Part 17

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 Symonds Dodd's office.

The Honorable Archer Converse had made up his mind that no influence in the world could pull or push him into politics. He held firmly fixed convictions as to what would happen to a good man in politics. To get office this man of principle would be obliged to fight manipulators with their own choice of weapons. And once in office, all his motives would be mocked and his movements assailed. Converse was a keen man who had studied men; he was not one of those amiable theorists who believe that the People always have sense enough in the mass to turn to and elect the right men for rulers. He understood perfectly well that accomplishing real things in politics is not a game of tossing rose-petals.

He went to call on Colonel Dodd. He went with the lofty purpose of a patriotic citizen, resolved to exhort the colonel to clean house. It seemed to be quite the natural thing to do, now that the idea had occurred to him. Certainly Colonel Dodd would listen to reason--would wake up when the thing was presented to him in the right manner; he must understand that new fashions had come to stay in these days of reform.

Thinking it all over, considering that really the matter of this water-supply and attendant monopoly of franchises had become an evil, that the prospects of the party would be endangered if the party leaders continued to nurse this evil, Mr. Converse was certain that he and the colonel would be able to arrange for reform, by letting the colonel do the reforming.

They faced each other. Their respective attitudes told much!

Colonel Dodd filled his chair in front of his desk, using all the space in it, swelling into all its concavities--usurping it all.

The Honorable Archer Converse sat very straight, his shoulders not touching his chair-back.

Physically they represented extremes; mentally, morally, and in political ethics they were as divergent as their physical attributes.

“I'm sorry that you were able to take those Danburg men into camp,” said Mr. Converse, couching his lance promptly and in plain sight like an honorable antagonist. “I had been retained and proposed to expose conditions in the management of water systems.”

“I don't know what you mean,” replied the colonel, following his own code of combat and mentally fumbling at a net to throw over this antagonist.

“Yes, you do,” retorted Mr. Converse. “You know better than I do because you own the water systems of this state. But if you need to be reminded, Colonel, I'll say that you are making great profits. You can afford to tap lakes--spend money for mains even if you do have to go fifteen or twenty miles into the hills around the cities and towns.”

“Whom do you represent, sir?”

“Colonel Dodd, I think--really--that I'm representing _you_ when I give you mighty good advice and do not charge for it.”

“I've got my own lawyers, Mr. Converse.”

Both men were employing politeness that was grim, and they were swapping glances as duelists slowly chafe swords, awaiting an opening.

Sullen anger was taking possession of the colonel, thus bearded.

Righteous indignation, born from his bitterness of the past few days, made Converse's eyes flash.

“You are one of the richest men in this state, Colonel Dodd, and your money has come to you from the pockets of the people--tolls from thousands of them. Remember that!”

“Huh!” snorted the colonel, looking up at a bouquet.

It is not often given to men to place proper estimate on their own limitations. Otherwise, the Honorable Archer Converse would never have gone in person to prevail upon Colonel Symonds Dodd. In temperament and ethics they were so far asunder that conference between them on a common topic was as hopeless an undertaking as would be argument between a tiger and a lion over the carcass of a sheep.

Mr. Converse rose, unfolding himself with dignified angularity.

“I must remind you, sir, that I belong to the political party of which you assume to be boss. If you refuse to give common justice to the people, then you are using that party to cover iniquity.”

Colonel Dodd worked himself out of his chair and stood up. “I am taking no advice from you, sir, as to how I shall manage business or politics.”

“Perhaps, sir, in regard to your business I can only exhort you to be honest, but as regards the party which my honored father led to victory in this state I have something to say, by gad! sir, when I see it being led to destruction.”

“Well, sir, what have you to say?”

“I will not stand by and allow it to be ruined by men who are using it to protect their methods in business dealings.”

“What ice do you think you cut in the politics of this state?” inquired the colonel, dropping into the vernacular of the politician, too angry to deal in any more grim politeness.

“Not the kind you are cutting, sir--your political ice is like the ice you cut from the poisoned rivers.”

“It seems to be still popular for cranks to come here and threaten me,” sneered the colonel. “It was started a while ago by a shock-headed idiot from the Eleventh Ward.”

The Honorable Archer Converse displayed prompt interest which surprised the colonel. “A young man from the Eleventh Ward? Was he tall and rather distinguished-looking?”

Colonel Dodd snorted his disgust. “Distinguished-looking! He threatened me, and I had him followed. He's a ward heeler. Better look him up!” His choler was driving him to extremes. He was pricked by his caller's high-bred stare of disdain. “He seems to be another apostle of the people who wants to tell me how to run my own business. Yes, you better look him up, Converse.”

