developed into a heeler of sorts, had been growing restive, wanting more
money.
"What can he swing?" was the curt question.
"Six out of seven pretty close counties. I don't pretend to know how he
has done it, but he has got the goods; I've taken the trouble to check
up on him. With his pull, we can swing the vote of the capital itself."
The vice-president frowned thoughtfully. "The old game of stuffing the
registration lists, I suppose," he said. And then: "Young Blount hasn't
got wind of this, has he?"
Gantry laughed. "You may be sure he hasn't. He has it in for Gryson on
general principles--made us take him off the shop pay-rolls. If he
thought we were dickering with him now, he'd be down on us like a
thousand of brick."
"Well, why don't you fix Gryson, once for all, and have it over with?
You oughtn't to expect me to come here and tell you what to do!"
It was at this point that Kittredge broke in.
"Gryson isn't safe. I have it straight that he is getting ready to sell
us out. That's why he wants his pay in advance."
The vice-president's heavy brows met in a frown, and the muscles of his
square jaw hardened.
"Put Gryson on the rack and show him what you've got on him in that
Montana bank robbery. That will bring him to book. It will be time
enough to talk about terms when he delivers the goods. Now another
thing--that Shonoho Inn matter that I wired about--what has been done?"
"It is all arranged," said the big superintendent. "The house was closed
for the season last month, and we have taken a short lease. One of our
dining-car managers will take charge of the service."
"And the wires?"
"We have made a cut-in from the old Shoshone Mine wire, which wasn't
taken down when the mine was abandoned. That let us out very neatly, and
no one outside of our own line-men know anything about the job. We have
four instruments in the hotel writing-room; two on the commercial and
two on the railroad wires. Will that be enough?"
Mr. McVickar nodded and reached over to press the bell-push which
signalled to his train conductor.
"That is about all I have to say," he said, in dismissal of the two
local officials. "Just nail Gryson up to the cross, where he belongs,
and keep young Blount busy and out of town; I leave the details to you.
Get orders for me as you go up to your office, Kittredge, and have the
despatcher let me out as soon as possible. I ought to be half-way to
Alkali by this time."
XVIII
THE CHASM
It was young Ranlett, a reporter for _The Plainsman_, who told Evan
Blount of the arrival of the vice-president's car, running as second
section of the Overland, and the scene of the telling was the lobby of
the Inter-Mountain Hotel, where Blount was smoking a pipe of
disappointment filled and lighted upon hearing that his father, Mrs.
Honoria, and Patricia had gone out to dinner somewhere--place unknown to
the obliging room clerk.
Ranlett had tried ineffectually to get to the private car, having for
his object the interviewing of the vice-president, but there had been
curious obstructions. The lower yard was apparently carefully guarded,
since the reporter had been turned back at three or four different
points when he had attempted to cross the tracks. Blount thought it a
little singular that the vice-president should come to the capital
secretly, but he did not stop to speculate upon this.
Having something more than a suspicion that Gantry had not properly
passed the threat of exposure up to McVickar, he determined at once to
seek an interview with the vice-president. Walking rapidly down to the
Sierra Avenue station, he saw a light in Gantry's office, and meaning to
be fair first and severe afterward, if needful, he ran up the stair and
tried the door of the traffic manager's office. It opened under his
hand, and he found Gantry sitting at his desk.
"Ranlett tells me that Mr. McVickar is in town," he began abruptly.
"Where is he?"
"Ranlett is mistaken--about twenty minutes mistaken," was Gantry's
reply. "Mr. McVickar passed through here a few minutes ago on his way to
Twin Canyons City. His special has been gone some little time."
"When is he coming back?"
"I don't know."
"Did you see him?"
"I did."
"Did you take up with him the matter of issuing new tariffs to do away
with the preferentials, or to level the public rates down to them?"
Gantry shifted uneasily in his chair, and tried to evade. "There was
very little time," he said. "Mr. McVickar was in a great hurry, and his
special was held only a few minutes."
Blount crossed the room and sat down.
