A BATTLE ROYAL
Having already convinced himself that the time was ripe for a straightforward declaration of principles, Evan Blount saw in the arrival of the Overland, with the vice-president's private car attached, only an added argument for haste.
During the better part of the long tramp in the outskirts of the city he had been halting between two opinions. The fighting blood of the Tennessee pioneer strain had clamored for its hearing, prompting him to enter the lists, to set up the standard of honesty and fair-dealing in the Blount name, to plunge into the approaching political campaign with a single purpose—the purpose of overthrowing the power of the machine in his native State. On the other hand, filial affection had pleaded eloquently. The battle for political honesty would inevitably involve his father; would, if successful, defeat and disgrace him. As often as he thought he had closed decisively with the idealistic determination, the other side of the argument sprang up again, keen-edged and biting. Up to the present moment he had owed his father everything—was still owing him day by day. Would it not be the part of a son to drop out quietly, leaving the political house-cleaning for some one who would not be obliged to pay such a costly price?
It was the idealistic decision which had been in the saddle when he dropped from the trolley car at the western portal of the railway station, and which was sending him to seek the scale-turning interview with Gantry. But, after all, it was chance and the swift current of events which seized upon him and swept him along, smashing all the arguments and fine-spun theories. Before he had gone ten steps in the direction of Gantry's office, some one in the throng of debarking Overland travellers called his name. Turning quickly, he found himself face to face with a white-haired little gentleman who had plucked impatiently at his sleeve.
"Why, bless my soul! Of all the lucky miracles!" gasped the young man who, but an instant earlier, had been deaf and blind to all external things. And then: "Where is Patricia?"
"She's here, somewhere," snapped the little gentleman irascibly. "I've lost her in this confounded mob. Find her for me. I've got my reading-glasses on, and I can't see anything. Why don't they have this barn of a place lighted up?"
"Stand still right where you are," Blount directed, and a moment later he had found Patricia guarding a pair of suit-cases which were too heavy for her to carry.
"You poor lost child!" was his burbled greeting.
"You don't mean to tell me that this is the West to which you said you were coming?"
"I'm not lost; I'm here. It's father who is lost," she laughed. Then she answered his question; "Yes, this is the West I meant, and if you haven't been telling the truth about it—"
Blount had snatched up the two hand-bags and had effected a reunion of the scattered pair. The little gentleman, standing immovable, as he had been told to do, was blinking impatiently through his reading-glasses at the surging throng. When Blount came up, the professor stabbed him with a sharp forefinger.
"Well, we're here, young man," he barked. "If you've been telling me fibs about those Megalosauridæ which you said could be dug out of your sage-brush hills, you'll pay our fare back home again—just make up your mind to that. Now show us the best hotel in this mushroom city of yours, and do it quickly."
Having a hospitable thing to do, Blount shoved his problem into a still more remote background and bestirred himself generously. Though the Inter-Mountain was only three squares distant, he chartered the best-looking auto he could find in the rank of waiting vehicles, put his charges into it, and went with them to do the honors at the hotel. By this postponement of the visit to Gantry he missed a meeting which would have done something toward solving a part of his problem. But for the hospitable turning aside he might have reached the railroad office in time to see a round-bodied man halting at the open door of Gantry's private room for a parting word with the traffic manager.
"Oh, yes; he fell for it, all right," was the form the parting word took. "If you had seen his face when Lackner and I came away, you'd have said there was battle, murder, and sudden death in it for somebody."
"But, see here, Bradbury," Gantry held his visitor to say, "it wasn't in the game that you were to fill him up with a lot of lies. I won't stand for that, you know. He is too good a fellow, and too good a friend of mine."
It was at this conjuncture that Blount, if he had been present and invisible, would have seen a sour smile wrinkling upon the face of the club gossip.
