A COG IN THE WHEEL
While Blount was staring abstractedly at the file of blank sheets which had been substituted for the incriminating letters of the vote-selling corporation managers, with Gantry sitting back, alert and watchful, to mark the first signs of the coming storm, there came a tap on the locked door of the little room, and a deprecatory voice said: "It's our closing time, gentlemen: if you are about through—"
"In a minute," returned Gantry quickly, and then he took the blank dummy out of Blount's hands, pocketed it, shut the japanned safety box, and touched his companion's shoulder.
"Let's get out of this, Evan," he said, still speaking as one speaks to a hurt child. "Conroy wants to close up."
Blount suffered himself to be led away, and in the vault room he went mechanically through the motions of locking up the empty box. In the street Gantry once more took the lead, walking his silent charge around the block and into the Temple Court elevator. A little later, when the door of the private room in the up-town legal office had opened to admit them, and Blount had dropped heavily into his own desk chair, Gantry plunged promptly into the breach.
"We've been friendly enemies in this thing right from the start, Evan," he began, "and that's as it had to be. But blood—even the blood of a college brotherhood—is thicker than water. I know now what you're in for, and I'm going to stand by you, if it costs me my job. First, let's clear the way a bit. If I say that I haven't had anything to do, even by implication, with this jolt you've just been given, will you believe me?"
Blount lifted a pair of heavy-lidded eyes and let them rest for an instant upon the face of the traffic manager. "If you say so, Dick, I'll believe it," he returned.
"Good. Now we can dive into the thick of it. I won't insult you by doubting the premising fact. You had the evidence once?"
"I did—enough of it to keep a grand jury busy for a month. It came to me in the shape of unsolicited letters from the men who are benefiting by the railroad company's evasion of the law, and who are, of course, equally criminal with the railroad officials. Why these letters were written to me I don't know, Gantry. I merely know that they were wholly unsolicited."
"They were written to you because you are supposed to be the doctor in the present crisis."
"But good God, Dick! Haven't I been shouting from every platform in the State that we were out for a clean campaign?"
Gantry shook his head and his smile was commiserative. "I know; and every man who has had his fingers in the pitch-barrel has chuckled to himself, and when two of them would get together they'd pound each other on the back and swear that you were the smoothest spellbinder that Mr. McVickar has ever turned loose on this side of the big mountains. It grinds, Evan, but it's the fact. Not one of the men you are after has ever taken your speeches seriously."
Blount's head sank lower.
"I'm smashed, Dick!" he groaned; "utterly and irretrievably disgraced and discredited in my native State! There isn't a man in the sage-brush hills who would believe me under oath, after this."
"It's hard, Evan—damned hard!" said the traffic manager, driven to repetition. "But grilling over it doesn't get us anywhere. What are you going to do"?
"With the election only five days away, there is nothing that can be done. I had you down, Dick; I could have forced my point with the weapon I had. Isn't that so?"
Gantry wagged his head dubiously. "I'm not the big boss, but I can tell you right now that, if you could have shown me what I was fully expecting to see, the wires between here and wherever Mr. McVickar's private car happens to be would have been kept pretty hot for a while." Then, upon second thought: "Yes; I guess you could have pulled it off. We couldn't stand for any such bill-boarding as you were threatening to give us."
Blount turned to his desk, opened it, and began to arrange his papers.
"You've been a good friend, after all, Dick," he said, talking as he worked. "I'm going to ask you to go one step farther and take charge of the funeral, if you will. Find Mr. McVickar and wire him that I've dropped out. I'll write him a resignation from somewhere, when I have time."
Gantry left his chair and came to stand beside the quitter.
"Honestly, Evan," he said slowly, "I thought you were a grown man. You'll forgive the mistake, won't you?"
Blount turned upon his tormentor and swore pathetically. "What's the use—what in the devil is the use?" he rasped, when the outburst began to grow measurably articulate. "You know as well as I do what's been done to me, and who has done it. Can I lift my hand to strike back, even if I had a weapon to strike with?"
"Perhaps you can't. But you owe it to yourself, and to a certain bright-minded young woman that I know of, not to fly off the handle without at least trying to see if you can't stay on. Wait a minute." The railroad man took a turn up and down the floor, head down and hands behind him. When he came back to the desk end he began again. "Evan, who's got those original papers?"
