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 this demand 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 have meant 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 has been 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, and the 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 comes next 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."



XXI

THE UNDER-DOG

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 a painstaking 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 small dea ex machina may dispose. At the cafe family 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 the cafe. "I simply can't serve 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 get him 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.

"It is too 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 is so good 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 the protegee of 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 everybody fights 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 back to the others. We've established a sort of family modus vivendi, my father and I, and I don't want him to think that I'm breaking it by plotting with you."

It was while the evening was still measurably young that Blount made his excuses to his hostess and got away, fondly believing that he was escaping without attracting the attention of the small lady who was deep in a political discussion with candidate Gordon at the critical moment. He was mistaken, but the escape was not interrupted. At the curb the Blount touring-car was waiting, with two others, and for an instant Blount hesitated, half inclined to ask his father's chauffeur, to drive him down-town. On such inconsequent pivots fate, or accident, twirls the most momentous affairs of life. If Blount had taken the car he would have been driven directly to the hotel. As it was, he walked, and in passing the Temple Court Building he remembered that he had not seen his mail since early morning.

Rousing the sleepy boy in charge of the all-night elevator, he had himself lifted to his office floor. The upper corridor was dimly lighted, and on leaving the car he went directly to the door of his private room, walking swiftly and neither seeing nor hearing a man who, materializing mysteriously out of the corridor shadows, followed him step by step.

In the office Blount snapped the lights on and turned to unlock his desk. As the key clicked in the lock the sixth sense, which is perhaps only a mingling of the subtler essences of the other five, warned him sharply, and he wheeled to face the door which had been left on the latch. As he looked, the door opened silently and the materializing shadow, haggard of face and with bloodshot eyes mirroring blind rage and the terror of a cornered rat, slipped into the room and stood warily aside out of the direct light from the electric chandelier. Blount looked again and swore softly. The dodging intruder was the man Thomas Gryson.



XXII

THE ICONOCLAST

It is a threadbare saying that the environment moulds the man. Yet, much more than the philosophers have contended, there are chameleon tendencies in the strongest character, and one finely determining to coerce his surroundings is quite likely to end by realizing that the surroundings have appealed to unsuspected color-changings in himself. Thus it may chance that the fairest fighter, finding himself sufficiently kicked and cuffed in the rough-and-tumble, will discover how facilely easy it is to descend to the level of his antagonists, and from this discovery to the awakening of the remorseless passion for success at any price is but a step, long or short according to the exigencies of the struggle.

Checked in his luggage, if not precisely pinned openly upon his sleeve, Blount had brought with him from the scholastic banks of the Charles a choice assortment of ideals, which are things precious only as they can be preserved inviolate. But for weeks, endless weeks as they seemed to him in the retrospect, he had been rubbing shoulders with a crude world which appeared to care little for ideals and less for the man who upheld them. Inevitably, as he had admitted to Gantry, the change was wrought, or working; the exclamation springing to his lips when he recognized Gryson evinced it, and when he beckoned the shifty intruder to the chair at the desk end the ruthless zeitgeist had taken full possession of him, and the thought uppermost had grown suddenly indifferent to the means if by their employment the end might be gained.

"Come over here and sit down," he commanded; then, seeing that Gryson hesitated and flung a glance over his shoulder at the door: "What are you afraid of?"

"They've got my number," said the ward-heeler, in a convict whisper which was little more than a facial contortion. "There's a couple o' bulls waitin' f'r me down on the sidewalk."

Blount crossed the room, shut the door and locked it. Then he went back to the self-confessed fugitive.

"You're safe for the time being," he told the man. "Now talk fast and talk straight. What do you want this time?"

Gryson hammered the arm of his chair with his fist and babbled profanity. When he became coherent he told his story, or rather Blount got it out of him piecemeal, of how he had been employed by the "organization" to falsify the registration lists in certain districts; of how, when the work was done, he had been denied the price and driven out with cursings. In the accusation, which was shot through with tremulous imprecations, the "organization" and the railroad company were implicated as if they were one. In one breath the fugitive charged the "double-crossing" to Kittredge, and in the next he accused the "big boss" himself, of having passed the sentence of deportation.

"You say you were driven out? How could they drive you if you didn't want to go?" queried the cross-examiner.

"That's on me: it was a job I pulled off two years ago in another place—up north of this—and the night-watchman got in the way when I was leavin'. They jerked that on me and showed me th' rope. They had me by th' neck, with th' word passed to Chief Robertson. I'm back here now wit' my life in my hand, but I'd chance it twice over to get square wit' them welshers that have bawled me out!"

"Why have you come to me?" asked Blount briefly.

"Gawd knows; I took a chance again. I've heard your speeches, and says I, 'There's your wan chance, cully,' and I'm here to grab f'r it. If you've been meanin' the half of what you've been sayin', Mr. Blount—" There was more of it, half pleadings and half mere rageful babblings of a vengeful soul hampered by the tongue of inadequacy.

Blount left his chair and began to pace the floor, with Gryson watching him furtively. At any time earlier in the struggle the thought of using this wretched time-server as a means to any end, however desirable and just, would have been nauseating. True, if there could be any such thing as honor among thieves, the man had earned the price of his crooked work among the registration clerks; but for another man to profit by the broken bargain, and by the confessed criminal's rage and lust for vengeance, was a thing to make even a hard-pressed loser in an unequal battle hesitate.

The hesitation was only momentary. With a gesture which was more expressive than many words, Blount turned short upon the furtive watcher in the chair at the desk end.

"What do you want me to do?" he demanded.

"You're on before I could stall it f'r you. You've been swearin' you'd back th' square deal to th' limit; it ain't square; it's crooked as hell. Grab f'r this knife I'm handin' you and cut the heart out o' these welshin' bosses that are givin' you th' double-cross the same as they're givin' it to me. You're the on'y man that can do it; the on'y man on Gawd's green earth they're afraid of. I know it damn' well. That's why they handed my number to th' chief and passed th' word to have me pinched. They was afraid I'd come here and squeal to you!"

Blount stopped him with an impatient gesture. "Let that part of it rest and get down to business. What you have been telling me may be true, but I can't do anything on your bare word—the word of a man who is dodging the police. You've got to bring me proofs in black and white; lists of the faked names, and a straight-out give-away of how they are to be used; names and dates, and a written story of your bargainings with the men higher up. This is Thursday; to be of any use, these documents would have to be in my hands by Saturday noon, at the latest. You know best whether the thing can be done in time—or done at all. What do you say?"

For a little time Gryson said nothing. When he spoke it was evident that the lust for vengeance and a guilty conscience were fighting an even-handed battle.

