On his way down the stairs to the street the Honorable Archer Converse, moving more rapidly than was his wont, overtook and passed Kate Kilgour. He was too absorbed to notice even a pretty girl. She had finished her work for the day and was on her way home.
When she reached the street she observed something which interested her immensely: Mr. Converse suddenly flourished his cane to attract the attention of a man on the opposite side of the street. Then Mr. Converse called to him from the curb with the utmost friendliness in his tones. The girl passed near him and heard what he said. It was not a mere hail to an inferior. The eminent lawyer very politely and solicitously asked the tall young man across the way if he could not spare time to come to the Converse office.
She cast a look over her shoulder. The young man came across the street promptly. He was the man who had served her in her time of need!
She went on, but turned again. An uncontrollable impulse prompted her.
They were entering the door of the office-building, and the aristocratic hand of the Honorable Archer Converse was patting the shoulder of this stranger. Her cheeks flushed and she turned away hastily, for the young man caught her backward glance and returned an appealing smile.
“Who is he?” she asked herself, knowing well the chill reserve of Mr. Converse in the matter of mankind.
“Who are you?” demanded Mr. Converse, planting himself in front of the young man when they were in the private office.
The other met the lawyer's searching look with his rare smile. “The same man I was last time we met—Walker Farr.”
“I have no right to pry into your private affairs, sir, but I have special reasons for wanting you to volunteer plenty of information about yourself.”
For reply the young man spread his palms and silently, by his smile, invited inspection of himself.
“Yes, I see you. But the outside of you doesn't tell me what I want to know.”
“It will have to speak for me.”
“Look here, I have let myself be tied up most devilishly by a train of circumstances that you started, young man. I was minding my own private business until a little while ago.”
“So was I, Mr. Converse.”
“You're a moderately humble citizen, judged from outside looks just now. How did I allow myself to be pulled in as I've been?”
The young man's smile departed. “I asked myself that question a little while ago, sir, after I was pulled in, for I am a stranger—not even a voter here.”
“Well, did you decide how it was?”
“I was led in by the hand of a helpless child—a poor little orphan girl whom I carried to the cemetery on my knees—a martyr—poisoned by that Consolidated water.”
The lawyer was stirred by the intensity of feeling which the man's tones betrayed.
“And it was borne in upon me afresh, Mr. Converse, that the philosophy of the causes by which God moves this world of ours will never be understood by man.”
“See here,” snapped the son of the war governor, “take off your mask, Walker Farr! There's something behind it I want to see. You are an educated gentleman! What are you? Where did you come from?”
Again Farr spread out his palms and was silent.
“You are right about causes. You are one in my case. There may be some fatalism in me—but I'm impelled to use you in a great fight that I feel honor-bound to take up. Now be frank!”
“For all use you can make of me, Mr. Converse, my life starts from the minute I picked that little girl up from the floor of a tenement-house in this city. For what I wasbeforeis so different from what I amnowthat I cannot mix that identity with my affairs.”
“But I cannot take a man into a matter like this unless I know all about him.”
Farr rose and bowed. “I'm sorry you can't accept me at face value, sir. I'm very sorry, because I'd like to serve under such a commander as you. However, I understand your position. I don't blame you. The rule of the world is pretty binding: know a man before you associate with him. But I am as I am. There's nothing more to be said.”
“You sit down,” commanded Converse. “This is a case where rules of the world can be suspended. For I need the kind of man who dares to face even Symonds Dodd in his office and tell him what he is. Oh, I have just come from there,” he explained in reply to Farr's stare. “He told me.”
“I went merely as a voice, sir.”
“But you seem to have been more than that in getting the confidence of the men in your ward. I know an organizer when I see him. I watched the faces of those men when you stepped before them. They have faith in you. That's a rare quality—the ability to inspire faith in the humble. First, faith—and then they'll follow. The movement I'm going to start needs followers, Mr. Farr! Can you do with other men what you have done with men in the Eleventh?”
“I believe I can, sir.”
“Ah, you have led men in the past, have you?” Mr. Converse fired the question at him. But he did not jump Walker Farr from his equipoise. The young man took refuge behind that inscrutable smile.
“Well,” sighed the lawyer, after a pause, “it's the dictum that one must be as wise as a serpent in politics, therefore I am picking out a man who will probably give a good account of himself. But it's a crazy performance of mine—going into this thing—and I may as well plunge to the extent of lunacy. Mr. Farr, the rebellious unrest in this state must be organized. We need a house-cleaning. We need the humbler voters! The men with interests are too well taken care of by the Machine to be interested. I want you to go out and hunt for sore spots and get to the voters just as you have in your ward. Find the right men in each town and city to help you. You must know many on account of your work for your water association. The fight will be financed—you need have no worry about that. Perhaps you have organized political revolts before,” pursued Converse, still craftily probing. “Then you'll tell me what honorarium you expect.”
“My expenses—nothing more, sir. If I had any money laid by I would pay my own way.”
