LITMIR.BIZ

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instantly would have recognized. It was the light of battle, the flickering of an ironic pleasure; the Senator was establishing a case, and presently there would be men scurrying for shelter while the halls of Congress heard his husky lawyer's voice piling up evidence and laying the mark of Judas across the names of certain gentlemen he long had suspected. Costaine was no pettifogger, nor did he ever raise the cry of "turn the rascals out" just to hear himself talk. When he had no evidence he kept silent and went on with his interminable digging. Therein lay his authority and his manifest power.

      Presently the room was cleared. He lighted himself another cigar and tilted back his chair, nodding at the secretary.

      "Nicholas, we've got Invering scorched. He'll wear no more purple, and he'll run for his hole like a scared rabbit. I detest and I suspect a man who continually and publicly wraps the flag around him and bares his breast to the arrows of iniquity. Oh, yes, Ignacius is scorched. The gentleman's dream of royal robes is sadly blasted. Nicholas, we leave for Washington by the next train. Arrange it." And presently, after shuffling through his depositions he raised his iron-gray head. "That fellow Grist didn't come, did he? Nor the land agent. Well, we'll pay 'em a visit. Come on."

      Down to the land office he went. The agent knew very well who Costaine was, but he affected ignorance, only asking "What can I do for you?"

      The Senator laid his card on the counter. "I want to see the records of this office, sir. Want to see 'em all."

      "Not open for inspection," said the agent, inclined to be surly.

      Costaine bent over the counter, frigidly polite. "Oh, yes, they are. Don't tell me what the regulations are. And you had better drop that public-be-condemned manner, sir. I want to see every dot and comma in this office."

      "You can't come out here and tell me what to do!" snapped the agent. "I take my orders from the department! You senators think you run the government, but you don't run the land office. My books are all in order, and I'll open 'em to the proper authorities."

      "So," mused the Senator. "Either I see those books or your head will be chopped off in the next forty-eight hours. And moreover, you will find yourself answering certain distinct charges. Nicholas, find me a chair in this rattletrap of an office."

      The land agent capitulated. The Senator put on his steel spectacles and started down the pages in a kind of flat-footed patience; all of his life he had done just exactly this sort of thing, and there was no man in America more experienced in smelling out discrepancies. Better than two hours later he left the office, turned back to the hotel, and from thence went to the station and got aboard the train. But Costaine was no hand for delay, and a long telegram preceded him to Washington.

      "It will be interesting to discover," he confided to the everpresent Nicholas, "by what extraordinary circumlocution those fine gentlemen got around the plain intent of the law."

      In the course of the Senator's investigation he had failed to interview one man. Christopher Grist was in town all during the day; he had been told that Costaine wanted to see him, and later, from his office, he saw the Senator pass along the street to the land agent's. But Grist avoided a meeting: as quietly as possible he left the back door of his office and as quietly disappeared, not to appear again until night. But when he did return he found the land-office man waiting for him uneasy and uncertain.

      "Look here—did you meet the Senator?"

      Grist smiled. "I made it a point not to, my dear fellow. I'm doing no explaining. Let the bosses stand inspection."

      "I know his reputation, the dam' muckraker," growled the agent. "It's his kind that cause all the trouble in America. Well, he looked at my records, but he never found anything. They've got nothing to pin on me, Grist! I'll face 'em!"

      "That's right," assented Grist cheerfully.

      The agent pointed angrily at him. "It's your cursed outfit that's got me in trouble! You've got to take some of the blame, I'll not be the goat."

      "Thought you said there was nothing to pin on you," replied Grist.

      "Oh, well, don't be a fool. That man means to manufacture trouble."

      Grist touched a match to his cigar. "Let me tell you something, old fellow. The Senator doesn't need to manufacture anything. If he looks he will find—and from the bird's-eye view I had of the gentleman I'd judge he was one hell of a good bloodhound."

      "That's a fine way for you to talk," grumbled the agent.

      "It's not my land, not my cattle. I'm only working for folks. If you want to know the truth about it, I've acquired an extraordinary detached point of view about the P.R.N. in the last few hours. What that outfit can't stand is daylight. Public attention will kill 'em quick as a shot. And I forecast much attention in the next few weeks. Watch out for it. Those fellows are the world's best evaders of responsibility. That's why I've got a detached point of view—and stand quite ready to detach myself from their employ."

      "Say, you don't figure they'd be so low as to try to hook us small fry, do you?" the agent demanded, more and more disturbed.

      "Don't you doubt it. A rich man's hide is no thicker than a poor man's. What on earth's the matter with your face? Got yellow jaundice?"

      "Well, I'm clear, anyhow," muttered the agent, ducking out of the office.

      "The poor fool," murmured Grist. He smoked alone in the darkness, turning over all his own transactions, examining his career with the P.R.N. for flaws. As far as he could reason the thing out they could pin nothing on his name. He obeyed orders, he didn't give them. If those orders happened to be ill-founded in law, what fault was that of his? He wasn't a lawyer. Of course, he had used his power criminally more than once—as in the effort to rustle Gillette's cattle. But there was no proof of this, and his own crew wouldn't ever testify against him.

      "I happen to have all their instructions to me neatly filed for reference. And yet those instructions, when you come right down to it, are as innocent as a new-born cat. Ha—it would appear I was in the hole, after all. They'd be just the gentlemen to say I horribly violated their orders to be legal. Now who's foolish?"

      He stirred in the chair and threw away his cigar. "I'd be wise if I drifted now. Still, it might blow over. Anyhow, the Senator isn't in Washington yet and won't be for a few days. So, why not wait? I'd hate to duck out of a good job and then find out nothing happened. We'll hang on a week."

      Grist, however, was a little short on his time calculation. He overlooked the telegraph wires, and Senator Costaine kept those wires busy all along the route to the capital city. The effect of those messages was to throw a certain clique into high alarm, and forty-eight hours after his departure from Nelson the repercussion of that alarm returned to Nelson and struck both Grist and the land-office agent almost at the same moment. Grist received the following short query:

      WHAT HAVE YOU DONE IN VIOLATION OF INSTRUCTIONS?

      Grist pondered over this a full day before sending back his answer, which was almost equally terse though a great deal more flippant.

      HAVE WASHED SOME DIRTY SHIRTS, AS PER INSTRUCTIONS.

      The land agent came down to Grist's office in very much of a hurry. He looked older, and there was a furtive expression on his face. "I told you—I told you! Now the department is on my heels. There's an inspector coming out here. My God, this is what a man gets for trying to pay his debts! Look at me!"

      "I see you distinctly. What are you worrying about? You're on solid ground. No proof of a forgery or anything like that, is there? Stand fast and get hold of yourself. This battle isn't lost yet."

      "All right for you to say," muttered the agent. "You don't know what kind of a mess I'm in." He turned about the office two or three times before going out. On the threshold he threw a last word back. "I'm taking a little ride to clear my head."

      Grist saw him go to the stable and presently come out with a horse and rig. The tail of the rig was filled with luggage; and as the man dipped beyond the street end and struck across the tracks into the open prairie Grist nodded. "That's the last of him. Well, he's wise. I should be doing

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