The Saturday Evening Post/The Falling Bean

by George Kibbe Turner

The Stranger Looked Up and Then Down Before
Answering. “Well, Perhaps,” He Said. “The
Time is Short, and the Matter is Very Urgent”

 

THE FALLING BEAN

By George Kibbe Turner

ILLUSTRATED BY
GEORGE E. WOLFE

IT WAS the end of October, 1918. The huge national publicity drive, which was to end the Great War, was on—the drive for the conservation of the bean. On every wall, in every newspaper, upon every tongue was the slogan: Beans for Our Boys. Six million school children were working every evening on their national prize essays on The Message of the Bean. Beautiful artists' models of every type were seen on every billboard, bending tenderly over flowering beans. Upon every woman's page in the press appeared the model menus for beanless days.

In the darkening office of Ben Bumpus Boone, the great Southwestern publicity senator, in the white Senate Office Building, his confidential publicity secretary, John Bunyan Jones, was at his typewriter alone, busy again, trying to crack out in three lines the sentiment which was to present, with brevity and pep, the main essence of the call for increased acreage and national conservation of the bean:

• Napoleon said: “An army moves upon its stomach!”
• Foch says: “War without beans is inconceivable!”
• America answers: “Beans for our boys!”

It was late—after hours. He was entirely alone. Around him, as he wrote, the electric typewriters for Senator Boone's personal publicity stunts stood silent. But he toiled on, knowing that the heart of his principal was in his work.

One of the ablest of the radical or free-publicity senators, alert and close to the inner policies of the war, Ben Bumpus Boone not only was himself the acknowledged leader of the shouting Western school of free publicity at the capital, but coöperated to the full in every way with the great and wonderful publicity and propaganda machinery of the Government. He stood very high indeed with all the publicity agencies and agents in Washington, both as a friend. informant and a publicity maker; so much so that he was not infrequently mentioned as a future possibility for the presidency.

And now, in this last great cause, he was more than anxious to assist. For he was a leader not alone in conservation and increased bean acreage, but in the proposed government guaranty of bean prices, in which his admirers and constituents in the great winter-bean belt of the West and Southwest were so interested.

His secretary for publicity, Mr. Jones, a small gray-faced young man with a sharp nose and somewhat slippery eyes, pulled his copy from his machine to start it over again. The argument was all there, but the phrasing did not suit him. He could see that it was still far from a finished piece of work.

At this time, just as he was restarting, his desk telephone rang. He answered in a habitually low and hoarsely whispering voice, “Hullo.”

A low voice answered it. “This is Q. V. 3.”

He saw now who it must be. It was that voice, that whisper that had come so often in the past; the voice of that secret intelligence service operator that he had so often blown to lunch.

“Yes,” he said, and listened eagerly.

The whisper at the telephone had the rhythm of one reading. “General Order 17,263. Cease buying beans!” it said, and stopped, interrupted.

For Mr. Jones, the confidential publicity secretary, had reared from his chair, carrying the telephone with him.

“No!” he called loudly into it. “It is impossible!”

“It is true,” reaffirmed the secret, almost solemn voice upon the telephone. “The United States War Department has ceased buying beans.”

“But the delegation has just left for Mongolia to buy up the soy-bean crop of 1919 and 1920 from Asia. The bean production in Patagonia and the Argentine has just been contracted for until 1926!”

“That is all true. But, nevertheless, the orders are now distinctly, cease buying beans. I will read them to you.”

He did so, At the end of the reading there was a stillness, a waiting.

“When—when will that order be issued?” asked Mr. Jones eagerly.

“It will be several days yet.”

“And am I ——”

“You are the only one that knows,” said the voice, anticipating his question.

“You know what that means!” said John Bunyan Jones hoarsely.

“I do—and you do!” said the still small voice at the end of the wire.

Mr. Jones suddenly sat down, disconnected, alone in the gathering twilight in the high office. For the speaker, the Q. V. 3 of the secret intelligence office, had hung up his receiver and gone away.

The confidential secretary of Senator Boone sat in the blue autumn dusk, slumped down in his desk chair, in deep thought, clutching absently his long sharp nose.

“Cease buying beans!” he muttered.

The tremendous significance of that confidential information for the moment overwhelmed him. There was no possible escape from it. If the United States War Department had taken that step—had actually ceased buying beans—the war most certainly was over!

Suddenly starting up, John Bunyan Jones snapped on the overhead electric light, snatched again the sheet of copy he had been producing and on its back, as a memorandum, made rapidly a series of calculations—in dollars, fractions and percentages.

Then firmly grasping the telephone he called the private number he desired. The business hours were over—in both the bean and the stock exchanges; but he never, as a matter of fact, made his aunt's orders in those hours, but always later, around this time, over the personal telephone of his broker.

The voice that he expected answered.

“Mrs. John Jared Jones speaking!” said John Bunyan Jones softly.

“Yes,” came back the voice of equal softness.

“Sell short beans—ten thousand tons!”

The hoarse and excited exclamation at the other end interrupted him.

“At the opening,” he continued, when it was again still. “And all the granger rails—the bean carriers especially!” he said, and named the stocks and the amounts. 1

“Is it true? Is your tip reliable? Are you certain?” came back the hoarse whisper.

