It was young Ranlett, a reporter forThe Plainsman, who told Evan Blount of the arrival of the vice-president's car, running as second section of the Overland, and the scene of the telling was the lobby of the Inter-Mountain Hotel, where Blount was smoking a pipe of disappointment filled and lighted upon hearing that his father, Mrs. Honoria, and Patricia had gone out to dinner somewhere—place unknown to the obliging room clerk.
Ranlett had tried ineffectually to get to the private car, having for his object the interviewing of the vice-president, but there had been curious obstructions. The lower yard was apparently carefully guarded, since the reporter had been turned back at three or four different points when he had attempted to cross the tracks. Blount thought it a little singular that the vice-president should come to the capital secretly, but he did not stop to speculate upon this.
Having something more than a suspicion that Gantry had not properly passed the threat of exposure up to McVickar, he determined at once to seek an interview with the vice-president. Walking rapidly down to the Sierra Avenue station, he saw a light in Gantry's office, and meaning to be fair first and severe afterward, if needful, he ran up the stair and tried the door of the traffic manager's office. It opened under his hand, and he found Gantry sitting at his desk.
"Ranlett tells me that Mr. McVickar is in town," he began abruptly. "Where is he?"
"Ranlett is mistaken—about twenty minutes mistaken," was Gantry's reply. "Mr. McVickar passed through here a few minutes ago on his way to Twin Canyons City. His special has been gone some little time."
"When is he coming back?"
"I don't know."
"Did you see him?"
"Idid."
"Did you take up with him the matter of issuing new tariffs to do away with the preferentials, or to level the public rates down to them?"
Gantry shifted uneasily in his chair, and tried to evade. "There was very little time," he said. "Mr. McVickar was in a great hurry, and his special was held only a few minutes."
Blount crossed the room and sat down.
"Dick, we've come to the last round-up," he said gravely. "In the nature of things, I can't give you any more time. You've been playing with me all along, and your last move in the game was a very childish one—sending me what purported to be a copy of a new freight tariff notice to the public. Did you suppose for a moment that I wouldn't have sense enough to see that the thing wasn't official, that it had no signatures and lacked even the name of the railroad company? I'm here now to tell you that you've got to do some real thing, and do it quickly. Let's go up and see the editor ofThe Capital."
"What for?" demanded Gantry.
"It is the railroad paper, and I want you to give Brinkley, the editor, an interview to the effect that a revision of the freight rates is in process, and that shippers having grievances should present them at once. That will at least start the ball to rolling in the right direction."
"I should think it would!" scoffed the traffic manager. "What you don't know about the making of freight tariffs would sink a ship, Evan. These things can't be done while you wait!"
"But they must be, in this instance," Blount insisted. "If you won't withdraw the preferentials given to the corporations, you must do the other thing. Post your legal notice of a reduction of the rates on the commodities upon which you are now allowing rebates, and I'll fight straight through on the line I've been taking all along."
"And if we don't?" queried Gantry.
"What is the use of making me say it for the hundredth time, Dick? If you don't do one or the other, there will be an explosion, just as I've told you. Of course, you know that my safe was broken open last night—wrecked with dynamite?"
"Yes."
"Well, unluckily for you, the packet of papers which might otherwise have been taken or destroyed, didn't happen to be in the safe. The documents arestill where they can be used at an hour's notice. And, by heaven, Dick, I'll use them if you don't play fair!"
Gantry, long-suffering and patient to a fault in a business affair, was not altogether superhuman.
"Evan, you are a frost—a black frost! You harp on one string until you wear it to frazzles! Don't you know that the Transcontinental is big enough and strong enough to chivvy you from one end of this country to the other, if you turn traitor? I love a fighting man, but by God, I haven't any use for a fool!"
Blount laughed.
"If I have succeeded in making you angry, perhaps there is a chance that you will do something. You may curse me out all you want to, but the fact remains. I'm going to explode the bomb, and it will be touched off long enough before election to do the work, if you keep on refusing to make my word good to the people. That is all—allthe all. Now, will you go up toThe Capitaloffice with me, and dictate that bit of information that I mentioned?"
"Not in a thousand years!" raged Gantry. "Not in ten thousand years!" Nevertheless he rose, closed his desk, and prepared to accompany the importunatepolitical manager. Half-way up the first square he said: "There is no use in our going toThe Capitaloffice at this time of night. Brinkley doesn't get around to his desk much before eleven. Let's go up to the club."
At the Railway Club the traffic manager developed a keen desire to kill the intervening time in a game of billiards. Blount indulged him, beat him three games in succession, and consistently refused to drink with him. At the end of the third game, Gantry gave a terse definition, abusively worded, of a man who would force his friend to go and drink alone, and went to the buffet. Ten minutes later, when Blount went after him, he had disappeared, and the visit to the newspaper office was postponed, perforce.
On the following morning, Blount found a telegram on his desk. It bore the vice-president's name, and the date-line was Twin Canyons City. It directed him to go to a remote portion of the State beyond the Lost River Mountains to examine the papers in a right-of-way case which was coming up for trial at the next term of court. This was in Kittredge's department, and Blount called the superintendent on the phone. Kittredge was in his office, and he evidently knew about the vice-president's telegram. Also, he seemed anxious to have the division counsel go to Lewiston at once; so anxious that he offered his own service-car to be run as a special train.
Blount saw no way to evade a positive order from the vice-president, but he was more than suspicious that Gantry or Kittredge, or possibly both of them, had misrepresented the right-of-way case to Mr. McVickar, in an attempt to get him away from the city and so to postpone a reiteration of the demand for a new freight tariff. What he did not suspect was that Mr. McVickar's telegram might possibly have originated in Kittredge's office.
Asking the superintendent to have the service-car made ready immediately, he packed his handbag, left a note for Patricia, who was not yet visible, and another for Gantry, who was not in his office, and began the roundabout journey.
In all his travelling up and down the State he had never found anything to equal the slowness of the special train. The noon meal, served by Kittredge's cook in the open compartment, found the special less than fifty miles on its way, and comfortably waiting at that hour on a side-track among the sage-brush hills for the coming of a delayed train in the opposite direction. Four mortal hours were lost onthe lonely siding. There was no station, and Blount could not telegraph. So far as he knew, the service-car might stay there for a day or a week. It was all to no purpose that he quarrelled with his conductor. The train crew had orders to wait for the west-bound time freight, and there was nothing to do but to keep on waiting.
Late in the afternoon the time freight, or some other train, came along, and the special was once more set in motion eastward, but at dinner-time it was again side-tracked, eighty-odd miles from its destination, and once more at a desert siding where there was no telegraph office. The car was still standing on the siding when Blount went to bed. But in the morning it was in motion again, jogging now on its leisurely way up the branch line.
