me in the shape of unsolicited letters from the men who are benefiting
by the railroad company's evasion of the law, and who are, of course,
equally criminal with the railroad officials. Why these letters were
written to me I don't know, Gantry. I merely know that they were wholly
unsolicited."
"They were written to you because you are supposed to be the doctor in
the present crisis."
"But good God, Dick! Haven't I been shouting from every platform in the
State that we were out for a clean campaign?"
Gantry shook his head and his smile was commiserative. "I know; and
every man who has had his fingers in the pitch-barrel has chuckled to
himself, and when two of them would get together they'd pound each other
on the back and swear that you were the smoothest spellbinder that Mr.
McVickar has ever turned loose on this side of the big mountains. It
grinds, Evan, but it's the fact. Not one of the men you are after has
ever taken your speeches seriously."
Blount's head sank lower.
"I'm smashed, Dick!" he groaned; "utterly and irretrievably disgraced
and discredited in my native State! There isn't a man in the sage-brush
hills who would believe me under oath, after this."
"It's hard, Evan--damned hard!" said the traffic manager, driven to
repetition. "But grilling over it doesn't get us anywhere. What are you
going to do"?
"With the election only five days away, there is nothing that can be
done. I had you down, Dick; I could have forced my point with the weapon
I had. Isn't that so?"
Gantry wagged his head dubiously. "I'm not the big boss, but I can tell
you right now that, if you could have shown me what I was fully
expecting to see, the wires between here and wherever Mr. McVickar's
private car happens to be would have been kept pretty hot for a while."
Then, upon second thought: "Yes; I guess you could have pulled it off.
We couldn't stand for any such bill-boarding as you were threatening to
give us."
Blount turned to his desk, opened it, and began to arrange his papers.
"You've been a good friend, after all, Dick," he said, talking as he
worked. "I'm going to ask you to go one step farther and take charge of
the funeral, if you will. Find Mr. McVickar and wire him that I've
dropped out. I'll write him a resignation from somewhere, when I have
time."
Gantry left his chair and came to stand beside the quitter.
"Honestly, Evan," he said slowly, "I thought you were a grown man.
You'll forgive the mistake, won't you?"
Blount turned upon his tormentor and swore pathetically. "What's the
use--what in the devil is the use?" he rasped, when the outburst began
to grow measurably articulate. "You know as well as I do what's been
done to me, and who has done it. Can I lift my hand to strike back, even
if I had a weapon to strike with?"
"Perhaps you can't. But you owe it to yourself, and to a certain
bright-minded young woman that I know of, not to fly off the handle
without at least trying to see if you can't stay on. Wait a minute." The
railroad man took a turn up and down the floor, head down and hands
behind him. When he came back to the desk end he began again. "Evan,
who's got those original papers?"
"The man who blew up my safe, of course. You've said you didn't hire
him, and that leaves only one alternative."
Gantry took the dummy packet from his pocket and held one of the blank
sheets up to the light of the window. It was growing dusk, and when he
failed to discern what he was looking for, he turned on the electric
lights and tried again. At this the script "T-C" water-mark was plainly
visible, and he showed it to Blount.
"That proves conclusively that the substitution was made here in your
own office. Whom do you suspect?"
In a flash Blount remembered: how he had sent Collins to get the packet
out of the safe, the stenographer's delay, the hasty sealing of the
envelope, and the suspicion which had been cut short by the incoming of
Ackerton.
"I know now who did it, and when it was done," he said. "The day before
the office was broken into I told Collins to bring me the papers from
the safe. What he brought me was that dummy--in a freshly sealed
envelope. I was going to open the envelope, but just then Ackerton
came in."
"All clear so far," said Gantry; and then: "Where is Collins now?"
"I don't know; he comes and goes pretty much as he pleases when I'm not
in town."
"Do you know anything about him personally?"
"No."
"I do. His father was a bank cashier, and he became a defaulter--of the
easy-mark kind; the kind that is too good-natured to look too curiously
at a friend's collateral. He would have gone over the road if your
father hadn't pulled him out by main strength."
"I see," said Blount cynically. "And the son has paid his father's debt
to my father. But why the safe-blowing?"
