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 got _him_ side-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.
XXIV
THE STAR CHAMBER IN THE OLD NATIONAL
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.