“I can’t go with you,” he answered brusquely, adding:  “And I’m not sure that I can join you at luncheon.  There is so much to be done that I shall probably drop around to the club for a bite at one o’clock.  Don’t wait for me, and don’t worry.  Above all, please don’t tell anybody where I am—­not even Dick Gantry.”

He was considerably relieved when she said “Good-by” rather abruptly, and rang off.  None the less, he thought it a little strange that his father should be planning to leave the capital on the very eve of the great struggle.  Was he so sure that nothing could happen within the next twenty-four hours?  Leaving the query answerless, he returned to the interrupted duty.  Deliberately, with the open telephone-book before him, he sought and found Judge Hemingway’s number; and a few seconds later he had the judge’s house in Mesa Circle, with the judge himself answering his call.  The wire conversation was brief and to the point.  Cautiously, and in well-guarded phrase, Blount stated his case.  By a series of correlated incidents which could be explained later, documentary evidence of a great conspiracy had fallen into his hands; would the judge step aside so far as to accord him a Sunday interview, taking his word for it that the emergency was most urgent, and that the time was too short to admit of the ordinary methods of procedure?

The judge’s answer was satisfactory, though Blount fancied it was rather reluctantly given.  A family engagement—­an accepted luncheon invitation—­would intervene; but between four and five o’clock in the afternoon the chief justice would be in his chambers in the Capitol building, and would be glad to have the son of his old friend the senator come at that hour.

With time on his hands, Blount squared himself at his desk and began to set his railroad house in order.  Now that the dreadful step was practically taken, he was free to wind up the business of his office, leaving things in order for his successor.  Once he had thought that he could not stay in the capital or in the West after the cataclysm.  But now the manlier thought prevailed.  A hard fate was making him his father’s betrayer; but beyond the betrayal, with the bare duty done, he would take his place as his father’s son, proving his love and loyalty by going down with him to any depth of infamy into which the cataclysm might drag him.

Since there was much to be done in the winding-up task, the forenoon fled quickly, and the hands of the small paper-weight clock on the desk were pointing to a quarter of two when Blount snapped the rubber band upon the final file of referred papers.  There were other odds and ends to be set in order, but he determined to let them wait until he had eaten.  A scant half-hour in the club grill-room was all he allowed himself, and at a quarter past two he was back at his desk, preparing to make the cleaning-up task complete.  Between four and five, Judge Hemingway had said; and Blount began on one of the odds and ends, which was the writing of his letter of resignation from the railroad service.