"I could get the affidavits—maybe," he said. "There's a dozen 'r more of the cullies down-along got their notice to fade away when I got mine, and they'd jump at th' chance to get back at the bosses. But f'r Gawd's sake, look at what it means to me! Anny minute I'm on the job I'd be lookin' to see some bull with a star on 'im holdin' a gun on me; and after that, it's this f'r mine"—with a jerk of the head and a pantomimic gesture simulating the hangman's knot under his ear.

"That is your risk," said Blount coldly, making this small concession to the expiring sense of uprightness. "You know how badly you want to 'get square,' as you put it, and I am interested only in the results. If you get caught, I sha'n't turn my hand over to help you—you can take that straight. But if you show up here with the proofs, proofs that I can use, any time before Saturday night, I'll undertake to see that you get safely out of the State."

It was in the little pause which followed that some one in the corridor rapped smartly on the locked door. At the sound, Gryson collapsed and his face became an ashen mask of fear. Blount, the law-abiding, might have hesitated, but this newer Blount had slain his scruples. Snatching Gryson out of his chair, he thrust him silently through the half-open door of the work-room, and a moment later he was answering the rap at the corridor entrance, opening the door and calmly facing the two policemen on the threshold.

"Well?" he said brusquely.

One of the men touched his helmet.

"We're looking for a felly that ducked in below a couple of hours ago, Mr. Blount. He's in the building, somewheres, and your office being lighted, we thought maybe you'd—"

Blount threw the door wide.

"You can see for yourselves," he said. "Would you like to come in and look around?"

"Sure not; your word's as good as the search, Mr. Blount. 'Twas only on the chance that he might have faked an excuse and ducked in on you to be out of reach."

Blount left the door open and went to get his coat and hat.

"Who is the man?" he asked, while the officers lingered.

"A felly named Gryson. He's been working in the railroad shops what times he wasn't pullin' off something crooked in the p'litical line."

"What is he wanted for?" Blount was closing his desk and preparing to leave the office.

"Croaking a bank watchman up in Montana afther he'd souped the vault door for a kick-shot."

"In that case, perhaps I'm lucky that he didn't drop in and croak me," laughed Blount, turning off the lights and joining the two men in the corridor. And then: "There is a back stair to the engine-room in the basement in the other wing of the building: have you been watching that?"

The bigger of the two policemen prodded the other in the ribs with his night-stick. "That's on us, Jakey. He'll have been gone hours ago. Let's be drilling. 'Tis a fine mind ye have, Mr. Blount, to be thinking of thim back stairs right off the bat." And the pair went down in the elevator with Blount, chuckling to themselves at their own discomfiture.

Having set his hand to the plough, Blount did nothing carelessly. Sauntering slowly, and even pausing to light a cigar, he trailed the two policemen until they were safely in another street. Then he turned back to the great office building and once more had himself lifted to the upper floor. In the office corridor he waited until the car had dropped out of sight; waited still longer to give the drowsy night-boy time to settle himself on his stool and go to sleep. Then he went swiftly to the door of the private room and unlocked it.

Gryson was ready, and even in the dim light of the corridor Blount could see that he was white-faced and trembling. In the silent faring to the stair which wound down in a spiral around the freight elevator Blount gripped the arm of trembling.

"You've got to get your nerve," he gritted savagely, "or you'll be nipped before you've gone a block!" And then: "Here's the stair: follow it down until you get to the basement. There's a coal entrance from the alley, and the engineer will be with his boilers in the other wing—and probably asleep. You've got it straight, have you? You're to bring the papers to my office on or before Saturday night. I'll be looking out for you, and if you bring me the evidence, you'll be taken care of. That's all. Down with you, now, and go quietly. If you're caught, I drop you like a hot nail; remember that."

Still puffing at the cigar which glowed redly in the darkness of the wing corridor, Blount waited until his man had been given time to reach the basement. Then he walked slowly back to the main corridor and descended by the public stair without awakening the elevator boy, who was sleeping soundly in his car on the ground level.

On the short walk to the hotel the full significance of the thing he had done had its innings. Cynical criticism to the contrary notwithstanding, there is now and then an honest lawyer who regards his oath of admission to the bar—the oath which binds him to uphold the cause of justice and fair dealing—as something more than a mere form of words. Beyond all question, an honest man who has sworn to uphold the law may neither connive at crime nor shield a criminal. Blount tried the shift of every man who has ever stepped aside out of the plain path of rectitude; he told himself morosely that he had nothing to do with Gryson's past; that he had taken no retainer from the Montana authorities; that the criminal was merely a cog in a wheel which was grinding toward a righteous end, and as such should be permitted to serve his turn.

The well-worn argument is always specious to the beginner, and Blount thought he had sufficiently justified himself by the time he was pushing through the revolving doors into the Inter-Mountain lobby. But when he saw his father quietly smoking his bed-time cigar in one of the big leather-covered lounging-chairs, he realized that the first step had been taken in an exceedingly thorny path; that whatever else might be the outcome of the bargain with Thomas Gryson, a son was coldly plotting to bring disgrace and humiliation upon a father.

For this reason, and because, when all is said, blood is much thicker than water, Blount made as if he did not see the beckoning hand-wave from the depths of the big chair in the smokers' alcove; ignored it, and with set lips and burning eyes made for the nearest elevator to take refuge in his room.



XXIII

A CRY IN THE NIGHT.

With the critical election, a struggle which was to decide for another two-year period whether or not the people of the Sage-Brush State were to be the masters or the servants of chartered monopoly, only four days distant, the capital city took on the aspect of a stirring camp—two rival camps, in fact, since the State headquarters of the two chief parties were in the Inter-Mountain Hotel—and each incoming train brought fresh relays of henchmen and district spellbinders to swell the sidewalk throngs and to crowd the lobbies.

On the Friday morning Blount awoke with the feeling that he had definitely cut himself off from all the commonplace activities of the campaign. There were two days of suspense to be outworn, and if he could have compassed it he would have been glad to efface himself completely. Since that was impossible, and since it seemed equally impossible that he should go on keeping up the farce of the modus vivendi after he had taken the step which would presently blazon his name to the world as that of his father's accuser, he bought the morning papers hurriedly at the hotel news-stand and went down the avenue to get his breakfast at the railroad restaurant, where he would be measurably sure of isolation.

After giving his order he ran hastily through the local news in the papers. There was no mention of the arrest of one Thomas Gryson in any of the police notes, and he breathed freer. But in The Plainsman there was an editorial which was vaguely disturbing. Blenkinsop, who wrote his own leaders, hinted pointedly at coming disclosures which would change the political map of the State for all time. Blount, trying to determine how much or how little the editorial was based upon his talk with the editor on the Wednesday night, found his omelet tasteless. Ready enough, as he was persuaded, to fire the disrupting mine with his own hand, he was not ready to surrender the match to any one else. Manifestly he must see Blenkinsop and caution him.

