Chapter VII: Part 7

Blount saw the figure of a small man with his cap pulled down over his ears bending over the wrecked cash-box. At the upblazing of the ceiling lights, the man sprang to his feet and fled, going out through the door by which Blount had just entered, and snapping the light-switch as he passed to leave the rooms in darkness.

Blount was cursing his own lack of presence of mind when he turned to follow the escaping burglar. In the darkness he fell over a chair, and by the time he had disentangled himself and had reached the corridor the safe-blower was gone. Racing to the elevator, Blount rang the bell until the sleepy car-tender set the machinery in motion and lifted himself to the floor of happenings. Here the incident ended abruptly, so far as any helpful discoveries were concerned. The elevator-man had carried no one down, and he confessed shamefacedly that he had again been asleep, and could not say whether or not anybody had descended the stair which circled the elevator-shaft.

Blount went back to his office, turned in a police alarm, and waited until a policeman came from the nearest station. Then he went to report the safe-blowing in person to the night captain on duty in the basement of the City Hall. A drowsy clerk took notes of the story, and the night captain contented himself with asking a single question.

"Do you know how much you lost, Mr. Blount?"

"Nothing of any great consequence, I imagine," said Blount, remembering, with an inward thrill of thankfulness, the morning impulse which had prompted him to transfer the one thing of inestimable consequence to the security of the bank safe-deposit box. Then he added: "There was a little money in the box, and some papers of no especial value to anybody. Just the same, captain, I want that man caught."

"We'll catch him, come morning," was the assurance, and then Blount went away and carried out his original intention of going to the Inter-Mountain and to bed.

To bed; but, for a long hour after the post-midnight quiet had settled down upon the great hostelry, not to sleep. If he had asked himself why he could not close his eyes and take the needed rest, the exciting incident in which he had lately been an actor would have offered a sufficient answer. But in reality the sharpened spur of wakefulness penetrated much more deeply. Beyond all doubt or shadow of doubt, it was the sinister, many-armed machine which had reached out to seize and destroy the evidence against its allies and fellow conspirators, the lawbreaking railroad company and the vote-selling corporations.

And, again beyond doubt, he made sure, it was his own boast made to his father which had been passed on to tell the sham burglar where to look and what to look for.

XVII

ON THE KNEES OF THE HIGH GODS

In the evening of the day following the safe-blowing in Blount's office, a one-car train, running as second section of the Overland, slipped unostentatiously into the capital railroad yard. With as little stir as it had made in its arrival, the single-car train took a siding below the freight station, where it would be concealed from the prying eyes of any chance prowler from the newspaper offices.

Coincident with the side-tracking O'Brien, the vice-president's stenographer, dropped from the step of the car and went in search of a telephone. When O'Brien was safely out of the way, a small man, clean-shaven and alert in his movements, whipped out of the shadows of the nearest string of box-cars, pushed brusquely past the guarding porter, and presented himself at the desk in the roomy office compartment of the private car.

The vice-president looked up and nodded. "How are you, Gibbert?" he said, and then: "You may condense your report. I have seen the newspapers. In passing I may say that it isn't much to your credit that you had to fall back upon the methods of the yeggmen."

"There wasn't any other way," protested the small man. "The papers were locked up in the cash-box of the safe, and young Blount carried the only key."

"It was crude; not at all worthy of a man of your ability, Gibbert. And if the newspapers tell it straight, you came near being caught. How did that happen?"

"Blount went to a ball, and I shadowed him. His girl was there, and it looked like a safe bet that he'd stay to see the lights put out. But he didn't."

"Well, never mind; you got the papers, I suppose?"

The company detective drew a thick envelope from his pocket and laid it upon the desk. The vice-president tore it open and read rapidly through the file of letters it had enclosed, tearing them one by one from the hold of the brass fastener at the upper left-hand corner as he glanced them over. "The chuckle-headed fools!" he gritted, apostrophizing the writers of the letters. And then: "Gibbert, I'd like to go into this a little deeper, if we had time; I'd like to know why in hell every man in this State with whom we've had a private business arrangement found it necessary to spread the details out on paper and send them to young Blount! Here; burn these things as I hand them to you."

The small man struck a match and, using the wide-mouthed metal cuspidor for an ash-pan, lighted the letters one at a time as they were given to him. When the cinder skeleton of the final sheet had been crushed into ashes, he rose from his knees and reached for his hat.

"Any other orders?" he asked.

"No; nothing more. You are reasonably sure that you haven't been recognized here by any of our local people?"

"I've kept the 'make-up' on most of the time. I've been in Mr. Gantry's office a couple of times, and in Mr. Kittredge's once, and neither of them caught on to me."

"That's good. You'd better go now. O'Brien has gone after Gantry and Kittredge, and I don't care to have them find you here. Better take the first train back to Chicago. These mutton-headed police here might possibly get on your track, and we don't want to have to explain anything to them."