"Dick, we've come to the last round-up," he said gravely. "In the nature
of things, I can't give you any more time. You've been playing with me
all along, and your last move in the game was a very childish
one--sending me what purported to be a copy of a new freight tariff
notice to the public. Did you suppose for a moment that I wouldn't have
sense enough to see that the thing wasn't official, that it had no
signatures and lacked even the name of the railroad company? I'm here
now to tell you that you've got to do some real thing, and do it
quickly. Let's go up and see the editor of _The Capital_."
"What for?" demanded Gantry.
"It is the railroad paper, and I want you to give Brinkley, the editor,
an interview to the effect that a revision of the freight rates is in
process, and that shippers having grievances should present them at
once. That will at least start the ball to rolling in the right
direction."
"I should think it would!" scoffed the traffic manager. "What you don't
know about the making of freight tariffs would sink a ship, Evan. These
things can't be done while you wait!"
"But they must be, in this instance," Blount insisted. "If you won't
withdraw the preferentials given to the corporations, you must do the
other thing. Post your legal notice of a reduction of the rates on the
commodities upon which you are now allowing rebates, and I'll fight
straight through on the line I've been taking all along."
"And if we don't?" queried Gantry.
"What is the use of making me say it for the hundredth time, Dick? If
you don't do one or the other, there will be an explosion, just as I've
told you. Of course, you know that my safe was broken open last
night--wrecked with dynamite?"
"Yes."
"Well, unluckily for you, the packet of papers which might otherwise
have been taken or destroyed, didn't happen to be in the safe. The
documents are still where they can be used at an hour's notice. And, by
heaven, Dick, I'll use them if you don't play fair!"
Gantry, long-suffering and patient to a fault in a business affair, was
not altogether superhuman.
"Evan, you are a frost--a black frost! You harp on one string until you
wear it to frazzles! Don't you know that the Transcontinental is big
enough and strong enough to chivvy you from one end of this country to
the other, if you turn traitor? I love a fighting man, but by God, I
haven't any use for a fool!"
Blount laughed.
"If I have succeeded in making you angry, perhaps there is a chance that
you will do something. You may curse me out all you want to, but the
fact remains. I'm going to explode the bomb, and it will be touched off
long enough before election to do the work, if you keep on refusing to
make my word good to the people. That is all--_all_ the all. Now, will
you go up to _The Capital_ office with me, and dictate that bit of
information that I mentioned?"
"Not in a thousand years!" raged Gantry. "Not in ten thousand years!"
Nevertheless he rose, closed his desk, and prepared to accompany the
importunate political manager. Half-way up the first square he said:
"There is no use in our going to _The Capital_ office at this time of
night. Brinkley doesn't get around to his desk much before eleven. Let's
go up to the club."
At the Railway Club the traffic manager developed a keen desire to kill
the intervening time in a game of billiards. Blount indulged him, beat
him three games in succession, and consistently refused to drink with
him. At the end of the third game, Gantry gave a terse definition,
abusively worded, of a man who would force his friend to go and drink
alone, and went to the buffet. Ten minutes later, when Blount went after
him, he had disappeared, and the visit to the newspaper office was
postponed, perforce.
On the following morning, Blount found a telegram on his desk. It bore
the vice-president's name, and the date-line was Twin Canyons City. It
directed him to go to a remote portion of the State beyond the Lost
River Mountains to examine the papers in a right-of-way case which was
coming up for trial at the next term of court. This was in Kittredge's
department, and Blount called the superintendent on the phone. Kittredge
was in his office, and he evidently knew about the vice-president's
telegram. Also, he seemed anxious to have the division counsel go to
Lewiston at once; so anxious that he offered his own service-car to be
run as a special train.
Blount saw no way to evade a positive order from the vice-president, but
he was more than suspicious that Gantry or Kittredge, or possibly both
of them, had misrepresented the right-of-way case to Mr. McVickar, in an
attempt to get him away from the city and so to postpone a reiteration
of the demand for a new freight tariff. What he did not suspect was that
Mr. McVickar's telegram might possibly have originated in Kittredge's
office.
Asking the superintendent to have the service-car made ready
immediately, he packed his handbag, left a note for Patricia, who was
not yet visible, and another for Gantry, who was not in his office, and
began the roundabout journey.
