Chapter 17

“I resign,” declared old Dan, nipping his little bunghole of a mouth under the hook of his nose. “Those animals are getting onto my nerves. The whole pack and caboodle are chasing me in a nightmare every time I go to sleep. Their condemned glass eyes are boring me worse than gimlets. I'm going on with that book of mine. I've got a new idea for it. I'm going to put in pictures of animals and name 'em for those tin-horn flukedubbles who could never get an office if it wasn't for the primaries.”

“Look here, Breed, you're an old man and you've done a lot of good work in your day, and we're all trying to do something for you. But I have pretty nigh reached the limit of my patience. Politics isn't what it used to be. Different manners, different men. I'm the head of our party and I command you to eliminate yourself. You go back to your job, use common sense, and keep out of things! You are silly--you're senile!”

“You have taken me out of where I belong and have put me in where I don't belong and now you're blaming me because I can't learn a lot of new tricks at my age. I resign, I say!”

“If you give up that job you'll never get another one.”

Uncle Dan put his hands under his coat-tails and marched out, his beak in the air.

“The trouble is,” he confided to old Sturdivant in the adjutant-general's office, “this younger element that's coming along thinks men like you and I have lost all our ability and influence. They're sally-lavering all over us, telling us how they want us to have an easy job. But it's all a damnation insult--that's what it amounts to.”

“All I have to do is lap sticking-paper and gum up the places where these rolls are torn,” said old Sturdivant. “I'm perfectly contented.”

“Then stay were you're put and swaller the insult,” retorted Breed, with disgust. “I thought you had more get-up-and-get. There's a stuffed rabbit in that museum. He'll make a good chum for you in your off hour. Go and sit down with him.” He went over to old Ambrose's desk. Ambrose was numbering dog's-eared pages with a rubber stamp and would not admit that he had been insulted by the state committee. “There's nobody got the right to ask me to stop being active and influential in this state,” insisted Breed. “They haven't taken my pride into account. I ain't naturally a kicker. I've always obeyed orders. If I've got to go out alone and show 'em that the old guard can't be insulted, then I'll do it.”

This time he took the trail of Walker Farr once more and followed that energetic young man until he cornered him.

Farr harkened with interest to the story of the scrapping of the Honorable Daniel Breed as related by that gentleman himself.

“And the moral of the tale is,” added Mr. Breed, “when a gang does you dirt turn around and plaster a few gobs onto the dirt-slingers. That ain't the rule in religion, but it's the natural and correct policy in politics. I have been hurt in my tender feelings. If them animals had been alive and savage enough I would have taken 'em up to the state committee-room and ste' boyed 'em onto the ungrateful cusses who have tried to make my last days unhappy. I know every sore spot in this state. You don't know 'em unless you have got second sight. I can take you to every man who has got a political bruise on him. Good gad! I have been poulticing those sore spots for twenty-five years. You need a man like I am.”

“I'll admit that I do need such a man. I am a stranger in the state. But I'm going to be perfectly frank with you, Mr. Breed. How do I know but you're a spy who wants to attach himself to me for the benefit of the ring?”

“You don't know,” returned Mr. Breed, serenely. “You have to take chances in politics. I'm taking chances when I join in with you. Just who are you and how do you happen to be mixed up in our politics?”

“I am mixing into politics because the men, women, and children are being poisoned by the Consolidated water. That's platform enough, isn't it?”

“Well, I reckon it is, knowing what I know of general conditions. You have got a pretty good head for politics, even if you ain't sincere on the water question,” said Breed, with a politician's ready suspicion of motives. “You've got a come-all-ye hoorah there that will make votes.”

“As to my personality, that has nothing to do with the matter. I am only an agent. Will you come with me and allow Mr. Converse to ask you some questions?”

“Sure thing!” agreed the Honorable Daniel, with great heartiness. “In politics the first thing to do before you get real busy is to have a nice heart-to-heart talk with the gent who says 'How much?' and laps his forefinger and begins to count. You understand, young man, that I have been in politics a long time. And I ain't an animal-trainer--I'm a field worker and I can earn my pay.”

And inside of a week Walker Farr, who had been previously struggling hard against lack of acquaintance in the state, found that Mr. Breed 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 half a dozen of the worst crimes any man can commit and hitch 'em on to him somehow,” urged Dodd, with fury. “Go after him. And when we get him good and proper I want to do some gloating through the bars. He's the first man who ever smacked my face for me--and I'll see that he gets his.”

He left Mr. Mullaney stowing the money away in a big wallet which was stuffed with newspaper clippings. He hurried in to the bar, gulped down a drink, and then went to the office desk and examined the hotel register. Anger and zest for revenge were stimulating in him a lively interest in that meeting which Farr seemed to be promoting. Mr. Dodd did not care especially what kind of meeting it was. He had set forth to camp on Walker Farr's trail and do him what hurt he could.

Dodd was a well-posted political worker. The names of the men were not names especially prominent in state politics, but his suspicions were stirred when he saw that all counties in the state were represented. And no more were arriving. He decided that the conference must be in session.