“Absolutely. You may depend upon it. The War Department has ceased buying beans.”

The harsh exclamation which came back was in part a groan, in part an exclamation of excited hope—the rare wild cry of a man who has had two hundred thousand dollars handed to him.

“But not a word. Not a word. It may not be out—for days yet,” continued Mr. Jones. “And then, of course, it will be confidential. Until then ——”

“Until then!” said the other speaker—and was still.

The telephone once more disconnected, the publicity secretary sat in thought—uneasy with the great responsibility and excitement. And yet he knew he had done all that he should do.

“I won't tell the old man about it tonight—on the telephone!” he said to himself. “I'll wait and tell him in the morning.”

For, of course, the less telephoning, always, the better—especially in a case like this, when a nation's future was involved.

II

IT WAS the lunch hour again in the national capital. In the accustomed restaurant, the Rendezvous, the press agents—both national and special—lingered and chatted gayly over their luncheon; but none more happily and eagerly than those at the table of Benmore Hooper—that most imaginative and sensitive of government press agents—whose work had been so notable in the publicity success of those departments with which he had been connected.

The poets and magazine men and short-haired lady writers upon his staff, who sat around him at his table, were never gayer than today.

The propaganda of the bean, put over so largely by them, had gone straight to the hearts of the entire American people. And naturally all were exhilarated by the campaign's success.

“Congratulations in the highest, chief!” said Don Doncaster, the magazine man.

“Even so,” said another, who had been a theological student.

“Isn't it goo-ood—goo-ood—the way it has gone everywhere?” said the oldest lady publicist cooingly.

“Excruciating! Excruciatingly exhilarating,” said the poet, John Leland Lilly, who was also something of a wag.

“Like wildfire in an oil well,” exclaimed Don Doncaster, the hardy magazine correspondent.

“Excruciating—absolutely!” said the waggish poet.

The youngest and shortest-haired and most attractive lady publicist, who sat next to her chief, was roguishly feeding him ice cream from her own spoon, on a dare, giggling shyly as she did so. But the talented publicity agent responded only absently to her girlish friendliness, thinking his own thoughts—of the last two days' unaccountable softness in the bean market; reverting every now and then to the paragraphs of the press agents of the bean and stock market houses upon the financial pages of his paper:

Our advices are that beans are going lower. Sell beans on all advances; make no commitments on the long side of the bean carriers. The bear drive against beans has not yet touched bottom.—John Henry Cleanout & Co.

We look for a stronger market in beans. The bear pools in both beans and the bean carriers have, in our opinion, done their worst. Buy beans confidently from now on; and the bean carriers on all recessions. Within thirty days we prophesy the strongest bean market of the war.—Spingler & Spanks.

It is our belief that the reaction in the bean market of the past few days is utterly unwarranted. It takes no account of the ravages of the bean weevil in Oklahoma, or the unseasonable dryness in the winter-bean belt, which we called attention to on the sixteenth. Beans will certainly go higher. In the bean carriers more discretion should be used. Operating expenses are growing by leaps and bounds under government ownership. For the long pull we are against the bean carriers. Our advice is buy beans. Sell the bean carriers on all bulges.—Swatheimer & Pugmore.

Reading this, the talented government publicity leader had no more sense of certainty than before. What, if anything, did they mean, these publicity agents of the bean and stock houses? He left them, as always, with a mind unsatisfied. He was gloomy, full of forebodings these last few days, not only personally for his own work but for the future of his departmental organizations.

He glanced uneasily about the Rendezvous at the national press agents, only mechanically eating from the spoon of his companion when his turn came. Around him, all cheery and eating, sat the press agents of the Government—the general publicity chief, with his larger staff, at their table; the special departmental staffs, the haughty publicity aids of the great publicity cabinet members, the lordly military publicity colonels and commodores of the war and navy departments; the private free-lances, the professional advisers and tipsters of business and stock houses and the great national corporations. All the great specialists, developed in the national capital by the huge publicity activity during the war.

As he looked about the noisy smoky room he saw at last the man that he was seeking, the chief bean and stock-market tipster of Washington, J. Rush Lewis—a fleshy blond, with an ever-ready smile and smooth back-brushed hair, thinning at the top. He seemed to be flushed, excited—apparently with something on his mind, as well as on his hip. As Benmore Hooper looked across, he winked and beckoned secretively at him.

“I'll meet you later at the office,” said Mr. Hooper to his staff, for it was now 2:30. And disregarding the last spoonful of the mutual ice cream he arose and left his own group, to pass to the side of the signaler.

“What's on in the bean market—with the bean carriers?” asked Benmore Hooper in a low harsh whisper.

The other, looking about, answered him cautiously, out of the corner of his mouth. “Will you keep it—absolutely? Cross your heart?”

“I will,” said Benmore Hooper seriously.

“The aunt of the secretary of Ben Bumpus Boone is selling short.”

“What!” cried Benmore Hooper, starting from his chair.

“Ten thousand tons,” said the other, murmuring from the corner of his mouth; and sat, his face completely purged again of all emotion.

