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.
It was not until he was deep into the fourth week of the hurryings to and fro that he began to admit a suspicion which grew like a juggler's rose once he had given it place. Could it be possible that these numerous invitations, coming now from all parts of the State, were purely spontaneous? If not, if they were so many subtle moves in the great game, he could see no possible end to be subserved by them save one: they were effectually keeping him away from the capital, which was naturally the nucleus and centre of the campaign activities. Was there something going on at headquarters that "the powers" did not wish him to find out? Of one thing he was well assured. Gantry was dodging him, was apparently keeping an accurate record of his movements; for whenever the hurryings permitted a flying return to the capital the traffic manager was always out of town.
These were small matters, but vital in their way. Failing to keep in touch with Gantry, Blount could never be sure that the policy of the railroad company had been reformed or changed in any respect. Moreover, his journeyings, which brought him in direct contact with the voters themselves, seemed to have the effect of isolating him curiously in the actual battle-field. That a hot political campaign was raging throughout the length and breadth of the State was not to be doubted; the newspapers were full of it, and in many districts the fight had become acrimonious and bitter. But although he was supposed to be in the thick of the fight, he knew that he was not; that some mysterious influence was shutting him out and holding him at arm's length.
Everywhere he went the cordial reception, the attentive and hospitable committeemen, the packed house, and the generous applause were always awaiting him. It was as if his progress had been carefully prearranged, like a sort of triumphal procession. None the less, the invisible barrier—the barrier which was excluding him from a hand-to-hand grapple with the inner workings of the campaign—was always there, and he could neither surmount it nor push it aside.
Notwithstanding the hard work and hard travelling, he did not allow the missionary effort and its curious isolation to obscure in any sense the sturdier purpose. By every means he could devise he was holding his principals up to the mirror of a vigilant watchfulness. Arguing that the opposition newspapers would be quick to seize upon any charge of corruption involving the railroad company, he read them faithfully. As yet there had been only innuendoes and a raking over of past misdeeds, though by this time many of the editors were openly claiming that the old alliance between the railroad and the machine had never been broken, and warning their readers accordingly.
Blount winced when he read such editorials as these. Though he was going about, striving to do his part manfully, and even with enthusiasm, the burden of the cruel responsibility he had voluntarily shouldered was never less than crushing. His only hope lay in success. If he could make Gantry and his superiors come clean-handed to the election, there need be no exposure, no cataclysm involving both the railroad officials and his father.
So ran the saving hope; and not content with mere watchfulness, Blount tried to get his finger upon the pulse of occasions whenever he could. On his brief stop-overs in the capital he kept his eyes and ears open for the earliest hint of any charge of chicanery, and though he was unable to get hold of Gantry personally, he kept up a steady fire of letters and telegrams, all pointing to the same end—absolute and utter good faith, and the upholding of his hands in the public plea for a square deal. To these the traffic manager always replied guardedly and optimistically. Everybody was delighted with the good work done, and doing, by the railroad company's field manager; public opinion was slowly but surely changing; let the good work go on—and much more to the same effect.
Blount did let the good work go on; but as the critical pre-election weeks approached, he began to arm himself, reluctantly but resolutely. A little quiet investigation, which was made to dovetail cleverly with his speech-making journeys, revealed—as Gantry had confessed it would—convincing evidence of past corruption and present law-breaking. Hathaway had told the truth when he had asserted that his own involvement was only one of many similar bargains. Blount called upon the president of the Irrigation Alliance at Romero, in the heart of the agricultural district, upon the managers of several of the electric-power companies, and upon a number of influential mining men—all shippers, and all large employers of labor. It was the same story everywhere. Preferential freight rates had been given in return for votes controlled, and the rates were still in effect.
The investigator turned sick at heart when these men talked quite freely to him, thus showing conclusively that they were cynically discounting his public utterances. McDarragh, owner and manager of the "Wire-Gold" properties in the Moscow district, winked slyly when Blount cautiously inserted the probe.
"You're on, Mr. Blount. I sat up there in the Op'ry-house last night listening to your game, and says I to myself, 'Thim railroad shift-bosses know their trade.' 'Twas a gr-reat talk you gave us, and it'll make the swinging of the har-rd-rock vote as easy as twice two. Of course, we have a thin paring on the ore rate; you'll be knowing that as well as annybody in the game, I'm thinking. 'Tis well that we fellows at the top know how to make one hand wash the other. Come again, Mr. Blount, and give my regards to the sinator when ye see him. And ye might whisper in his ear that it's a waste of good wor-rk for him to be sinding his gum-shoe wire-pullers to be laboring with our min. We're safe as the clock up here in the Moscow."
This was not the first hint that Blount had been given pointing to the underground work of the machine. That this work was being directed toward the subversion of the popular will, he made no doubt; and there were times when he was strongly tempted to carry the war boldly into the wider field of graft and bossism. That he postponed the bigger battle was due quite as much to the singleness of purpose which was his best gift as to the desire to spare his father. Telling himself resolutely that the reformation of the railroad company's political methods was his chief object, and the only one which warranted him in retaining his place on the Company's payrolls, he held aloof when his father's name was mentioned and bent himself to the task of providing the means for the subjugation of Gantry—and of Gantry's and his own superiors, if need be.
