back with him. Good-bye."

His excuse was the mere truth, his conversation
with Norbert, in the carriage which they managed
to secure to themselves, continuing earnestly until
Joe spoke to the driver and alighted at a corner,
near Mr. Farbach's Italian possessions. "Don't
forget," he said, as he closed the carriage door,
"I've got to have both ends of the string in my
hands."

"Forget!" Norbert looked at the cupola of
the Pike Mansion, rising above the maples down
the street. "It isn't likely I'll forget!"


When Joe entered the "Louis Quinze room"
which some decorator, drunk with power, had
mingled into the brewer's villa, he found the owner
and Mr. Sheehan, with five other men, engaged in
a meritorious attempt to tone down the apartment
with smoke. Two of the five others were prosperous
owners of saloons; two were known to the
public (whose notion of what it meant when it
used the term was something of the vaguest) as
politicians; the fifth was Mr. Farbach's closest
friend, one who (Joe had heard) was to be the next
chairman of the city committee of the party.
They were seated about a table, enveloped in blue
clouds, and hushed to a grave and pertinent silence