ted to use them, we could send you to the penitentiary, right here in
your own State."

The senator drew up a mock-Sheraton arm-chair and lowered his huge frame
gently into it.

"In order to use those papers against me you'd first have to get hold of
them, wouldn't you, Hardwick?" he asked.

"We have them," was the terse assertion.

The Honorable David's chuckle rumbled deep in his capacious chest.

"Barto phoned you an hour or so ago that he had 'em, but, owing to
circumstances over which he had no control, he couldn't deliver 'em to
you until to-morrow morning. Isn't that about the way it shapes up?"

The vice-president's frown marked an added degree of irritation. "So
you have a cut-in on my telephone wire, have you?" he rasped.

The senator leaned forward and laid a forefinger on the
vice-presidential knee.

"Listen, Hardwick," he said. "I dictated that phone message to you, and
Barto repeated it word for word because he had to--I reckon maybe it was
because one of my men was holding a gun to his other ear while he talked
to you. The little hold-up that you planned this afternoon didn't come
off. Barto lost out bad, and when we get around to giving him the third
degree, I shouldn't wonder if he'd tell a whole lot of things that you
wouldn't want to see printed in the newspapers."

Mr. McVickar sprang out of his chair with an agility surprising in so
heavy a man, crossed to the open door of the room where his clerical
force was at work, and slammed it shut. When he returned, he was no
longer the confident tyrant of foregone conclusions.

"Where are those papers now, Blount?" he inquired.

"They are in the hands of Chief Justice Hemingway, for investigation and
such action as he and his colleagues on the Supreme Court bench see fit
to take."

"Good God! Your son did that, knowing that you are as deep in the mud as
we are in the mire?"

"I reckon he did, so. That boy is all wool and a yard wide. He thought
he was putting me in the hole, too, along with Kittredge and your
railroad crooks, and it came mighty near tearing him in two. But he did
it. You haven't been more than half-appreciating that boy, Hardwick."

"'He thought,' you say; isn't it the fact that you are in the hole,
David?"

The senator reached over, took one of the gigantic McVickar cigars from
the open box on the desk, and calmly lighted it.

"You're a pretty hard man to convince, Hardwick," he said slowly, when
the big cigar was filli