told him that she and her father would dine in the _café_ at seven, and
that there would be a place at their table for him--and another for his
father, if the ex-senator would so far honor a poor college professor.
There was an hour to spare; and if the vice-president of the
Transcontinental was not the king, he was at least a great man, and one
whose invitation was in some sense a royal command.
"Certainly, I'll be glad to go with you," was Blount's acquiescent
rejoinder. So much the registry-clerk heard; and he saw, between jabs
with his pen, the straight path to the revolving doors of the portal
ploughed by the big man with young Blount at his elbow.
One minute after the spinning doors had engulfed the pair the
registry-clerk was called on the house telephone. A sad-faced tourist
who was waiting patiently for his room assignment heard only the answer
to the question which came over the wire from one of the upper floors:
"No, Senator, Mr. Evan is not here; he has just this moment gone
out--with Mr. McVickar. Could I overtake him? I'll try; but I don't know
where they were going. Yes; all right. I'll send a boy right away."
VIII
THE QUEEN'S GAMBIT
When the news went forth to the dwellers in the sage-brush hills that
Boss David's son had been appointed to fill an important office as a
member of the railroad company's legal staff, the first wave of
astoundment was swiftly followed by many speculations as to what young
Blount's _début_ as a railroad placeman really meant.
_The Plainsman_, the capital city's principal daily, and the outspoken
organ of the people's party, was quick to discover an ulterior motive in
Evan Blount's appointment and its acceptance. Blenkinsop, the
leader-writer on _The Plainsman_, took a half-column in which to point
out in emphatic and vigorous Western phrase the dangers that threatened
the commonwealth in this very evident coalition of the railroad octopus
and the machine.
The _Lost River Miner_, on the contrary, was unwilling to believe that
the younger Blount was acting in the interest of machine politics in
taking an employee's place on the railroad pay-roll. In this editor's
comment there were veiled hints of a disagreement between father and
son; of differences of opinion which might, later on, lead to a pitched
battle. The _Capital Daily_, however--the stock in which was said to be
owned or controlled by local railroad officials--took a different
ground, covertly insinuating that nothing for nothing was the accepted
rule in politics; that if the railroad company had made a place for the
son, it was only a justifiable deduction that the father was not as
fiercely inimical to the railroad interests as the opposition press was
willing to have a too credulous public believe.
Elsewhere in the State press comment was divided, as the moulders of
public opinion happened to read party loss or gain in the appointment of
the new legal department head. Some were fair enough to say that young
Blount had merely shown good sense in taking the first job that was
offered him, following the commendation with the very obvious conclusion
that the railroad company's pay check would buy just as much bread in
the open market as anybody's else. On the whole, the senator's son was
given the benefit of the doubt and a chance to prove up.
Of the interview between the father and the son, in which Evan announced
his intention of accepting a place under McVickar, nothing was said in
the newspapers, for the very good reason that no reporter was present.
If the young man who had so summarily taken his future into his own
hands was anticipating a storm of disapproval and opposition, he was
disappointed. He had seen Mr. McVickar's private car coupled to the
east-bound Fast Mail, and had dined with Patricia and her father, the
fourth seat at the table of reunion being vacant because the senator was
dining elsewhere. Later in the evening he faced the music in the
sitting-room of the private suite, waylaying his father on the Honorable
David's return to the hotel.
Planning it out beforehand, Blount had meant to give the ethical reasons
which had constrained him to put a conclusive end to the
attorney-generalship scheme. But when the crux came, the carefully
planned argument side-stepped and he was reduced to the necessity of
declaring his purpose baldly. The railroad people had offered him a
place, and he had accepted it.
"So McVickar talked you over to his side, did he?" was the boss's gentle
comment. "It's all right, son; you're a man grown, and I reckon you know
best what you want to do. If it puts us on opposite sides of the
political creek, we won't let that roil the water any more than it has
to, will we?"
To such a mild-mannered surrender, or apparent surrender, the stirring
filial emotions could do no less than to respond heartily.
