"Ah!" he exclaimed with a sudden indrawing of his breath. "You don't know what it is costing me!"

"Truly, I don't," she a.s.serted 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 G.o.d'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? G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sed, 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.

a.s.suming 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 a.s.surance 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.