If Blount hesitated it was only because he was trying to determine whether or not the traffic manager was business-fit. Gantry comprehended perfectly, and his laugh was derisive and a trifle bitter.
"You're sizing me up and asking yourself if I'm too far gone to be worth while," he jeered. "If I couldn't stand any more liquid grief than you can, I would have been down and out years ago. Show your hand, Evan—if you have any to show."
Blount hesitated no longer. Taking Gantry's arm, he led him out of the club and around the block to the Sierra National Bank. It was after banking hours, but the side door giving access to the safe-deposit department was still open. With the traffic manager at his elbow, Blount asked the custodian for his private box, got it, and led the way to one of the cell-like retiring rooms. Gantry proved his capacity for transacting business by turning on the lights, locking the door, and squaring himself in a chair at one side of the tiny writing-table.
Blount opened the japanned safety box, took out a bulky envelope and tossed it across to the traffic manager.
"You can see for yourself whether I've been bluffing or not," he said quietly; and then he turned his back and interested himself in the lithograph of the latest Atlantic liner framed and hanging upon the mahogany end wall of the small room.
For a little time there was a dead silence, broken only by the faint rustling of the papers as Gantry withdrew and unfolded them. When he had glanced at the last folded letter sheet, he snapped the rubber band upon the sheaf and sat back in his chair. Blount turned at the snap and found the traffic manager smiling curiously up at him.
"Sit down, Evan," was the friendly invitation. And when Blount had dropped into the opposite chair: "We used to be pretty good friends in the old days, Ebee," Gantry went on, falling easily into the use of the college nickname. "I haven't forgotten the time when I would have had to break and go home if you hadn't stood by me like a brother and lent me money. For that reason, and for some others, I hate to see you bucking a dead wall out here in the greasewood hills."
"It is you and your kind who are bucking the dead wall, Dick."
"No, listen; I'm giving it to you straight, now. A few minutes ago you thought I was drunk—possibly too far gone to serve your purpose. I wasn't; I was merely sick and disgusted at the spectacle afforded by a crafty, crooked, double-dealing old world—the world we're living in. Once in a blue moon an honest man turns up, and when that happens he's got to be broken on the wheel—as you're going to be broken. Oh, yes; I came out with ideals, too, but they've been knocked out of me. We all have to keep the lock-step in business, and business is hell, Evan. I'm honest to my salt—which is to say that as yet I'm not using my job to line my own pockets, but that's the one decent thing that can be said of me. Don't let me bore you."