“There isn’t much to tell.  I asked for bare justice, and it was refused.”

“Your father has the papers?”

“He neither admitted nor denied.”

“But you didn’t quarrel?”

Blount’s smile was mirthless.  “We are here together, as you see.  After all is said, we are still father and son.”

“Of course; that’s as it should be, Evan.  What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know:  go on fighting until I’m wiped out, I suppose.  And that reminds me:  have you seen that fellow Gryson within the last day or two?”

Gantry dropped into the depths of a lounging-chair and lighted a cigarette.  “So you’re after Thomas Matthew, too, are you?  Kittredge has been ransacking the town for him all day, and up to a couple of hours ago he hadn’t found him.  What’s in the wind?”

“I don’t know, but I mean to find out.  What can you tell me about Gryson—­more than you have already told me?”

“Not very much, I guess.  He’s a scalawag, of course, but unhappily for all of us he is a scalawag with a pull.  Kittredge has been dickering with him—­I don’t mind telling you that now.”

“What is the nature of the pull?”

“Votes,” said Gantry succinctly.

“Straight or crooked?”

“You may search me.  But knowing Tom Gryson a little, I should put my money on the marked card.”

“Naturally,” said Blount dryly.  “Still, I am needing to be shown.  I’ve had two or three chances to size Gryson up, and he didn’t impress me as a man with any ability beyond the requirements of a bully and the lowest type of a political heeler.”

“Tom is bigger than that; I don’t know how much bigger, but some.  He has votes to sell, and Kittredge, at least, seems to believe that he can deliver the goods.  I don’t know the inside of the deal.  I’ll tell you frankly that I tried to shove it over to you, neck and heels, at first.  When that little notion failed, I pushed it along to Kittredge.”

Blount’s eyebrows, which promised in time to be as portentous as the Honorable Senator’s, met in a frown.  “I’m going to find Gryson, dead or alive,” he said.

Gantry looked up quickly.

“Which means that you know what has become of him?”

“He has been put out of the way for a purpose, and the purpose is to keep me from finding out something that Gryson wants to tell me.  That was the animus of the scheme to send me on a fool’s errand to Lewiston.  After you left me last night I found out that Gryson had been worrying Collins the day before; had been in the office a number of times and was sweatingly anxious about something.”

Gantry flung his cigarette away and lighted another.  After a deep inhalation or two he said:  “Let it alone, Evan.  I have a hunch that you’ll be happier if you don’t try to drag the cover off of that particular cesspool.”

“Listen,” said Blount shortly.  “When my father turned me down last night I told him that I still had five days in which to—­”