The Landloper by Holman Day (ereader ebook .txt) 📖

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