“I appreciate zeal in public affairs,” mused Colonel Dodd, gazing at the door which Dr. Dohl had closed behind him. “But once there was a retriever dog who chased his master with a stick of dynamite that had a sputtering fuse.”
He set his broad hands upon the arms of his chair, derricked himself up, and went over to the mirror. He peered at himself and seemed to rearrange his countenance, much as a woman would smooth the ruffled plumage of her hat.
“We're not murderers,” he informed the composed visage which the mirror held forth to him. “But we haven't got to the point where we're letting lunatics who break up city government meetings, or crank doctors, tell us how to spend a million or two of the money we've worked hard to accumulate. There's getting to be too much of this telling business men in this country how to run their business. If we're peddling typhoid fever in spite of what our analyses tell us, then we'll go ahead, of course, and clean up.” Colonel Dodd was willing to acknowledge that much to himself, surveying his countenance in the mirror. “But we'll continue to run our own business,” he added.
Then he sat down again in his chair and pushed a button. “Briggs,” he directed, “send in those three men from Danburg.”
He whirled his swivel-chair and sat there at his desk, his rectangular front squared to meet them.
The three men who came in were of the rural businessmen type, and their faces were not amiable. Two of them halted in the middle of the sumptuous apartment and the third stepped a couple of paces ahead of them. He carried a huge roll of engineers' plans under his arm.
“My name is Davis, as I suppose you know, Colonel Dodd,” he reported.
“Have seats, gentlemen.”
“We are tired of sitting,” stated the spokesmen, with sour significance.
“I understand, Mr. David. But mornings are very busy times for me. I was attending to appointments made beforehand. You made no appointment, and I was not expecting you.”
There was silence, and the three men glowered on him. It was evident that settled animosity emboldened these country merchants even in the presence of Colonel Symonds Dodd.
“I was not expecting you, I say.”
The colonel's demeanor displayed a little uncertainty; he had rather expected suppliants. He knew what a nasty blow had been dealt these men the day before.
“Probably not,” assented Davis. “You expected that after Stone & Adams yanked the gangplank out from under us yesterday we would put in at least one day tearing around to other banking firms, trying to place our bonds.”
“Why—why—Well, if Stone & Adams—You naturally wouldn't take the verdict of one banking-house on a matter of bonds, would you?”
“Look here, Colonel Dodd, we understand you—clear way down to the ground—and we may as well save wear on our tongues. And first of all we have come right here to save shoe-leather. We have come straight to headquarters. Do you suppose we're going to gallop around this city to bankers after the word has gone out about us? Not much! We are here in the captain's office, and you can't fool us about that.”
“I never heard such—” the colonel began to sputter.
“I know you never did—and it's getting your goat,” asserted the blunt countryman. “We've got a plain and pertinent question to put to you—do you intend to ram us to the wall in our water deal?”
The head of the state's water trust simulated anger perfectly, even if he didn't feel it. And there was astonishment in his anger.
“What have I to do with your dealings with bankers?” he demanded. “Probably your plant isn't up to pitch.”
“That talk doesn't go with us, not for a minute, Colonel Dodd,” shouted the undaunted Davis. “You're talking to business men, not to children. We offered to leave the matter of our plan to any three engineers in this state. Why is it that Stone & Adams refuse to take the word of anybody except your man, Snell?”
“They probably want the word of the best consulting-engineer in the state.”
“But he's your man.”
“He is our man because he is the best. We hire him for our work. But we do not control his opinions when he is consulted by others. Oh no! And I want to tell you, my men, that I refuse to listen to any more such talk from you.”
“Then call in one of your political policemen and have us put out,” invited the unterrified Davis.
“Build your plant right and your bonds will sell. Our bonds sell when Mr. Snell reports on our plants.”
“We'll save our strength in the matter of building plants and running around trying to place bonds with brokers who have been tipped off by the money trust of this state. We propose to get it straight from you first. You can't fool us for one minute, I repeat! We'll have our last wiggle right here. Will you take your hands off our affairs?”
“I haven't put my handsonyour affairs,” shouted Colonel Dodd, furious at being baited in this amazing manner. Never before had any visitor dared to raise his voice in that office. “You're crazy.”
“You're right—we are—pretty nearly so. Myself and these two neighbors of mine have tied up every dollar we can rake and scrape to build a water-plant for our little village and give our folks clean water from a lake, not the rotten poison you would pump out of our millstream for us. We have tried to do this for our town and make an honest dollar for ourselves. Now you have got us lashed to the mast, financially, so you think, and you propose to step in and gobble our franchise. That's enough to make men crazy.”
“Get out of my office!”
“You grabbed the franchise and common stock of Westham that way,” declared Davis. “You scooped in Durham and Newry and a lot of others. But I'm here to warn you, Colonel Dodd. Danburg is going to choke you if you try to swallow it. We are only countrymen, and we know it. You have always done all the bossing and threatening in this state up to now. But I tell you, Colonel Dodd, there comes a time when the rabbit will spit in the bulldog's eye. If we three go out of this room in the same spirit in which we came into it something will drop in this state. We shall have a story to tell.”