In all his travelling up and down the State he had never found anything
to equal the slowness of the special train. The noon meal, served by
Kittredge's cook in the open compartment, found the special less than
fifty miles on its way, and comfortably waiting at that hour on a
side-track among the sage-brush hills for the coming of a delayed train
in the opposite direction. Four mortal hours were lost on the lonely
siding. There was no station, and Blount could not telegraph. So far as
he knew, the service-car might stay there for a day or a week. It was
all to no purpose that he quarrelled with his conductor. The train crew
had orders to wait for the west-bound time freight, and there was
nothing to do but to keep on waiting.
Late in the afternoon the time freight, or some other train, came along,
and the special was once more set in motion eastward, but at dinner-time
it was again side-tracked, eighty-odd miles from its destination, and
once more at a desert siding where there was no telegraph office. The
car was still standing on the siding when Blount went to bed. But in the
morning it was in motion again, jogging now on its leisurely way up the
branch line.
At Lewiston, the town at the end of the branch where the right-of-way
trouble had originated, Blount found more delay, carefully planned for,
as he had now come firmly to believe. The plaintiffs in the right-of-way
case were out of town, and their lawyers had gone to the capital. Blount
saw that he might wait a week without accomplishing anything, hence he
immediately instructed his conductor to get orders for the return.
After having been gone a half-hour or more, the conductor came back to
the service-car to say that the single telegraph-wire connecting
Lewiston with the outer world was down, and that the orders for the
return journey could not be obtained until the telegraph connection was
restored. At that point Blount took matters into his own hands.
There was a mining company having its headquarters in the isolated town,
and Blount had met the manager once in the capital--met him in a social
way, and had been able to show him some little attention. Hiring a
buckboard at the one livery stable in the place, he drove out to the
"Little Mary," and found Blatchford, the friendly manager, smoking a
black clay cutty pipe in his shack office. It did not take Blount over a
minute to renew the pleasant acquaintance, and to state his dilemma.
"I'm hung up here with my special train, the wires are down and I can't
get out," was his statement of the crude fact. "Didn't you tell me that
you owned a motor-car?"
"I did," was the prompt reply. "Want to borrow it?"
"You beat me to it," said Blount, laughing. "That was precisely what I
was going to beg for--the loan of your car. I believe you told me that
you had driven it from here to the capital."
"Oh, yes; several times, and the road is fairly good by way of Arequipa
and Lost River Canyon. It's only about half as far across country as it
is around by the railroad. You ought to make it in six hours and a half,
or seven at the longest. Drive me down to the burg, and I'll put you in
possession."
Blount began to be audibly thankful, but the mine manager good-naturedly
cut him short.
"It's all in the day's work, Mr. Blount, and I'm glad to be of
service--not because you are the Transcontinental's lawyer, nor
altogether because you are the Honorable David's son. I haven't
forgotten your kindness to me when I was in town three weeks ago. Let's
go and get out the chug-wagon."
A little later Blount found himself handling the wheel of a very
serviceable knockabout car equipped for hard work on country roads. When
he was ready to go, he drove down to the railroad yard and hunted up his
conductor.
"After you have had your vacation, you may get orders from Mr.
Kittredge and take his car back to the capital," he told the man. "When
you do, you may give him my compliments, and tell him I preferred to run
my own special train."
The conductor grinned and made no reply, and he was still grinning when
he sauntered into the railroad telegraph office and spoke to the
operator.
"I dunno what's up," he said, "but whatever it was, the string's broke.
Old Dave Sage-Brush's son has borrowed him an automobile, and gone back
to town on his own hook. Guess you'd better call up the division
despatcher and tell him the broken-wire gag didn't work. Get a move on.
We hain't got nothin' to stay here for now."
Blount had a very pleasant drive across country, with no mishap worse
than a blown-out tire and a little carbureter trouble. Being a motorist
of parts, neither the accident nor the needed readjustment detained him
very long, and by the middle of the afternoon he was racing down the
smooth northern road, with the spires and tall buildings of the capital
fairly in sight.
