Kennedy was not quite ready to leave yet, but sought out Travis and obtained permission to glance over the financial end of the campaign.  There were few large contributors to Travis’s fund, but a host of small sums ranging from ten and twenty-five dollars down to dimes and nickels.  Truly it showed the depth of the popular uprising.  Kennedy also glanced hastily over the items of expense—­ rent, salaries, stenographer and office force, advertising, printing and stationery, postage, telephone, telegraph, automobile and travelling expenses, and miscellaneous matters.

As Kennedy expressed it afterwards, as against the small driblets of money coming in, large sums were going out for expenses in lumps.  Campaigning in these days costs money even when done honestly.  The miscellaneous account showed some large indefinite items, and after a hasty calculation Kennedy made out that if all the obligations had to be met immediately the committee would be in the hole for several thousand dollars.

“In short,” I argued as we were leaving, “this will either break Travis privately or put his fund in hopeless shape.  Or does it mean that he foresees defeat and is taking this way to recoup himself under cover of being held up?”

Kennedy said nothing in response to my suspicions, though I could see that in his mind he was leaving no possible clue unnoted.

It was only a few blocks to the studio of Harris Hanford, whom Kennedy was now bent on seeing.  We found him in an old building on one of the side streets in the thirties which business had captured.  His was a little place on the top floor, up three flights of stairs, and I noticed as we climbed up that the room next to his was vacant.

Our interview with Hanford was short and unsatisfactory.  He either was or at least posed as representing a third party in the affair, and absolutely refused to permit us to have even a glance at the photographs.

“My dealings,” he asserted airily, “must all be with Mr. Bennett, or with Mr. Travis, direct, not with emissaries.  I don’t make any secret about it.  The prints are not here.  They are safe and ready to be produced at the right time, either to be handed over for the money or to be published in the newspapers.  We have found out all about them; we are satisfied, although the negatives have been destroyed.  As for their having been stolen from Travis, you can put two and two together.  They are out and copies have been made of them, good copies.  If Mr. Travis wishes to repudiate them, let him start proceedings.  I told Bennett all about that.  To-morrow is the last day, and I must have Bennett’s answer then, without any interlopers coming into it.  If it is yes, well and good; if not, then they know what to expect.  Good-bye.”

It was still early in the forenoon, and Kennedy’s next move was to go out on Long Island to examine the library at Travis’s from which the pictures were said to have been stolen.  At the laboratory Kennedy and I loaded ourselves with a large oblong black case containing a camera and a tripod.