Colonel Dodd swung his chair around and faced his desk.
“Gentlemen, let's not get excited,” he appealed. Ostensibly he reached for a pencil. He also pushed a button he had not touched before that day. Then he came around slowly on the swivel of his chair. “You have mentioned certain towns, Davis. Those towns have water systems that are a part of the Consolidated, to be sure. But the men who promoted those plants and were unable to complete them came to us and begged us to step in and take the burden off their hands.” While Colonel Dodd talked he kept glancing, but in an extremely unobtrusive manner, at a huge and magnificent Japanese screen that occupied one corner of his office. “It is easy enough to start ventures in this world, Mr. Davis. An inexperienced man can do that. But it most often takes experience and a lot of money to install a successful water plant.”
“We want to get down to cases, Colonel Dodd,” insisted the spokesman. “We haven't come here without posting ourselves. We know how you have talked to the others. But you can't bluff us. You propose to steal our plant, such of it as we have been able to build to date. One word from you to the money gang takes the hoodoo off us. Now talk business! Do you propose to pot us like you have the rest?”
The heart of the big rose in the center of the screen flashed once with a glow that was imperceptible unless one had been gazing at it, watching for a signal. Colonel Dodd understood that Miss Kate Kilgour had entered through a low door and was behind the screen, ready with note-book and pencil. He leaned back in his deep chair and interlocked his pudgy fingers across his paunch.
“I assure you I have not the least interest in your projects as to the Danburg water system, Mr. Davis, Mr. Erskine, Mr. Owen.” He dwelt on the names. “The Consolidated has plenty of its own business to attend to.”
“But I say you are trying to runourbusiness, too—no, ruin it!”
“Do you realize, Mr. Davis, that you are accusing me of criminal conspiracy—making a statement that might go hard with you in a court of law? You have accused me of trying to discredit you with banking-houses. Can you produce any proof except your foolish and unjust suspicions? You have been made angry by a refusal to handle your bonds. I don't sell bonds. I build and operate water systems.”
“The same old game,” sneered Davis. “Your water syndicate, the railroads of this state, the banks, the politics—they're all snarled up together like snakes in winter quarters. I say, if you pass the word our bonds will be taken. If you don't do it, I'm going to trot out of this office and expose your highway-robber system.”
“In one breath you threaten me because you say I'm interfering in your affairs. In the next breath you threaten me because I refuse to interfere. You are making dangerous talk, Davis. I may call the courts to pass on that threat. There is only one proposition I can make to you—and that's strictly in the line of my business. If you are tied up financially—are at the end of your resources and must have help—I'll give you my aid in getting the Consolidated to take over the Danburg plant at a fair valuation.”
“Is that the best word you've got for us?”
“I have made you an honorable business proposition.”
“That your final talk?”
“Absolutely.”
Davis found words inadequate for his boiling emotions just then. He advanced on Dodd, who shrank back into his chair. Davis whipped the long roll of plans out from under his arm, held the roll by one end, and swung it like a bat-stick. But he did not strike at Dodd, as the magnate seemed to apprehend.
He swung over the colonels' head and swept the top of the desk clean of everything; vases, bouquets,objets d'art, all went rolling and smashing to the floor.
Colonel Dodd ducked low and held his square head in his hands as if he feared that the next assault would be on that. But Davis led his associates out of the room through the door which Briggs had flung open, summoned by the crash in his master's holy of holies.
For the first time, perhaps, in the history of that private office the door leading into the anteroom was left open and unguarded. Briggs ran into the room, his coat-tails streaming, his inquisitive beak stretched forward. On his heels followed the tall young man who had been waiting in the anteroom. It was Walker Farr, who closed the door behind him, shutting out the curious anteroom clients who flocked and peered.
When the colonel lifted his head he found himself looking squarely into the eyes of this tall young man whom he in no way remembered.
Briggs went down on his hands and knees and began to pick up the debris.
One of the bouquets had rolled to the colonel's feet, and he stooped with some difficulty, recovered it, and laid it across his knees. He gazed past Farr with a frown—with a significant, dismissing jerk of his head. The young man turned in time to see the capitalist's handsome secretary. The amazing riot in the sanctuary of her employer had brought her from behind the screen. Uncertainty and alarm were in her eyes and excitement had flushed her cheeks. Against the background of the gorgeous screen she seemed a veritable apparition of loveliness, and while Farr stared, frankly admiring her, recognizing her, exchanging that startled recognition with her, she disappeared.
“How do you dare to come into my private office in this fashion?”
“I have waited in that anteroom every day for ten days, trying to get an audience. The door was open just now and I came in.”
“It's your own fault if you haven't seen me. I see men who have business with me and who send in an explanation of that business.”