"The man who blew up my safe, of course. You've said you didn't hire him, and that leaves only one alternative."
Gantry took the dummy packet from his pocket and held one of the blank sheets up to the light of the window. It was growing dusk, and when he failed to discern what he was looking for, he turned on the electric lights and tried again. At this the script "T-C" water-mark was plainly visible, and he showed it to Blount.
"That proves conclusively that the substitution was made here in your own office. Whom do you suspect?"
In a flash Blount remembered: how he had sent Collins to get the packet out of the safe, the stenographer's delay, the hasty sealing of the envelope, and the suspicion which had been cut short by the incoming of Ackerton.
"I know now who did it, and when it was done," he said. "The day before the office was broken into I told Collins to bring me the papers from the safe. What he brought me was that dummy—in a freshly sealed envelope. I was going to open the envelope, but just then Ackerton came in."
"All clear so far," said Gantry; and then: "Where is Collins now?"
"I don't know; he comes and goes pretty much as he pleases when I'm not in town."
"Do you know anything about him personally?"
"No."
"I do. His father was a bank cashier, and he became a defaulter—of the easy-mark kind; the kind that is too good-natured to look too curiously at a friend's collateral. He would have gone over the road if your father hadn't pulled him out by main strength."
"I see," said Blount cynically. "And the son has paid his father's debt to my father. But why the safe-blowing?"
"Collins's face had to be saved in some way. He couldn't know that you meant to lock the dummy up in the safety vault," returned Gantry, and then, after a pause: "That's our one little ray of hope, Evan."
"I don't see it."
"Don't you? Then I'll make it a bit plainer. If some railroad burglar had cracked your safe, you could confidently assume that the original letters have been carefully cremated by this time, couldn't you?"
"I suppose so."
"But if your father has them ... Evan, I don't know any more than the man in the moon what he wants them for, but the man in the street would grin and tell you that your father was merely getting ready to hold the railroad company up for something it didn't want to part with."
"I'm letting you say it of my own flesh and blood, Dick; and it shows you how badly broken I am. After all, it doesn't lead anywhere."
"Yes, it does. Let us suppose, just for the sake of argument, that your father doesn't know how much those letters mean to you—I know it's a pretty hard thing to imagine, but we'll do it by main strength and awkwardness. Let us suppose again, that being the case, that you go to him frankly and show him in a few well-chosen words just where he has landed you; tell him you've got to have those letters—simply got to have them—to save your face. I know your father, Evan, a good bit better than you do; he'd give you the earth with a fence around it if you should ask him for it."
Evan Blount got slowly out of his chair, stood up, and put his hands upon the smaller man's shoulders.
"Dick, do you realize what you are doing for yourself when you show me a possible way of getting my weapon back?" he demanded.
Gantry's lips became a fine straight line and he nodded.
"That's what made me walk the floor a few minutes ago; I was trying to find out if I were big enough. It's all right, Ebee; you go to it, and I'll throw up my job and run a foot-race with the sheriff, if I have to. Damn the job, anyway!" he finished petulantly. "I'm tired of being a robber for somebody else's pocket all the time!"
Blount sat down again and put his face in his hands. After a time he looked up to say: "I can't let you outbid me in the open market, Dick. You can't set the friendship peg any higher than I can."
Gantry crossed the room and recovered his top-coat and hat from the chair where he had thrown them.
"Don't you be a fool," he advised curtly. "There's a railroad down in Peru that is going bankrupt for the lack of a wide-awake, up-to-date traffic man. I've had the offer on my desk for a month, and I'm going to cable to-night. That lets you out, whether you do or don't. But if you've got the sense of a wooden Indian, you'll do as I've said—and do it pronto. Your time's mighty short, anyway. So long."
And before Blount could stop him he was gone.
XX
A STONE FOR BREAD
Though he had eaten nothing since the early breakfast in the service-car on the way to Lewiston, Evan Blount let the dinner hour go by unnoted. For a long time after Gantry had left him he sat motionless, a prey to thoughts too bitter to find expression in words; the dismaying thoughts of the hard-pressed champion who has discovered that his foes are of his own household.
Apart from the one great boyhood sorrow, a sorrow which had been allowed unduly to magnify itself with the passing years, he had never been brought face to face with any of the hardnesses which alone can make the soldier of life entirely intrepid in the shock of battle. In the backward glance he saw that his homeless youth had been, none the less, a sheltered youth; that his father's love and care had built and maintained invisible ramparts which had hitherto shielded him. It was most humiliating to find that the crumbling of the ramparts was leaving him naked and shivering; to find that he was so far out of touch with his pioneer lineage as to be unable to stand alone.