Breakfast over, he walked, by the longest way around, to his office in the Temple Court, hoping to find work which would help him through the forenoon. It was an idle hope. From a State-wide shower of political correspondence the daily mail had dropped suddenly to an inconsequential drizzle, and there were no callers. Here, again, he saw, or thought he saw, the all-powerful hand of the machine. He had been used for a purpose, the purpose of hoodwinking and deceiving the voters. That purpose having been served, he was to be dropped—was already dropped, as it seemed. By noon the sheer time-killing effort became blankly unbearable, and in desperation he broke with another of the ideals—the one labelled sincerity—and going boldly to the Inter-Mountain he waited in the lobby for the family party of three to come down to the one-o'clock luncheon in the public cafe.

Joining the party when it came down, he found it difficult only in the inner sanctuaries to maintain the status quo ante Gryson. There was no shadow of suspicion or coolness in his father's kindly smile and genial greeting, and Mrs. Honoria rallied him playfully upon the narrow margin by which he had held his own and Patricia's places at the Gordon dinner-table the night before. Only in Patricia's eyes he read a curious questioning, a hint that they were finding something in his eyes which was new and not wholly understandable. He knew well enough what it was that she saw; and though she was sitting opposite him at the table for four, he looked at her as seldom as possible, devoting himself, for once in a way, resolutely to his father's wife.

After luncheon he again fell back upon the dogged boldness. Unable to contemplate a second plunge into the solitude of the Temple Court offices, he asked and was accorded permission to take Patricia for a country drive in the little car. When the city was left behind, and the small machine was purring steadily northwestward over a road which led to nowhere in particular, Blount put his finger accurately upon the thing which had been building little barriers of silence between them all the way out from town.

"You knew me well enough yesterday to be reasonably certain of what I would do in given circumstances, didn't you, Patricia?" he began abruptly. "To-day you are not so sure about it. Why?"

She laughed lightly, but there was a serious undernote in her voice when she said: "There are moments when you make me wonder if you haven't been dabbling in necromancy, Evan. I was at that very instant telling myself that it wasn't so."

"But you know it is so," he persisted. "Why am I different?"

"I don't know."

"Yet you recognize the fact?"

"Is it a fact?" she queried.

"Yes."

"In what way are you different?"

"I am not altogether certain that I know, myself. But I do know this: between yesterday and to-day there is a gulf so wide that it seems measureless. The scientists claim there are no cataclysms; no sudden and sweeping changes taking place either in the physical or the metaphysical field. If that be true, the changes must go on subconsciously for a long time before they are recognized. There is no other way of accounting for the gulfs."

"You are talking miles over my head," she protested; and, though the assertion was not strictly true, it served its purpose.

"I can make it a little plainer," he went on, slowing the motor until the small car was merely ambling. "You remember that night at Wartrace Hall, and what you told me? I went out from that talk resolved to do what you had shown me I ought to do, stubbornly refusing to consider the possibility of failure. None the less, I have failed."

"Oh, no!" she exclaimed; "not that!"

"Yes, just that. But the failure is not the worst thing that has befallen me. I have lost or gained something that pushes the yesterdays into a past which can never be recovered. Let me tell you, girl: I have been fighting in the open, against treachery and deceit fighting always under cover. I have been fighting bare-handed where others were armed. Day by day I have been finding out the baseness and the trickery; how my own side has used me as a screen behind which the old dishonorable expedients could be safely planned and carried out. I never knew until within the past two days what all this chicanery and double-dealing might be doing to me, but now I do know."

"Will it bear telling?" she asked quietly.

"I think not—to you," he returned, matching her low tone. "Let it be enough to say that I am no longer the man I was when I came out here. Patricia, I'm not fighting bare-handed any more; I'm smashing in with any weapon I can get hold of. There will be no such reform as the one you urged me to champion—as the era of fair-dealing and sincerity which I have been trying honestly and earnestly to inaugurate. Nevertheless, if my hand doesn't tremble too much at the critical moment, there will be, on the morning of next Tuesday, such a revolution as this commonwealth has never seen. Though they have robbed me and made a puppet of me, I can still bring it about."

He had gone farther than he meant to, and he thought she would protest. He knew that her convictions of what should be and what should not be were clear-cut and definite. But a man, even though he be a lover, may know a woman's mind without knowing very much about the woman herself. There was no protest forthcoming. Quite the contrary, she answered him with a little shudder that was almost a caress, saying: "I think you have grown—bigger and stronger than I ever thought you could grow, Evan; and I'm sure your hand won't tremble. Is that what you want me to say?"

Since there is no more contradictory being in a sentient world than a man in love, Blount was not quite sure that it was what he wanted her to say. By times, to any lover worthy of the name, the chosen woman figures as a goddess, a tutelary divinity postulating for a mere earthly man all that is high and holy and inerrant; an impeccable standard by which he can measure his own baser desires and ambitions and be shrived of them. At other times the straitly human has its innings, and the longing is for a comrade, a companion, a second self buried, lost, submerged in the loyalty which never questions. Having come slowly to maturity as a lover, Blount had been leaning toward the divinity definition of Patricia Anners. But now the iconoclastic change was breaking many images.

"You are willing to believe that I haven't gone altogether backward?" he queried, after the little car had measured an additional stretch of the mesa road.

"You are bigger and stronger," she repeated.

"How do you know I am?"

"I can tell; any woman could tell."

"Is the acquirement of size and strength so great a thing that—"

"I think it is—in a woman's eyes," she admitted fearlessly. "We are all more or less primitive and—and, well, 'Stone-Agey,' let us say, in the last analysis; at least, women are." And then: "You don't know women very well, Evan."

"Don't I?"

"No, you don't. You judge us by standards which have no existence outside of your own purely masculine deductions. For example: I suppose you wouldn't admit for a moment that a good woman might properly do things which would be entirely discreditable in a man?"

He shook his head slowly and said: "Yesterday, or the day before, I might have said 'no,' with all the cocksureness of a boy of twenty. To-day I can only say: 'Who am I, that I should judge any man—or any woman?'" Then suddenly: "You are making excuses for my father's wife. You needn't, you know. She has fought me from the beginning, and I know it. Sometimes I think that she is solely responsible for my failure to accomplish the thing I had set my heart upon. Let it go; I don't bear malice. Just now I'm more interested in what you were saying about the sex differences and the woman's point of view. Have you been calling me a weak man, Patricia?"

"No; only—a little—conventional," she returned half reluctantly.

"But you are the quintessence of conventionality yourself!" he burst out.

"Am I? Perhaps that was a passing phase, too. Quite probably the little things will remain—the dressing for dinner and the paying of party calls and all that. But one really big man has made many things seem petty and trifling—things that I used to think were of the greatest possible importance."

