enemies he has! Men like Mr. Schwartz, who have no scruples,
no principle."

"Schwartz!" I repeated in surprise. Henry Schwartz was the boss of his
party in the state; the man of whom one of his adversaries had said,
with the distinct approval of the voting public, that he was so low in
the scale of humanity that it would require a special dispensation of
Heaven to raise him to the level of total degradation. But he and
Fleming were generally supposed to be captain and first mate of the
pirate craft that passed with us for the ship of state.

"Mr. Schwartz and my father are allies politically," the girl explained
with heightened color, "but they are not friends. My father is a
gentleman."

The inference I allowed to pass unnoticed, and as if she feared she had
said too much, the girl rose. When she left, a few minutes later, it was
with the promise that she would close the Monmouth Avenue house and go
to her aunts at Bellwood, at once. For myself, I pledged a thorough
search for her father, and began it by watching the scarlet wing on her
hat through the top of the elevator cage until it had descended out of
sight.

I am afraid it was a queer hodgepodge of clues and sentiment that I
poured out to Hunter, the detective, when he came up late that
afternoon.

Hunter was quiet when I finished my story.

"They're rotten clear through," he reflected. "This administration is
worse than the last, and it was a peach. There have been more suicides
than I could count on my two hands, in the last ten years. I warn
you--you'd be better out of this mess."

"What do you think about the eleven twenty-two?" I asked as he got up
and buttoned his coat.

"Well, it might mean almost anything. It might be that many dollars, or
the time a train starts, or it might be the eleventh and the
twenty-second letters of the alphabet--k--v."

"K--v!" I repeated, "Why that would be the Latin _cave_--beware."

Hunter smiled cheerfully.

"You'd better stick to the law, Mr. Knox," he said from the door. "We
don't use Latin in the detective business."

CHAPTER II

UNEASY APPREHENSIONS

Plattsburg was not the name of the capital, but it will do for this
story. The state doesn't matter either. You may take your choice, like
the story Mark Twain wrote, with all kinds of weather at the beginning,
so the reader could take his pick.

We will say that my home city is Manchester. I live with my married
brother, his wife and two boys.