For a man who had been oftenest an onlooker on the football half of life, Kent was measurably quick and resourceful.  In one motion he clamped the weapon and turned it aside; in another he jammed the fire end of his cigar among the fingers of the grasping hand.  The governor jerked free with an oath, pain-extorted; and Kent dropped the captured weapon into the table drawer.  It was all done in two breaths, and when it was over, Kent flung away the broken cigar and lighted a fresh one.

“That was a very primitive expedient, your Excellency, to say the best of it,” he remarked.  “Have you nothing better to offer?”

The reply was a wild-beast growl, and taking it for a negative, Kent went on.

“Then perhaps you will listen to my proposal.  The papers you are so anxious about are here,”—­tapping the envelope on the table.  “No, don’t try to snatch them; you wouldn’t get out of here alive with them, lacking my leave.  Such of them as relate to your complicity in the Universal Oil deal are yours—­on one condition; that your health fails and you get yourself ordered out of the State for the remainder of your term.”

“No!” thundered the governor.

“Very well; you may stay and take a course of home treatment, if you prefer.  It’s optional.”

“By God!  I don’t know what keeps me from throttling you with my hands!” Bucks got upon his feet, and Kent rose, also, slipping the box envelope into his pocket and laying a precautionary hand on the drawer-pull.

The governor turned away and walked to the window, nursing his burned fingers.  When he faced about it was to return to the charge.

“Kent, what is it you want?  Say it in two words.”

“Candidly, I didn’t know, until a few minutes ago, Governor.  It began with a determination to break your grip on my railroad, I believe.”

“You can have your railroad, if you can get it—­and be damned to it, and to you, too!”

“I said it began that way.  My sole idea in gathering up this evidence against you and your accomplices was to whittle out a club that would make you let go of the Trans-Western.  For two weeks I have been debating with myself as to whether I should buy you or break you; and half an hour before you came, I went to the bank and took these papers out, meaning to go and hunt you up.”

“Well?” said the governor, and the word bared his teeth because his lips were dry.

“I thought I knew, in the old Gaston days, how many different kinds of a scoundrel you could be, but you’ve succeeded in showing me some new variations in the last few minutes.  It’s a thousand pities that the people of a great State should be at the mercy of such a gang of pirates as you and Hendricks and Meigs and MacFarlane, and——­”

“Break it off!” said Bucks.

“I’m through.  I was merely going to add’ that I have concluded not to buy you.”

“Then it’s to be war to the knife, is it?”