But there are better things in the blood of the pioneers than a latter-day descendant of the continent-conquering fathers may be able to discern in the moment of defeat and disaster. Slowly, so slowly that he did not recognize the precise moment at which the tide of depression and wretchedness reached its lowest ebb and turned to sweep him back to a firmer footing, Blount found himself emerging from the bitter waters. Gantry, the Gantry whom he had been calling hard names, setting him down as at best a lovable but wholly unprincipled time-server, had pointed a possible way to retrieval, heroically effacing himself that the way might be unobstructed. With the warm blood leaping again, Blount straightened himself in his chair. He would go to his father, not as a son begging a boon, but as a man demanding his rights. The machine had seen fit to throw down the challenge by burglarizing his office and robbing him. Very good; there were five days remaining in which to strike back. He would lift the challenge, and if his reasonable demand should be refused, he would drop the railroad crusade and break into the wider field of bossism and machine-made majorities, ploughing and turning it up to the light as he could.
The fiery resolution had scarcely been taken when he heard the door of Collins's outer room open and close, and a moment later the good-looking young stenographer came in, bringing a breath of the crisp autumn evening with him.
"I didn't know you were back, Mr. Blount!" he exclaimed. "I saw the office lights from the street, and thought somebody had left them turned on. Is there anything I can do?"
"Yes; sit down," said Blount crisply, and then: "Collins, what do you do with yourself when I am out of town?"
"I stay here most of the time. I went out early this afternoon, but I don't often do it."
"Were you here all day yesterday?"
"Yes."
"Was there anything unusual going on?"
The young man looked away as if he expected to find his answer in the farther corner of the room.
"I don't know as you'd call it unusual," he replied half-hesitantly. "There were a good many callers. Shall I bring you the list?"
"Yes."
The stenographer went out to his desk and brought back a slip of paper with the names.
"This man Gryson," said Blount, running his eye over the memorandum, "I see you've got him down four or five times. What did he want?"
"He wouldn't tell me. But he was all kinds of anxious to see you. That was why I telegraphed you; I couldn't get rid of him any other way."
"Let me see the copy of the message."
Again Collins made a journey to his desk, returning with the telegraph-impression book open at the proper page. Blount glanced at the copy of the brief message: "Thomas Gryson wants to know when he can be sure of finding you here," and handed the book back.
"How did you send that?" he asked.
"I sent it down to the despatcher's office by Barney."
Blount nodded. The message had not reached him; and its suppression was doubtless another move in the subtle game.
"You say you couldn't find out what Gryson wanted?" he pressed.
"He—he seemed to be all torn up about something; couldn't say three words without putting a cuss word in with them. The most I could get out of him was that somebody was trying to double-cross him."
Blount took a cigar from his pocket and lighted it. He was faint for lack of food, but he absently mistook the hunger for the tobacco craving.
"Collins," he said evenly, "you appear to forget at times that you are working for a man who has had some little experience with unwilling witnesses in the courts. You are not telling me the truth; or, at least, you're not telling me all of it. Let's have the part that you are keeping back."
"The—the last time he was in, he—he did talk a little," faltered the young man. "He's got something to sell, and he's f-fighting mad at Mr. Kittredge. He said he was going to throw the gaff into somebody damn' quick if Mr. Kittredge didn't wipe off the slate and c-come across with the price."
"That is better," was the brief comment. "Now, then, why did you lie to me in the first place?"
The stenographer shut his eyes and shrunk lower in his chair, but he made no reply.
"I'll tell you why you lied," Blount went on, less harshly. "It was because you were told to. Isn't that so?"
Collins nodded.
Reaching out quickly, Blount laid a hand on the young man's knee. "Fred, what do you think of a soldier who takes his pay from one side and fights on the other? That is what you've been doing, you know; it is what you did when you put a dozen sheets of blank paper into an envelope the other day—the day I sent you to get a file of letters marked 'private' from the safe."
The culprit drew away from the touch of the hand on his knee, and there was fear, and behind the fear the courage of desperation, in his eyes when he lifted them.