“But you know what that means.”

“I do. Absolutely.”

“It means only one thing!”

“One thing only,” the still, flushed face confirmed him, with the emotionless, professionally enigmatic face of the tipster. “Especially when you know his inside information. The War Department has ceased buying beans.”

It seemed impossible, looking about the room! All these merry folk, all these war publicity agents of the Government, happy, satisfied, contented in their great work for their country. And in a month or three months, or six months at the most, all would be gone from here—needed no longer, now that the war was done!

Illustration: “Foch Says—War Without Beans is Inconceivable! America Answers—Beans for Our Boys!”

Excusing himself, going out to be in his office before three o'clock the closing hour of the bean and stock markets, Benmore Hooper walked, head down, oblivious of the sharp dangers of the automobiles and bicycles of the streets of Washington at war. It was not that he himself had believed in backing beans to the utmost—not alone in word but in deed. In the bean market, as well as in the press! It was not that he himself was practically ruined by the fall in beans. But all these others—his own staff, the other department staffs, the intelligence officers, home and foreign, the accelerators of public opinion, the general publicity staff! All that magnificent organization of propaganda for the country, going on, cheerful, contented, completely functioning today, and within six months' time, gone—all dissipated; its members precipitated into private life!

Head down, brooding, he passed uncertainly back to his personal suite of offices.

III

INTO the dark, empty, echoing corridor of the deserted Senate Office Building came from an unlighted office the sound of a strong, sonorous barytone voice. Ben Bumpus Boone, the possible future candidate for the presidency, practicing in the twilight his coming speech before the national convention of the Furious Farm Defenders. Dated from that important event, it would be sent in advance to every newspaper of consequence in the United States.

“Fellow citizens in a great republic—Mister Chairman,” the measured voice began: “The bean, sir, is a little thing. It sounds absurd for me to say to this enlightened gathering that the fate of nations, of freedom, of civilization itself hangs today upon so small a thing. And yet, who in this vast assemblage, within the hearing of my voice tonight, would have the boldness to assert that this apparently preposterous statement is not a commonplace of the world's news today?

“Let us take, sir, very briefly, a rapid survey of the place of the bean in the military art as recorded by the historian, It was Alexander, sir ——” The rolling periods went on.

The dark-faced stranger, listening intently at the closed door, waited alone in the long, vacant hallway for their conclusion.

“Yes, my friends, yes,” they rolled on. “A bean seems a little thing—a very little thing! But, sir, is it not precisely the little thing today—in science, in medicine, in industry—upon which the mind of man is focused; which, in the providence of God, sums up today in the stupendous totality of human effort, human duty, human achievement? And if we, in this great crisis of the world, but do our own little thing—our bit, so called—no more will be required of us.

“Let no one complain, then, that he cannot have a perfect part in this great turning point in the history of the race. The struggling farmer, who strives his best to make two beans grow for the world's market where there was but one before; the humblest housewife, who against all pleading rigidly conserves her beans upon the nation's beanless days—who will say that these have not made their sacrifices, done their bit, given their national service?

“But as for the man—if there be such—the glutton, the self-indulgent weakling, the man who, in secret or in public, with unbridled appetite evades or will not enforce upon himself this first, most sacred fast of patriotism—this national conservation of the food of war, the motive power of armies—let him beware! The spirit of high self-sacrifice in this nation did not die at Valley Forge. It is electric in the air today, And the coward, the craven, the weakling, who will not make this prime sacrifice, upon which the conscience of the American people is so aroused today—better far for him that he lay in the trenches of the Hun when the armies of the enlightened West, well-fed, full-nourished, invigorated by the free and daily sacrifice of a free people, rise and overwhelm them with freedom's towering tide—strong with the food of pioneers, the strength of civilization's hardy freemen.”

Concluding from the ensuing silence that the speech was done—for the time, at least—the dark serious stranger in the hall-way at last turned the knob, and walked into the half dusk of the senator's outer office.

“Who's there? Who are you?” boomed the hearty voice of the recent speaker from the obscurity of the inner room.

“My name is Browne,” said his visitor, with a touch of restraint.

Ben Bumpus Boone, having snapped on the electric light, observed him closely. A tall dark man, with heavy tortoise-shell spectacles, and an oblong golden key—the well-known Phi Beta Kappa key of scholastic excellence—shining against his dark vest.

“Come in, Mr. Browne,” said Ben Bumpus Boone. “Mr. Browne, what can I do for ou?”

“Your secretary, Mr. Jones, is not here?” asked the dark stranger, with a touch of hesitation in his voice.

“No, sir,” said the senator. “No, sir, he has gone for the day. Is there anything I can do?”

The stranger looked up and then down before answering. “Well, perhaps,” he said. “The time is short, and the matter is very urgent.”

“Go ahead, sir. Tell me, by all means,” said Ben Bumpus Boone in his free generous manner, “Perhaps I may be able to help you—who knows? Sit down, Mr. Browne. Tell me what it is you wish.”

His visitor, being seated, looked up gravely. “It concerns his aunt—Mrs. John Jared Jones,” he stated,

“Oh, yes?” said Mr. Boone, with the rising accent of one waiting for further information, and watching now quite intently.

