Hastily Frank verified her statement.  Then he hurried to the office, found his notes and for an hour wrote steadily, absorbedly a spectacular tale of superstition, extravagance and financial chaos.  As he turned in his copy the editor handed him a slip of paper on which was written:  “Call Aleta Boice at once.”  He sought a telephone, but there was no response.  He tried again, but vainly.  A third attempt, however, and Aleta’s voice, half frantic, answered his.

“He’s killed himself,” she cried.  “Oh, Frank, I don’t know what to do.”

“He?  Who?” Frank asked startled.

“Frank, you know!  The man who wanted me to—­”

“Do you mean the Supervisor?”

“Yes....  They say it was an accident.  But I know better.  He lost his money in the safe deposit failure....  Oh, Frank, please come to me, quick.”

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.