“I think,” stated Mr. Converse, warming with the spirit of combat, glancing up at the portrait of the war governor, “that we'll be able to surprise some of the fat toads of politicians in this state, sitting so comfortably under their cabbage-leaves. You're a stranger, young man, and as you go about your work the regular politicians will simply blink at you and will not understand, I hope, provided you go softly. It is very silly of me to be in this affair, sir. But a man of my age must have peace of mind, and that infernal meeting in your ward awoke me. Furthermore,” he added, displaying the acrimony that even a good man requires to spur him to honest fighting, “a cheap politician only lately flipped my card insolently and referred in slighting tones to my honored father.” He rose and gave Farr his hand. “I'll have assembled here in my office at ten o'clock to-morrow morning some gentlemen who will stand for decency in public affairs as soon as they have been waked up. You will please attend that conference, Mr. Farr. We have only a short month before the state convention, and we must bring there at least a respectable number of delegates whom Symonds Dodd cannot bribe or browbeat.”
“Most extraordinary—most extraordinary!” mused the Honorable Archer Converse, when he was alone. “From that meeting—to an investigation—from Dodd—to this young man—I have been leaping from crag to crag like a mountain-goat, never stopping to take breath. And here I haven't even been able to find out just who he is—and they do say I'm the best cross-examiner in this state! However, I'll show Symonds Dodd that I'm not to be sneered at, even if I have to hire Patagonians in this campaign.”
Even chivalry must needs be spiced with a little strictly personal animosity to achieve its best results!
Colonel Symonds Dodd, laboriously climbing into his limousine in front of the First National block, scowled at a young man because the man grinned at him so broadly as he passed along. In his general indifference and contempt for the humble the colonel did not search his memory and did not recognize this person as the young man who had appealed to him in his office. The face seemed familiar and had some sort of an unpleasant recollection connected with it; therefore the colonel scowled. He was far from realizing that this person carried on his palm the warmth from a hand-clasp which, just a moment before, had ratified an agreement to dynamite the Dodd political throne.
If some seer had risen beside his chariot to predict disaster the colonel would have shriveled him with a contemptuous look. For the Consolidated Water Company had that day been intrenched more firmly than ever in its autocracy by a decision handed down from the Supreme Court. A city had hired the best of lawyers and had fought desperately for the right to have pure water. But the law, as expounded by the judges, had held as inexorable the provision that no city or town in the state could extend its debt limit above the legal five percent of its valuation, no matter for what purpose. The city sought for some avenue, some plan, some evasion, even, so that it might take over the water system and give its people crystal water from the lakes instead of the polluted river-water. The city pointed to typhoid cases, to slothful torpor on the part of the water syndicate. But the court could only, in the last analysis, point to the law—and that law in regard to debt limit was rooted in the constitution of the state—and a law fortified by the constitution is seldom dislodged.
Backed by law, bulwarked by political power, owning men and money-bags, Colonel Dodd rode home with great serenity. He had even forgotten his rather tempestuous half-hour with the Honorable Archer Converse. As a matter of fact, gentlemen of the aristocracy of the state who prided themselves on their ancestry were considered by Colonel Dodd to be impracticable cranks; he despised the poor and hated the proud—and called himself a self-made man. And Colonel Dodd was firmly convinced that nobody couldunmakehim.
He strolled among his flower-beds that evening.
Walker Farr sat in his narrow chamber and pored over interlined manuscripts. At last he shook the papers above his head, not gaily, but with grim bitterness.
“That plan will stand law, and no other lawyer ever thought of it!” he cried, aloud. “You've got an iron clutch on those cities and towns, Colonel Dodd, but I've got something that will pry your fingers loose!” He threw the papers from him and set his face in his hands. “And they ask me who I am and I can't tell them,” he sobbed.
The first sniffer to catch the trail of Walker Farr was the veteran, Daniel Breed, an old political hound who always traveled with muffled paws and nose close to the ground. But when he went to the meeting of the state committee and the Big Boys with his news their reception of him hinted that they suspected he was making up a political bugaboo in order to get a job. He was even told that his services as field man would not be needed in that campaign. And it may be imagined what effect that news had on old Daniel Breed, who had been a trusted pussy-footer and caucus manipulator for a quarter of a century.
“You don't mean to tell me that you're trying to slam me onto the scrap-heap, do you?” he demanded. “I'll scrap before I'll be scrapped.”
“Look here, Dan, it's the colonel's orders,” explained the chairman. “It has been decided to play politics a little more smoothly. There is too much jaw-gab going among the cranks. If there is any outside work done at all it will be put over by new chaps who are not so well advertised as you old bucks. We want to hide the machinery this year.”
“That's a jobeefed nice thing to say to me, a man that would go up in a balloon and troll for hen-hawks, asking no questions, provided the state committee told me it would help in carrying a caucus.”
“But we're taking care of the old boys all right, Dan. Vose is in the pension-office; Ambrose and Sturdivant are in the adjutant-general's office patching up the Civil War rolls, with orders to take their time about it. And you'll be used well.”
“I want to be in the field,” insisted Breed, 'sipping' his lips importantly. “Those fellows are old fuddy-duddies. I'm a natural politician.”
He was an interesting figure, this Honorable Daniel Breed. He was entitled to the “Honorable.” He had been a state senator from his county. With his slow, side-wheel gait, head too little for his body, nose like a beak, sunken mouth, cavernous eyes, and a light hat perched on the back of his narrow head he suggested a languid, tame, bald-headed eagle. And his voice was a dry, nasal, querulous squawk—a sound more avian than human.
“I tell ye there's yeast a-stirring,” he told the state committee. “There's a fellow come up out of the Eleventh Ward in Marion that's some punkins in organizing. He pretends to be a law student in Arch Converse's law-office. He ain't a native. I don't know where he hails from. He ain't a registered voter as yet. But he's a man who needs to be trailed.”
