The story as it appeared under the scare headlines the next morning was crisply told.  An oil company had been formed with Senator Duvall at its head.  After its incorporation it was ascertained that it not only held options on all the most valuable wells in the Belmount region, but that its charter gave it immunity from the law requiring all corporations to have their organizations, officers, and operating headquarters in the State.  By the time the new company was three days old it had quietly taken up its options and was the single big fish in the pool by virtue of its having swallowed all the little ones.

Then came the finishing stroke which had set the wires to humming.  On the sixth day it was noised about that Senator Duvall had transferred his controlling interest to Rumford—­otherwise to the Universal Oil Company; that he had served only as a figurehead in the transaction, using his standing, social and political, to secure the charter which had been denied Rumford and his associates.

It had all been managed very skilfully; the capping of the wells by the Universal’s agent, the practical sealing up of the entire district, being the first public intimation of the result of Duvall’s treachery and the complete triumph of a foreign monopoly.

The storm that swept the State when the facts came out was cyclonic, and it was reported, as it needed to be, that Senator Duvall had disappeared.  Never in the history of the State had public feeling risen so high; and there were not lacking those who said that if Duvall showed himself his life would not be safe in the streets of the capital.

It was after the Argus had gone to press on the night of explosions that Editor Hildreth sought and found David Kent in his rooms at the Clarendon, and poured out the vials of his wrath.

“Say, I’d like to know if you cue-call this giving me a fair show!” he demanded, flinging into Kent’s sitting-room and dropping into a chair.  “Did I, or did I not understand that I was to have the age on this oil business when there was anything fit to print?”

Kent gave the night editor a cigar and was otherwise exasperatingly imperturbable.

“Keep your clothes on, and don’t accuse a man of disloyalty until you have all the documents in the case,” he said.  “I didn’t know, until I saw your bulletin a few hours ago, that the thing had been pulled off.  In fact, I’ve been too busy with other things to pay much attention to the Belmount end of it.”

“The ded-devil you have!” sputtered Hildreth, chewing savagely on the gift cigar.  “I’d like to know what business you had to mix up in other things to the detriment of my news column.  You were the one man who knew all about it; or at least you did a week or two ago.”

“Yes; but other and more important things have intervened.  I have been desperately busy, as I say.”

“Well, you’ve lost your chance to get your grip on the capitol gang, anyway; that is one comfort,” growled the editor, getting what consolation he could out of Kent’s apparent failure.  “They played it too fuf-fine for you.”