Clinging desperately to the single purpose of getting back to the deserted room before his absence should be discovered, and weighed down by a crushing sense of the immorality of the step he had just taken in bargaining with a hunted criminal and in conniving at his escape, he pressed on, pushing through the revolving doors and slipping once more into the Saturday evening lobby throng.  Edging around to the stair, he took all the cautious steps in reverse; ascending first to his own room to leave the rain-coat and the hat, and afterward feeling his way down the servants’ stair and through the lower corridor to the locked door in his father’s private suite.

Past this he had a hazy notion that part of him—­the observing part—­stood aside and looked on while the other part slowly and painfully struggled out of its clothes and into its pajamas.  Also he saw the other part, after it had carefully secreted the wrapped package of papers under the mattress, beat the pillows feebly and bury its head in them.  After that there was a great blank.

XXVI

APPLES OF GOLD

Notwithstanding the pillow-muffled plunge which was almost a lapse into the coma of utter exhaustion, Evan Blount awoke early on the Sunday morning, refreshed and measurably free from pain.  Since the sun was just beginning to gild the lofty finial on the dome of the Capitol opposite, there was no one stirring as yet in the adjoining rooms of the suite, and the streets were silent save for the chanting cries of the newsboys.

Slipping out of bed, Blount crossed to the window and threw it open.  It was good to be able to stand and walk without wincing; and a breath of the sunrise breeze sweeping down from the eastern hills was like a draught of invigorating wine.  As he leaned out for an instant to make sure that not even the height would bring a return of the vertigo, the wail of the nearest newsboy became shrilly articulate:  "Here’s yer Morning Plainsman!  All erbout the great election frauds!"

Hardly crediting his ears, Blount listened again, and when the cry was repeated he closed the window softly and sat down to grapple with this newest development of his problem.  Did the newsboy’s selling-cry mean that Blenkinsop had found out for himself, and independently, about the falsified registration lists?  If so, there would be no public vindication for one Evan Blount; but also—­thank God!—­no need for a son to blazon himself to the world as his father’s accuser.  A great wave of thankfulness rolled over Blount’s head, submerging him and turning the exclamation which sprang to his lips into a paean of rejoicing.  Instantly he saw himself throwing up his railroad connection and taking his rightful place as his father’s counsel and defender.  Here, at last, was a cause into which he could fling himself body and soul.  True, people would say that he had been in league with the corporations, the boss, and the machine, from the first, but what did that matter?