"Collins's face had to be saved in some way. He couldn't know that you
meant to lock the dummy up in the safety vault," returned Gantry, and
then, after a pause: "That's our one little ray of hope, Evan."
"I don't see it."
"Don't you? Then I'll make it a bit plainer. If some railroad burglar
had cracked your safe, you could confidently assume that the original
letters have been carefully cremated by this time, couldn't you?"
"I suppose so."
"But if your father has them ... Evan, I don't know any more than the
man in the moon what he wants them for, but the man in the street would
grin and tell you that your father was merely getting ready to hold the
railroad company up for something it didn't want to part with."
"I'm letting you say it of my own flesh and blood, Dick; and it shows
you how badly broken I am. After all, it doesn't lead anywhere."
"Yes, it does. Let us suppose, just for the sake of argument, that your
father doesn't know how much those letters mean to you--I know it's a
pretty hard thing to imagine, but we'll do it by main strength and
awkwardness. Let us suppose again, that being the case, that you go to
him frankly and show him in a few well-chosen words just where he has
landed you; tell him you've got to have those letters--simply _got_ to
have them--to save your face. I know your father, Evan, a good bit
better than you do; he'd give you the earth with a fence around it if
you should ask him for it."
Evan Blount got slowly out of his chair, stood up, and put his hands
upon the smaller man's shoulders.
"Dick, do you realize what you are doing for yourself when you show me a
possible way of getting my weapon back?" he demanded.
Gantry's lips became a fine straight line and he nodded.
"That's what made me walk the floor a few minutes ago; I was trying to
find out if I were big enough. It's all right, Ebee; you go to it, and
I'll throw up my job and run a foot-race with the sheriff, if I have to.
Damn the job, anyway!" he finished petulantly. "I'm tired of being a
robber for somebody else's pocket all the time!"
Blount sat down again and put his face in his hands. After a time he
looked up to say: "I can't let you outbid me in the open market, Dick.
You can't set the friendship peg any higher than I can."
Gantry crossed the room and recovered his top-coat and hat from the
chair where he had thrown them.
"Don't you be a fool," he advised curtly. "There's a railroad down in
Peru that is going bankrupt for the lack of a wide-awake, up-to-date
traffic man. I've had the offer on my desk for a month, and I'm going
to cable to-night. That lets you out, whether you do or don't. But if
you've got the sense of a wooden Indian, you'll do as I've said--and do
it _pronto_. Your time's mighty short, anyway. So long."
And before Blount could stop him he was gone.
XX
A STONE FOR BREAD
Though he had eaten nothing since the early breakfast in the service-car
on the way to Lewiston, Evan Blount let the dinner hour go by unnoted.
For a long time after Gantry had left him he sat motionless, a prey to
thoughts too bitter to find expression in words; the dismaying thoughts
of the hard-pressed champion who has discovered that his foes are of his
own household.
Apart from the one great boyhood sorrow, a sorrow which had been allowed
unduly to magnify itself with the passing years, he had never been
brought face to face with any of the hardnesses which alone can make the
soldier of life entirely intrepid in the shock of battle. In the
backward glance he saw that his homeless youth had been, none the less,
a sheltered youth; that his father's love and care had built and
maintained invisible ramparts which had hitherto shielded him. It was
most humiliating to find that the crumbling of the ramparts was leaving
him naked and shivering; to find that he was so far out of touch with
his pioneer lineage as to be unable to stand alone.
But there are better things in the blood of the pioneers than a
latter-day descendant of the continent-conquering fathers may be able to
discern in the moment of defeat and disaster. Slowly, so slowly that he
did not recognize the precise moment at which the tide of depression and
wretchedness reached its lowest ebb and turned to sweep him back to a
firmer footing, Blount found himself emerging from the bitter waters.
Gantry, the Gantry whom he had been calling hard names, setting him down
as at best a lovable but wholly unprincipled time-server, had pointed a
possible way to retrieval, heroically effacing himself that the way
might be unobstructed. With the warm blood leaping again, Blount
straightened himself in his chair. He would go to his father, not as a
son begging a boon, but as a man demanding his rights. The machine had
seen fit to throw down the challenge by burglarizing his office and
robbing him. Very good; there were five days remaining in which to
strike back. He would lift the challenge, and if his reasonable demand
should be refused, he would drop the railroad crusade and break into the
wider field of bossism and machine-made majorities, ploughing and
turning it up to the light as he could.