“So I have been told by that man,” stated Farr, pointing to Briggs, who was groping about on the carpet. “But my business with you couldn't be discussed through a third party.”
“Now that you're in here, what is that business?”
“I'll tell you first what it isnot, so that there won't be any misunderstanding in your mind about me. I am not here to borrow money, beg money, ask for work, ask for a personal favor of any kind, solicit a political job, nor have I anything to sell to you or to give to you. So, you see, my business is different.”
With a quick motion he brought out a parcel which he had held concealed in the broad-brimmed hat.
Briggs straightened up on his knees and remained thus, seemingly paralyzed, staring at the parcel.
The capitalist sank back in his chair, his face growing greenish white.
“Don't you throw that bomb!” he gasped. In his panic he was not able to deduce any other explanation for the presence of this stranger who had so strenuously disclaimed all reasonable motives for his visit. He quailed before this man who seemed to be a dangerous crank—for Farr's attire was out of the ordinary and his eyes were flashing and his poise was that of a man sure of himself.
“What do you think I have here in this package?”
“Dynamite!” mumbled the magnate.
“It's worse.”
Colonel Dodd rolled his head to and fro on the back of his chair, shutting his eyes in vain attempt to find somebody to whom to appeal for help. He started a furtive hand in the direction of the battery of buttons.
“Keep your hands in your lap,” commanded Farr. “I say that what I have here in this package is worse than dynamite.” He tore the paper and disclosed a half-dozen faucets that were still dripping with slime. “You know now what I mean, Colonel Dodd. This is the stuff your water company is pumping through the pipes in this state.”
The president of the Consolidated straightened in his chair, but he had been thoroughly frightened.
While Farr talked on the colonel seemed to be gathering himself—recovering his voice.
“It's a mighty bold act for me to come in here like this, Colonel Dodd. I understand it. I'm a poor man and a stranger in this city. Just consider me a voice—call me Balaam's ass if you want to. But I've come up from the tenement-house districts where the children are dying.”
“What do you want?” The magnate discharged the question explosively.
“Pure water in the city mains.”
“Whom do you represent?”
Farr hesitated. Colonel Dodd scented possible political strategy in this visit, and was controlling his ire in order to probe the matter.
“Come, my man. Out with it! Who commissioned you to come here?”
“I'll not claim that I have any powers delegated to me, sir.”
“How did you dare to force your way in here?”
“Considering what kind of a man I was a few weeks ago, I'm having pretty hard work to explain to myself what I'm doing, sir.”
The colonel knotted bushy brows. This person seemed to be playing with him. “Who told you to come here?”
“The soul of a little girl who was named Rosemarie.”
Colonel Dodd came out of his chair, thoroughly angry—and yet he repressed his anger. This person, more than ever, seemed to him to be a crank with vagaries.
Farr put up a protesting palm. His tones trembled, and into them he put all the appeal a human voice can compass.
“I know I astonish you, Colonel,” he added. “I astonish myself. I'm not much on self-analysis. I don't know just what has come over me the last few weeks. But they do say the Deity picks out queer instruments when He wants things done. Man to man, now, forgetting you're a mighty man and I'm a small one, won't you say you'll give the people of this state pure water instead of poison?”
“You don't think you can stroll in here and coax me to build over the whole Consolidated system, do you?”
“That isn't the idea at all, sir. Treat me simply as a voice—a jog of your conscience—a reminder. I'll go away and you'll never see me again.”
“If you think the cranks in this state can influence me in the least item about running my own business you're the worst lunatic outside the state asylum,” declared the colonel, with passion.
“You mean that what I have asked on behalf of women and children hasn't had any effect on you?”
“Not the slightest. Get out!” In his present mood Colonel Dodd would not admit to this interloper that he planned reforms, and in that moment he unwittingly created his Frankenstein's monster.
Farr retreated a couple of steps and bowed. “Colonel Dodd, in my part of the West we fellows had a little code: help a woman, always, everywhere; tote a tired child in our arms; and, in the case of a man who announced himself an enemy, give him fair notice when it came time to pull guns. Better get your weapon loose on your hip.”
He bowed again and went out.
Briggs rose from his knees and his master snapped an angry stare from the door that the young man had closed softly behind himself.
“What kind of a resort is my office getting to be? Do you know who that devilish fool is, Briggs?”
“No, sir. He has been hanging around here, that's all I know. I kept at him.” He made a little dab of his woodpecker beak. “But I couldn't find out anything from him.”
“Well find out from somebody else, then. And get judge Warren on the 'phone for me.”
When the bell rang and the colonel heard the voice of the Consolidated's corporation counsel greeting him on the wire he ordered the judge to come over at once.
“Hell has just burned through here in three small patches,” stated the colonel, grimly. “The sooner we turn on the Consolidated hose, the better.”
