“Well?” she said inquiringly.

The senator shook his head in patient tolerance.

“Whatever you’ve been doing, it’s knocked the bottom clean out for the boy, Honoria.  For a little spell he had me going, and I thought I’d just naturally have to turn loose and spill all the fat into the fire.”

“You mustn’t do that,” she returned quickly.  “There are five days yet, and I need at least three of them.  He was very angry?”

“Fighting mad.”

“Of course,” said the small one thoughtfully.  “But we can’t allow that to get in the way of the bigger things.  It won’t make any family break, will it?  For Patricia’s sake I shall be sorry if he is desperate enough to make the quarrel a personal one.”

“I did the best I could on that, little woman, and I reckon he’s big enough to keep on telling us ‘Howdy.’  What comes next on the programme?”

“To-morrow I’m going to try to get him to take Patricia driving.  Beyond that I haven’t planned, and anyway it doesn’t matter, now that you have Gryson out of the way.”  Then she offered a bit of news.  “Richard Gantry telephoned me a few minutes ago.  He has sent in his resignation, and is going to Peru.”

The senator was opening the door to the adjoining bedroom and turning on the lights.

“Oh, no, I reckon not,” he rejoined, with a mellow laugh rumbling deep in his great body.  “Dick only thinks he is going to Peru.  We all think such things now and then.”

XXI

THE UNDER-DOG

Blount’s first move on the morning following the militant interview with his father was telegraphic; he wired the campaign chairmen in the three towns remaining on his list, cancelling his speaking-engagements.  Beyond that he went forth to institute a painstaking search in the purlieus of the city, a quest having for its object the unearthing of the man Thomas Gryson.  More and more he was coming to believe that this man was the key to a larger situation in the field of political corruption than any which had as yet developed.  Wherefore he made the search thorough.

Oddly enough, considering the man and his habits, the quest proved fruitless.  Blount was too clean a man to be on familiar terms with the saloon men and dive-keepers of the capital-city underworld, or with the crooks and turnings of the underworld itself; but he found his way around easily enough in daylight, and had his labor for his pains.  For when he went back to the hotel at the luncheon-hour he brought little with him save a stench in his nostrils and a slightly increased fund of mystification.  Gryson had disappeared as completely as if the earth had opened and swallowed him.  And Blount knew the disappearance was real, because the ward-heeler’s own henchmen were searching for him.