"I owe the senator one or two on my own account, Gantry. But it wasn't necessary to go out of the beaten path. If young Blount or his daddy would like to sue us for libel, we could prove every word that was said—or prove that it was common report; too common to be doubted. And it got the young fellow; got him right in the solar plexus. If you don't see some fireworks within the next few days, I miss my guess and lose my ante."
This is what Evan Blount, carrying out his intention of going to Gantry, might have seen and heard. On the other hand, if he had lingered a few minutes longer on the station platform he could scarcely have failed to mark the side-tracking of private car "008," and he might have seen the herculean figure of the vice-president crossing to the carriage-stand to climb heavily into a waiting automobile.
Mr. McVickar's order to the chauffeur was curtly brief, and a little later the vice-president entered the lobby of the Inter-Mountain and shot a brisk question at the room-clerk.
"Is Senator Blount in his rooms?"
"I think not. He was here a few minutes ago. I'll send a boy to hunt him up for you. You want your usual suite, I suppose, Mr. McVickar?"
"No; I'm not stopping overnight. Is young Blount here in the hotel?"
"He has just gone up to the fifth floor with some friends of his—Mr. Anners and his daughter, from Boston. Shall I hold him for you when he comes down?"
"No; I want to see the senator. Hustle out another boy or two. I can't wait all night."
It was at this moment that Evan Blount, bearing luggage-checks and going in search of the house baggageman, missed another incident which might have drawn him back suddenly to his problem and its unsettled condition. The incident was the meeting between his father and the railroad vice-president at the room-clerk's counter. It was neither hostile nor friendly; on McVickar's part it was gruffly business-like.
"Well, Senator, I'm here," was the follow-up of the perfunctory hand-shake. "Let's find a place where we can flail it out," and together the two entered an elevator.
Reaching the floor of the private dining-room suites, the ex-cattle-king led the way in silence to his own apartments; rather let us say he pointed the way, since in the march down the long corridor the two field commanders tramped evenly abreast as if neither would give the other the advantage of an inch of precedence. In the sitting-room of the private suite the senator snapped the latch on the door, and pressed the wall-button for the electric lights. McVickar dragged a chair over to one of the windows commanding a view of the busy street, and dropping solidly into it, like a man bracing himself for a fight, began abruptly:
"I suppose we may as well cut out the preliminaries and come to the point at once, Blount. Ackerton wired me that you had definitely announced your son as a candidate for the attorney-generalship. Have you?"
The senator had found an unopened box of cigars in a cabinet and he was inserting the blade of his pocket-knife under the lid when he said, with good-natured irony: "The primaries do the nominating in this State, Hardwick. Didn't you know that?"
"See here, Blount; I've come half-way across the continent to thresh this thing out with you, face to face, and I'm not in the humor to spar for an opening. Do you mean to run your son or not? That is a plain question, and I'd like to have an equally plain answer."
"I told you two weeks ago what you might expect if you insisted on sticking your crow-bar in among the wheels this fall, McVickar, but you wouldn't believe me. I'll say it again if you want to hear it."
"And I told you two weeks ago that we couldn't stand for any such programme as the one you had mapped out. And I added that you might name your own price for an alternative which wouldn't confiscate us and drive us off the face of the earth."
"Yes; and I named the price, if you happen to remember."
"I know; you said you wanted us to turn everything over to the Paramounters and take our chances on a clean administration. Naturally, we're not going to do any such Utopian thing as that. What I want to know now is what it is going to cost us to do the practical and possible thing."
"Want to buy me outright this time, do you, Hardwick?" said the boss, still smiling.
"We"—McVickar was going to say—"We have bought you before," but he changed the retort to a less offensive phrasing—"We have had no difficulty heretofore in arriving at some practical and sensible modus vivendi, and we shouldn't have now. But as a condition binding upon any sort of an arrangement, I am here to say that we can't let you nominate and elect your son as attorney-general; that's out of the question. If it's going to prove a personal disappointment to you, we'll be reasonable and try to make it up to you in some other way."