“Squire Converse isn't in politics, Dan. You're getting notional in your old age,” said the committeeman from Breed's county.
“But good gad! there ain't any statute to keep him out. Something has happened to make him good and mad. Some of these fancy jumping-jacks can make awful leaps when the box is opened, gents! Better take warning from what I tell you!”
The committeemen exchanged smiles.
“We are going to steal a little of the kid-gloved chaps' thunder,” explained the chairman. “They have been howling about machine politics and interlocking interests and air-tight methods until the people are growling about the close corporation they say we've got. So we're going to show 'em a thing or two. Nothing like frankness and open house.”
“Gor-ram it, you ain't even square with me—after I have worked politics with you for twenty-five years!” He marched up to the table and rapped his hard little knuckles on it. “It's this way, gents,” he said, “and I'll be short and sweet. What's the matter with politics when a man like I've always been gets pi-oogled out of the councils?”
“We don't need workers like you any more,” stated the chairman.
“But there's politics to play, just the same.”
“But in a different way, Breed. There are the new ideas, and new men can operate more efficiently. They won't attract attention.”
“Old Maid Orne down in my town came into church late and crawled up the aisle on her hands and knees so as not to attract attention. And she broke up the meeting!”
“We've got to fall in with the new ways, Dan,” said the attorney-general. “These are touchy times. We must be careful of the party.”
“I 'ain't never disgraced it, have I?”
“Uncle Dan, we want you to take a good, comfortable position and settle down,” affirmed Governor Alonzo Harwood, an unctuous, rubicund gentleman who had been listening, smiling his everlasting smile.
“I prefer to hold myself in readiness for a call to the field,” squalled Breed. “I'm better'n three of these young snydingles. They don't know how to organize!”
“There isn't much chance for organizing,” said a Congressman, placatingly. “The primaries take care of themselves pretty well.”
“Yes,” sneered old Dan, “a fellow thinks well of himself, or else his neighbors tell him he can save the nation, and he puts a piece in the paper saying how good he is and sets pictures of himself up in store winders like a cussed play-actor, keeps a cash account, and thinks that's politics. I don't care if there ain't ever no more caucuses. This thing ain't going to last. I want to keep in the field. I'll see chances to heave trigs into the spokes of these hallelujah chariots they're rolling to political glory in!”
The mighty ones exchanged glances—deprecating glances—apprehensive glances.
“You don't think I'm dangerous, do you, after I've been in politics as long as I have?”
“No, but we feel that the old war-horses are entitled to run to pasture with their shoes off,” coaxed the chairman.
“It seems to me more like tying me up to a stanchion in a stall. I ain't ungrateful, gents. I know this younger element doesn't believe in setting hens in politics any more. It's the incubator nowadays—wholesale job of it. But, by dadder! my settings have always cracked the shells, twelve to the dozen! Then you don't want me, eh?”
“That job in the state land-office—we thought it would just about fit you,” suggested the chairman.
“I'd just as soon be sent to state prison—solitary confinement. The state hasn't got any land any more. It has all been peddled out to the grabbers. I've messed and mingled with men all my life. Nobody ever comes into the land-office. You ain't afraid of me to that extent, be you?”
“What do you want?” asked the governor.
“Settled, is it, you don't want me in politics?”
“There isn't anything for you to do,” declared his Excellency, and he showed a little impatience, though his smile did not fade.
“Well, then make me state liberian,” said old Dan, with an air of resignation.
There was deep and horrified silence.
“I'm developing literary instinks,” explained Breed. “I've got a son who owns a printing-office, and my granddaughter can take down anything in shorthand and write it off. I'm going to write a book. She'll take it down and he'll print it.”
“I can't appoint you state librarian,” said the governor, getting control of his emotions. “It's already tied up, that appointment. Keep it under your hat, but I have selected Reverend Doctor Fletcher, of Cornish, and have notified him.”
“Giving a plum like that to a parson who never controlled but one vote, and that's his own—and then voted the way the deacon told him to? I reckon it's about as you say—there are new times in politics. All right! I'll go and climb a sumach-bush. You needn't bother about any job for me, gents. I'll settle down to my literary work.”
“What is the book?” asked the chairman.
“I have your word for it that the old days in politics have all gone by,” said Breed. “All the old things dead and buried! Very well. That's going to make my book valuable and interesting. No harm in putting it out in these times. I shall entitle it 'Breed's Handbook of Political Deviltry.' I shall tell the story of how it was done when politics was really politics.”
“Going to tell all you know?” inquired the governor.
“Of course. Truth, and not poetry, will be my motto. And just for a test of how popular it will be, I'd like to ask you gents how many of you will subscribe for a volume?”
“I think this committee will take the whole edition,” said the chairman, dryly.
“Look here, Dan,” blurted the attorney-general, “you must be joking.”
“I don't know what ever gave you the impression that I'm a humorist,” returned Breed. “If there ain't going to be anything more like the old times, then what's the matter with having the story of how it was done? That book will sell like hot cakes. I'll go out and sell it—it will give me a chance to keep on mixing and messing with men.”
“Dan, if it wasn't you talking—knowing you well—I'd say this is a piece of blackmail,” declared the attorney-general. “Of course you can't put out a book of that kind in this state.”