The fiery resolution had scarcely been taken when he heard the door of
Collins's outer room open and close, and a moment later the good-looking
young stenographer came in, bringing a breath of the crisp autumn
evening with him.
"I didn't know you were back, Mr. Blount!" he exclaimed. "I saw the
office lights from the street, and thought somebody had left them
turned on. Is there anything I can do?"
"Yes; sit down," said Blount crisply, and then: "Collins, what do you do
with yourself when I am out of town?"
"I stay here most of the time. I went out early this afternoon, but I
don't often do it."
"Were you here all day yesterday?"
"Yes."
"Was there anything unusual going on?"
The young man looked away as if he expected to find his answer in the
farther corner of the room.
"I don't know as you'd call it unusual," he replied half-hesitantly.
"There were a good many callers. Shall I bring you the list?"
"Yes."
The stenographer went out to his desk and brought back a slip of paper
with the names.
"This man Gryson," said Blount, running his eye over the memorandum, "I
see you've got him down four or five times. What did he want?"
"He wouldn't tell me. But he was all kinds of anxious to see you. That
was why I telegraphed you; I couldn't get rid of him any other way."
"Let me see the copy of the message."
Again Collins made a journey to his desk, returning with the
telegraph-impression book open at the proper page. Blount glanced at the
copy of the brief message: "Thomas Gryson wants to know when he can be
sure of finding you here," and handed the book back.
"How did you send that?" he asked.
"I sent it down to the despatcher's office by Barney."
Blount nodded. The message had not reached him; and its suppression was
doubtless another move in the subtle game.
"You say you couldn't find out what Gryson wanted?" he pressed.
"He--he seemed to be all torn up about something; couldn't say three
words without putting a cuss word in with them. The most I could get out
of him was that somebody was trying to double-cross him."
Blount took a cigar from his pocket and lighted it. He was faint for
lack of food, but he absently mistook the hunger for the tobacco
craving.
"Collins," he said evenly, "you appear to forget at times that you are
working for a man who has had some little experience with unwilling
witnesses in the courts. You are not telling me the truth; or, at least,
you're not telling me all of it. Let's have the part that you are
keeping back."
"The--the last time he was in, he--he did talk a little," faltered the
young man. "He's got something to sell, and he's f-fighting mad at Mr.
Kittredge. He said he was going to throw the gaff into somebody damn'
quick if Mr. Kittredge didn't wipe off the slate and c-come across with
the price."
"That is better," was the brief comment. "Now, then, why did you lie to
me in the first place?"
The stenographer shut his eyes and shrunk lower in his chair, but he
made no reply.
"I'll tell you why you lied," Blount went on, less harshly. "It was
because you were told to. Isn't that so?"
Collins nodded.
Reaching out quickly, Blount laid a hand on the young man's knee. "Fred,
what do you think of a soldier who takes his pay from one side and
fights on the other? That is what you've been doing, you know; it is
what you did when you put a dozen sheets of blank paper into an envelope
the other day--the day I sent you to get a file of letters marked
'private' from the safe."
The culprit drew away from the touch of the hand on his knee, and there
was fear, and behind the fear the courage of desperation, in his eyes
when he lifted them.
"You can give me the third degree if you want to, Mr. Blount, but as
long as I've got the breath to say no, I'll never tell you the next
thing you're going to ask me!"
Blount sprang up and went to stand at the window. There was a street
arc-lamp swinging in its high sling some distance below the window
level, its scintillant spark changing weirdly to blue and green and back
to blinding orange, and he stared so steadily at it that his eyes were
full of tears when he turned to look down upon the waiting culprit.
"No, Collins; I'm not going to ask you the name of the other master for
whom you have thrown me down," he said gravely; and then: "That's
all--you may go now."
The young man got up and groped for the hat which had fallen from his
hands to the floor and rolled away out of reach.
"You mean that I'm to get my time-check?" he asked.
"No," he grated--the harshness returning suddenly. "You are disloyal,
and I know it; your successor would probably be the same, and I
shouldn't know it."
