"Take another look, Evan, and see how helpless you are in
the grip of a crooked world," he said, very gently.
Blount caught up the file and ran it through. It was made up wholly of
pieces of blank paper, cut to letter-size, and clipped at the corner
with a brass fastener, as the originals had been.
XIX
A COG IN THE WHEEL
While Blount was staring abstractedly at the file of blank sheets which
had been substituted for the incriminating letters of the vote-selling
corporation managers, with Gantry sitting back, alert and watchful, to
mark the first signs of the coming storm, there came a tap on the locked
door of the little room, and a deprecatory voice said: "It's our closing
time, gentlemen: if you are about through--"
"In a minute," returned Gantry quickly, and then he took the blank dummy
out of Blount's hands, pocketed it, shut the japanned safety box, and
touched his companion's shoulder.
"Let's get out of this, Evan," he said, still speaking as one speaks to
a hurt child. "Conroy wants to close up."
Blount suffered himself to be led away, and in the vault room he went
mechanically through the motions of locking up the empty box. In the
street Gantry once more took the lead, walking his silent charge around
the block and into the Temple Court elevator. A little later, when the
door of the private room in the up-town legal office had opened to admit
them, and Blount had dropped heavily into his own desk chair, Gantry
plunged promptly into the breach.
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