“You know her of course—or of her?” asked the stranger, continuing his questioning.

“Well, slightly,” said the senator, after a considerable hesitation in his turn. “Very slightly. But yes—yes—I can say, perhaps that I know—or know of her. Why?”

The stranger did not respond at once, but sat as if waiting for the senator to go on.

“You know, perhaps, of her financially?” he asked again finally.

“I have understood, sir, that she was a woman of large financial means, sir, if that is what you mean,” said Ben Bumpus Boone, watching him now very closely indeed, as he saw the other was also doing with him.

“Then you have heard perhaps the various stories about her operations?” asked the other—the visitor with the spectacles and soft polished manner, still evidently feeling his way.

“About what operations?” asked Mr. Boone sharply.

“You have not heard the stories about her?” asked his visitor, still cautiously.

“No, sir, I have not, sir. What stories, sir?” asked Mr. Boone, his voice still more metallic.

“That the aunt of your secretary has been selling beans!”

“What!” exclaimed the popular statesman, still more harshly.

“Short—upon the bean exchange! Ten thousand tons! And several hundred shares of all the bean carriers!” the stranger proceeded, concluding finally his statement.

There was now a well-marked silence.

“Just what does that mean?” asked Senator Boone, finally breaking it.

“Do you not know?” the stranger asked, his grave searching eyes upon him.

“No, sir.”

“Selling short—that is, to take advantage of falling prices?” he asked, and looked up for an understanding—an understanding that he did not get. “You know that much?”

“No, sir. I have no knowledge, thank God, sir,” said Senator Boone, his voice now growing both stronger and more rapid; “none whatever, of the operations of Wall Street—or of the bean market—or of finance of any kind, I am glad to say. What is it that you mean, sir? What are you driving at?” asked the senator, his voice now growing ever louder and more rapid.

The visitor, after another hesitation, at length reached into the inside pocket of his finely cut but quiet suit, and drew out a typewritten paper.

“Have you seen this, Mr. Boone?” he asked with great politeness, in the manner of one approaching a subject from another angle.

Ben Bumpus Boone, reading it, gave a great start. “War Department! Cease buying beans. Order 17,263!” he stammered. “Do you mean that this is true—authentic!”

“It is,” said the polite but still-faced stranger, with his grave eyes always on his face.

“If that is so, then the war is over! The war is done!”

“You did not know it then, before—you have not seen this document before?” asked the grave-eyed stranger, this unidentified Mr. Browne.

“No, sir. I certainly did not, sir. Why, sir?” demanded Ben Bumpus Boone, now very loudly indeed. “Why, sir?”

“Then you would not know what I have come to see you about,” his soft-voiced but alarming visitor told him.

But Ben Bumpus Boone would not be put by. “What is it, sir? Of what are you speaking? It is my right to know! I insist!” he cried out loudly.

The still-eyed and mysterious stranger answered him now very calmly.

“It is this story that is starting on its way through Washington about the aunt of your secretary.”

“Yes? And what,” asked Senator Boone, confronting him—“what is that story?”

“The story I have already spoken of—that your secretary's aunt is in the bean and stock market today, selling beans and the bean carriers short on a tremendous scale. In anticipation of the end of war!”

The popular senator and future possibility for the presidency sprang upon his feet.

“It's a lie—a lie—a damnable and outrageous lie! An invention of my enemies!” he cried; and striding rapidly across his inner office he closed its door into the outer room. “But if it is so,” he cried in a lowered but not less serious voice—“if this man—or his aunt—or any of his relatives in any way or on any pretext, by any subterfuge—is selling beans upon the secret information gathered in my office—then he will leave—without waiting for his hat!”

He stopped suddenly as an idea struck him. “I will send for him. I will bring him here at once. You shall make your charges in his presence!” exclaimed Ben Bumpus Boone.

“That would perhaps be best,” agreed the grave and reticent stranger.

“Yes,” said Ben Bumpus Boone ceremoniously, and stopped again as he took up his desk telephone.

Central finally answered him. Going from one number to another, he sought his confidential publicity secretary, Mr. Jones, until he located him at length at the home and by the private telephone of his broker.

“Come,” he said harshly. “And come a-running. I want to talk to you!”

Until Mr. Jones arrived the two who awaited him sat, saying very little, watching different objects in the sparsely ornamented room, glancing only hastily at intervals at each other.

At last the hastening secretary opened the outer door, stood before them in the entrance to the inner room.

Rising and confronting him, Ben Bumpus Boone spoke.

“Mr. Jones,” he said, with extreme ceremoniousness, “this gentleman, here behind me, has made, sir, a very serious charge. He states, if I understood him, that, taking advantage of information secured by you while in the employ of this office, your aunt has been speculating heavily, in great sums, upon the stock and bean exchanges.”

“Again!” said the voice of the stranger from behind him.

And at that, Ben Bumpus Boone was silent, astonished, relieved by the sudden change of expression upon the face of the man before him.

“Why, damn me!” said John Bunyan Jones, the confidential publicity secretary of Ben Bumpus Boone, with a strong emphasis on the last word, and started forward with his hand outstretched in greeting.

