The Landloper Part 47

"You think you have given us all the main points of what you overheard, do you, Mr. Dodd?" inquired the judge, turning sharp gaze on the young man.

"I can't remember any more."

"You think you recognized voices sufficiently well to be sure that this person named Farr made that novel suggestion in regard to what was called a 'water district'?"

"There was no mistaking his voice," said Dodd, with the malevolence of bitter recollection.

Another prolonged silence. Then the judge asked, his eyes again on the ceiling, "Just who is this Walker Farr?"

Richard Dodd, keeping jealous espionage on all the girl's emotions and movements saw a flush suffuse her cheeks; her hands trembled. She raised her eyes in a quick glance and he detected eager inquiry.

"I don't know who he is," growled the colonel.

"You'd better find out," advised the corporation counsel.

"Why?"

"Of course this thing has been put up to me very suddenly. I can give you only a snap judgment. But that scheme has possibilities."

"As a lawyer you don't mean to tell me that a crazy idea like that can be put through in this state against the combination we control?"

"It will not be a case of combination and money and politics, Colonel, when it gets to the high court. It will be _law_. And I'm sorry you can't tell me any more about the man who has devised the plan. I'd like to know how he dug it out."

"But a gang of pirates can't organize like that and confiscate our property! We're going to tap the lakes. We're going ahead right away.

But can that fool's scheme scoop in the Consolidated Water Company?"

"That's to be found out. I am going to tell you now that I believe an organization of citizens into an independent water district can be made legally and be independent of other debts. Colonel Dodd, if that opposition gets control of the next legislature you can depend upon it that the necessary legislation will be pa.s.sed. We may as well look facts in the face: they're getting mighty restive in this state; the people have been penned in by the Machine very effectually to date--but show 'em a place now where they can jump the fence and they're going to do it."

"But what's the good of paying you twenty-five thousand dollars a year for law if you can't keep the bars up?" The tone was that of the impatient tyrant.

"You'll please remember that this thing is likely to go to the United States court. When you go in there you've got to leave your side-arms of politics--pull and pocket-book--at the door. I will say this: the Federal Const.i.tution guarantees protection against any irregular, illegal, or confiscatory action under state authority. That is, no states shall pa.s.s any law impairing the obligation of contracts nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Now, of course, a corporation is a person in the meaning of the law, and therefore we can carry the matter to the United States Supreme Court, but I want to tell you that if the next legislature enacts law permitting water districts, and the state authorities proceed to condemn your plants, you may as well get ready to step out from under. You are a shrewd man and you understand the spirit of these times in regard to giving to the people their full rights in public utilities. I say again, you'd better get a line on this Walker Farr, because it's either a case of ignorance inspired or else he's a deep one. He has started with a plan that can be defended by law--and the judges in these days are handing the people's rights and property back to them when there is a legal opportunity."

"Why, this Farr is a nothing--n.o.body. Dug in our trenches for a while until he was discharged. Briggs looked him up for me. The only man in this city he has been at all intimate with is an old Canuck named Provancher who tends the rack down at Gamonic Mill. You can judge him by the company he keeps."

"Well, he seems to be fraternizing with better men just now," drawled the judge. "Archer Converse, for instance!"

"The thing to do," suggested young Dodd, still watching the girl, "is get something on that hobo and boot him out of town or put him in jail.

It ought to be easy enough."

"And it will be attended to," declared the colonel, with venom. "We'll kill that one crow and hang him up in full view of the rest of those croakers! I'll put something over on that fellow and have all the papers in the state print it--and high-and-mighty Converse will be so disgusted that he'll quit and the rest of the crowd will be ashamed to keep on.

Disgrace a reformer! That's the surest play in politics! We must get Farr!"

He turned his scowling gaze away from the flowers and found Miss Kilgour looking at him with an expression in her eyes he had never seen there before. Reproach and scorn seemed to mingle in the stare she gave him.

He blinked, and when he looked again she was examining the point of her pencil; he decided that his eyesight had played him a strange prank.

"By the way, Miss Kilgour," he informed her, "you need not remain. Make two typewritten copies--the judge will need one."

Richard Dodd arose when she left her chair, but she did not glance at him. He began to speak before she had reached the door, unable to restrain his jealous temper longer.

"Uncle Symonds, pa.s.s the word to that old Provancher, through the superintendent of the Gamonic, that unless he comes across with all the stuff he knows about that Farr he'll be fired. And I've got a hunter out on my own account. It will be easy enough to catch the skunk and strip off his pelt."

Miss Kilgour closed the door behind her with a sharper click than she had ever given its latch before. She hurried to her typewriter in her little room and began to work with all her energy.

