“Yes, Mr. President!  Abbott, will you show the President out?” Then when Charley had returned, he said, “Abbott, the Secretary of State will be here.  How about Brown?”

“He will be here,” replied Charley.  “I used the President’s name pretty freely, but I think I finally got him curious enough and worried enough.”

Enoch nodded.  “Abbott, for the first time since I’ve been in this office, I’m going to quit early and go for a ride.”

“It’s what you ought to do every day,” said Abbott.

“Look here, Abbott, if I get this beastly matter settled to-morrow, I want you to go away for two months’ vacation.”

“Well,” said Charley, doubtfully, “if you get it settled!”

“Don’t let that worry you,” said Enoch grimly as he pulled on his overcoat and left the office.  “I’ll settle it.”

Promptly at three o’clock, the next day, Abbott ushered three men into the Secretary’s office.  Enoch rose and bowed to Secretary Fowler, to Hancock Brown, and to Ames, the reporter.  The last was a clear cut young fellow with a nose a little too sharp and eyes set a trifle too close together.

“If you will be seated, gentlemen, I’ll tell you the object of this call upon your time.  Mr. Abbott, please remain in the room.

“On the third of November, Mr. Brown, you published in one of your evening papers an article about me written under your direction by Ames.  The facts in that article were in the main true.  The deductions you drew from them were vilely false.  It is not, Mr. Brown, a pleasant knowledge for a man to carry through life that his mother was what my mother was.  I have suffered from that knowledge as it is obviously quite beyond your power to comprehend.  I say obviously, because no men with decency or the most ordinary imagination would have dared to harrow a man’s secret soul as you harrowed mine.  Even in my many battles with Tammany, my unfortunate birth has been respected.  It remained for you to write the unwriteable.

“As for my gambling, that too is true, to a certain extent.  I have played cards perhaps half a dozen times in as many years.  I was taught to play by the Luigi whom you interviewed.  I have a gambler’s instinct, but since I was fourteen I have fought as men can fight and latterly I have been winning the battle.

“Your insinuations as to my adult relationship to the underworld and to women are lies.  And your dragging Miss Allen into the dirty tale was a gratuitous insult which it is fortunate for both of you, her father has not yet seen.  It happened that while I was on the vacation recently in which you have taken so impertinent an interest, that I joined the camp of two miners.  One of them, Curly Field, told me an interesting story.  He probably would not have told me had I not been calling myself Smith and had he not discovered that I am a lawyer.”

The smile suddenly disappeared from Brown’s face.