Mr. Breed blinked angrily.
“I'll take all the cases of libel against you and won't charge my clients a cent.”
“Fill everybody else's little tin dipper, eh? Passing everybody else a bottle and a rubber nipple! Everybody getting his, and me left out! All right. If that's political gratitude in these new times, go on with you medinkculum! And last year I snapped the six up-country caucuses that gave you your plurality in joint convention!”
“We appreciate all your past services, Dan. If we didn't we wouldn't be trying so hard to place you,” said the governor. “We're taking care of all the old boys. You mustn't embarrass us. In these days it's for the good of the party to put in each office the man who is especially fitted for it. We mustn't invite criticism. A librarian needs peculiar qualifications.”
“Well, old Jaquish was liberian, wasn't he? And he wouldn't even go vote unless you went and dragged him to the polls by the scruff of his neck. What did he ever do for the party? And look at old Tomdoozle as state treasurer!”
“Jaquish was a bookman, and our state treasurer—but no matter. Now listen! I'm going to put you at the head of a new department in the State House where you won't be lonesome. More people will come there than to the library. You'll have the title of curator.”
“What's that?” asked Breed, suspiciously. “And what is the department, anyway?”
“The museum of natural history in the fish-and-game rooms. We're going to make it complete—mounted specimens of all our animals. You'll be curator—you see, you will get a title that sounds well!”
“I'm of a restless and inquiring disposition, and my special forty is politics,” stated Breed, sulking. “I don't believe I'm going to relish being ringmaster of a lot of stuffed animals, no matter what kind of a title I get. How much pay goes with the job?”
“Fifteen hundred,” said the governor.
“Well,” sighed Breed, “it will give me a chance to be around the State House during the session, and I'll take it. Then if I don't like it I can resign after the legislature adjourns.”
The Big Ones understood his frame of mind and overlooked his ingratitude.
“And so I'll bid you good day, gents,” he said, and straddled out with his hands under his coat-tails.
“So we've gothimside-tracked and out of mischief,” averred the governor. “That takes care of all of 'em, and I'm relieved. It isn't stylish any more to come to town with a lot of old hounds trotting under the tail of the political cart.”
But before the end of that week the governor was obliged to call Uncle Dan to a private conference in the Executive Chamber.
“You must remember that you're a state officer,” warned his Excellency. “You're a part of the administration. But you are out talking politics all the time. I want you to stay in your department. Just remember that you're curator of our museum.”
“I don't like that blamed job,” complained Breed. “I don't care what my title is, it only means that I have to dust off that old stuffed loon, keep moths out of that loosivee, and fleas or some kind of insecks off'n that bull moose. It ain't no job for a politician. And there's a steady stream through there asking me all kinds of questions about animals. I don't know nothing about animals. I don't know whether a live moose eats hay or chopped liver. Those questions keep me all hestered up. It puts me in a wrong position before the public. I can't tell 'em which or what, and they think I'm losing my mind.”
“Post up! It will keep you busy. Get books out of the library and read. Inform yourself and have a story for the folks!”
A few days later the chairman of the state committee had an indignant report to make to the governor regarding Uncle Dan's natural-history activities.
“He has turned that museum into a circus show, your Excellency. He has named every one of those stuffed animals for somebody in politics he doesn't like, and leads a snickering mob of sight-seers around the room and lectures. When a state officer names a saucer-eyed Canadian lynx for me and then folks come up from that basement and grin at me, it's time a halt was called.”
His Excellency called for Breed and called a halt, using forceful language.
“I resign,” declared old Dan, nipping his little bunghole of a mouth under the hook of his nose. “Those animals are getting onto my nerves. The whole pack and caboodle are chasing me in a nightmare every time I go to sleep. Their condemned glass eyes are boring me worse than gimlets. I'm going on with that book of mine. I've got a new idea for it. I'm going to put in pictures of animals and name 'em for those tin-horn flukedubbles who could never get an office if it wasn't for the primaries.”
“Look here, Breed, you're an old man and you've done a lot of good work in your day, and we're all trying to do something for you. But I have pretty nigh reached the limit of my patience. Politics isn't what it used to be. Different manners, different men. I'm the head of our party and I command you to eliminate yourself. You go back to your job, use common sense, and keep out of things! You are silly—you're senile!”
“You have taken me out of where I belong and have put me in where I don't belong and now you're blaming me because I can't learn a lot of new tricks at my age. I resign, I say!”
“If you give up that job you'll never get another one.”
Uncle Dan put his hands under his coat-tails and marched out, his beak in the air.
“The trouble is,” he confided to old Sturdivant in the adjutant-general's office, “this younger element that's coming along thinks men like you and I have lost all our ability and influence. They're sally-lavering all over us, telling us how they want us to have an easy job. But it's all a damnation insult—that's what it amounts to.”
“All I have to do is lap sticking-paper and gum up the places where these rolls are torn,” said old Sturdivant. “I'm perfectly contented.”
“Then stay were you're put and swaller the insult,” retorted Breed, with disgust. “I thought you had more get-up-and-get. There's a stuffed rabbit in that museum. He'll make a good chum for you in your off hour. Go and sit down with him.” He went over to old Ambrose's desk. Ambrose was numbering dog's-eared pages with a rubber stamp and would not admit that he had been insulted by the state committee. “There's nobody got the right to ask me to stop being active and influential in this state,” insisted Breed. “They haven't taken my pride into account. I ain't naturally a kicker. I've always obeyed orders. If I've got to go out alone and show 'em that the old guard can't be insulted, then I'll do it.”