Not to let gratitude lag too far behind the service rendered, he drove
Blatchford's car to the garage nearest the freight station, left
instructions to have it shipped back to Lewiston by the first train, and
promptly went in search of Gantry. The traffic manager was not in his
office, but Blount found him at the Railway Club.
"Just a word, Dick," he began, when he had overtaken his man pointing
for the buffet. "Kittredge put up a job on me, and I think you helped
him. I had to borrow an automobile to come back in from Lewiston. It's
down at the Central Garage, and I have given Bankston, the garage man,
orders to ship it back to Mr. Blatchford, of the 'Little Mary.' I wish
you'd phone your freight agent to see that it is properly taken care of,
and that the freight bill is sent to me."
Gantry made no reply, but he went obediently to the house telephone and
gave the necessary instructions. The thing done, he turned shortly upon
Blount, scowling morosely.
"Come on in and let's have a drink," he said.
Blount marked the brittleness of tone and the half-quarrelsome light in
the eyes which were a little bloodshot.
"No, Dick; you've had one too many already," he objected firmly.
Gantry put his back against the wall of the corridor.
"No," he rasped; "I'm not drunk, but I'm ready to fight you to a finish,
and for once in a way I'm going to get in the first lick. You've been
bluffing me from the start, and you're going to try it again. It won't
go this time; you've got to show me!"
If Blount hesitated it was only because he was trying to determine
whether or not the traffic manager was business-fit. Gantry comprehended
perfectly, and his laugh was derisive and a trifle bitter.
"You're sizing me up and asking yourself if I'm too far gone to be worth
while," he jeered. "If I couldn't stand any more liquid grief than you
can, I would have been down and out years ago. Show your hand, Evan--if
you have any to show."
Blount hesitated no longer. Taking Gantry's arm, he led him out of the
club and around the block to the Sierra National Bank. It was after
banking hours, but the side door giving access to the safe-deposit
department was still open. With the traffic manager at his elbow, Blount
asked the custodian for his private box, got it, and led the way to one
of the cell-like retiring rooms. Gantry proved his capacity for
transacting business by turning on the lights, locking the door, and
squaring himself in a chair at one side of the tiny writing-table.
Blount opened the japanned safety box, took out a bulky envelope and
tossed it across to the traffic manager.
"You can see for yourself whether I've been bluffing or not," he said
quietly; and then he turned his back and interested himself in the
lithograph of the latest Atlantic liner framed and hanging upon the
mahogany end wall of the small room.
For a little time there was a dead silence, broken only by the faint
rustling of the papers as Gantry withdrew and unfolded them. When he had
glanced at the last folded letter sheet, he snapped the rubber band upon
the sheaf and sat back in his chair. Blount turned at the snap and found
the traffic manager smiling curiously up at him.
"Sit down, Evan," was the friendly invitation. And when Blount had
dropped into the opposite chair: "We used to be pretty good friends in
the old days, Ebee," Gantry went on, falling easily into the use of the
college nickname. "I haven't forgotten the time when I would have had to
break and go home if you hadn't stood by me like a brother and lent me
money. For that reason, and for some others, I hate to see you bucking a
dead wall out here in the greasewood hills."
"It is you and your kind who are bucking the dead wall, Dick."
"No, listen; I'm giving it to you straight, now. A few minutes ago you
thought I was drunk--possibly too far gone to serve your purpose. I
wasn't; I was merely sick and disgusted at the spectacle afforded by a
crafty, crooked, double-dealing old world--the world we're living in.
Once in a blue moon an honest man turns up, and when that happens he's
got to be broken on the wheel--as you're going to be broken. Oh, yes; I
came out with ideals, too, but they've been knocked out of me. We all
have to keep the lock-step in business, and business is hell, Evan. I'm
honest to my salt--which is to say that as yet I'm not using my job to
line my own pockets, but that's the one decent thing that can be said of
me. Don't let me bore you."
"Go on," said Blount soberly. "I don't see the pointing of it yet,
but--"
"You will when I tell you that I've been lying to you; faking first one
thing and then another. Do you get that?"
"I hear you say it; yes."
