"In order to use those papers against me you'd first have to get hold of them, wouldn't you, Hardwick?" he asked.
"We have them," was the terse assertion.
The Honorable David's chuckle rumbled deep in his capacious chest.
"Barto phoned you an hour or so ago that he had 'em, but, owing to circumstances over which he had no control, he couldn't deliver 'em to you until to-morrow morning. Isn't that about the way it shapes up?"
The vice-president's frown marked an added degree of irritation. "So you have a cut-in on my telephone wire, have you?" he rasped.
The senator leaned forward and laid a forefinger on the vice-presidential knee.
"Listen, Hardwick," he said. "I dictated that phone message to you, and Barto repeated it word for word because he had to—I reckon maybe it was because one of my men was holding a gun to his other ear while he talked to you. The little hold-up that you planned this afternoon didn't come off. Barto lost out bad, and when we get around to giving him the third degree, I shouldn't wonder if he'd tell a whole lot of things that you wouldn't want to see printed in the newspapers."
Mr. McVickar sprang out of his chair with an agility surprising in so heavy a man, crossed to the open door of the room where his clerical force was at work, and slammed it shut. When he returned, he was no longer the confident tyrant of foregone conclusions.
"Where are those papers now, Blount?" he inquired.
"They are in the hands of Chief Justice Hemingway, for investigation and such action as he and his colleagues on the Supreme Court bench see fit to take."