At Lewiston, the town at the end of the branch where the right-of-way trouble had originated, Blount found more delay, carefully planned for, as he had now come firmly to believe. The plaintiffs in the right-of-way case were out of town, and their lawyers had gone to the capital. Blount saw that he might wait a week without accomplishing anything, hence he immediately instructed his conductor to get orders for the return.
After having been gone a half-hour or more, the conductor came back to the service-car to say that the single telegraph-wire connecting Lewiston with the outer world was down, and that the orders for the return journey could not be obtained until the telegraph connection was restored. At that point Blount took matters into his own hands.
There was a mining company having its headquartersin the isolated town, and Blount had met the manager once in the capital—met him in a social way, and had been able to show him some little attention. Hiring a buckboard at the one livery stable in the place, he drove out to the "Little Mary," and found Blatchford, the friendly manager, smoking a black clay cutty pipe in his shack office. It did not take Blount over a minute to renew the pleasant acquaintance, and to state his dilemma.
"I'm hung up here with my special train, the wires are down and I can't get out," was his statement of the crude fact. "Didn't you tell me that you owned a motor-car?"
"I did," was the prompt reply. "Want to borrow it?"
"You beat me to it," said Blount, laughing. "That was precisely what I was going to beg for—the loan of your car. I believe you told me that you had driven it from here to the capital."
"Oh, yes; several times, and the road is fairly good by way of Arequipa and Lost River Canyon. It's only about half as far across country as it is around by the railroad. You ought to make it in six hours and a half, or seven at the longest. Drive me down to the burg, and I'll put you in possession."
Blount began to be audibly thankful, but the mine manager good-naturedly cut him short.
"It's all in the day's work, Mr. Blount, and I'm glad to be of service—not because you are the Transcontinental's lawyer, nor altogether because you are the Honorable David's son. I haven't forgotten your kindness to me when I was in town three weeks ago. Let's go and get out the chug-wagon."
A little later Blount found himself handling the wheel of a very serviceable knockabout car equipped for hard work on country roads. When he was ready to go, he drove down to the railroad yard and hunted up his conductor.
"After you have had your vacation, you may get orders from Mr. Kittredge and take his car back to the capital," he told the man. "When you do, you may give him my compliments, and tell him I preferred to run my own special train."
The conductor grinned and made no reply, and he was still grinning when he sauntered into the railroad telegraph office and spoke to the operator.
"I dunno what's up," he said, "but whatever it was, the string's broke. Old Dave Sage-Brush's son has borrowed him an automobile, and gone back to town on his own hook. Guess you'd better callup the division despatcher and tell him the broken-wire gag didn't work. Get a move on. We hain't got nothin' to stay here for now."
Blount had a very pleasant drive across country, with no mishap worse than a blown-out tire and a little carbureter trouble. Being a motorist of parts, neither the accident nor the needed readjustment detained him very long, and by the middle of the afternoon he was racing down the smooth northern road, with the spires and tall buildings of the capital fairly in sight.
Not to let gratitude lag too far behind the service rendered, he drove Blatchford's car to the garage nearest the freight station, left instructions to have it shipped back to Lewiston by the first train, and promptly went in search of Gantry. The traffic manager was not in his office, but Blount found him at the Railway Club.
"Just a word, Dick," he began, when he had overtaken his man pointing for the buffet. "Kittredge put up a job on me, and I think you helped him.I had to borrow an automobile to come back in from Lewiston. It's down at the Central Garage, and I have given Bankston, the garage man, orders to ship it back to Mr. Blatchford, of the 'Little Mary.' I wish you'd phone your freight agent to see that it is properly taken care of, and that the freight bill is sent to me."
Gantry made no reply, but he went obediently to the house telephone and gave the necessary instructions. The thing done, he turned shortly upon Blount, scowling morosely.
"Come on in and let's have a drink," he said.
Blount marked the brittleness of tone and the half-quarrelsome light in the eyes which were a little bloodshot.
"No, Dick; you've had one too many already,"he objected firmly.
Gantry put his back against the wall of the corridor.
"No," he rasped; "I'm not drunk, but I'm ready to fight you to a finish, and for once in a way I'm going to get in the first lick. You've been bluffing me from the start, and you're going to try it again. It won't go this time; you've got to show me!"
If Blount hesitated it was only because he was trying to determine whether or not the traffic manager was business-fit. Gantry comprehended perfectly, and his laugh was derisive and a trifle bitter.
"You're sizing me up and asking yourself if I'm too far gone to be worth while," he jeered. "If I couldn't stand any more liquid grief than you can, I would have been down and out years ago. Show your hand, Evan—if you have any to show."
Blount hesitated no longer. Taking Gantry's arm, he led him out of the club and around the block tothe Sierra National Bank. It was after banking hours, but the side door giving access to the safe-deposit department was still open. With the traffic manager at his elbow, Blount asked the custodian for his private box, got it, and led the way to one of the cell-like retiring rooms. Gantry proved his capacity for transacting business by turning on the lights, locking the door, and squaring himself in a chair at one side of the tiny writing-table.
Blount opened the japanned safety box, took out a bulky envelope and tossed it across to the traffic manager.
"You can see for yourself whether I've been bluffing or not," he said quietly; and then he turned his back and interested himself in the lithograph of the latest Atlantic liner framed and hanging upon the mahogany end wall of the small room.
For a little time there was a dead silence, broken only by the faint rustling of the papers as Gantry withdrew and unfolded them. When he had glanced at the last folded letter sheet, he snapped the rubber band upon the sheaf and sat back in his chair. Blount turned at the snap and found the traffic manager smiling curiously up at him.
"Sit down, Evan," was the friendly invitation. And when Blount had dropped into the opposite chair: "We used to be pretty good friends in the old days, Ebee," Gantry went on, falling easily into the use of the college nickname. "I haven't forgotten the time when I would have had to break and go home if you hadn't stood by me like a brother and lent me money. For that reason, and for some others, I hate to see you bucking a dead wall out here in the greasewood hills."
"It is you and your kind who are bucking the dead wall, Dick."
"No, listen; I'm giving it to you straight, now. A few minutes ago you thought I was drunk—possibly too far gone to serve your purpose. I wasn't; I was merely sick and disgusted at the spectacle afforded by a crafty, crooked, double-dealing old world—the world we're living in. Once in a blue moon an honest man turns up, and when that happens he's got to be broken on the wheel—as you're going to be broken. Oh, yes; I came out with ideals, too, but they've been knocked out of me. We all have to keep the lock-step in business, and business is hell, Evan. I'm honest to my salt—which is to say that as yet I'm not using my job to line my own pockets, but that's the one decent thing that can be said of me. Don't let me bore you."
"Go on," said Blount soberly. "I don't see thepointing of it yet, but—"
"You will when I tell you that I've been lying to you; faking first one thing and then another. Do you get that?"
"I hear you say it; yes."
