man was tired out long ago, but Hawk will hang on
till his teeth fall out."

"Do you 'continue' again?" asked the general manager.

Kent nodded.

"I so instructed Hunnicott. Luckily, two of our most important witnesses
are missing. They have always been missing, in point of fact."

Loring was glancing over the letter.

"How about this affidavit business, and the Falkland stop-over?" he asked.

"Oh, I fancy that's gossip, pure and simple, as Hunnicott says. Hawk is
sharp enough not to let us know if he were baiting a trap. And Falkland
probably told the _Clarion_ man the simple truth."

Loring nodded in his turn. Then he broke away from the subject abruptly.
"Sit down," he said; and when Kent had found a chair: "I had a caller this
morning--Senator Duvall."

State Senator Duvall had been the father, or the ostensible father, of the
Senate amendment to House Bill Twenty-nine. He was known to the
corporations' lobby as a legislator who would sign a railroad's
death-warrant with one hand and take favors from it with the other; and
Kent laughed.

"How many did he demand passes for, this time? Or was it a special train
he wanted?"

"Neither the one nor the other, this morning, as it happened," said the
general manager. "Not to put too fine an edge upon it, he had something to
sell, and he wanted me to buy it."

"What was it?" Kent asked quickly.

Loring was rubbing his eye-glasses absently with the corner of his
handkerchief.

"I guess I made a mistake in not turning him over to you, David. He was
too smooth for me. I couldn't find out just what it was he had for sale.
He talked vaguely about an impending crisis and a man who had some
information to dispose of; said the man had come to him because he was
known to be a firm friend of the Trans-Western, and so on."

Kent gave his opinion promptly.

"It's a capitol-gang deal of some sort to hold us up; and Duvall is
willing to sell out his fellow conspirators if the price is right."

"Have you any notion of what it is?"

Kent shook his head.

"Not the slightest. The ways have been tallowed for us, thus far, and I
don't fully understand it. I presented our charter for re-filing
yesterday, and Hendricks passed it without a word. As I was coming out of
the secretary's office I met Bucks. We were pretty nearly open enemies in
the old days in Gaston, but he went out of his way to shake hands and to
congratulate me on my appointment as general counsel."

"That