"My father, you mean?"

"Yes. If I should ever marry, Evan, I should be deliriously happy if I could find a man who promised to grow to the stature of your father."

There was manifestly no rejoinder to be made to this by David Blount's son, though it pointed to another and still more painful involvement. What would Patricia say when the debacle came? Would she lose faith in his father, and in all masculinity, in the crash? Or would she borrow yet again from the primitive woman she had been half-acknowledging and still be loyal? In either case Blount saw his own finish, and he was rather relieved when she left the sex argument indeterminate and began to talk of other things: of her father's decision to go home at the end of the following week, of the good times she had been having, and of the regret with which she would turn her back upon the wide horizons and the freedom of it all.

"I brought my shell with me when I came," she confessed, laughing, "but I think it is broken into little pieces by now. You will know how small the pieces are when I tell you that 'Tennessee Jim,' your father's horse wrangler, calls me 'Miz' Pat,' and it always makes me want to shake hands with him."

Blount made the afternoon last as he could, sending the little car over many miles of the mesa roads and encouraging the small confidences which were enabling him to postpone his own evil hour. When the sun was dipping toward the Carnadine Hills they returned over a trail which came into the main Quaretaro road at a point where the northern highway begins its descent to the lower mesa level. Half-way down the descending gulch they came to the mouth of a small lateral canyon breaking into the larger gorge from the eastward; a canyon dry for the greater part of the year, but in the rainy season affording an outlet for the flood-waters of the Little Shonoho.

"That is a road I have always wanted to explore," said Patricia, pointing to the fine driveway leading up the small canyon. "That is one of my weaknesses when I am driving; I am never able to pass a branch road without wanting to turn aside and explore it."

"Then we'll explore this one, right now," said Blount, cutting the car to the left. He was more than willing to delay, even by littles, the moment when he should be obliged to resume the sorry business of waiting and dissembling.

Miss Anners glanced at the tiny watch pinned upon her shoulder.

"Shall we have time? It's getting late."

"Plenty of time for all we shall be able to do or see up here," Blount returned. "The road ends at the canyon head, a mile above. There is a very small and very exclusive summer-resort hotel, called the Shonoho Inn, on the upper level. It has a six-weeks' season—like the Florida resorts—they tell me, and it is closed now."

It was within the next five hundred yards that the prediction that there would be nothing to see anticipated its fulfilment. At a sudden turn in the narrow defile they came to a brush-built barricade posted with a sign:

ROAD WASHED OUT ABOVE NO PASSING FOR VEHICLES!

"That settles it," said Blount shortly, and he turned the car and let it roll back down the grade to the main gulch.

When they were once more speeding toward town Blount stole a glance at his companion, wondering if it were the small disappointment which made her silent.

"Are you tired?" he asked quickly.

"Oh, no," she rejoined, brightening again. "I have enjoyed every minute of it. I was just thinking of what I said a little while ago; of how it is going to break my heart to leave it all."

It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her that she needn't leave it. But he remembered and caught himself sharply. When the dreadful Tuesday should have come and gone, she might be only too willing to go away; and, in any event, he would have to go. There would be no place in his own and his father's State for him after Gryson returned, and the match had been touched to the hidden mine of high explosives. This was what was in his mind when he said rather tamely: "I suppose you will have to go. There isn't any chance for social-settlement work out here yet."

"No," she responded half-absently; and thereupon he gave the little car still more spark and throttle and sent it flying over the final stretch of the fine road to the city.

The electric lights were showing like faint yellow stars against the sunset sky when Blount skilfully placed the small car at the Inter-Mountain curb and lifted his companion to the sidewalk.

"Are you going anywhere to-night?" he asked.

"I don't know," was the reply. "There is a 'crush' on at the Weatherfords', but I don't know whether Mrs. Blount has accepted for us or not."

"Don't go," he pleaded quickly. "Back out of it some way, and give me just this one evening to myself. Won't you do that, Patricia?"

"I'll try," she agreed. "But if Mrs. Blount has accepted—"

"Confound Mrs. Blount!" he growled. And then the newly aroused underman in him added: "You tell her that I want you to give me the evening, and let that settle it."

As it turned out a little later, Miss Anners found it unnecessary to be rude to her hostess. For some reason best known to herself, Mrs. Honoria had declined the invitation—engraved in the correctest shaded Old English and made to include the senator and Miss Anners—and was planning a free evening for herself and her guest.

After the cafe dinner—a dinner at which Evan Blount, once more calling himself all the hard names in the hypocrite's vocabulary, made the fourth—Mrs. Honoria proposed an adjournment to the hotel parlors, which were in the mezzanine lounge. Later, she found herself alone on the divan which had been drawn up to command a view of the spirited scene in the lobby below. The senator had gone down to mingle with the politicians, and she could see him—big, masterful, and smiling—moving about from group to group. On the opposite side of the mezzanine gallery, Evan and Patricia were "doing time," as the little lady musingly phrased it: walking up and down and talking quietly; a handsome couple, as the approving glances of more than one passing guest testified.

To Mrs. Honoria, thus isolated, came at the appointed time the sober-eyed young traffic manager for the railroad company. Gantry had been under orders from the little lady for the better part of the afternoon, but the business of the day had given him no chance to report earlier.

"You got my note?" he asked, taking the place she made for him on the tete-a-tete divan.

"Yes; a little while before dinner. It came just in time to let me send frightfully late 'regrets' to Mrs. Weatherford."

"I couldn't come sooner. I've had the Hathaway crowd on my hands all afternoon. There is something in the wind, and those fellows are scared stiff. They say that Evan's speech-making has stirred up the working men and the rank and file like a declaration of war with Mexico, and nobody can tell what is going to happen next Tuesday."

"Is that all?"

"No, not quite all. There is a mild panic on in at least three of the city wards over the disappearance of a fellow named Gryson, a sort of—er—wire-puller and all-around general-utility man. Some say he has been doing crooked work and had to disappear; others say that he has taken his pay for whatever job he was doing and has skipped out, leaving his journeymen strikers to hold the bag."

"Gryson," said the little lady, her eyes narrowing; "Gryson—the name is curiously familiar. He is what you call a ward-worker, isn't he?"

Gantry nodded. "Something of the sort, yes. Evan calls him one of the 'pie-eaters,' and away along early in the game they had a set-to in Evan's office and Evan fired him; told him if he ever came back he'd throw him out."

Again Mrs. Honoria's fine eyes became reflective.

"Richard," she said softly, "I'd give anything in the world if I could know that Evan still feels that way about Thomas Gryson."

"Then you know the plug-ugly, do you?" said Gantry.

"I know of him. He is a criminal and a dangerous man."

