"About Mr. Knowles and the _Herald_? Oh, yes," he answered,
knocking the ashes off his cigar quietly. "And about the thousand
votes he'll gain? Oh, yes. And about incidentally showing you and
Crowder up as bribing Genz and promising to protect him--making your
methods public? Oh, yes. And about the Grand Jury? Yes, Genz told
me. And about me and the penitentiary. Yes, he told me. Mr. Knowles is
a rather excitable young man. Don't you think so?"

"Well?"

"Well, what's the trouble?"

"Trouble!" I said. "I'd like to know what you're going to do?"

"What's Knowles going to do?"

"He's sworn to expose the whole deal, as you've just told me you knew;
one of the preliminaries to having us all up before the next Grand
Jury and sending you and Genz over the road, that's all!"

Gorgett laughed that old, fat laugh of his, tilting farther back, with
his hands in his pockets and his eyes twinkling under his last
summer's straw hat-brim.

"He can't hardly afford it, can he," he drawled, "he being the
representative of the law and order and purity people? They're mighty
sensitive, those folks. A little thing turns 'em."

"I don't understand," said I.