Nerved to the strident pitch now by the new resolution, Blount hurriedly
set his desk in order, slammed it shut, and followed the stenographer to
the street level. In the avenue he hesitated for a moment, the thoughts
shuttling swiftly. In a flash the inferences fell into place. Gantry had
said that his father was responsible for the time-killing journey to
Lewiston. Why had it been necessary? Was it to keep him out of Gryson's
way? What did the ward-organizer have to communicate that made him so
anxious to secure an interview? Was that anxiety the breach through
which the wider field of corruption might be reached?
Again swift decision came to its own and Blount faced to the right,
walking rapidly until he turned in at the foot of the worn double flight
of stairs leading to the editorial rooms of _The Plainsman_. Blenkinsop,
the editor, a lean, haggard man with a sallow face, coarse black hair
worn always a little longer than the prevailing cut, and deep-set,
gloomy eyes, was at his desk.
"Can you give me a few minutes of your time, Blenkinsop?" the caller
asked shortly.
"I can sell 'em to you, maybe," said the editor, and the lift of the
gloomy eyes merely served to turn the jest into a bit of morbid sarcasm.
Then he gave the sarcasm a half-bitter twist: "You railroad gentlemen
are always willing to buy what you can't reach out and take."
"I know that is what you believe," said Blount, drawing up a broken
chair and planting himself carefully in it; "we are on opposite sides of
the fence in this fight, if you are fighting the railroad merely because
it is a railroad; otherwise, perhaps, we are not so far apart as we
might be. I don't know whether or not you have listened to any of my
speeches, but you've printed a good many of them."
The editor nodded. "I've read 'em, and I'm willing to be the hundredth
man and say that I believe you are individually honest. I hope you're
not going to ask me to go any further than that."
"I'm not; I came for quite another purpose. First, let me ask a frank
question: Is _The Plainsman_ out for a square deal all around,
regardless of who may be hit?"
Blenkinsop took time to consider the question and his answer, chewing
thoughtfully upon his extinct cigar while he reflected.
"This is straight goods?" he asked finally. "You're not trying to pull
me into an admission that can be used against us a little later on?"
"At the present moment you are talking to Evan Blount, the man, and not
to the Transcontinental company's lawyer, Blenkinsop."
"All right; then I'll tell you flat that we are out for blood. We hold
no brief for any living man. There are no strings tied to us, and we
wear nobody's brass collar."
"Then you are fighting the machine as well as the railroad?" Blount put
in quickly.
The editor sat back in his chair, and the two furrows which deepened
upon either side of his hard-bitted mouth answered for a smile.
"When you find a machine that hasn't got 'T-C.R.' lettered on it
somewhere, you let us know about it," was his rather cryptic reply.
"That is not the point," said Blount dryly. "Here is the question I
wanted to ask: There are only five days intervening before the election.
How wide a swath could you cut if the evidence of wholesale corruption
could be placed in your hands within twenty-four hours?"
Again the editor took time to consider. When he spoke it was to say: "I
can't quite believe that you are going to be disloyal to your salt at
this late stage of the game, Blount. Do you mean that you are going to
show your own company up for what it really is?"
"Never mind about that. I asked a question, and you haven't answered
it."
"It was a question of time, wasn't it? There's time enough to tip the
skillet over and spill all the grease into the fire, if that's what you
mean; always time enough, up to the last issue before the polls open."
"And you'd do it--no matter who might happen to get in the way of the
burning grease?"
"We print the news, and we try to get all the news there is. But it
would have to be straight goods, Blount; no 'ifs' and 'ands' about it.
I'm not saying that you couldn't produce the goods, you know. If you
could break into Gantry's and Kittredge's private files, the trick would
be turned. But I know well enough you're not going to do that."
Blount got up out of the broken chair and buttoned his coat.
"I needn't take any more of your time just now," he said. "I merely
wanted to know how far you'd go if somebody should happen along at the
last moment and give you a plain map of the road."
"We'll go as far, and drive as hard, as any newspaper this side of the
Missouri River. But we've got to have the facts--don't forget that."
Blount was turning to go, but he faced around again sharply.
