“I know,” said Blount, and, since he was the last man in the world to be diverted from his purpose by any conversational dust-throwing, he pressed the question cut off by the hasty interruption.  “What I was going to ask was how you happen to have added Professor Anners’s name to your list—­recently, it seems?”

The lumberman was reduced to the necessity of inventing a ready lie.  He had obeyed his instructions blindly, on the supposition that young Blount would know and understand.

“Anners?  Oh, he knows a good thing when he sees it; and I guess maybe your father put him on.  He’s a friend of the family, ain’t he?  Maybe the senator found a little chunk of ‘Twin Buttes’ that he didn’t want himself, and passed it along.”

Blount’s blood ran cold at the sight of the cracking walls and crumbling foundations on every hand.  The proof that the railroad company’s lawless attitude was still unchanged was too strong to be doubted; and now there was an added blow from the hand of his father.  He wheeled short upon the lumber-king.

“Who sent you to me, Mr. Hathaway?” he demanded.

The hawk-faced man laughed.  “I guess you know just as well or better than I do.  But just to show you that I can keep my mouth shut, I ain’t going to tell you.  It’s all right and straight—­and you might say it’s all in the family, counting the professor in on the side, as it were.”

“I see,” Blount said, and this time he was only too sure that he did see.  Then:  “What is it you want me to do for you, Mr. Hathaway?  You have told me once, but I’m afraid I didn’t grasp it fully.”

“Fix it with Gantry, or somebody, so that we can put the company vote where it’s most needed and get our rate continued.  It’s simple enough.”

“The simplicity is beyond question.”  Blount returned the list of stockholders and fell back upon the pencil-sharpening.  “It is quite elementary, as you say; but there is another phase of the transaction which seems to have escaped you.  Are you aware that the present arrangement which you have so accurately described, and the continuance of it which you are proposing, are crimes for which both parties involved may be called into court and punished?”

Hathaway started as if the comfortable chair in which he was lounging had been suddenly electrified.

“Say, Blount, are you working for the railroad, or not?” he demanded.  “If you are, what in the name of Heaven are you driving at?  I know the line of talk you’ve been handing out since McVickar gave you your job and set you up in business here, but that’s for the dear public.  You don’t have to wear your halo when a man comes in to talk hard facts from the inside.  It comes to just this:  you do something for me, and I do something for you.  You make it possible for us to live and sell lumber, and we do what we can to make it easy for your railroad to get its ‘square deal’ from a pie-cutting legislature.  That’s the whole thing in a nutshell.”