The Landloper: The Romance of a Man on Foot
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