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Gantry had been under orders from the little lady for the better part of the afternoon, but the business of the day had given him no chance to report earlier. "You got my note?" he asked, taking the place she made for him on the tête-
I'll tell you frankly that I tried to shove it over to you, neck and heels, at first. When that little notion failed, I pushed it along to Kittredge." Blount's eyebrows, which promised in time to be as portentous as the Honorable Senator's, met in a frown. "I'm going to find Gryson, dead or alive," he said. Gantry looked up quickly. "Which means that you know what has become of him?"
The traffic manager did want to know, and when the boy had ducked out, the knowledge was promptly utilized. A touch of a desk-button brought the stenographer, and Gantry dictated a message. "'Important that I should have conference with you on arrival. Will meet you at train at twelve-three. Send that to Mr.
McVickar has disappeared, and the end of the world has come," was the way he phrased it for the listening ear; but the word which came back must have been peculiarly heartening, since from that time on to an hour well past midnight Gantry figured hilariously as the self-constituted host of any and all who would be entertained. At Wartrace Hall there was also rejoicing, albeit of a quieter sort.
"Dolores!" admonished Mrs. Gantry. "Oh, piffle!" complained the girl, drawing aside for the men to pass her. Even Mrs. Gantry was not equal to the rudeness of snubbing a caller in her own house when she had given an earl permission to bring him. But the contrast between her greetings of the two men was, to say the least, noticeable.
"Say! that sounds pretty good to me," laughed Gantry, settling himself comfortably in a lazy-chair and feeling in his pockets for a cigar. "I've been in Boston the full week, skating around over the chilly crust of things and never able to get so much as one tenuous little social claw-hold. Say, Evan, how many ice-plants does that impenetrable old town keep going ever count 'em?"
He sank into a stupor that outwardly was not unlike heavy slumber. Mrs. Gantry had been gone several minutes when the other door swung open. Dolores skipped in, closely followed by Lafayette Ashton. The young man's face was flushed, and there was a slight uncertainty in his step; but as he closed the door and followed the girl across the room, he spoke with rather more distinctness than usual.
Gantry was coming down the avenue of banana-trees with the ice he had taken so much time to procure, and the lumber magnate rose reluctantly. There was time for only one more question, and he put it hastily. "When and where can I find Evan Blount?" he asked. "The day after to-morrow, at his office in Temple Court.
Better take the first train back to Chicago. These mutton-headed police here might possibly get on your track, and we don't want to have to explain anything to them." Five minutes after the small man had dropped from the step of the "008," to disappear in the box-car shadows, Gantry and Kittredge came down the yard and entered the private car.
Would it not be the part of a son to drop out quietly, leaving the political house-cleaning for some one who would not be obliged to pay such a costly price? It was the idealistic decision which had been in the saddle when he dropped from the trolley car at the western portal of the railway station, and which was sending him to seek the scale-turning interview with Gantry.
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