e with heat and unwonted
anxiety.

When the three new-comers went up-stairs, instead of going into the
grill-room, I looked at Hunter.

"Is this where the political game is played?" I asked.

"Yes, if the political game is poker," he replied, and led the way into
the room which adjoined the kitchen.

No one paid any attention to us. Bare tables, a wooden floor, and almost
as many cuspidors as chairs, comprised the furniture of the long room.
In one corner was a battered upright piano, and there were two
fireplaces with old-fashioned mantels. Perhaps a dozen men were sitting
around, talking loudly, with much scraping of chairs on the bare floor.
At one table they were throwing poker dice, but the rest were drinking
beer and talking in a desultory way. At the piano a man with a red
mustache was mimicking the sextette from _Lucia_ and a roar of applause
met us as we entered the room. Hunter led the way to a corner and put
down his bottles.

"It's fairly quiet to-night," he said. "To-morrow's the big
night--Saturday."

"What time do they close up?" I asked. In answer Hunter pointed to a
sign over the door. It was a card, neatly printed, and it said, "The
White Cat never sleeps."

"There are only two rules here," he explained. "That is one, and the
other is, 'If you get too noisy, and the patrol wagon comes, make the
driver take you home.'"

The crowd was good-humored; it paid little or no attention to us, and
when some one at the piano began to thump a waltz, Hunter, under cover
of the noise, leaned over to me.

"We traced Fleming here, through your corner-man and the cabby," he said
carefully. "I haven't seen him, but it is a moral certainty he is
skulking in one of the up-stairs rooms. His precious private secretary
is here, too."

I glanced around the room, but no one was paying any attention to us.

"I don't know Fleming by sight," the detective went on, "and the
pictures we have of him were taken a good while ago, when he wore a
mustache. When he was in local politics, before he went to the
legislature, he practically owned this place, paying for favors with
membership tickets. A man could hide here for a year safely. The police
never come here, and a man's business is his own."

"He is up-stairs now?"

"Yes. There are four rooms up there for cards, and a bath-room. It's an
old dwelling house. Would Fleming know you?"

"No, but of course Wardrop would."

As if in answer to my objection, Wardrop app