upon him.

"I hope that you will do all for my father, for the city, for your own
election, that you can," she said. "All I ask is that for the present
I be allowed to handle the case by myself."

The Court House tower tolled five. She held out to him a gloved hand.

"Good-by. I'm sorry I can't invite you in," she said lightly, and
turned away.

He watched the slender figure go up the steps and into the jail, then
turned and walked down the street--exasperated, puzzled, in profound
thought.

CHAPTER XIV

THE NIGHT WATCH

The next morning Elijah Stone appeared in Katherine's office as per
request. He was a thickly, if not solidly, built gentleman, in
imminent danger of a double chin, and with that submerged blackness of
the complexion which is the result of a fresh-shaven heavy beard. He
kept his jaw clinched to give an appearance of power, and his black
eyebrows lowered to diffuse a sense of deeply pondered mystery. His
wife considered him a rarely handsome specimen of his sex, and he
permitted art to supplement the acknowledged gifts of nature so far as
to perfume his glossy black hair, to wear a couple of large diamond
rings, and to carry upon the watch chain that clanked heavily across
the broad and arching acreage of his waistcoat a begemmed lodge emblem
in size a trifle smaller than a paper weight.

He was an affable, if somewhat superior, being, and he listened to
Katherine with a still further lowering of his impressive brows. She
informed him, in a perplexed, helpless, womanly way, that she was
inclined to believe that her father was "the victim of foul play"--the
black brows sank yet another degree--and that she wished him privately
to investigate the matter. He of course would know far, far better
what to do than she, but she would suggest that he keep an eye upon
Blake. At first Mr. Stone appeared somewhat sceptical and hesitant,
but after peering darkly out for a long and ruminative period at the
dusty foliage of the Court House elms, and after hearing the
comfortable fee Katherine was willing to pay, he consented to accept
the case. As he left he kindly assured her, with manly pity for her
woman's helplessness, that if there was anything in her suspicion she
"needn't waste no sleep now about gettin' the goods."

In the days that followed, Katherine saw her Monsieur Lecoque
shadowing the movements of Blake with the lightness and general
unobtrusiveness of a mahogany bedstead ambling abo