"Who did it, Gantry?"

"There is only one man in this bailiwick who can take the whip to a fellow like Tom Gryson. I guess I don't need to name him for you, Evan."

Blount got out of his chair and stood with his back to the fire, and his face was white.

"Good G.o.d! the rottenness of it, d.i.c.k!" he groaned. And then: "I've got to get out of this and begin all over again in some corner of the world where at least one man in ten hasn't forgotten the meaning of common honesty and decency and fair dealing. Heaven knows I'm no saint, but if I stay here this cursed crookedness will get into my blood and I'll be just as degraded as the worst of them. No, I'm not raving; there have been times when I've felt myself slipping--times when I've been tempted to get down and fight with the weapons that everybody fights with in this G.o.d-forsaken, law-breaking, graft-ridden commonwealth!"

Gantry had risen and he was slowly shaking his head.

"You're hot now--and with good enough cause, I guess. But that sort of a temperature makes a man near-sighted and color-blind. Human nature is pretty much the same the world over, Evan, and if you could see beyond the crookedness you'd find a lot of good people out here, averaging about the same as the decent majority anywhere. It's an inarticulate majority generally; it doesn't stand up on its hind legs and rear around and call attention to itself--couldn't if it should try. But it's here and there and everywhere in America, just the same. A railroad car with one drunken fool in it gives you the idea. You focus on him and say, 'What a beastly shame!' and you entirely overlook the other fifty-odd people in the car who are quietly minding their own business."

Blount's smile was for the man rather than for the theory.

"You are an implacable optimist, d.i.c.k, and you always have been," he returned. "Your theory is good humanitarianism, and I wish I could accept it as applying to this abandoned community out here in my native hills; but I can't. Let's go back to the others. We've established a sort of family _modus vivendi_, my father and I, and I don't want him to think that I'm breaking it by plotting with you."

It was while the evening was still measurably young that Blount made his excuses to his hostess and got away, fondly believing that he was escaping without attracting the attention of the small lady who was deep in a political discussion with candidate Gordon at the critical moment.

He was mistaken, but the escape was not interrupted. At the curb the Blount touring-car was waiting, with two others, and for an instant Blount hesitated, half inclined to ask his father's chauffeur, to drive him down-town. On such inconsequent pivots fate, or accident, twirls the most momentous affairs of life. If Blount had taken the car he would have been driven directly to the hotel. As it was, he walked, and in pa.s.sing the Temple Court Building he remembered that he had not seen his mail since early morning.

Rousing the sleepy boy in charge of the all-night elevator, he had himself lifted to his office floor. The upper corridor was dimly lighted, and on leaving the car he went directly to the door of his private room, walking swiftly and neither seeing nor hearing a man who, materializing mysteriously out of the corridor shadows, followed him step by step.

In the office Blount snapped the lights on and turned to unlock his desk. As the key clicked in the lock the sixth sense, which is perhaps only a mingling of the subtler essences of the other five, warned him sharply, and he wheeled to face the door which had been left on the latch. As he looked, the door opened silently and the materializing shadow, haggard of face and with bloodshot eyes mirroring blind rage and the terror of a cornered rat, slipped into the room and stood warily aside out of the direct light from the electric chandelier. Blount looked again and swore softly. The dodging intruder was the man Thomas Gryson.

XXII

THE ICONOCLAST

It is a threadbare saying that the environment moulds the man. Yet, much more than the philosophers have contended, there are chameleon tendencies in the strongest character, and one finely determining to coerce his surroundings is quite likely to end by realizing that the surroundings have appealed to unsuspected color-changings in himself.

Thus it may chance that the fairest fighter, finding himself sufficiently kicked and cuffed in the rough-and-tumble, will discover how facilely easy it is to descend to the level of his antagonists, and from this discovery to the awakening of the remorseless pa.s.sion for success at any price is but a step, long or short according to the exigencies of the struggle.

Checked in his luggage, if not precisely pinned openly upon his sleeve, Blount had brought with him from the scholastic banks of the Charles a choice a.s.sortment of ideals, which are things precious only as they can be preserved inviolate. But for weeks, endless weeks as they seemed to him in the retrospect, he had been rubbing shoulders with a crude world which appeared to care little for ideals and less for the man who upheld them. Inevitably, as he had admitted to Gantry, the change was wrought, or working; the exclamation springing to his lips when he recognized Gryson evinced it, and when he beckoned the shifty intruder to the chair at the desk end the ruthless _zeitgeist_ had taken full possession of him, and the thought uppermost had grown suddenly indifferent to the means if by their employment the end might be gained.

"Come over here and sit down," he commanded; then, seeing that Gryson hesitated and flung a glance over his shoulder at the door: "What are you afraid of?"

"They've got my number," said the ward-heeler, in a convict whisper which was little more than a facial contortion. "There's a couple o'

bulls waitin' f'r me down on the sidewalk."

Blount crossed the room, shut the door and locked it. Then he went back to the self-confessed fugitive.

"You're safe for the time being," he told the man. "Now talk fast and talk straight. What do you want this time?"

