screened on three
sides by an open fretwork of Moorish design, was built out from the wall
of the dining-room, and through the latticings of the fretwork he could
look down upon the oblong lobby of the resort hotel. There was a
table-desk with lamps on it drawn out in front of a cheerful wood-fire
burning in a great stone fireplace, and in front of the fire, standing
with his back to the blaze, Blount saw his father. From a lighted room
at the opposite end of the lobby space came a confused clattering of
telegraph instruments. Blount caught a glimpse of shirt-sleeved clerks
moving about in the room beyond, and then a door opened beneath him and
the vice-president of the Transcontinental Company strode out into the
firelight to shake hands with his visitor and to say: "I've been looking
for you; I thought you'd come in out of the wet before it was too late,
David. Sit down and tell me how much you're going to bleed us for, and
I'll make out the check."

With a cold hand gripping at his heart, Blount turned away, sick and
revolted, and there was a curse on his lips for the cruelty of the woman
who had brought him to be a witness to his father's shame. But when he
groped for the door of egress and found it, the knob refused to turn.
The door was locked and he could not retreat.

XXX

THE RECKONING

Evan Blount's first impulse when he found his retreat cut off by the
locked door of the musicians' gallery was to make his presence known
instantly to the two men standing before the fire in the lobby below.
Shame, vicarious shame for the father who would thus find himself
unmasked before his son, was all that made him hesitate; and in the
pausing moment he heard his father's reply to the vice-president's
challenging greeting.

"The same old song; always the same old song with you, isn't it,
Hardwick?" the senator was saying in jocose deprecation. "What money
can't buy, isn't worth having; that's about the way you fellows always
stack it up." Then, with sudden grimness: "Sit down, Hardwick. I've come
to say a few things to you that won't listen very good, but you've got
to take your medicine this time."

"What's that?" demanded the vice-president, dropping mechanically into
his desk-chair. And then: "It's no use, David. We've beat you at your
own game. We're going to roll up a majority next Tuesday that will wipe
you and your broken-down machine out of existence. Don't you believe
it?"

"Not yet--not quite yet