“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 run _our_ business, 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 is _not_, 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.
XIV
THE MATTER OF DOING WHAT ONE CAN
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.