"Listen, Hardwick," he said. "I dictated that phone message to you, and Barto repeated it word for word because he had to--I reckon maybe it was because one of my men was holding a gun to his other ear while he talked to you. The little hold-up that you planned this afternoon didn't come off. Barto lost out bad, and when we get around to giving him the third degree, I shouldn't wonder if he'd tell a whole lot of things that you wouldn't want to see printed in the newspapers." Mr. McVickar sprang out of his chair with an agility surprising in so heavy a man, crossed to the open door of the room where his clerical force was at work, and slammed it shut. When he returned, he was no longer the confident tyrant of foregone conclusions. "Where are those papers now, Blount?" he inquired. "They are in the hands of Chief Justice Hemingway, for investigation and such action as he and his colleagues on the Supreme Court bench see fit to take." "Good God! Your son did that, knowing that you are as deep in the mud as we are in the mire?" "I reckon he did, so. That boy is all wool and a yard wide. He thought he was putting me in the hole, too, along with Kittredge and your railroad crooks, and it came mighty near tearing him in two. But he did it. You haven't been more than half-appreciating that boy, Hardwick." "'He thought,' you say; isn't it the fact that you are in the hole, David?" The senator reached over, took one of the gigantic McVickar cigars from the open box on the desk, and calmly lighted it. "You're a pretty hard man to convince, Hardwick," he said slowly, when the big cigar was filling the air of the lobby with its fragrance. "Away along back at the beginning of this fight I told you what I was aiming to do, and why. You wouldn't believe it then, and you don't want to believe it now; but that's because you don't happen to have a son of your own. When that boy of mine wired me that he was coming out here to get into the harness, I began to turn over the leaves of the record and look back a little. It was a mighty dirty record, McVickar. I don't know that I'm any better man now than I was in the days when we made that record--you and I--but when I looked it over, it struck me all in a heap that I'd have to get out the bucket and scrubbing-brush if I didn't want to make a clean-hearted, clean-minded boy plumb ashamed of his old daddy." "But, say--you haven't quit your scheming for a single minute, Blount!" retorted the railroad tyrant. "You are just as much the boss of the machine to-day as you've ever been!"