The Spider's Web

had been done, and Luke accepted this verdict as a proof and triumph of right. He passed his examinations and, shortly

ltimately attained. Even his relatives, who were people of so high a position that they regarded voting as something beneath their caste and would rather be pillaged than lay hands upon the pillagers, had kept him at a distance and were a little ashamed of their pride in his success now that he had secured it. With a few other men, all his elders, he had found

novitiate. He tried petty offenders whose crimes were so insignificant that he frequently found it hard to consider them crimes at all, and he was often too sorry for the accused to be glad when he convicted them. The first time he won a sentence, which was by no means the firs

thirty, with a cynical tolerance of life and a tendency to regard their work as a game that everybody played solely for the sake of winning it, with the opposing lawye

, a Larry O'Mara, when he came through Luke's litt

e?" Luke

and old Laurie was sitting, too. T

s pink wi

he charge?"

ughs was asleep at the switch. When he did object, Laurie ruled against me, but the jury'd heard it all rig

hed for t

e man g

e first wondering

o this he did something else we didn't k

understand his associates' desire to sec

anted them to be what he called "all-round criminal practitioners" when the time should come for them to leave his service, and so Luke was once or twice called into a capital trial. On one such occasion he was helping young Uhler. Leighton himself had tried a striker named Gace on the charge of shooting and killing a detective

, and you might as well have Huber with you. We're bound to lose, and so I'm going to

He convinced himself of Reardon's guilt, and he ended by convincing Luke. The proceedings, indeed, went largely in the State's favor until, shortly after the defense had opened its case, the man Gace, who had p

defending lawyer and, co

n a clever ruse to secure an unjust acquittal, sprang to his feet and shook an angry finger under

heating justice in your own case, you

ied the witness. He was a big man with the frame

ally mean to tell this court th

of a smile brushed

im, didn't the

er lost L

ness of the participants in the legal game, and the discovery that the best minds at the Bar, of course seeking the most lucrative field for their practice, were in the position of advisers to the great financiers, their incomes, which far exceeded those of their more active

ed but devouring anaconda; the dark passages full of tenements; the quiet pavements bordered by prosperous dwellings; the roar of every sort of business and the crackle of all sorts of pleasure; the joy and suffering eternally intermingled, yet so intermingled that h

America, he turned a corner and found himself in China, in crooked streets heavy with the smells of the East, among shops whose signs bore Oriental characters, among crowds of impassive yellow faces-men and only men-where there was no sound of English speech. On

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ACK

NTED

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drank champagne and heard songs by vaudeville performers who thus earned more money than at the theaters which they had deserted, to seats in shoddy beer-halls where there was dancing by women too old or too unskilled to continue upon the stage; and on the way home from "Little Hunga

es. Somebody said that, during the past winter, seventy thousand New York children had gone hungry to the public schools; Luke was sure that the schools would soon supply their pupils with free meals. From a report of the New Jersey Department of Charities that came into his hands, he learned that, in New Jersey, one person in every two hundred and six of the population was a ward of the State; but his reflection was only tha

fourteen thousand children in one year. These, all of them under the age of sixteen, were no longer herded with mature criminals that completed their education in vice, though their offenses ranged from mere waywardness to burglary. Their judges were patient and sympathetic men. One was the president of a society called the Big Brothers, the duty of whose members was to act

. He saw with high hope the Washington Irving High School for Girls, the result of an agitation begun by pupils. Here was a building eight stories

aboratories, a conservatory, a zoological garden and a roof-garden, and laundries. There's a regular theater-stage, scenery, and all that-a store, a bank, a housekeeping department, and an employment bureau. They have an orchestra, and they dance. There are nurseries with real babies in them-babies that can cry-and there is a five-room model house, a hospital, and a section where they train nurses. They use all thes

d he had a fine respect for such of his acquaintances as had made their own money by building up their own industries. He doubted certain men in whose hands lay the administration of government, but he was sure that the cure for this was the election of honorable men. He brought to New York, and l

with him. On one such occasion, his host, little, sallow, with almond eyes that gave him a strangely Japanese appearance, fell to talking of these questions

"the shortsightedness of these really

aid Luke, "because it'

t what's

hat you buy che

he must be paid for his work if his employees are paid for theirs. It's the fair return that he gets for the risk he's run

agr

his power so as to prevent other men from doing them, but we haven't any righ

gressman from his characteristic reticence. He scorned the tyranny of Russia and the English make-shift of a constitutional monarchy. In the United States the people could rule; the means were provided; if they failed now and then, it was for a brief time o

ntire rank and file of the Democrats; he saw the integrity of Leighton, and accepted it as a true token of Republican virtue. He wanted the government restore

he belt of the public. Grand Juries had a way of including enough partisans of these politicians to prevent the finding of true bills. When true bills were found, petty juries generally contained enough Democrats to persuad

our of them twice and two three times; we've had our hands full with appeals, and the only one of the

o because they believed he was getting

wer down," concluded L

Against these retailers he proceeded with all the vigor he had shown in his larger and less productive efforts. Evidence to convict the sources of supply was hard to get, s

ntment, but this gave him fresh courage. One day, when Uhler was on vacation and Luke was taking the work of the

n the second floor of a house in Avenue A. As he waltzed past the door le

te," said the gan

and went t

" he d

or. "His crowd's after you 'cause they say you piped off Dutch's broth

re i

nd front when

is he

n ba

these

iend n

walked to

below," he explained. "Wai

, with his back to the stairs, smoking a cigarette. Without warning, Zantzinger shot him through the head. Then he

to the homicide bureau. Luk

he District-Attorney, "is the right-hand

im?" asked

en on th

heir n

n get

oroner on

hought

on shr

be the end o

d not cre

s done with the case, he'll see to it nobody knows anything.

?" urged Luke.

hair. He put his feet on his desk a

ayor and Police Commissioner fighting against me." He spoke like a man at last driven to declare something he has long striven to conceal.

of passing weariness and discouragement; but he daily found this endeavor more difficult. What suddenly turned his mind to other thi