Blount got up out of the broken chair and buttoned his coat.

“I needn’t take any more of your time just now,” he said.  “I merely wanted to know how far you’d go if somebody should happen along at the last moment and give you a plain map of the road.”

“We’ll go as far, and drive as hard, as any newspaper this side of the Missouri River.  But we’ve got to have the facts—­don’t forget that.”

Blount was turning to go, but he faced around again sharply.

“Do you mean to tell me, Blenkinsop, that you don’t know, as well as you know you’re alive, that this campaign is honeycombed with deals and trades and dishonesty and trickery in every legislative district?” he demanded.

Again the ghastly smile which was only a deepening of the natural furrows flitted across the editor’s face.

“Of course, I know it,” he returned.  “But you’ll excuse me if I say that I scarcely expected to have the railroad company’s field-manager come and tell me about it.”

Blount’s grim smile was a match for the editorial face-wrinkling.  “You are like a good many others, Blenkinsop; you see red when you hear the noise of a railroad train.  Perhaps, a little later, I may be able to persuade you to see another color—­yellow, for example.  Let it go at that.  Good-night.”

Once more in the avenue, Blount turned his steps toward the Inter-Mountain.  Since the campaign was now in its final week, the clans were gathering in the capital, and the lobby of the great hotel was filled with groups of caucussing politicians.  Blount was halted half a dozen times before he could make his way to the room-clerk’s desk, and the pumping process to which he was subjected at each fresh stoppage would have amused him if the fiery resolution which was driving him on had not temporarily killed his sense of humor.  It was evident that, in spite of all he had been saying and doing, a considerable majority of the caucussers were still regarding him as his father’s lieutenant.  He did not try very hard to remove the impression.  It mattered little, in the present crisis, what the various party henchmen thought or believed.

It was a sharp disappointment when the room-clerk told him that his father and Mrs. Honoria and their guest had gone to the theatre.  He was keyed to the fighting-pitch, and he wanted to have the deciding word spoken while his blood was up and there was still time to act.  A glance at the clock showed him that he had a full half-hour to wait; and, as much to escape the buzzing lobbyists as to satisfy his hunger, he went to the cafe and ordered a belated dinner, choosing a table from which he could look out through the open doors and command the main entrance through which the theatre-goers would return.

He was through with the dinner, and was slowly sipping his black coffee, when he saw them come in.  Since it was no part of his plan to dull the edge of opportunity by holding it first upon the social grindstone, he let the party of three go on to the elevators, and a little later sent a card up-stairs asking his father to meet him in the lounge on the mezzanine floor.