The Honorable David shook his head.
"This close to an election you're mighty near safe in blaming anybody and everybody in sight, son," he returned gravely; and apart from this small break in the monotony, the second half of the fifteen miles went speechless.
The clock in the Temple Court tower was pointing to five minutes of five when the senator, instead of taking the direct street to the Inter-Mountain, as his son expected him to, turned the car aside into the Capitol grounds and brought it to rest before the side entrance which led to the chambers of the Supreme Court justices.
"You're still in time, Evan, boy," he intimated gently; "and I'm only going to ask one thing of you. When you get through with Hemingway, come around to the hotel and show your grit by taking dinner with the rest of us. Are you man enough to do that?"
If the son hesitated, it was only for a fraction of a second. When he answered, it was to say: "If I were going up-stairs to put a noose around my own neck, it would be simpler and easier than the thing I've got to do. As to your one condition—dad, I'll be with you at dinner, and at all other times, after this thing is done. I've quit the railroad, and I did it so that I might be free to be your son and your lawyer when the smash comes. Can I say more?"
"You don't need to say another blessed word, son," was the sober rejoinder; and when Evan Blount got out, the Honorable David drove away without a backward glance for the young man who was dragging himself up the granite steps of the Capitol entrance like a condemned criminal going to execution.
XXIX
AT SHONOHO INN
Evan Blount's interview with the venerable chief justice was not at all what he had imagined it would be. To begin with, he found it blankly impossible to take the attitude he had meant to take—namely, that of a conscientious member of the bar, rigorously ignoring all the little cross-currents of human sympathy and the affections.