All-Wool Morrison by Holman Day (ebook offline reader txt) 📖

was put into the pregnant stare exchanged by the two men.
Then the Senator took another grip on his cigar with bared teeth and began to march again.
"Corson, what's going to be done with that blue-blazed understudy of Ananias?"
"Depend on the wrath of Heaven, perhaps," said the Senator, sarcastically. "I haven't had time to look in Holy Writ this morning and ascertain just what kind of a He Ananias told. But whatever it was, it was tame beside what Morrison told that mob about me last night."
"You've had your fling at me about my exclusiveness! What are you putting out yourself this morning in the way of statements?" The Governor banged his fist down on the newspapers which littered the study table.
"Nothing! Not yet!"
"I've got to have my self-respect with me when I deliver my inaugural address this forenoon. The only way I can possess it is by ramming Morrison into jail."
"On what ground, may I ask?"
"Interference with the Chief Executive of this state! Inciting the mob against the militia! Putting state property in danger. Forgery--contempt of court! I'll appeal to the judges to act. I'll call in the attorney-general. You and I were forcibly detained!"
"Yes, we might allege abduction," was Corson's dry rejoinder. "Our helplessness in the hands of a usurper would win a lot of public sympathy."
"I tell you, we would have the sympathy of the people," asserted the Governor, too angry to be anything else than literal.
"And they'd express it by giving us the biggest laugh ever tendered to two public men in this state, North. We've got to look this thing straight in the eye. I told Morrison last night that no such preposterous thing was ever put over in American politics, and he agreed with me. You must agree, too! That makes us unanimous on one point, and that's something gained, because it's an essential point. We can't afford to let the public know just how preposterous the situation was. A man in American public life can get away with almost any kind of a fix, if it's taken seriously. But the right sort of a general laugh will snuff him like that!" He snapped his finger. "We're not dealing with politics and procedure in the case of Morrison,"
"We're dealing with a fool and his folly!" the Governor shouted.
It was another of those cases where the expected guest under discussion becomes an eavesdropper at just the wrong moment; Morrison was not deliberately an eavesdropper. He had followed the instructed secretary to the study door, and the Governor had declared himself with a violence that was heard outside the room.
The mayor stepped in when the secretary opened the door
After the secretary had closed the door and departed Morrison stepped forward. "Governor North, you're perfectly right, and I agree with you without resenting your remark. I did make quite a fool of myself last night. Perhaps you are not ready to concede that the ends justify the means."
"I do not, sir!"
"A result built on falsehoods is a pretty poor proposition," declared the Senator. "I refer especially to those fake telegrams and to your impudent assertion to the mob that I said this or that!"
"Yes, that telegram job was a pretty raw one, sir," Morrison admitted. "But I really didn't lie straight out to those men in the square about your participation. I let 'em draw an inference from the way I complimented your fairness and good sense. I was a little hasty last night--but I didn't have much time to do advance thinking."
"I'm going to express myself about last night," stated Senator Corson.
"Will you wait a moment, sir?" Morrison had not removed his overcoat; he had not even unbuttoned it; he afforded the impression of a man who intended to transact business and be on his way with the least possible delay. He glanced at the electric lights and at the shaded windows. "This seems too much like last night. Won't you allow me? It's a little indulgence to my state of mind!"
He hurried across the room and snapped up the shades and pulled apart the curtains. He reached his hand to the wall-switch and turned off the lights.
"This isn't last night--it's this morning--and there's nothing like honest daylight on a proposition, gentlemen! Nothing like it! Last night things looked sort of tragic. This morning the same things will look comical if"--he raised his forefinger--"if the inside of 'em is reported. If the real story is told, the people in this state will laugh their heads off." Again the Governor and the Senator put a lot of expression into the look which they exchanged. "I got that mob to laughing last night and, as I told General Totten, that settled the civil war. If the people get to laughing over what happened when Con Rellihan took his orders only from the mayor of Marion, it will--well, it'll be apt to settle some political hash."
"Do you threaten?" demanded North. He was blinking into the matter-of-fact daylight where Morrison stood, framed in a window.
"Governor North, take a good look at me. I'm not a pirate chief. I'm merely a business man up here to do a little dickering. I can't trade on my political influence, because I haven't any. You have all the politics on your side. I propose to do the best I can with the little stock in trade I have brought." He walked to the table and flapped on it his hand, palm up. "You are two almighty keen and discerning gentlemen. I don't need to itemize the stock in trade I have laid down here. You see what I've got!"
He paused and, his eyes glinting with a suppressed emotion that the discerning gentlemen understood, he glanced from one to the other of them.
