that I can join you at luncheon. There is so much to be done that I
shall probably drop around to the club for a bite at one o'clock. Don't
wait for me, and don't worry. Above all, please don't tell anybody where
I am--not even Dick Gantry."
He was considerably relieved when she said "Good-by" rather abruptly,
and rang off. None the less, he thought it a little strange that his
father should be planning to leave the capital on the very eve of the
great struggle. Was he so sure that nothing could happen within the next
twenty-four hours? Leaving the query answerless, he returned to the
interrupted duty. Deliberately, with the open telephone-book before him,
he sought and found Judge Hemingway's number; and a few seconds later he
had the judge's house in Mesa Circle, with the judge himself answering
his call. The wire conversation was brief and to the point. Cautiously,
and in well-guarded phrase, Blount stated his case. By a series of
correlated incidents which could be explained later, documentary
evidence of a great conspiracy had fallen into his hands; would the
judge step aside so far as to accord him a Sunday interview, taking his
word for it that the emergency was most urgent, and that the time was
too short to admit of the ordinary methods of procedure?
The judge's answer was satisfactory, though Blount fancied it was rather
reluctantly given. A family engagement--an accepted luncheon
invitation--would intervene; but between four and five o'clock in the
afternoon the chief justice would be in his chambers in the Capitol
building, and would be glad to have the son of his old friend the
senator come at that hour.
With time on his hands, Blount squared himself at his desk and began to
set his railroad house in order. Now that the dreadful step was
practically taken, he was free to wind up the business of his office,
leaving things in order for his successor. Once he had thought that he
could not stay in the capital or in the West after the cataclysm. But
now the manlier thought prevailed. A hard fate was making him his
father's betrayer; but beyond the betrayal, with the bare duty done, he
would take his place as his father's son, proving his love and loyalty
by going down with him to any depth of infamy into which the cataclysm
might drag him.
Since there was much to be done in the winding-up task, the forenoon
fled quickly, and the hands of the small paper-weight clock on the desk
were pointing to a quarter of two when Blount snapped the rubber band
upon the final file of referred papers. There were other odds and ends
to be set in order, but he determined to let them wait until he had
eaten. A scant half-hour in the club grill-room was all he allowed
himself, and at a quarter past two he was back at his desk, preparing to
make the cleaning-up task complete. Between four and five, Judge
Hemingway had said; and Blount began on one of the odds and ends, which
was the writing of his letter of resignation from the railroad service.
He was enclosing the letter when there came a light tap at the
office-door, and then the door itself opened to admit Patricia--a
Patricia bright-eyed and determined, alluringly charming in her tightly
veiled driving-hat, muffling motor-coat, and dainty gauntlets.
"You?" said Blount not too hospitably. "I thought you said something
about going to Wartrace?"
"So I did, and so I am," she asserted, coming to sit in the chair last
occupied by one Thomas Gryson.
"And the others?" he queried.
"They have just left; gone on ahead in the touring-car. I was deputed to
bring you."
"But I told you this morning that I couldn't go, and I can't!" he
protested.
She looked him squarely in the eye. "Evan, you don't dare tell me why
you can't!"
"Business," he pleaded.
"That may be half of the truth, but it isn't any more than half." Then
she made the direct appeal: "I wish you'd tell me, Evan. I know a
little--just the little that Mrs. Blount has seen fit to tell me--and no
more. There is trouble threatening; some dreadful trouble. I saw it
yesterday when you were so miserable; I can see it in your eyes this
minute."
Blount got up and began to pace the floor so that she might not see his
eyes. He was no more proof against such an appeal than any lover gladly
ready to bare his soul to the woman chosen out of a world of women for
his confidant and second self would be.
"I want to tell you," he affirmed, wheeling abruptly to face her; "I
wanted to tell you yesterday, only it was too horrible. You will know it
all when I say that by this time to-morrow the whole State will be
ringing with the story of David Blount's degradation and ruin; and
I--his only son, Patricia--I shall be the one who will have betrayed him
and brought it to pass!"
She blanched a little at that, and there was a great horror in her
eyes. But he noted at the moment, and remembered it afterward, that she
did not push him into the harrowing details, as another woman might have
done.
"You are very sure, I suppose?" she said gently.