"Well, he is out of it, I guess; he must be, if his own running-mates can't find him."

"Isn't Mr. Kittredge trying to find him, too?"

"Yes. And I think Kittredge played it rather low down on the poor beggar. They had a deal of some sort, and when Gryson put his price on the job—"

"I know," she interrupted. "Mr. Kittredge ought to have paid him and let him go."

Gantry's smile was a tribute to superior genius.

"You've got me going," he said; "you always have me going. With the election only three days off, I can't tell yet what you and the senator are trying to do."

"The senator, at least, has never made any secret of his object," she smiled back at him. "He has told everybody that he is out for a clean sweep."

"Exactly," said Gantry; "but no man living knows what he means by a 'clean sweep.' I'll bet there are a hundred men down there in the lobby right now who would give the best year out of their lives to know. And they can't guess—they can't begin to guess!"

"Let us leave them to their guesses, while we go back to the certainties," she suggested. "Did you find out what I asked you to?"

"Yes; and I don't know whether I ought to tell you or not. I'm still drawing my salary from the railroad, you know."

"And you are not sure that I am drawing mine?" she laughed. "Don't you remember when Mr. McVickar gave me this?" touching the little jewel-incrusted watch on her shoulder.

"Yes, I remember; also I remember that this is the first time I have ever seen you wearing it." And then: "I'd never try to bribe you in the wide, wide world, Mrs. Blount."

"Why not?"

"For two reasons: you are too much in love with your husband; and, if you took a notion to fly the track, a king's ransom wouldn't be big enough to make you stay bribed."

"I am flattered, I'm sure; but I'm still in the dark about the thing you have come here to tell me," she reminded him.

"I presume you may as well know it, though I can tell you that it has been kept the darkest kind of a secret. Mr. McVickar came west to-day from Bald Butte in a new gasolene unit-car which is supposed to be making a trial trip over the road. The car is supposed to have a bunch of the Chicago officials on board, though not half a dozen men on this division know that the vice-president is the only official, and that the others are clerks and telegraphers."

"Go on," said the small person quickly.

"That gasolene special is lost. No station west of Bald Butte has yet reported it. Strictly between us two, it left the main line at the old disused track leading out to the abandoned Shoshone mine workings. There were autos to meet it at the mine, and by this time Mr. McVickar is probably toasting his feet before an open wood-fire in the Shonoho Inn."

Mrs. Honoria leaned her two round arms on the mezzanine rail, and looked long and earnestly down upon the caucussing lobby throng. When she looked up it was to say: "There are wires?"

"A full set of cut-ins. You can trust the big boss for that. He is in touch with every corner of the State, just the same as he would be if he were here in his usual election headquarters in the hotel."

The small plotter became silent again, and when she spoke she was smiling brightly.

"You are a good boy, Richard, and you shall have your reward. And it is going to be something that will make you happy, this time. Run away, now, and let me have a little solitude. I want to think."

It was a full hour after Gantry's disappearance that the senator came up-stairs, and Mrs. Honoria beckoned to the pair on the opposite side of the gallery.

"It's bedtime," she said, when they came around to her divan. And then, with a malicious little grimace for Evan: "I've been counting, and I've seen Patricia stifle three distinct and separate yawns in the last five minutes. She has been up every night since we came to town, and—"

Left to himself, Blount sat watching the crowd for a time, and then went to his room to read himself to sleep. One of the two crucial days of suspense was outworn, but there was another coming; and after he had read for an hour he went to bed, resolutely determined to get the rest necessary to carry him through the dreaded Saturday. Sleep came quickly when he had turned off the lights, but it was merely a transition to a troubled dreamland in which Patricia, Mrs. Honoria, Gryson, and Gantry were weirdly confused. In the thick of it he seemed to see the ward-heeler standing at his bedside and beating furiously upon a huge Chinese gong. When he sprang up and began to rub his eyes, the room was lighted by a red glare, and the dream-noise was translated into the rattling of wheels and the clanging of alarm-gongs and cries of "Fire!" in the avenue below.

As a city dweller, Blount should have felt the wall of the room, and, finding it still cool, should have turned over and gone to sleep again. Instead, he slipped out of bed and went to the window. One glance showed him that the fire was in the business district, either in or near the Temple Court Building. That was enough to make him dress hurriedly and hasten to the street, where he found a handful of policemen trying ineffectually to keep a clear pavement for the racing fire-trucks. Watching his chance, Blount darted out to make the crossing. He was half-way to the opposite curb when an unwieldy hook-and-ladder truck, drawn by a pair of magnificent grays, came lurching and plunging down the side street upon which the hotel cornered.

In front of the horses, and leaping and barking at their heads in a frenzy of excitement, was a spotted coach-dog—the truck squad's mascot. Blount was within a few feet of the farther sidewalk, and was well out of danger when the long truck slewed into the avenue. But at the passing instant the mascot dog, leaping and whirling like a four-footed dervish, sprang backward. Blount felt the catapulting shock of a yielding body between his shoulders, heard a yell from the truck-driver on his high seat, and went plunging headlong to the curb. After which he felt and heard no more.



XXIV

FIELD HEADQUARTERS

In the great world-battles of yesterday, or the day before, the commanding general rode, with a few chosen officers of his staff, to some near-by hill-top, shell-swept and perilous, and with the help of a pair of field-glasses and a corps of hard-riding aides kept in touch as he could with the shifting fortunes of his divisions and brigades. It would be small credit to an up-to-date day of progress and invention if this were not all changed. The present-moment commander-in-chief—warring, industrial, or political—may sit, thanks to the Morses and the Edisons, comfortably in office-coat and slippers, far removed from the battle turmoil, directing his forces with the pressure of a finger upon the appropriate electric button, or in a few words dictated to the human ear of a clicking telegraph-instrument.

By all these adventitious aids Vice-President McVickar was profiting on the Saturday morning following the mysterious disappearance on the Friday of the gasolene unit-car somewhere between Bald Butte and the capital. The small resort hotel at the head of Shonoho Canyon had been transformed into a field headquarters. The hotel manager's desk, wheeled out in front of a crackling wood-fire in the ornate little lobby, was studded with its row of electric call-buttons; a railroad dining-car crew had taken possession of the kitchen; and the spacious writing-and lounging-room, sacred, in the season, to the guests of the exclusive hotel, housed a ranking of glass-topped telegraph-tables and impromptu desks—a work-room manned by a dozen picked young men, with O'Brien, the vice-president's private secretary, acting as the chief.

Though the momentous Tuesday was still three days in the future, Mr. McVickar was actively at work on the Saturday morning, gathering in the loose ends and strengthening the railroad company's defences. With his arm-chair drawn up to the borrowed desk he was running rapidly through the telegrams filtering in a steady shower from the crackling sounders in the writing-room. When the situation had begun to outline itself with something like coherence, he pressed a call-button for O'Brien.

