, I’ve had this million-dollar Griswald factory valued on the tax list at fifty thousand ever since I’ve been the politics of Tarryville, and now Harry Griswald won't come across with his regular ten thousand support for the party.”

“The reform spirit is growing,” exulted Blackie. “The time has come, Tim, when nothing but square methods will be tolerated in public office.”

“Go to it!” grinned Big Tim admiringly. “You put that con across like a real straight hair, but you’re too late by five years. You can’t kid anybody with reform splush nowadays. I know, for I’ve tried it myself.”

“But I’m on the level with it,” earnestly protested Blackie.

“Go on and deliver your milk,” laughed Big Tim. “I’ll give it to you for one thing, though. You al¬ ways was the best spreader on the lot. What are you going to hand the Griswalds?”

“Jim’s going to try to buy Harry Griswald’s resi¬ dence property, just between the factory and my house over there.”

“He’d better buy it quick, then,” snarled Big Tim. “If handsome Harry keeps it, it’s going on the tax list at about ten billion dollars instead of thirty thou¬ sand,” and he started to slouch away, as roundshouldered as a gorilla. “I say,” he called, turning. “It’s no use your going in now. They were just starting a board of directors’ scrap when I got my turn-down — the three Griswald brothers and the two sisters. That’s why I wanted a bomb.”

“Thanks,” chuckled Wallingford. “We’ll stay out till they’re through, for fear you might find one,” and stepping from the path, he walked across the beautifully kept lawn to the hedge beyond which stretched the Harry Griswald estate. It was a handt

some big place/ running back from the pike to the river, with winding drives, and big trees, and a stately stone house.

“I feel like it’s a hop dream when I think of own¬ ing a park like that,” smiled Wallingford.

“Piker,” reproached Blackie.

“I’ll put up enough money for it to make a flurry on Wall Street,” indignantly repudiated Walling¬ ford ; “and I’ll let them bite every dollar, to make sure it’s good ; but I’m suspicious of my luck. From all I hear, this Griswald won’t sell. Why doesn’t he live in it?”

“His wife got nerves as soon as she married money, and has only strength enough to dress five times a day, and carry twelve trunks to a different health-resort every month in the year,” grinned Blackie. “She’s a confirmed invalid.”

“Then why won’t he sell?” puzzled Wallingford.

“Hush ! It’s the ancestral estate,” whispered Blackie. “Harry is the first aristocrat the family ever had, and he broke himself buying an old home¬ stead to make good.”

“No heirs?” guessed Wallingford.

“In Tarryville?” scorned Blackie.

“Then he’d sell, with proper pressure,” decided Wallingford. “Say, Blackie, if I could buy this property, I’d cut off that whole corner of the river¬ front with thick shrubbery. I don’t like its face.”

“Pm tired of this continuous bickering,” an¬ nounced Vivian. “It is disgraceful that this family can not come together without quarreling. I’m com¬ pelled to attend these meetings to protect my inter¬ ests, but if I could sell my stock at a reasonable figure, Fd never be seen near one of you.”

“For how much will you sell your stock?” in¬ quired the pale-whiskered one.

“Don’t be a fool,” Grace admonished her hus¬ band. “You haven’t the money to buy it.”

“I’ll sell for two hundred thousand dollars,” of¬ fered Vivian.

“Any of us would do that,” sneered Welles.

“I’d like to buy it,” declared Harry. “With the power to extend the business, I could make it dou¬ ble its value in a year. I’ll give you a hundred thou¬ sand cash, Vivian, and my note for the balance.”

“There’d be something crooked about it,” retorted Vivian. “I’d even suspect your cash.”

The gavel fell impatiently. “Harry’s more than dubious methods are not under discussion, and this meeting is adjourned!” roared the chairman, where¬ upon an immediate babble arose, with six tireless voices in the contest for supremacy.

“Lovely party,” commented Blackie. “Say, Jim, do you suppose they could make a pianola small enough to put on a forty-foot launch?”

Wallingford paid no attention to him, nor was he paying any attention to the babble in the boardroom. His round pink face had not the trace of a line on, it, nor was there a wrinkle in his brow, but he was perfectly oblivious of the fact that Blackie, insistent now to know if a wash-room, dressingroom and kitchen could not be combined on a forty-foot launch, was prodding his elbow. Presently he arose and looked out of the window toward the Gris* wald wharf.