He drew the packet of affidavits from his pocket.
"This is the evidence: sworn statements incriminating my father and many
others."
"You had those papers yesterday?"
"No. I got up last night to keep my appointment with the man who brought
them. But you see now why I can't go to Wartrace with you."
"I see that you are going to do something for which you will never,
never be able to forgive yourself," she said gravely. "You are going to
make use of those papers?"
He sat down and stared gloomily at her. "Patricia, I have taken a solemn
oath. The law which I have sworn to uphold is greater than--" He was
going to say, "greater than any man's claim for immunity," but she
finished the sentence otherwise for him.
"Is greater than your love for your father. I suppose I ought to be able
to understand that, but I am not. Evan, you can't do it--you mustn't do
it; every drop of that father's blood in your veins ought to cry out
against it."
"Ah!" he exclaimed with a sudden indrawing of his breath. "You don't
know what it is costing me!"
"Truly, I don't," she asserted calmly. "Your father is a great and good
man. If he had a daughter instead of a son, she would know and
understand." Then, in a quick and generous upflash of feeling: "I wish
he had a daughter--I wish I were she! I should try to show him that
blood is thicker than water!"
"You wish--you were--his daughter? Do you realize what you are saying?"
Then he went on brokenly: "_Don't_, Patricia, girl--for God's sake don't
tempt me to do evil that good may come! Can't you understand how I am
driven to do this thing--how every fibre of me is rebelling against the
savage necessity? God knows, I'd give anything I am or hope to be if the
necessity could be wiped out!"
Instantly she changed her attack.
"But I say you can not do it. You are a brave man, Evan; I know, because
I have seen you tried. You mustn't turn cowardly now."
"Nor shall I!" he countered quickly. "But I don't understand."
"Don't you? Isn't it cowardly to strike this cruel blow in the dark? You
_can't_ do this thing without giving your father the warning that you
would give your bitterest enemy--you simply can't, and still be the man
I have known and l--liked for two whole years!"
"Father's going to Wartrace this afternoon is merely an added twist of
the thumb-screws," he protested in fresh wretchedness. "I should have
gone to him first--I meant to go to him first. From what you said over
the telephone this morning I gathered that the Wartrace trip was to be
made on my account, and I hoped, I believed, it would be given up when I
refused to go. Now I can not see him first; the time is too short. That
which is to be done must be done to-day--this afternoon; otherwise it
will be too late. Don't make it any harder for me, Patricia. Surely you
can see how hard it is, in any case!"
"As I said a moment ago, I can see that you are about to do something
for which, in all the years to come, you will never be able to get your
own forgiveness. Oh, I know," she went on bitterly. "You will tell me
that I am a woman, with only a woman's standards, which are valueless
when they get mixed up with the emotions. But I can tell you that I know
your father better than you do--much better. And I believe in him,
utterly, absolutely. Won't you give him a chance, Evan? Won't you show
him those dreadful papers and ask him what he will do when you have
betrayed him?"
Blount winced painfully at the hard word, and then he remembered that he
had been the first to apply it. But he answered her in the only way that
seemed possible:
"The time: I have promised to meet Chief Justice Hemingway at his
chambers between four and five this afternoon."
"Chief Justice Hemingway?" she queried. "Why, he--" she broke off
suddenly and sprang from her chair. "I have the little car here in the
street. It was Mrs. Blount's proposal; she said you would change your
mind if I came after you and offered to drive you. Come! I'll promise to
bring you back before five o'clock. I know the time is awfully short,
but I can do it!"
If Blount hesitated it was only because her beauty and her eagerness
thrilled him until, for the moment, he could think of nothing else. Then
he closed his desk quickly and struggled into his overcoat, saying: "It
shall be as you wish. Let's go."
XXVII
IN WHICH PATRICIA DRIVES
For fifteen miles north of the capital the Quaretaro road is a
well-kept, level speedway, and Miss Anners amply proved the worth of her
summer's training by showing herself a fearless driver. Half an hour
after the small roadster had left the curb in front of the Temple Court
Building it was among the hills and climbing to the upper mesa level.
