One week later, to the day, the wife of one of the richest men in America died of acute pneumonia at her home in Chicago. Practically all the daily papers in America carried notices of this lady's death; the wealth of her husband and her own prominence in social and philanthropic affairs justified this. At greater or at less length it was variously set forth that she was the niece of a former ambassador to the Court of St. James; that she was the national head of a great patriotic organisation; that she was said to have dispensed upward of fifty thousand dollars a year in charities; that she was born in such and such a year at such and such a place; that she left, besides a husband, three children and one grandchild; and so forth and so on.

But not a single paper in the United States stated that she was the only sister of Congressman Jason Mallard.

The remainder of this account must necessarily be in the nature of a description of episodes occurring at intervals during a period of about six weeks; these episodes, though separated by lapses of time, are nevertheless related.

Three days after the burial of his sister Congressman Mallard took part in a debate on a matter of war-tax legislation upon the floor of the House. As usual he voiced the sentiments of a minority of one, his vote being the only vote cast in the negative on the passage of the measure. His speech was quite brief. To his colleagues, listening in dead silence without sign of dissent or approval, it seemed exceedingly brief, seeing that nearly always before Mallard, when he spoke at all upon any question, spoke at length. While he spoke the men in the press gallery took no notes, and when he had finished and was leaving the chamber it was noted that the venerable Congressman Boulder, a man of nearly eighty, drew himself well into his seat, as though he feared Mallard in passing along the aisle might brush against him.

The only publication in America that carried a transcript of Congressman Mallard's remarks on this occasion was the Congressional Record.

At the next day's session Congressman Mallard's seat was vacant; the next day likewise, and the next it was vacant. It was rumoured that he had left Washington, his exact whereabouts being unknown. However, no one in Washington, so far as was known, in speaking of his disappearance, mentioned him by name. One man addressing another would merely say that he understood a certain person had left town or that he understood a certain person was still missing from town; the second man in all likelihood would merely nod understandingly and then by tacit agreement the subject would be changed.

Just outside one of the lunch rooms in the Union Station at St. Louis late one night in the latter part of January an altercation occurred between two men. One was a tall, distinguished-looking man of middle age. The other was a railroad employé—a sweeper and cleaner.

It seemed that the tall man, coming out of the lunch room, and carrying a travelling bag and a cane, stumbled over the broom which the sweeper was using on the floor just beyond the doorway. The traveller, who appeared to have but poor control over his temper, or rather no control at all over it, accused the station hand of carelessness and cursed him. The station hand made an indignant and impertinent denial. At that the other flung down his bag, swung aloft his heavy walking stick and struck the sweeper across the head with force sufficient to lay open the victim's scalp in a two-inch gash, which bled freely.

For once a policeman was on the spot when trouble occurred. This particular policeman was passing through the train shed and he saw the blow delivered. He ran up and, to be on the safe side, put both men under technical arrest. The sweeper, who had been bowled over by the clout he had got, made a charge of unprovoked assault against the stranger; the latter expressed a blasphemous regret that he had not succeeded in cracking the sweeper's skull. He appeared to be in a highly nervous, highly irritable state. At any rate such was the interpretation which the patrolman put upon his aggressive prisoner's behaviour.

Walking between the pair to prevent further hostilities the policeman took both men into the station master's office, his intention being to telephone from there for a patrol wagon. The night station master accompanied them. Inside the room, while the station master was binding up the wound in the sweeper's forehead with a pocket handkerchief, it occurred to the policeman that in the flurry of excitement he had not found out the name of the tall and still excited belligerent. The sweeper he already knew. He asked the tall man for his name and business.

"My name," said the prisoner, "is Jason C. Mallard. I am a member of Congress."

The station master forgot to make the knot in the bandage he was tying about the sweeper's head. The sweeper forgot the pain of his new headache and the blood which trickled down his face and fell upon the front of his overalls. As though governed by the same set of wires these two swung about, and with the officer they stared at the stranger. And as they stared, recognition came into the eyes of all three, and they marvelled that before now none of them had discerned the identity of the owner of that splendid tousled head of hair and those clean-cut features, now swollen and red with an unreasonable choler. The policeman was the first to get his shocked and jostled senses back, and the first to speak. He proved himself a quick-witted person that night, this policeman did; and perhaps this helps to explain why his superior, the head of the St. Louis police department, on the very next day promoted him to be a sergeant.

But when he spoke it was not to Mallard but to the sweeper.

"Look here, Mel Harris," he said; "you call yourself a purty good Amurican, don't you?"

"You bet your life I do!" was the answer. "Ain't I got a boy in camp soldierin'?"

"Well, I got two there myself," said the policeman; "but that ain't the question now. I see you've got a kind of a little bruised place there on your head. Now then, as a good Amurican tryin' to do your duty to your country at all times, I want you to tell me how you come by that there bruise. Did somebody mebbe hit you, or as a matter of fact ain't it the truth that you jest slipped on a piece of banana peelin' or something of that nature, and fell up against the door jamb of that lunch room out yonder?"

For a moment the sweeper stared at his interrogator, dazed. Then a grin of appreciation bisected his homely red-streaked face.

"Why, it was an accident, officer," he answered. "I slipped down and hit my own self a wallop, jest like you said. Anyway, it don't amount to nothin'."

"You seen what happened, didn't you?" went on the policeman, addressing the station master. "It was a pure accident, wasn't it?"

"That's what it was—a pure accident," stated the station master.

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