taken a load off of my shoulders, I
can assure you. If you can persuade Mrs. Blount into it, I'll arrange
for a little dinner of five to-morrow evening in the _cafe_ where we can
all get together. You'll like the professor, I know; and I hope you're
going to like Patricia. She's New England, and at first you may think
she's a bit chilly. But really she isn't anything of the kind."

The Honorable Senator got up and strolled to the window.

"You'd better go to bed, son," he advised. "It's getting to be mighty
late, and you'll want to be surging around some with these friends of
yours to-morrow. And, before I forget it, the big car is in
Heffelfinger's garage. Order it out after breakfast and show the
Cambridge folks a good time."

It was late the following evening, several hours after the informal
little dinner for five in the Inter-Mountain _cafe_, when the senator
had himself lifted from the lobby to the private-suite floor and made
his way to the door of his own apartments. As was her custom when they
were together, his wife was waiting up for him.

"Did you find out anything more?" she asked, without looking up from the
tiny embroidery frame which was her leisure-filling companion at home or
elsewhere.

"Not enough to hurt anything. McVickar has fixed things to suit himself.
The boy's law-office job is to be pretty largely nominal; a sort of
go-as-you-please and do-as-you-like proposition on the side, with
Ackerton to do all the sure-enough court work and legal drudgery. Since
Ackerton is a pretty clean fellow, and Evan stands up so straight that
he leans over backward, this lay-out means that the bribing isn't going
to be done by the legal department in the coming campaign."

"Is that all?"

"All but one little thing. Evan's job is to be more or less associated
with the traffic department, and the word has been passed to Gantry and
his crowd to see to it that the boy doesn't get to know too much."

"But they can't keep him from finding out about the underground work!"
protested the small one.

"If it's an order from headquarters, they're going to try mighty hard.
Evan wants to believe that everything is on the high moral plane, and
when a man wants to believe a thing it isn't so awfully hard to fool
him. It'll be a winning card for them if they can send the boy out to
talk convincingly about the cleanness of the company's campaign. That
sort of talk, handed out as Evan can hand it, if he is convinced of th