This time he took the trail of Walker Farr once more and followed that energetic young man until he cornered him.
Farr harkened with interest to the story of the scrapping of the Honorable Daniel Breed as related by that gentleman himself.
“And the moral of the tale is,” added Mr. Breed, “when a gang does you dirt turn around and plaster a few gobs onto the dirt-slingers. That ain't the rule in religion, but it's the natural and correct policy in politics. I have been hurt in my tender feelings. If them animals had been alive and savage enough I would have taken 'em up to the state committee-room and ste' boyed 'em onto the ungrateful cusses who have tried to make my last days unhappy. I know every sore spot in this state. You don't know 'em unless you have got second sight. I can take you to every man who has got a political bruise on him. Good gad! I have been poulticing those sore spots for twenty-five years. You need a man like I am.”
“I'll admit that I do need such a man. I am a stranger in the state. But I'm going to be perfectly frank with you, Mr. Breed. How do I know but you're a spy who wants to attach himself to me for the benefit of the ring?”
“You don't know,” returned Mr. Breed, serenely. “You have to take chances in politics. I'm taking chances when I join in with you. Just who are you and how do you happen to be mixed up in our politics?”
“I am mixing into politics because the men, women, and children are being poisoned by the Consolidated water. That's platform enough, isn't it?”
“Well, I reckon it is, knowing what I know of general conditions. You have got a pretty good head for politics, even if you ain't sincere on the water question,” said Breed, with a politician's ready suspicion of motives. “You've got a come-all-ye hoorah there that will make votes.”
“As to my personality, that has nothing to do with the matter. I am only an agent. Will you come with me and allow Mr. Converse to ask you some questions?”
“Sure thing!” agreed the Honorable Daniel, with great heartiness. “In politics the first thing to do before you get real busy is to have a nice heart-to-heart talk with the gent who says 'How much?' and laps his forefinger and begins to count. You understand, young man, that I have been in politics a long time. And I ain't an animal-trainer—I'm a field worker and I can earn my pay.”
And inside of a week Walker Farr, who had been previously struggling hard against lack of acquaintance in the state, found that Mr. Breed had spoken the truth. The two made a team which excited the full approval—the wondering admiration—of the Honorable Archer Converse.
Farr's power to control and interest men achieved astonishing results with Daniel Breed's exact knowledge of persons and conditions.
But they were rather humble citizens. There was no fanfare about their work. If Colonel Symonds Dodd knew anything at all about the fires they were setting, he made no move to turn on the Consolidated hose.
They did not come furtively, yet they came unobtrusively—these men who drifted into the National Hotel in Marion that day.
At one side of the big rotunda of the National stood Walker Farr, his keen gaze noting the men who came dribbling in, singly, by twos and threes. They were not men of Marion city. A newspaper reporter, happening in at the National, noted that fact. He stood for a time and watched the filtering arrivals. There were some who were plainly men of affairs, others were solid men who bore the stamp of the rural sections. They went to the desk, wrote their names, and were shown up-stairs by bellhops. Most of them, as they crossed the office, nodded greeting to the tall young man who wore a frock coat and a broad-brimmed hat and stood almost motionless at one side of the rotunda.
The National was state Mecca for all kinds of conventions. The reporter studied his date-book. No convention was scheduled for that day. He managed to get a peep at the hotel register. The men who had been signing their names hailed from all portions of the state, but the reporter did not find identities which suggested political activities. It was plainly not a gathering of politicians—none of the old war-horses were in evidence.
The reporter questioned a few of the arrivals, chasing beside them. They all gave the same answer—they had come to Marion on business.
The reply was safe, succinct, and stopped further questions. The reporter did venture to pick out a little man and inquire what kind of business called him to Marion, and the little man informed him with sarcasm that he was a baker from Banbury and had come down to purchase doughnut holes.
The reporter thereupon dodged into the bar to escape the grins of some of the office crew, and his haste was such that he nearly beat the baize doors into the face of Richard Dodd, who was coming out.
“You're the first real politician I've seen in this bunch,” affirmed the reporter. “What's it all about?”
“What's what about?”
“This convention that's assembling here.”
“I know nothing about it,” stated Mr. Dodd, with dignity. “It's nothing of a political nature, I can assure you of that.”
The reporter noted that young Mr. Dodd's eyes were red and that his step wavered, and that he exhaled the peculiar odor which emanates from gentlemen who have been prolonging for some time what is known vulgarly as a “toot.” In fact, the reporter remembered then the rumor in newspaper circles that the chief clerk of the state treasury had been attending to stimulants instead of to business for almost two weeks.
“I assure you that I know all that's to be known about politics,” insisted Mr. Dodd. “If there's a convention here, who's running it?”
They had returned from the bar into the main office.
“I don't know—can't find out. That tall fellow over there seems to know everybody who had been coming in—all the bunch of outsiders. But I never saw him before.”
Mr. Dodd closed one eye in order to focus his attention on this unknown across the office.
A deep glow of antipathy and distrust came into the eye which located and identified Walker Farr.
Mr. Dodd cursed without using names, verbs, or information.
“Oh, you know him, do you?”