Nearing the mouth of Shonoho Canyon, they overtook and passed a horseman
turning into the canyon road. The man's horse shied and threatened to
bolt at sight of the storming car, but Patricia was looking straight
ahead, and she made no movement to slacken speed. At the passing
glimpse, Blount's mind went shuttling backward to the homecoming night
in the Lost Hills, and he made sure he recognized the rider as
Hathaway's morose henchman, the man Barto.
He wondered vaguely what Barto could be doing at the turn in the
obstructed side-canyon road, and the wonder went with him while the
little car was covering the remaining distance and flying up the
cottonwood-shaded avenue at Wartrace Hall. But a glance at his watch
made him forget the Barto incident in a heart-warming thrill of
admiration--the joy of a skilled motorist recognizing kindred skill in
another. The thirty miles from the city had been made in something under
fifty minutes.
When she brought the roadster to a stand at the carriage entrance,
Patricia spoke for the first time since she had taken the wheel for the
record-breaking drive.
"Find your father quickly and say to him what you have come to say. When
you are ready to go back, I'll keep my promise and drive you."
"That won't be at all necessary," he protested, getting out to stand
with his hand on the dash. "I am perfectly well able to drive myself;
and, besides, it would leave you at the wrong end of the road, and
alone."
"Don't stand there talking about it," she commanded. "Go and do what you
have to do. I'll wait here."
Blount turned away and found old Barnabas holding the door open for him.
A word passed, and the old negro bobbed his head. "Yas, sah; Marsteh
David's in de libra'y," was the answer to Blount's query, and, throwing
his overcoat and soft hat aside, the bearer of burdens not his own
walked quickly through the hall and let himself into the room of trial.
The bright autumn day was cool--cool enough to warrant the crackling
wood-fire on the library hearth. With his easy chair planted at the
cosey corner of the fire and an open book on the table at his elbow,
the senator sat smoking his long-stemmed pipe in the Sunday afternoon
quiet. Mingled with the fire-snapping there were faint tappings, as if
one of the cottonwoods, growing too near the house, were sending twig
signals to the inmates.
The senator moved the open book a little farther aside when his son made
an abrupt entrance into the cheerful room.
"Well, son, you made out to get here after so long a time, didn't you?"
he said gently. And then: "How's the broken head to-day?"
"Better," answered the son shortly, adding: "It's the least of my
troubles just now."
"That's good," was the hearty comment. Then, with the long stem of the
pipe pointing to a Morris-chair: "Draw up and sit down. I reckon the
drive has tired you some, even if you won't admit it. Where's the little
girl?"
Evan Blount saw instantly that he must be brief and pitiless.
"Patricia is waiting in the car to drive me back to town," he explained,
forcing himself to speak calmly. "I have an appointment with Chief
Justice Hemingway which must be kept, and he will wait in his chambers
in the Capitol only until five o'clock. Father, do you know why I have
made that appointment?"
The senator wagged his great head in a way which might mean anything or
nothing, and said: "How should I know, son?"
"I hoped you would know. It's not a very pleasant task for me to tell
you," the younger man went on, ignoring the chair to which the
long-stemmed pipe was still pointing. "A short time ago--yesterday, to
be exact--evidence, legal evidence, of corruption and false registration
in four of the city wards, and in a number of outlying districts in the
State, was put into my hands. This evidence incriminates a group of
ringleaders and a still larger number of election officers. You know
what I've got to do with it."
The older man nodded slowly.
"Yes, I reckon I know, son; and I'm not saying a word. If you weren't a
Blount, I might ask if you haven't learned that one of the first rules
in the book of politics is the one that says we mustn't hang the dirty
clothes out where everybody can see 'em, but I know better than to say
anything like that to you."
The young man's heart sank within him. It seemed evident that his father
was still unsuspecting, still unconscious of the dreadful consequences
to himself. Only utter frankness could avail now.
"I can't discuss the question of expediency with you," he said hastily,
"any further than to say that I'd cheerfully give ten years of my life
to be able to consider it. Let me be perfectly plain: This evidence I am
speaking of involves you personally. If the papers are put into Judge
Hemingway's hands there will be a searching investigation, prompt
indictments, criminal proceedings, and all the disgrace that the widest
publicity can bring upon the men who are responsible for the present
desperate state of affairs."
The senator had laid his pipe aside and was staring soberly into the
fire. "Go on, son," he said quietly; "let's have the rest of it."