“Confound it, Jim, I wish you’d listen to me!” insisted Blackie at his elbow again. “Where would you put the cellarette on my launch, or would you have one in each end?”

“Make it a combination knapsack and life-pre¬ server,” advised Wallingford, turning to him with a cheerful smile. “I’ve figured out how to vote for you this fall.”

“I knew you’d do it,” returned Blackie, in some surprise that Wallingford had spent so much time over the problem. “You said, down at the wharf, that you intended to make Harry Griswald sell you his place.”

“I know how, now,” chuckled Wallingford. “I’m going to induce that Napoleon of finance to extend the business.”

“I think I’d better get a poultice for Harry,” thoughtfully proposed Blackie.

“He won’t be stung,” denied Wallingford, io

Harry Griswald was a man of large ideas; one could tell that from his very walk, which was ma¬ jestic and a trifle wide and swaying, as befitted a man of some portliness; his brow wore a habitual frown, not at all of displeasure, but of thought; and he greeted Wallingford with the seriousness due to so large a caller, and one supporting so heavy a dia¬ mond in his cravat. He might be a buyer of art terra-cotta !

“Any one introduced by my very good neighbor, Mr. Daw, is sure of a hearty welcome to our stu¬ dios,” Mr. Griswald observed, shaking hands most condescendingly, and leading the way into his own private office.

“He’d like to become a neighbor of yours, too,” Blackie informed Mr. Griswald. “He wants to buy your residence property.”

Mr. Griswald turned most severe. “It is not for sale,” he replied. “It is to be entailed.”

“I’m sorry,” regretted Wallingford. “However, I’m not surprised. I wouldn’t sell it. You have a beautiful plant here, Mr. Griswald,” and he cast his eye on a magnificent water-color perspective hanging over Griswald’s desk, which looked like the bird’s-eye view of a world’s fair.

“The nucleus of one,” admitted Mr. Griswald with modest pride. “It will be a magnificent plant if ever my plans of extension are carried out,” and he waved his hand gracefully over the water-color, in which the future Griswald galleries squeezed the horizon rudely.

Wallingford nodded his head in emphatic ap¬ proval. “No business can stand still,” he sagely ob¬ served. “It must either go forward or backward.”

“Precisely what I tell my brothers,” declared Gris¬ wald, growing choleric as he remembered his wrongs.

“You are a partnership, I believe,” prevaricated Wallingford, by way of drawing fire.

“No, a corporation,” corrected Griswald. “A million dollars, divided equally among five.”

“I see,” mused Wallingford. “That is a most unfortunate condition for business progress. The largest enterprises are the result of an aggressive one-man power. I suppose you get along, however, like brothers,” and with a glare he dared Blackie to snort.

“Well, yes,” admitted Griswald with a wince. “Of course my brother Curtis, being the oldest, assumes a certain amount of authority.”

Wallingford cast a savage glance at Blackie. That irresponsible person was grinning shamelessly.

“Authority, to be worth anything, must be abso¬ lute,” Wallingford declared with the solemn wis¬ dom of a school-teacher. “Of course you know how Peter Wilkinson got his,” and he chuckled.

Mr. Griswald shamefacedly confessed that he did not. In fact, he had never heard of Peter Wilkin¬ son, but naturally he did not confess to that depth of ignorance.

“It’s a good laugh/’ Wallingford informed him, and crossed his legs so comfortably that Mr. Gris¬ wald offered him a cigar and gave Blackie a. match for his cigarette. Evidently this was a gentleman of wide experience, and one often learned something from these informal chats. “At the start,” con¬ tinued Wallingford, lighting his cigar, “he was a minority stockholder in a business which had stopped growing; but now he owns it all, and is so prosper¬ ous that the mint is jealous.”

“A minority stockholder?’’ queried Mr. Gris¬ wald, beginning to feel a vague admiration for the Napoleon of finance whose case was so nearly like his own.

“A one-fifth interest was all he owned,” insisted Wallingford.

Mr. Griswald reflected that this was an exact parallel to his own case, and became more eagerly attentive.

“He was a strong resourceful man,” went on Wallingford.

Mr. Griswald compressed his jaws. He, too, was a strong resourceful man. He wore curly tufts of burnsides to prove it. ^

“He was a man of knowledge, of education and of refinement/' stated Wallingford.