"It's so. I faked that story about your father's having made an
underground deal with us. It was a lie out of whole cloth, because I
didn't believe at that time that he had. There had been a falling out
between him and Mr. McVickar; that was common talk on the division. But
until yesterday I didn't know for certain that the trouble had been
patched up; in fact, I had my own reasons for believing that it hadn't
been patched up."
"And you told me there was an alliance in order that I might believe
that my father would be involved in an exposure of the railroad's
double-dealing with the public?"
"Just that. Self-preservation is the primal law--after you've dropped
the ideals--and I thought I had invented a way to hold you down. I might
have saved myself the trouble--and the lie. It comes down to this, Evan:
you are one man against a crooked world, and you haven't had a ghost of
a show from the first minute."
"You'll have to make it plainer," was the even-toned rejoinder. "As
matters stand now, I am pretty well assured that I can do what I set out
to do. I'm going to be able to make my own employers come through with
clean hands."
Gantry was shaking his head slowly, and again the curious smile flitted
across his keen, fine-featured face, lingering for an instant at the
corners of the eyes.
"You say I'll have to make it plainer, and I will. A little while ago
you intimated that Kittredge and I were responsible for the telegram
which sent you to Lewiston yesterday. It was a fake, but it didn't
originate with Kittredge or with me."
"With whom, then?"
"I hate to tell you, Evan--it'll hit you hard. The frame-up was your
father's. He got hold of Kittredge the night before, some time after we
had left my office together to go up-town. He told Kittredge it was for
the good of 'the cause,' and suggested that a wire purporting to come
from Mr. McVickar would probably turn the trick. He didn't give his
reason for wanting to get you out of the way at this time, and Kittredge
didn't ask it."
Blount was pinning the traffic manager down with an eyehold which was
like a gripping hand, and the close air of the little mahogany bank cell
became suddenly charged with the subtle effluence of antagonism. Blount
was the first to break the painful silence.
"You have told me nothing new, Dick, or at least nothing that I have not
been taking for granted almost from the beginning. But let it be
understood between us, once for all, that I discuss my father, his
motives, or his acts, with no man living. We'll drop that phase of it;
it's a side issue, and has no bearing upon the business that brought us
here. You asked for the proof of my ability to compel your employers and
mine to turn over the clean leaf. You have it there under your hand."
For answer, Gantry pushed the rubber-banded file across the table to his
companion. "Take another look, Evan, and see how helpless you are in
the grip of a crooked world," he said, very gently.
Blount caught up the file and ran it through. It was made up wholly of
pieces of blank paper, cut to letter-size, and clipped at the corner
with a brass fastener, as the originals had been.
XIX
A COG IN THE WHEEL
While Blount was staring abstractedly at the file of blank sheets which
had been substituted for the incriminating letters of the vote-selling
corporation managers, with Gantry sitting back, alert and watchful, to
mark the first signs of the coming storm, there came a tap on the locked
door of the little room, and a deprecatory voice said: "It's our closing
time, gentlemen: if you are about through--"
"In a minute," returned Gantry quickly, and then he took the blank dummy
out of Blount's hands, pocketed it, shut the japanned safety box, and
touched his companion's shoulder.
"Let's get out of this, Evan," he said, still speaking as one speaks to
a hurt child. "Conroy wants to close up."
Blount suffered himself to be led away, and in the vault room he went
mechanically through the motions of locking up the empty box. In the
street Gantry once more took the lead, walking his silent charge around
the block and into the Temple Court elevator. A little later, when the
door of the private room in the up-town legal office had opened to admit
them, and Blount had dropped heavily into his own desk chair, Gantry
plunged promptly into the breach.
"We've been friendly enemies in this thing right from the start, Evan,"
he began, "and that's as it had to be. But blood--even the blood of a
college brotherhood--is thicker than water. I know now what you're in
for, and I'm going to stand by you, if it costs me my job. First, let's
clear the way a bit. If I say that I haven't had anything to do, even by
implication, with this jolt you've just been given, will you believe
me?"
Blount lifted a pair of heavy-lidded eyes and let them rest for an
instant upon the face of the traffic manager. "If you say so, Dick, I'll
believe it," he returned.
"Good. Now we can dive into the thick of it. I won't insult you by
doubting the premising fact. You had the evidence once?"