“In all our talks, Dick—­there haven’t been very many of them—­my father has taken, or seemed to take, a different line.  I don’t recall anything specific just now, but he has given me the impression that he hasn’t much in common with Mr. McVickar and his methods.  To hear him talk—­”

Gantry smiled.  “You know your father very superficially, Evan, if you’ll permit me to say so.  What the Honorable David Blount says in talk with you or me or anybody outside of the inner circle is a mighty poor foundation upon which to build any idea of what’s going on in the back of his head.  No—­hold on; don’t get mad.  What I’m trying to tell you is what everybody in the sage-brush hills—­save and excepting yourself—­knows like a book, and that is that the big boss’s moves are all made strictly in the dark.  He doesn’t let his own right hand know what the left is doing.  That’s the secret of his absolutely Czarish power, I think.”

The shriek of a distant locomotive whistle floated in through the open window at Blount’s back and he got up stiffly.

“That’s my train coming,” he said.  And then:  “Tell me plainly, Dick:  you brought me up here to throw a final brick—­a bigger one than you have yet thrown—­and I know it.  What did Mr. McVickar tell you to-day that will make my job harder than I am already finding it?”

Gantry turned his head, refusing to meet the straightforward gaze of the questioner.

“You intimated this morning that you would go at it lawyer-fashion, Evan,” he said; “which means, I suppose, that you would get the evidence on us.  You can do it; the Lord knows, there’s plenty of it to be had.  But when you pull out one set of props the whole thing will come down.  We haven’t any of us been careful enough about what we put in writing—­not even your father.”

Blount staggered as if the words had been a blow.

“You’re trying to tell me that my father would be involved in the disclosures you fellows might drive me to make?” he demanded, and his voice was husky.

Gantry was still looking away.  “There always has to be an intermediary—­you know that.  We can’t do business direct with these—­with the people who have something to sell.  You can draw your own inferences, Evan.  I didn’t send Hathaway to you; I sent him to your father.”

The train was thundering into the station and Blount picked up his hand-bag and went out, stumbling blindly in the unlighted passage at the stair-head.  And in the private office behind him the traffic manager was crushing his dead cigar in his clenched hand and staring fixedly at the square of darkness framed by the open window.

XIV

BARRIERS INVISIBLE

During the three weeks following the night journey to Angora, a journey on which he once more fought the hard battle to a still sharper conclusion, Evan Blount scarcely saw his office in Temple Court for more than a brief hour or two at a time.  One speaking appointment followed another in such rapid succession that he was constantly going or returning; and since there was everywhere a repetition of the welcome accorded him by the miners of the Carnadine district, there was no reason save physical weariness to make him wish to limit his opportunity.