"The election is day after to-morrow. I shall wait till the polls have closed, naturally, before I show him up. A convict, or one who has served a penal term, under the state constitution, can hold no office of public trust. I am advised that the new ticket is likely to win. The Trust's candidate will be next in the running, and with Sevier out, must be declared elected. Where will Sevier receive the returns?" "At Midfields, I imagine," Treadwell replied. "It's the committee headquarters. Governor Eveland of your State is to be a guest there, I hear. He's very much interested in this campaign, being something of a reformer himself." "So much the better! The Governor himself shall ask for the warrant for Sevier's arrest. We will go there that evening." "We!" repeated Treadwell. "Yes. You will come with me--as my attorney." "But I don't approve the step!" protested the other. "I consider the whole affair preposterous!" "I am under the impression," retorted Craig, darkly, "that you are still under my retainer--not Sevier's." Treadwell flushed. "If you put it in that way," he said stiffly, "I shall of course accompany you. But you have my legal opinion." Craig jerked the door open. "I'll meet you at Midfields at eight that evening," he said. CHAPTER XLIV THE LIGHTED FUSE In the Warden's office at the Penitentiary next morning--the same room Harry Sevier had entered when he had first stepped under the gloomy prison archway--Craig stood staring out of the open window across the yellow courtyard. The last move in the game was at hand--the game he had made up his mind now to play out alone, to the last card. He had not taken the Warden into his confidence, though he had sat talking with him for a half hour. From him he had heard the tale of the escape of prisoner No. 239--a tender subject with the official, but one in which his influential visitor had exhibited a particular interest. To the Warden the latter's concern for a scoundrel who had come within an ace of murdering him seemed natural enough. It would be in keeping with Craig's determined and vindictive character to exhaust every effort to apprehend the fugitive. To some intention of this sort the Warden had laid his caller's further inquiries concerning the pickpocket who had been the missing man's cell-mate. Craig, however, had had reason of another sort. It had chagrined him to learn that with the prisoner had disappeared the record-card on which he had counted as a piece of tangible evidence. But this was not an essential, since, once denounced, Harry Sevier would be put upon the defensive, and the one conclusive and natural defence--an alibi--he could not furnish. In the meantime, however, the sensational accusation should be supported, and what more to this purpose than the convict who had shared No. 239's very cell? Promise of a pardon--he could arrange that with the Board--would make the fellow tractable, and he could take him with him on parole.