Blount nodded. The message had not reached him; and its suppression was doubtless another move in the subtle game.
"You say you couldn"t find out what Gryson wanted?" he pressed.
"He--he seemed to be all torn up about something; couldn"t say three words without putting a cuss word in with them. The most I could get out of him was that somebody was trying to double-cross him."
Blount took a cigar from his pocket and lighted it. He was faint for lack of food, but he absently mistook the hunger for the tobacco craving.
"Collins," he said evenly, "you appear to forget at times that you are working for a man who has had some little experience with unwilling witnesses in the courts. You are not telling me the truth; or, at least, you"re not telling me all of it. Let"s have the part that you are keeping back."
"The--the last time he was in, he--he did talk a little," faltered the young man. "He"s got something to sell, and he"s f-fighting mad at Mr.
Kittredge. He said he was going to throw the gaff into somebody d.a.m.n"
quick if Mr. Kittredge didn"t wipe off the slate and c-come across with the price."
"That is better," was the brief comment. "Now, then, why did you lie to me in the first place?"
The stenographer shut his eyes and shrunk lower in his chair, but he made no reply.
"I"ll tell you why you lied," Blount went on, less harshly. "It was because you were told to. Isn"t that so?"
Collins nodded.
Reaching out quickly, Blount laid a hand on the young man"s knee. "Fred, what do you think of a soldier who takes his pay from one side and fights on the other? That is what you"ve been doing, you know; it is what you did when you put a dozen sheets of blank paper into an envelope the other day--the day I sent you to get a file of letters marked "private" from the safe."
The culprit drew away from the touch of the hand on his knee, and there was fear, and behind the fear the courage of desperation, in his eyes when he lifted them.
"You can give me the third degree if you want to, Mr. Blount, but as long as I"ve got the breath to say no, I"ll never tell you the next thing you"re going to ask me!"
Blount sprang up and went to stand at the window. There was a street arc-lamp swinging in its high sling some distance below the window level, its scintillant spark changing weirdly to blue and green and back to blinding orange, and he stared so steadily at it that his eyes were full of tears when he turned to look down upon the waiting culprit.
"No, Collins; I"m not going to ask you the name of the other master for whom you have thrown me down," he said gravely; and then: "That"s all--you may go now."
The young man got up and groped for the hat which had fallen from his hands to the floor and rolled away out of reach.
"You mean that I"m to get my time-check?" he asked.
"No," he grated--the harshness returning suddenly. "You are disloyal, and I know it; your successor would probably be the same, and I shouldn"t know it."
Nerved to the strident pitch now by the new resolution, Blount hurriedly set his desk in order, slammed it shut, and followed the stenographer to the street level. In the avenue he hesitated for a moment, the thoughts shuttling swiftly. In a flash the inferences fell into place. Gantry had said that his father was responsible for the time-killing journey to Lewiston. Why had it been necessary? Was it to keep him out of Gryson"s way? What did the ward-organizer have to communicate that made him so anxious to secure an interview? Was that anxiety the breach through which the wider field of corruption might be reached?
Again swift decision came to its own and Blount faced to the right, walking rapidly until he turned in at the foot of the worn double flight of stairs leading to the editorial rooms of _The Plainsman_. Blenkinsop, the editor, a lean, haggard man with a sallow face, coa.r.s.e black hair worn always a little longer than the prevailing cut, and deep-set, gloomy eyes, was at his desk.
"Can you give me a few minutes of your time, Blenkinsop?" the caller asked shortly.
"I can sell "em to you, maybe," said the editor, and the lift of the gloomy eyes merely served to turn the jest into a bit of morbid sarcasm.
Then he gave the sarcasm a half-bitter twist: "You railroad gentlemen are always willing to buy what you can"t reach out and take."
"I know that is what you believe," said Blount, drawing up a broken chair and planting himself carefully in it; "we are on opposite sides of the fence in this fight, if you are fighting the railroad merely because it is a railroad; otherwise, perhaps, we are not so far apart as we might be. I don"t know whether or not you have listened to any of my speeches, but you"ve printed a good many of them."