Mr. Griswald smoothed his mustache with a hand upon which glowed a daintily set sapphire.

“He was a man of ideas."

Mr. Griswald frowned at the bird’s-eye view of the terra-cotta plant that should be built — if he were running the business.

“In fact, he was a commercial genius."

Mr. Griswald strove to look modest. “A com¬ mercial genius," he sadly remarked, “usually has unbelievable ignorance and prejudice opposed to him," and he glanced bitterly out at his brother Cur¬ tis, who was passing the window.

“Peter Wilkinson made that handicap look like a squeezed soap-bubble/’ bragged Wallingford with the true pleasure of a creator. “I knew him like a lead dollar. Wilkinson Green Paint Company, you know; you’ve heard of them; every pair of green shutters in the United States carries a coat of their mixture. That’s their specialty. Green shutter-paint. Nothing else."

“By George!" commented Griswald. “I didn’t know there was a monopoly of green shutter-paint. How did your friend go about it, with his minority of stock?"

“Well, he was one of these strong, aggressive, never-sav-die fighters, to begin with," replied Wallingford, and Mr. Griswald, squaring his shoulders and his lower lip, looked savagely out toward his brother Curtis’s larger and better lighted private office. “Nobody would carry out his ideas, so he got bull-mad, one day, and made up his mind to umpire his own game or go broke. There was one stockholder who would vote with him, and between them they held forty per cent, of the shares. Peter knew where another fifteen per cent, could be bought, so he sold his house and lot, his automobile, his motor-boat and the baby buggy, came into the next stockholders’ meeting with a fifty-five per cent, control, tossed out the two men who had poohpoohed his ideas, and now when he wants to figure out how much he’s worth, he sets down a figure nine, and writes ciphers after it until his arm aches !”

Mr. Griswald drew a long, long breath. “Bully!” he declared with much show of vigor. “That was the way to do it !”

“It was a fighter’s way,” agreed Wallingford warmly. “Think of it! The day he got his Dutch up, he was almost a middle-aged man, but full of fire.” Mr. Griswald blinked his eyes and grew deadly stern. “To-day, he is in the prime of life and couldn’t even go bankrupt if he invented some¬ thing or got into a lawsuit. Why, not long ago he bought the immense ancestral estates of Lord Twim-

LS bley, and the king was his guest at a recent shooting party !”

The chest of Mr. Griswald expanded. He was one of those who had been within a mile or so of the coronation, and he felt that, somehow, this gave him allegiance to the British crown. “Stunning!” he ejaculated.

Wallingford arose with the apologetic air of one who has already outstayed the limits of a purpose¬ less call, but he paused to admire the pretty per¬ spective over the desk. “That’s a magnificent ideal,” he politely commented. “Do you figure on achiev¬ ing it in the near future?”

Mr. Griswald, who was a keen, strong, aggress¬ ive, middle-aged man of brilliant ideas and fighting fire, stood up and dwelt heroically on his pet water-color. “Yes,” he suddenly declaimed with vast de¬ termination.

“I hope you do,” smiled Wallingford, shaking hands with him. “It will beautify Tarryville so much that I am sorry I can not live near enough to watch your studios grow.”

“Wait a minute,” hesitated Mr. Griswald, and Wallingford allowed him ample time for great thought.

“You spoke, a while ago, of buying my property. How much do you offer?”

“A hundred thousand dollars,” stated Walling¬ ford.

Mr. Griswald inwardly gasped. It almost seemed an omen that Wallingford had named the exact amount he needed to make up enough to buy his sister Vivian’s stock; that is, if she had not changed her mind. Moreover, the offer was quite liberal.

“I’ll do it!” he enthusiastically decided, banging his fist upon his desk like a hero.

Wallingford whipped out his check-book. “It’s a bet,” he agreed. “I’ll give you a check right now, on a bill of sale, if you like, and we’ll put up to our lawyers the job of cheating us the rest of the way.”

Mr. Griswald’s eyes suddenly contracted. “I’d rather think about it overnight,” he responded con¬ templatively, waving the enticing check-book from him.

“If I could only slip you the money, you’d stick,” laughed Wallingford, putting away 'his check-book with regret, nevertheless. “Now, let’s have a clea# understanding about this. I’m offering you a hun¬ dred thousand for Griswald County over there, from the hedge to Blackie Daw’s, and from the gasoline pike to the tug-boat speedway.”

