The Landloper Part 42

"But I cannot take a man into a matter like this unless I know all about him."

Farr rose and bowed. "I'm sorry you can't accept me at face value, sir.

I'm very sorry, because I'd like to serve under such a commander as you.

However, I understand your position. I don't blame you. The rule of the world is pretty binding: know a man before you a.s.sociate with him. But I am as I am. There's nothing more to be said."

"You sit down," commanded Converse. "This is a case where rules of the world can be suspended. For I need the kind of man who dares to face even Symonds Dodd in his office and tell him what he is. Oh, I have just come from there," he explained in reply to Farr's stare. "He told me."

"I went merely as a voice, sir."

"But you seem to have been more than that in getting the confidence of the men in your ward. I know an organizer when I see him. I watched the faces of those men when you stepped before them. They have faith in you. That's a rare quality--the ability to inspire faith in the humble.

First, faith--and then they'll follow. The movement I'm going to start needs followers, Mr. Farr! Can you do with other men what you have done with men in the Eleventh?"

"I believe I can, sir."

"Ah, you have led men in the past, have you?" Mr. Converse fired the question at him. But he did not jump Walker Farr from his equipoise. The young man took refuge behind that inscrutable smile.

"Well," sighed the lawyer, after a pause, "it's the dictum that one must be as wise as a serpent in politics, therefore I am picking out a man who will probably give a good account of himself. But it's a crazy performance of mine--going into this thing--and I may as well plunge to the extent of lunacy. Mr. Farr, the rebellious unrest in this state must be organized. We need a house-cleaning. We need the humbler voters!

The men with interests are too well taken care of by the Machine to be interested. I want you to go out and hunt for sore spots and get to the voters just as you have in your ward. Find the right men in each town and city to help you. You must know many on account of your work for your water a.s.sociation. The fight will be financed--you need have no worry about that. Perhaps you have organized political revolts before,"

pursued Converse, still craftily probing. "Then you'll tell me what honorarium you expect."

"My expenses--nothing more, sir. If I had any money laid by I would pay my own way."

"I think," stated Mr. Converse, warming with the spirit of combat, glancing up at the portrait of the war governor, "that we'll be able to surprise some of the fat toads of politicians in this state, sitting so comfortably under their cabbage-leaves. You're a stranger, young man, and as you go about your work the regular politicians will simply blink at you and will not understand, I hope, provided you go softly. It is very silly of me to be in this affair, sir. But a man of my age must have peace of mind, and that infernal meeting in your ward awoke me.

Furthermore," he added, displaying the acrimony that even a good man requires to spur him to honest fighting, "a cheap politician only lately flipped my card insolently and referred in slighting tones to my honored father." He rose and gave Farr his hand. "I'll have a.s.sembled here in my office at ten o'clock to-morrow morning some gentlemen who will stand for decency in public affairs as soon as they have been waked up. You will please attend that conference, Mr. Farr. We have only a short month before the state convention, and we must bring there at least a respectable number of delegates whom Symonds Dodd cannot bribe or browbeat."

"Most extraordinary--most extraordinary!" mused the Honorable Archer Converse, when he was alone. "From that meeting--to an investigation--from Dodd--to this young man--I have been leaping from crag to crag like a mountain-goat, never stopping to take breath. And here I haven't even been able to find out just who he is--and they do say I'm the best cross-examiner in this state! However, I'll show Symonds Dodd that I'm not to be sneered at, even if I have to hire Patagonians in this campaign."

Even chivalry must needs be spiced with a little strictly personal animosity to achieve its best results!

Colonel Symonds Dodd, laboriously climbing into his limousine in front of the First National block, scowled at a young man because the man grinned at him so broadly as he pa.s.sed along. In his general indifference and contempt for the humble the colonel did not search his memory and did not recognize this person as the young man who had appealed to him in his office. The face seemed familiar and had some sort of an unpleasant recollection connected with it; therefore the colonel scowled. He was far from realizing that this person carried on his palm the warmth from a hand-clasp which, just a moment before, had ratified an agreement to dynamite the Dodd political throne.

If some seer had risen beside his chariot to predict disaster the colonel would have shriveled him with a contemptuous look. For the Consolidated Water Company had that day been intrenched more firmly than ever in its autocracy by a decision handed down from the Supreme Court.

A city had hired the best of lawyers and had fought desperately for the right to have pure water. But the law, as expounded by the judges, had held as inexorable the provision that no city or town in the state could extend its debt limit above the legal five percent of its valuation, no matter for what purpose. The city sought for some avenue, some plan, some evasion, even, so that it might take over the water system and give its people crystal water from the lakes instead of the polluted river-water. The city pointed to typhoid cases, to slothful torpor on the part of the water syndicate. But the court could only, in the last a.n.a.lysis, point to the law--and that law in regard to debt limit was rooted in the const.i.tution of the state--and a law fortified by the const.i.tution is seldom dislodged.

Backed by law, bulwarked by political power, owning men and money-bags, Colonel Dodd rode home with great serenity. He had even forgotten his rather tempestuous half-hour with the Honorable Archer Converse. As a matter of fact, gentlemen of the aristocracy of the state who prided themselves on their ancestry were considered by Colonel Dodd to be impracticable cranks; he despised the poor and hated the proud--and called himself a self-made man. And Colonel Dodd was firmly convinced that n.o.body could _unmake_ him.

