" he began, "you fellows downtown are making my office a
cesspool, and I won't stand for it. Garrigan, that saloon-keeper in the
second ward, came up to-day to ask for a free ticket to Worthington and
return; and when I pinned him down he admitted that you'd sent him to
me."

"I did," said Gantry, grinning. "Why otherwise have we got a
post-graduate, double-certificated political manager, I'd like to know?"

Blount dropped into a chair and felt in his pockets for his cigar-case.

"I guess we may as well fight this thing to a finish right here and now,
Dick," he said coolly. "I'm not chief vote buyer for the
Transcontinental Company--I'm not any kind of a vote buyer."

"Who said you were?" retorted the traffic manager.

"It says itself, if I am supposed to cut the pie and hand out pieces of
it to these grub-stakers that you and Carson and Bentley and Kittredge
are continually sending to me."

This time Gantry's grin was playful, but behind it there was a shrewd
flash of the Irish-blue eyes that Blount did not see.

"I guess the company would be plenty willing to furnish a few small pies
for really hungry people, if you think you need them to go along with
your Temple Court office fittings," he returned.

"Ah?" said Blount calmly, giving the exclamation the true Boston
inflection. "You are either too shrewd or not quite shrewd enough, Dick.
You covered that up with a laugh, so that I might take it as a joke if I
happened to be too thin-skinned to take it in disreputable earnest. Let
us understand each other; we are fighting squarely in the open in this
campaign; publicity is the word--I have Mr. McVickar for my authority.
Anybody who wants to know anything about the railroad company's business
in this State can learn it for the asking, and at first-hand. Secrecy
and all the various brands of political claptrap that have been admitted
in the past are to be shown the door. This is the intimation that was
made to me: wasn't it made to you?"

Gantry did not reply directly to the direct demand. On the other hand,
he very carefully refrained from answering it in any degree whatsoever.

"You have your job to hold down and I have mine," he rejoined. "What
you say goes as it lies, of course; but just the same, I shouldn't be
too righteously hard on the little brothers, if I were you."

"If by the 'little brothers' you mean the pie-eaters, I'm going to fire
them out, neck and crop, Richard. They make me excessively weary