"You can give me the third degree if you want to, Mr. Blount, but as long as I've got the breath to say no, I'll never tell you the next thing you're going to ask me!"
Blount sprang up and went to stand at the window. There was a street arc-lamp swinging in its high sling some distance below the window level, its scintillant spark changing weirdly to blue and green and back to blinding orange, and he stared so steadily at it that his eyes were full of tears when he turned to look down upon the waiting culprit.
"No, Collins; I'm not going to ask you the name of the other master for whom you have thrown me down," he said gravely; and then: "That's all—you may go now."
The young man got up and groped for the hat which had fallen from his hands to the floor and rolled away out of reach.
"You mean that I'm to get my time-check?" he asked.
"No," he grated—the harshness returning suddenly. "You are disloyal, and I know it; your successor would probably be the same, and I shouldn't know it."
Nerved to the strident pitch now by the new resolution, Blount hurriedly set his desk in order, slammed it shut, and followed the stenographer to the street level. In the avenue he hesitated for a moment, the thoughts shuttling swiftly. In a flash the inferences fell into place. Gantry had said that his father was responsible for the time-killing journey to Lewiston. Why had it been necessary? Was it to keep him out of Gryson's way? What did the ward-organizer have to communicate that made him so anxious to secure an interview? Was that anxiety the breach through which the wider field of corruption might be reached?
Again swift decision came to its own and Blount faced to the right, walking rapidly until he turned in at the foot of the worn double flight of stairs leading to the editorial rooms of The Plainsman. Blenkinsop, the editor, a lean, haggard man with a sallow face, coarse black hair worn always a little longer than the prevailing cut, and deep-set, gloomy eyes, was at his desk.
"Can you give me a few minutes of your time, Blenkinsop?" the caller asked shortly.
"I can sell 'em to you, maybe," said the editor, and the lift of the gloomy eyes merely served to turn the jest into a bit of morbid sarcasm. Then he gave the sarcasm a half-bitter twist: "You railroad gentlemen are always willing to buy what you can't reach out and take."
"I know that is what you believe," said Blount, drawing up a broken chair and planting himself carefully in it; "we are on opposite sides of the fence in this fight, if you are fighting the railroad merely because it is a railroad; otherwise, perhaps, we are not so far apart as we might be. I don't know whether or not you have listened to any of my speeches, but you've printed a good many of them."
The editor nodded. "I've read 'em, and I'm willing to be the hundredth man and say that I believe you are individually honest. I hope you're not going to ask me to go any further than that."
"I'm not; I came for quite another purpose. First, let me ask a frank question: Is The Plainsman out for a square deal all around, regardless of who may be hit?"
Blenkinsop took time to consider the question and his answer, chewing thoughtfully upon his extinct cigar while he reflected.
"This is straight goods?" he asked finally. "You're not trying to pull me into an admission that can be used against us a little later on?"
"At the present moment you are talking to Evan Blount, the man, and not to the Transcontinental company's lawyer, Blenkinsop."
"All right; then I'll tell you flat that we are out for blood. We hold no brief for any living man. There are no strings tied to us, and we wear nobody's brass collar."
"Then you are fighting the machine as well as the railroad?" Blount put in quickly.
The editor sat back in his chair, and the two furrows which deepened upon either side of his hard-bitted mouth answered for a smile.
"When you find a machine that hasn't got 'T-C.R.' lettered on it somewhere, you let us know about it," was his rather cryptic reply.
"That is not the point," said Blount dryly. "Here is the question I wanted to ask: There are only five days intervening before the election. How wide a swath could you cut if the evidence of wholesale corruption could be placed in your hands within twenty-four hours?"
Again the editor took time to consider. When he spoke it was to say: "I can't quite believe that you are going to be disloyal to your salt at this late stage of the game, Blount. Do you mean that you are going to show your own company up for what it really is?"
"Never mind about that. I asked a question, and you haven't answered it."
"It was a question of time, wasn't it? There's time enough to tip the skillet over and spill all the grease into the fire, if that's what you mean; always time enough, up to the last issue before the polls open."
"And you'd do it—no matter who might happen to get in the way of the burning grease?"
"We print the news, and we try to get all the news there is. But it would have to be straight goods, Blount; no 'ifs' and 'ands' about it. I'm not saying that you couldn't produce the goods, you know. If you could break into Gantry's and Kittredge's private files, the trick would be turned. But I know well enough you're not going to do that."