"It's so. I faked that story about your father's having made an underground deal with us. It was a lie out of whole cloth, because I didn't believe at that time that he had. There had been a falling out between him and Mr. McVickar; that was common talk on the division. But until yesterday I didn't know for certain that the trouble had been patched up; in fact, I had my own reasons for believing that it hadn't been patched up."
"And you told me there was an alliance in order that I might believe that my father would be involved in an exposure of the railroad's double-dealing with the public?"
"Just that. Self-preservation is the primal law—after you've dropped the ideals—and I thought I had invented a way to hold you down. I might have saved myself the trouble—and the lie. It comes down to this, Evan: you are one man against a crooked world, and you haven't had a ghost of a show from the first minute."
"You'll have to make it plainer," was the even-toned rejoinder. "As matters stand now, I am pretty well assured that I can do what I set out to do. I'm going to be able to make my own employers come through with clean hands."
Gantry was shaking his head slowly, and again the curious smile flitted across his keen, fine-featured face, lingering for an instant at the corners of the eyes.
"You say I'll have to make it plainer, and I will. A little while ago you intimated that Kittredge and I were responsible for the telegram which sent you to Lewiston yesterday. It was a fake, but it didn't originate with Kittredge or with me."
"With whom, then?"
"I hate to tell you, Evan—it'll hit you hard. The frame-up was your father's. He got hold of Kittredge the night before, some time after we had left my office together to go up-town. He told Kittredge it was for the good of 'the cause,' and suggested that a wire purporting to come from Mr. McVickar would probably turn the trick. He didn't give his reason for wanting to get you out of the way at this time, and Kittredge didn't ask it."
Blount was pinning the traffic manager down with an eyehold which was like a gripping hand, and theclose air of the little mahogany bank cell became suddenly charged with the subtle effluence of antagonism. Blount was the first to break the painful silence.
"You have told me nothing new, Dick, or at least nothing that I have not been taking for granted almost from the beginning. But let it be understood between us, once for all, that I discuss my father, his motives, or his acts, with no man living. We'll drop that phase of it; it's a side issue, and has no bearing upon the business that brought us here. You asked for the proof of my ability to compel your employers and mine to turn over the clean leaf. You have it there under your hand."
For answer, Gantry pushed the rubber-banded file across the table to his companion. "Take another look, Evan, and see how helpless you are in the grip of a crooked world," he said, very gently.
Blount caught up the file and ran it through. It was made up wholly of pieces of blank paper, cut to letter-size, and clipped at the corner with a brass fastener, as the originals had been.
While Blount was staring abstractedly at the file of blank sheets which had been substituted for the incriminating letters of the vote-selling corporation managers, with Gantry sitting back, alert and watchful, to mark the first signs of the coming storm, there came a tap on the locked door of the little room, and a deprecatory voice said: "It's our closing time, gentlemen: if you are about through—"
"In a minute," returned Gantry quickly, and then he took the blank dummy out of Blount's hands, pocketed it, shut the japanned safety box, and touched his companion's shoulder.
"Let's get out of this, Evan," he said, still speaking as one speaks to a hurt child. "Conroy wants to close up."
Blount suffered himself to be led away, and in the vault room he went mechanically through the motions of locking up the empty box. In the street Gantry once more took the lead, walking his silentcharge around the block and into the Temple Court elevator. A little later, when the door of the private room in the up-town legal office had opened to admit them, and Blount had dropped heavily into his own desk chair, Gantry plunged promptly into the breach.
"We've been friendly enemies in this thing right from the start, Evan," he began, "and that's as it had to be. But blood—even the blood of a college brotherhood—is thicker than water. I know now what you're in for, and I'm going to stand by you, if it costs me my job. First, let's clear the way a bit. If I say that I haven't had anything to do, even by implication, with this jolt you've just been given, will you believe me?"
Blount lifted a pair of heavy-lidded eyes and let them rest for an instant upon the face of the traffic manager. "If you say so, Dick, I'll believe it," he returned.
"Good. Now we can dive into the thick of it. I won't insult you by doubting the premising fact. You had the evidence once?"
"I did—enough of it to keep a grand jury busyfor a month. It came to me in the shape of unsolicited letters from the men who are benefiting by the railroad company's evasion of the law, and who are, of course, equally criminal with the railroad officials. Why these letters were written to me I don't know, Gantry. I merely know that they were wholly unsolicited."
"They were written to you because you are supposed to be the doctor in the present crisis."
"But good God, Dick! Haven't I been shouting from every platform in the State that we were out for a clean campaign?"
Gantry shook his head and his smile was commiserative. "I know; and every man who has had his fingers in the pitch-barrel has chuckled to himself, and when two of them would get together they'd pound each other on the back and swear that you were the smoothest spellbinder that Mr. McVickar has ever turned loose on this side of the big mountains. It grinds, Evan, but it's the fact. Not one of the men you are after has ever taken your speeches seriously."
Blount's head sank lower.
"I'm smashed, Dick!" he groaned; "utterly and irretrievably disgraced and discredited in my native State! There isn't a man in the sage-brush hills who would believe me under oath, after this."
"It's hard, Evan—damned hard!" said the traffic manager, driven to repetition. "But grilling over it doesn't get us anywhere. What are you going to do"?
"With the election only five days away, there is nothing that can be done. I had you down, Dick; I could have forced my point with the weapon I had. Isn't that so?"
Gantry wagged his head dubiously. "I'm not the big boss, but I can tell you right now that, if you could have shown me what I was fully expecting to see, the wires between here and wherever Mr. McVickar's private car happens to be would have been kept pretty hot for a while." Then, upon second thought: "Yes; I guess you could have pulled it off. We couldn't stand for any such bill-boarding as you were threatening to give us."
Blount turned to his desk, opened it, and began to arrange his papers.
"You've been a good friend, after all, Dick," he said, talking as he worked. "I'm going to ask you to go one step farther and take charge of the funeral, if you will. Find Mr. McVickar and wire him that I've dropped out. I'll write him a resignation from somewhere, when I have time."
Gantry left his chair and came to stand beside the quitter.
"Honestly, Evan," he said slowly, "I thought you were a grown man. You'll forgive the mistake, won't you?"
Blount turned upon his tormentor and swore pathetically. "What's the use—what in the devil is the use?" he rasped, when the outburst began to grow measurably articulate. "You know as well as I do what's been done to me, and who has done it. Can I lift my hand to strike back, even if I had a weapon to strike with?"
"Perhaps you can't. But you owe it to yourself, and to a certain bright-minded young woman that I know of, not to fly off the handle without at least trying to see if you can't stay on. Wait a minute." The railroad man took a turn up and down the floor, head down and hands behind him. When he came back to the desk end he began again. "Evan, who's got those original papers?"
"The man who blew up my safe, of course. You've said you didn't hire him, and that leaves only one alternative."
