Checked in his luggage, if not precisely pinned openly upon his sleeve, Blount had brought with him from the scholastic banks of the Charles a choice assortment of ideals, which are things precious only as they can be preserved inviolate.  But for weeks, endless weeks as they seemed to him in the retrospect, he had been rubbing shoulders with a crude world which appeared to care little for ideals and less for the man who upheld them.  Inevitably, as he had admitted to Gantry, the change was wrought, or working; the exclamation springing to his lips when he recognized Gryson evinced it, and when he beckoned the shifty intruder to the chair at the desk end the ruthless zeitgeist had taken full possession of him, and the thought uppermost had grown suddenly indifferent to the means if by their employment the end might be gained.

“Come over here and sit down,” he commanded; then, seeing that Gryson hesitated and flung a glance over his shoulder at the door:  “What are you afraid of?”

“They’ve got my number,” said the ward-heeler, in a convict whisper which was little more than a facial contortion.  “There’s a couple o’ bulls waitin’ f’r me down on the sidewalk.”

Blount crossed the room, shut the door and locked it.  Then he went back to the self-confessed fugitive.

“You’re safe for the time being,” he told the man.  “Now talk fast and talk straight.  What do you want this time?”

Gryson hammered the arm of his chair with his fist and babbled profanity.  When he became coherent he told his story, or rather Blount got it out of him piecemeal, of how he had been employed by the “organization” to falsify the registration lists in certain districts; of how, when the work was done, he had been denied the price and driven out with cursings.  In the accusation, which was shot through with tremulous imprecations, the “organization” and the railroad company were implicated as if they were one.  In one breath the fugitive charged the “double-crossing” to Kittredge, and in the next he accused the “big boss” himself, of having passed the sentence of deportation.

“You say you were driven out?  How could they drive you if you didn’t want to go?” queried the cross-examiner.

“That’s on me:  it was a job I pulled off two years ago in another place—­up north of this—­and the night-watchman got in the way when I was leavin’.  They jerked that on me and showed me th’ rope.  They had me by th’ neck, with th’ word passed to Chief Robertson.  I’m back here now wit’ my life in my hand, but I’d chance it twice over to get square wit’ them welshers that have bawled me out!”

“Why have you come to me?” asked Blount briefly.

“Gawd knows; I took a chance again.  I’ve heard your speeches, and says I, ‘There’s your wan chance, cully,’ and I’m here to grab f’r it.  If you’ve been meanin’ the half of what you’ve been sayin’, Mr. Blount—­” There was more of it, half pleadings and half mere rageful babblings of a vengeful soul hampered by the tongue of inadequacy.