Again Mr. Griswald silently considered. “For my residence property,” he finally corroborated.

As they passed out of the building, Blackie solemnly plucked a geranium from an enormous pot at the side of the door and pinned it on Walling¬ ford’s coat. “It’s a medal,” he explained.

“For what?” grinned Wallingford. “For jolly¬ ing Brother Harry into selling the family estate, if he can buy Vinegar Vivian’s stock to-night?”

“No,” corrected Blackie; “for quick digging. Where did you keep all those facts about that paint monopoly? I never heard of it.”

“Neither did I, till just as we came in,” chuckled Wallingford. “Look there,” and he pointed to a workman who was spreading a coat of vivid green paint on the “studio” shutters,

Blackie walked over and looked at the paint-can. “You came close enough for that sucker never to find out the difference, anyhow,” he commented. “He’ll probably swallow that shutter-paint gag ' without pinning back its ears.”

“What’s the matter with the parable?” demanded Wallingford. “I think it was a pippin.”

“Nothing much the matter with it,” laughed Blackie; “except that you need a lorgnette. You missed the key-board. It isn’t the Wilkinson Green Paint Company, but the Williamsburg Cream Paint Company. They grind out twelve cans a day in a leaky old barn just over the bridge; and they manu¬ facture eighty-four shades to order!”

Chapter II

WALLINGFORD, happy in the possession of a fair suburban home of many shaded acres, installed his automobile in the garage and littered the place, from pike to river, with several varieties of the five known kinds of building materials : brick, stone, iron, wood and cement. There was a per¬ gola to be built, a spring-house, some bridges, a kiosk and numberless other stamps of his indi¬ viduality, and accompanied by Blackie, he even went over to see the new president, manager and main¬ spring of the wholly reorganized Griswald Com¬ pany about supplanting the hedge, on their mutual property line, with an ancient, ivy-clad stone wall.

“I don’t understand what hedge you mean,” pro¬ tested Harry Griswald, looking uncomfortably out the big bow-win<5t>w that had once shrined Brother Curtis. “There is no hedge on the dividing line between my former residence property and the studio grounds.”

“Oh, I see,” returned Wallingford carelessly. “The hedge is entirely on your side. In that case

I suppose you won’t mind my building a wall at the edge of the line.”

“I scarcely think you would like a wall so near to the house,” advised Griswald, who was so uneasy that Wallingford looked at him sharply.

“Just where is my property line?” he wanted to know, catching the infection of uneasiness.

“I’ll show you,” offered Griswald with alacrity. “It is marked by corner-stones,” and he led the way out to the pike and along the front of Wallingford’s new purchase. Half-way he stopped. “This is the limit of my residence property,” he stated, removing with his foot the leaves and moss from an X-marked surveyor’s stone. “It runs straight back from here, at a right angle to the river.”

Wallingford turned in amazement to Blackie. That gentleman was grinning for pure joy.

“Looks like you patted the wrong end of your hornet,” he consoled J. Rufus.

“It’s hard to believe,” protested the veteran “trimmer,” and then he demanded of Griswald : “Do you mean to say that this was not a part of your residence property?”

“It was not technically known as such,” replied Griswald, recovering his complacency, now that the worst was over.

“Did it never belong to you?”

“Well, yes,” admitted Griswald, now curling his mustache to conceal a smirk of satisfaction. “In fact, it does yet. You see, this part upon which the house stands was the original residence property, which I purchased from the Sammis estate. The remainder I bought from my brothers, three years ago. We — we still speak of it as a part of the studio grounds.”

Blackie snickered outright, and Wallingford gulped audibly.

“Get that poultice,” he groaned to Blackie. “But look here, Griswald, I distinctly remember that when I first talked this over with you, I specified that the price I offered was for your entire property; from that hedge to Mr. Daw’s and from the pike to the river!”

“And I distinctly remember that I corrected you by saying my residence property,” returned Gris¬ wald coldly. “You will find the estate you have purchased accurately described in your deed.”

Wallingford looked sadly on that beautiful stretch of woodland. There was the spring over which he had intended to build his pretty little stone drinking-house; there ran the tiny brook which he had planned to put to such picturesque use; there was the knoll upon which he had decided to erect his kiosk; and across yonder was to have run his pergola !

