"Ah?" said Blount calmly, giving the exclamation the true Boston inflection. "You are either too shrewd or not quite shrewd enough, Dick. You covered that up with a laugh, so that I might take it as a joke if I happened to be too thin-skinned to take it in disreputable earnest. Let us understand each other; we are fighting squarely in the open in this campaign; publicity is the word--I have Mr. McVickar for my authority. Anybody who wants to know anything about the railroad company's business in this State can learn it for the asking, and at first-hand. Secrecy and all the various brands of political claptrap that have been admitted in the past are to be shown the door. This is the intimation that was made to me: wasn't it made to you?" Gantry did not reply directly to the direct demand. On the other hand, he very carefully refrained from answering it in any degree whatsoever. "You have your job to hold down and I have mine," he rejoined. "What you say goes as it lies, of course; but just the same, I shouldn't be too righteously hard on the little brothers, if I were you." "If by the 'little brothers' you mean the pie-eaters, I'm going to fire them out, neck and crop, Richard. They make me excessively weary." Gantry's playful mood fell away from him like a cast-off garment. "I don't quite believe I'd do that, if I were you, Evan. There are pie-eaters on both sides in every political contest, and while they can't do any cause any great amount of good, they can often do a good bit of harm. I wouldn't be too hard on them, if I were you." "What would you do?--or, rather, what did you do when you were managing the State campaign two years ago?" inquired Blount pointedly. "I cut the pie," said the traffic manager simply. "In other words, you let this riffraff blackmail you and, incidentally, put a big black mark against the company's good name." "Oh, no; I wouldn't put it quite that strong. Not many of these little fellows ask for money, or expect it. A free ride now and then in the varnished cars is about all they look for." "But you can't give them passes under the interstate law," protested the purist. "Not outside of the State, of course. But inside of the State boundaries it's our own business." "You mean it _was_ our own business, previous to the passage of the State rate law two years ago," corrected Blount. "It is our own business to this good day--in effect. That part of the law has been a complete dead-letter from the day the governor signed it. Why, bless your innocent heart, Evan, the very men who argued the loudest and voted the most spitefully for it came to me for their return tickets home at the end of the session. Of course, we kept the letter of the law. It says that no 'free passes' shall be given. We didn't issue passes; we merely gave them tickets out of the case and charged them up to 'expense.'"