"How about that wire to Detwiler at Ophir—any reply yet?" was the rasping demand shot at the secretary.

"Nothing yet; no, sir."

"Go after him again! There's a screw loose among those miners! How about Hathaway? Did you phone Twin Buttes?"

"Yes; and Grogan, the mill time-keeper, answered. He says Mr. Hathaway is in the capital and something has gone wrong—he doesn't know what."

"Keep the wires hot until you can get hold of Hathaway himself, and when you nail him, switch him over to my phone. Any word from the irrigation people at Natcho?"

"Yes. They say that the farmers under the High Line have been getting restive and forming associations. Daniels was the man who talked to me, and he says it's a Gordon movement, though the ranchmen are trying to keep it quiet."

"Take a message to Daniels!" snapped the vice-president; and then, dictating: "'How would it do to let it be known quietly that Gordon's election means raise in price of water to High Line users?' Send that, and sign it 'Committee of Safety.' Now how about Kittredge? Did you get him?"

"I did; he's driving out in his car, and he ought to be here in a few minutes."

As if to make O'Brien's word good, the roar of an automobile came from the driveway, dominating for the moment the chattering of the telegraph-instruments, and a little later Kittredge came in, lifting his goggles and wiping the road dust from his closely clipped black beard.

"That car of yours isn't what it might be, Kittredge," was the vice-president's crusty greeting. "You'd better get a faster one. Sit down, and let's have it. How are things shaping up in the city?"

The big superintendent sat down and found a cigar in an inner pocket of his driving-coat.

"We are holding our own, as far as anybody can see," he returned.

"That 'as far as anybody can see' is just your weakness, Kittredge," said the chief testily. "What we want—what we've got to have first, last, and all the time—is the fact. Now see if you can answer a few straight questions. What is the senator doing?"

"His wife has a young girl visiting her, and if the Honorable Dave is doing anything more than to show the two women a good time, I can't find it out."

"There you go again! You say 'if.' It's your business to know."

Kittredge held his peace. Being designed by nature for a heavy-weight ring-fighter, there were times when he felt like taking off his coat to the vice-president.

"Well?" prompted McVickar, when Kittredge remained obstinately silent.

"If I knew what sort of a deal you have made with the senator—"

"That cuts no figure. But let it go. What's young Blount doing?"

"He's out of it, good and plenty. He started to go to the Sampson Block fire last night and was knocked down by a hook-and-ladder truck. It's a cracked skull, and Doc Dillon says he's safe to stay in bed for a week or so."

"H'm," said the chief reflectively. "That is almost what you might call opportune, Kittredge. The young fellow has done his work well, but there was always the danger that he might overdo it. In fact, there was a time, a week or two ago, when I thought he would have to be called down and given a lesson. Now then, how about that Gryson business?"

"It was just as you said: I had to take Tom by the neck and get rid of him."

"He did his work all right?"

"Yes, and came swaggering around for his pay. I sized it up one side and down the other. He had a pretty bad case of swelled head and tried to hold me up for a bonus, hinting around about what he could do if he wanted to throw the gaff into us. As I say, I sized it up, and took snap judgment on him—pulled the Montana racket and gave him twenty-four hours' start of the police."

The vice-president frowned and shook his head. "You took a chance—a long chance, Kittredge! Twenty-four hours gave him all the time he needed to fall afoul of young Blount."

The big superintendent grinned amiably.

"The senator helped out on that," he explained.

"The senator? How was that?"

"It's the first time he has shown any part of his hand to me in the entire campaign. About an hour after I had shot Tom Gryson to pieces a note came down from the Inter-Mountain, asking me to come up. I didn't get to see the senator himself, but Mrs. Blount gave me the dope. As a result, young Blount got a hurry telegram from you, directing him to go to Lewiston at once in that right-of-way matter of Brodhead's. I gave him my car, and the trip cost him the better part of two whole days."

Again the vice-president shook his head.

"Your methods are always pretty crude, Kittredge," he commented. "You took another long chance when you forged my name to a telegram for as shrewd a young lawyer as Evan Blount. But go on. You got Blount out of the way—then what?"

"Then I went after Gryson again. The little woman's hint hit the bull's-eye as true as a rifle bullet. Tom meant to give us away to Blount. He haunted Blount's up-town office the better part of the day; and finally, in sheer self-defence, I had to tip him off to the police, as I had threatened to. Another little mystery bobbed up there. Chief Robertson winked one eye at me and said: 'You're too late, Mr. Kittredge; your man has already been piped off and he's gone.'"

"Who did it?" snapped McVickar.

"I don't know, and Robertson wouldn't tell me. But I got him to promise to put out the reward quietly. If Gryson comes back he'll be nipped before he can talk."

"With young Blount laid up, it won't make much difference," was the summing-up rejoinder. And then: "I think that is all—for this morning. Go around to the telephone-exchange when you get back to town and tell the manager that I want a special operator—a man, if he's got one—put on this long-distance wire. Have you sent your linemen out to guard the wires on the Shoshone mine track?"

"Yes; all the way from the switch to the hills."

"All right; that's all. Keep your finger on the pulse of things in town to-day, and arrange with your despatcher to give my operators here a clear wire in any direction whenever it's called for. Above all, keep me posted, Kittredge; don't let anything get by you, no matter how trivial it may seem."

As the superintendent was climbing into his car, the railroad electrician who was in charge of the men guarding the telegraph-wires came up.

"One minute, Mr. Kittredge. I've put the box in, according to orders—"

"What box, and whose orders?"

"The recording microphone in Mr. McVickar's office, in there; and by his orders, I guess—at least they came from one of his men. We're needing a couple more batteries, and I was just wondering if it'd be all right to take 'em from that gasolene unit-car. We could put 'em back afterwards."

"Yes; take 'em wherever you can find 'em," said the superintendent, who was thinking pointedly of other things just then; and the permission given, he started his motor and drove away.



XXV

BLOOD AND IRON

Ten o'clock in the Saturday forenoon marked the time of Superintendent Kittredge's flying visit to his chief's headquarters-on-the-field at the head of Shonoho Canyon; and at that hour Evan Blount, blinking dizzily, and with his head bandaged and throbbing as if the premier company of all the African tom-tom symphonists were making free with it, was letting Mrs. Honoria beat up his pillows and prop him with them, so that the drum-beating clamor might be minimized to some bearable degree.

"You are feeling better now?" suggested the volunteer nurse, going to adjust the window-curtains for the better comfort of the blinking and aching eyes.

The victim of the hook-and-ladder squad's mascot answered qualitatively.

"I feel as if I had been having an argument with a battering-ram and had come off second-best. I've been out of my head, haven't I?"

