Then he walked slowly back to the main corridor and
descended by the public stair without awakening the elevator boy, who
was sleeping soundly in his car on the ground level.
On the short walk to the hotel the full significance of the thing he had
done had its innings. Cynical criticism to the contrary notwithstanding,
there is now and then an honest lawyer who regards his oath of admission
to the bar--the oath which binds him to uphold the cause of justice and
fair dealing--as something more than a mere form of words. Beyond all
question, an honest man who has sworn to uphold the law may neither
connive at crime nor shield a criminal. Blount tried the shift of every
man who has ever stepped aside out of the plain path of rectitude; he
told himself morosely that he had nothing to do with Gryson's past; that
he had taken no retainer from the Montana authorities; that the criminal
was merely a cog in a wheel which was grinding toward a righteous end,
and as such should be permitted to serve his turn.
The well-worn argument is always specious to the beginner, and Blount
thought he had sufficiently justified himself by the time he was pushing
through the revolving doors into the Inter-Mountain lobby. But when he
saw his father quietly smoking his bed-time cigar in one of the big
leather-covered lounging-chairs, he realized that the first step had
been taken in an exceedingly thorny path; that whatever else might be
the outcome of the bargain with Thomas Gryson, a son was coldly plotting
to bring disgrace and humiliation upon a father.
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