Gantry took the dummy packet from his pocket and held one of the blank sheets up to the light of the window. It was growing dusk, and when he failed to discern what he was looking for, he turned on the electric lights and tried again. At this the script "T-C" water-mark was plainly visible, and he showed it to Blount.
"That proves conclusively that the substitution was made here in your own office. Whom do you suspect?"
In a flash Blount remembered: how he had sent Collins to get the packet out of the safe, the stenographer's delay, the hasty sealing of the envelope, and the suspicion which had been cut short by the incoming of Ackerton.
"I know now who did it, and when it was done," he said. "The day before the office was broken into I told Collins to bringme the papers from the safe. What he brought me was that dummy—in a freshly sealed envelope. I was going to open the envelope, but just then Ackerton came in."
"All clear so far," said Gantry; and then: "Where is Collins now?"
"I don't know; he comes and goes pretty much as he pleases when I'm not in town."
"Do you know anything about him personally?"
"No."
"I do. His father was a bank cashier, and he became a defaulter—of the easy-mark kind; the kind that is too good-natured to look too curiously at a friend's collateral. He would have gone over the road if your father hadn't pulled him out by main strength."
"I see," said Blount cynically. "And the son has paid his father's debt to my father. But why the safe-blowing?"
"Collins's face had to besaved in some way. He couldn't know that you meant to lock the dummy up in the safety vault," returned Gantry, and then, after a pause: "That's our one little ray of hope, Evan."
"I don't see it."
"Don't you? Then I'll make it a bit plainer. If some railroad burglar had cracked your safe, you could confidently assume that the original letters have been carefully cremated by this time, couldn't you?"
"I suppose so."
"But if your father has them ... Evan, I don't know any more than the man in the moon what he wants them for, but the man in the street would grin and tell you that your father was merely getting ready to hold the railroad company up for something it didn't want to part with."
"I'm letting you say it of my own flesh and blood, Dick; and it shows you how badly broken I am. After all, it doesn't lead anywhere."
"Yes, it does. Let us suppose, just for the sake of argument, that your father doesn't know how much those letters mean to you—I know it's a pretty hard thing to imagine, but we'll do it by main strength and awkwardness. Let us suppose again, that being the case, that you go to him frankly and show him in a few well-chosen words just where he has landed you; tell him you've got to have those letters—simplygotto have them—to save your face. I know your father, Evan, a good bit better than you do; he'd give you the earth with a fence around it if you should ask him for it."
Evan Blount got slowly out of his chair, stood up, and put his hands upon the smaller man's shoulders.
"Dick, do you realize what you are doing for yourself when you show me a possible way of getting my weapon back?" he demanded.
Gantry's lips became a fine straight line and he nodded.
"That's what made me walk the floor a few minutes ago; I was trying to find out if I were big enough. It's all right, Ebee; you go to it, and I'll throw up my job and run a foot-race with the sheriff, if I have to. Damn the job, anyway!" he finished petulantly. "I'm tired of being a robber for somebody else's pocket all the time!"
Blount sat down again and put his face in his hands. After a time he looked up to say: "I can't let you outbid me in the open market, Dick. You can't set the friendship peg any higher than I can."
Gantry crossed the room and recovered his top-coat and hat from the chair where he had thrown them.
"Don't you be a fool," he advised curtly. "There's a railroad down in Peru that is going bankrupt for the lack of a wide-awake, up-to-date traffic man. I've had the offer on my desk for a month, and I'm going to cable to-night. That lets you out, whether you do or don't. But if you've got the sense of a wooden Indian, you'll do as I've said—and do itpronto. Your time's mighty short, anyway. So long."
And before Blount could stop him he was gone.
Though he had eaten nothing since the early breakfast in the service-car on the way to Lewiston, Evan Blount let the dinner hour go by unnoted. For a long time after Gantry had left him he sat motionless, a prey to thoughts too bitter to find expression in words; the dismaying thoughts of the hard-pressed champion who has discovered that his foes are of his own household.
Apart from the one great boyhood sorrow, a sorrow which had been allowed unduly to magnify itself with the passing years, he had never been brought face to face with any of the hardnesses which alone can make the soldier of life entirely intrepid in the shock of battle. In the backward glance he saw that his homeless youth had been, none the less, a sheltered youth; that his father's love and care had built and maintained invisible ramparts which had hitherto shielded him. It was most humiliating to find that the crumbling of the ramparts was leaving him naked and shivering; to find that he was so far out of touch with his pioneer lineage as to be unable to stand alone.
But there are better things in the blood of the pioneers than a latter-day descendant of the continent-conquering fathers may be able to discern in the moment of defeat and disaster. Slowly, so slowly that he did not recognize the precise moment at which the tide of depression and wretchedness reached its lowest ebb and turned to sweep him back to a firmer footing, Blount found himself emerging from the bitter waters. Gantry, the Gantry whom he had been calling hard names, setting him down as at best a lovable but wholly unprincipled time-server, had pointed a possible way to retrieval, heroically effacing himself that the way might be unobstructed. With the warm blood leaping again, Blount straightened himself in his chair. He would go to his father, not as a son begging a boon, but as a man demanding his rights. The machine had seen fit to throw down the challenge by burglarizing his office and robbing him. Very good; there were five days remaining in which to strike back. He would lift the challenge, and if his reasonable demand should be refused, he would drop the railroad crusade and break into the wider field of bossism and machine-mademajorities, ploughing and turning it up to the light as he could.
The fiery resolution had scarcely been taken when he heard the door of Collins's outer room open and close, and a moment later the good-looking young stenographer came in, bringing a breath of the crisp autumn evening with him.
"I didn't know you were back, Mr. Blount!" he exclaimed. "I saw the office lights from the street, and thought somebody had left them turned on. Is there anything I can do?"
"Yes; sit down," said Blount crisply, and then: "Collins, what do you do with yourself when I am out of town?"
"I stay here most of the time. I went out early this afternoon, but I don't often do it."
"Were you here all day yesterday?"
"Yes."
"Was there anything unusual going on?"
The young man looked away as if he expected to find his answer in the farther corner of the room.
"I don't know as you'd call it unusual," he replied half-hesitantly. "There were a good many callers. Shall I bring you the list?"
"Yes."
The stenographer went out to his desk and brought back a slip of paper with the names.
"This man Gryson," said Blount, running his eye over the memorandum, "I see you've got him down four or five times. What did he want?"
"He wouldn't tell me. But he was all kinds of anxious to see you. That was why I telegraphed you; I couldn't get rid of him any other way."
"Let me see the copy of the message."
Again Collins made a journey to his desk, returning with the telegraph-impression book open at the proper page. Blount glanced at the copy of the brief message: "Thomas Gryson wants to know when he can be sure of finding you here," and handed the book back.
"How did you send that?" he asked.
"I sent it down to the despatcher's office by Barney."
Blount nodded. The message had not reached him; and its suppression was doubtless another move in the subtle game.
