't want to hear any stories of that kind about
Bassett. Politics is rotten enough at best without tipping over the
garbage can to find arguments. I don't believe your father is going to
stoop to that. To be real frank with you, I don't think he can afford
to."

"You've got to hear it; you can't desert me now. I'm away up in the air
this morning, and even if you do hate this kind of thing, you've got to
see where dad's hatred of Bassett puts Marian and me."

"It puts you clean out of it; away over the ropes and halfway home!
That's where it puts you," boomed Harwood.

"Well, you've got to listen, and you've got to tell me what to do. Dad
had already investigated Bassett's years in New York, when he was a
young man studying in the law school down there. But they could get
about so far and no farther. It's a long time ago and all the people
Bassett knew at that time had scattered to the far corners of the earth.
But that book struck dad all of a heap. It fitted into what he had heard
about Bassett as a dilettante book collector; even then Bassett was
interested in such things. And you know in that account of him you wrote
in the 'Courier' that I told you I had read on the other side that first
time we met? Well, when dad and I went to the Adirondacks it was only
partly on my account; he met a man up there who had been working up
Bassett's past, and dad went over all the ground himself. It was most
amazing that it should all come out that way, but he found the place,
and the same man is still living at the house where the strange woman
stayed that Ware told about. I know it's just as rotten as it can be,
but dad's sure Bassett was the man who took that woman there and
deserted her. It fits into a period when Bassett wasn't in New York and
he wasn't at Fraserville. They've found an old file of the Fraserville
paper at the State Library that mentions the fact that Bassett's father
was very ill--had a stroke--and they had hard work locating Bassett, who
was the only child. There's only one missing link in the chain of
evidence, and that's the woman herself, and her child that was born up
there. Ware told us that night how he failed to get track of them later,
and dad lost the trail right there too. But that's all I need tell you
about it. That's what I've got hanging over me. And dad won't promise
not to use it on Bassett if he has to."

Harwood's face had gone white, but he smiled and knit his fingers
together behind his