"You're hot now--and with good enough cause, I guess. But that sort of a temperature makes a man near-sighted and color-blind. Human nature is pretty much the same the world over, Evan, and if you could see beyond the crookedness you'd find a lot of good people out here, averaging about the same as the decent majority anywhere. It's an inarticulate majority generally; it doesn't stand up on its hind legs and rear around and call attention to itself--couldn't if it should try. But it's here and there and everywhere in America, just the same. A railroad car with one drunken fool in it gives you the idea. You focus on him and say, 'What a beastly shame!' and you entirely overlook the other fifty-odd people in the car who are quietly minding their own business." Blount's smile was for the man rather than for the theory. "You are an implacable optimist, Dick, and you always have been," he returned. "Your theory is good humanitarianism, and I wish I could accept it as applying to this abandoned community out here in my native hills; but I can't. Let's go back to the others. We've established a sort of family _modus vivendi_, my father and I, and I don't want him to think that I'm breaking it by plotting with you." It was while the evening was still measurably young that Blount made his excuses to his hostess and got away, fondly believing that he was escaping without attracting the attention of the small lady who was deep in a political discussion with candidate Gordon at the critical moment. He was mistaken, but the escape was not interrupted. At the curb the Blount touring-car was waiting, with two others, and for an instant Blount hesitated, half inclined to ask his father's chauffeur, to drive him down-town. On such inconsequent pivots fate, or accident, twirls the most momentous affairs of life. If Blount had taken the car he would have been driven directly to the hotel. As it was, he walked, and in passing the Temple Court Building he remembered that he had not seen his mail since early morning. Rousing the sleepy boy in charge of the all-night elevator, he had himself lifted to his office floor. The upper corridor was dimly lighted, and on leaving the car he went directly to the door of his private room, walking swiftly and neither seeing nor hearing a man who, materializing mysteriously out of the corridor shadows, followed him step by step.