“Sept. 4.—­I am unfit to speak to you, but oh, I need you as I never did before.  Don’t turn those kind, clear-seeing eyes away from me, Lucy!  Lucy!  It happened this way.  I wanted, if possible to make our Police Commissioner see Minetta Lane through my eyes.  And I took him down there, three days ago.  It’s unchanged, in all these years, except for the worse.  And Luigi was dragging a sack of rags into his basement.  He was gray and bent but it was Luigi.  And he recognized me and yelled ‘Bastard!’ after me.  Lucy, I went back and beat him, till the Commissioner hauled me off.  And the dirty, spluttering little devil roared my story to all that greedy, listening crowd!  I slipped away, Lucy, and I hid myself in a place I know in Chinatown.  No!  No!  I don’t drink and I don’t hit the pipe.  I gamble.  My luck is unbelievable.  And when the fit is on me, I’d gamble my very soul away.  Jonas found me.  Jonas is a colored porter in the City Hall who has rather adopted me.  And Jonas said, ’Boss, how come you to do a stunt like this?  The Police Commissioner say to the Mayor and I hear ’em, an Italian black hander take you for somebody else and he have him run in.  I tell ’em you gone down to Atlantic City.  You come home with me, Boss.’  He put his kind black hand on my shoulder, and Lucy, his eyes were full of tears.  I left my winnings with the Chinaman, and came back here with Jonas.  Lucy!  Oh, if I could really hear your voice!”

“Sept. 5.—­I had a long talk with the Police Commissioner to-day.  I can trust him the way I used to trust Mr. Seaton, Lucy.  I told him the truth about Luigi and me and he promised to do what he could to ferret out the truth about my people.  If I could only know that my father was half-way decent, no matter what my mother was, it would make an enormous difference to me.”

Enoch turned another year of pages.

“Oct. 12.—­Lucy, the Police Commissioner says he has to believe that Luigi’s mistress was my mother.  He advises me to close that part of my life for good and all and give myself to politics.  Easy advice!  But I am going to play the game straight in spite of Minetta Lane.”

Enoch paused long over this entry, then turned on again.

“Nov. 6.—­Well, my dear, shake hands with Congressman Huntingdon.  Yes, ma’am!  It’s true!  Aren’t you proud of me?  And, Lucy, listen!  Don’t have any illusions on how I got there.  It wasn’t brains.  It wasn’t that the people wanted me to put over any particular idea or ideal for them.  I simply so intrigued them with flights of oratory that they decided I was a natural born congressman!  Well, bless ’em for doing it, anyhow, and I’ll play the game for them.  If I ever had had a father I’d like to talk politics with him.  He must have had some decency in him, or I’d have been all bad, like my mother.  Or maybe I’m a throw-back from two degenerate parents.  Well, we’ll end the breed with me.