The Landloper Part 11

"No, sir."

"But I just saw you circulating among those men. Your rig-out shows your character!"

"You mean these garments I wear?"

"Certainly! A frock-coat helps out your pose before an ignorant public."

"He stole that coat from me," squeaked a fat man, standing at a little distance, scrubbing a torn sleeve over his grimy, sweat-streaked face.

"He picked it fair off'n my back. I have follered him to show him up as a robber and a fake. That's so help me!"

Riotous laughter from all the listeners followed that declaration; a glance at the tubby tramp and survey of the tall young man whose contours fitted the garments made the fat man's a.s.sertion seem like a huge joke.

"I can prove it!" squalled the vagrant.

"Beat it! Get out of this city!" commanded a policeman. "If you don't we'll have you on the rock-pile. What ye mean by such guff?" He flourished his stick and the tramp hurried away.

"It's no use," he whined. "Grab and bluff! Him what can do it best always wins. That's the way the world goes!"

"When I took these clothes off the back of my vanis.h.i.+ng friend I felt that they would make a change in my life," stated Farr, with a smile which provoked more laughter. "But I did not dream that they would bring me such prominence in so short a time." He bowed to the man in the car.

But Colonel Dodd was angry and insistent and did not join in the merriment.

"I say you are a labor-agitator. Any man who won't go to work himself has no right to be stirring up other workers against their own interests. You may as well own up to me, my man. These men standing around here know what you are--you have been talking with them. Outside of stirring trouble, you don't work, do you?"

"Oh yes, my lord!"

There was smiling mockery in the tone, almost insolence. He seemed to be willing to display to the rich man the same lack of respect he had displayed to the poor men who stood near and listened to this colloquy.

"Oh, you do?" Colonel Dodd raised his voice. "Listen sharp, my men! Do you want to be led around by the noses by a man who doesn't work? This gentleman is going to tell us what his job is!" He sneered when he said it.

"I am an a.s.siduous toiler in my profession, your excellency. I am surprised that as an employer you do not recognize a real worker when you see one."

This tone of raillery and this stilted manner of speech promptly caught the fancy of the throng. The men crowded more closely and the orator on the trough was silent.

"What do you work at?"

"I am an architect, your gracious highness."

"Less of that insolence in the way of names, my friend! An architect, eh? Well, what did you ever build?"

"I laid out Dream Avenue in the boom city of Expectation and built on that thoroughfare a magnificent row of castles in the air. If you had a bit more imagination I might try to sell you something in my line. But it is useless, I see! Farewell!"

He swept off his broad-brimmed hat with a deep bow, backed away a few steps, and bowed again and went on his way. The crowd guffawed. This baiting of the city's labor magnate had most agreeably scratched their itching sense of resentment.

"I don't know who that josher is, but I hate to lose him out of town,"

confided the orator on the trough to those near him.

"I never saw that fellow before, but I'll pinch him if you say so, Colonel Dodd," volunteered the policeman. "Do you make complaint?"

"No," snapped the colonel, glowering on the broad back which was swinging across the square in retreat. He told his chauffeur to drive on.

When the car pa.s.sed Farr the colonel flicked cigar ashes which alighted in a spray of dust on the sleeve of the frock-coat.

"Bah!" said the colonel, shooting the young man a scowl.

Farr gave in return a smile, but it was not a particularly genial smile.

The young man went on his way leisurely; by his gait, by his frequent and somewhat prolonged pauses at shop windows, by his indifferent starings at traffic and pedestrians, it was plain that he had little of moment on his mind.

He bought a penny gla.s.s of water at a corner kiosk.

"Do you mind telling me," he asked the vender, "Who is Colonel Dodd of this city? I am a stranger and I have just overheard the name."

The man grinned. "If it wasn't for Colonel Symonds Dodd I wouldn't be making much of a living here, selling spring-water. He is president of the Consolidated."

"And that means?"

"Why, it means that he is boss of the water trust that owns the system in this city and in all the other cities and towns of this state. And they pump all of their water out of the rivers because the lakes are so far off, and n.o.body drinks that water unless he has to or don't know any better. Colonel Dodd? Why, he bosses the whole state, they tell me."

"I gathered that he was important," said the young man, and walked on.

He was held up in the pa.s.sing crowd at a street corner for a few moments because a parade of some half-dozen automobiles whirled past. The cars were decorated with banners, and the wild flowers and other spoil of forest and field in the arms of the ladies indicated that this was a party returning from a picnic in the suburbs.

"Would you mind telling me," asked Farr of the policeman who was guarding the corner, "who that young man is--the one there in the gray automobile?"

"With the bleached blonde and the pretty girl?" asked the officer. "Oh, that's Colonel Dodd's nephew--d.i.c.ky Dodd. Of course you know who the colonel is."

"Yes," said Farr. He opened his mouth to ask another question, for the policeman seemed to be of the obliging sort. Then he closed his lips resolutely and marched along.

"What's the use?" he muttered. "Two dark eyes and a red mouth--and I am almost forgetting how to be a philosopher."

Farther down the city thoroughfare he met one who had claimed to be a philosopher. It was Jared Chick, stalking along the sidewalk in his home-made armor. He held a box of stove-polish in one hand and a brush in the other, and as he strolled he was giving his corselet and such parts of the armor as he could handily reach a glossy coat--a gleaming and burnished surface. On his helmet in place of a crest Knight Chick bore aloft a metal banneret inscribed, "Invincible Stove Polish."

"And the mission?" asked Farr, halting his quondam companion, who had been too intent upon his business to pay heed to pa.s.sers.

"I find thee changed, and no doubt thee, too, finds me changed," sighed Mr. Chick.

The mouth of an alley between high buildings afforded a retreat and the breeze blew there fitfully, and Mr. Chick stepped to that oasis of shade in the glare of suns.h.i.+ne.

"I have been obliged to modify my mission in some degree. I must confess that to thee," he said. "This is a strange and wicked world."

"Didn't you know it before you gave up a good blacksmith business to go out in the hot sun and suffer torment, all for nothing?"

"It is very hard work," acknowledged Chick, showing his flushed and streaming face under his vizor. "If I were not used to the fires of the forge I think I would fall down and die. But I must keep on."

"But you are simply an advertising-sign."

"I have modified my mission. I have not given up, however. I will tell thee! I found a man beside the way--a man who had been drinking strong waters and whose pockets had been turned wrong side out. So I took him to a tavern and I sat with him through the night, and nursed him when he suffered, and revealed my mission when he awoke. 'I am out to do good to all men,' I told him, and he searched through his pockets with blasphemy, and he said that I had done him--and he haled me before the court, and the judge said that no man could publicly profess such disinterestedness and escape suspicion, because people in these days are all looking for the main chance. So he did not believe me and he sentenced me to the jail. But a good Samaritan interceded for me and took me from behind the bars, and now in the spirit of grat.i.tude I am repaying him; he makes and sells this stove-polish."