"We mustn't let it," was the quick reply; but after this the younger man
added: "I feel that I ought to make some explanations--they're due to
you. I've been knocking about here in the city with my eyes and ears
open, and I must confess that the political field has been made to
appear decidedly unattractive to me. From all I can learn, the political
situation in the State is handled as a purely business proposition; it
is a matter of bargain and sale. I couldn't go into anything like that
and keep my self-respect."
"No, of course you couldn't, son. So you just took a job where you could
earn good, clean money in your profession. I don't blame you a
particle."
Blount was vaguely perturbed, and he showed it by absently laying aside
the cigar which he had lately lighted and taking a fresh one from the
open box on the table. He could not help the feeling that he ought to be
reading between the lines in the paternal surrender.
"You think there will be more or less political work in my job with the
railroad?" he suggested, determined to get at the submerged facts, if
there were any.
"Oh, I don't know; you say McVickar has hired you to do a lawyer's work,
and I reckon that is what he will expect you to do, isn't it?"
Blount laid the second cigar aside and crossed the room to readjust a
half-opened ventilating transom. Mr. McVickar had not defined the duties
of the new counselship very clearly, but there had been a strong
inference running through the private-car conference to the effect that
the headship of the local legal department would carry with it some
political responsibilities. At the moment the newly appointed placeman
had been rather glad that such was the case. The vice-president had
convinced him of the justice of the railroad company's
contention--namely, that the present laws of the State, if rigidly
administered, amounted to a practical confiscation of the company's
property. While Mr. McVickar was talking, Blount had hoped that the new
office which the vice-president was apparently creating for him would
give him a free hand to place the company's point of view fairly before
the people of the State, and to do this he knew he would have to enter
the campaign in some sort as a political worker. Surely, his father must
know this; and he went boldly upon the assumption that his father did
know it.
"As I have said, I am to be chief of the legal department on this
division, and as such it will be necessary for me to defend my client
both in court and out of court," he said finally. "Since I am fairly
committed, I shall try to stay on the job."
"Of course you will. You've got to be honest with yourself--and with
McVickar. I don't mind telling you, son, that I'm flat-footed on the
other side this time, and I had hoped you were going to be. But if
you're not, why, that's the end of it. We won't quarrel about it."
Now this was not at all the paternal attitude as the young man had been
prefiguring it. He had looked for opposition; finding it, he would have
found it possible to say some of the things which were crying to be said
and which still remained unsaid. But there was absolutely no loophole
through which he could force the attack. If his late decision had been
of no more importance than the breaking of a dinner engagement, his
father could scarcely have dismissed it with less apparent concern.
Balked and practically talked to a standstill in the business matter,
Blount switched to other things.
"I missed you to-night at dinner," he said, beginning on the new tack.
"Two of my Cambridge friends are here, and I wanted you to meet them."
The Honorable David looked up quickly.
"The fossil-digging professor and his daughter?" he queried shrewdly.
"Yes; how did you know? They came in on the Overland, and I find that
the professor has made the long journey on the strength of what I once
told him about the megatheriums and things. I guess it's up to me to
make good in some way."
"Don't you worry a minute about that, Evan, boy," was the instant
rejoinder. "Honoria's coming in from Wartrace to-morrow, and if you'll
put us next, we'll take care of your friends--mighty good care of 'em."
Then, almost wistfully Blount thought: "You won't mind letting Honoria
do that much for you, will you, son?"
"I'd be a cad if I did. And you've taken a load off of my shoulders, I
can assure you. If you can persuade Mrs. Blount into it, I'll arrange
for a little dinner of five to-morrow evening in the _café_ where we can
all get together. You'll like the professor, I know; and I hope you're
going to like Patricia. She's New England, and at first you may think
she's a bit chilly. But really she isn't anything of the kind."
The Honorable Senator got up and strolled to the window.
"You'd better go to bed, son," he advised. "It's getting to be mighty
late, and you'll want to be surging around some with these friends of
yours to-morrow. And, before I forget it, the big car is in
Heffelfinger's garage. Order it out after breakfast and show the
Cambridge folks a good time."
It was late the following evening, several hours after the informal
little dinner for five in the Inter-Mountain _café_, when the senator
had himself lifted from the lobby to the private-suite floor and made
his way to the door of his own apartments. As was her custom when they
were together, his wife was waiting up for him.
