“Etienne, are you sure of what you are talking about?” demanded Farr. His voice trembled. The visit of that handsome girl to that quarter of the city--those men so patently pursuing her--there was a sinister look to the affair.
“Oh, we all know that Burke. He hire many votes in this ward for many years. He known in Marion just so well as the steeple on the _hotel de ville_. And that odder--that young mans, we know him, for his oncle is Colonel Dodd. Oh yes!”
“Good night, Etienne--and to you Miss Zelie!” said Farr, curtly, walking off toward the entrance of Rose Alley. He did not ask the old man to go with him. He was drawn in two directions by his emotions and stopped after he had taken a few steps. This seemed like espionage in a matter which was none of his concern. It was entirely possible that the confidential secretary of Colonel Dodd and the nephew of that gentleman might have common business even in Rose Alley and at that time of evening.
But the matter of that masquerading ballot-falsifier, just out of state prison, overcame Farr's scruples about meddling in the affairs of Kate Kilgour.
He turned the corner into the alley in season to see the two men far ahead of him; they passed out of the radiance shed by a dim light and he saw no more of them. He walked the length of the alley and was not able to locate any of the party. At its lower end the alley was closed in by houses, and it was plain that the people he sought had not passed out into another thoroughfare. He marched back, scrutinizing the outside of buildings, trying to conjecture what business the handsome girl and the two men could have in that section at that hour, and where they had entered to prosecute that business.
“I must continue to blame it all on the nice old ladies,” he told himself, smiling at the shamed zest he was finding in this hunt. “But I hope this knight-errantry will not grow to be a habit with me. I mustn't forget that I have another job on hand for nine o'clock--also knight-errantry!”
He paused under the dim light where his men had disappeared and looked at his cheap watch.
Then he heard a woman's protesting voice. She cried “No, _no_, NO!” in crescendo.
He gazed at the house from which the voice seemed to come. It was near at hand, a shabby little cottage with a thin slice of yard closed in by a dilapidated picket fence. He perceived no observers in the alley, and he stepped into the yard. The front windows were open, for the evening was warm, but no lights were visible in the house.