"You say you couldn't find out what Gryson wanted?" he pressed.
"He—he seemed to be all torn up about something; couldn't say three words without putting a cuss word in with them. The most I could get out of him was that somebody was trying to double-cross him."
Blount took a cigar from his pocket and lighted it. He was faint for lack of food, but he absently mistook the hunger for the tobacco craving.
"Collins," he said evenly, "you appear to forget at times that you are working for a man who has had some little experience with unwilling witnesses in the courts. You are not telling me the truth; or, at least, you're not telling me all of it. Let's have the part that you are keeping back."
"The—the last time he was in, he—he did talk a little," faltered the young man. "He's got something to sell, and he's f-fighting mad at Mr. Kittredge. He said he was going to throw the gaff into somebody damn' quick if Mr. Kittredge didn't wipe off the slate and c-come across with the price."
"That is better," was the brief comment. "Now, then, why did you lie to me in the first place?"
The stenographer shut his eyes and shrunk lower in his chair, but he made no reply.
"I'll tell you why you lied," Blount went on, less harshly. "It was because you were told to. Isn't that so?"
Collins nodded.
Reaching out quickly, Blount laid a hand on the young man's knee. "Fred, what do you think of a soldier who takes his pay from one side and fights on the other? That is what you've been doing, you know; it is what you did when you put a dozensheets of blank paper into an envelope the other day—the day I sent you to get a file of letters marked 'private' from the safe."
The culprit drew away from the touch of the hand on his knee, and there was fear, and behind the fear the courage of desperation, in his eyes when he lifted them.
"You can give me the third degree if you want to, Mr. Blount, but as long as I've got the breath to say no, I'll never tell you the next thing you're going to ask me!"
Blount sprang up and went to stand at the window. There was a street arc-lamp swinging in itshigh sling some distance below the window level, its scintillant spark changing weirdly to blue and green and back to blinding orange, and he stared so steadily at it that his eyes were full of tears when he turned to look down upon the waiting culprit.
"No, Collins; I'm not going to ask you the name of the other master for whom you have thrown me down," he said gravely; and then: "That's all—you may go now."
The young man got up and groped for the hat which had fallen from his hands to the floor and rolled away out of reach.
"You mean that I'm to get my time-check?" he asked.
"No," he grated—the harshness returning suddenly. "You are disloyal, and I know it; your successor would probably be the same, and I shouldn't know it."
Nerved to the strident pitch now by the new resolution, Blount hurriedly set his desk in order, slammed it shut, and followed the stenographer to the street level. In the avenue he hesitated for a moment, the thoughts shuttling swiftly. In a flash the inferences fell into place. Gantry had said that his father was responsible for the time-killing journey to Lewiston. Why had it been necessary? Was it to keep him out of Gryson's way? What did the ward-organizer have to communicate that made him so anxious to secure an interview? Was that anxiety the breach through which the wider field of corruption might be reached?
Again swift decision came to its own and Blount faced to the right, walking rapidly until he turned in at the foot of the worn double flight of stairs leading to the editorial rooms ofThe Plainsman. Blenkinsop, the editor, a lean, haggard man with a sallow face, coarse black hair worn always a little longer than the prevailing cut, and deep-set, gloomy eyes, was at his desk.
"Can you give me a few minutes of your time, Blenkinsop?" the caller asked shortly.
"I can sell 'em to you, maybe," said the editor, and the lift of the gloomy eyes merely served to turn the jest into a bit of morbid sarcasm. Then he gave the sarcasm a half-bitter twist: "You railroad gentlemen are always willing to buy what you can't reach out and take."
"I know that is what you believe," said Blount, drawing up a broken chair and planting himself carefully in it; "we are on opposite sides of the fence in this fight, if you are fighting the railroad merely because it is a railroad; otherwise, perhaps, we are not so far apart as we might be. I don't know whether or not you have listened to any of my speeches, but you've printed a good many of them."
The editor nodded. "I've read 'em, and I'm willing to be the hundredth man and say that I believe you are individually honest. I hope you're not going to ask me to go any further than that."
"I'm not; I came for quite another purpose.First, let me ask a frank question: IsThe Plainsmanout for a square deal all around, regardless of who may be hit?"
Blenkinsop took time to consider the question and his answer, chewing thoughtfully upon his extinct cigar while he reflected.
"This is straight goods?" he asked finally. "You're not trying to pull me into an admission that can be used against us a little later on?"
"At the present moment you are talking to Evan Blount, the man, and not to the Transcontinental company's lawyer, Blenkinsop."
"All right; then I'll tell you flat that we are out for blood. We hold no brief for any living man. There are no strings tied to us, and we wear nobody's brass collar."
"Then you are fighting the machine as well as the railroad?" Blount put in quickly.
The editor sat back in his chair, and the two furrows which deepened upon either side of his hard-bitted mouth answered for a smile.
"When you find a machine that hasn't got 'T-C.R.' lettered on it somewhere, you let us know about it," was his rather cryptic reply.
"That is not the point," said Blount dryly. "Here is the question I wanted to ask: There are only five days intervening before the election. How wide a swath could you cut if the evidence of wholesale corruption could be placed in your hands within twenty-four hours?"
Again the editor took time to consider. When he spoke it was to say: "I can't quite believe that you are going to be disloyal to your salt at this late stage of the game, Blount. Do you mean that you are going to show your own company up for what it really is?"
"Never mind about that. I asked a question, and you haven't answered it."
"It was a question of time, wasn't it? There's time enough to tip the skillet over and spill all the grease into the fire, if that's what you mean; always time enough, up to the last issue before the polls open."
"And you'd do it—no matter who might happen to get in the way of the burning grease?"
"We print the news, and we try to get all the news there is. But it would have to be straight goods, Blount; no 'ifs' and 'ands' about it. I'm not saying that you couldn't produce the goods, you know. If you could break into Gantry's and Kittredge's private files, the trick would be turned. But I know well enough you're not going to do that."
Blount got up out of the broken chair and buttoned his coat.
"I needn't take any more of your time just now," he said. "I merely wanted to know how far you'd go if somebody should happen along at the last moment and give you a plain map of the road."
"We'll go as far, and drive as hard, as any newspaper this side of the Missouri River. But we've got to have the facts—don't forget that."
Blount was turning to go, but he faced around again sharply.
"Do you mean to tell me, Blenkinsop, that you don't know, as well as you know you're alive, that this campaign is honeycombed with deals and trades and dishonesty and trickery in every legislative district?" he demanded.
Again the ghastly smile which was only a deepening of the natural furrows flitted across the editor's face.
"Of course, I know it," he returned. "But you'll excuse me if I say that I scarcely expected to have the railroad company's field-manager come and tell me about it."
Blount's grim smile was a match for the editorial face-wrinkling. "You are like a good many others, Blenkinsop; you see red when you hear the noise of a railroad train. Perhaps, a little later, I may be able to persuade you to see another color—yellow, for example. Let it go at that. Good-night."
