The Landloper: The Romance of a Man on Foot
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