In the early dusk of a summer evening Mr. Peter Briggs stood at the edge of the sidewalk of one of the squalid avenues of the district of the tenement-houses of Marion. His hands were behind him, propping out his coat-tails. He kept peering at the gloomy stairway of a house near at hand. Take the gloom, his attitude, and his sooty garb, and he gave a very picturesque impression of a raven doing sentinel duty.
At last a tall young man came down the stairs which Mr. Briggs was watching and strolled off leisurely up the avenue, stopping here and there to chat, nodding to this man, flourishing a hand salute to that man. The young man apparently had nothing whatever on his mind except to enjoy a stroll in the summer evening.
Mr. Briggs watched him out of sight without moving from his tracks. Then he withdrew both hands from under his coat-tails. In one hand was a note-book, in the other hand was a pencil. Mr. Briggs made an entry, closed the book with decision, and snapped an elastic band around the covers. Then he made off toward his home. He lived up-town in a section where there were fewer smells and better scenery. He determined that this should be his last tour of surveillance. He had found his trips into the nooks and crannies of the Eleventh Ward to be very distasteful employment for a man who had served Colonel Dodd for so many years in the sumptuous surroundings of that office in the First National block.
He asked himself what would be the use of hunting for any more information regarding such an inconsequential individual as one Walker Farr? He wondered why this crank had impressed Colonel Symonds Dodd sufficiently to stir up all this trouble for himself, Peter Briggs. The fellow had come from somewhere—nobody in Marion seemed to know. He had been discharged from the employment of the Consolidated. Now he was going about, warning all the people to boil the city water they drew from the faucets. He seemed to be a crank on the water subject, so Peter Brigg's note-book recorded.
The book also recorded that this queer Walker Farr strolled about the streets in the poorer quarters, “currying favor”: so Peter Briggs expressed the young man's evening activities in the note-book. That seemed to be all there was to it. At any rate, Peter Briggs decided that he had finished his quest.
Thereupon he had snapped the elastic band with vigor and made up his mind to tell Colonel Dodd the next morning that chasing that worthless fellow around or thinking that such a fellow could do anything to interfere with Colonel Dodd was poppycock. Peter Briggs hoped he would dare to call it “poppycock” in the presence of his master—for he was thoroughly sick of being a sleuth in the ill-smelling Eleventh Ward.
He did dare to call it poppycock. And Colonel Dodd shrugged his shoulders and forgot one Walker Farr. The fellow seemed inconsiderable—and Colonel Dodd found other matters very pressing.
For one thing, those three men from Danburg had brought suit against both Stone & Adams and the Consolidated Water Company and had engaged as counsel no less a personage than the Honorable Archer Converse, the state's most eminent corporation lawyer, a man of such high ideals and such scrupulous conception of legal responsibility that he had never been willing to accept a retainer from the great System which dominated state affairs. Colonel Symonds Dodd feared the Honorable Archer Converse. It was hinted that the Danburg case would involve charges of conspiracy with intent to restrain independents, and would be used to show up what the opponents of the Consolidated insisted was general iniquity in finance and politics.
Colonel Dodd outwardly was not intimidated. He sent no flag of truce. He decided to intrench and fight. He cursed when he remembered the interview with the Danburg triumvirate.
“Under ordinary circumstances I would buy them off in the usual way,” he informed Judge Warren. “But that damnation lunatic raved at me with all the insults he could think of—then he up with his dirty bunch of plans and knocked my flowers on to the floor—yes, sir, that was what the mad bull did—he knocked my flowers on to the floor!”
And Colonel Dodd emphasized that as the crime unforgivable.
It was from Citizen Drew that Walker Farr heard the story of Captain Andrew Kilgour.
Citizen Drew was the elderly man with the earnest face who had been first to commend Farr that evening at City Hall when he and old Etienne had made their pathetically useless foray against bulwarked privilege.
Folks in Marion who knew Citizen Drew had forgotten his given name. In his propaganda of protest he called himself “Citizen.” He built carriage-tops in a little shop where there were drawers stuffed with political and economic literature, and he read and pondered during his spare hours.
Farr sought out Citizen Drew and sat at his feet, with open ears.
For Citizen Drew knew the political history of his state, the men concerned, their characters, their aims, their weaknesses, their virtues, their faults—especially did he understand their faults—their affiliations with the Machine, their attitude toward the weak; he had followed their trails as the humble hound follows big game.
Therefore, Farr, a stranger in that land, seeking knowledge with which to arm his resolve, went and sat with Citizen Drew and learned many things.
Sometimes loquacity carried Citizen Drew a bit afield from the highway of politics, and when he touched on the case of Captain Andrew Kilgour Farr's heart thumped and his eyes glistened. For Drew prefaced the bit of a story with this:
“I never knew Symonds Dodd to do anything toward squaring a wrong he had committed except when he gave Kate Kilgour a fine position in his office. And there are those who say that he was only showing more of his selfishness when he hired her; he wanted the prettiest girl in the city to match his office furnishings.”
