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?"