nd business is hell, Evan. I'm
honest to my salt--which is to say that as yet I'm not using my job to
line my own pockets, but that's the one decent thing that can be said of
me. Don't let me bore you."

"Go on," said Blount soberly. "I don't see the pointing of it yet,
but--"

"You will when I tell you that I've been lying to you; faking first one
thing and then another. Do you get that?"

"I hear you say it; yes."

"It's so. I faked that story about your father's having made an
underground deal with us. It was a lie out of whole cloth, because I
didn't believe at that time that he had. There had been a falling out
between him and Mr. McVickar; that was common talk on the division. But
until yesterday I didn't know for certain that the trouble had been
patched up; in fact, I had my own reasons for believing that it hadn't
been patched up."

"And you told me there was an alliance in order that I might believe
that my father would be involved in an exposure of the railroad's
double-dealing with the public?"

"Just that. Self-preservation is the primal law--after you've dropped
the ideals--and I thought I had invented a way to hold you down. I might
have saved myself the trouble--and the lie. It comes down to this, Evan:
you are one man against a crooked world, and you haven't had a ghost of
a show from the first minute."

"You'll have to make it plainer," was the even-toned rejoinder. "As
matters stand now, I am pretty well assured that I can do what I set out
to do. I'm going to be able to make my own employers come through with
clean hands."

Gantry was shaking his head slowly, and again the curious smile flitted
across his keen, fine-featured face, lingering for an instant at the
corners of the eyes.

"You say I'll have to make it plainer, and I will. A little while ago
you intimated that Kittredge and I were responsible for the telegram
which sent you to Lewiston yesterday. It was a fake, but it didn't
originate with Kittredge or with me."

"With whom, then?"

"I hate to tell you, Evan--it'll hit you hard. The frame-up was your
father's. He got hold of Kittredge the night before, some time after we
had left my office together to go up-town. He told Kittredge it was for
the good of 'the cause,' and suggested that a wire purporting to come
from Mr. McVickar would probably turn the trick. He didn't give his
reason for wanting to get you out of the way at this time, and Kittredge
didn't ask it."

Blount