"Good, sound, sensible second thought!" Gantry commented, laughing. Then he took out his pocket-book and passed the suppressed telegram across to Blount. "Here it is; you can do the waste-basket act yourself. I couldn't let you commit hara-kiri without at least trying to get the cutting tool out of your hands. What is the other thing you've got on your mind this early in the morning? It must be a nightmare of some sort, by the look in your eyes."
"It may figure as a nightmare to you, Dick, before we're through with it. I'll make it short. You know what I have been doing—what I supposed I was hired to do—assuring everybody right and left that we were going into this campaign with clean hands?"
"I know," admitted the traffic manager, developing a sudden interest in the figures of the rug at his feet.
"I have been doing this in a business way at my office up-town, in season and out of season, and night before last, at Ophir, I did it publicly. As the campaign progresses, I shall doubtless put myself on record many times to the same effect."
"Good man!" applauded Gantry, striving to drag the talk down to some less portentous altitude. "I'm sure we need all the whitewashing anybody can give us."
"That is just the point I have come to make," Blount went on gravely. "It mustn't be merely a coat of whitewash, Dick; it has got to be the real thing, this time. I began by firing the 'little brothers,' as you called them, but I sha'n't stop at that; I mean to go higher up if I am compelled to. I am here this morning to ask you to give me your word as a gentleman and my friend that you will not, directly or indirectly, do or cause to be done anything that will make me stand forth as a self-convicted liar before the people of this State. I want you to promise me that you will cut out all the deals, all the briberies, all the bargainings, all the—"
"Oh, say; see here!" protested the man under fire; "you've got the wrong pig by the ear, Evan. I'm not the Transcontinental Railway Company!"
"I know you are not. But, to a greater degree than any other official in the local management, you have Mr. McVickar's confidence. If you don't feel competent to handle the thing on your own responsibility, of course it's your privilege to pass it up to those who have the authority. In that case, I wish to make one point clear: you're the man I'm going to hold up to the rack. I can't afford to spread myself over the entire management, and I don't mean to try. I'm going to look to you, Dick, for the backing of the clean sheet, and I warn you in all soberness that there must be no blots on it; no compromises; no whipping of the devil around the stump."
"Great Scott!" murmured Gantry. "And you're on the pay-rolls, the same as the rest of us! But candidly, as man to man, Evan, the thing can't be done, you know. We've got to play the game; they'll eat us alive if we don't. You needn't figure in it at all; it was a mistake letting Sim Hathaway get to you, and I said so at the time. But your—er—the powers that be said it had to be that way, and I had to let him go and ball you all up. It sha'n't happen again; I can promise you that much, anyway."
Blount caught quickly at the hesitant pause.