"You know what has led up to the present wretched involvement--my
involvement," Blount went on. "When I took the railroad job, I did it in
good faith and went about preaching the gospel of the square deal for
everybody, including the corporations. But in a very short time I
discovered that my own people were not keeping faith with me; had no
intention of keeping it. Later on, a number of corporation officials and
managers, men who had formerly made corrupt deals with the railroad
company, and are to this day profiting by them, became frightened.
Assuming that I was the chief broker for the railroad company in the
present campaign, these men wrote me letters which were in the highest
degree incriminating."
The big man who was staring into the heart of the fire nodded
thoughtfully.
"I remember; you told me something about that before, didn't you?"
"Yes, and we needn't go into the details again. I meant to use those
letters as a club to hammer a little honesty into my own employers. Up
to that time I had been trying to believe that the machine--your
machine--and the railroad lawbreakers were not one and the same thing."
"But you changed your mind about that?"
"I had to, after I found out that you had corrupted one of my clerks and
had sent one of your thugs to dynamite my safe. That is past and gone;
but you can see where it left me. As you and everybody in the State
know, I had been committing myself publicly everywhere, doing it with
the assurance that when it came to the pinch I could bring Gantry and
Kittredge and even Mr. McVickar himself to terms--the terms of honesty
and fair dealing. With my weapon stolen, I was left helpless, facing the
certainty that on the day after the election I should be pilloried in
every hole and corner of my native State as the most shameless liar that
ever breathed. Do you wonder that I was desperate?"
"No, son; I reckon you wouldn't have been much of a Blount if you hadn't
been."
"I was desperate. I said to myself that I would find another weapon,
even if I should have to take a leaf out of your own book, dad, to do
it. I took the leaf, and I have the weapon. You drove Gryson away, but
you made one small miscalculation. You didn't believe that his desire
for revenge would be stronger than his fear of the gallows."
Again the older man nodded thoughtfully.
"Yes, son; I know. He came back twice: once when he found you in your
office last Wednesday night; and again yesterday, or rather last
evening, when you got out of your bed and went to help him make his
getaway on the east-bound Overland."
Evan Blount started back, and his exclamation was of pure astoundment.
"You knew all this?" he gasped.
"Oh, yes; I reckon there isn't much happening that such a double-dyed
old villain as I am doesn't find out, Evan," was the sober rejoinder.
"But, good heavens! if you know so much, you must know what Gryson came
back for, and what he gave me!"
"Yes; I know that, too. I reckon I might as well make a clean breast of
it while I'm at it."
"You knew it last night, and yet you didn't send somebody to hold me up
and take the papers away from me?"
The senator's chuckle rumbled deep in his mighty chest.
"Maybe I was counting a little on the kinship, Evan, boy. Maybe I was
saying to myself: 'No, I reckon the boy won't do it, after all--not when
he reads what's set down in the papers; he just naturally couldn't do
it.'"
"Oh, my Lord, dad!" was the choking response. "Can't you see that you
are killing me by inches? Can't you see that I've got to choose between
being a man clear through, or a scoundrel as weak and shifty as any of
those I have been denouncing? My God, it's terrible!"
"I reckon you're going to choose straight," said the older man, still
with eyes averted.
"I have chosen," said the son brokenly; "or perhaps it would be truer to
say that there never has been any choice since the moment when I set my
foot in the path which has led me thus far on the way to hell. I can
despise myself utterly for the means I took to secure the evidence, but
that very lapse makes it all the more needful that I should atone as I
can."
David Blount rose and put his back to the fire.
"Son, you are a man among a thousand--among ten thousand," he said
quietly. "When it comes to a pure question of good, old-fashioned right
and wrong, you can buck up just like your old great-gran'pap, the judge,
did when he had to sentence one of his own sons for killing an Indian.
You haven't said it in so many words, so I'll say it for you: you've got
me, and maybe some others, right where you can shove us into the
penitentiary. That's about what you're trying to tell me, isn't it?"
"For God's sake, don't put it that way!" Blount protested. "I gave you
fair warning almost at the first. I've got to fight for the right as I
see it. If I don't, I shall be less than a man--less than your son.
Can't you see that it is breaking my heart?"
