Downstairs Craig waited with growing impatience.  We stood in an angle in which we could see without being readily seen, and our impatience was not diminished by seeing Hanford enter the elevator.

I think that Miss Ashton would have made an excellent woman detective, that is, on a case in which her personal feelings were not involved as they were here.  She was pale and agitated as she appeared in the corridor, and Kennedy hurried toward her.

“I can’t believe it.  I won’t believe it,” she managed to say.

“Tell me, what happened?” urged Kennedy soothingly.

“Oh, Mr. Kennedy, why did you ask me to do this?” she reproached.  “I would almost rather not have known it at all.”

“Believe me, Miss Ashton,” said Kennedy, “you ought to know.  It is on you that I depend most.  We saw Hanford go up.  What occurred?”

She was still pale, and replied nervously, “Mr. Bennett came in about quarter to ten.  He stopped to talk to me and looked about the room curiously.  Do you know, I felt very uncomfortable for a time.  Then he locked the door leading from the press bureau to his office, and left word that he was not to be disturbed.  A few minutes later a man called.”

“Yes, yes,” prompted Kennedy.  “Hanford, no doubt.”

She was racing on breathlessly, scarcely giving one a chance to inquire how she had learned so much.

“Why,” she cried with a sort of defiant ring in her tone, “Mr. Travis is going to buy those pictures after all.  And the worst of it is that I met him in the hall coming in as I was coming down here, and he tried to act toward me in the same old way—­and that after all I know now about him.  They have fixed it all up, Mr. Bennett acting for Mr. Travis, and this Mr. Hanford.  They are even going to ask me to carry the money in a sealed envelope to the studio of this fellow Hanford, to be given to a third person who will be there at two o’clock this afternoon.”

“You, Miss Ashton?” inquired Kennedy, a light breaking on his face as if at last he saw something.

“Yes, I,” she repeated.  “Hanford insisted that it was part of the compact.  They—­they haven’t asked me openly yet to be the means of carrying out their dirty deals, but when they do, I—­I won’t——­”

“Miss Ashton,” remonstrated Kennedy, “I beg you to be calm.  I had no idea you would take it like this, no idea.  Please, please.  Walter, you will excuse us if we take a turn down the corridor and out in the air.  This is most extraordinary.”

For five or ten minutes Kennedy and Miss Ashton appeared to be discussing the new turn of events earnestly, while I waited impatiently.  As they approached again she seemed calmer, but I heard her say, “I hope you’re right.  I’m all broken up by it.  I’m ready to resign.  My faith in human nature is shaken.  No, I won’t expose Wesley Travis for his sake.  It cuts me to have to admit it, but Cadwalader used always to say that every man has his price.  I am afraid this will do great harm to the cause of reform and through it to the woman suffrage cause which cast its lot with this party.  I—­I can hardly believe——­”