Once more in the avenue, Blount turned his steps toward the Inter-Mountain. Since the campaignwas now in its final week, the clans were gathering in the capital, and the lobby of the great hotel was filled with groups of caucussing politicians. Blount was halted half a dozen times before he could make his way to the room-clerk's desk, and the pumping process to which he was subjected at each fresh stoppage would have amused him if the fiery resolution which was driving him on had not temporarily killed his sense of humor. It was evident that, in spite of all he had been saying and doing, a considerable majority of the caucussers were still regarding him as his father's lieutenant. He did not try very hard to remove the impression. It mattered little, in the present crisis, what the various party henchmen thought or believed.
It was a sharp disappointment when the room-clerk told him that his father and Mrs. Honoria and their guest had gone to the theatre. He was keyed to the fighting-pitch, and he wanted to have the deciding word spoken while his blood was up and there was still time to act. A glance at the clock showed him that he had a full half-hour to wait; and, as much to escape the buzzing lobbyists as to satisfy his hunger, he went to thecaféand ordered a belated dinner, choosing a table from which he could look out through the open doors and command themain entrance through which the theatre-goers would return.
He was through with the dinner, and was slowly sipping his black coffee, when he saw them come in. Since it was no part of his plan to dull the edge of opportunity by holding it first upon the social grindstone, he let the party of three go on to the elevators, and a little later sent a card up-stairs asking his father to meet him in the lounge on the mezzanine floor.
Having the advantage of time, he was first at the appointed meeting-place. He had drawn a chair to the balustrade, and was glooming thoughtfully down at the lobby gathering, upon which even the lateness of the hour appeared to have no dispersing effect, when a mellow voice behind him said: "Well, son, taking a quiet little squint at the menagerie?"
Blount got up and gave the speaker his chair, dragging up another for himself. The senator sat down and stretched his great frame like a man wearied. "Ah, Lord!" he said. "The old man isn't as young as he used to be, Evan, boy. There was a time once when eleven o'clock didn't seem any later to me than it does now to you; but it's gone by, son, and I don't reckon it'll ever come back again."
Blount drew his chair nearer. "I have a hard thing to say to you to-night, dad," he began, "and you mustn't make it harder by speaking of your—of the things that get near to me. I am a man grown, and a Blount, like yourself; I want you to give me back those papers which your dynamiter or somebody else in your pay took from my office safe three nights ago."
The senator's eyes lighted with the gentle smile, and the tips of the great mustaches twitched slightly.
"So McVickar's been telling tales out of school, has he?" he inquired half-jocularly.
"I have had no communication with Mr. McVickar. It wasn't necessary, nor is it needful for us to go aside out of the straight road. I want those papers. They are mine, and they were stolen."
The elder man smiled again. "What if I should say that I haven't got 'em, son—what then?" he asked mildly.
"I don't want you to say that. I want to believe that, however bitter this fight may grow, we shall still speak the truth to each other."
There was silence for a little time, and then the father broke it to say: "Reckon I could ask you what papers you mean, without roiling the water any more than it's already been roiled, son?"
"You may ask and I'll answer, if you'll let me say that it is hardly worth while for you to spar with me to gain time. I had certain documents—letters—which would have enabled me to come through clean with my own people—with the railroad management. You knew I had them; I was imprudent enough to boast of it one evening when we were dining together in your rooms. I know what I'm talking about, dad, when I make thisdemand of you. One of my clerks has been tampered with. Three days ago, when I asked him to bring me the letters from the safe, he brought me, instead, a packet of blank paper which he allowed me to go and lock up in my safety-box in the Sierra National. I don't know why you had the safe blown up, unless it was to save Collins's face."
Again a silence intervened, and in the midst of it the senator sat up and began to feel half-absently in his pockets for a cigar. Blount offered his own pocket-case, following it with the tender of a lighted match. With the cigar going, the Honorable David settled back in the deep chair, chuckling thoughtfully.
"They wrote me from back yonder on the Eastern edge of things that you had the makings of a mighty fine lawyer in you, boy, and I'll be switched if I don't believe they had it about right. The way you've trailed this thing out doesn't leave the old man a hole as big as a dog-burrow to crawl out of, does it, now? Reckon you've sure-enough got to have those papers back before you can go on, do you?"
"You know I must. You know what I've been preaching and talking: I havemeant every word of it in good faith, and when I began to doubt the good faith of those behind me, I was forced to cast about for a weapon. It was handed to me almost miraculously, and as long as I held it my good name before the people of the State was safe. As the matter stands now, I'm a broken man, dad. After the election I shall be billeted from one end of the State to the other as the most shameless liar that ever breathed!"
The senator was rocking his great head slowly upon the chair-pillow. "That's bad; that's mighty bad, son. I reckon we'll have to fix some way to trail you out of that bog-hole, sure enough!"
"I'm not asking for help; I'm asking for bare justice. Give me those papers and I'll fight myself clear."
"And if I say I can't give 'em to you, Evan, boy, what then?"
"Then, hard and unfilial as it may seem to you, I shall fight you and your machine to a finish. You think I can't do it? I'll show you. I've got five days, and they are all my own. This campaign hasbeen rotten to the core from the very beginning. You have tried to keep me from finding it out, and you have partly succeeded. But I know a little, and inside of the next twenty-four hours I shall know more. That's my last word, dad, and it breaks my heart to have to say it. But, by the God who made us both, if you drive me to it, I shall stir up such a revolution in this State that the people will forget to curse me for the lies I have been allowed to tell them!"
Blount was upon his feet when he finished, andthe senator was rising stiffly from the depths of the big chair.
"That's good, man-sized talk, son," he commented gently, "and I reckon I haven't a word to say against it. All I'm going to beg for is this: we're kin, boy—mighty close kin. Belt away as hard as you like in the big scrap; it does me good to see that all these little Eastern frills haven't made you any less a two-fisted, hard-hitting Blount; but don't let it make you turn your back when your old daddy comes into the room. That's all I ask. Now you'd better go to bed and sleep up some. There's another day coming, and if there isn't, none of these little things we've been haggling over is going to count for much to any of us."
Three minutes later the Honorable Senator Sage-Brush was letting himself into the sitting-room of his suite on the private dining-room floor by means of his night-key. The small person whom Gantry and a few others were still calling the court of last resort was sitting up, and the tiny embroidery-frame on the table had evidently just been laid aside.
"Well?" she said inquiringly.
The senator shook his head in patient tolerance.
"Whatever you've been doing, it's knocked the bottom clean out for the boy, Honoria. For a little spell he had me going, and I thought I'd just naturally have to turn loose and spill all the fat into the fire."
"You mustn't do that," she returned quickly. "There are five days yet, and I need at least three of them. He was very angry?"
"Fighting mad."
