"He didn't need any special instructions," was the vice-president's rejoinder, and his tone chimed in with the hard-bitted smile. "Now that it is all over, I don't mind telling you that he mapped the thing out for himself, and all we had to do was to sit tight and give him plenty of rope. Candidly, David, I don't believe I'm hardened enough to play the game as it ought to be played out here in the sage-brush hills. The young fellow's sincerity came pretty near getting away with me when I saw how ridiculously in earnest he was."

"Yet you let him go on, putting himself deeper and deeper in the hole every time he stood up before an audience, and you never said a word--never gave him a hint that you were not going to back him up in everything he was saying?"

This time the hard-bitted smile broke into a laugh.

"Let's get down to business, David. You wouldn't expect us to throw the game away when somebody was trying his best to put the winning card into our hands. We needn't dig back into the campaign for something to jangle over, you and I. We can come right down to the present moment. You're cornered, but I don't deny that you've still got a few votes to dispose of. How much do you want for them?"

Blount saw his father take a step forward, and for a flitting instant he thought there would be violence. But apparently nothing was farther from the senator's intention.

"I'm not selling to-night, Hardwick; I'm buying," he said, with the good-natured smile wrinkling at the corners of his eyes. "I want to know how much you'll take to clean up right where you are and make my boy's word good to the people of this State."

Mr. McVickar turned to his table-desk and took up a sheaf of telegrams.

"I'm a pretty busy man this evening, David; and if you haven't anything better than that to offer--"

"You've got a lot of crooked deals out--special rates and rebates and such things; the boy believed you were going to call them all off and be good, Hardwick."

The vice-president laid the telegrams aside and turned back again with the air of a man determined to sweep away all the obstructions at one shrewd push.

"You're wasting your time and mine; let's get down to business," he snapped. "Some little time ago your son began to urge this same 'reform measure,' as he termed it. I believe he even went so far as to threaten Gantry and Kittredge with the publication of certain private letters from our patrons, letters written to him in his capacity of field campaigner for our company. I don't suppose he really meant to do any such disloyal thing as that, but--"

"But to make sure he wouldn't, you had one of your hired shadow-men blow up his safe and steal the letters," put in the senator mildly. "That was prudent, Hardwick. I was a little scared up myself for fear Evan might get real good and mad, and let the cat out of the bag; I was, for a fact."

"Without admitting the safe-blowing, I may say that the letters were destroyed, and our friends were advised to be a little more conservative in their correspondence. That settles the 'reform measure' incident and brings us down to the present argument. If you are not here to get in line with us, what did you come for?"

"I came to give you one more chance to be decent, Hardwick; just--one--more--last--chance."

"David, there are times when you make me tired, and this is one of them. For years you've held us up and dictated to us; but this time we've got you by the neck. Did you ever happen to hear of a fellow named Thomas Gryson?"

"Oh, yes; I've heard of him. I believe he has been on your pay-rolls for a while--notwithstanding the fact that he is an escaped criminal," was the shrewd counter-thrust.

"He's a scoundrel; we'll admit that. Just the same, your son hired him to go out and get evidence in a certain matter of alleged crookedness in the registration lists. He got it, and delivered the papers to your son last night. Some of those affidavits incriminate you, David. If we wanted to use them, we could send you to the penitentiary, right here in your own State."

The senator drew up a mock-Sheraton arm-chair and lowered his huge frame gently into it.

"In order to use those papers against me you'd first have to get hold of them, wouldn't you, Hardwick?" he asked.

"We have them," was the terse a.s.sertion.

The Honorable David's chuckle rumbled deep in his capacious chest.

"Barto phoned you an hour or so ago that he had 'em, but, owing to circ.u.mstances over which he had no control, he couldn't deliver 'em to you until to-morrow morning. Isn't that about the way it shapes up?"

The vice-president's frown marked an added degree of irritation. "So you have a cut-in on my telephone wire, have you?" he rasped.

The senator leaned forward and laid a forefinger on the vice-presidential knee.

"Listen, Hardwick," he said. "I dictated that phone message to you, and Barto repeated it word for word because he had to--I reckon maybe it was because one of my men was holding a gun to his other ear while he talked to you. The little hold-up that you planned this afternoon didn't come off. Barto lost out bad, and when we get around to giving him the third degree, I shouldn't wonder if he'd tell a whole lot of things that you wouldn't want to see printed in the newspapers."

Mr. McVickar sprang out of his chair with an agility surprising in so heavy a man, crossed to the open door of the room where his clerical force was at work, and slammed it shut. When he returned, he was no longer the confident tyrant of foregone conclusions.