"Did you find out anything more?" she asked, without looking up from the
tiny embroidery frame which was her leisure-filling companion at home or
elsewhere.
"Not enough to hurt anything. McVickar has fixed things to suit himself.
The boy's law-office job is to be pretty largely nominal; a sort of
go-as-you-please and do-as-you-like proposition on the side, with
Ackerton to do all the sure-enough court work and legal drudgery. Since
Ackerton is a pretty clean fellow, and Evan stands up so straight that
he leans over backward, this lay-out means that the bribing isn't going
to be done by the legal department in the coming campaign."
"Is that all?"
"All but one little thing. Evan's job is to be more or less associated
with the traffic department, and the word has been passed to Gantry and
his crowd to see to it that the boy doesn't get to know too much."
"But they can't keep him from finding out about the underground work!"
protested the small one.
"If it's an order from headquarters, they're going to try mighty hard.
Evan wants to believe that everything is on the high moral plane, and
when a man wants to believe a thing it isn't so awfully hard to fool
him. It'll be a winning card for them if they can send the boy out to
talk convincingly about the cleanness of the company's campaign. That
sort of talk, handed out as Evan can hand it, if he is convinced of the
truth of what he is saying, will capture the honest voter every time. I
tell you, little woman, there's a thing we politicians are constantly
losing sight of: that down at the bedrock bottom the American
voter--'the man in the street,' as the newspapers call him--is a fair
man and an honest man. Speaking broadly, you couldn't buy him with a
clear title to a quarter-section in Paradise."
This little eulogy upon the American voter appeared to be wasted upon
the small person in the wicker rocking-chair. "We must get him back,"
she remarked, referring, not to the American voter, but to the senator's
son. "Have you thought of any plan?"
"No."
She smiled up at him sweetly. "You are like the good doctor who cannot
prescribe for the members of his own family. If he were anybody else's
son, you would know exactly what to do."
"Perhaps I should."
"I have a plan," she went on quietly, bending again over her embroidery.
"He may have to take a regular course of treatment, and it may make him
very ill; would you mind that?"
David Blount leaned back in his chair and regarded her through
half-closed eyelids. "You're a wonder, little woman," he said; and then:
"I don't want to see the boy suffer any more than he has to."
"Neither do I," was the swift agreement. Then, with no apparent
relevance: "What do you think of Miss Anners?"
The senator sat up at the question, with the slow smile wrinkling
humorously at the corners of his eyes.
"I haven't thought much about her yet. She's the kind that won't let you
get near enough in a single sitting to think much about her, isn't she?"
"She is a young woman with an exceedingly bright mind and a very high
purpose," was the little lady's summing-up of Patricia. "But she isn't
altogether a Boston iceberg. She thinks she is irrevocably in love with
her chosen career; but, really, I believe she is very much in love with
Evan. If we could manage to win her over to our side as an active
ally--"
This time the senator's smile broadened into a laugh.
"You are away yonder out of my depth now," he chuckled. "Does your
course of treatment for the boy include large doses of the young woman,
administered frequently?"
"Oh, no," was the instant reply. "I was only wondering if it wouldn't be
well to enroll her--enlist her sympathies, you know."
"Why not?--if you think best? You're the fine-haired little wire-puller,
and it's all in your hands."
"Will you give me _carte-blanche_ to do as I please?" asked the small
plotter.
"Sure!" said the Honorable David heartily, adding: "You can always
outfigure me, two to one, when it comes to the real thing. You've made a
fine art of it, Honoria, and I'll turn the steering-wheel over to you
any day in the week."
When she looked up she was smiling in the way which had made Evan Blount
wonder, in that midnight meeting at Wartrace Hall, how she could look so
young and yet be so wise.
"You deal with people in the mass, David, and no one living can do it
better. I am like most women, I think: I deal with the individual. That
is all the difference. When do the Annerses go out to the fossil-beds?"
"I don't know; any time when you will invite them to make Wartrace their
headquarters, I reckon."
