With his face hidden in the crook of his arm, he was groping in vain outreachings for something to lay hold of, for some clear-minded, clean-hearted adviser who could tell him what to do; how he should clamber out of this pit of humiliation into which nothing more culpable than an honest zeal for civic righteousness had precipitated him.  In his despair he told himself that there was no one, and then suddenly he remembered—­Patricia would know, and she would understand better than any one else in a populous world how to point the way out of the labyrinth.  He must go to her and tell her.  In the meantime....

He got up and shut his desk with a slam.  In the meantime there should be no more lies told—­no more turns taken in the crooked path.  Collins, the stenographer, heard the noise of the desk closing and came to the door of the private room, note-book and pencil in hand.  “Anything to give me before you go out?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Blount almost savagely.  “Take a message to Mr. McVickar.  Are you ready?”

The stenographer nodded.

Blount dictated curtly:  “’Pending another interview with you in person, I shall close my offices in Temple Court and confine myself strictly to the routine legal business of the company.  Meanwhile, my resignation is in your hands if you wish to appoint a new division counsel.’  Have you got that, Collins?  Very well; write it out and send it at once.  I shall be at the Inter-Mountain for a little while, if you want to reach me between now and closing time.”

XII

A WELL-SPRING IN THE DESERT

Going to the hotel, Blount shut himself into a telephone booth and tried, ineffectually, to get a long-distance connection with Wartrace Hall.  When he finally grew exasperated at the central operator’s oft-repeated “line’s busy,” he called up Gantry to ask if the traffic manager knew anything about the purposes and movements of his father.  Gantry did not know, but he knew something else—­a thing which proved the leakiness of the railroad telegraph department.

“Come down here and tell me what you mean by sending incendiary telegrams to the vice-president,” he commanded, with jesting severity.  And with a hard word for the department which had gossiped, Blount went down to the general offices in the station building.

Gantry was busy with the stenographer, but the business was immediately postponed and the clerk dismissed when Blount entered.

“‘Tell it out among the heathen,’” the traffic manager quoted jocosely, when the door closed behind the shorthand man.

“There is nothing to tell—­more than you seem to know already,” snapped Blount morosely.  “I have wired my resignation, that’s all.”

“But why?” persisted Gantry.

“Because I’m not going to be an accessory, either before or after the fact—­not if I know it,” was the curt rejoinder.