"A little, yes; but that was to be expected. You were pretty badly hurt."

"Have I been talking?"

"Not very much—nothing intelligible." The little lady had drawn her chair to the window and was busying herself with the never-finished embroidery.

"What hit me—was it the truck?"

"No; some of the people in the street said it was a dog; a coach-dog running and jumping at the heads of the fire-horses. In falling you struck your head against the iron grating of a sewer inlet."

"Umph!" said Blount, and the face-wrinkling which was meant to be a sardonic smile turned itself into a painful grin. "Shot to death by a dog! Blenkinsop or some of the others ought to have run that for a head-line." Then, with a twist of the hot eyeballs: "This isn't my room. Where am I?"

"You are in the spare room of our suite. Your father had you brought here so that we could take care of you properly. But you mustn't talk too much; it's the doctor's orders."

Blount lay for a long time watching her as she passed the needle in and out through the bit of snowy linen stretched upon the tiny embroidery-ring. She had fine eyes, he admitted; eyes with the little downward curve in brow and lid at the outer corners—the curve of allurement, he had heard it called. Also, her hands were shapely and pretty. He recalled the saying that a woman may keep her age out of her face, but her hands will betray her. Mrs. Honoria's hands were still young; they looked almost as young as Patricia's, he decided. At the comparison he broke over the rule of silence.

"Does Patricia know?" he asked.

"Certainly. She has been here nearly all morning. She wouldn't let anybody else hold your head while the doctor was sewing it up."

"I know," he returned; "that is a part of her—of her special training: first aid to the injured, and all that. They teach it in the German sociological schools she attended last year."

"Oh, yes; I see"—with a malicious little smile to accentuate the curving downdroop of the pretty eyelids. "You mean that she was just getting a bit of practice. I wondered why she was so willing; most young women are so silly about the sight of a little blood. Don't you think you'd better try to sleep for a while? Doctor Dillon said it would be good for you if you could."

"Heavens and earth!" he chanted impatiently; "I'm not sick!" And then, with a sharp fear stabbing him: "What day is this, please?"

She looked up with a smile. "Are you wondering if you have lost a day? You haven't. The fire was at three o'clock this morning, and this is Saturday."

As if the naming of the day had been a spell to strike him dumb, Blount shut his eyes and groped helplessly for some hand-hold upon the suddenly rehabilitated responsibilities. Saturday—the day when Gryson would return with the proofs which, if they were to serve any good end, must be given the widest possible publicity in the two days remaining before the election. Blount recalled his carefully laid plans: he had intended giving Collins and the two record clerks a half-holiday, so that Gryson might come and go unnoticed. Also, he had meant to make a definite appointment with Blenkinsop and the representative of the United Press, to the end that there might be no delay in the firing of the mine. Lastly, Gryson must be shielded and gotten out of the city in safety; so much the traitor had a right to demand if he should risk his liberty and his life by returning with the evidence.

It was a hideous tangle to owe itself to the joyous gambollings of the firemen's mascot dog. And there was more to it than the hopeless smashing of the Saturday's plans. Into the midst of the mordant reflections, and adding a sting which was all its own, came the thought of this newest obligation laid upon him by his father and his father's wife. They had taken him in and were loading him down with kinsman gifts of care and loving-kindness, while his purpose had been—must still be—to strike back like a merciless enemy. He remembered the old fable of the adder warmed to life in a man's bosom, and it left him sick and nerveless.

None the less, the obsession of the indomitable purpose persisted, gripping him like the compelling hand of a giant in whose grasp he was powerless. For a time he sought to escape, not realizing that the obsession was the call of the blood passed on from the men of his race who, with axe and rifle, had hewn and fought their way in the primeval wilderness, and would not be denied. Neither did he suspect that the dominating passion driving him on was his best gift from the man against whom he was pitting his strength. What he did presently realize was that the giant grip of purpose was not to be broken; and thereupon a vast cunning came to possess him. He must have time and a chance to plan again: if he should feign sleep, perhaps the woman whose presence and personality were shackling the inventive thought would go away and leave him free to think.

She did go after a while, though so noiselessly that when he opened his eyes it was with the fear that he should see her still bending over the little embroidery frame at the window. Finding himself alone, he sat up in bed and gave the broken head an opportunity to blot him out if it could. For a little space the walls of the room became as the interior of a hollow peg-top, spinning furiously with a noise like the rushing of many waters. After the surroundings had resumed their normal figurings he rose to his knees. There was another grapple with the whirling peg-top, and again he mastered the dizzying confusion. Made bold by success, he got his feet on the floor and stood up, clinging to the brass foot-rail of the bed until the unstable encompassments had once more come to rest.

By this time he was able to conquer all save the throbbing headache. Shuffling first to one door and then to the other, he shot the bolts against intrusion. Then he staggered across to the dressing-case and took a look at himself in the glass. The bandaged head, with its haggard, pain-distorted face grimacing back at him, extorted a grunt of sardonic disapproval, but the mirror answered the query which had sent him stumbling across to it. The bandage was comparatively small and tightly drawn; a soft hat could be worn over it—the hat would cover and decently hide it.

Next he found his clothes, those he had been wearing at the time of the accident. Somebody had been thoughtful enough to have them cleaned and pressed; from which he argued that the plunging fall on the wet asphalt had been demoralizing in more ways than one. Continuing the experimental venture, he walked back and forth and up and down until he could do it without clutching at the bed-rails to save himself from falling. Then he reshot the door-bolts and went back to bed to await developments.

The first of these came when Patricia brought his luncheon. He had been wondering if she would be the one to come; wondering and hoping. With the unfilial purpose driving him on, there were added twinges at the thought of his father's wife going on piling the mountain of obligation higher and still higher by waiting upon him, and thus reminding him at every turn of the adder fable. With Patricia it was different.

"Good morning," he grimaced, when Patricia came in with the daintily appointed server. "Getting a bit more of the first-aid practice, are you?"

"I am obeying orders," she flashed back, when she had shaken up the pillows and placed the appetizing meal within his reach. "Mrs. Blount said I'd probably have a less disturbing influence upon you than she would. Shall I feed you?"

"Good heavens, no! I'm not that near dead, I hope! If you don't believe it, you may sit down and watch me eat—if you're not missing your own luncheon."

"Nurses have no regular meal-times," she retorted. And then: "You are feeling a great deal better, aren't you?"

"Much better—since you came. Did they tell you it was a dog?"

She nodded, and he went on.

"It was my unlucky night, I guess. Did the fire burn up my office? I forgot to ask Mrs. Blount about that."

"No; it was a building across the street from the Temple Court."

"'Small favors thankfully received,'" he quoted, resolutely pushing a fresh recurrence of the tomtom beatings into the background; "small favors and larger ones in proportion—this broth, for example. It's simply delicious. I hadn't realized how hungry I was."