Dodd avoided the elevator. He tramped up the broad stairs to the floor above the office. The doors of the large parlor were closed. He turned the knob cautiously; the doors were locked. He heard within the dull mumble of many voices--men in conversation. It was evident that the formal meeting, whatever it might be, had not begun its session. He tiptoed away from the door and climbed another flight of stairs.

There were no nooks and corners of the old National Hotel which Richard Dodd did not understand in all their intricacies. As his uncle's political scout it had been his business to know them.

He hunted along the corridor until he found a maid.

“Is there anybody in Number 29?” he asked.

“Two of that new crowd that just came in have it, Mr. Dodd. But they have gone down-stairs again.”

He wadded a bill in his palm and jammed it into her hand. “Let me in with your pass-key, that's a good girl. It's all right. I won't disturb their stuff. I only want to listen. You understand! There's a political game on. I want to get to that ventilator in the closet--you know it!”

“Oh, if it's only politics, Mr. Dodd!” she sniffed, with the scorn of a girl who has seen many conventions come and go, knew the little tricks, and had developed for the whole herd of politicians lofty disdain; she knew them merely as loud-talking men who had little consideration for hotel maids, men who littered their rooms with cigar stubs and whisky-bottles. She started for the door, swinging the pass-key on its cord. “If it's just politics, sure you can go in. Many a buck I've let in to listen to their old palaver down in that parlor.”

Dodd bolted the door behind him.

He felt entirely safe, for he understood that the rightful tenants of that room were locked into the parlor below. He climbed upon a chair in the closet and put his ear to the grating of the ventilator.

He heard only one man's voice. He recognized its crisp tones--it was the Honorable Archer Converse.

“I repeat, gentlemen, that this interest of yours would amaze me if I had not been prepared by reports from our agents who have been so well captained by Mr. Walker Farr. Remember that this is simply a conference, prior to organization. Every man of you is a chief in it. Let us be calm, discreet, sensible, and silent.

“I'm not going over the details of the unrest in this state. The fact that so many of you are present here from all sections is sufficient commentary on that unrest. We understand perfectly well that a certain clique of self-seekers has arrogated to itself supreme control of the party. A party must be controlled, I admit. If that control were in the hands of honest and patriotic men we would not be here today.

“I'm not going to bother you with details of what has been going on in departments in our State House. The employees are the tools of the ring and they have misused their power. I'm afraid of what may be uncovered there when the house-cleaning begins. But the honor of our party demands such a house-cleaning.”

Richard Dodd's hands trembled as he clung to the ventilator bars.

“However, we are faced by something in the way of an issue that's bigger than graft.”

Now his earnestness impressed more than ever the listener at the grating.

“Gentlemen, to a certain extent graft is bound to be fostered and protected by any party; but when a party is used to protect and aggrandize those who monopolize the people's franchise rights it's time for the honest men in that party to be _men_ instead of partisans. Don't you allow those monopolists to hold you in line by whining about party loyalty. And don't let them whip you into line by their threats, either. I refuse, for one, as much as I love my party, to have its tag tied into my ear if that tag isn't clean!”

The assemblage applauded that sentiment.

“I'm going to call names, gentlemen. Colonel Symonds Dodd has this state by its throat. With Colonel Dodd stand all the financial interests--the railroads, the corporations, even the savings-banks. He is intrenched behind that law which limits the indebtedness of our cities and towns. Municipalities cannot own their own plants under present conditions. Those men are even using the people's own money against them! They scare depositors by threats of financial havoc if present conditions and the big interest are bothered by any legislation.

“I must warn you, gentlemen, that it's a long and difficult road ahead of us. But we must start. I have not intended to discourage you by stating the obstacles to be overcome.

“I have explained them so that, if we make slow progress at first, we shall not be discouraged.

“We will organize prevailing unrest and the innate honesty in this state. We will establish a branch of the Square Deal Club in every town and city. It must be done carefully, conservatively, and as secretly as possible.” The lawyer's cautious fear of too much haste now displayed itself. “The most we can hope to do is send to the state convention some men who will leaven that lump of ring politics. Party usage and tradition are so strong that we must renominate Governor Harwood, I suppose, for a complimentary second term.”

“I think we can do better,” cried a voice.

“Possibly,” returned Mr. Converse, dryly, “but we must do that 'better' carefully and slowly. In politics, gentlemen, we cannot transform the ogre into the saint merely by waving the magic wand and expecting the charm to operate instantly. Possibly we can control the next legislature. I do not know just what legislation we may be able to devise and pass, but I hope for inspiration.

“I will say now that I am with you. My purse is open. Command my services for all questions of law. I will establish myself at the capital for the legislative session.

“But there is one thing I will not do under any circumstances--I will not accept political office.”

“You bet you won't,” muttered young Dodd, at the grating. “You wouldn't be elected a pound-keeper in the town of Bean Center.”

But if Mr. Dodd could have seen through that grating as well as hear he would have been greatly interested just then in the expression on the face of Walker Farr. The face was not exactly the face of a prophet, but it had a large amount of resolution written over it.