The Landloper: The Romance of a Man on Foot
angry--so angry you'd even pick up a tramp for an escort. But what
interest do you take in that renegade?” His tones were acrid with
jealousy.
“I did not find him a renegade. I found him a mystery, Richard. And I
hope that some day I will know what the mystery is.”
“Are you trying to drive me mad?”
“I am merely chatting along in order to keep you off a topic which
is distressing. I heard that your uncle intended to have the man
investigated after he came into the office here and made that brave
stand. I happened to hear the talk the young man made. Perhaps that
accounts for my curiosity. Did your uncle find out much about the man?”
“I don't know what he found out,” declared Dodd, rapidly losing control
of himself. “But I propose to find out for myself.”
“Please do, Richard,” said the girl, ingenuously and earnestly. She
seemed to be losing some of the hauteur she had shown at the first of
their meeting.
“I'll find out enough to put him in jail, where he probably belongs. I'm
not going to insult you, Kate, by any more talk about a tramp. You can't
shift me from the main topic. Go home and talk with your mother, as I
have told you. We are going to be married!”
“Richard, our affair is ended.”
“Then who is the man?”
“There is no man.”
“If you say that and mean it, then you don't know women as well as I
know them. You don't know even yourself!” he declared. “I want to say
to you, Kate, that we are all walking on mighty thin ice. The sooner
you and I take hold of hands and get safely ashore--just you and I--the
better it will be. Just let your curiosity about other men fall asleep.
I tell you again, go home and talk with your mother.”
He bowed, reached his hand to touch hers, but refrained when she turned
suddenly to her desk and resumed her work.
Young Dodd hurried out of the building without attempting to see his
uncle, and cooled his head and his passion and soothed his physical
discomfort by a headlong dash in his car back to the state's capital
city.
The girl took her courage in her hands and asked Mr. Peter Briggs, in
as matter-of-fact tone as she could muster, whether he did not want any
record copy made of his notes in regard to that person who had bearded
Colonel Dodd. But Mr. Briggs informed her that the matter was not of
sufficient importance.
“The fellow is merely a cheap, loafing sort--here to-day, there
to-morrow,” said Briggs. “I investigated him thoroughly.”
Until then Miss Kilgour had always had a high opinion of Peter Briggs's
acumen. She promptly revised that estimate, reflecting that age is bound
to dull a person's senses and cloud his judgment.
XXI
THE HONORABLE LION CONFERS WITH COLONEL TIGER
All his people in the offices of the Honorable Archer Converse noticed
that the chief was not amiable that day. His usual dignified composure
was wholly lacking. He gave off orders fretfully, he slapped papers
about on his desk when he worked there; every now and then he glanced
up at the portrait of his distinguished father and muttered under
his breath. He had called for more documents relating to state health
statistics, reports on water systems, and had despatched a clerk to
the capital city to secure certain additional facts, figures, and
literature. The junior members of his law firm knew that he had taken
much to heart the case of the citizens of Danburg, who had been blocked
in their honest efforts to build a water system and who now
charged various high interests with conspiracy. The litigation was
important--the issues revolutionary. But the juniors had never seen the
chief fussed up by any law case before.
Then something really did happen!
The three citizens of Danburg who had occasionally conferred with him
came into his office and lined up in front of him. Mr. Davis scratched
his chin and blinked meekly, Mr. Erskine exhibited his nervousness by
running his fingers around inside his collar, and Mr. Owen fairly oozed
unspoken apology.
“Look here, gentlemen,” snapped Mr. Converse, “I'm not ready for you. I
told you not to come until next week. I have an immense mass of material
to study. You're only wasting time--mine and yours--coming here to-day.”
“Well, you see, your honor,” stammered Davis, “we came to-day so as to
save you more trouble and work.”
“Work!” echoed Mr. Converse, seizing the arms of his chair and shoving
an astonished face forward.
“Why--why--you see we've decided not to push this case any further.
And whatever is owing to you--name the sum.” He did not relish the
glow which was coming into the attorney's eyes, nor the grim wrinkles
settling about the thin lips. “So that there won't be any hard feelings,
in any way,” Davis hastened to say.
“What has happened to you men all of a sudden?” demanded the lawyer.
“Explain! Speak up!”
Davis's face was red, and he found much difficulty in replying.
“Well--you see--you know--if you get into law you never know when you're
going to get out. We feel that this case is bound to drag! It's an awful
big case--and they've got lots of money to fight us.”
“I told you I'd take your case for bare expenses and court fees,”
stormed the lawyer. “It's a case I wanted to prosecute.”
“We know--you were mighty fine about it--but we've decided different.
You see, the Consolidated--”
Mr. Converse came onto his feet and shook his finger under Davis's nose.
“Don't you dare to tell me you have sold out to the Consolidated,” he
shouted in tones that rang through his offices and brought all his force
to the right about and attention.
“That wasn't it--exactly. But they'll take it off our hands--will do the
right thing, now that we have shown 'em a few things! Colonel Dodd has
seen new light. And it is too good a price for us to throw down.”