"Of course," said the small one thoughtfully. "But we can't allow that to get in the way of the bigger things. It won't make any family break, will it? For Patricia's sake I shall be sorry if he is desperate enough to make the quarrel a personal one."
"I did the best I could on that, little woman, and I reckon he's big enough to keep on telling us 'Howdy.' What comesnext on the programme?"
"To-morrow I'm going to try to get him to take Patricia driving. Beyond that I haven't planned, and anyway it doesn't matter, now that you have Gryson out of the way." Then she offered a bit of news. "Richard Gantry telephoned me a few minutes ago. He has sent in his resignation, and is going to Peru."
The senator was opening the door to the adjoining bedroom and turning on the lights.
"Oh, no, I reckon not," he rejoined, with a mellow laugh rumbling deep in his great body. "Dick only thinks he is going to Peru. We all think such things now and then."
Blount's first move on the morning following the militant interview with his father was telegraphic; he wired the campaign chairmen in the three towns remaining on his list, cancelling his speaking-engagements. Beyond that he went forth to institute apainstaking search in the purlieus of the city, a quest having for its object the unearthing of the man Thomas Gryson. More and more he was coming to believe that this man was the key to a larger situation in the field of political corruption than any which had as yet developed. Wherefore he made the search thorough.
Oddly enough, considering the man and his habits, the quest proved fruitless. Blount was too clean a man to be on familiar terms with the saloon men and dive-keepers of the capital-city underworld, or with the crooks and turnings of the underworld itself; but he found his way around easily enough in daylight, and had his labor for his pains. For when he went back to the hotel at the luncheon-hour he brought little with him save a stench in his nostrils and a slightly increased fund of mystification. Gryson had disappeared as completely as if the earth had opened and swallowed him. And Blount knew the disappearance was real, because the ward-heeler's own henchmen were searching for him.
Daunted but not beaten, Blount meant to continue the quest in the afternoon. But man proposes, and a smalldea ex machinamay dispose. At thecaféfamily luncheon, at which Blount was careful to make his appearance, not only because Patricia was there, but also for the sake of keeping the kinsman peace his father had begged for, it transpired that Patricia had been promised an auto drive to Fort Parker, the military reservation sixteen miles to the westward, and that there were difficulties. The senator's wife took his arm and explained her dilemma at the table dispersal.
"It is parade day at the Fort, you know, and Patricia has set her heart on going. I don't know how I came to be so absurdly thoughtless, but I promised her before I remembered that this is the Kismet Club election afternoon, and if I don't go, they'll make me president again in spite of everything," she said in low tones as they were leaving thecafé. "I simplycan'tserve another year; and at the same time, I do so dislike to disappoint Patricia. She is such a dear girl!" Mrs. Honoria was strictly within the bounds of truth in claiming to have forgotten the date of the Kismet election of officers; but it was equally true that the club would re-elect her, present or absent, since she was its founder and chief patroness.
Blount saw the pointing of all this with perfect clarity, and he had no need to assure himself that it had every ear-mark of another expedient to gethim out of the way. But while he was with Mrs. Honoria and listening to her persuasive little appeals it was much harder to maintain the antagonistic attitude than it was when she figured—at a distance—merely as his father's second wife and his mother's supplanter. Foolish? Oh, yes; but at times when the star of impulse is in the ascendant every man hath a fool in his sleeve.
"Itistoo bad to disappoint her," he found himself saying, matching the little lady's low tone. "If I wasn't so terribly busy—"
"I know; and just now, with the election so near, you must be busier than ever. I suppose I shall have to explain to Patricia, and it hurts me, when she is going home so soon."
"Going home?" echoed the victim.
"Yes; in a few days now. The professor has already overstayed his leave of absence, so he says."
Blount clenched a figurative fist and shook it savagely at an unkind fate. Nevertheless, he fell.
"If you can shift your responsibility to my shoulders, Mrs. Blount—" he began, but she would not let him finish.
"Oh! that issogood of you, Evan. Take the little car, and be sure to ask the garage man to put in new batteries. The magneto isn't working very well. And be here by half past one if you can. The parade is at half past two, you know."
Under other conditions the railroad company's "social secretary," as the society editors of the capital were still calling him, might have had a joyous half-holiday. The autumn afternoon was picture-fine, the little car ran well, and Patricia's mood was tempered with the gayety which strives to extract the final thrill of enjoyment out of the closing days of a delightful vacation. Blount was grateful for the light-hearted mood. He felt that it would be next to impossible to tell Patricia how wretchedly he had failed in the single-handed crusade, and, as to the desperate alternative, there could be no confidences with one whose every reference to his father was shot through with loving and loyal admiration.
At the military reservation there were fewer opportunities for the confidences, or rather fewer temptations to indulge in them. It was a gala day at the post, and there were a number of auto parties out from the city. Blount knew most of the officers and their wives, and Patricia was welcomed not less for her own sake than for the reason that she had figured in former visits as theprotégéeof an ex-senator's wife. After the parade there was an impromptu game of baseball, with the broad verandas of the officers' quarters serving for the grandstand. Beyond the game there was tea, and the sunset gun had been fired before the young lieutenant, who had attached himself to Miss Anners at the earliest possible moment in the afternoon, reluctantly surrendered his prize and handed Patricia into the waiting runabout for the return to the capital.
"We shall be late for dinner, if we don't hurry," was the young woman's comment when Blount steered the little car clear of the post settlement and took the road well in the wake of the Weatherford touring machine. Then she added: "We mustn't be; we are dining out this evening—at the Gordons."
Blount was entirely willing to hurry. Half of one of the precious days of challenge had been wasted in the futile search for Gryson, and here was the other half worse than wasted, since the handsome young lieutenant had so brazenly monopolized Patricia.
"I'll get you home in time for dinner, never fear," he returned, but apparently the little car was no party to the promise. A short mile from the reservation the motor began to miss, and a few minutes farther along it stopped altogether. Blount got out and began to investigate. There was plenty of gasolene, but the spark appeared to be dead.
"I ought to have a leather medal!" he confided to Patricia, in great disgust. "Mrs. Blount told me that the batteries needed to be changed, and I had them changed, but neglected to have them tested. Sit still and let me spin it on the magneto a while."
She let him do it until the perspiration was standing in fine little beads on his forehead and he was hot and desperate. Then she said sweetly: "I don't believe I'd wear myself out that way, if I were you, Evan. Something happened to the magneto two or three weeks ago, and it has never been fixed."
Blount pushed his driving-cap back, mopped his face, and came around to dive once more into the wiring in the battery box. Dusk was coming on, and he had to light one of the side-lamps to serve as a lantern. By changing the wiring he was finally able to evoke a desultory response from the spark-coil, and a little later to start the motor after some limping fashion.