“I have seen her,” said Farr, trying to be matter-of-fact. “I—I sort of wondered!”
“Her father was a friend of mine. He was a good man. And the Consolidated money couldn't buy him. His people were Kilgowers in Scotland and he was a man not given to much talk, but he was willing to let me run on, nodding his head now and then while he smoked. He was an honest man and the best engineer in the state, and he kept his own counsel in all things. And he showed me the Kilgower coat of arms—and he didn't show that to many. He was no boaster. He was proud of his people, but he used to say that it made but little difference who the ancestors were unless the descendants copied the virtues and tried to improve over the faults. There was a Kilgower who went down across the border and gave himself as a hostage so that the clan might gain time—and he knew that he would be hung—and he was. But he saved his people. And I wish you would remember that, Mr. Farr, for it explains a bit the state of mind of Andrew Kilgour.
“He wouldn't sell himself for the gang's dirty work—he made honest reports. So they did for him, Mr. Farr. And he couldn't afford to have them do for him, because his wife was vain and a spendthrift and he let her waste and spend because he was a good and simple man when it came to the matter of a woman's domination over him. That's the curse on strong men—they are tender when it comes to a woman. She wasn't worthy of him, his wife. It's the daughter who has his honesty. I think if she knew who had done for her father she would not stay in Symonds Dodd's office. But the gang does for a man most often without leaving the trail open when they run away and hide.
“He would come here and sit with me and smoke and was very silent. I knew there were debts and I knew well enough that the woman wanted him to sell himself.
“He raked and scraped money—he sold everything of his own, his instruments and all. He took out every cent of insurance that money would buy. Then he put prussic acid in a capsule—a shell of salol, I believe they said it was—so that the work of the poison would be delayed, and he swallowed the capsule on the street and went into an office and sat and chatted with friends and joked and laughed much more than was his habit till at last his eyes closed and his face grew white and he fell out of his chair upon the floor stone-dead, and never uttered a groan.
“It was brave work. They called it heart disease, but it's not easy to fool insurance people. They took him out of his grave and proved suicide—and they did not pay a dollar of insurance to his family. They were not obliged to. The policies were new and the suicide clause let the companies out. So he left only debts instead of twenty-five thousand dollars. However, I say it was brave work.”
“It would have been braver to stay and face it,” blurted Farr.
“But Andrew Kilgour had a code of his own—a state of mind some of us could not understand—the example of an ancestor. We are not all alike. Many cannot stay and face trouble. You might be able to do it—you seem to have a level head!”
Farr grew pale, his hands trembled on the arms of his chair, and then he got up and marched across the little shop to the window, turning his back on Citizen Drew.
“You told them in City Hall that you would stay here and fight,” pursued Citizen Drew. “That is brave work.”
“I'll be much obliged to you, Citizen Drew, if you'll leave me out of your catalogue of heroes. And I take back what I said about his facing it. I hadn't any right to make any such comment.”
“So the girl went to work in Symonds Dodd's office and his nephew is courting her. I hope he doesn't get Andrew Kilgour's daughter. He never went after any other girl honestly. I have looked into this case because I was Andrew's friend. Young Dodd wants to marry her and the mother is helping him. But I know that rapscallion, Mr. Farr. I can't believe that Kate Kilgour will be caught by him.”
“He has a fine position, they tell me,” said Farr, still gazing out of the window.
“The Machine made old Peleg Johnstone state treasurer, and he doesn't know bonds from biscuit. Colonel Dodd put in his nephew as chief clerk, and old Peleg is a figure-head, smoking his pipe in the back office and resting his wool-tipped boots on his desk. Oh, I know the bunch of 'em, sir. I can tell you the inside of things. Young Dodd takes orders from his uncle and runs the treasury. All the state's money is in the Dodd banks on the checking-account basis—and the gang is letting it out at six percent. Tidy little profit! And nobody to say a word, even to ask how Richard Dodd finds so much money to spend. But that's the principal wonder in the world, Mr. Farr—how your neighbor gets his money to blow. Jones, Smith, Brown, and Robinson—they stand and look at one another and ask the same question. And folks in the Eleventh Ward are even asking me how you get your living,” added Citizen Drew, smoothing his curiosity with a bit of jocoseness.
“I have been working in this city—doing good, hard work,” stated Farr, moving toward the door.
“Yes, but you have been discharged.”
“I understand how it is you know so much stuff to tell me,” returned the young man, smiling. “Well, Citizen Drew, I'm going to take the first job that offers itself. Tell 'em that!”
“I'm glad of it,” said Citizen Drew, with blunt heartiness. “If you have set out to do anything among the plain folks you've got to be at work in the open, earning honest wages, or they'll suspect you. They have been fooled too often by fakes and loafers. But since you advertised yourself in City Hall you may find jobs a little hard to land. It's pretty much of an air-tight proposition, Consolidated influence.”
