“But how did you do it?” I asked, not comprehending.  “The faked photographs did not move him, that I could see.”

The words, “faked photographs,” caused Miss Ashton to glance up quickly.  I saw that Kennedy had not told her or any one yet, until the Boss had made good.  He had simply arranged one of his little dramas.

“Shall I tell, Miss Ashton?” he asked, adding, “Before I complete my part of the compact and blot out the whole affair?”

“I have no right to say no,” she answered tremulously, but with a look of happiness that I had not seen since our first introduction.

Kennedy laid down a print on a table.  It was the pinhole photograph, a little blurry, but quite convincing.  On a desk in the picture was a pile of bills.  McLoughlin was shoving them away from him toward Bennett.  A man who was facing forward in the picture was talking earnestly to some one who did not appear.  I felt intuitively, even before Kennedy said so, that the person was Miss Ashton herself as she stuck the needle into the wall.  The man was Cadwalader Brown.

“Travis,” demanded Kennedy, “bring the account books of your campaign.  I want the miscellaneous account particularly.”

The books were brought, and he continued, turning the leaves, “It seemed to me to show a shortage of nearly twenty thousand dollars the other day.  Why, it has been made up.  How was that, Bennett?”

Bennett was speechless.  “I will tell you,” Craig proceeded inexorably.  “Bennett, you embezzled that money for your business.  Rather than be found out, you went to Billy McLoughlin and offered to sell out the Reform campaign for money to replace it.  With the aid of the crook, Hanford, McLoughlin’s tool, you worked out the scheme to extort money from Travis by forged photographs.  You knew enough about Travis’s house and library to frame up a robbery one night when you were staying there with him.  It was inside work, I found, at a glance.  Travis, I am sorry to have to tell you that your confidence was misplaced.  It was Bennett who robbed you—­and worse.

“But Cadwalader Brown, always close to his creature, Billy McLoughlin, heard of it.  To him it presented another idea.  To him it offered a chance to overthrow a political enemy and a hated rival for Miss Ashton’s hand.  Perhaps into the bargain it would disgust her with politics, disillusion her, and shake her faith in what he believed to be some of her ‘radical’ notions.  All could be gained at one blow.  They say that a check-book knows no politics, but Bennett has learned some, I venture to say, and to save his reputation he will pay back what he has tried to graft.”

Travis could scarcely believe it yet.  “How did you get your first hint?” he gasped.

Kennedy was digging into the wall with a bill file at the place where he had buried the little vulcanised disc.  I had already guessed that it was a dictograph, though I could not tell how it was used or who used it.  There it was, set squarely in the plaster.  There also were the wires running under the carpet.  As he lifted the rug under Miss Ashton’s desk there also lay the huge circles of wire.  That was all.