"The broth ought to be good; I made it myself, you know."

"You did? Where, for pity's sake?"

"In the hotel kitchen. The chef was furious at first. He twirled his Napoleon-III mustaches and sputtered and swelled up like an angry old turkey. But when I talked nice to him in his own beloved Bordelaise he let me do anything I pleased."

Blount looked up quickly, and the movement brought the head-throbbings back with disconcerting celerity.

"You are cruelly kind to me, Patricia; everybody is kind to me. And I'm not needing kindness just now," he ended.

"Aren't you? I don't agree with you, and I'm sure your father and Mrs. Blount wouldn't." Then she went on to tell him how they had all been up, watching the progress of the fire from their windows, when the word came that he had been hurt in the street. Also, she told how his father had impatiently smashed the telephone because, the wires having been cut and tangled in the fire, he could get no response, and how, thereupon, he had turned the entire night force of the hotel out to go in search of a doctor. "But with all that, he couldn't stand it to look on while the doctor was taking the stitches," she added. "He turned his back and tramped over here to the window; and I could hear him gritting his teeth and—and swearing."

If Evan Blount ate faster than a sick man should, it was because there are limits to the finest fortitude. Patricia ran on cheerfully, minimizing her own part in the first-aid incidents, and magnifying the anxious and affectionate concern of the senator and his wife. He listened because he could not help it; but when he had finished, and she was inquiring if there was anything else she could do for him, he dissembled, saying that he would try to sleep, and asking her to shut out more of the daylight and to deny him to everybody until evening.

She promised; but naturally enough, with the dreadful responsibility drawing nearer with every hour-striking of the tiny leather-cased travelling-clock on the dresser, sleep was out of the question for him. Hot-eyed and restless, he wore out the long afternoon in feverish impatience, slipping now and then into the shadow land of delirium when the pain was severest, but clinging always to the obsessing idea. At whatever cost, the crisis must find him resolute to do his part. Gryson must be met, the evidence of fraud must be secured, and the fraud itself must be defeated.

The bright autumn day was fading to its twilight, and the shadows were gathering around his bed, when Patricia tiptoed in to ask, first, if he were awake, and, next, what he would like to have for his supper. Exhausted by the waiting battle, he answered briefly: he was not hungry; if he could be left alone again, with the assurance that no one would come to disturb him, it was all he would ask. He tried to say it crustily, with the irritable impatience of the convalescent—dissembling again. But the young woman with a self-sacrificial career in view had lost none of her womanly gift of sympathetic intuition.

"You are not so well this evening," she said softly, laying a cool palm on his forehead. "I think I'd better telephone Doctor Dillon."

Now the thing for Patricia's lover to do was obvious. With pity thus trembling on the very crumbling brink of love, the opportunity which months of patient wooing had not evoked lay ready to his hand. It was a fair measure of the mastery an obsession may obtain—the lover's ability to thrust the gentler emotion into the background, to feign restless irritation under the passion-stirring touch, and to say: "No; I don't want Dillon or anybody; I want to be left alone. Please latch the door when you go out, and tell father and his—and Mrs. Blount that I don't want to be disturbed."

She took the curt dismissal in silence, and after she was gone Blount sat up in bed and cursed himself fervently and painstakingly for the little brutality. But the remorseful cursings took nothing from the grim determination which had prompted the brutality. The dusk was thickening, and the street electrics were turning the avenue into a broad highway of radiance. Blount got up, and with a disheartening renewal of the splitting headache, began to dress, but there were many pauses in which he had to sit on the edge of the bed to wait for the throbbing pain to subside.

The next step was to reach his own room, two floors above, and he let himself cautiously into the corridor and locked the door from the outside. Making a long round to avoid the elevators, he dragged himself up two flights of stairs and so came to his goal.

Enveloped in a rain-coat, and with a soft hat drawn well over his eyes, he compassed the escape from the upper floor by means of the remote stair he had used in ascending, and so reached the ground-floor. Fortunately, the lobby was crowded; and turning up the collar of the rain-coat to hide the bandage, Blount worked his way toward the revolving doors. More than once in the dodging progress he rubbed shoulders with men whom he knew, and who knew him; but the shielding hat-brim and the muffling rain-coat saved him.

Reaching the street, he did not attempt to walk to the Temple Court. Instead, he crept around to a garage near the hotel and hired a two-seated road-car. Quite naturally, the garage-keeper wanted to send his own driver, and Blount counted it as an unavoidable misfortune that he was obliged to give his name, and to hear the motor-liveryman say: "Oh, sure! I didn't recognize you, Mr. Blount. I reckon Senator Dave's son can have anything o' mine that he wants."

Blount drove the road-car all the way around the Capitol grounds to come into his office street inconspicuously. Across from the Temple Court the fire ruins were still smouldering, and there was an acrid odor of stale smoke in the air. For a full third of the block the street was littered with debris. Blount stopped his machine at the nearest corner and got out to reconnoitre the office-building entrance. In the vestibule he glanced up at the face of the illuminated wall-clock, making a hasty calculation based upon the leaving time of the east-bound Overland. There were fifty minutes to spare, and when he reached his office, and had turned on the desk-light and dropped heavily into his chair, he called up the railroad station to inquire about the train. The Overland was reported ten minutes late. If Gryson should show up in time, this earliest outgoing train must be made to serve as the means for his flight.

Blount had scarcely formulated the condition when the office-door winged noiselessly, and the man himself, hollow-eyed and haggard, stumbled in. As once before, Blount got up and went to shut the door and lock it. When he came back, Gryson had taken his seat in a chair at the desk-end, where the light from the shaded working-lamp fell upon his sinister face.

"Well, I've been all th' way t' hell and back ag'in," he announced in a grating whisper. "They've put th' reward out, and three times since last night some of me own pals 've tried to snitch on me." Then he drew a carefully wrapped package from its hiding-place under his coat and laid it on the desk. "It's all there," he went on in the same rasping undertone. "Some of 'em give up to get square wit' th' bosses, and some of 'em had to have a gun shoved in their faces. No matter; they've come across—the last damn' wan of 'em; and th' affidavits are there, too—when I c'd get next to a dub of a not'ry that'd make 'em."

Blount did not untie the package, nor did he cross-examine the traitor. His head was throbbing again almost unbearably, and he was beginning to fear that he might not last to carry out the plan of safe-conduct for the informer. Slipping the precious package into an inner pocket of the enveloping coat, he took a compact roll of bank-bills from a drawer in the desk and gave it to Gryson, saying tersely: "That isn't a bribe, you understand; it's merely to help you make your getaway. Can you manage to ride on Transcontinental trains without being recognized offhand?"