“Don't you see, Chief? Don't you understand?” he cried “This is Q. V. 3 of the intelligence department.”

The face of his chief, while it changed expression, did not yet relax.

“Then why in thunder didn't you say so?” he asked the now smiling stranger.

“I was waiting for you to begin,” the latter told him.

And Senator Boone, standing still, started smiling slowly, tentatively himself.

“You must remember that from the first I was instructed that you must know nothing. That you were to have no knowledge of your secretary's aunt's operations in the markets,” his visitor was saying.

And Senator Boone now started laughing heartily.

“And that in no case should I come here or communicate with you,” said the stranger, Mr. Browne, the mysterious Q. V. 3 of the intelligence service. “That it was just as well that we did not meet each other. And indeed I would not be here now if it were not necessary. If it were not for your danger.”

“My danger!” said the popular senator from the agricultural state, his broad smile fading as these words recalled him to the present situation.

“This story that's starting out—about your aunt!” continued the grave stranger in the dark-rimmed glasses, turning now to Mr. Jones, the secretary.

“You know how it goes,” he said, “from the tipsters and New York financial correspondents to the various general and departmental heads of publicity—at the lunch hour, at the Rendezvous. From the heads of the publicity bureaus to the stenographers and the lady publicity assistants. And then, of course, it's all out—all over Washington.”

“Yes,” said the two before him.

“As it is now—starting all over Washington that the aunt of the secretary of Ben Bumpus Boone is plunging again in the bean stock market.”

“No!” exclaimed the two other excited voices.

“And you know what that will mean—the first announcement to the world—prematurely—through a so-called leak in this office—of the greatest secret of the ages—that this war is over—that the War Department has ceased buying beans!”

“Which is tantamount to the same thing!” said Ben Bumpus Boone, with stiff lips.

“Yes,” said the grave visitor. “It will be a most notable scandal; one that will go down the ages.”

“What shall we do? What can we do?” asked the white-faced secretary.

“You must resign! Get out of here! Go!” exclaimed his chief, waving both arms in his emotion. “Before my enemies get busy! We must forestall them! You must resign.”

“But that alone would merely confirm—exaggerate the rumor,” the quiet-voiced and grave-faced Mr. Browne, the Q. V. 3 of the telephone and the intelligence service, pointed out. “Lead possibly to an investigation.”

“That's it!” said the pale-faced Mr. Jones,

“But he must go—get out of Washington! At once! That's sure!” said Senator Boone.

“Yes,” agreed his visitor calmly.

“Well then! Well! What would you do? What shall we do?” exclaimed the highly popular senator, walking in great perturbation up and down his inner office—in marked contrast to the quiet Mr. Browne.

The latter waited before making his low-voiced reply.

“There is but one thing which can be done now,” it came at last.

“What? What?”

“Mr. Jones' aunt must die!”

The gleam of understanding, which quickly sprang into the rolling eye of Ben Bumpus Boone at this abhorrent and unnatural suggestion at first, as quickly died away.

“Why? What good would that do?” he asked, in evident disappointment.

“In Honolulu,” explained young Mr. Browne, of the intelligence service.

The eye of the listening statesman was aglow again, waiting as he went on.

“Where Mr. Jones must go at once—on urgent call—to take charge of her estate, as sole heir and executor.”

Ben Bumpus Boone, the possible future people's candidate for President, leaped to is feet. “You've done it! You've turned the trick! You've saved my life!” he cried, and wrung the quiet well-dressed visitor's long hand.

Turning now to his waiting secretary, he attacked the problem before him with his characteristic vim. “You must go. Go. At once. To Honolulu. On the next train! When does it go—the next train go?” he cried, as his chain of thoughts came to him. And turning to his desk he threw one paper after another into the air, with the vigor of one accustomed in youth to the operations of the hayfield, in the dim hope of finding a Pacific Coast time-table.

“Get your hat. Go home. Get the next train. We will take care of the death notice—and the notice of your resignation,” he was crying.

“I will take care of that personally, in all the press,” said the quiet voice of Mr. Browne, of the intelligence service.

Handing his hesitating assistant his hat, Senator Boone, with his well-known irresistible vigor of manner, clapped him upon the shoulder.

“Good-by. God bless you, my boy!” he said. And we will let you know by cipher how your aunt's account in the stock and bean market is going.”

IV

THE news of the death of the aunt of John Bunyan Jones in the press of America was very simple, a mere stickful or two under the Washington date line:

PRIVATE SECRETARY'S AUNT IS DEAD

Washington, Oct. —— The sudden death, announced here today, of Mrs. Catherine Pringle Jones at her city house in Honolulu, removes one of the most remarkable figures of the Pacific Islands. Succeeding at the death of her husband, John Jared Jones, to his vast plantations, Catherine Jones has been called by the natives the Pineapple Queen. Although by nature retiring and very little seen, Catherine Jones was a woman of great force of character, and her immense fortune has been invested by her in dealings in all the exchanges of the world especially in agricultural staples—of which, although so far removed, she hes bought and sold tremendous quantities by cable during the past half dozen years in the markets of this country.

