“You’ll have to make it plainer,” was the even-toned rejoinder.  “As matters stand now, I am pretty well assured that I can do what I set out to do.  I’m going to be able to make my own employers come through with clean hands.”

Gantry was shaking his head slowly, and again the curious smile flitted across his keen, fine-featured face, lingering for an instant at the corners of the eyes.

“You say I’ll have to make it plainer, and I will.  A little while ago you intimated that Kittredge and I were responsible for the telegram which sent you to Lewiston yesterday.  It was a fake, but it didn’t originate with Kittredge or with me.”

“With whom, then?”

“I hate to tell you, Evan—­it’ll hit you hard.  The frame-up was your father’s.  He got hold of Kittredge the night before, some time after we had left my office together to go up-town.  He told Kittredge it was for the good of ‘the cause,’ and suggested that a wire purporting to come from Mr. McVickar would probably turn the trick.  He didn’t give his reason for wanting to get you out of the way at this time, and Kittredge didn’t ask it.”

Blount was pinning the traffic manager down with an eyehold which was like a gripping hand, and the close air of the little mahogany bank cell became suddenly charged with the subtle effluence of antagonism.  Blount was the first to break the painful silence.

“You have told me nothing new, Dick, or at least nothing that I have not been taking for granted almost from the beginning.  But let it be understood between us, once for all, that I discuss my father, his motives, or his acts, with no man living.  We’ll drop that phase of it; it’s a side issue, and has no bearing upon the business that brought us here.  You asked for the proof of my ability to compel your employers and mine to turn over the clean leaf.  You have it there under your hand.”

For answer, Gantry pushed the rubber-banded file across the table to his companion.  “Take another look, Evan, and see how helpless you are in the grip of a crooked world,” he said, very gently.

Blount caught up the file and ran it through.  It was made up wholly of pieces of blank paper, cut to letter-size, and clipped at the corner with a brass fastener, as the originals had been.

XIX

A COG IN THE WHEEL

While Blount was staring abstractedly at the file of blank sheets which had been substituted for the incriminating letters of the vote-selling corporation managers, with Gantry sitting back, alert and watchful, to mark the first signs of the coming storm, there came a tap on the locked door of the little room, and a deprecatory voice said:  “It’s our closing time, gentlemen:  if you are about through—­”

“In a minute,” returned Gantry quickly, and then he took the blank dummy out of Blount’s hands, pocketed it, shut the japanned safety box, and touched his companion’s shoulder.