Kent fired up a little.

“And if I am?” he retorted.

“I should say you had missed your calling.  It is baldly a question of business—­or rather of self-preservation.  We needn’t mince matters among ourselves.  If Bucks is for sale, we buy him.”

Kent shrugged.

“There isn’t any doubt about his purchasability.  But I confess I don’t quite see how you will go about it.”

“Never mind that part of it; just leave the ways and means with those of us who have riper experience—­and fewer hamperings, perhaps—­than you have.  Your share in it is to tell us how big a bid we must make.  As I say, you know the man.”

David Kent was silent for the striding of half a square.  The New England conscience dies hard, and while it lives it is given to drawing sharp lines on all the boundaries of culpability.  Kent ended by taking the matter in debate violently out of the domain of ethics and standing it upon the ground of expediency.

“It will cost too much.  You would have to bid high—­not to overcome his scruples, for he has none; but to satisfy his greed—­which is abnormal.  And, besides, he has his pose to defend.  If he can see his way clear to a harvest of extortions under the law, he will probably turn you down—­and will make it hot for you later on in the name of outraged virtue.”

Harnwicke’s laugh was cynical.

“He and his little clique don’t own the earth in fee simple.  Perhaps we shall be able to make them grasp that idea before we are through with them.  We have had this fight on in other states.  Would ten thousand be likely to satisfy him?”

“No,” said Kent.  “If you add another cipher, it might.”

“A hundred thousand is a pot of money.  I take it for granted the Western Pacific will stand its pro-rate?”

The New England conscience bucked again, and Kent made his first open protest against the methods of the demoralizers.

“I am not in a position to say:  I should advise against it.  Unofficially, I think I can speak for Loring and the Boston people.  We are not more saintly than other folk, perhaps; and we are not in the railroad business for health or pleasure.  But I fancy the Advisory Board would draw the line at bribing a governor—­at any rate, I hope it would.”

“Rot!” said Harnwicke.  And then:  “You’ll reap the benefits with other interstate interests; you’ll have to come in.”

Kent hesitated, but not now on the ground of the principle to be defended.

“That brings in a question which I am not competent to decide.  Loring is your man.  You will call a conference of the ‘powers,’ I take it?”

“It is already called.  I sent Atherton out to notify everybody as soon as the trap was sprung in the House.  We meet in the ordinary at the Camelot.  You’ll be there?”

“A little later—­if Loring wants me.  I have some telephoning to do before this thing gets on the wires.”