She was so busy and her machine clattered so viciously that she did not hear Richard Dodd when he entered. He leaned over her.

"Have you talked with your mother yet? Has she given you some advice?" he asked. His jealousy still fired him and his tone was not conciliatory.

The contempt in the glance she flung upward at him roused him to pa.s.sion. In the state of mind in which he then was he made no allowances for her ignorance of conditions in her mother's case. He knew what he had done for Mrs. Kilgour's sake, and this att.i.tude on the daughter's part p.r.i.c.ked him like wilful ingrat.i.tude.

He put his hands on the keyboard of the typewriter and stopped her work.

"I love you, Kate, and you have known it for a long time. I tried to show you how much I loved you. I know I did a foolish thing. But I loved you." He almost sobbed the protestation. "I've been in h.e.l.l's torment since it happened. I've been a fool all the way through, but I won't be a fool any more if you'll take pity on me."

She did not speak. Her silent, utter contempt stung more deeply and surely than words.

"If you insist on being so high above, I'm going to bring you down a little," he sneered. "I hate to do it, but you've got to be shown where your real friends are. I have given your mother a chance to say something to you, and say it right. But she hasn't done it, and I don't propose to be made the goat." In his anger he was not choice in his language. "You go home and ask her whether or not she owes me five thousand dollars. Oh, you needn't open your eyes at me in that style!

It's time we all got down to cases in this thing, Kate. I've waited for her long enough. She has simply fluffed me along. Now she has got to do her part."

"Have you lost your mind?" she demanded.

"No! But I lost five thousand dollars when I loaned it to your mother.

Kate, she told me she had a stock deal on--that she would be able to pay it back. Listen! I may as well go the limit with you. I took money that wasn't mine so that I could help your mother out--it was because I loved you. Now you realize how much I have loved you. I protected your mother.

And now, by the G.o.ds, if you and she don't come to the scratch in this thing and do right by me I'll show up why she had to be protected, and after that you'll never draw a happy breath again in your life. I advised you to talk with your mother once before. This time you'd better to it."

She leaned back in her chair, white and trembling, for his tones carried conviction.

"I have hated to open this thing up, Kate. I have waited a long time, hoping you'd understand that I would make a good husband--that I deserved to have you. I'm only speaking out now so that you'll wake up.

You've got to stand by the man who has stood by you. Go talk with your mother!"

After he had hurried out she went back to her work, but her fingers could only fumble at the keys. By effort of will persons of strong character can compose themselves after disaster has been confirmed; but impending disaster that is hinted at--guessed at--is a menace which paralyzes. She was endeavoring to write down what Richard Dodd had revealed of the plans of Walker Farr. She understood that the mighty power of the state machine was now doubling its fist over the head of the stranger who had come into her life in such peculiar fashion. At the same moment she was cowering under the threat of something she did not fully understand.

And from the Dodds--uncle and nephew--came the menace which loomed over both of them.

Then to her came Peter Briggs, who had been summoned to a conference in the inner office; by direction of his chief he had been reading to Judge Warren certain entries penciled in the note-book which he guarded with the elastic band.

"The governor wants you to add these items to the record, so that the judge can have a copy," said Mr. Briggs to the confidential secretary.

"The subject isn't a very genteel one, Miss Kilgour, but orders are orders, and you'll have to excuse me."

And Mr. Briggs kept snapping the elastic band nervously while he dictated, carefully looking away from the young woman.

In such manner Kate Kilgour learned of the existence of Zelie Dionne and of the child whom Walker Farr had protected; Mr. Briggs's zeal in the interest of his employer had made him a partisan in that affair, with easy conscience regarding the matter of the details. The bald record showed that Farr and the girl had cared for the child between them, had nursed it with grief and solicitude, had borne it to the plot of land where the little graves were crowded so closely. Mr. Briggs complacently avoided dates and age and the minuter details. He even pleaded the case, having caught a cue from Colonel Dodd; his record left the impression that Walker Farr, who had come from nowhere--n.o.body knew when--had lived in Marion unknown and unnoticed at the time when he had compa.s.sed the ruin of a confiding girl.

"A scalawag, and a bad one!" commented Mr. Briggs, closing his note-book. "And of course there's worse to come! Posing as a reformer--that's the way such renegades work the thing. A new game for every new place!"

And Kate Kilgour, remembering the vagrant on the broad highway, wrote down the arraignment of this person, trying to understand her emotions.

Her own eyes had seen him garbed as a tramp, plainly a homeless nomad.

Her ears had just listened to the story of his shame.