“Let’s get out of this, Evan,” he said, still speaking as one speaks to a hurt child.  “Conroy wants to close up.”

Blount suffered himself to be led away, and in the vault room he went mechanically through the motions of locking up the empty box.  In the street Gantry once more took the lead, walking his silent charge around the block and into the Temple Court elevator.  A little later, when the door of the private room in the up-town legal office had opened to admit them, and Blount had dropped heavily into his own desk chair, Gantry plunged promptly into the breach.

“We’ve been friendly enemies in this thing right from the start, Evan,” he began, “and that’s as it had to be.  But blood—­even the blood of a college brotherhood—­is thicker than water.  I know now what you’re in for, and I’m going to stand by you, if it costs me my job.  First, let’s clear the way a bit.  If I say that I haven’t had anything to do, even by implication, with this jolt you’ve just been given, will you believe me?”

Blount lifted a pair of heavy-lidded eyes and let them rest for an instant upon the face of the traffic manager.  “If you say so, Dick, I’ll believe it,” he returned.

“Good.  Now we can dive into the thick of it.  I won’t insult you by doubting the premising fact.  You had the evidence once?”

“I did—­enough of it to keep a grand jury busy for a month.  It came to me in the shape of unsolicited letters from the men who are benefiting by the railroad company’s evasion of the law, and who are, of course, equally criminal with the railroad officials.  Why these letters were written to me I don’t know, Gantry.  I merely know that they were wholly unsolicited.”

“They were written to you because you are supposed to be the doctor in the present crisis.”

“But good God, Dick!  Haven’t I been shouting from every platform in the State that we were out for a clean campaign?”

Gantry shook his head and his smile was commiserative.  “I know; and every man who has had his fingers in the pitch-barrel has chuckled to himself, and when two of them would get together they’d pound each other on the back and swear that you were the smoothest spellbinder that Mr. McVickar has ever turned loose on this side of the big mountains.  It grinds, Evan, but it’s the fact.  Not one of the men you are after has ever taken your speeches seriously.”

Blount’s head sank lower.

“I’m smashed, Dick!” he groaned; “utterly and irretrievably disgraced and discredited in my native State!  There isn’t a man in the sage-brush hills who would believe me under oath, after this.”

“It’s hard, Evan—­damned hard!” said the traffic manager, driven to repetition.  “But grilling over it doesn’t get us anywhere.  What are you going to do”?

“With the election only five days away, there is nothing that can be done.  I had you down, Dick; I could have forced my point with the weapon I had.  Isn’t that so?”