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.