Sit down and tell me how much you're going to bleed us for, and
I'll make out the check."
With a cold hand gripping at his heart, Blount turned away, sick and
revolted, and there was a curse on his lips for the cruelty of the woman
who had brought him to be a witness to his father's shame. But when he
groped for the door of egress and found it, the knob refused to turn.
The door was locked and he could not retreat.
XXX
THE RECKONING
Evan Blount's first impulse when he found his retreat cut off by the
locked door of the musicians' gallery was to make his presence known
instantly to the two men standing before the fire in the lobby below.
Shame, vicarious shame for the father who would thus find himself
unmasked before his son, was all that made him hesitate; and in the
pausing moment he heard his father's reply to the vice-president's
challenging greeting.
"The same old song; always the same old song with you, isn't it,
Hardwick?" the senator was saying in jocose deprecation. "What money
can't buy, isn't worth having; that's about the way you fellows always
stack it up." Then, with sudden grimness: "Sit down, Hardwick. I've come
to say a few things to you that won't listen very good, but you've got
to take your medicine this time."
"What's that?" demanded the vice-president, dropping mechanically into
his desk-chair.
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