“You’ve got to get your nerve,” he gritted savagely, “or you’ll be nipped before you’ve gone a block!” And then:  “Here’s the stair:  follow it down until you get to the basement.  There’s a coal entrance from the alley, and the engineer will be with his boilers in the other wing—­and probably asleep.  You’ve got it straight, have you?  You’re to bring the papers to my office on or before Saturday night.  I’ll be looking out for you, and if you bring me the evidence, you’ll be taken care of.  That’s all.  Down with you, now, and go quietly.  If you’re caught, I drop you like a hot nail; remember that.”

Still puffing at the cigar which glowed redly in the darkness of the wing corridor, Blount waited until his man had been given time to reach the basement.  Then he walked slowly back to the main corridor and descended by the public stair without awakening the elevator boy, who was sleeping soundly in his car on the ground level.

On the short walk to the hotel the full significance of the thing he had done had its innings.  Cynical criticism to the contrary notwithstanding, there is now and then an honest lawyer who regards his oath of admission to the bar—­the oath which binds him to uphold the cause of justice and fair dealing—­as something more than a mere form of words.  Beyond all question, an honest man who has sworn to uphold the law may neither connive at crime nor shield a criminal.  Blount tried the shift of every man who has ever stepped aside out of the plain path of rectitude; he told himself morosely that he had nothing to do with Gryson’s past; that he had taken no retainer from the Montana authorities; that the criminal was merely a cog in a wheel which was grinding toward a righteous end, and as such should be permitted to serve his turn.

The well-worn argument is always specious to the beginner, and Blount thought he had sufficiently justified himself by the time he was pushing through the revolving doors into the Inter-Mountain lobby.  But when he saw his father quietly smoking his bed-time cigar in one of the big leather-covered lounging-chairs, he realized that the first step had been taken in an exceedingly thorny path; that whatever else might be the outcome of the bargain with Thomas Gryson, a son was coldly plotting to bring disgrace and humiliation upon a father.

For this reason, and because, when all is said, blood is much thicker than water, Blount made as if he did not see the beckoning hand-wave from the depths of the big chair in the smokers’ alcove; ignored it, and with set lips and burning eyes made for the nearest elevator to take refuge in his room.

XXIII

A CRY IN THE NIGHT.

With the critical election, a struggle which was to decide for another two-year period whether or not the people of the Sage-Brush State were to be the masters or the servants of chartered monopoly, only four days distant, the capital city took on the aspect of a stirring camp—­two rival camps, in fact, since the State headquarters of the two chief parties were in the Inter-Mountain Hotel—­and each incoming train brought fresh relays of henchmen and district spellbinders to swell the sidewalk throngs and to crowd the lobbies.