"Then I think it will be to-morrow," decided the confident mistress of
policies. "It won't do to let Evan see too much of Patricia until after
his course of treatment is well under way. Shall we make it to-morrow?
And will you telephone Dawkins to bring down the biggest car? I have a
notion wandering around in my head somewhere that Miss Patricia Anners
will stand a little judicious impressing. She is exceedingly democratic,
you know--in theory."
IX
THE RANK AND FILE
Considerably to his surprise, and no less to his satisfaction, the newly
appointed "division counsel," as his title ran, was not required to take
over the old legal department offices in the second story of the station
building, where all the other offices of the company were located.
Instead, he was directed to fit up a suite of rooms in Temple Court, the
capital's most pretentious up-town sky-scraper, and there was something
more than a hint that the item of first cost would not be too closely
scrutinized.
It was the vice-president himself, writing from Chicago, who authorized
the new departure and loosened the purse strings. "Don't be afraid of
spending a little money," wrote the great man. "Make your up-town
headquarters as attractive as may be, and arrange matters with Ackerton
so that your office will not be burdened with too much of the routine
legal work. A successful legal representative will be a good mixer--as I
am sure you are--and will extend the circle of his acquaintance as
rapidly and as far as possible. Your appointment will be fully justified
when you have made your up-town office a place where the good citizens
of the capital and the State can drop in for a cordial word with the
company's spokesman."
Acting upon this suggestion, Blount opened the Temple Court headquarters
at once and threw himself energetically into the indicated field.
Ackerton, a technical expert with a needle-like mind and the State code
at his fingers'-ends, was left in charge of the working offices in the
railroad building, with instructions to apply to his chief only when he
needed specific advice.
At the up-town headquarters, Blount gave himself wholly to the pleasant
task of making friends. With a good store of introductions upon which to
make a beginning, and with the open-handed, whole-souled _camaraderie_
of the West to help, the list of acquaintances grew with amazing
rapidity. For the three or four weeks after Mrs. Blount had whisked the
Annerses away to Wartrace Hall and the habitat of the Megalosauridæ, the
newly appointed "social secretary" for the railroad, as Honoria had
dubbed him, met all comers joyously and accepted all invitations, never
inquiring whether they were extended to his father's son, to the
railroad company's legal chief, or to Evan Blount in his proper person.
During this social interval he saw little of his father, though he was
still occupying his share of the private dining-room suite at the
Inter-Mountain. Part of the time, as he knew, the Honorable Senator was
at Wartrace Hall, looking after his mammoth ranch, and helping to
entertain the visitors from Massachusetts. But now and again the father
came and went; and occasionally there was a dinner _à deux_ in the hotel
_café_, with a little good-natured raillery from the senator's side of
the table.
"Got you chasing your feet right lively in the social merry-go-round
these days, haven't they, son? Like it, as far as you've gone?" said the
ex-cattle-king one evening when Evan had come down in evening clothes,
ready to go to madam the governor's wife's strictly formal "informal" a
little later on.
"It's all in the day's work," laughed the younger man. "I shall need all
the 'pull' I can get a little later on, sha'n't I?"
"I shouldn't wonder if you did, son; I shouldn't wonder if you did. And
I reckon you're doing pretty good work, too, mixing and mingling the way
you do. Was it McVickar's idea, or your own--this sudden splash into the
social water-hole?"
"I don't mind telling you that it is a part of the new policy," returned
the social splasher, still smiling. "We are out to make friends this
time; good, solid, open-eyed friends who will know just what we are
doing and why we are doing it."
"H'm," mused the senator, "so publicity's the new word, is it?"
"Yes; publicity is the word. The Gordon people say they are going to
show us up; there won't be anything to show up when the time comes. We
are going to beat them to the billboards."
The grizzled veteran of a goodly number of political battles put down
his coffee-cup; he was still old-fashioned enough to drink his coffee in
generous measure with the meat courses.
"You can't do the circus act--ride two horses at once and do the same
stunt on both, son," he remarked gravely. "If you're really going to put
the saddle and bridle on the publicity nag, you've got to turn the other
one out of the corral and let it go back to the short-grass."