He strolled among his flower-beds that evening.

Walker Farr sat in his narrow chamber and pored over interlined ma.n.u.scripts. At last he shook the papers above his head, not gaily, but with grim bitterness.

"That plan will stand law, and no other lawyer ever thought of it!"

he cried, aloud. "You've got an iron clutch on those cities and towns, Colonel Dodd, but I've got something that will pry your fingers loose!"

He threw the papers from him and set his face in his hands. "And they ask me who I am and I can't tell them," he sobbed.

XXIII

THE PROPHET WHO WAS UNDERRATED

The first sniffer to catch the trail of Walker Farr was the veteran, Daniel Breed, an old political hound who always traveled with m.u.f.fled paws and nose close to the ground. But when he went to the meeting of the state committee and the Big Boys with his news their reception of him hinted that they suspected he was making up a political bugaboo in order to get a job. He was even told that his services as field man would not be needed in that campaign. And it may be imagined what effect that news had on old Daniel Breed, who had been a trusted p.u.s.s.y-footer and caucus manipulator for a quarter of a century.

"You don't mean to tell me that you're trying to slam me onto the sc.r.a.p-heap, do you?" he demanded. "I'll sc.r.a.p before I'll be sc.r.a.pped."

"Look here, Dan, it's the colonel's orders," explained the chairman. "It has been decided to play politics a little more smoothly. There is too much jaw-gab going among the cranks. If there is any outside work done at all it will be put over by new chaps who are not so well advertised as you old bucks. We want to hide the machinery this year."

"That's a jobeefed nice thing to say to me, a man that would go up in a balloon and troll for hen-hawks, asking no questions, provided the state committee told me it would help in carrying a caucus."

"But we're taking care of the old boys all right, Dan. Vose is in the pension-office; Ambrose and St.u.r.divant are in the adjutant-general's office patching up the Civil War rolls, with orders to take their time about it. And you'll be used well."

"I want to be in the field," insisted Breed, 'sipping' his lips importantly. "Those fellows are old fuddy-duddies. I'm a natural politician."

He was an interesting figure, this Honorable Daniel Breed. He was ent.i.tled to the "Honorable." He had been a state senator from his county. With his slow, side-wheel gait, head too little for his body, nose like a beak, sunken mouth, cavernous eyes, and a light hat perched on the back of his narrow head he suggested a languid, tame, bald-headed eagle. And his voice was a dry, nasal, querulous squawk--a sound more avian than human.

"I tell ye there's yeast a-stirring," he told the state committee.

"There's a fellow come up out of the Eleventh Ward in Marion that's some punkins in organizing. He pretends to be a law student in Arch Converse's law-office. He ain't a native. I don't know where he hails from. He ain't a registered voter as yet. But he's a man who needs to be trailed."

"Squire Converse isn't in politics, Dan. You're getting notional in your old age," said the committeeman from Breed's county.

"But good gad! there ain't any statute to keep him out. Something has happened to make him good and mad. Some of these fancy jumping-jacks can make awful leaps when the box is opened, gents! Better take warning from what I tell you!"

The committeemen exchanged smiles.

"We are going to steal a little of the kid-gloved chaps' thunder,"

explained the chairman. "They have been howling about machine politics and interlocking interests and air-tight methods until the people are growling about the close corporation they say we've got. So we're going to show 'em a thing or two. Nothing like frankness and open house."

"Gor-ram it, you ain't even square with me--after I have worked politics with you for twenty-five years!" He marched up to the table and rapped his hard little knuckles on it. "It's this way, gents," he said, "and I'll be short and sweet. What's the matter with politics when a man like I've always been gets pi-oogled out of the councils?"

"We don't need workers like you any more," stated the chairman.

"But there's politics to play, just the same."

"But in a different way, Breed. There are the new ideas, and new men can operate more efficiently. They won't attract attention."

"Old Maid Orne down in my town came into church late and crawled up the aisle on her hands and knees so as not to attract attention. And she broke up the meeting!"

"We've got to fall in with the new ways, Dan," said the attorney-general. "These are touchy times. We must be careful of the party."

"I 'ain't never disgraced it, have I?"

"Uncle Dan, we want you to take a good, comfortable position and settle down," affirmed Governor Alonzo Harwood, an unctuous, rubicund gentleman who had been listening, smiling his everlasting smile.

"I prefer to hold myself in readiness for a call to the field," squalled Breed. "I'm better'n three of these young snydingles. They don't know how to organize!"

"There isn't much chance for organizing," said a Congressman, placatingly. "The primaries take care of themselves pretty well."

"Yes," sneered old Dan, "a fellow thinks well of himself, or else his neighbors tell him he can save the nation, and he puts a piece in the paper saying how good he is and sets pictures of himself up in store winders like a cussed play-actor, keeps a cash account, and thinks that's politics. I don't care if there ain't ever no more caucuses. This thing ain't going to last. I want to keep in the field. I'll see chances to heave trigs into the spokes of these hallelujah chariots they're rolling to political glory in!"