"Do you mean to tell me, Blenkinsop, that you don't know, as well as you
know you're alive, that this campaign is honeycombed with deals and
trades and dishonesty and trickery in every legislative district?" he
demanded.
Again the ghastly smile which was only a deepening of the natural
furrows flitted across the editor's face.
"Of course, I know it," he returned. "But you'll excuse me if I say
that I scarcely expected to have the railroad company's field-manager
come and tell me about it."
Blount's grim smile was a match for the editorial face-wrinkling. "You
are like a good many others, Blenkinsop; you see red when you hear the
noise of a railroad train. Perhaps, a little later, I may be able to
persuade you to see another color--yellow, for example. Let it go at
that. Good-night."
Once more in the avenue, Blount turned his steps toward the
Inter-Mountain. Since the campaign was now in its final week, the clans
were gathering in the capital, and the lobby of the great hotel was
filled with groups of caucussing politicians. Blount was halted half a
dozen times before he could make his way to the room-clerk's desk, and
the pumping process to which he was subjected at each fresh stoppage
would have amused him if the fiery resolution which was driving him on
had not temporarily killed his sense of humor. It was evident that, in
spite of all he had been saying and doing, a considerable majority of
the caucussers were still regarding him as his father's lieutenant. He
did not try very hard to remove the impression. It mattered little, in
the present crisis, what the various party henchmen thought or believed.
It was a sharp disappointment when the room-clerk told him that his
father and Mrs. Honoria and their guest had gone to the theatre. He was
keyed to the fighting-pitch, and he wanted to have the deciding word
spoken while his blood was up and there was still time to act. A glance
at the clock showed him that he had a full half-hour to wait; and, as
much to escape the buzzing lobbyists as to satisfy his hunger, he went
to the _café_ and ordered a belated dinner, choosing a table from which
he could look out through the open doors and command the main entrance
through which the theatre-goers would return.
He was through with the dinner, and was slowly sipping his black coffee,
when he saw them come in. Since it was no part of his plan to dull the
edge of opportunity by holding it first upon the social grindstone, he
let the party of three go on to the elevators, and a little later sent a
card up-stairs asking his father to meet him in the lounge on the
mezzanine floor.
Having the advantage of time, he was first at the appointed
meeting-place. He had drawn a chair to the balustrade, and was glooming
thoughtfully down at the lobby gathering, upon which even the lateness
of the hour appeared to have no dispersing effect, when a mellow voice
behind him said: "Well, son, taking a quiet little squint at the
menagerie?"
Blount got up and gave the speaker his chair, dragging up another for
himself. The senator sat down and stretched his great frame like a man
wearied. "Ah, Lord!" he said. "The old man isn't as young as he used to
be, Evan, boy. There was a time once when eleven o'clock didn't seem any
later to me than it does now to you; but it's gone by, son, and I don't
reckon it'll ever come back again."
Blount drew his chair nearer. "I have a hard thing to say to you
to-night, dad," he began, "and you mustn't make it harder by speaking of
your--of the things that get near to me. I am a man grown, and a Blount,
like yourself; I want you to give me back those papers which your
dynamiter or somebody else in your pay took from my office safe three
nights ago."
The senator's eyes lighted with the gentle smile, and the tips of the
great mustaches twitched slightly.
"So McVickar's been telling tales out of school, has he?" he inquired
half-jocularly.
"I have had no communication with Mr. McVickar. It wasn't necessary, nor
is it needful for us to go aside out of the straight road. I want those
papers. They are mine, and they were stolen."
The elder man smiled again. "What if I should say that I haven't got
'em, son--what then?" he asked mildly.
"I don't want you to say that. I want to believe that, however bitter
this fight may grow, we shall still speak the truth to each other."
There was silence for a little time, and then the father broke it to
say: "Reckon I could ask you what papers you mean, without roiling the
water any more than it's already been roiled, son?"
"You may ask and I'll answer, if you'll let me say that it is hardly
worth while for you to spar with me to gain time. I had certain
documents--letters--which would have enabled me to come through clean
with my own people--with the railroad management. You knew I had them;
I was imprudent enough to boast of it one evening when we were dining
together in your rooms. I know what I'm talking about, dad, when I make
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."