Five minutes after the small man had dropped from the step of the "008," to disappear in the box-car shadows, Gantry and Kittredge came down the yard and entered the private car. Again the vice-president said, "How are you?" and nodded toward the nearest chairs. "Sit down; I'll be through in a minute," and he went on reading the file of papers taken up at the departure of the detective. At the end of the minute he shot a question at the two who were waiting.

"You got my message?"

Gantry answered for himself and the superintendent. "Yes. Your orders have been carried out. The yards are posted, and nobody, outside of a few of our own men, knows that your car is here."

The vice-president took one of the long black cigars from the open box on the flat-topped desk, and passed the box to his two lieutenants.

"Light up," he said tersely. "I'm due in Twin Canyons City to-morrow morning, and we've got to thresh this thing out in a hurry. Any change in the situation since your last report?"

Gantry shook his head. "Nothing very important. Blount's up-town office was broken into last night and his safe ripped open with dynamite, as I suppose you have read in the papers. Who did it, or why it was done, nobody seems to know."

"Well, what came of it?"

"Nothing, so far as I can find out," returned the traffic manager. "Blount had been to the Gordon dance, and he saw the light in his office as he was coming down-town. When he went up to find out what was going on, he caught the safe-blower fairly in the act, but the fellow got away."

"Did Blount lose anything?"

"That's the queer part of it. Blount won't say much about it; and this morning he went around to police headquarters and told the chief to drop the matter, giving as his reason that he was too busy to prosecute the fellow even if he was caught."

To a disinterested observer it might have seemed a little singular that the vice-president made no further comment upon the burglary. As a matter of fact, his next question completely ignored it.

"What has Blount been doing this week?" he asked.

"He has spoken twice; once at Arequipa and once at Hellersville. I understand he has engagements enough to keep him out of town right up to election day."

"That is good," was the nodded approval. "He would only be in the way here at the capital." And then pointedly to Gantry: "Any more of that nonsense about putting a barrel of powder under us and blowing us all up if we don't build the freight tariffs over to suit his notion?"

"A good bit more of it," Gantry admitted reluctantly. "The other day he went so far as to set a time limit; gave me three days of grace in which to file the public notice of the change in rates."

"What did you do?"

"I filed the notice--taking care that the only copy should be the one I sent to Blount's office."

The vice-president looked coldly at his division traffic manager.

"There are times, Gantry, when you seem to be losing your grip. Dave Blount's son isn't a school-boy, to be fooled by such a transparent trick as that! Don't you suppose he knows, as well as you do, that the public notice has to be filed in every station on the road?"

"I had to take a chance--I've had to take a good many chances," protested the traffic manager in his own defence; and Kittredge, a bearded giant who was fully the vice-president's match in heroic physique, removed his cigar to say: "That young fellow has been a frost. If he isn't a wild-eyed fanatic, as Gantry insists he is, he is deeper than the deep blue sea! I'd just about as soon have a box of dynamite kicking around underfoot as to have him messing in this campaign fight. I've been keeping cases on him, as you ordered, and he has worn out three of my best office men on the job."

"You are prejudiced, Kittredge," was the vice-president's comment. "It was the best move in the entire campaign--putting him in the field. Apart from the public sentiment he has been turning our way, we mustn't lose sight of the fact that we got hold of him at a time when the Honorable Senator was getting ready to turn us down."

"Speaking of the sentiment," Gantry put in, "I don't know whether it's all sentiment or not. There's a sort of mystery mixed up in this speech-making business of Blount's. At first I thought maybe his sudden popularity was due to some word sent out from your Chicago office; but when you told me it wasn't, I began to do a little speculating on my own account. I can't make up my mind yet whether it is pure popularity, or whether it's the assisted kind."

"Assisted?" said the vice-president, with a lifting of the heavy eyebrows.

"Yes. It has been too unanimous. I have a trustworthy man in Blount's up-town office, and he says the invitations have fluttered in like autumn leaves; more than Blount could accept if he travelled continuously. Kittredge's men report that the speech-making has been a triumphant progress all over the State; bands, receptions, committees, and banquets wherever Blount goes."

Mr. McVickar grunted. "The speeches have been all that anybody could ask. I've been reading them."

Kittredge shook his head.

"Gantry says they are, but I say no," he contended. "There is such a thing as putting too much sugar in the coffee. Blount's overdoing it; he's putting the whitewash on so thick that any little handful of mud that happens to be thrown will stick and look bad."

"Of course, we have to take chances on that," was the vice-president's qualifying clause. "Nevertheless, young Blount's talk has undoubtedly had its effect upon public sentiment. We must be careful not to let the opposition newspapers get hold of anything that would tend to nullify it."

