The Landloper - Holman Day (13 inch ebook reader .TXT) 📗

be done? Mr. Converse hasn't told us! We can clean up politics, perhaps, but it seems to me that we'll never be able to clean up the dirtiest and most dangerous mess."
On the silence that followed broke a voice which made Dodd, his ear to the grating, grate his teeth. His hatred recognized this speaker. It was Walker Farr.
"I apologize for venturing to speak in this meeting," he said. "But if that gentleman's question isn't answered here and now in some way I'm afraid men will go away discouraged. I have heard the same question, Mr. Converse, as I have traveled about the state lately. I have thought about this matter constantly, in my poor fashion. And because I went into that job of pondering with an open mind is the reason, perhaps, why a strange idea has come to me. You know they say that strange notions are born out of ignorance. The better way would have been, possibly, to submit the plan first of all to your legal mind, Mr. Converse. I will keep silence now and confer with you, sir, if you think best." His tone was wistful.
"Talk it out in open meeting," cried the cordial voice of Mr. Converse. "Free speech and all of us taken into confidence--that's the spirit of this movement of ours!"
"Has it ever occurred to anybody to form a new municipality for water purposes only? I have studied your state constitution, and the language in which the debt limit of five percent is provided I find applies strictly to towns and cities. Suppose the citizens of Marion, together with the adjoining towns of Weston and Turner, all of them now served by the Consolidated, should unite simply as individuals for the common purpose of owning and operating their own water-plant--form, say a water district?"
"An independent body politic and corporate?" It was Converse's voice and it betrayed quick interest and some astonishment.
"I suppose that would be the legal name, sir. Wouldn't it be possible to organize such a combination of the people, distinct from other municipal responsibilities? Then if we can elect the right men to our legislature we can go to the State House and ask for some legislation that will enable us to take over systems by the right of eminent domain, provide a plan of fair appraisal, give us a law which will make water-district bonds a legal investment for savings-banks. In short, gentlemen, I repeat, this plan is nothing more than an organization of the desired territory and people into a new, distinct, and separate municipality for water purposes only, leaving all other forms of municipal government to pursue their accustomed functions precisely as though the district had not been organized. That's the idea as best I can state it in few words."
There was a long period of silence.
Dodd, listening to the mutterings of a revolt which threatened the whole political fabric which protected him, his interest clearing his brain of the liquor fog, could imagine the scene below. That assemblage was staring wide-eyed at Archer Converse, the law's best-grounded man in the state.
"It is very modest to call that suggestion an idea," stated Mr. Converse, at last. "Mr. Farr, if I can find the necessary law in our statutes to back it up, it's an inspiration."
There was the ring of conviction in his tones.
Mr. Dodd left the grating and escaped from the hotel.
He fairly cantered to headquarters in the First National block; he felt a politician's frightened conviction that he had something mighty important to tell his uncle.


XXV
A GIRL AND A MATTER OF HONOR
It had been a protracted session.
Judge Ambrose Warren, corporation counsel for the Consolidated, leaned back in his chair and gazed at the ceiling over the peak of the skeleton structure he had erected in front of his nose with his fingers.
Colonel Dodd squinted first at his nephew and then at the bouquet on his desk.
The nephew had been attempting by all the methods known to the appealing male to win only one return glance from Kate Kilgour; but the young lady held her eyes on her note-book, poised her pencil above the page, and waited for more of that conversation and statement of which she had been the silent recorder.
"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 passed. 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 Constitution guarantees protection against any irregular, illegal, or confiscatory action under state authority. That is, no states shall pass 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--nobody. 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, pass 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 passion. 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 attitude on the daughter's part pricked him like wilful ingratitude.
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 hell'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