Her nephew, John Bunyan Jones, for the past few years the confidential secretary of Senator Ben Bumpus Boone, is named as the sole heir and executor of her estate, estimated at several million dollars. He has already left for Honolulu to take charge of his new interests.

Rarely—perhaps never—has Washington been so stirred by publicity as by this brief announcement of the death of that most picturesque operator in the bean and stock markets, the aunt of the secretary of Ben Bumpus Boone. It fell like a thunderclap upon the real judges of real news—the news behind the news in the newspapers. There could be no further concealment from these of the situation as it was. The whisper went from mouth to mouth:

“What—dead? The aunt of the secretary of Ben Bumpus Boone already dead! In Honolulu! And John Bunyan Jones already on his way there—to manage his immense estate! The war is over!”

The inference was too plain—to those in Washington who knew anything at all. If there was any doubt before that the War Department had ceased buying beans, that the end of war was now at hand, it was now destroyed.

The price of the bean plunged downward in the bean market; the bean-carrier railroad stocks following from the opening. The private wires from Washington to Wall Street were never idle; the tipsters and Washington's financial correspondents did not take their clothes off for twenty-four hours—scarcely took their telephone receivers from their ears. And at the lunch hour at the Rendezvous Restaurant there was talk of nothing else among the sad-faced, discouraged set of publicity men and women who gathered there. There was not a man—scarcely a lady—publicist who did not realize that the end of their wonder-working efforts in the war was come; that their long happy conferences at luncheon-time were over; that soon they would be scattered again across the country, seeking another job in a land whose labor market was already flooded with publicity agents, even before the addition of this great body trained up by the grim necessities of war.

Benmore Hooper, the great government publicity agent, seeing the changed company, silent at their lunch hour, realizing their hard situation, could not repress a groan.

It seemed unthinkable that all this wonderful machinery of publicity, of accelerating and directing public opinion—this new art built up at such tremendous cost by the combination of the American press agents' methods with the best and most successful methods of the military secret-service propaganda of Europe—should be lost entirely to the Republic at the closing of hostilities. But how could it be otherwise? Who was there to continue it? And as his mind went over this, he thought also of himself, of the many others who, backing up their word, their publicity by their deed, had bought beans and the bean carriers in the open market, assisting in that rise of prices, that prosperity, which is so essential to a country engaged in a great war.

A sense of resentment, of injustice, came over his fine sensitive face. What right had John Bunyan Jones—what right had Ben Bumpus Boone—always so ostentatiously their friends—to withhold their private information from the Government's publicity agents from the accredited agents of a country at war; and give it to this distant woman—this aunt of John Bunyan Jones, in the Sandwich Islands? This wealthy woman, whom no one ever knew; whom no one would ever see. Who now lay dead—so suddenly dead, in Honolulu! It was not mere negligence. It was bald and deliberate treachery.

Benmore Hooper turned toward his table with a bitter exclamation.

“Ben Bumpus Boone,” he pledged himself, “will never be President of this country! Not if I can help it!” And looking about the changed and melancholy scene he knew that all these somber lunchers, all these ex-newspapermen and magazine men and poets and lady publicists who had been gathered into the publicity service of their country through the war, would feel the same; and, once recalled to their respective homes at the close of war, would act exactly as he would in this matter.

Turning, he walked over to his own table the large well-filled round table of their conferences, about which so many long happy profitable lunch hours had been passed. No one now laughed or called to him. Even the youngest and most attractive lady publicist at the right hand of his seat looked up as he sat down, giving him a wan, mirthless and bitter smile.

“It is a travesty, is it not?” she said. “Almost grotesque.”

“What?” he asked her sharply.

“Don't you know?”

“Know what?”

“This is beanless day,” she told him.

He only groaned. “Wait until Ben Bumpus Boone comes up for nomination for the presidency!” he said once more to himself, bitterly, between his teeth.

V

IT WAS twilight again in the Senate Office Building. Again the voice of Ben Bumpus Boone boomed dully and half intelligibly from his closed office into the deserted corridor, in rehearsal for the oncoming convention of the Furious Farm Defenders.

“The bean, sir ——” it began, and stopped, broken.

Inside, Ben Bumpus Boone, clutching his thick hair, walked back and forth in intense agitation across his inner office.

“I can't do it. I can't go through with this!” he cried aloud. “It is a farce. Worse than a farce!”

Falling heavily into his swivel chair, he groaned, and buried his face in his hands. He groaned—and suddenly looked up. For there was someone in his outer office—a knock at his inner door.

“Come in!” cried Ben Bumpus Boone, springing to his feet, turning on the light.

Before him stood the still only partially known Mr. Browne of the intelligence service, the mysterious furnisher of the dope upon which the profitable but disastrous operations of Mr. Jones' aunt had been founded in the bean market.

“What is it? You look ill!” asked his visitor solicitously.

Ben Bumpus Boone raised his eyelids, browned and bruised with his sleepless nights,

“That accursed aunt of my secretary! That aunt of Jones! Oh, why did I—unskilled in finance as I was—let him have her speculate in beans?”

The other gazed in sympathetic silence through his heavy glasses as the senator went on.

