The Landloper: The Romance of a Man on Foot
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.
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