“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, coarse 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.”