urn up about the same time. Haven't been able
to learn what it is; but I'll bet dollars to doughnuts, they are all
absent on the same trail. If we let go a broadside, they'll have to
come out with the truth to shut us off; and there is where we are going
to get him; see? I've got another theory, too."

"What's that?" asked the Senator, without turning.

"It is, if he sees we're going to involve her, he'll quit."

Moyese didn't answer. He rose from his chair and walked to a rear
window, where he stood looking out. Did he credit what he had heard?
Was it a recital of facts, or a distortion of facts through a tainted
mind? Did Brydges, himself, believe what he had tried to convey? Or
was his job to obtain certain results at any cost: and was this part of
the cost? Ask yourself that of the tainted news you read every day.
Ask why those who recognize the lie do not brand it as such; why those
who are uncertain do not verify before they repeat and credit; and you
will probably have some clue to the little melodrama of dishonor
enacted in the office of a legal luminary at Smelter City that
sweltering hot July day. When you come to observe it, Bat's recital
contained nothing that might not have been posted in eminent
respectability on a church warden's door. Like fresh fruit passed
through a mouldy cellar, the facts came from the medium of the narrator
with the unclean contagion of cellar mould. The next narrator would
not pass on the facts. He would pass on the cellar rot.

"If we served up those two stories together hot," emphasized Bat, "we'd
about cut the throat of any opposition to our interests in the Valley?
He'd quit! I'll bet before he'd see her involved, he'd jump his job!"

When the Senator turned his face to the handy man, he was very sober.
He stood looking over the tops of his glasses boring into Bat's face.

"It's a pity," he said.

"Yes, it's too bad: one hates to have one's faith in human nature all
balled out this way; but you never know what kind of a fact you're
going ping up against where a woman is concerned." Something in the
Senator's look stopped Bat mid-way.

"Brydges, I thought I told you never to meddle with the damphool who
makes excuses for what he's going to do. Never do anything, unless you
have some end worth while in view; then, if it's worth while, do it,
damn it, and don't waste time excusing the means! Now, I'll have
nothing to do with this; mind that, Brydges. You d