"Oh, my poor dinner!" said Miss Anners, who was still in the light-hearted mood; this after Blount's careful nursing had resulted in a creeping resumption of the cityward progress. And then: "I hope you didn't have any engagement for this evening?"
"I have but one ambition in life," he rejoined grimly, "and that is to get you back to the hotel in time for your engagement. Surely Mrs. Blount will wait for you."
At the rate they were going the waiting promised to be long. But after another half-hour had been killed, the headlights of a westward-driven car appeared in the road ahead. Blount pulled quickly into the ditch and jumped out to flag the oncoming machine; did flag it, and was able to borrow a set of batteries. With the new equipment the remainder of the drive was accomplished swiftly, but not swiftly enough. At the Inter-Mountain they found that the senator and Mrs. Honoria had gone to keep their dinner engagement, and a note in the little lady's copperplate handwriting informed Blount that the invitation had been made to include him, and that he was to hurry and bring Patricia.
Fully alive now to the time-killing purpose of the clever little machinator in arranging to have spent batteries given him, Blount, nevertheless, did his duty like a man, and the pair made a late descent upon the Gordon dinner-table. Though the dinner was informal, there were other guests besides the senator's party, and among them the traffic manager. Blount, sitting next to Patricia, made their tardiness an excuse and devoted himself to her, thus escaping the toils of the general table-talk, which was frankly political. But at the adjournment to the drawing-room he cornered Gantry.
"I meant to hunt you up this afternoon," he began, "but I was otherwise spoken for. What have you done?"
"I've cabled a conditional acceptance of the offer I was telling you about."
"But you haven't resigned?"
"No. Mr. McVickar will probably be here within a day or two, and I'll make it verbal."
Yielding to the urgings of the younger Gordon, Patricia was going to the piano, and Blount snatched at his opportunity.
"Give me a few minutes in the smoking-room,"he said to the traffic manager, and when the privacy was secured: "You needn't resign, Dick. There isn't going to be any earthquake—of the kind you were fearing."
"You don't mean that the Honorable Senator has turned you down, Evan?"
"Just that."
"I'm sorry," said the friend in need, feeling his way cautiously. Then he added: "You needn't tell me anything more than you want to, you know."
"There isn't much to tell. I asked for bare justice, and it was refused."
"Your father has the papers?"
"He neither admitted nor denied."
"But you didn't quarrel?"
Blount's smile was mirthless. "We are here together, as you see. After all is said, we are still father and son."
"Of course; that's as it should be, Evan. What are you going to do?"
"I don't know: go on fighting until I'm wiped out, I suppose. And that reminds me: have you seen that fellow Gryson within the last day or two?"
Gantry dropped into the depths of a lounging-chair and lighted a cigarette. "So you're after Thomas Matthew, too, are you? Kittredge has been ransacking the town for him all day, and up to a couple of hours ago he hadn't found him. What's in the wind?"
"I don't know, but I mean to find out. What can you tell me about Gryson—more than you have already told me?"
"Not very much, I guess. He's a scalawag, of course, but unhappily for all of us he is a scalawag with a pull. Kittredge has been dickering with him—I don't mind telling you that now."
"What is the nature of the pull?"
"Votes," said Gantry succinctly.
"Straight or crooked?"
"You may search me. But knowing Tom Gryson a little, I should put my money on the marked card."
"Naturally," said Blount dryly. "Still, I am needing to be shown. I've had two or three chances to size Gryson up, and he didn't impress me as a man with any ability beyond the requirements of a bully and the lowest type of a political heeler."
"Tom is bigger than that; I don't know how much bigger, but some. He has votes to sell, and Kittredge, at least, seems to believe that he can deliver the goods. I don't know the inside of the deal. I'll tell you frankly that I tried to shove it over to you, neck and heels, at first. When that little notion failed, I pushed it along to Kittredge."
Blount's eyebrows, which promised in time to be as portentous as the Honorable Senator's, met in a frown. "I'm going to find Gryson, dead or alive," he said.
Gantry looked up quickly.
"Which means that you know what has become of him?"
"He has been put out of the way for a purpose,and the purpose is to keep me from finding out something that Gryson wants to tell me. That was the animus of the scheme to send me on a fool's errand to Lewiston. After you left me last night I found out that Gryson had been worrying Collins the day before; had been in the office a number of times and was sweatingly anxious about something."
Gantry flung his cigarette away and lighted another. After a deep inhalation or two he said: "Let it alone, Evan. I have a hunch that you'll be happier if you don't try to drag the cover off of that particular cesspool."
"Listen," said Blount shortly. "When my father turned me down last night I told him that I still had five days in which to—"
"I know," Gantry nodded. "Just the same, you're not going to do it."
"If I don't, it will be because I can't; because the time is too short." Then, with a sudden and impulsive gesture of appeal: "Dick, for Heaven's sake help me to find that man Gryson, if you know where he is! I shall blow up if I can't do something!"
Gantry rose and tossed the second cigarette among the coals in the grate.
"I've been afraid all along that they'd corner you and beat you to death with feather-dusters," he lamented. "And the only thing I can say will make matters worse instead of better. I have it pretty straight that Gryson has been fired—shooed out of town, and probably out of the State."
"Who did it, Gantry?"
"There is only one man in this bailiwick who can take the whip to a fellow like Tom Gryson. I guess I don't need to name him for you, Evan."
Blount got out of his chair and stood with his back to the fire, and his face was white.
"Good God! the rottenness of it, Dick!" he groaned. And then: "I've got to get out of this and begin all over again in some corner of the world where at least one man in ten hasn't forgotten the meaning of common honesty and decency and fair dealing. Heaven knows I'm no saint, but if I stay here this cursed crookedness will get into my blood and I'll be just as degraded as the worst of them. No, I'm not raving; there have been times when I've felt myself slipping—times when I've been tempted to get down and fight with the weapons that everybodyfights with in this God-forsaken, law-breaking, graft-ridden commonwealth!"
Gantry had risen and he was slowly shaking his head.
"You're hot now—and with good enough cause, I guess. But that sort of a temperature makes a man near-sighted and color-blind. Human nature is pretty much the same the world over, Evan, and if you could see beyond the crookedness you'd find a lot of good people out here, averaging about the same as the decent majority anywhere. It's an inarticulate majority generally; it doesn't stand up on its hind legs and rear around and call attention to itself—couldn't if it should try. But it's here and there and everywhere in America, just the same. A railroad car with one drunken fool in it gives you the idea. You focus on him and say, 'What a beastly shame!' and you entirely overlook the other fifty-odd people in the car who are quietly minding their own business."
Blount's smile was for the man rather than for the theory.
"You are an implacable optimist, Dick, and you always have been," he returned. "Your theory is good humanitarianism, and I wish I could accept it as applying to this abandoned community out here in my native hills; but I can't. Let's go backto the others. We've established a sort of familymodus vivendi, my father and I, and I don't want him to think that I'm breaking it by plotting with you."