"You've got a cock-and-bull yarn in which you are shown up as a liar and a lawbreaker," the Governor declared. "You've got some guess--so about errors in returns--"
"Hold on! Hold on, North!" protested Senator Corson. "It's just as Morrison says--we don't need to itemize his stock in trade. I can estimate it for myself. Morrison, you say you're ready to dicker. What do you want?"
"A legislature that's organized open and above-board, with all claimants in their seats and having their word to say as to the sort of questions that will be sent up to the court. Staying in their seats, gentlemen, till the decisions are handed down! Let the legislature, as a whole, draft the questions about the status of its membership. I've got my own interest in this--and I'll be perfectly frank in stating it. I have a report on water-power to submit. I don't want that report to go to a committee that has been doctored up by a hand-picked House and Senate."
"You don't expect that Governor North and myself are going to stand here and give you guaranties as to proposed legislation, do you?"
"You are asking me, as an executive, to interfere with the legislative branch," expostulated His Excellency.
"Gentlemen, I don't expect to settle the problems of the world here this morning, or even this water-power question. I'm simply demanding that the thing be given a fair start on the right track." There was a great deal of significance in his tone when he added: "I hope there'll be no need of going into unpleasant details, gentlemen. All three of us know exactly what is meant."
Senator Corson was distinctly without enthusiasm; he maintained his air of chilly dignity. "What legislation is contemplated under that report that you will submit?"
"Some of the lawyers say that a general law prohibiting the shipping of power over wires out of the state must be backed by a change in our constitution. Until we can secure that change there must be a prohibitive clause on every water-power charter granted by the legislature--a clause that restricts all the developed power for consumption in this state."
"A policy of selfishness, sir."
"No, Senator Corson, a policy that protects our own development until we can create a surplus of power. Sell our surplus, perhaps! That's a sound rule of business. If you'll allow me to volunteer a word or two more as to plans, I'll say that eventually I hope to see the state pay just compensation and take back and control the water-power that was given away by our forefathers.
"As to power that is still undeveloped, I consider it the heritage of the people, and I refuse to be a party to putting a mortgage on it. My ideas may be a little crude just now--I say again that everything can't be settled and made right in a moment, but I have stated the principle of the thing and we fellows who believe in it are going ahead on that line. I realize perfectly well, sir, that this plan discourages the kind of capital that Mr. Daunt represents, but if there is one thing in this God's country of ours that should not be put into the hands of monopoly it's the power in the currents of the rivers that are fed by the lakes owned by the people. I'm a little warm on the subject, Senator Corson, I'll confess. I have been stubbing my toes around in pretty awkward shape. But I had to do the best I could on short notice."
"You have been very active in the affair," was the Senator's uncompromising rejoinder.
Governor North continued to be frankly a skeptic and had been expressing his emotions by wagging his head and grunting. In the line of his general disbelief in every declaration and in everybody, he pulled his watch from his pocket as if to assure himself as to the real time; he had scowled at the Senator's mantel clock as if he suspected that even the timepiece might be trying to put something over on him. "I must be moving on toward the State House." He wore the air of a defendant headed for the court-room instead of a Governor about to be inaugurated. "I must know where I stand! Morrison, what's it all about, anyway?"
The Governor was convincingly sincere in his query. He had the manner of one who had decided, all of a sudden, to come into the open. There was something almost wistful in this new candor. Stewart's poise was plainly jarred.
"What's it all about?" He blinked with bewilderment. "Why, I have been telling you, Governor!"
"Do you think for one minute that I believe all that Righteous Rollo rant?"
"I have been stating my principles and--"
"Hold on! I've had all the statements that I can absorb. What's behind 'em? That's what I want to know. Wait, I tell you! Don't insult my intelligence any more by telling me it's altruism, high-minded unselfishness in behalf of the people! I have heard others and myself talk that line of punk to a finish. Are you going to run for Governor next election?"
"Absolutely not!"
"Are you grooming a man?"
"No, sir!"
"Building up a political machine?"
"Certainly I am not,"
"Going to organize a water-power syndicate of your own after you get legislation that will give you a clear field against outside capital?"
"No--no, most positively!"
"Senator Corson, you claim you know Morrison better than I do. How much is he lying?"
"I think he means what he says."
North picked up his overcoat and plunged his arms into the sleeves. "If I should think so--if I should place implicit faith in any man who talks that way--I'd be ashamed of my weakness--and I've got too many things about myself to be ashamed of, all the way from table manners to morals! There's one thing that I'm sort of holding on to, and that's the fact that my intellect seems to be unimpaired in my old age. Morrison, I don't believe half what