Blount got up out of the broken chair and buttoned his coat.
"I needn't take any more of your time just now," he said. "I merely wanted to know how far you'd go if somebody should happen along at the last moment and give you a plain map of the road."
"We'll go as far, and drive as hard, as any newspaper this side of the Missouri River. But we've got to have the facts—don't forget that."
Blount was turning to go, but he faced around again sharply.
"Do you mean to tell me, Blenkinsop, that you don't know, as well as you know you're alive, that this campaign is honeycombed with deals and trades and dishonesty and trickery in every legislative district?" he demanded.
Again the ghastly smile which was only a deepening of the natural furrows flitted across the editor's face.
"Of course, I know it," he returned. "But you'll excuse me if I say that I scarcely expected to have the railroad company's field-manager come and tell me about it."
Blount's grim smile was a match for the editorial face-wrinkling. "You are like a good many others, Blenkinsop; you see red when you hear the noise of a railroad train. Perhaps, a little later, I may be able to persuade you to see another color—yellow, for example. Let it go at that. Good-night."
Once more in the avenue, Blount turned his steps toward the Inter-Mountain. Since the campaign was now in its final week, the clans were gathering in the capital, and the lobby of the great hotel was filled with groups of caucussing politicians. Blount was halted half a dozen times before he could make his way to the room-clerk's desk, and the pumping process to which he was subjected at each fresh stoppage would have amused him if the fiery resolution which was driving him on had not temporarily killed his sense of humor. It was evident that, in spite of all he had been saying and doing, a considerable majority of the caucussers were still regarding him as his father's lieutenant. He did not try very hard to remove the impression. It mattered little, in the present crisis, what the various party henchmen thought or believed.
It was a sharp disappointment when the room-clerk told him that his father and Mrs. Honoria and their guest had gone to the theatre. He was keyed to the fighting-pitch, and he wanted to have the deciding word spoken while his blood was up and there was still time to act. A glance at the clock showed him that he had a full half-hour to wait; and, as much to escape the buzzing lobbyists as to satisfy his hunger, he went to the café and ordered a belated dinner, choosing a table from which he could look out through the open doors and command the main entrance through which the theatre-goers would return.
He was through with the dinner, and was slowly sipping his black coffee, when he saw them come in. Since it was no part of his plan to dull the edge of opportunity by holding it first upon the social grindstone, he let the party of three go on to the elevators, and a little later sent a card up-stairs asking his father to meet him in the lounge on the mezzanine floor.
Having the advantage of time, he was first at the appointed meeting-place. He had drawn a chair to the balustrade, and was glooming thoughtfully down at the lobby gathering, upon which even the lateness of the hour appeared to have no dispersing effect, when a mellow voice behind him said: "Well, son, taking a quiet little squint at the menagerie?"
Blount got up and gave the speaker his chair, dragging up another for himself. The senator sat down and stretched his great frame like a man wearied. "Ah, Lord!" he said. "The old man isn't as young as he used to be, Evan, boy. There was a time once when eleven o'clock didn't seem any later to me than it does now to you; but it's gone by, son, and I don't reckon it'll ever come back again."
Blount drew his chair nearer. "I have a hard thing to say to you to-night, dad," he began, "and you mustn't make it harder by speaking of your—of the things that get near to me. I am a man grown, and a Blount, like yourself; I want you to give me back those papers which your dynamiter or somebody else in your pay took from my office safe three nights ago."
The senator's eyes lighted with the gentle smile, and the tips of the great mustaches twitched slightly.
"So McVickar's been telling tales out of school, has he?" he inquired half-jocularly.
"I have had no communication with Mr. McVickar. It wasn't necessary, nor is it needful for us to go aside out of the straight road. I want those papers. They are mine, and they were stolen."
The elder man smiled again. "What if I should say that I haven't got 'em, son—what then?" he asked mildly.
"I don't want you to say that. I want to believe that, however bitter this fight may grow, we shall still speak the truth to each other."
There was silence for a little time, and then the father broke it to say: "Reckon I could ask you what papers you mean, without roiling the water any more than it's already been roiled, son?"