"They are moving heaven and earth to do it," said the superintendent. "The Honorable David is lying low, as he usually does, but I more than half believe he's getting ready to give us the double-cross. That is the explanation of this safe-blowing scrape, as I put it up."

Again the vice-president failed to comment further on the burglary. "What I am most afraid of, now, is that our young man may be, as you say, Kittredge, a trifle over-zealous," he said musingly. "We have discovered that he is something of a fanatic."

"He's more than that," Kittredge cut in quickly. "One of the men I've had following him--Farnsworth--is as good as any Pinkerton that ever walked. He says Blount isn't half so innocent as he looks and acts. The speech-making has taken him into every corner of the State, and Farnsworth says he has been doing a lot of quiet prying around and investigating on the side."

"I've been thinking," Gantry added, "what a beautiful mix-up we should have if the senator and his son should both conclude to pull out and get together at the last moment."

The master plotter shook his head. "You have no sense of perspective, Gantry. Young Blount is with us solely because he is too straightforward to countenance his father's political methods. On the other hand, if the Honorable Dave should turn upon us now, he would be obliged to do it at the expense of his son's reputation. Anything he could say against us would simply have the effect of holding his son up to public exprobration as a common campaign liar. I know David Blount pretty well; he won't do anything like that."

Gantry bit his lip and a slow smile of respectful admiration crept up to the Irish eyes.

"When it comes to the real fine-haired work, you have us all feeling for hand-holds, Mr. McVickar," he said. "Now I know why you made a place for Evan Blount, and why you have been giving him a free hand on the whitewashing. It's the biggest thing that has ever been pulled off in Western politics!"

"It hasn't been pulled off yet," was the quick reply. "We are holding old David in a noose that may turn into a rope of sand at any minute; don't forget that. During the few days intervening before the election we must preserve the present status at any cost. Young Blount is the only man who may possibly disturb it. Keep him out of the way. If he doesn't have speaking invitations enough to busy him, see to it that he gets them. As long as you can keep him talking he won't have any time for side issues. Now about this Gryson business: you want to handle that yourselves, and I don't want any more telegrams like the one you sent me last night, Gantry. What's the condition?"

Gantry outlined the Gryson "condition" briefly. The man Gryson, who had developed into a heeler of sorts, had been growing restive, wanting more money.

"What can he swing?" was the curt question.

"Six out of seven pretty close counties. I don't pretend to know how he has done it, but he has got the goods; I've taken the trouble to check up on him. With his pull, we can swing the vote of the capital itself."

The vice-president frowned thoughtfully. "The old game of stuffing the registration lists, I suppose," he said. And then: "Young Blount hasn't got wind of this, has he?"

Gantry laughed. "You may be sure he hasn't. He has it in for Gryson on general principles--made us take him off the shop pay-rolls. If he thought we were dickering with him now, he'd be down on us like a thousand of brick."

"Well, why don't you fix Gryson, once for all, and have it over with? You oughtn't to expect me to come here and tell you what to do!"

It was at this point that Kittredge broke in.

"Gryson isn't safe. I have it straight that he is getting ready to sell us out. That's why he wants his pay in advance."

The vice-president's heavy brows met in a frown, and the muscles of his square jaw hardened.

"Put Gryson on the rack and show him what you've got on him in that Montana bank robbery. That will bring him to book. It will be time enough to talk about terms when he delivers the goods. Now another thing--that Shonoho Inn matter that I wired about--what has been done?"

"It is all arranged," said the big superintendent. "The house was closed for the season last month, and we have taken a short lease. One of our dining-car managers will take charge of the service."

"And the wires?"

"We have made a cut-in from the old Shoshone Mine wire, which wasn't taken down when the mine was abandoned. That let us out very neatly, and no one outside of our own line-men know anything about the job. We have four instruments in the hotel writing-room; two on the commercial and two on the railroad wires. Will that be enough?"

Mr. McVickar nodded and reached over to press the bell-push which signalled to his train conductor.

"That is about all I have to say," he said, in dismissal of the two local officials. "Just nail Gryson up to the cross, where he belongs, and keep young Blount busy and out of town; I leave the details to you. Get orders for me as you go up to your office, Kittredge, and have the despatcher let me out as soon as possible. I ought to be half-way to Alkali by this time."

XVIII

THE CHASM

It was young Ranlett, a reporter for _The 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?"

"I did."

"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 of _The 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 are still 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--_all_ the all. Now, will you go up to _The Capital_ office 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 importunate political manager. Half-way up the first square he said: "There is no use in our going to _The Capital_ office 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 on the 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 headquarters in 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 call up 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 to the 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 the pointing 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 the close 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.

XIX

A COG IN THE WHEEL

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 silent charge 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 busy for 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 bring me 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 be saved 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--simply _got_ to 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 it _pronto_. Your time's mighty short, anyway. So long."

And before Blount could stop him he was gone.

XX

A STONE FOR BREAD

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-made majorities, 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.