“It was my fault, in a way,” he said. “I know it. I am too friendly—too complaisant—too easily led. I am willing to do almost anything for my friends—for my humbler subordinates—for the common people; and so I have often laid myself open to misinterpretation by my enemies.”

“There will be no public investigation,” his visitor suggested, “with Jones' aunt dead, with Jones in Honolulu, out among his aunt's plantations, scattered through the islands of the Pacific.”

“No. But worse. Far worse than that!” cried Ben Bumpus Boone, now clutching at his strong thick hair.

“Worse?” the other echoed after him.

“Yes. Could anything—anything be worse than this?” said the great publicity senator—the idol of the South and West, springing to his feet.

“What do you mean?”

The other answered with a groan. “The free-publicity boys are all out after me! The whole free-publicity gang in Washington—governmental, private, military, newspaper! All out after me—sworn to have my scalp, to hang my hide up on the door! The whole outfit in Washington—both the full press agents, and the half press agents and third press agents and quarter press agents among the journalists in Washington,” said the tortured man, starting to walk back and forth across his inner office—“are all out gunning me, have sworn to get me. Every man Jack of them!”

He strode faster and faster, back and forth.

“And that's only half—half the story,” he cried, going on elucidating his position. “For now, with the end of the war, all these men—all these ex-magazine writers, and lady writers and ex-newspapermen— will go back to their homes, scattered through every hamlet, every city, every county in the country—sore, irritated, out of a job, hating me as no man was ever hated before; and scattering, like the last bomb in a Fourth of July fireworks, through every congressional district of this broad land, this false, damnable, unprintable, but for that very reason irrefutable fabrication of the speculations of my secretary's aunt in the bean market. I'm lost—lost! Whatever chance I ever had for the presidency is gone—with that bunch out sworn to get me—scattered out from Maine to California,” said the popular idol of the great South and West, sitting down heavily again, burying his burly head in his hands.

“Not if you will be guided by my advice,” said the low and scholarly voice of his companion out of the ensuing silence.

The desperate man raised up his bloodshot eyes to his.

“What advice?”

“To take advantage of this psychological moment—this very scattering of the press agents and the demi-press agents out of Washington after war.”

“Doing what?” the senator asked of him, staring up through his thick eyebrows.

“By making your pre-presidential free-publicity chain,” said the grave and scholarly voice of his visitor.

“My what?” inquired Ben Bumpus Boone hoarsely.

“Your chain of free-publicity agents across the country—controlled in your interest!”

His listener gazed at him, with a first returning gleam of hope in his reddened eyes.

“But how?” he asked.

“By tying all these press agents and these near press agents to you—making them your friends, your ministers, your helpers, your agents—instead of your enemies—just before they are thrown back throughout the United States.”

A growing hope shone in his hearer's eyes, together with a startled look of wonder,

“Thus forging your pre-presidential chain of free publicity from coast to coast! Solidifying your hold upon the mass mind of this country, by acting at the psychological moment,” the other was explaining on, with studious face and curious highbrow theoretical use of words.

“But how—how?” gasped the great free-publicity senator, overcome by the scope, the tremendousness of this scheme.

“By giving them jobs—or placing them in jobs!”

His hearer sat speechless, suspicious, doubtful, while the speaker went on, in his unusual academic speech, elucidating his plan.

“You will see readily, senator,” he said, “what the situation will be—if you care to make this arrangement, this combination of publicity interests with me. You operating from Washington, I from New York—the two great distributing centers of free publicity in the United States! And with this iron chain of our own agents across the country.”

Ben Bumpus Boone, more doubtful, more suspicious every moment now, thought best to say nothing, merely to watch and listen to this man—and let him ta!k on.

“You, senator,” he was saying, “working from the one great center here—as the greatest expert, the master mind in the shipment of free political publicity from Washington to the great agricultural publicity markets of the South and West. I, operating from the other center—the general center of free-publicity shipping in New York! With our own agents or operatives in the movies, the radio, the press throughout the land—all in jobs in which they were placed or employed by us. And so our men!”

Now Senator Boone broke in at length—to check this extravagance; awaken him from this grandiose and impossible dream of power.

“Jobs, I suppose,” he said sarcastically—“for all!”

“Oh, no. Merely for those we need,” the calm, still apparently reasonable voice of his visitor was proceeding—“only the ones who would be of real consequence in publicity for us. Not the poets, the rank amateurs, the lady publicists—all the ruck that make the most noise but nobody would believe on a bet.”

“I understand. I understand all that,” said Ben Bumpus Boone bluntly. “But just the same, there are the others.”

“Yes.”

“Who's going to give them—or get them all these jobs?”

“I will,” said the grave Mr. Browne.

The time had come, Ben Bumpus Boone could see, to end this thing—to stop this madman's bluff—to puncture this wild balloon of this strange, impractical, if not definitely crazy highbrow. For he saw now what all this probably was. This man—this grave-faced man, with the stilted speech and the tortoise-shell glasses, who had set loose this free floating dream, who had made this tremendous and unworkable proposal—was without much doubt a victim of delusions. Looking at him now he thought he noted, indeed, a strange thick gleam continually growing in his eyes and a greater sharpness in his voice.