"Where are those papers now, Blount?" he inquired.

"They are in the hands of Chief Justice Hemingway, for investigation and such action as he and his colleagues on the Supreme Court bench see fit to take."

"Good G.o.d! Your son did that, knowing that you are as deep in the mud as we are in the mire?"

"I reckon he did, so. That boy is all wool and a yard wide. He thought he was putting me in the hole, too, along with Kittredge and your railroad crooks, and it came mighty near tearing him in two. But he did it. You haven't been more than half-appreciating that boy, Hardwick."

"'He thought,' you say; isn't it the fact that you are in the hole, David?"

The senator reached over, took one of the gigantic McVickar cigars from the open box on the desk, and calmly lighted it.

"You're a pretty hard man to convince, Hardwick," he said slowly, when the big cigar was filling the air of the lobby with its fragrance. "Away along back at the beginning of this fight I told you what I was aiming to do, and why. You wouldn't believe it then, and you don't want to believe it now; but that's because you don't happen to have a son of your own. When that boy of mine wired me that he was coming out here to get into the harness, I began to turn over the leaves of the record and look back a little. It was a mighty dirty record, McVickar. I don't know that I'm any better man now than I was in the days when we made that record--you and I--but when I looked it over, it struck me all in a heap that I'd have to get out the bucket and scrubbing-brush if I didn't want to make a clean-hearted, clean-minded boy plumb ashamed of his old daddy."

"But, say--you haven't quit your scheming for a single minute, Blount!"

retorted the railroad tyrant. "You are just as much the boss of the machine to-day as you've ever been!"

"I reckon, that's so, too," was the measured reply. "But there's just this one little difference, Hardwick: a machine, in a factory or in politics, is a mighty necessary thing, and we wouldn't get very far nowadays without it. Here in America we're just coming to learn that machine politics--which is sometimes only another name for intelligent organization--needn't be bad politics unless we make 'em bad. To put it another way, the machine will grind corn or clean up the streets and alleys just as easily as it will grind up men and principles."

The vice-president made a gesture of impatience.

"Come to the point," he urged. "Do you mean to tell me that you can face an investigation by the Supreme Court?"

"For this one time, Hardwick, I can. For this one time in the history of the Sage-Brush State, the slate--the machine slate--is as clean as the back of your hand. When the court comes to investigate, it will find that every crooked deal in this campaign has had a railroad man or a corporation man at the back of it. Let me tell you what's due to happen.

Chief Justice Hemingway had luncheon with me to-day, and he came early enough to give me a quiet hour before we went to table with the ladies.

There is going to be an investigation, and some sharp, shrewd young lawyer is going to be appointed by the court to take evidence. When this young man gets to work, every wheel in the machine is going to roll his way. Every bribe you've offered and paid, every false name you've put on the registration lists, every deal you've made with men like Pete Hathaway and McDarragh, has had its witnesses, and by the G.o.ds, Hardwick, they'll testify--every man of them!"

Again the vice-president sprang from his chair, but this time it was to walk the floor with his head bowed and his hands in his pockets. The listener in the musicians' gallery found a seat and sat down to let the intoxicating, overwhelming joy of it all have its will of him. In the fulness of time the tramping magnate who had been so crushingly out-generalled in his own chosen field came to stand before the big man, who was still quietly smoking in the sham-Sheraton arm-chair.

"You spoke of the appointment of a special prosecuting attorney, David,"

he said in a harsh monotone. "Who will it be?"

"You've guessed it already, I reckon. It'll be the boy, Hardwick.

Hemingway will appoint him if he is willing to serve."

"He's taken our retainer!" snapped the vice-president.

"Not much, he hasn't! you hired him for wages, and if he wants to resign--he has resigned, by the way--and take another job, I reckon he can do it without breaking any of the Ten Commandments."

"We can't stand for that--you know we can't."

"No; I don't think you can--not as a corporation. Besides the flock of witnesses that we can drum up, he'll have those letters that we were talking about a while back. You missed fire on that, too, Hardwick. What your man dynamited out of Evan's office safe, and what you destroyed, were only clever copies. The real letters were stolen by the boy's friends, and little as you may believe it, the object of that theft was to give you this last chance. The boy was mighty hot under the collar, and we couldn't be sure that he wouldn't start the fireworks before the band was ready to play. He would have started them, too, if his match hadn't been taken away from him."

Mr. McVickar walked around the other end of the table-desk and sat down heavily.

"You've spoken twice of a 'last chance' David," he said grittingly.

"What is it?"