Again the grimly humorous smile was twinkling in the gray eyes of the old cattleman. "What is the market quotation on disappointments, right now, Hardwick?" he inquired.
With another man McVickar might have been too diplomatic to show signs of a shortening temper. But David Blount was an open-eyed enemy of long standing.
"I don't know anybody west of the Missouri River who has a better idea of market values than you have," the vice-president countered smartly. Then, dropping a heavy hand upon the arm of his chair: "This thing has got to be settled here and now, Blount. If you put your son in as public prosecutor, you can have but one object in view—you mean to squeeze us till the blood runs. We are willing to discount that object before the fact!"
"So you have said before, a number of times and in a whole heap of different ways. It's getting sort of monotonous, don't you think?"
"I sha'n't say it many more times, David; you are pushing me too far and too hard."
"All right; what will you say, then?"
"Just this: if you won't meet me half-way—if you insist upon a fight—I'll fight you with any weapons I can get hold of!"
Once more the quiet smile played about the outer angles of the hereditary Blount eyes.
"You've said that in other campaigns, Hardwick; in the end you've always been like the 'possum that offered to come down out of the tree if the man wouldn't shoot."
"I'll hand you another proverb to go with that one," snapped the man in the arm-chair: "The pitcher that goes once too often to the well is sure to be broken. You've got a joint in your armor now, Blount. You've always been able to snap your fingers at public opinion before this; can you afford to do it now?"
"Oh, I don't know; I reckon I'll have to grin and bear it if you want to buy up a few newspapers and set them to blacklisting me, as you usually do," was the half-quizzical reply. Then: "I'm pretty well used to it by this time. You and your folks can't paint me much blacker than you have always painted me, Hardwick."
"Maybe not. But this time we're going to give you a chance to start a few libel suits—if you think you can afford to appear in the courts. We've got plenty of evidence, and by heavens we'll produce it! You put your son in as public prosecutor and we might be tempted to make your own State too hot to hold you. Had you thought of that?"
"Go ahead and try it," was the laconic response.
"But that isn't all," the railroad dictator went on remorselessly. "Your fellow citizens here know you for exactly what you are, Blount. You rule them with a rod of iron, but that rule can be broken. When it is broken, you'll be hounded as a criminal. In our last talk together you had something to say to me about our not keeping up with the change in public sentiment; public sentiment has changed; changed so far that it is coming to demand the punishment of the great offenders as well as the jailing of the little ones. If we want to push this fight hard enough, it is not impossible that you might find yourself in a hard row of stumps at the end of it, David."
"I'm taking all those chances," was the even-toned rejoinder of the man who was to be shown up.
"But there is one chance I'm sure you haven't considered," McVickar went on aggressively. "This son of yours; I know as much about him as you do—more, perhaps, for I have taken more pains to keep tab on him for the past few years than you have. He is clean and straight, Blount; a son for any father to be proud of. If that is the real reason why we don't want to have him instructing the grand juries of this State, it is also your best reason for wanting to keep the past decently under cover. What will you say to him when the newspapers open up on you? And what will he say to you? And suppose you get him in, and we should show you up so that you'd be dragged into court with your own son for the prosecutor? How does that strike you?"
For the first time since the opening of the one-sided conference the senator laid his cigar aside and sat thoughtfully tugging at the drooping mustaches.
"You'd set the house afire over my head, would you, Hardwick?" he queried, with the gray eyes lighting up as with a glow of smouldering embers. "The last time we talked you'll remember that you posted your 'de-fi'; now I'll post mine. You go ahead and do your damnedest! The boy and I will try to see to it that you don't have all the fun. I won't say that you mightn't turn him if you went at it right; but you won't go at it right, and as matters stand now—well, blood is thicker than water, Hardwick, and if you hit me you hit him. I reckon, between us, we'll make out to give you as good as you send. That's all"—he rose to lean heavily upon the table—"all but one thing: you fight fair, Hardwick; say anything you like about me and I'll stand for it; but if that boy has anything in his past that I don't know about—any little fool trick that he wouldn't want to see published—you let it alone and keep your damned newspaper hounds off of it!"
