CHAPTER LXXXVI

A NEW CITY GOVERNMENT

Frank found Aleta, dry-eyed, frantic, pacing up and down her little sitting room which always looked so quaintly attractive with its jumble of paintings and bric-a-brac, its distinctive furniture and draperies--all symbolic of the helter-skelter artistry which was a part of Aleta's nature. She took Frank's hand and clung to it.

"I'm so glad you've come," she whispered. "I'm so glad you've come."

It was a little time ere she could tell him of the tragedy. The man had been run over, quickly killed. Witnesses had seen him stagger, fall directly in the path of an advancing car. A doctor called it apoplexy.

"But I know better," sobbed Aleta, for the tears had come by now. "He never was sick in his life. He thought he'd lost me when the money went ... his money in the California Safe Deposit Company."

Frank took a seat beside her on the couch, whose flaming, joyous colors seemed a mockery just then. "Aleta," he said, "I wish I could help you. I wish I knew how, but I don't."

She lifted her tear-stained eyes to his with a curious bitterness. "No ... you don't. But thank you. Just your coming's helped me, Frank. I'm better. Go--and let me think things over." She tried to smile, but the tears came.

"Life's a hideous puzzle. Perhaps if I'd gone with him, all would have come right.... I'd have made him happy."

"But what about yourself?"

Again that bitter, enigmatic look came to her eyes. "I guess ... that doesn't matter, Frank."

He left her, a queer ache in his heart. Was she right about the man's committing suicide. Poor devil! He had stolen for a woman. Others had filched his plunder. Then God had taken his misguided life.

But had He? Was God a murderer? A passive conniver at theft? No, that were blasphemy! Yet, if He _permitted_ such things--? No, that couldn't be, either. It was all an abominable enigma, as Aleta said. Unless--the thought came startlingly--it were all a dream, a nightmare. Thus Kant, the great philosopher, believed. Obsessed by the idea, he paused before a book-store. Its show window prominently displayed Francisco Stanley's latest novel.

Frank missed the mellow wisdom of his father's counsel seriously. He entered the shop, found a volume of Kant and scanned it for some moments till he read:

"This world's life is only an appearance, a sensuous image of the pure spiritual life, and the whole of Sense is only a picture swimming before our present knowing faculty like a dream and having no reality in itself."

## Acting upon a strange impulse, he bought the book, marked the passage

and ordered it sent to Aleta.

A week after Ruef's confession the trial of Mayor Schmitz began. It dragged through the usual delays which clever lawyers can exact by legal technicality. Judge Dunne, sitting in the auditorium of the Bush Street synagogue, between the six-tinned ceremonial candlesticks and in front of the Mosiac tablets of Hebraic law, dispensed modern justice.

Meanwhile the Committee of Seven sprang suddenly into being. A morning paper announced that Schmitz had handed the reins of the city over to a septette of prominent citizens. Governor Gillette lauded this action. But Rudolph Spreckels disowned the Committee. Langdon and Heney were suspicious of its purpose. So the Committee of Seven resigned.

At this juncture the Schmitz trial ended in conviction of the Mayor which was tantamount to his removal from office. It left a vacancy which, nominally, the Supervisors had the power to fill. But they were under Langdon's orders. Actually, therefore, the District Attorney found himself confronted by the task of naming a new mayor.

Unexpectedly the man was found in Edward Robeson Taylor, doctor of medicine and law, poet and Greek scholar. The selection was hailed with relief. Frank hastened to the Taylor home, a trim, white dwelling on California street near Webster. He found a genial, curly-haired old gentleman sitting in a room about whose walls were thousands of books. He was reading Epictetus.

Stanley found the new mayor likeable and friendly. He seemed a man of simple thought. Frank wondered how he would endure the roiling passions of this city's politics. Dr. Taylor seemed undaunted by the prospect, though.

Without delay he was elected by the Supervisors. Then began the farcical procedure of their resignations. One by one the new chief named good citizens as their successors.

But the real fight was now beginning. Halsey's testimony had not incriminated Glass beyond a peradventure. There remained a shade of doubt that he had authorized the outlay of a certain fund for the purposes of bribery. The jury disagreed. The Prosecution's first battle against the "higher-ups" had brought no victory.

Ruef was failing Heney as a witness for the people. After months of bargaining the special prosecutor withdrew his tacit offer of immunity. Heney's patience with the wily little Boss, who knew no end of legal subterfuge, was suddenly exhausted. Frank heard that Ruef was to be tried on one of the three hundred odd indictments found against him. Schmitz had been sentenced to five years in San Quentin. He had appealed.

* * * * *

Several times Frank tried to reach Aleta on the telephone. But she did not respond to calls, a fact which he attributed to disorganized service. But presently there came a letter from Camp Curry in the Yosemite Valley.

"I am here among the everlasting pines and cliffs," she wrote, "thinking it all out. I thank you for the book, which has helped me. If only we might waken from our 'dream'! But here one is nearer to God. It is very quiet and the birds sing always in the golden sunshine.

"I shall come back saner, happier, to face the world.... Perhaps I can forget myself in service, I think I shall try settlement work.

"Meanwhile I am trying not to think of what has happened ... what can never happen. I am reading and painting. Yesterday a dog came up and licked my hand. I cried a little after that, I don't know why."

In his room that evening, Frank re-read the letter. It brought a lump to his throat.

##