_ CHAPTER XII. AT THE FOOT OF THE THRONE
As usual at nine-thirty in the afternoon, the big tower clock on the First National Bank building in the city of Marion pointed the finger of its minute-hand straight downward.
As usual, at this hour, as he had done for many years, Colonel Symonds Dodd eased himself down from the equipage that brought him to his office. This day the vehicle was his limousine car.
In view of the fact that Colonel Dodd owned the First National block the big clock seemed to point its finger at him with the bland pride of a flunky in a master. It seemed to say, "Behold! The great man is here!"
Colonel Dodd was never embarrassed when fingers were pointed at him wherever he went. If a man is lord of finance and politics in his state he expects to be pointed out.
When he stepped from his car he carried in his arms, with great tenderness, a long parcel which was carefully wrapped in tissue-paper. He always carried a similar parcel when he came to his office. Each morning the gardener of the Dodd estate laid choice flowers on the seat of that vehicle which had been chosen to convey the master to the city.
Colonel Dodd coddled the long parcel with the care a nurse would have bestowed on an infant--but he kicked his fat leg clumsily at an urchin who got in his way on the sidewalk. A college professor of Marion happened to be passing at the moment and saw the act and knew what the colonel was carrying in his arms. The professor made a mental note of fresh material for his lecture on "The Psychological Phenomena of the Bizarre in the Emotions." The professor had just met a woman wheeling a cat out in a baby-carriage.
The doctor had advised exercise for the colonel--a small amount. The colonel toilsomely climbed the one flight of stairs to his office. That was his daily quota of exercise.
A little man with a beak of a nose was waiting in the corridor and hastened to unlock a door marked "Private," and the colonel went in, and the little man locked the door and tiptoed down the corridor to the general offices.
Before he removed his hat Colonel Dodd carefully stripped the tissue-paper from the damp flowers. There were two huge bouquets. He set these into vases of ornate bronze, one on each end of his desk. He patted and stroked the flowers until they appeared to best advantage. He stood back and bestowed affectionate regard on them. No human being had ever reported the receipt of such a look from Colonel Symonds Dodd. It was rather astonishing to find softness in him in respect to flowers. He seemed as hard as a block of wood. He had a squat, square body and his legs seemed to be set on the corners of that body. His square face was smooth except for a wisp of whisker, minute as a water-color brush, jutting from under his pendulous lower lip.
He hung up his hat and stood for a moment before a massive mirror. The report in Marion was that he stood before that mirror and made up his expression to suit the character of a day's business.
Then he sat down at his desk and stuck a pudgy finger on one button of a battery of buttons.
A girl entered with a promptitude which showed that she had been waiting for the summons.
He did not look up at her. His gaze was on one of the bouquets.
She brought a portfolio and packets of letters all neatly docketed.
His salutation was merely, "Miss Kilgour." Colonel Dodd did not deal in many "Good-mornings." It was also reported in Marion and the state that his stock of urbanity was so small he was compelled to expend it very thriftily. He certainly did not waste any of it on his office help. He might have afforded at least one glance at the girl, for she was extremely pretty. Still another report in Marion was to the effect that he had selected Kate Kilgour as his secretary as the final artistic touch to the beauty of his private office in order that he might have a perfect ensemble. She did seem, so far as his interest in her went, to be only a part of that ensemble which he occasionally swept carelessly with his gaze--he reserved all his intimate admiration for the bouquets.
She laid his "Strictly Personal" letters on his fresh blotter.
She sat down and began to read the business letters aloud, not waiting for his orders to begin. It was her daily routine, business transacted as Colonel Dodd wished it to be transacted--crisply, promptly, directly.
He dictated replies, usually laconic, even curt, as soon as she had finished each letter. His eyes were on the flowers as he talked.
When the letters were finished she retired with her portfolio and her notes, the thick carpet muffling the sound of her withdrawal.
After he had slit the envelopes of his personal correspondence and had read the contents the colonel pushed another button. The little man who had been waiting in the corridor slipped edgewise in at the door. He was thin and elderly and his knob of a head, set well down on his pinched shoulders, had peering eyes on each side of that beak of a nose. When he walked across the room his long arms were behind him under his coat-tails and held them extended, and he bore some resemblance to a bird. In fact, one did not require much imagination to note resemblance to a bird in Peter Briggs--many folks likened him to a woodpecker--for he flitted to and fro in Colonel Dodd's anteroom, among those awaiting audience, tapping here and rapping there with the metaphorical beak of questions, starting up the moths and grubs of business which men who came and waited hid under the bark of their demeanor.
