“Where are those papers now, Blount?” he inquired.

“They are in the hands of Chief Justice Hemingway, for investigation and such action as he and his colleagues on the Supreme Court bench see fit to take.”

“Good God!  Your son did that, knowing that you are as deep in the mud as we are in the mire?”

“I reckon he did, so.  That boy is all wool and a yard wide.  He thought he was putting me in the hole, too, along with Kittredge and your railroad crooks, and it came mighty near tearing him in two.  But he did it.  You haven’t been more than half-appreciating that boy, Hardwick.”

“‘He thought,’ you say; isn’t it the fact that you are in the hole, David?”

The senator reached over, took one of the gigantic McVickar cigars from the open box on the desk, and calmly lighted it.

“You’re a pretty hard man to convince, Hardwick,” he said slowly, when the big cigar was filling the air of the lobby with its fragrance.  “Away along back at the beginning of this fight I told you what I was aiming to do, and why.  You wouldn’t believe it then, and you don’t want to believe it now; but that’s because you don’t happen to have a son of your own.  When that boy of mine wired me that he was coming out here to get into the harness, I began to turn over the leaves of the record and look back a little.  It was a mighty dirty record, McVickar.  I don’t know that I’m any better man now than I was in the days when we made that record—­you and I—­but when I looked it over, it struck me all in a heap that I’d have to get out the bucket and scrubbing-brush if I didn’t want to make a clean-hearted, clean-minded boy plumb ashamed of his old daddy.”

“But, say—­you haven’t quit your scheming for a single minute, Blount!” retorted the railroad tyrant.  “You are just as much the boss of the machine to-day as you’ve ever been!”

“I reckon, that’s so, too,” was the measured reply.  “But there’s just this one little difference, Hardwick:  a machine, in a factory or in politics, is a mighty necessary thing, and we wouldn’t get very far nowadays without it.  Here in America we’re just coming to learn that machine politics—­which is sometimes only another name for intelligent organization—­needn’t be bad politics unless we make ’em bad.  To put it another way, the machine will grind corn or clean up the streets and alleys just as easily as it will grind up men and principles.”

The vice-president made a gesture of impatience.

“Come to the point,” he urged.  “Do you mean to tell me that you can face an investigation by the Supreme Court?”