PAGE 16
The Campaign Grafter
by
Kennedy was digging into the wall with a bill file at the place where he had buried the little vulcanised disc. I had already guessed that it was a dictograph, though I could not tell how it was used or who used it. There it was, set squarely in the plaster. There also were the wires running under the carpet. As he lifted the rug under Miss Ashton’s desk there also lay the huge circles of wire. That was all.
At this moment Miss Ashton stepped forward. “Last Friday,” she said in a low tone, “I wore a belt which concealed a coil of wire about my waist. From it a wire ran under my coat, connecting with a small dry battery in a pocket. Over my head I had an arrangement such as the telephone girls wear with a receiver at one ear connected with the battery. No one saw it, for I wore a large hat which completely hid it. If any one had known, and there were plenty of eyes watching, the whole thing would have fallen through. I could walk around; no one could suspect anything; but when I stood or sat at my desk I could hear everything that was said in Mr. Bennett’s office.”
“By induction,” explained Kennedy. “The impulses set up in the concealed dictograph set up currents in these coils of wire concealed under the carpet. They were wirelessly duplicated by induction in the coil about Miss Ashton’s waist and so affected the receiver under her very becoming hat. Tell the rest, Miss Ashton.”
“I heard the deal arranged with this Hanford,” she added, almost as if she were confessing something, “but not understanding it as Mr. Kennedy did, I very hastily condemned Mr. Travis. I heard talk of putting back twenty thousand into the campaign accounts, of five thousand given to Hanford for his photographic work, and of the way Mr. Travis was to be defeated whether he paid or not. I heard them say that one condition was that I should carry the purchase money. I heard much that must have confirmed Mr. Kennedy’s suspicion in one way, and my own in an opposite way, which I know now was wrong. And then Cadwalader Brown in the studio taunted me cynically and – and it cut me, for he seemed right. I hope that Mr. Travis will forgive me for thinking that Mr. Bennett’s treachery was his”
A terrific cheer broke out among the clerks in the outer office. A boy rushed in with a still unblotted report. Kennedy seized it and read:
“McLoughlin concedes the city by a small majority to Travis, fifteen election districts estimated. This clinches the Reform League victory in the state.”
I turned to Travis. He was paying no attention except to the pretty apology of Margaret Ashton.
Kennedy drew me to the door. “We might as well concede Miss Ashton to Travis,” he said, adding gaily, “by induction of an arm about the waist. Let’s go out and watch the crowd.”