"Seventeen, Colonel Dodd. Five for real business; twelve of them are sponges."
"The five?"
"Chief Engineer Snell of the Consolidated, Dr. Dohl of the State Board of Health, the three promoters of the Danburg Village Water system."
"Send in Snell."
Engineer Snell did not sit in the presence of his president, nor did the president ask him to sit.
"Briggs tells me the Danburg men are here."
"They're waiting out there, Colonel Dodd."
"Quitting?"
"I don't think so--just yet. They look too mad. I gave 'em the harpoon in good shape, as is usual, but I didn't expect they'd run here so soon. Thought they would flop a little longer."
"They got their poke from Stone & Adams yesterday afternoon, did they?"
"Yes, Colonel. My report to Stone & Adams showed that the Danburg plan of levels is faulty, that their unions are not up to contract, that their station and pumps are inefficient for the demands. So Stone & Adams had to tell 'em that their bonds were turned down."
"Do you know whether they have tried another banking-house yet?"
"I don't believe they have had time, Colonel."
"But such fellows always do try. Their banging in here on me so quickly looks a little irregular. In business, you know, Snell, if you tie a tin can to a dog and he runs and ki-yi's, that's perfectly natural and you can sit back and wait for nature to take its course. If the dog doesn't run, but sits down and gnaws the string in two--then look out for the dog."
"I must admit they're coming here sudden after their jolt. They look mad. But I figure they must have quit. The jolt was a hard one, for Stone & Adams had been leading 'em on--according to orders."
The colonel stared at a bouquet.
"Have you got your other report--the side report--in shape for me to get a hasty idea? If they have come here with a proposition--want to quit and cover themselves, I need information right now."
Engineer Snell laid papers on the desk. He proceeded to explain.
"If you don't feel you have time to go over it--don't want to keep the Danburg crowd waiting--I can tell you that the plant is pretty nearly all right. So much all right that you can afford to slip 'em a couple of thousand apiece on top of what they have already spent. I don't suppose you want 'em to holler too loud. I can tell you that Davis, Erskine, and Owen--those men out there--are cleaned out. They have put in all their ready money. They were depending on Stone & Adams for the first instalment from the bonds, so as to take up some thirty-day notes and pay bills due on material."
Colonel Dodd meditated, pulling on his wisp of whisker.
"It's one thing to encourage enterprise in this state--it's another thing to be everlastingly paying rake-offs to local promoters who grab a franchise when we're not looking and then hold us up. I don't want to hurt the Danburg men. But my stockholders expect certain things of me and it's about time men in this state understand that we propose to control the water question. Snell, you go and talk to those Danburg men like a father to children. Send them in here smoothed down and we'll do the right thing by them."
He signaled for Briggs and told him to admit Dr. Dohl.
The doctor, chairman of the State Board of Health, was a chubby man with a tow-colored, fan-shaped beard. He sat down and sprung his eye-glasses on his bulgy nose and drew out a package of manuscript.
"Colonel, I have felt it my duty to write a special chapter on the typhoid situation in this state for the report of the State Board of Health."
"Very well, Doctor." The colonel was curt and his tone admitted nothing of his sentiments.
"DO you care to listen to it? It rather vitally concerns the Consolidated Water Company."
"You don't blame us for all these typhoid cases, do you?"
"No, sir--not for all of them."
"Why blame us for any of them? Our analyses show that we're giving clean water. How about dirty milkmen and the sanitary arrangements in these tenement-houses and all such? It's the fashion to blame a corporation for everything bad that happens in this world."
"We have placed blame on milkmen where any blame is due," stated Dr. Dohl. He tapped his manuscript. "But I have spent considerable of my department's money in making a house-to-house canvass, tracing the sources. The man before me
guessed. I have made
sure! Colonel Dodd, the Consolidated water is pretty poisonous stuff these days."
"What's the matter in this state all of a sudden?" snapped the colonel. "I am told that a lunatic almost broke up our city government meeting the other night, shouting that the Consolidated is trying to poison folks. You're too level-headed a man to get into that class, Dr. Dohl."
