The Landloper: The Romance of a Man on Foot
had spoken the truth. The two made a team which excited the full
approval--the wondering admiration--of the Honorable Archer Converse.
Farr's power to control and interest men achieved astonishing results
with Daniel Breed's exact knowledge of persons and conditions.
But they were rather humble citizens. There was no fanfare about their
work. If Colonel Symonds Dodd knew anything at all about the fires they
were setting, he made no move to turn on the Consolidated hose.
XXIV
THE STAR CHAMBER IN THE OLD NATIONAL
They did not come furtively, yet they came unobtrusively--these men who
drifted into the National Hotel in Marion that day.
At one side of the big rotunda of the National stood Walker Farr, his
keen gaze noting the men who came dribbling in, singly, by twos
and threes. They were not men of Marion city. A newspaper reporter,
happening in at the National, noted that fact. He stood for a time and
watched the filtering arrivals. There were some who were plainly men of
affairs, others were solid men who bore the stamp of the rural sections.
They went to the desk, wrote their names, and were shown up-stairs by
bellhops. Most of them, as they crossed the office, nodded greeting to
the tall young man who wore a frock coat and a broad-brimmed hat and
stood almost motionless at one side of the rotunda.
The National was state Mecca for all kinds of conventions. The reporter
studied his date-book. No convention was scheduled for that day. He
managed to get a peep at the hotel register. The men who had been
signing their names hailed from all portions of the state, but the
reporter did not find identities which suggested political activities.
It was plainly not a gathering of politicians--none of the old
war-horses were in evidence.
The reporter questioned a few of the arrivals, chasing beside them. They
all gave the same answer--they had come to Marion on business.
The reply was safe, succinct, and stopped further questions. The
reporter did venture to pick out a little man and inquire what kind
of business called him to Marion, and the little man informed him with
sarcasm that he was a baker from Banbury and had come down to purchase
doughnut holes.
The reporter thereupon dodged into the bar to escape the grins of some
of the office crew, and his haste was such that he nearly beat the baize
doors into the face of Richard Dodd, who was coming out.
“You're the first real politician I've seen in this bunch,” affirmed the
reporter. “What's it all about?”
“What's what about?”
“This convention that's assembling here.”
“I know nothing about it,” stated Mr. Dodd, with dignity. “It's nothing
of a political nature, I can assure you of that.”
The reporter noted that young Mr. Dodd's eyes were red and that his
step wavered, and that he exhaled the peculiar odor which emanates from
gentlemen who have been prolonging for some time what is known vulgarly
as a “toot.” In fact, the reporter remembered then the rumor in
newspaper circles that the chief clerk of the state treasury had been
attending to stimulants instead of to business for almost two weeks.
“I assure you that I know all that's to be known about politics,”
insisted Mr. Dodd. “If there's a convention here, who's running it?”
They had returned from the bar into the main office.
“I don't know--can't find out. That tall fellow over there seems to
know everybody who had been coming in--all the bunch of outsiders. But I
never saw him before.”
Mr. Dodd closed one eye in order to focus his attention on this unknown
across the office.
A deep glow of antipathy and distrust came into the eye which located
and identified Walker Farr.
Mr. Dodd cursed without using names, verbs, or information.
“Oh, you know him, do you?”
“No, I don't know him.” Mr. Dodd hung to his vengeful secret doggedly.
He left the reporter and went and sat down in a chair and continued to
stare at Farr, who remained oblivious to this inspection.
The reporter went across the office. There seemed to be more or less
mystery about this man who had provoked all those curses from the
secretive chief clerk of the treasury.
“Can you give me any information about these men who are meeting here
to-day?”
“Meeting of the Independent Corn-Growers' Association.” The reporter's
gaze was frankly skeptical, but Farr met it without a flicker of the
eyelids.
“I never heard of any such association.”
“You have now, sir.”
“Is it open to the newspapers?”
“Closed doors--absolutely private.”
“Who'll give out the statement?”
Farr put his hand on the reporter's shoulder and gave him a smile.
“You see, it's to fight the packers' union and so we are not giving away
our ammunition to the enemy. Keep it quiet and when the thing breaks
I'll give you our side.”
“All right, sir. If it's to be an exclusive for me I'll steer away the
other newspaper men. But do you know just why Richard Dodd--that man
over there--is damning you into shoe-strings?”
Even at that distance Farr's keen gaze detected the filmy eyes and the
flushed face.
“Perhaps it's because the Corn-Growers propose to put their corn into
johnny-bread instead of using it for whisky?”
The newspaper man, his suspicions dulled by Farr's radiant good nature
and wholesome frankness, went away about his business, but he halted
long enough beside Dodd's chair to repeat “the corn-grower's” joke
regarding the young man who had been glowering on him.
Dodd got up with as much alacrity as he could command and went across
to Farr. Sober, the nephew of Colonel Dodd had treated this person
with rather lofty contempt; drunk, he was not so finical in matters
of caste--and, besides, this man now wore the garb of a gentleman, and
young Mr. Dodd always placed much emphasis on clothes.
“Look here, my fellow, now that I have you where I don't need to
consider the presence of ladies, I want to ask you how you dared to mess
into my private business?”