“Skinned by an amateur!” he reflected with humiliation. “Oh, very well, Griswald! How much do you want for it?”

“Twenty-five thousand dollars,” replied Mr. Gris¬ wald happily.

“Fine!” declared Wallingford. “I may as well get it good while I’m at it. I’ll meet you at my law¬ yer’s to-morrow morning. I want to see the new deed fixed myself.”

“Cheer up, Jim, the worst is always yet to come,” advised Blackie hilariously when Griswald had gone. “The bitten worm will turn at last, and the darkest dawn is just before the hour.”

“I hope you choke,” growled Wallingford savage¬ ly. “I don’t like to be stung when I’m off duty.”

“But see what a good lesson it is to you!” soothed Blackie. “In order to handle a sucker with grace and ease, you ought to know how one feels. How does he?”

“Go on and giggle, you laughing jackass !” snarled W allingf ord.

“Do you know that I’m being sheared of a hun¬ dred and twenty-five thousand cold iron plunks in order to vote for you?”

“I know it, and I’m proud of it,” snickered Blackie. “It’s the record price.”

Wallingford glared after the retreating form of the gifted amateur. “And to think that peanut¬ brained four-flusher got it up all in his own head !”

he exploded with a scorn that was entirely for himself. “I wish Measen had found his bomb!’’

“Go to it!” laughed Blackie. “It’s a good thing to have a grouch all the way out. You’ll have to calm yourself before you can frame up a proper come-back for neighbor Harry, and I think I’ll go over to the house and play the saxophone for Violet Bonnie till you are once more willing to be Little Sunshine. Say, Jim, can you think of any way to put a shower-bath on a forty-foot launch?”

Wallingford turned to him kindly but firmly. “When you play your saxophone, won’t you please render my favorite airs, very softly, in the far cor¬ ner of your cellar?” he requested. “I want to stay here, and think.”

Half an hour later Blackie, glancing out the win¬ dow of the Dutch library, saw Wallingford on the river bank, walking frowningly up and down, up and down, up and down.

“I’ll give him ten more minutes,” he grinningly observed.

“HI go out and start them making that cham¬ pagne-cup,” sympathetically replied Violet Bonnie. “To tell the truth, though, I expected him in be-* fore this. I never knew Jim to take so long to dig up a scheme.”

“That’s because this one has to be a peach,” chuckled Blackie. “Jim’s professional pride is hurt.”

“This ain’t much like the old fair-ground days, when we guzzled our suds straight from the can, ate our scoffin’ at a stand-up grease- joint and flopped in the wall of a platform show,” observed Big Tim Measen, as Violet Bonnie poured him an¬ other sample of the contents of the cellarette in the Dutch library.

“It isn’t even like the days when I used to carry Blackie’s maybe mining stock as a side line to my Florida swamp-land operations,” asserted Chinchilla Williams, who, though fastidiously neat, derived his nickname from his general hairiness. “When we were having our meal-tickets punched at Java Charley’s, I never expected to be mayor of Tarryville, nor to see you with a so-help-me house like this.”

“It’s because I quit phony work,” stated Blackie with virtuous pride. “There’s no money in a con game. I never would have had a hut of this kind if I hadn’t gone into legitimate business graft with Jim Wallingford.”

“He seems to be some clever party, all right,” agreed Big Tim; “but just the same, you’d still be rolling your own cigarettes, out of chopped alfalfa at five a pack, if you hadn’t been lucky enough to catch friend wife here, on her sleep-walking day, and marry her before she woke up,” and he lifted his glass gallantly to Violet Bonnie.

“That’s a cautious and stingy statement,” echoed Chinchilla Williams. “How an outcast like Blackie ever picked such a peach is a point past me.”

“Quit your kidding,” chided Violet Bonnie, high¬ ly delighted. “A little more of the rye, Mr. Willlams ?

“No, I think I’ll switch and take a headache, if you have a bottle of hop essence loafing around near the ice some place. Now, Blackie, what can we put over for you?”

“Well, Fringes,” explained Blackie, “I’m going to hand you some political dope so good that this ought to be your birthday. On the level, I’d like to hold it over for my reform campaign this fall, but Jim Wallingford can’t wait. Don’t you think it would be a good play for you to give the masses in Tarryville a public boat-landing?”

