rrest of one Thomas Gryson in any
of the police notes, and he breathed freer. But in _The Plainsman_ there
was an editorial which was vaguely disturbing. Blenkinsop, who wrote his
own leaders, hinted pointedly at coming disclosures which would change
the political map of the State for all time. Blount, trying to determine
how much or how little the editorial was based upon his talk with the
editor on the Wednesday night, found his omelet tasteless. Ready enough,
as he was persuaded, to fire the disrupting mine with his own hand, he
was not ready to surrender the match to any one else. Manifestly he must
see Blenkinsop and caution him.

Breakfast over, he walked, by the longest way around, to his office in
the Temple Court, hoping to find work which would help him through the
forenoon. It was an idle hope. From a State-wide shower of political
correspondence the daily mail had dropped suddenly to an inconsequential
drizzle, and there were no callers. Here, again, he saw, or thought he
saw, the all-powerful hand of the machine. He had been used for a
purpose, the purpose of hoodwinking and deceiving the voters. That
purpose having been served, he was to be dropped--was already dropped,
as it seemed. By noon the sheer time-killing effort became blankly
unbearable, and in desperation he broke with another of the ideals--the
one labelled sincerity--and going boldly to the Inter-Mountain he waited
in the lobby for the family party of three to come down to the
one-o'clock luncheon in the public _cafe_.

Joining the party when it came down, he found it difficult only in the
inner sanctuaries to maintain the _status quo ante_ Gryson. There was no
shadow of suspicion or coolness in his father's kindly smile and genial
greeting, and Mrs. Honoria rallied him playfully upon the narrow margin
by which he had held his own and Patricia's places at the Gordon
dinner-table the night before. Only in Patricia's eyes he read a curious
questioning, a hint that they were finding something in his eyes which
was new and not wholly understandable. He knew well enough what it was
that she saw; and though she was sitting opposite him at the table for
four, he looked at her as seldom as possible, devoting himself, for once
in a way, resolutely to his father's wife.

After luncheon he again fell back upon the dogged boldness. Unable to
contemplate a second plunge into the solitude of the Temple Court
offices, he asked and was accorded permission t