Farr, towering above him, beamed down on him with tolerant indifference
and did not answer.
“That Lochinvar business may sound good in a poem, but it doesn't go
here in Marion--not when it's my business and my girl.”
Dodd raised his voice. He seemed about to become a bit hysterical.
Farr set slow, gripping, commanding clutch about the young man's elbow.
“If your business with me can possibly be any talk about a lady,” he
advised, “you'd better come along into the reading-room.”
“It is about a lady,” persisted Dodd when they had swung in behind a
newspaper-rack. The room was apparently empty. “You understand what you
came butting in upon, don't you?”
“I took it to be a rehearsal of a melodrama, crudely conceived and very
poorly played.”
“Say, you use pretty big words for a low-lived iceman.”
“State your business with me if you have any,” Farr reminded him. “I
have something else to do besides swap talk with a drunken man--and your
breath is very offensive.”
Dodd began to tap a finger on Farr's breast.
“I want you to understand that I've got a full line on you; you have
been chumming with a Canuck rack-tender, you deserted a woman, and she
committed suicide, and you took the brat--”
Farr's big hand released the elbow and set itself around Mr. Dodd's
neck. Thumb and forefinger bored under the jaw and Mr. Dodd's epiglottis
ceased vibrating.
“I don't like to assault a man, but talk doesn't seem to fit your case
and I can't stop long enough to talk, anyway. This choking is my comment
on your lies.” He pushed Mr. Dodd relentlessly down into the nearest
chair and spanked his face slowly and deliberately with the flat of
his hand. “And this will indicate to you just how much I care for your
threats. You'll remember it longer than you will recollect words.”
He finished and went away, leaving his victim getting his breath in
the chair. Dodd, peering under the rack, saw him hasten and join the
Honorable Archer Converse in the hotel lobby and they went up the broad
stairs together.
The chief clerk of the state treasury sat there and smoothed his
smarting face with trembling hands and worked his jaws to dislodge the
grinding ache in his neck. But the stinging, malevolent rancor within
him burned hotter and hotter. He started to get up out of the chair and
sat back again, much disturbed.
A man who had been hidden by an adjoining rack of newspapers was now
leaning forward, jutting his head past the ambuscade. He was an elderly
man with an up-cocked gray mustache, and there was a queer little smile
in his shrewd blue eyes. Dodd knew him; he was one Mullaney, a state
detective.
“What are you doing here--practicing your sneak work?” demanded the
young man. As a state official he did not entertain a high opinion of
the free-lance organization to which Mullaney belonged.
“I'm here reading a paper--supposed it's what the room is for,” returned
Detective Mullaney. “But excuse me--I'll get out. Room seems to be
reserved for prize-fighters.”
“You keep your mouth shut about that--that insult.”
“I never talk--it would hurt my business.”
“I don't fight in a public place. I'm a gentleman. I want you to
remember what you saw, Mullaney! I'll get to that cheap bum in a way he
won't forget.”
“Do you mind telling me who your friend is?” asked the detective.
Dodd shot him a sour side-glance and muttered profanity.
“I couldn't help wondering what particular kind of business you and he
could have, seeing how it was transacted,” pursued the detective.
Dodd glowered at the floor. “Look here, Mullaney! There's a whole lot
about that man I want to know, if you can help me and keep your mouth
closed. I haven't got much confidence in the work you fellows do--they
tell me you can't detect mud on your own boots.”
Mr. Mullaney pulled his chair out from behind the papers and leaned back
in it and crossed his hands over his stomach and smiled without a trace
of resentment.
“I might tell you something right now about that tall friend of yours
that would jump you, Mr. Dodd--I'm that much of a detective!”
“Tell me, then.”
“Just as it stands it's guesswork--considerable guesswork.”
“What does that amount to?”
“A great deal in my business. Take this city of one hundred thousand!
I'm the only man in it who is making guesswork about strangers his
special line of work. The rest of the citizens rub elbows with all
passers and don't give a hoot. There are a good many thousand men in
this country whom the law wants and whom the law can't find. That fellow
may be one of them, for all I know. I guess he is, for instance. Then I
make it my business to prove guesswork.”
“You must be doing a devil of a rushing business!” sneered Dodd.
“I manage to make a good living. I don't talk about my business, for if
I should blow it I wouldn't have any. I say, I _guess_! Then I spend my
spare time hunting through my books of pointers. For ten years I have
read every newspaper I could get hold of. I come in here and study
papers from all over. Every crime that has been committed, every man
wanted, every chap who has got away, I write down all I can find out
about him. Then, if anything comes up to make me guess about a man I
begin to hunt my books through.”
“Well, if I'm any good on a guess,” snorted Dodd, “that renegade who
just insulted me is down in your books, somewhere. You'd better hunt.”
“It's slow work and eats up time,” sighed Mr. Mullaney.
Dodd looked at him for a time and then began to pull crumpled bills from
his waistcoat pocket. He straightened five ten-dollar bills, creased
them into a trough, and stuck the end toward the detective.
“Follow his trail back. I never heard of your book scheme before. Take
this money for a starter. If you can't find him in your books, pick out