odded in approval, and, while he wrote, Rumson and the
detective planned how, without those inside the road-house being aware
of their presence, they might be near it.

Kessler's Cafe lay in the Seventy-ninth Police Precinct. In taxi-cabs
they arranged to start at once and proceed down White Plains Avenue,
which parallels the Boston Road, until they were on a line with
Kessler's, but from it hidden by the woods and the garages. A walk of a
quarter of a mile across lots and under cover of the trees would bring
them to within a hundred yards of the house.

Wharton was to give them a start of half an hour. That he might know
they were on watch, they agreed, after they dismissed the taxi-cabs, to
send one of them into the Boston Post Road past the road-house. When it
was directly in front of the cafe, the chauffeur would throw away into
the road an empty cigarette-case.

From the cigar-stand they selected a cigarette box of a startling
yellow. At half a mile it was conspicuous.

"When you see this in the road," explained Rumson, "you'll know we're on
the job. And after you're inside, if you need us, you've only to go to a
rear window and wave."

"If they mean to do him up," growled Bissell, "he won't get to a rear
window."

"He can always tell them we're outside," said Rumson----"and they are
extremely likely to believe him. Do you want a gun?"

"No," said the D. A.

"Better have mine,"' urged Hewitt.

"I have my own," explained the D. A.

Rumson and Hewitt set off in taxi-cabs and, a half-hour later,
Wharton followed. As he sank back against the cushions of the big
touring-car he felt a pleasing thrill of excitement, and as he passed
the traffic police, and they saluted mechanically, he smiled. Had they
guessed his errand their interest in his progress would have been less
perfunctory. In half an hour he might know that the police killed Banf;
in half an hour he himself might walk into a trap they had, in turn,
staged for him. As the car ran swiftly through the clean October air,
and the wind and sun alternately chilled and warmed his blood, Wharton
considered these possibilities.

He could not believe the woman Earle would lend herself to any plot to
do him bodily harm. She was a responsible person. In her own world
she was as important a figure as was the district attorney in his. Her
allies were the man "higher up" in Tammany and the police of the upper
ranks of the uniformed force. And of the higher offi