“You have let those monopolists buy you off. They have paid you a big
bribe because they are getting scared. They were afraid they had played
the old game once too often. I have them where I want them! No, my men!
You've got to fight this thing, I say.”
“You can't drag us into law unless we're willing to go,” stated Davis,
doggedly. “We've taken their money and the papers have been passed--and
that settles it. We haven't done anything different than the others have
done in this state.”
“No, and that's the trouble with this state,” cried Converse, with
passion. “You came in here at first and talked like men--like honest men
who had good reason for righteous anger--and I took your case. And now
you sneak back here and give up your fight--bribed after I clubbed them
until they were willing to offer you enough money.”
“We have only done what straight business men would do Mr. Converse,”
declared Owen.
“We had a chance to go to the high court with a case that would open up
the whole rottenness in this state before we got done fighting, and you
have sold out!”
“Good day. We don't have to listen to such talk,” said Erskine.
“You wait one minute.” The lawyer pulled open a drawer and found his
check-book. He wrote hastily and tore out the check. “Here's that
retaining-fee you paid me. Now get out of my office.”
He drove them ahead of him to the door, shouting insistent commands that
they hurry.
When they were gone he gazed about at his astonished associates, his
partners, and his clerks.
“I apologize most humbly ladies and gentlemen, for making such a
disturbance. I--I hardly seem to be myself to-day.”
He went to his desk and sat down and stared up at the portrait of
War-Governor Converse for a long time. At last he thumped his fist on
his desk and shook his head.
“No,” he declared, as if the portrait had been asking him a question
and pressing him for a reply, “I can't do it. I could have gone into
the courts and fought them as an attorney. I could have maintained my
self-respect. But not in politics--no--no! It's too much of a mess in
these days.”
But he pushed aside the papers which related to the affairs of the big
corporations for which he was counsel and kept on studying the reports
which his clerks had secured for him--such statements on health and
financial affairs as they were able to dig up.
A day later his messenger brought a mass of data back from the State
House along with a story about insolent clerks and surly heads of
departments who offered all manner of slights and did all they dared to
hinder investigation.
“It's a pretty tough condition of affairs, Mr. Converse,” complained
the clerk, “when a state's hired servants treat citizens as if they were
trespassers in the Capitol. It has got so that our State House isn't
much of anything except a branch office for Colonel Dodd.”
“But you told them from what office you came--from my office?”
“Of course I did, sir.”
“Well, what did they say?”
The clerk's face grew red and betrayed sudden embarrassment.
“Oh, they--they--didn't say anything special: just uppish--only--”
“What did they say?” roared Mr. Converse. “You've got a memory! Out with
it! Exact words.”
Clerks were taught to obey orders in that office.
“They said,” choked the man, “that simply because your father was
governor of this state once you needn't think you could tell folks in
the State House to stand around! They said you didn't cut any ice in
politics.”
“That's the present code of manners, eh? Insult a citizen and salaam to
a politician!”
“Mr. Converse, I waited an hour in the Vital Statistics Bureau while the
chief smoked cigars with Alf Symmes, that ward heeler. I had sent in our
firm card, and the chief held it in his hand and flipped it and smoked
and sat where he could look out at me and grin--and when Symmes had
finished his loafing they let me in.”
Mr. Converse turned to his desk and plunged again into the data.
The next day he put a clerk at the long-distance telephone to call
physicians in all parts of the state--collecting independent information
in regard to the past and present prevalence of typhoid; he read certain
official reports with puckered brow and little mutters of disbelief,
and after he had read for a long time that disbelief was very frank. Mr.
Converse had rather keen vision in matters of prevarication, even when
the lying was done adroitly with figures.
He was not a pleasant companion for his office force during those days;
his irascibility seemed to increase. He knew it himself, and he felt a
gentleman's shame because of a state of mind which he could not seem to
control.
And finally, out of the complexity of his emotions, he fully realized
that he was angry at himself and that his anger at himself was growing
more acute from the fact that he realized that the anger was justified.
For he woke to the knowledge that he had allowed himself to grow
selfish. He resented the fact that anybody should expect him to meddle
with public affairs--to get into the muddle of politics. And he knew he
ought to be ashamed of such selfishness--and, therefore, he grew more
angry at himself as he continued to harbor resentment against any agency
which threatened to drag him into public life.
He knew where the shell of that selfishness had been broken--it was
cracked in the meeting where his chivalry had received its call to arms
in behalf of the helpless. Those men had gazed at him, had told their
troubles--and had left it all to his conscience! He did not believe
those men were shrewd enough to understand so exactly in what fashion he
could be snared in their affairs.
“Confound that rascal who inveigled me there!” ran his mental anathema
of the strange young man. “He must have been the devil, wearing that
frock-coat to hide his forked tail. And here I am now, fighting for
peace of mind!”
And his struggle for his peace of mind drove him, at last, to set his
hat very straight on his head and march across the street to Colonel