A silence electrically surcharged with possibilities settled down upon
the isolated room, with the stillness broken only by the crackling of
the fire and that other distant tapping as of tree-twigs on the roof. At
the end of the pause the senator took a forward step and put a hand on
his son's shoulder.
"I haven't one word to say, Evan, boy," he began slowly. "As you told me
that first day out here, son, it's your job to hew to the line and let
the chips fall where they may. You go ahead and do just what seems
right and law-abiding to you. I'd rather go to jail twice over than have
you do any different. Is that what you're wanting me to say?"
Blount dropped into a chair, as if the touch on his shoulder had crushed
him, and covered his face with his hands. It was hard--harder than even
his own prefigurings had forecast it. Fighting against the patent facts,
he had been cherishing a lingering hope that his father might be able to
brush away the cruel necessity at the last moment. But now the hope was
dead.
It was a long minute before he staggered to his feet and groped his way
to the door, leaving his father standing before the fire and once more
puffing absently at the long-stemmed pipe. When old Barnabas had helped
him into his coat and had given him his hat, he found Patricia still
sitting in the car, with the motor purring softly under the hood.
"Must you go back?" she queried, when he had descended the steps to
climb stiffly into the seat beside her.
He nodded.
"Your duty is clear?"
"Perfectly clear--now."
"And the consequences?" she asked.
"I can only guess," he muttered. "Ruin and disgrace for all of us, I
suppose. Of course, you understand that I have resigned from the
railroad service and shall stand with my father when--when the thing is
done."
She was backing the little roadster into the circling driveway to turn
for the start. At the reversing moment she made her final plea.
"Don't do it, Evan--_don't do it!_ I have no more than a woman's reason
to offer, but I am sure you are opening the door to a lifelong sorrow
for yourself and--and--for me!"
It was the last two words that steeled him suddenly. Not even at her
beseeching would he turn aside from the plain path of the oath-bound
obligation. It struck him like a blow that the turning aside would make
him forever unworthy of her.
"Take me back to the city as quickly as you can!" he said. "Or, better
still, stay here and let me have the car. That is my last word."
"You're not fit to drive a car!" she snapped; and for further answer she
threw the speed lever into the intermediate gear and released the
clutch. Like a projectile hurled from a catapult, the swift little
roadster shot away down the cottonwood avenue, and with a jerk of the
lever into the "high" the second race against time was begun.
For the first few miles Patricia's passenger had all he could do to keep
his seat. On its upper mesa windings the Quaretaro road follows the
course of the stream which has been robbed of its waters for the
cultivated lands, and though the roadway was good the hazards were
plentiful when taken at speed. More than once Blount caught himself in
the act of reaching for the steering-wheel, but as often he desisted. As
on the outward race, Patricia was staring straight ahead, and giving
the little car every throb of speed there was in its machinery. None the
less, he could see that she had it under perfect control.
What finally happened came with the suddenness of the thunder-clap
following a bolt which strikes near at hand. They were on the down-grade
approach to the mouth of Shonoho Canyon, and they could not see beyond
the gentle curve to the left, where the smaller gulch found its
intersection with the main ravine. When they were within a hundred yards
of the curve the stretch below came into view. Blount had a momentary
glimpse of some barrier--a pine-tree, as it proved to be--lying across
the main road. Seeing it, he realized at the same instant that Patricia
was neither throttling the motor nor applying the brakes. After that he
had barely time to snap the switch and to throw the heavy wind-shield
down before the devastating crash came.
XXVIII
THE GOSSIPING WIRES
After his son had left him, the Honorable Senator Sage-Brush remained
standing before the library fire until he heard the machine-gun exhausts
of the small roadster distance-diminishing down the driveway avenue.
Then he stepped aside and pressed the bell-push ordinarily used to
summon the old negro footman.
In answer to the call a door opened beyond the chimney-jamb, and
immediately the gentle twig-tapping sounds resolved themselves into the
clickings of a pair of telegraph relays and the chatter of a typewriter.
A good-looking young fellow, with his coat off, entered the library,
carefully closing the door behind him.
"Want to send something, senator?" he asked, whipping a note-book from
his hip-pocket.
"No, not just this minute. Anything new coming over the wires?"