“I did,” said Gantry, grinning.  “Why otherwise have we got a post-graduate, double-certificated political manager, I’d like to know?”

Blount dropped into a chair and felt in his pockets for his cigar-case.

“I guess we may as well fight this thing to a finish right here and now, Dick,” he said coolly.  “I’m not chief vote buyer for the Transcontinental Company—­I’m not any kind of a vote buyer.”

“Who said you were?” retorted the traffic manager.

“It says itself, if I am supposed to cut the pie and hand out pieces of it to these grub-stakers that you and Carson and Bentley and Kittredge are continually sending to me.”

This time Gantry’s grin was playful, but behind it there was a shrewd flash of the Irish-blue eyes that Blount did not see.

“I guess the company would be plenty willing to furnish a few small pies for really hungry people, if you think you need them to go along with your Temple Court office fittings,” he returned.

“Ah?” said Blount calmly, giving the exclamation the true Boston inflection.  “You are either too shrewd or not quite shrewd enough, Dick.  You covered that up with a laugh, so that I might take it as a joke if I happened to be too thin-skinned to take it in disreputable earnest.  Let us understand each other; we are fighting squarely in the open in this campaign; publicity is the word—­I have Mr. McVickar for my authority.  Anybody who wants to know anything about the railroad company’s business in this State can learn it for the asking, and at first-hand.  Secrecy and all the various brands of political claptrap that have been admitted in the past are to be shown the door.  This is the intimation that was made to me:  wasn’t it made to you?”

Gantry did not reply directly to the direct demand.  On the other hand, he very carefully refrained from answering it in any degree whatsoever.

“You have your job to hold down and I have mine,” he rejoined.  “What you say goes as it lies, of course; but just the same, I shouldn’t be too righteously hard on the little brothers, if I were you.”

“If by the ‘little brothers’ you mean the pie-eaters, I’m going to fire them out, neck and crop, Richard.  They make me excessively weary.”

Gantry’s playful mood fell away from him like a cast-off garment.

“I don’t quite believe I’d do that, if I were you, Evan.  There are pie-eaters on both sides in every political contest, and while they can’t do any cause any great amount of good, they can often do a good bit of harm.  I wouldn’t be too hard on them, if I were you.”

“What would you do?—­or, rather, what did you do when you were managing the State campaign two years ago?” inquired Blount pointedly.

“I cut the pie,” said the traffic manager simply.

“In other words, you let this riffraff blackmail you and, incidentally, put a big black mark against the company’s good name.”