“No, I don't know him.” Mr. Dodd hung to his vengeful secret doggedly. He left the reporter and went and sat down in a chair and continued to stare at Farr, who remained oblivious to this inspection.
The reporter went across the office. There seemed to be more or less mystery about this man who had provoked all those curses from the secretive chief clerk of the treasury.
“Can you give me any information about these men who are meeting here to-day?”
“Meeting of the Independent Corn-Growers' Association.” The reporter's gaze was frankly skeptical, but Farr met it without a flicker of the eyelids.
“I never heard of any such association.”
“You have now, sir.”
“Is it open to the newspapers?”
“Closed doors—absolutely private.”
“Who'll give out the statement?”
Farr put his hand on the reporter's shoulder and gave him a smile.
“You see, it's to fight the packers' union and so we are not giving away our ammunition to the enemy. Keep it quiet and when the thing breaks I'll give you our side.”
“All right, sir. If it's to be an exclusive for me I'll steer away the other newspaper men. But do you know just why Richard Dodd—that man over there—is damning you into shoe-strings?”
Even at that distance Farr's keen gaze detected the filmy eyes and the flushed face.
“Perhaps it's because the Corn-Growers propose to put their corn into johnny-bread instead of using it for whisky?”
The newspaper man, his suspicions dulled by Farr's radiant good nature and wholesome frankness, went away about his business, but he halted long enough beside Dodd's chair to repeat “the corn-grower's” joke regarding the young man who had been glowering on him.
Dodd got up with as much alacrity as he could command and went across to Farr. Sober, the nephew of Colonel Dodd had treated this person with rather lofty contempt; drunk, he was not so finical in matters of caste—and, besides, this man now wore the garb of a gentleman, and young Mr. Dodd always placed much emphasis on clothes.
“Look here, my fellow, now that I have you where I don't need to consider the presence of ladies, I want to ask you how you dared to mess into my private business?”
Farr, towering above him, beamed down on him with tolerant indifference and did not answer.
“That Lochinvar business may sound good in a poem, but it doesn't go here in Marion—not when it's my business and my girl.”
Dodd raised his voice. He seemed about to become a bit hysterical.
Farr set slow, gripping, commanding clutch about the young man's elbow.
“If your business with me can possibly be any talk about a lady,” he advised, “you'd better come along into the reading-room.”
“It is about a lady,” persisted Dodd when they had swung in behind a newspaper-rack. The room was apparently empty. “You understand what you came butting in upon, don't you?”
“I took it to be a rehearsal of a melodrama, crudely conceived and very poorly played.”
“Say, you use pretty big words for a low-lived iceman.”
“State your business with me if you have any,” Farr reminded him. “I have something else to do besides swap talk with a drunken man—and your breath is very offensive.”
Dodd began to tap a finger on Farr's breast.
“I want you to understand that I've got a full line on you; you have been chumming with a Canuck rack-tender, you deserted a woman, and she committed suicide, and you took the brat—”
Farr's big hand released the elbow and set itself around Mr. Dodd's neck. Thumb and forefinger bored under the jaw and Mr. Dodd's epiglottis ceased vibrating.
“I don't like to assault a man, but talk doesn't seem to fit your case and I can't stop long enough to talk, anyway. This choking is my comment on your lies.” He pushed Mr. Dodd relentlessly down into the nearest chair and spanked his face slowly and deliberately with the flat of his hand. “And this will indicate to you just how much I care for your threats. You'll remember it longer than you will recollect words.”
He finished and went away, leaving his victim getting his breath in the chair. Dodd, peering under the rack, saw him hasten and join the Honorable Archer Converse in the hotel lobby and they went up the broad stairs together.
The chief clerk of the state treasury sat there and smoothed his smarting face with trembling hands and worked his jaws to dislodge the grinding ache in his neck. But the stinging, malevolent rancor within him burned hotter and hotter. He started to get up out of the chair and sat back again, much disturbed.
A man who had been hidden by an adjoining rack of newspapers was now leaning forward, jutting his head past the ambuscade. He was an elderly man with an up-cocked gray mustache, and there was a queer little smile in his shrewd blue eyes. Dodd knew him; he was one Mullaney, a state detective.
“What are you doing here—practicing your sneak work?” demanded the young man. As a state official he did not entertain a high opinion of the free-lance organization to which Mullaney belonged.
“I'm here reading a paper—supposed it's what the room is for,” returned Detective Mullaney. “But excuse me—I'll get out. Room seems to be reserved for prize-fighters.”
“You keep your mouth shut about that—that insult.”
“I never talk—it would hurt my business.”
“I don't fight in a public place. I'm a gentleman. I want you to remember what you saw, Mullaney! I'll get to that cheap bum in a way he won't forget.”
“Do you mind telling me who your friend is?” asked the detective.
Dodd shot him a sour side-glance and muttered profanity.
“I couldn't help wondering what particular kind of business you and he could have, seeing how it was transacted,” pursued the detective.
Dodd glowered at the floor. “Look here, Mullaney! There's a whole lot about that man I want to know, if you can help me and keep your mouth closed. I haven't got much confidence in the work you fellows do—they tell me you can't detect mud on your own boots.”
Mr. Mullaney pulled his chair out from behind the papers and leaned back in it and crossed his hands over his stomach and smiled without a trace of resentment.
“I might tell you something right now about that tall friend of yours that would jump you, Mr. Dodd—I'm that much of a detective!”
