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, d.i.c.k."

"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 h.e.l.l, 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 a.s.sured 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, d.i.c.k, 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 bra.s.s 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 subst.i.tuted 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 j.a.panned 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, d.i.c.k, 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?"

"I did--enough of it to keep a grand jury busy for a month. It came to 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 G.o.d, d.i.c.k! 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, d.i.c.k!" 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--d.a.m.ned hard!" said the traffic manager, driven to repet.i.tion. "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, d.i.c.k; 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, d.i.c.k," 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.