“I have somebody looking after my interests in that line, Citizen Drew. I'm not worrying.” He opened the door. “In fact, there are two mighty helpful chaps whom I'm going to associate with more or less from now on.”
“Bring 'em with you and let me know 'em. Can't have too many in a good cause.”
“I'll bring them—but they are pretty hard to understand—rather slow getting acquainted—lots of folks have no use for them,” said Farr, starting down-stairs.
“What are their names?” asked the inquisitive citizen, eager for more additions to his general stock of information.
“I'll tell you later.”
But Farr named them to himself when he was on the street.
“Chance and Humility—I hope you are going to stick by me from now on,” he muttered. “Chance, you have led me into a queer position and into a strange state of mind. Humility, you are helping me to understand. Now, Chance, what have you to say to me?”
It was more of the fantastic whimsy with which Walker Farr played.
His eyes, searching the street after this challenge to Chance, beheld an ice-wagon rumbling past. It was a neat-looking cart, painted white, and bore the advertisement, “Crystal Pure Independent Ice Company.”
Another wagon, painted dirty yellow, followed. It was a Consolidated ice-cart; Farr knew those carts with their loads of river-ice.
The spectacle of something which promised rivalry to that yellow cart piqued his interest. His mood welcomed the first adventure which Chance presented. He had found Chance playing peculiar pranks with his affairs in the days just past.
He hurried in pursuit of the white cart and accosted the driver.
“Where can I find the manager of this company?”
“He's up at Coosett Lake this afternoon, sir.” The man was respectful. The stranger's garb and demeanor impressed him. “The trolley will take you pretty near it. Take a car in the square—a Halcyon Park car.”
Without canvassing the matter further Farr took the car.
He decided that it was a most comforting sensation, this abandoning his problems to Chance! It saved so much fuss and worry.
He found the little lake at the limits of the park area—a hollow among the hills.
Men were busy at the foot of the slope over whose crest he marched. He saw several rough buildings at the edge of the lake, plainly makeshift ice-houses. One was a new structure and the other two were old barns which had been “darned” here and there with new material, and their yawed sides were propped with joists. Men were loading ice upon carts; the translucent cubes flashed in the rays of the sun.
During the process of his little crusade he had become acquainted with the conditions in the city of Marion and he knew that the Consolidated folks controlled the ice-supply as well as the water. They held an iron grip by legislative charter on all the riparian rights along the river and allowed no one else to operate an ice-field. He had seen and sniffed the unwholesome slime which a melted cake of Consolidated ice deposited.
When he found opportunity he accosted a man in corduroy. He was a big chap, bronzed by the sun, and Farr singled him out as the manager because he had been directing the other workers while he toiled himself.
“It's a little business of my own,” said the man. “I have started in independent.”
“I had thought the Consolidated had control of everything.”
“They would control everything if they could. They wouldn't let me run my carts through the city streets if they knew how to stop me. I worked for them fifteen years, lugging their dirty ice on my back, up stairs and down, and I know that crowd. I don't understand much of anything but the ice business, mister, whoever you are. But I wouldn't lug any more of that ice into homes. I put my savings in here, every cent, hired these barns and a shore privilege, and I'm selling clean ice. But I'm going to lose every blamed cent! It's no use. I can't buck 'em. Excuse me! It's no interest to you. My mouth runs away with me when I get talking about that gang.”
He went back to the barn to help his men shift a runway.
Farr waited patiently until he was able to speak to the busy man again.
“I don't mean to bother you, sir,” he said, humbly. “But I am interested in this proposition of yours. I have worked for the Consolidated, myself. I was discharged because I stood up and damned their water before the mayor and aldermen.”
“Say, I heard something about that!” cried the iceman, displaying prompt interest and admiration. “The boys said it was good work.”
“I mention it merely to put myself right with you.”
“Then say on ahead, my friend!”
“Do you tell me you can't make a go of this?”
“I'm afraid I can't. It's a half-mile haul for me to the nearest siding. The railroad folks don't give me any better rate than they're obliged to—and you know why that is! And I have to have another set of carts for the city delivery. And no capital to work with! I'm up against a crowd that has all the money, plenty of equipment, and has its supply right at the back door of the city—and it belongs at the back door! But you know what the buying public is! The only reason why I have lasted is because my old customers gave me their business and are sticking pretty well.”
“My friend,” declared Farr, putting his hand on the shoulder bent and ridged by many years of ice-toting, “lots of men who are making money as missionaries are not doing half the good in the world you're doing. You're certainly showing some of the citizens of Marion the difference between good ice and frozen gobs of pestilence.”
