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 _café_ 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
tête-à-tête 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.