Part 104

“After all, you have only my word for what I am and what I have done,” expostulated Bristol.

“Oh no, I have the evidence of my eyes and ears and my own common sense.”

Bristol pressed the hand stretched forth to him.

“I'm not going to talk to you any more to-night,” stated the host, when they were on the upper landing. “It will all seem different in the morning. It's going to be all right after this, Thornton. I'm sorry I haven't a wife. A woman understands how to listen to troubles better than a man. Is your mother alive?”

“No, Mr. Converse.”

“I might have known that. You would not have allowed a mother to suffer--your folly would never have gone so far. You would have been home long before this. Ah, well, my boy, some woman will know how to comfort you some day for all you have endured. Good night!”

The young man knew that Zelie Dionne had been right in what she said; he did not require the added opinion of the state's most eminent lawyer.

XXXII

THE DEBT

Colonel Symonds Dodd sat at his desk in the First National block and clutched helplessly at the dragging ends of events. He failed to get firm hold on anything and irefully informed Judge Warren that the whole situation was a “damnation nightmare.”

“Well,” affirmed the judge, who had been pricked in his legal pride by his master's tongue, “the Consolidated has eaten some pretty hearty meals. It's no wonder it is having bad dreams right now.”

“You're squatting down like an old rooster in a dust-heap,” raged the colonel, too angry to be choice in his language. “You, a twenty-five-thousand-dollar lawyer, come in here to me and say that you can't block the confiscatory scheme of a bounder--a nobody--a black-leg stranger in this state!”

“I'll carry on the fight if you order me to do so,” said the corporation lawyer. “That's my business. We can lobby in the next legislature. We can fight the laws that Archer Converse's legislature is bound to pass, for they're after us, Colonel Dodd. We can carry the thing to the highest tribunal--and then we can fight the appraisals on every water-plant in the state, but--”

“Well, but what?”

“One by one they'll pry loose every finger we have got hooked on to our proposition. I have submitted that water-district plan to the acid test, Colonel. It was my duty to do it. A lawyer must keep cool while his bosses curse and disparage. I have the opinions of the law departments of three leading colleges on the scheme. They all say that such a plan, if properly safeguarded by constitutional law, will get by every blockade we can erect. Now if you want to spend money I'll help you spend all you care to appropriate,” concluded the judge, grimly.

“We'll fight,” was the dictum of the master.

“Then I take it that you have definitely decided to give up your political control, Colonel! A certain amount of popularity is needed to cinch any man in politics. You're going to be the most unpopular man in this state if you start in to fight every town and city simply for the purpose of piling up costs and clubbing them away from their own as long as you have the muscle to do it.”

“I don't care about politics--politics has gone to the devil in this state already. They'll get tired of chasing fox-fires through a swamp following after such lah-de-dahs as Arch Converse, and will come back and be good. I'll wait for 'em to come back. But in the mean time I'm going to have the courts say whether our property can be confiscated. I'll take a few pelts while they're trying it on!”

Judge Warren bowed stiffly and retired from the interview.

Day after day passed and Colonel Dodd was more than ever convinced that the nightmare was continuing. Politicians agreed with him--all of them with amazement, many of them with wrath.

Because the Honorable Archer Converse and the man who had called himself Walker Farr had dropped completely out of sight, leaving no explanation of any sort.

“They didn't even tell me,” confessed Daniel Breed, “and I'm their chief fugler, and here's the November election right plunk on top of us--and even the Apostle Paul would have to do at least four weeks of spry campaigning in this state to be sure of being elected if a state committee was getting ready to lay down on him like ours seems to be doing. I'm jogafferbasted. I can't express myself no other way.”

Mr. Breed, in moments of especial anxiety and despondency when he reviewed the situation, darkly hinted that the grand jury ought to look into the thing. The Consolidated had done about everything up to date except assassinate and abduct, he averred, and everybody knew Colonel Dodd's present state of mind.

However, Colonel Dodd did receive Miss Kate Kilgour politely when she came to him; he had always held her in estimation next to the bouquets in his office.

“I have come to you,” she explained, “because I could not get the information anywhere else. I have tried. I do not want to bother you, sir.”

The girl was pitifully broken, her voice trembled.

“Well, well, what is it?” he demanded, impatiently, and yet with a touch of kindly tolerance. “You needn't be afraid of me even if you did leave me in hop-and-jump style, Miss Kilgour.”

“Where is your nephew, Richard?”