"I'll allow you to set me down in any class which seems fitting from your point of view," replied the doctor, stiffly. "But if that lunatic, as you call him, got an angle-worm or a frog's leg out of his tap I don't blame him for breaking up a meeting of the city government which will tolerate the water which is being pumped through the city mains just now."
"We're working on the filtering-plant--it will be all right in a little while. It got out of hand before we realized it," said the colonel, now a bit apologetic.
"In this crisis your filter amounts to about that!" The doctor snapped a pudgy finger into a plump palm. "The river-water in this state has been poisoned. You must go into the hills--to the lakes, Colonel Dodd."
"You don't mean to say that you recommend that in your report, Doctor?"
"Absolutely--emphatically."
"Without stopping to think of the millions it will cost my company to build over its plants?"
"It has come to a point where it isn't a question of money, Colonel."
"We can't afford it."
"Then let the cities and towns of the state buy in their water-plants and do it."
"Good Jefferson! Don't you know that every city and town in this state where we have a water-plant has already exceeded its debt limit of five percent?"
"Do I understand you as intimating, Colonel Dodd, that there is no help for this present condition of affairs?"
"Look here--I'm neither a Herod nor a Moloch, even if some of the crack-brained agitators in this state will have it that way," protested the magnate, with heat. "Are you going to print that report before you have given us time to turn around?"
"With one hundred deaths a day from typhoid fever in this state, Colonel, that matter of time becomes mighty important."
"Look here, Dohl, don't you remember that it was my indorsement that gave you your job?"
"I do, Colonel Dodd. But I'm a physician, not a politician."
"I see you're not," retorted the colonel, dryly. "But you're a member of our political party, and you know that the Consolidated and its associate interests are the backbone of that party. There are a lot of soreheads in this state, and we're having a devil of a time to hold 'em in line. Every savings-bank in this state, furthermore, holds bonds of the Consolidated. Do you want to start a panic? You've got to be careful how you touch the first brick standing in a row. Dohl, you leave that report with me. I'll go over it. I'll take the matter up with the directors. We'll move as fast as possible."
The doctor hesitated, stroking the folds of his manuscript.
"You're not doubting my word, are you?" demanded the colonel.
"No, sir!" Even the physician's sense of duty did not embolden him to persist under this scowl of the man of might.
The colonel took the document from Dr. Dohl's relaxing hands and shoved it into a pigeonhole of the big desk.
"You must understand that pipe-lines to lakes cannot be laid in a minute as a child strings straws, Doctor," admonished the magnate.
"Do you propose to lay lines to the lakes, Colonel? I need to throw a little sop to my conscience if my report is delayed."
"Everything right will be done in good time, Dr. Dohl. I will proceed as rapidly as possible, considering that the law, finance, and politics are all concerned. As you are leaving," he added, giving his visitor the blunt hint that the interview was over, "I must draw your attention to the fact that if you bludgeon the Consolidated with a report like this it may be a long time before we can move in the matter. You'll only scare the banks and set the cranks to yapping. Just remember that you're a state officer and have a weighty responsibility to your party and to financial interests."
Dr. Dohl went away. He sourly realized that he was only a cog in the big machine; that for a moment he had threatened to develop a rough edge and start a squeak, but the big file had been used on him. It had been used on many another of the State House cogs, as he well knew. Responsibility as to his party! Safety and sanity in regard to financial interests! He knew that these talismanic words had been used to control even the lords in national politics. He departed from the Presence, muttering his rebellion, but fully conscious that a political Samson in modern days made but a sorry spectacle of himself when he started to pull down the pillars of the party temple.
He continued to mutter when he walked through the anteroom.
Most of the men who waited there had faces as lowering as the visage which Dr. Dohl displayed.
The doctor had not lost all faith in his own fearlessness and rectitude of motive, but he was obliged to acknowledge to himself that just then he was a rather weak champion.
"However, I'd like to lay eyes on the sort of man who can unjoint this devilish combination of politics and law and finance," he informed himself, trying to justify his own retreat.
His eyes, in passing, swept a stranger.
The stranger was a tall young man with wavy hair and brown eyes. He sat patiently, nursing a broad-brimmed black hat on his knees.
"I'd like to see that man!" repeated Dr. Dohl, mentally, sugar-coating his disgust at his own weakness.
If mortal man were gifted with prescience Dr. Dohl would have stared out of countenance the tall young man who sat on a bench in the outer office of the state's overlord and nursed a broad-brimmed hat upon his knees. _