The vice-president, being of those who regain equanimity in exact proportion as an opponent loses it, chuckled grimly; was still chuckling when an interrupting tap came at the locked door. Blount got up and turned the latch to admit an office-boy wearing the uniform of the railroad headquarters. "Note for Mr. McVickar," said the messenger; and at a gesture from the senator he crossed the room to deliver it.
For a full half-minute after the boy had gone, the vice-president sat poring over the pencilled scrawl, which was all that the sealed envelope yielded. The note was lacking both date-line and signature, though the clerks in Richard Gantry's office were familiar enough with the hieroglyph that appeared at the bottom of the sheet. In his own good time the vice-president folded the bit of paper and thrust it into his pocket. Then he resumed the talk at the precise point at which it had been broken off.
"You needn't let the boy's record trouble you," he averred. "As I said a few minutes ago, it's as clean as a hound's tooth. That is one of the things I'm banking on, David. If you don't look out, I'm going to have that young fellow fighting on our side before we're through."
At this the light in the gray eyes flamed fiercely, and the ex-cattle-king took the two strides needful to place him before McVickar.
"Don't you try that, McVickar; I give you fair warning!" he grated, his deep-toned voice rumbling like the burr of grinding wheels. "There's only one way you could do it, and—"
The vice-president stood up and reached for his hat.
"And you'll take precious good care that I don't get a chance to try that way, you were going to say. All right, David; you tell me to do my damnedest, and I'll hand that back to you, too. You do the same, and we'll see who comes out ahead."
The vice-president caught an elevator at the end of his leisurely progress down the corridor, and had himself lowered to the lobby. The electric lights were glowing, and the great gathering-place was beginning to take on its evening stir. Mr. Hardwick McVickar pushed his way to the desk, and a row of lately arrived guests waited while he asked his question.
"Where shall I be most likely to find Mr. Evan Blount at this time of day?" he demanded; and the obliging clerk made the guest-line wait still longer while he summoned a bell-boy and sent him scurrying over to one of the writing-tables.
"This is Mr. Evan Blount," said the clerk, indicating the young man who came up with the returning bell-boy. "Mr. Blount, this is Mr. Hardwick McVickar, first vice-president of the Transcontinental Railway Company."
There was no trace of the recent battle in Mr. McVickar's voice or manner when he shook hands cordially with the son of the man who had so lately defied him.
"Your father and I were just now holding a little conference over your future prospects, Mr. Blount," he said, going straight to his point. "Suppose you come down to the car with me for a private talk on legal matters. I'm inclined to think that we shall wish to retain you in a cause which is coming up in September. Gantry tells me that you are pretty well up in corporation law. Can you spare me a half-hour or so?"
Evan Blount glanced at the big clock over the clerk's head. Patricia had told him that she and her father would dine in the café at seven, and that there would be a place at their table for him—and another for his father, if the ex-senator would so far honor a poor college professor. There was an hour to spare; and if the vice-president of the Transcontinental was not the king, he was at least a great man, and one whose invitation was in some sense a royal command.
"Certainly, I'll be glad to go with you," was Blount's acquiescent rejoinder. So much the registry-clerk heard; and he saw, between jabs with his pen, the straight path to the revolving doors of the portal ploughed by the big man with young Blount at his elbow.
One minute after the spinning doors had engulfed the pair the registry-clerk was called on the house telephone. A sad-faced tourist who was waiting patiently for his room assignment heard only the answer to the question which came over the wire from one of the upper floors: "No, Senator, Mr. Evan is not here; he has just this moment gone out—with Mr. McVickar. Could I overtake him? I'll try; but I don't know where they were going. Yes; all right. I'll send a boy right away."