The editor nodded. "I"ve read "em, and I"m willing to be the hundredth man and say that I believe you are individually honest. I hope you"re not going to ask me to go any further than that."
"I"m not; I came for quite another purpose. First, let me ask a frank question: Is _The Plainsman_ out for a square deal all around, regardless of who may be hit?"
Blenkinsop took time to consider the question and his answer, chewing thoughtfully upon his extinct cigar while he reflected.
"This is straight goods?" he asked finally. "You"re not trying to pull me into an admission that can be used against us a little later on?"
"At the present moment you are talking to Evan Blount, the man, and not to the Transcontinental company"s lawyer, Blenkinsop."
"All right; then I"ll tell you flat that we are out for blood. We hold no brief for any living man. There are no strings tied to us, and we wear n.o.body"s bra.s.s collar."
"Then you are fighting the machine as well as the railroad?" Blount put in quickly.
The editor sat back in his chair, and the two furrows which deepened upon either side of his hard-bitted mouth answered for a smile.
"When you find a machine that hasn"t got "T-C.R." lettered on it somewhere, you let us know about it," was his rather cryptic reply.
"That is not the point," said Blount dryly. "Here is the question I wanted to ask: There are only five days intervening before the election.
How wide a swath could you cut if the evidence of wholesale corruption could be placed in your hands within twenty-four hours?"
Again the editor took time to consider. When he spoke it was to say: "I can"t quite believe that you are going to be disloyal to your salt at this late stage of the game, Blount. Do you mean that you are going to show your own company up for what it really is?"
"Never mind about that. I asked a question, and you haven"t answered it."
"It was a question of time, wasn"t it? There"s time enough to tip the skillet over and spill all the grease into the fire, if that"s what you mean; always time enough, up to the last issue before the polls open."
"And you"d do it--no matter who might happen to get in the way of the burning grease?"
"We print the news, and we try to get all the news there is. But it would have to be straight goods, Blount; no "ifs" and "ands" about it.
I"m not saying that you couldn"t produce the goods, you know. If you could break into Gantry"s and Kittredge"s private files, the trick would be turned. But I know well enough you"re not going to do that."
Blount got up out of the broken chair and b.u.t.toned his coat.
"I needn"t take any more of your time just now," he said. "I merely wanted to know how far you"d go if somebody should happen along at the last moment and give you a plain map of the road."
"We"ll go as far, and drive as hard, as any newspaper this side of the Missouri River. But we"ve got to have the facts--don"t forget that."
Blount was turning to go, but he faced around again sharply.
"Do you mean to tell me, Blenkinsop, that you don"t know, as well as you know you"re alive, that this campaign is honeycombed with deals and trades and dishonesty and trickery in every legislative district?" he demanded.
Again the ghastly smile which was only a deepening of the natural furrows flitted across the editor"s face.
"Of course, I know it," he returned. "But you"ll excuse me if I say that I scarcely expected to have the railroad company"s field-manager come and tell me about it."
Blount"s grim smile was a match for the editorial face-wrinkling. "You are like a good many others, Blenkinsop; you see red when you hear the noise of a railroad train. Perhaps, a little later, I may be able to persuade you to see another color--yellow, for example. Let it go at that. Good-night."
Once more in the avenue, Blount turned his steps toward the Inter-Mountain. Since the campaign was now in its final week, the clans were gathering in the capital, and the lobby of the great hotel was filled with groups of caucussing politicians. Blount was halted half a dozen times before he could make his way to the room-clerk"s desk, and the pumping process to which he was subjected at each fresh stoppage would have amused him if the fiery resolution which was driving him on had not temporarily killed his sense of humor. It was evident that, in spite of all he had been saying and doing, a considerable majority of the caucussers were still regarding him as his father"s lieutenant. He did not try very hard to remove the impression. It mattered little, in the present crisis, what the various party henchmen thought or believed.