ar," said Gantry; and then: "Where is Collins now?"

"I don't know; he comes and goes pretty much as he pleases when I'm not
in town."

"Do you know anything about him personally?"

"No."

"I do. His father was a bank cashier, and he became a defaulter--of the
easy-mark kind; the kind that is too good-natured to look too curiously
at a friend's collateral. He would have gone over the road if your
father hadn't pulled him out by main strength."

"I see," said Blount cynically. "And the son has paid his father's debt
to my father. But why the safe-blowing?"

"Collins's face had to be saved in some way. He couldn't know that you
meant to lock the dummy up in the safety vault," returned Gantry, and
then, after a pause: "That's our one little ray of hope, Evan."

"I don't see it."

"Don't you? Then I'll make it a bit plainer. If some railroad burglar
had cracked your safe, you could confidently assume that the original
letters have been carefully cremated by this time, couldn't you?"

"I suppose so."

"But if your father has them ... Evan, I don't know any more than the
man in the moon what he wants them for, but the man in the street would
grin and tell you that your father was merely getting ready to hold the
railroad company up for something it didn't want to part with."

"I'm letting you say it of my own flesh and blood, Dick; and it shows
you how badly broken I am. After all, it doesn't lead anywhere."

"Yes, it does. Let us suppose, just for the sake of argument, that your
father doesn't know how much those letters mean to you--I know it's a
pretty hard thing to imagine, but we'll do it by main strength and
awkwardness. Let us suppose again, that being the case, that you go to
him frankly and show him in a few well-chosen words just where he has
landed you; tell him you've got to have those letters--simply _got_ to
have them--to save your face. I know your father, Evan, a good bit
better than you do; he'd give you the earth with a fence around it if
you should ask him for it."

Evan Blount got slowly out of his chair, stood up, and put his hands
upon the smaller man's shoulders.

"Dick, do you realize what you are doing for yourself when you show me a
possible way of getting my weapon back?" he demanded.

Gantry's lips became a fine straight line and he nodded.

"That's what made me walk the floor a few minutes ago; I was trying to
find out if I were big enough. It's all right, Ebee; you go to it, an