“A fellow needs grit, grace, gumption, and a lot of missionary spirit to fight what I'm fighting, mister. I ain't going to say anything about a lot of obstacles the syndicate has put in my way. Those were to be expected in the way of regular business competition. But you can see I have only got limited resources here, and I can't afford a big outfit in the city. Sometimes I have run short, the best I could do—and it's mighty little sleep I have. And the Consolidated drivers have refused to sell ice to anybody who has been buying of me even when mothers have pleaded so as to keep milk for sick babies from souring. That's orders from headquarters! You wouldn't think that the same big chaps who boss the governor of the state would get down to such nubbins as that, eh? But they do—that's their system. They used to tell me that it's the only way a big syndicate can keep its grip—never leave a bar down! Yes, sir, they have blacklisted my customers until they'll be good and give the Consolidated a yearly contract. More than that, they pass word along that I'll be out of business by another season and that folks who have bought of me this year will be given the go-by next! Can you beat it?”
“Are you going to sell out to them?”
“No,” said the iceman, grimly. “There are two good reasons: I won't sell and they won't buy. They will kill me out so that nobody else will be encouraged to try the scheme again.”
“I want a job,” stated Farr, curtly. “I want to work for you. Give me a place on one of your carts in the city.”
“Say, look here,” blurted the other man, frankly astonished, “you look more like a gent than an iceman!”
“No matter what I look like. The main question is, can I lug ice? Feel of my muscle!”
“It may be a poor outlook for your pay—working for me,” warned the proprietor. “And if you ever want another job in Marion you may be blacklisted. I don't want to get you into a scrape.”
“I can't be in any worse scrape than the one I am in now. Haven't I just told you who I am?”
“Oh, I know that! I reckon you're the same fellow. But, see here, mister, I'm one of those simple kind of galoots—and the less a man knows the more suspicious he is. You ain't wanting to work for me just because you need a job!”
“I do need a job! I have spent the little money I had by me after I was fired by the Consolidated. I had some special expenses—the funeral of a—a friend,” he added, wistfulness in his tones. He drove his hand into his pockets and exhibited a few small coins in his palm when he pulled his hand out. “That's my cash—every cent of it!”
“Sure! I see it. But money's easy enough to come at by a fellow like you when he needs it. You haven't come across all square with me yet!” It was not mere inquisitiveness; it was the insistence of a plain man who wanted a definite peg on which to hitch the first warp of association. “You've got to handle money of mine,” he went on. “I'm in a tight place and I have got to have the right men tied up with me. I wouldn't have to ask one of those boys yonder why he wanted to lug ice. But you ain't no ordinary slouch, mister. You don't do things—not many of 'em—unless you've got a good reason for same.” It was the instinct of ingenuousness. “Keep it all to yourself if you want to. But in that case you'll have to excuseme!”
Farr did not hesitate. He smiled.
“You're a down-on-the-ground fellow who may be able to understand the thing better than I do myself,” he declared. Again he put his hand on the bent shoulder.
“You didn't break loose from a good job and start this ice business here simply to make more money, did you?”
“Well, I've got a family to support and I wanted to make some money, of course, but I thought it was about time to have less relics, germs, curiosities, microbes, and general knickknacks left in ice-boxes after the ice had melted. So I went out of the frozen museum business, mister.” His voice softened suddenly. “We lost a little girl a year ago last summer. Typhoid!”
“I lost a little girl—a friend,” said Farr, patting the shoulder. “It's this way with me—What is your name?”
“Freeland Nowell.”
“Mr. Nowell, I have poked more or less fun in my life at men who claimed to have missions. Perhaps that was because those men drew my attention by advertising their missions loudly—and, therefore, I concluded that all men with licenses to cure this and fix that and regulate the other were fooling themselves or else were bluffs. But all of a sudden I have waked up to something. I believe that any human being who isn't doing a little something on the side to help somebody else in this life is mighty miserable. I believe that the average sort of folks are doing it—keeping it quiet, in most cases, perhaps. I thought I had a mission and I stood up in your city government and advertised it and made considerable of an ass of myself.”
“Well, it was all right one way you look at it,” said Nowell, with the caution of the honest citizen. “But, of course, you got the stigmy put onto you of being a crank and a disturber and you don't get nowhere! It ain't gab and holler that does it! If talk sets folks to thinking—that's all right, so far as it goes. But a lot of these chaps set their mouths to going and let their hands lay crossed in their laps and then wonder why the world doesn't get better because they have asked it to be good.”
It was sagacity from the humble observer.
“Mr. Nowell, I don't want to be quite as lonesome in this world as I have been,” said Farr, with earnestness. “It's an awful feeling, that! A man can be lonely for a time and crowd down the hankering to be in the march of honest men where he can touch elbows and be a part of things. I see you look at me! That's right—it's queer stuff to be talking to you.” He pondered for a moment and went on. “Queer thing, eh, for a fellow to wake up all of a sudden—a fellow of my stamp—and want to do some real good in the world? Well, it surprisesme, and it would surprise you a whole lot more if you knew me better. We won't try to analyze the feeling. I've given up trying to do it.” He paused and his brown eyes surveyed the blinking iceman with a quizzical appeal in them. “That's a pretty long preface, Mr. Nowell. It ought to lead up to some very important request. But it doesn't. I simply want a job on your ice-cart. It will give me the best opportunity I know of to go into homes and tell mothers to boil the water which comes out of those dirty taps; after I unscrew the faucets I won't have to argue much. I told Colonel Dodd in his office to look out for me! That may have been bluster. I am a nobody. But I'm on his trail, and there is one thing I can do to start with! I can help save the lives of a few children. That's all! I'll be following my new motto. Will you give me the job?”
