rn you in all soberness that
there must be no blots on it; no compromises; no whipping of the devil
around the stump."

"Great Scott!" murmured Gantry. "And you're on the pay-rolls, the same
as the rest of us! But candidly, as man to man, Evan, the thing can't be
done, you know. We've got to play the game; they'll eat us alive if we
don't. You needn't figure in it at all; it was a mistake letting Sim
Hathaway get to you, and I said so at the time. But your--er--the powers
that be said it had to be that way, and I had to let him go and ball you
all up. It sha'n't happen again; I can promise you that much, anyway."

Blount caught quickly at the hesitant pause.

"Who were 'the powers that be' in Hathaway's case, Dick?" he inquired.

"I can't tell you that; honestly, I can't, Evan," was the anxious
refusal. "Don't ask me."

"All right; then I shall assume that Mr. McVickar was responsible," said
Blount calmly, thus proving that he had not taken his degree in the law
school for nothing.

"Oh, hold on! You mustn't do that, either!" protested the man who was
figuring most unwillingly as the occupant of the witness stand.

"Thank you," returned the postgraduate, with the true Blount smile. "Now
I know that it was my father. No; you needn't deny it; I suppose it was
for some good reason that this man was sent to teach me how to play the
game--as reasons go in practical politics. But we are side-stepping the
real issue. I've asked you for a promise: will you give it?"

"I--I can't give it, Evan, and hold my job; that's God's own truth!"

"No; it isn't God's truth--it's the other kind. But that was about what
I expected you to say. Now hear my side of it: if you don't clean
house--you and the other officials of the company--I shall not only
resign; I shall take the field on the other side and tell what I know
and why I've thrown up my job. I've been telling everybody that this is
to be a campaign of publicity, and by all that is good and great, I
shall keep my word, Dick!"

"Oh, for heaven's sake, you wouldn't do that!" ejaculated the traffic
man, now thoroughly alarmed. "Land of glory, Evan! you know too much--a
great deal too much!"

The young man who knew too much got up and relighted his cigar with a
match taken from Gantry's desk box.

"It's up to you," he said, with his hand on the door-knob. "Get into
communication with whatever 'powers that be' there are that can give the
necessary orders; see to it that the