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In so far as it welcomed only those who could spend money it was exclusive, but in all other respects its reputation was of the worst. In situation it was lonely, and from other houses separated by a quarter of a mile of dying trees and vacant lots.

The Boston Post Road upon which it faced was the old post road, but lately, through this back yard and dumping-ground of the city, had been relaid. It was patrolled only and infrequently by bicycle policemen. “But this,” continued the detective eagerly, “is where we win out. The road-house is an old farmhouse built over, with the barns changed into garages. They stand on the edge of a wood. It’s about as big as a city block. If we come in through the woods from the rear, the garages will hide us. Nobody in the house can see us, but we won’t be a hundred yards away. You’ve only to blow a police whistle and we’ll be with you.”

“You mean I ought to go?” said Wharton.

Rumson exclaimed incredulously: “You got to go!”

“It looks to me,” objected Bissell, “like a plot to get you there alone and rap you on the head.” “Not with that note inviting him there,” protested Hewitt, “and signed by Earle herself.”

“You don’t know she signed it?” objected the senator.

“I know her,” returned the detective. “I know she’s no fool. It’s her place, and she wouldn’t let them pull off any rough stuff there–not against the D. A. anyway”

The D. A. was rereading the note. “Might this be it?” he asked. “Suppose it’s a trick to mix me up in a scandal? You say the place is disreputable. Suppose they’re planning to compromise me just before election. They’ve tried it already several times.”

“You’ve still got the note, If persisted Hewitt. “It proves why you went there. And the senator, too. He can testify. And we won’t be hundred yards away. And,” he added grudgingly, “you have Nolan.”

Nolan was the spoiled child of ‘the office.’ He was the district attorney’s pet. Although still young, he had scored as a detective and as a driver of racing-cars. As Wharton’s chauffeur he now doubled the parts.

“What Nolan testified wouldn’t be any help,” said Wharton. “They would say it was just a story he invented to save me.”

“Then square yourself this way,” urged Rumson. “Send a note now by hand to Ham Cutler and one to your sister. Tell them you’re going to Ida Earle’s–and why–tell them you’re afraid it’s a frame-up, and for them to keep your notes as evidence. And enclose the one from her.”

Wharton nodded 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.”