“I sure will,” declared Nowell, heartily. “If I don't know when a man is talking rock-bottom to me, then it's my own fault. When do you want to go to work?”
“Now.”
Nowell gave the new man's garments a disparaging side glance.
“You look more as if you was going out to preach instead of deliver ice. But I can fix that if you're busted, my friend. You slip off that coat and help here till we're loaded. Then ride into the city on the freight-car and tell any one of my men to give you the overalls and jumper I left hanging in my stable office.”
In this fashion it came about that Farr that day was riding on an ice-wagon in Marion, learning his route. A red-headed youth who was nursing an ice-pick wound in a bundled-up foot served as guide and driver and spotted the “Crystal Pure” cards propped here and there in windows, mutely signaling the household needs. With zestful complacency, and with secret enjoyment in being allowed to “team” this chap who looked and talked like a “nob,” the youth allowed Farr to do all the work.
The route took in many apartment-houses of the city.
The labor was muscle-racking. In most cases there were stairs to climb. He stood, sagging under his burden, till chests were cleared by the housewives or sluggish maids. He discovered that the iceman was considered a fair and logical butt for all the forenoon grouches of the kitchen. Women complained querulously that the ice dripped on the clean floor, or that the piece was not up to the twenty-cent piece delivered by the other company, or that he was late, or he had not had his eyes about him the day before or else he would have seen the card.
On numerous occasions he was obliged to carry a piece of ice back down-stairs to his cart and exchange it for a piece of another size and price. He received no apology in such cases; he was tartly informed that he ought to have common sense enough to know what was wanted in that house. In other cases, the mistress of the apartments turned him from the door and explained with entire lack of interest in his long climb that the card had been left up by oversight—the chest had been filled the day before.
And at two places sharp-tongued women would not allow him to enter, frankly stating that icemen were too dirty creatures to allow inside the door of a respectable house; the women received their ten-cent cubes in pans and slammed the door in his face.
And through all this Farr preserved his smile.
In this slavery, tongue-lashed by fretful women, sweating under his burden, he was happy; he could not account for it and did not attempt to, but he knew it. He accepted the situation.
He received rewards enough to fortify his resolution.
A motherly woman asked him to wait a moment and she mixed for him a glass of lemonade. That gave him an opportunity to say a few words to her about drinking-water, modestly and deferentially. She was interested, and he showed her what the guilty faucet of her tap held in concealment.
And he saw that she was shocked and after he had warned her he asked her to tell all the other women whom she knew. She promised to bring the matter up in her sewing-club.
“And even the fussy women,” he told himself, as he plodded back to his cart, encouraged by his first experiment, “if I keep calm, if I keep smiling—I shall find my chance to say something to them after a time.”
A fresh doughnut was given to him by a maid who smiled up at his manly good looks approvingly, and he was very grateful, for his breakfast had been a meager one because he had barely enough small coins to make a jingle in his pocket.
The maid gasped affrightedly when he showed her what was in the faucet, and immediately set on water to boil to supply the bottles in the ice-chest.
Furthermore, the maid stated that she knew many other maids who would be glad to know about such a dreadful thing, and that she would have a word to say to them on the way to Sunday mass and back.
Farr began to understand more clearly what can be accomplished by a lone voice, carrying a gospel which can be backed and illustrated by signs and wonders.
“I'll have them listening to me yet,” he pondered. “I'll never say another unkind word about a woman's tongue.”
Colonel Symonds Dodd flashed past the ice-cart that afternoon in his limousine.
Farr laughed aloud at the humor of a thought which occurred to him: he reflected that he would like to behold Colonel Dodd's face and hear Colonel Dodd's remarks if somebody told that gentleman that the man before whom he had quailed and grown pale was now starting what the man believed was a more effective assault on the dynasty than even a whole car-load of dynamite bombs could make, even if they were exploded in all the Consolidated reservoirs. The remarks which would entertain, so Farr pondered, would come when the colonel was informed that the assault consisted of a lone iceman making talk to women in kitchens.
“However,” said the iceman to himself, as he checked a nick in a ten-cent cube at the back of his cart. “I hold that my new motto is all right, and old Etienne will indorse it, and he knows what self-sacrifice consists of. It isn't rolling up your eyes and folding your hands and saying, 'What can I do?' It's saying, 'I'll do what I can!'—and then keeping your hands busy!”