"It is already turned out," asserted the young man, not affecting to
misunderstand. "We neither buy votes nor spend illegitimate money in
this campaign."
The stout assertion was good as far as it went; the new division counsel
made it and believed it. But on his way to the governor's mansion, a
little later, he could not help wondering if he had been altogether
candid in making it. The offices in the up-town sky-scraper were not
exclusively a railroad social centre where the disinterested voter could
come and have the facts ladled out to him without fear or favor on the
part of the ladler. They had come to be also a rallying-point for a
heterogeneous crowd of ward-workers, wire-pullers, and small
politicians, most of whom were anxious to be employed or retained as
henchmen. Some of these "stretcher men," as Blount contemptuously called
them, had been employed in past campaigns; others were still the
beneficiaries of the railroad, holding pay-roll places which Blount
acutely suspected were chiefly sinecures.
Latterly, this contingent of strikers and heelers had been greatly
augmented, and it was beginning to make its demands more emphatic. A
dozen times a day Blount had the worn phrase, "nothing for nothing,"
dinned into his ears, and he was beginning to harbor a suspicion that
his office had been made a dumping-ground for all the other departments.
Seeing Gantry at madam the governor's lady's reception, Blount took an
early opportunity of cornering the traffic manager in one of the
otherwise deserted smoking-dens, and when he had made sure there were no
eavesdroppers plunged at once into the middle of things.
"See here, Dick," he began, "you fellows downtown are making my office a
cesspool, and I won't stand for it. Garrigan, that saloon-keeper in the
second ward, came up to-day to ask for a free ticket to Worthington and
return; and when I pinned him down he admitted that you'd sent him to
me."
"I did," said Gantry, grinning. "Why otherwise have we got a
post-graduate, double-certificated political manager, I'd like to know?"
Blount dropped into a chair and felt in his pockets for his cigar-case.
"I guess we may as well fight this thing to a finish right here and now,
Dick," he said coolly. "I'm not chief vote buyer for the
Transcontinental Company--I'm not any kind of a vote buyer."
"Who said you were?" retorted the traffic manager.
"It says itself, if I am supposed to cut the pie and hand out pieces of
it to these grub-stakers that you and Carson and Bentley and Kittredge
are continually sending to me."
This time Gantry's grin was playful, but behind it there was a shrewd
flash of the Irish-blue eyes that Blount did not see.
"I guess the company would be plenty willing to furnish a few small pies
for really hungry people, if you think you need them to go along with
your Temple Court office fittings," he returned.
"Ah?" said Blount calmly, giving the exclamation the true Boston
inflection. "You are either too shrewd or not quite shrewd enough, Dick.
You covered that up with a laugh, so that I might take it as a joke if I
happened to be too thin-skinned to take it in disreputable earnest. Let
us understand each other; we are fighting squarely in the open in this
campaign; publicity is the word--I have Mr. McVickar for my authority.
Anybody who wants to know anything about the railroad company's business
in this State can learn it for the asking, and at first-hand. Secrecy
and all the various brands of political claptrap that have been admitted
in the past are to be shown the door. This is the intimation that was
made to me: wasn't it made to you?"
Gantry did not reply directly to the direct demand. On the other hand,
he very carefully refrained from answering it in any degree whatsoever.
"You have your job to hold down and I have mine," he rejoined. "What
you say goes as it lies, of course; but just the same, I shouldn't be
too righteously hard on the little brothers, if I were you."
"If by the 'little brothers' you mean the pie-eaters, I'm going to fire
them out, neck and crop, Richard. They make me excessively weary."
Gantry's playful mood fell away from him like a cast-off garment.
"I don't quite believe I'd do that, if I were you, Evan. There are
pie-eaters on both sides in every political contest, and while they
can't do any cause any great amount of good, they can often do a good
bit of harm. I wouldn't be too hard on them, if I were you."
"What would you do?--or, rather, what did you do when you were managing
the State campaign two years ago?" inquired Blount pointedly.
"I cut the pie," said the traffic manager simply.
"In other words, you let this riffraff blackmail you and, incidentally,
put a big black mark against the company's good name."