"That proves conclusively that the subst.i.tution 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 a.s.sume 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, d.i.c.k; 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.

"d.i.c.k, 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.

d.a.m.n 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, d.i.c.k.

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 _p.r.o.nto_. 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 pa.s.sing 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 un.o.bstructed. 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."