Gryson hammered the arm of his chair with his fist and babbled profanity. When he became coherent he told his story, or rather Blount got it out of him piecemeal, of how he had been employed by the "organization" to falsify the registration lists in certain districts; of how, when the work was done, he had been denied the price and driven out with cursings. In the accusation, which was shot through with tremulous imprecations, the "organization" and the railroad company were implicated as if they were one. In one breath the fugitive charged the "double-crossing" to Kittredge, and in the next he accused the "big boss" himself, of having pa.s.sed the sentence of deportation.

"You say you were driven out? How could they drive you if you didn't want to go?" queried the cross-examiner.

"That's on me: it was a job I pulled off two years ago in another place--up north of this--and the night-watchman got in the way when I was leavin'. They jerked that on me and showed me th' rope. They had me by th' neck, with th' word pa.s.sed to Chief Robertson. I'm back here now wit' my life in my hand, but I'd chance it twice over to get square wit'

them welshers that have bawled me out!"

"Why have you come to me?" asked Blount briefly.

"Gawd knows; I took a chance again. I've heard your speeches, and says I, 'There's your wan chance, cully,' and I'm here to grab f'r it. If you've been meanin' the half of what you've been sayin', Mr. Blount--"

There was more of it, half pleadings and half mere rageful babblings of a vengeful soul hampered by the tongue of inadequacy.

Blount left his chair and began to pace the floor, with Gryson watching him furtively. At any time earlier in the struggle the thought of using this wretched time-server as a means to any end, however desirable and just, would have been nauseating. True, if there could be any such thing as honor among thieves, the man had earned the price of his crooked work among the registration clerks; but for another man to profit by the broken bargain, and by the confessed criminal's rage and l.u.s.t for vengeance, was a thing to make even a hard-pressed loser in an unequal battle hesitate.

The hesitation was only momentary. With a gesture which was more expressive than many words, Blount turned short upon the furtive watcher in the chair at the desk end.

"What do you want me to do?" he demanded.

"You're on before I could stall it f'r you. You've been swearin' you'd back th' square deal to th' limit; it ain't square; it's crooked as h.e.l.l. Grab f'r this knife I'm handin' you and cut the heart out o' these welshin' bosses that are givin' you th' double-cross the same as they're givin' it to me. You're the on'y man that can do it; the on'y man on Gawd's green earth they're afraid of. I know it d.a.m.n' well. That's why they handed my number to th' chief and pa.s.sed th' word to have me pinched. They was afraid I'd come here and squeal to you!"

Blount stopped him with an impatient gesture. "Let that part of it rest and get down to business. What you have been telling me may be true, but I can't do anything on your bare word--the word of a man who is dodging the police. You've got to bring me proofs in black and white; lists of the faked names, and a straight-out give-away of how they are to be used; names and dates, and a written story of your bargainings with the men higher up. This is Thursday; to be of any use, these doc.u.ments would have to be in my hands by Sat.u.r.day noon, at the latest. You know best whether the thing can be done in time--or done at all. What do you say?"

For a little time Gryson said nothing. When he spoke it was evident that the l.u.s.t for vengeance and a guilty conscience were fighting an even-handed battle.

"I could get the affidavits--maybe," he said. "There's a dozen 'r more of the cullies down-along got their notice to fade away when I got mine, and they'd jump at th' chance to get back at the bosses. But f'r Gawd's sake, look at what it means to me! Anny minute I'm on the job I'd be lookin' to see some bull with a star on 'im holdin' a gun on me; and after that, it's this f'r mine"--with a jerk of the head and a pantomimic gesture simulating the hangman's knot under his ear.

"That is your risk," said Blount coldly, making this small concession to the expiring sense of uprightness. "You know how badly you want to 'get square,' as you put it, and I am interested only in the results. If you get caught, I sha'n't turn my hand over to help you--you can take that straight. But if you show up here with the proofs, proofs that I can use, any time before Sat.u.r.day night, I'll undertake to see that you get safely out of the State."

It was in the little pause which followed that some one in the corridor rapped smartly on the locked door. At the sound, Gryson collapsed and his face became an ashen mask of fear. Blount, the law-abiding, might have hesitated, but this newer Blount had slain his scruples. s.n.a.t.c.hing Gryson out of his chair, he thrust him silently through the half-open door of the work-room, and a moment later he was answering the rap at the corridor entrance, opening the door and calmly facing the two policemen on the threshold.

"Well?" he said brusquely.

One of the men touched his helmet.

"We're looking for a felly that ducked in below a couple of hours ago, Mr. Blount. He's in the building, somewheres, and your office being lighted, we thought maybe you'd--"

Blount threw the door wide.

"You can see for yourselves," he said. "Would you like to come in and look around?"

"Sure not; your word's as good as the search, Mr. Blount. 'Twas only on the chance that he might have faked an excuse and ducked in on you to be out of reach."

Blount left the door open and went to get his coat and hat.

"Who is the man?" he asked, while the officers lingered.

"A felly named Gryson. He's been working in the railroad shops what times he wasn't pullin' off something crooked in the p'litical line."

"What is he wanted for?" Blount was closing his desk and preparing to leave the office.

"Croaking a bank watchman up in Montana afther he'd souped the vault door for a kick-shot."

"In that case, perhaps I'm lucky that he didn't drop in and croak me,"

laughed Blount, turning off the lights and joining the two men in the corridor. And then: "There is a back stair to the engine-room in the bas.e.m.e.nt in the other wing of the building: have you been watching that?"