The securing of evidence of the kind which would really give him the whip-hand promised to be a delicate undertaking. Men like McDarragh talked openly enough about the illegal special freight rates, but talk was not evidence. Curiously enough, while he was trying to devise some way of obtaining the tangible proof without using his semiofficial position in the company's service as a lever, the thing itself was thrown at him. From some mysterious source a rumor went out that the special rates were in jeopardy; and the very men with whom he had talked began to write him importunate letters begging him to deny the rumor. With a sheaf of these letters in his pocket, each one inculpating both parties to the illegal "deals," Blount grew gayly exultant. The natural inference was that Gantry and "the powers" had been finally forced to yield—that he had won his victory. But if he had not yet won it, chance, or something better, had placed in his hands the weapon with which he could compel a return to fair dealing and honesty.
It was on a second speech-making visit to Ophir that Blount had his first face-to-face chance at Gantry. A meeting of the Mine-Owners' Association, moving for a readjustment of the classification on copper matte and bullion at a time when the railroad company might be supposed to be on the giving hand, brought Gantry to the gold camp in the Carnadine Hills, and the first man he met at the hotel was the stubborn dictator of new policies for the Transcontinental Company.
"Hello, Dick! made a mistake, didn't you—coming while I was here?" said the reformer, with a very lifelike replica of his father's grim smile. "I suppose you have an immediate engagement to go somewhere else, or to do something that will give you a chance to dodge?"
"No; I wish to the Lord I had!" was the hearty admission. "You're a fright, Evan; you are getting to be a perfect nightmare, with your letters and telegrams. You've got me so I'm afraid to open my desk."
Blount nodded gravely. "I'm glad the letters and telegrams have had their effect at last," he rejoined.
"Had their effect? Yes, they've had the effect of turning my hair gray, if that's what you mean."
"I think you know what I mean, Dick."
"I'll be hanged if I do. What are you driving at?"
"At the fact that you have finally concluded to cancel the crooked deals with—wait, and I'll give you the names of the co-respondents"—and he drew a packet of neatly docketed letters from his pocket.
"Hold on a minute," protested the traffic manager; "you're getting in rather too deep for me. Will you let me see those letters?"
Blount put the letters back into his pocket and mechanically buttoned his light top-coat over them for additional safety.
"Do you mean to say that you haven't passed the word to Hathaway and McDarragh and a dozen others I could name?" he asked.
"Of course I haven't. You call yourself a lawyer, and yet you ask us to set aside promises that are, or ought to be, as binding as so many written contracts with penalties attached. You're crazy, Evan; it can't be done, and that's all there is to it."
Blount was frowning thoughtfully. "'Can't' goes out of the window when 'must' comes in at the door, Dick. You remember what I told you—that I'd get evidence, lawyer-fashion. I've got it; evidence of the sort that would turn the people of this State into a howling mob to tear up your tracks if I should publish it."
"But I tell you we can't withdraw the specials, you wild-eyed fanatic!"
"All right; then level down the public's rates to fit them. And do it quickly, old man. The time is growing fearfully short, and my patience isn't what it used to be."
"My Lord! anybody would think you owned the Transcontinental Company, lock, stock, and barrel! Where under heaven did you get your nerve, Evan? Blest if I don't believe you could out-bluff the old—er—your father, himself, if you once got the fool notion into your head that it was your duty to try!"
"You are side-stepping again, Dick, and that won't go any longer. You've got to fish or cut bait, and do one or the other pretty soon."
"I'd cut the bait all right, if I were Mr. McVickar, Evan. I'd fire you so blamed far that you wouldn't be able to find your way back in a month of Sundays."
Blount tapped his pocket. "As long as I have these documents, Mr. McVickar doesn't dare to fire me. And if you and he don't come down within the next few days—yes, it's a matter of days, now—I'll fire myself and go over every foot of the ground again, telling what I know."
Gantry's eyes darkened. He had graduated with honors from the particular department in railroading in which patience is more than a virtue. Yet there are limits.
"You seem to have entirely forgotten that little talk we had in my office the night you were going to Angora," he said.
"No; I haven't forgotten it—not for a single waking minute."
"What I said to you then goes as it lies," was the threatening reminder. "If you pull the props out, there'll be more than one death in the family."
"You mean that you, or Mr. McVickar, will make it a point to include my father; I've wrestled that out, too, Dick. I'm going to try to pull him out of it, but whether I succeed or fail, the consequences will be the same for you fellows. Come and hear me speak to-night, Dick—if you're stopping over that long. Then you'll know how much in earnest—how deadly in earnest—I am. You spoke of my father just now; I want to remind you again that I, too, bear the Blount name—a name that I have heard bandied about as a synonym for all that is worst in our political life. Don't you see that I've got to make good?"
"Oh, great cats!—you and your high-strung notions of what you've got to do!" snorted the traffic manager, and he went away to his classification meeting.