“Very well, sir! If he came in here and tried to tell you the truth about yourself he's worth knowing. Furthermore, I think I do know him.”

“Ah, one of those you train with, eh? Do you like him?”

It was biting sarcasm, but to the colonel's disappointment it did not appear to affect his caller in the least. Converse even smiled--a most peculiar sort of smile.

“I must say, sir, that I have been hating him cordially.”

The colonel grunted approbation.

“But from now on, sir, for reasons best known to myself, I'm going to make that young man my close and particular friend. You'll hear from us later.”

He bowed stiffly and went out, leaving Colonel Dodd staring after him with his square face twisted into an expression of utter astonishment, his little eyes goggling, his tuft of whisker sticking up like an exclamation-point.

“The first appropriation the next legislature makes,” he soliloquized, “will have to be money enough to build a new wing on the insane-hospital. They're all going crazy in this state, from aristocrats to tramps.”

XXII

ENLISTING A KNIGHT-ERRANT

On his way down the stairs to the street the Honorable Archer Converse, moving more rapidly than was his wont, overtook and passed Kate Kilgour. He was too absorbed to notice even a pretty girl. She had finished her work for the day and was on her way home.

When she reached the street she observed something which interested her immensely: Mr. Converse suddenly flourished his cane to attract the attention of a man on the opposite side of the street. Then Mr. Converse called to him from the curb with the utmost friendliness in his tones. The girl passed near him and heard what he said. It was not a mere hail to an inferior. The eminent lawyer very politely and solicitously asked the tall young man across the way if he could not spare time to come to the Converse office.

She cast a look over her shoulder. The young man came across the street promptly. He was the man who had served her in her time of need!

She went on, but turned again. An uncontrollable impulse prompted her.

They were entering the door of the office-building, and the aristocratic hand of the Honorable Archer Converse was patting the shoulder of this stranger. Her cheeks flushed and she turned away hastily, for the young man caught her backward glance and returned an appealing smile.

“Who is he?” she asked herself, knowing well the chill reserve of Mr. Converse in the matter of mankind.

“Who are you?” demanded Mr. Converse, planting himself in front of the young man when they were in the private office.

The other met the lawyer's searching look with his rare smile. “The same man I was last time we met--Walker Farr.”

“I have no right to pry into your private affairs, sir, but I have special reasons for wanting you to volunteer plenty of information about yourself.”

For reply the young man spread his palms and silently, by his smile, invited inspection of himself.

“Yes, I see you. But the outside of you doesn't tell me what I want to know.”

“It will have to speak for me.”

“Look here, I have let myself be tied up most devilishly by a train of circumstances that you started, young man. I was minding my own private business until a little while ago.”

“So was I, Mr. Converse.”

“You're a moderately humble citizen, judged from outside looks just now. How did I allow myself to be pulled in as I've been?”

The young man's smile departed. “I asked myself that question a little while ago, sir, after I was pulled in, for I am a stranger--not even a voter here.”

“Well, did you decide how it was?”

“I was led in by the hand of a helpless child--a poor little orphan girl whom I carried to the cemetery on my knees--a martyr--poisoned by that Consolidated water.”

The lawyer was stirred by the intensity of feeling which the man's tones betrayed.

“And it was borne in upon me afresh, Mr. Converse, that the philosophy of the causes by which God moves this world of ours will never be understood by man.”

“See here,” snapped the son of the war governor, “take off your mask, Walker Farr! There's something behind it I want to see. You are an educated gentleman! What are you? Where did you come from?”

Again Farr spread out his palms and was silent.

“You are right about causes. You are one in my case. There may be some fatalism in me--but I'm impelled to use you in a great fight that I feel honor-bound to take up. Now be frank!”

“For all use you can make of me, Mr. Converse, my life starts from the minute I picked that little girl up from the floor of a tenement-house in this city. For what I was _before_ is so different from what I am _now_ that I cannot mix that identity with my affairs.”

“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 associate 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 association. 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 assembled 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 passed 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 analysis, point to the law--and that law in regard to debt limit was rooted in the constitution of the state--and a law fortified by the constitution 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 nobody could _unmake_ him.

He strolled among his flower-beds that evening.

Walker Farr sat in his narrow chamber and pored over interlined manuscripts. 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 muffled 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 pussy-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 scrap-heap, do you?” he demanded. “I'll scrap before I'll be scrapped.”

“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.”