nd, by
heaven, Dick, I'll use them if you don't play fair!"

Gantry, long-suffering and patient to a fault in a business affair, was
not altogether superhuman.

"Evan, you are a frost--a black frost! You harp on one string until you
wear it to frazzles! Don't you know that the Transcontinental is big
enough and strong enough to chivvy you from one end of this country to
the other, if you turn traitor? I love a fighting man, but by God, I
haven't any use for a fool!"

Blount laughed.

"If I have succeeded in making you angry, perhaps there is a chance that
you will do something. You may curse me out all you want to, but the
fact remains. I'm going to explode the bomb, and it will be touched off
long enough before election to do the work, if you keep on refusing to
make my word good to the people. That is all--_all_ the all. Now, will
you go up to _The Capital_ office with me, and dictate that bit of
information that I mentioned?"

"Not in a thousand years!" raged Gantry. "Not in ten thousand years!"
Nevertheless he rose, closed his desk, and prepared to accompany the
importunate political manager. Half-way up the first square he said:
"There is no use in our going to _The Capital_ office at this time of
night. Brinkley doesn't get around to his desk much before eleven. Let's
go up to the club."

At the Railway Club the traffic manager developed a keen desire to kill
the intervening time in a game of billiards. Blount indulged him, beat
him three games in succession, and consistently refused to drink with
him. At the end of the third game, Gantry gave a terse definition,
abusively worded, of a man who would force his friend to go and drink
alone, and went to the buffet. Ten minutes later, when Blount went after
him, he had disappeared, and the visit to the newspaper office was
postponed, perforce.

On the following morning, Blount found a telegram on his desk. It bore
the vice-president's name, and the date-line was Twin Canyons City. It
directed him to go to a remote portion of the State beyond the Lost
River Mountains to examine the papers in a right-of-way case which was
coming up for trial at the next term of court. This was in Kittredge's
department, and Blount called the superintendent on the phone. Kittredge
was in his office, and he evidently knew about the vice-president's
telegram. Also, he seemed anxious to have the division counsel go to
Lewiston at once; so anxious that he offered his own service-car