twenty pages each; twenty-eight names, with city, State, street number addresses, and amounts subscribed to a page, all in ink in longhand.
"Better take them with you to the hotel and go carefully over the names and amounts," put in Mr. Rogers. "It certainly is a long job, but one that you must tackle some time, and the sooner the better."
Here was the missing link in my chain of evidence, delivered directly into my hands without a word of persuasion or cajolery. Providence played that hand for me surely. I concealed my jubilance by rattling along vociferously:
"I shall have to work over this a heap, sending out circulars and what not. It would have been better to have had it in typewriting, but I suppose Stillman didn't dare intrust it to the machine people. However, I can divide up the seventeen sections among different people and none will know the whole story. I will keep it in Boston with the other papers, and—gracious! what's this?"
"What is it?" he asked, smiling at my excitement.
In front of me was the section beginning with the "Mc's," and the largest subscription on the page was 6,000 shares—1,200 allotment. I followed the line back to the name. It was that of Hugh McLaughlin, then the big "boss" of Brooklyn, who, like all the other big bosses of New York State, was a trusted lieutenant of "Standard Oil." I put my finger on the amount and said:
"You have taken care of your friend across the river, I see. No wonder all the politicians were so anxious to get in, for they know you would not put this old gentleman into anything that is not pretty sure."
Mr. Rogers nodded wisely:
"Yes, I told the old stalwart he had better have about half a million, but he went $100,000 better, I see. I sent the word around to the others, too,