"You may ask and I'll answer, if you'll let me say that it is hardly worth while for you to spar with me to gain time. I had certain documents—letters—which would have enabled me to come through clean with my own people—with the railroad management. You knew I had them; I was imprudent enough to boast of it one evening when we were dining together in your rooms. I know what I'm talking about, dad, when I make this demand of you. One of my clerks has been tampered with. Three days ago, when I asked him to bring me the letters from the safe, he brought me, instead, a packet of blank paper which he allowed me to go and lock up in my safety-box in the Sierra National. I don't know why you had the safe blown up, unless it was to save Collins's face."
Again a silence intervened, and in the midst of it the senator sat up and began to feel half-absently in his pockets for a cigar. Blount offered his own pocket-case, following it with the tender of a lighted match. With the cigar going, the Honorable David settled back in the deep chair, chuckling thoughtfully.
"They wrote me from back yonder on the Eastern edge of things that you had the makings of a mighty fine lawyer in you, boy, and I'll be switched if I don't believe they had it about right. The way you've trailed this thing out doesn't leave the old man a hole as big as a dog-burrow to crawl out of, does it, now? Reckon you've sure-enough got to have those papers back before you can go on, do you?"
"You know I must. You know what I've been preaching and talking: I have meant every word of it in good faith, and when I began to doubt the good faith of those behind me, I was forced to cast about for a weapon. It was handed to me almost miraculously, and as long as I held it my good name before the people of the State was safe. As the matter stands now, I'm a broken man, dad. After the election I shall be billeted from one end of the State to the other as the most shameless liar that ever breathed!"
The senator was rocking his great head slowly upon the chair-pillow. "That's bad; that's mighty bad, son. I reckon we'll have to fix some way to trail you out of that bog-hole, sure enough!"
"I'm not asking for help; I'm asking for bare justice. Give me those papers and I'll fight myself clear."
"And if I say I can't give 'em to you, Evan, boy, what then?"
"Then, hard and unfilial as it may seem to you, I shall fight you and your machine to a finish. You think I can't do it? I'll show you. I've got five days, and they are all my own. This campaign has been rotten to the core from the very beginning. You have tried to keep me from finding it out, and you have partly succeeded. But I know a little, and inside of the next twenty-four hours I shall know more. That's my last word, dad, and it breaks my heart to have to say it. But, by the God who made us both, if you drive me to it, I shall stir up such a revolution in this State that the people will forget to curse me for the lies I have been allowed to tell them!"
Blount was upon his feet when he finished, and the senator was rising stiffly from the depths of the big chair.
"That's good, man-sized talk, son," he commented gently, "and I reckon I haven't a word to say against it. All I'm going to beg for is this: we're kin, boy—mighty close kin. Belt away as hard as you like in the big scrap; it does me good to see that all these little Eastern frills haven't made you any less a two-fisted, hard-hitting Blount; but don't let it make you turn your back when your old daddy comes into the room. That's all I ask. Now you'd better go to bed and sleep up some. There's another day coming, and if there isn't, none of these little things we've been haggling over is going to count for much to any of us."
Three minutes later the Honorable Senator Sage-Brush was letting himself into the sitting-room of his suite on the private dining-room floor by means of his night-key. The small person whom Gantry and a few others were still calling the court of last resort was sitting up, and the tiny embroidery-frame on the table had evidently just been laid aside.
"Well?" she said inquiringly.
The senator shook his head in patient tolerance.
"Whatever you've been doing, it's knocked the bottom clean out for the boy, Honoria. For a little spell he had me going, and I thought I'd just naturally have to turn loose and spill all the fat into the fire."
"You mustn't do that," she returned quickly. "There are five days yet, and I need at least three of them. He was very angry?"
"Fighting mad."
"Of course," said the small one thoughtfully. "But we can't allow that to get in the way of the bigger things. It won't make any family break, will it? For Patricia's sake I shall be sorry if he is desperate enough to make the quarrel a personal one."
"I did the best I could on that, little woman, and I reckon he's big enough to keep on telling us 'Howdy.' What comes next on the programme?"
"To-morrow I'm going to try to get him to take Patricia driving. Beyond that I haven't planned, and anyway it doesn't matter, now that you have Gryson out of the way." Then she offered a bit of news. "Richard Gantry telephoned me a few minutes ago. He has sent in his resignation, and is going to Peru."
The senator was opening the door to the adjoining bedroom and turning on the lights.
"Oh, no, I reckon not," he rejoined, with a mellow laugh rumbling deep in his great body. "Dick only thinks he is going to Peru. We all think such things now and then."