The Landloper Part 21

"I don't think so--just yet. They look too mad. I gave 'em the harpoon in good shape, as is usual, but I didn't expect they'd run here so soon.

Thought they would flop a little longer."

"They got their poke from Stone & Adams yesterday afternoon, did they?"

"Yes, Colonel. My report to Stone & Adams showed that the Danburg plan of levels is faulty, that their unions are not up to contract, that their station and pumps are inefficient for the demands. So Stone & Adams had to tell 'em that their bonds were turned down."

"Do you know whether they have tried another banking-house yet?"

"I don't believe they have had time, Colonel."

"But such fellows always do try. Their banging in here on me so quickly looks a little irregular. In business, you know, Snell, if you tie a tin can to a dog and he runs and ki-yi's, that's perfectly natural and you can sit back and wait for nature to take its course. If the dog doesn't run, but sits down and gnaws the string in two--then look out for the dog."

"I must admit they're coming here sudden after their jolt. They look mad. But I figure they must have quit. The jolt was a hard one, for Stone & Adams had been leading 'em on--according to orders."

The colonel stared at a bouquet.

"Have you got your other report--the side report--in shape for me to get a hasty idea? If they have come here with a proposition--want to quit and cover themselves, I need information right now."

Engineer Snell laid papers on the desk. He proceeded to explain.

"If you don't feel you have time to go over it--don't want to keep the Danburg crowd waiting--I can tell you that the plant is pretty nearly all right. So much all right that you can afford to slip 'em a couple of thousand apiece on top of what they have already spent. I don't suppose you want 'em to holler too loud. I can tell you that Davis, Erskine, and Owen--those men out there--are cleaned out. They have put in all their ready money. They were depending on Stone & Adams for the first instalment from the bonds, so as to take up some thirty-day notes and pay bills due on material."

Colonel Dodd meditated, pulling on his wisp of whisker.

"It's one thing to encourage enterprise in this state--it's another thing to be everlastingly paying rake-offs to local promoters who grab a franchise when we're not looking and then hold us up. I don't want to hurt the Danburg men. But my stockholders expect certain things of me and it's about time men in this state understand that we propose to control the water question. Snell, you go and talk to those Danburg men like a father to children. Send them in here smoothed down and we'll do the right thing by them."

He signaled for Briggs and told him to admit Dr. Dohl.

The doctor, chairman of the State Board of Health, was a chubby man with a tow-colored, fan-shaped beard. He sat down and sprung his eye-gla.s.ses on his bulgy nose and drew out a package of ma.n.u.script.

"Colonel, I have felt it my duty to write a special chapter on the typhoid situation in this state for the report of the State Board of Health."

"Very well, Doctor." The colonel was curt and his tone admitted nothing of his sentiments.

"DO you care to listen to it? It rather vitally concerns the Consolidated Water Company."

"You don't blame us for all these typhoid cases, do you?"

"No, sir--not for all of them."

"Why blame us for any of them? Our a.n.a.lyses show that we're giving clean water. How about dirty milkmen and the sanitary arrangements in these tenement-houses and all such? It's the fashion to blame a corporation for everything bad that happens in this world."

"We have placed blame on milkmen where any blame is due," stated Dr.

Dohl. He tapped his ma.n.u.script. "But I have spent considerable of my department's money in making a house-to-house canva.s.s, tracing the sources. The man before me _guessed_. I have made _sure_! Colonel Dodd, the Consolidated water is pretty poisonous stuff these days."

"What's the matter in this state all of a sudden?" snapped the colonel.

"I am told that a lunatic almost broke up our city government meeting the other night, shouting that the Consolidated is trying to poison folks. You're too level-headed a man to get into that cla.s.s, Dr. Dohl."

"I'll allow you to set me down in any cla.s.s which seems fitting from your point of view," replied the doctor, stiffly. "But if that lunatic, as you call him, got an angle-worm or a frog's leg out of his tap I don't blame him for breaking up a meeting of the city government which will tolerate the water which is being pumped through the city mains just now."

"We're working on the filtering-plant--it will be all right in a little while. It got out of hand before we realized it," said the colonel, now a bit apologetic.

"In this crisis your filter amounts to about that!" The doctor snapped a pudgy finger into a plump palm. "The river-water in this state has been poisoned. You must go into the hills--to the lakes, Colonel Dodd."

"You don't mean to say that you recommend that in your report, Doctor?"

"Absolutely--emphatically."

"Without stopping to think of the millions it will cost my company to build over its plants?"

"It has come to a point where it isn't a question of money, Colonel."

"We can't afford it."

"Then let the cities and towns of the state buy in their water-plants and do it."

"Good Jefferson! Don't you know that every city and town in this state where we have a water-plant has already exceeded its debt limit of five percent?"

"Do I understand you as intimating, Colonel Dodd, that there is no help for this present condition of affairs?"

"Look here--I'm neither a Herod nor a Moloch, even if some of the crack-brained agitators in this state will have it that way," protested the magnate, with heat. "Are you going to print that report before you have given us time to turn around?"

"With one hundred deaths a day from typhoid fever in this state, Colonel, that matter of time becomes mighty important."

"Look here, Dohl, don't you remember that it was my indors.e.m.e.nt that gave you your job?"

"I do, Colonel Dodd. But I'm a physician, not a politician."

"I see you're not," retorted the colonel, dryly. "But you're a member of our political party, and you know that the Consolidated and its a.s.sociate interests are the backbone of that party. There are a lot of soreheads in this state, and we're having a devil of a time to hold 'em in line. Every savings-bank in this state, furthermore, holds bonds of the Consolidated. Do you want to start a panic? You've got to be careful how you touch the first brick standing in a row. Dohl, you leave that report with me. I'll go over it. I'll take the matter up with the directors. We'll move as fast as possible."

The doctor hesitated, stroking the folds of his ma.n.u.script.

"You're not doubting my word, are you?" demanded the colonel.

"No, sir!" Even the physician's sense of duty did not embolden him to persist under this scowl of the man of might.

The colonel took the doc.u.ment from Dr. Dohl's relaxing hands and shoved it into a pigeonhole of the big desk.

"You must understand that pipe-lines to lakes cannot be laid in a minute as a child strings straws, Doctor," admonished the magnate.

"Do you propose to lay lines to the lakes, Colonel? I need to throw a little sop to my conscience if my report is delayed."

"Everything right will be done in good time, Dr. Dohl. I will proceed as rapidly as possible, considering that the law, finance, and politics are all concerned. As you are leaving," he added, giving his visitor the blunt hint that the interview was over, "I must draw your attention to the fact that if you bludgeon the Consolidated with a report like this it may be a long time before we can move in the matter. You'll only scare the banks and set the cranks to yapping. Just remember that you're a state officer and have a weighty responsibility to your party and to financial interests."

Dr. Dohl went away. He sourly realized that he was only a cog in the big machine; that for a moment he had threatened to develop a rough edge and start a squeak, but the big file had been used on him. It had been used on many another of the State House cogs, as he well knew. Responsibility as to his party! Safety and sanity in regard to financial interests! He knew that these talismanic words had been used to control even the lords in national politics. He departed from the Presence, muttering his rebellion, but fully conscious that a political Samson in modern days made but a sorry spectacle of himself when he started to pull down the pillars of the party temple.

He continued to mutter when he walked through the anteroom.

Most of the men who waited there had faces as lowering as the visage which Dr. Dohl displayed.