“Tell me, then.”
“Just as it stands it's guesswork—considerable guesswork.”
“What does that amount to?”
“A great deal in my business. Take this city of one hundred thousand! I'm the only man in it who is making guesswork about strangers his special line of work. The rest of the citizens rub elbows with all passers and don't give a hoot. There are a good many thousand men in this country whom the law wants and whom the law can't find. That fellow may be one of them, for all I know. I guess he is, for instance. Then I make it my business to prove guesswork.”
“You must be doing a devil of a rushing business!” sneered Dodd.
“I manage to make a good living. I don't talk about my business, for if I should blow it I wouldn't have any. I say, Iguess! Then I spend my spare time hunting through my books of pointers. For ten years I have read every newspaper I could get hold of. I come in here and study papers from all over. Every crime that has been committed, every man wanted, every chap who has got away, I write down all I can find out about him. Then, if anything comes up to make me guess about a man I begin to hunt my books through.”
“Well, if I'm any good on a guess,” snorted Dodd, “that renegade who just insulted me is down in your books, somewhere. You'd better hunt.”
“It's slow work and eats up time,” sighed Mr. Mullaney.
Dodd looked at him for a time and then began to pull crumpled bills from his waistcoat pocket. He straightened five ten-dollar bills, creased them into a trough, and stuck the end toward the detective.
“Follow his trail back. I never heard of your book scheme before. Take this money for a starter. If you can't find him in your books, pick out half a dozen of the worst crimes any man can commit and hitch 'em on to him somehow,” urged Dodd, with fury. “Go after him. And when we get him good and proper I want to do some gloating through the bars. He's the first man who ever smacked my face for me—and I'll see that he gets his.”
He left Mr. Mullaney stowing the money away in a big wallet which was stuffed with newspaper clippings. He hurried in to the bar, gulped down a drink, and then went to the office desk and examined the hotel register. Anger and zest for revenge were stimulating in him a lively interest in that meeting which Farr seemed to be promoting. Mr. Dodd did not care especially what kind of meeting it was. He had set forth to camp on Walker Farr's trail and do him what hurt he could.
Dodd was a well-posted political worker. The names of the men were not names especially prominent in state politics, but his suspicions were stirred when he saw that all counties in the state were represented. And no more were arriving. He decided that the conference must be in session.
Dodd avoided the elevator. He tramped up the broad stairs to the floor above the office. The doors of the large parlor were closed. He turned the knob cautiously; the doors were locked. He heard within the dull mumble of many voices—men in conversation. It was evident that the formal meeting, whatever it might be, had not begun its session. He tiptoed away from the door and climbed another flight of stairs.
There were no nooks and corners of the old National Hotel which Richard Dodd did not understand in all their intricacies. As his uncle's political scout it had been his business to know them.
He hunted along the corridor until he found a maid.
“Is there anybody in Number 29?” he asked.
“Two of that new crowd that just came in have it, Mr. Dodd. But they have gone down-stairs again.”
He wadded a bill in his palm and jammed it into her hand. “Let me in with your pass-key, that's a good girl. It's all right. I won't disturb their stuff. I only want to listen. You understand! There's a political game on. I want to get to that ventilator in the closet—you know it!”
“Oh, if it's only politics, Mr. Dodd!” she sniffed, with the scorn of a girl who has seen many conventions come and go, knew the little tricks, and had developed for the whole herd of politicians lofty disdain; she knew them merely as loud-talking men who had little consideration for hotel maids, men who littered their rooms with cigar stubs and whisky-bottles. She started for the door, swinging the pass-key on its cord. “If it's just politics, sure you can go in. Many a buck I've let in to listen to their old palaver down in that parlor.”
Dodd bolted the door behind him.
He felt entirely safe, for he understood that the rightful tenants of that room were locked into the parlor below. He climbed upon a chair in the closet and put his ear to the grating of the ventilator.
He heard only one man's voice. He recognized its crisp tones—it was the Honorable Archer Converse.
“I repeat, gentlemen, that this interest of yours would amaze me if I had not been prepared by reports from our agents who have been so well captained by Mr. Walker Farr. Remember that this is simply a conference, prior to organization. Every man of you is a chief in it. Let us be calm, discreet, sensible, and silent.
“I'm not going over the details of the unrest in this state. The fact that so many of you are present here from all sections is sufficient commentary on that unrest. We understand perfectly well that a certain clique of self-seekers has arrogated to itself supreme control of the party. A party must be controlled, I admit. If that control were in the hands of honest and patriotic men we would not be here today.
“I'm not going to bother you with details of what has been going on in departments in our State House. The employees are the tools of the ring and they have misused their power. I'm afraid of what may be uncovered there when the house-cleaning begins. But the honor of our party demands such a house-cleaning.”
Richard Dodd's hands trembled as he clung to the ventilator bars.
“However, we are faced by something in the way of an issue that's bigger than graft.”
Now his earnestness impressed more than ever the listener at the grating.
“Gentlemen, to a certain extent graft is bound to be fostered and protected by any party; but when a party is used to protect and aggrandize those who monopolize the people's franchise rights it's time for the honest men in that party to bemeninstead of partisans. Don't you allow those monopolists to hold you in line by whining about party loyalty. And don't let them whip you into line by their threats, either. I refuse, for one, as much as I love my party, to have its tag tied into my ear if that tag isn't clean!”