“And who are you?” inquired Ben Bumpus Boone, in full rich tones. “How can you do this?”

The grave-faced stranger paused before answering, looking up seriously at his questioner, his hand upon the shining key, the golden key of scholarship, upon his vest.

“I am Marcus Aurelius Browne,” he said then in his suave and cultivated voice.

For a moment the great popular radical or free-publicity senator sat silent, his round, thick-jowled and resolute face stiff with sudden horror. But only for a moment.

“The Marcus Aurelius Browne?” he cried. “Of Wall Street! Of New York!”

“At your service,” said the spectacled and heavy-haired man in the chair before him, bowing slightly. “After a year and a half of service in the war.”

And now Ben Bumpus Boone, the idol of the South and West, of the agricultural and laboring man, his momentary weakness gone, stood forth and faced him.

“I defy you!” he said loudly. “I defy you—and Wall Street—the stock market—the cotton, wheat and bean markets—all those sinister influences and greater gambling hells which you represent! And as for this trap which you have set for my feet—this devilish fabrication of my enemies, concerning the speculation of my private secretary's aunt, I will say ——”

But, looking now, he saw the scholarly looking Mr. Browne smiling an amused but not unfriendly smile.

“Do not,” he said, now interrupting, “say anything. It is not necessary. I wish to be your friend. Your ally—not your enemy. And I need you as certainly as you need me. I have been,” he continued, in the other's silence, “the mental and intellectual agent of Wall Street, yes—the much needed point of contact with the public mind which it must have. I have been all that, yes. You are entirely right.”

His hearer listened, spellbound by the suavity of his voice, the academic and even highbrow words and manner of his speech.

“And it is precisely because of that—because I am an ambitious—a very ambitious—man and know the exact limitations of financial and corporation publicity in its contacts with the public mind, that I come to you—to offer you this alliance—to satisfy at one time both your ambition and my own!”

“What is your offer?” asked Ben Bumpus Boone, striking heavily on the leather seat of his swivel chair, as he sat blindly backward.

“First, to fulfill your great ambition—to make you President; and after that—fulfill my own!”

“What ambition is that,” asked Ben Bumpus Boone, lifting up his bloodshot eyes from underneath his heavy brow, “of yours?”

“To be the secret inside public-relations counsel of the President; to write his speeches, direct his interviews, establish all his contacts with the mass mind—both in America and abroad!”

The voice of the senator at last answered him, hoarse and harsh. “In other words, to be the President!”

“Is there anything so impossible then in this particular portion of my plan?” the visitor asked him, with a slight but very well-informed smile.

“No,” Ben Bumpus Boone was compelled to admit. “No,” he said, dropping a heavy hand upon his desk as he slumped down heavily in his chair. “And I the figurehead!” he muttered half aloud.

And yet, what could he do? This man had him.

“I'll do it. I'll do it!” said Ben Bumpus Boone now heartily, leaping up, as he recalled the whole details of the operations which involved this man and the unfortunate speculation of the aunt of his confidential secretary, John Bunyan Jones.

“I'll do it, gladly!” cried Ben Bumpus Boone's strong hearty barytone.

“That is fine,” said the stranger with the glasses and mild manner, but the sharply shining eyes. “That is fine. But,” he went on, speaking after a slight mutual silence, “we must not forget. We must net deceive ourselves. We are not the only ones who will have this idea.”

“What idea?”

“That having won the war, the free publicity of America will play a part—a continually growing part—that it will probably go far indeed toward picking out our future Presidents!”

Ben Bumpus Boone started, struck at once by the irresistible reasonableness of this statement.

“And that being the case, others besides us will soon be developing this same plan; will soon be starting their own pre-presidential free-publicity combinations, forging their chain of press agents, placed personally in the strategic centers of publicity throughout the country.”

“Soon!” said Senator Boone loudly. “Soon!” he spoke out louder still, recalling sharply the alertness and mental ingenuity of the other free-publicity candidates for the possible future nomination for the presidency. “Come on. Let's get busy!”

“Tomorrow morning,” said the visitor, rising, “I shall be in with our plan, the outline of which I have already almost completed.”

The senator sat alone when this man was gone, thinking his strangely mingled thoughts—happy thoughts of the extraordinary strength of his new connection; uneasy thoughts about his bargain with this man who, now holding him helpless in his hands, planned to be the secret future ruler of the United States—by holding in his power its combined publicity. A great fear and dread possessed Ben Bumpus Boone; a great and sudden apprehension of this strange silent personality, with its tremendous dream of power—the almost mad ambition which, he saw, now burned behind that studious, spectacled face, that Phi Beta Kappa key.

He was interrupted finally by the jarring call of his telephone. It was a telegram in cipher from John Bunyan Jones en route to Honolulu. He took it and translated it:

No wire from you. Am anxious. Do not close aunt's accounts before positively necessary.

Ben Bumpus Boone started, conscience-stricken. In his excitement he had forgotten entirely to keep Jones posted upon the now stupendous profits of his aunt's estate in the still madly falling bean market.

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Editor's Note—This is the fourth of a series of stories by Mr. Turner. The fifth and last will appear in an early issue.