“No,” replied Chinchilla from force of habit, it being considered the loss of about five points in the game to agree to anything offhand.

“They got one,” objected Big Tim; “down at the foot of Ticonderoga Street.”

“A fish-market ferry-landing!” scorned Blackie. “What I mean is to get a good1 place, and doll it all up for red-carpeted skiffs and launches with scal¬ loped awnings.”

“It sounds delicate, but where’s the rake-off?” objected Tim.

“Public boat-house and fishing-pier,” promptly returned Blackie. “If you had a cute little stretch of river bank, with a Cupid fountain in the center, and border of geraniums, and eight iron benches, the town council could rent one end for the boat¬ house, and the other to the Tarryville Boat Club, if they’d build a fishing-pier to shut off the pikers that pay their debts from the spenders that live on their mortgages. The club would put up a pile of verandas that would be a credit to the community.”

But Tim looked at him in earnest speculation. “Where do you and Jim Wallingford come in on this?” he naturally wanted to* know.

“We’ll get to join the boat-club,” returned Blackie immediately and with wide-eyed innocence. “Violet Bonnie has a dressmaker that makes a spe¬ cialty of exclusive yachting outfits.”

“And the minute we do horn into that club,” sup^ plemented Violet Bonnie with a flush of anger, “I’m going to get me a one-eyed lorgnette made, and hand the marble stare right back at some of these enameled-faced dog-cuddlers out here !”

“Hand ’em a hunk of glassay for my wife,” begged Chinchilla Williams. “She was peeved enough before I got to be mayor, but after that, they tossed her the frapped gaze so hard that every time she came in from her afternoon drive she had chills.”

“I suppose they’ll pull the same effect on me when Blackie is mayor,” guessed Violet Bonnie philosoph¬ ically; “but I can dangle some few medals as a freezer myself.”

“It’s a shriek to me that Blackie’s going to lead a reform ticket around by the hand,” laughed the mayor.

“He’s on the level with it,” insisted Violet Bonnie with a trace of indignation. “When Blackie gets through wiping up, politics in this town will be so clean you could eat off it.”

“It’s been tried, and it doesn’t work,” declared the mayor with a grin. “However, that’s neither here nor there. If Blackie gets too strong in his cam¬ paign, I'll have to* pull his record on him.”

“What difference does that make on a reform ticket?” demanded Blackie.

“They know yours, don't they?” interjected Violet Bonnie.

“Anyhow,” went on Blackie, “I think we ought to agree to leave personalities out of the fight, since there’s so much to* be denied on both sides, and stick to the campaign issues. I’m against graft, bribery and corruption, and that’s my platform.”

“What’s this public-boat-landing scheme?” in¬ quired Big Tim who had been thinking it over very carefully. “Where’s the land you want to unload on the town council?”

“If that’s what I was after, I’d come to you, square and honest, and figure how we could split it up,” returned Blackie, a trifle hurt. “There’s nothing of the kind doing. I wouldn’t sell you my land, and Wallingford wouldn’t part with any of his.”

“Then where do we get it? Show five cards and shake your sleeve.”

“You’ll have to condemn it,” explained Blackie blandly, and blew a thin blue stream of smoke at the bust of Browning; “condemn it and buy it in at its tax valuation.”

“I get you now,” smiled Big Tim, much relieved. “I didn’t know you hated anybody in the burg.”

“I don’t,” grinned Blackie. “This is a mere pub¬ lic-spirited enterprise, as I tell you.”

“Tie a bunch of firecrackers to that and start itdown an alley,” advised Big Tim. “Let’s get down to cases. Who’s to be stung?”

“Well, there’s only one possible location,” ex¬ plained Blackie. “That’s the strip of river-front just above the Boat Club landing.”

Big Tim and Chinchilla Williams looked at each other speculatively while they figured it out, and then they grinned in unison.

“Why, that’s the Griswald wharf!” said the mayor.

“You have the nerve of a taxi-driver,” commented

Big Tim admiringly. ‘‘Why, I don’t believe we could do that, legally.”

“You can do it, though,” reproved Blackie; “do it, and make it stick. Can’t you ?”

“Yes, I guess so,” acknowledged the politics of Tarryville; then he chuckled. “Handsome Harry would be so sore he’d holler from the touch of his own clothes.”