The assemblage applauded that sentiment.
“I'm going to call names, gentlemen. Colonel Symonds Dodd has this state by its throat. With Colonel Dodd stand all the financial interests—the railroads, the corporations, even the savings-banks. He is intrenched behind that law which limits the indebtedness of our cities and towns. Municipalities cannot own their own plants under present conditions. Those men are even using the people's own money against them! They scare depositors by threats of financial havoc if present conditions and the big interest are bothered by any legislation.
“I must warn you, gentlemen, that it's a long and difficult road ahead of us. But we must start. I have not intended to discourage you by stating the obstacles to be overcome.
“I have explained them so that, if we make slow progress at first, we shall not be discouraged.
“We will organize prevailing unrest and the innate honesty in this state. We will establish a branch of the Square Deal Club in every town and city. It must be done carefully, conservatively, and as secretly as possible.” The lawyer's cautious fear of too much haste now displayed itself. “The most we can hope to do is send to the state convention some men who will leaven that lump of ring politics. Party usage and tradition are so strong that we must renominate Governor Harwood, I suppose, for a complimentary second term.”
“I think we can do better,” cried a voice.
“Possibly,” returned Mr. Converse, dryly, “but we must do that 'better' carefully and slowly. In politics, gentlemen, we cannot transform the ogre into the saint merely by waving the magic wand and expecting the charm to operate instantly. Possibly we can control the next legislature. I do not know just what legislation we may be able to devise and pass, but I hope for inspiration.
“I will say now that I am with you. My purse is open. Command my services for all questions of law. I will establish myself at the capital for the legislative session.
“But there is one thing I will not do under any circumstances—I will not accept political office.”
“You bet you won't,” muttered young Dodd, at the grating. “You wouldn't be elected a pound-keeper in the town of Bean Center.”
But if Mr. Dodd could have seen through that grating as well as hear he would have been greatly interested just then in the expression on the face of Walker Farr. The face was not exactly the face of a prophet, but it had a large amount of resolution written over it.
“I don't want to be the first one to throw any cold water on our prospects,” declared a voice, after Mr. Converse had announced that the meeting was open for general discussion; “it really does seem to me that we stand a good show of getting control of the next legislature. But after we do get control what prospect is there of passing any legislation that will help us? Wherever there is a water system in this state the municipality has been so loaded down with debts our machine politics have plastered into it that the legal debt limit has been reached. The only way this water question can be cleared up is by taking the systems away from those monopolists—making them the property of towns and cities. But if towns and cities can't borrow any more money, just how is this to be done? Mr. Converse hasn't told us! We can clean up politics, perhaps, but it seems to me that we'll never be able to clean up the dirtiest and most dangerous mess.”
On the silence that followed broke a voice which made Dodd, his ear to the grating, grate his teeth. His hatred recognized this speaker. It was Walker Farr.
“I apologize for venturing to speak in this meeting,” he said. “But if that gentleman's question isn't answered here and now in some way I'm afraid men will go away discouraged. I have heard the same question, Mr. Converse, as I have traveled about the state lately. I have thought about this matter constantly, in my poor fashion. And because I went into that job of pondering with an open mind is the reason, perhaps, why a strange idea has come to me. You know they say that strange notions are born out of ignorance. The better way would have been, possibly, to submit the plan first of all to your legal mind, Mr. Converse. I will keep silence now and confer with you, sir, if you think best.” His tone was wistful.
“Talk it out in open meeting,” cried the cordial voice of Mr. Converse. “Free speech and all of us taken into confidence—that's the spirit of this movement of ours!”
“Has it ever occurred to anybody to form a new municipality for water purposes only? I have studied your state constitution, and the language in which the debt limit of five percent is provided I find applies strictly to towns and cities. Suppose the citizens of Marion, together with the adjoining towns of Weston and Turner, all of them now served by the Consolidated, should unite simply as individuals for the common purpose of owning and operating their own water-plant—form, say a water district?”
“An independent body politic and corporate?” It was Converse's voice and it betrayed quick interest and some astonishment.
“I suppose that would be the legal name, sir. Wouldn't it be possible to organize such a combination of the people, distinct from other municipal responsibilities? Then if we can elect the right men to our legislature we can go to the State House and ask for some legislation that will enable us to take over systems by the right of eminent domain, provide a plan of fair appraisal, give us a law which will make water-district bonds a legal investment for savings-banks. In short, gentlemen, I repeat, this plan is nothing more than an organization of the desired territory and people into a new, distinct, and separate municipality for water purposes only, leaving all other forms of municipal government to pursue their accustomed functions precisely as though the district had not been organized. That's the idea as best I can state it in few words.”
There was a long period of silence.
Dodd, listening to the mutterings of a revolt which threatened the whole political fabric which protected him, his interest clearing his brain of the liquor fog, could imagine the scene below. That assemblage was staring wide-eyed at Archer Converse, the law's best-grounded man in the state.
“It is very modest to call that suggestion an idea,” stated Mr. Converse, at last. “Mr. Farr, if I can find the necessary law in our statutes to back it up, it's an inspiration.”
There was the ring of conviction in his tones.
Mr. Dodd left the grating and escaped from the hotel.
He fairly cantered to headquarters in the First National block; he felt a politician's frightened conviction that he had something mighty important to tell his uncle.