next minute Hunter appeared, from the same direction, and we walked
quickly together. I told him who the man just ahead had been, and he
nodded without surprise. But before we turned the next corner he
stopped.

"Did you ever hear of the White Cat?" he asked. "Little political club?"

"Never."

"I'm a member of it," he went on rapidly. "It's run by the city ring, or
rather it runs itself. Be a good fellow while you're there, and keep
your eyes open. It's a queer joint."

The corner we turned found us on a narrow, badly paved street. The
broken windows of the warehouse still looked down on us, and across the
street was an ice factory, with two deserted wagons standing along the
curb. As well as I could see for the darkness, a lumber yard stretched
beyond the warehouse, its piles of boards giving off in the rain the
aromatic odor of fresh pine.

At a gate in the fence beyond the warehouse Hunter stopped. It was an
ordinary wooden gate and it opened with a thumb latch. Beyond stretched
a long, narrow, brick-paved alleyway, perhaps three feet wide, and
lighted by the merest glimmer of a light ahead. Hunter went on
regardless of puddles in the brick paving, and I stumbled after him. As
we advanced, I could see that the light was a single electric bulb, hung
over a second gate. While Hunter fumbled for a key in his pocket, I had
time to see that this gate had a Yale lock, was provided, at the side,
with an electric bell button, and had a letter slot cut in it.

Hunter opened the gate and preceded me through it. The gate swung to and
clicked behind me. After the gloom of the passageway, the small
brick-paved yard seemed brilliant with lights. Two wires were strung
its length, dotted with many electric lamps. In a corner a striped tent
stood out in grotesque relief; it seemed to be empty, and the weather
was an easy explanation. From the two-story house beyond there came
suddenly a burst of piano music and a none too steady masculine voice.
Hunter turned to me, with his foot on the wooden steps.

"Above everything else," he warned, "keep your temper. Nobody gives a
hang in here whether you're the mayor of the town, the champion
pool-player of the first ward, or the roundsman on the beat."

The door at the top of the steps was also Yale-locked. We stepped at
once into the kitchen, from which I imagined that the house faced on
another street, and that for obvious reasons only its rear entrance was
used. The kitchen was b