Tom Gryson to pieces a
note came down from the Inter-Mountain, asking me to come up. I didn't
get to see the senator himself, but Mrs. Blount gave me the dope. As a
result, young Blount got a hurry telegram from you, directing him to go
to Lewiston at once in that right-of-way matter of Brodhead's. I gave
him my car, and the trip cost him the better part of two whole days."

Again the vice-president shook his head.

"Your methods are always pretty crude, Kittredge," he commented. "You
took another long chance when you forged my name to a telegram for as
shrewd a young lawyer as Evan Blount. But go on. You got Blount out of
the way--then what?"

"Then I went after Gryson again. The little woman's hint hit the
bull's-eye as true as a rifle bullet. Tom meant to give us away to
Blount. He haunted Blount's up-town office the better part of the day;
and finally, in sheer self-defence, I had to tip him off to the police,
as I had threatened to. Another little mystery bobbed up there. Chief
Robertson winked one eye at me and said: 'You're too late, Mr.
Kittredge; your man has already been piped off and he's gone.'"

"Who did it?" snapped McVickar.

"I don't know, and Robertson wouldn't tell me. But I got him to promise
to put out the reward quietly. If Gryson comes back he'll be nipped
before he can talk."

"With young Blount laid up, it won't make much difference," was the
summing-up rejoinder. And then: "I think that is all--for this morning.
Go around to the telephone-exchange when you get back to town and tell
the manager that I want a special operator--a man, if he's got one--put
on this long-distance wire. Have you sent your linemen out to guard the
wires on the Shoshone mine track?"

"Yes; all the way from the switch to the hills."

"All right; that's all. Keep your finger on the pulse of things in town
to-day, and arrange with your despatcher to give my operators here a
clear wire in any direction whenever it's called for. Above all, keep me
posted, Kittredge; don't let anything get by you, no matter how trivial
it may seem."

As the superintendent was climbing into his car, the railroad
electrician who was in charge of the men guarding the telegraph-wires
came up.

"One minute, Mr. Kittredge. I've put the box in, according to orders--"

"What box, and whose orders?"

"The recording microphone in Mr. McVickar's office, in there; and by his
orders, I guess--at least they came from one of his men. We're nee