_ CHAPTER XIII. THE CODE AND THE GAGE OF BATTLE
"I appreciate zeal in public affairs," mused Colonel Dodd, gazing at the door which Dr. Dohl had closed behind him. "But once there was a retriever dog who chased his master with a stick of dynamite that had a sputtering fuse."
He set his broad hands upon the arms of his chair, derricked himself up, and went over to the mirror. He peered at himself and seemed to rearrange his countenance, much as a woman would smooth the ruffled plumage of her hat.
"We're not murderers," he informed the composed visage which the mirror held forth to him. "But we haven't got to the point where we're letting lunatics who break up city government meetings, or crank doctors, tell us how to spend a million or two of the money we've worked hard to accumulate. There's getting to be too much of this telling business men in this country how to run their business. If we're peddling typhoid fever in spite of what our analyses tell us, then we'll go ahead, of course, and clean up." Colonel Dodd was willing to acknowledge that much to himself, surveying his countenance in the mirror. "But we'll continue to run our own business," he added.
Then he sat down again in his chair and pushed a button. "Briggs," he directed, "send in those three men from Danburg."
He whirled his swivel-chair and sat there at his desk, his rectangular front squared to meet them.
The three men who came in were of the rural businessmen type, and their faces were not amiable. Two of them halted in the middle of the sumptuous apartment and the third stepped a couple of paces ahead of them. He carried a huge roll of engineers' plans under his arm.
"My name is Davis, as I suppose you know, Colonel Dodd," he reported.
"Have seats, gentlemen."
"We are tired of sitting," stated the spokesmen, with sour significance.
"I understand, Mr. David. But mornings are very busy times for me. I was attending to appointments made beforehand. You made no appointment, and I was not expecting you."
There was silence, and the three men glowered on him. It was evident that settled animosity emboldened these country merchants even in the presence of Colonel Symonds Dodd.
"I was not expecting you, I say."
The colonel's demeanor displayed a little uncertainty; he had rather expected suppliants. He knew what a nasty blow had been dealt these men the day before.
"Probably not," assented Davis. "You expected that after Stone & Adams yanked the gangplank out from under us yesterday we would put in at least one day tearing around to other banking firms, trying to place our bonds."
"Why--why--Well, if Stone & Adams--You naturally wouldn't take the verdict of one banking-house on a matter of bonds, would you?"
"Look here, Colonel Dodd, we understand you--clear way down to the ground--and we may as well save wear on our tongues. And first of all we have come right here to save shoe-leather. We have come straight to headquarters. Do you suppose we're going to gallop around this city to bankers after the word has gone out about us? Not much! We are here in the captain's office, and you can't fool us about that."
"I never heard such--" the colonel began to sputter.
"I know you never did--and it's getting your goat," asserted the blunt countryman. "We've got a plain and pertinent question to put to you--do you intend to ram us to the wall in our water deal?"
The head of the state's water trust simulated anger perfectly, even if he didn't feel it. And there was astonishment in his anger.
"What have I to do with your dealings with bankers?" he demanded. "Probably your plant isn't up to pitch."
"That talk doesn't go with us, not for a minute, Colonel Dodd," shouted the undaunted Davis. "You're talking to business men, not to children. We offered to leave the matter of our plan to any three engineers in this state. Why is it that Stone & Adams refuse to take the word of anybody except your man, Snell?"
"They probably want the word of the best consulting-engineer in the state."
"But he's your man."
"He is our man because he is the best. We hire him for our work. But we do not control his opinions when he is consulted by others. Oh no! And I want to tell you, my men, that I refuse to listen to any more such talk from you."
"Then call in one of your political policemen and have us put out," invited the unterrified Davis.
"Build your plant right and your bonds will sell. Our bonds sell when Mr. Snell reports on our plants."
"We'll save our strength in the matter of building plants and running around trying to place bonds with brokers who have been tipped off by the money trust of this state. We propose to get it straight from you first. You can't fool us for one minute, I repeat! We'll have our last wiggle right here. Will you take your hands off our affairs?"
"I haven't put my hands
on your affairs," shouted Colonel Dodd, furious at being baited in this amazing manner. Never before had any visitor dared to raise his voice in that office. "You're crazy."
"You're right--we are--pretty nearly so. Myself and these two neighbors of mine have tied up every dollar we can rake and scrape to build a water-plant for our little village and give our folks clean water from a lake, not the rotten poison you would pump out of our millstream for us. We have tried to do this for our town and make an honest dollar for ourselves. Now you have got us lashed to the mast, financially, so you think, and you propose to step in and gobble our franchise. That's enough to make men crazy."
"Get out of my office!"
"You grabbed the franchise and common stock of Westham that way," declared Davis. "You scooped in Durham and Newry and a lot of others. But I'm here to warn you, Colonel Dodd. Danburg is going to choke you if you try to swallow it. We are only countrymen, and we know it. You have always done all the bossing and threatening in this state up to now. But I tell you, Colonel Dodd, there comes a time when the rabbit will spit in the bulldog's eye. If we three go out of this room in the same spirit in which we came into it something will drop in this state. We shall have a story to tell."
Colonel Dodd swung his chair around and faced his desk.
"Gentlemen, let's not get excited," he appealed. Ostensibly he reached for a pencil. He also pushed a button he had not touched before that day. Then he came around slowly on the swivel of his chair. "You have mentioned certain towns, Davis. Those towns have water systems that are a part of the Consolidated, to be sure. But the men who promoted those plants and were unable to complete them came to us and begged us to step in and take the burden off their hands." While Colonel Dodd talked he kept glancing, but in an extremely unobtrusive manner, at a huge and magnificent Japanese screen that occupied one corner of his office. "It is easy enough to start ventures in this world, Mr. Davis. An inexperienced man can do that. But it most often takes experience and a lot of money to install a successful water plant."
"We want to get down to cases, Colonel Dodd," insisted the spokesman. "We haven't come here without posting ourselves. We know how you have talked to the others. But you can't bluff us. You propose to steal our plant, such of it as we have been able to build to date. One word from you to the money gang takes the hoodoo off us. Now talk business! Do you propose to pot us like you have the rest?"
The heart of the big rose in the center of the screen flashed once with a glow that was imperceptible unless one had been gazing at it, watching for a signal. Colonel Dodd understood that Miss Kate Kilgour had entered through a low door and was behind the screen, ready with note-book and pencil. He leaned back in his deep chair and interlocked his pudgy fingers across his paunch.
"I assure you I have not the least interest in your projects as to the Danburg water system, Mr. Davis, Mr. Erskine, Mr. Owen." He dwelt on the names. "The Consolidated has plenty of its own business to attend to."
"But I say you are trying to 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. _