Part 36

“I don't believe they have had time, Colonel.”

“But such fellows always do try. Their banging in here on me so quickly looks a little irregular. In business, you know, Snell, if you tie a tin can to a dog and he runs and ki-yi's, that's perfectly natural and you can sit back and wait for nature to take its course. If the dog doesn't run, but sits down and gnaws the string in two--then look out for the dog.”

“I must admit they're coming here sudden after their jolt. They look mad. But I figure they must have quit. The jolt was a hard one, for Stone & Adams had been leading 'em on--according to orders.”

The colonel stared at a bouquet.

“Have you got your other report--the side report--in shape for me to get a hasty idea? If they have come here with a proposition--want to quit and cover themselves, I need information right now.”

Engineer Snell laid papers on the desk. He proceeded to explain.

“If you don't feel you have time to go over it--don't want to keep the Danburg crowd waiting--I can tell you that the plant is pretty nearly all right. So much all right that you can afford to slip 'em a couple of thousand apiece on top of what they have already spent. I don't suppose you want 'em to holler too loud. I can tell you that Davis, Erskine, and Owen--those men out there--are cleaned out. They have put in all their ready money. They were depending on Stone & Adams for the first instalment from the bonds, so as to take up some thirty-day notes and pay bills due on material.”

Colonel Dodd meditated, pulling on his wisp of whisker.

“It's one thing to encourage enterprise in this state--it's another thing to be everlastingly paying rake-offs to local promoters who grab a franchise when we're not looking and then hold us up. I don't want to hurt the Danburg men. But my stockholders expect certain things of me and it's about time men in this state understand that we propose to control the water question. Snell, you go and talk to those Danburg men like a father to children. Send them in here smoothed down and we'll do the right thing by them.”

He signaled for Briggs and told him to admit Dr. Dohl.

The doctor, chairman of the State Board of Health, was a chubby man with a tow-colored, fan-shaped beard. He sat down and sprung his eye-glasses on his bulgy nose and drew out a package of manuscript.

“Colonel, I have felt it my duty to write a special chapter on the typhoid situation in this state for the report of the State Board of Health.”

“Very well, Doctor.” The colonel was curt and his tone admitted nothing of his sentiments.

“DO you care to listen to it? It rather vitally concerns the Consolidated Water Company.”

“You don't blame us for all these typhoid cases, do you?”

“No, sir--not for all of them.”

“Why blame us for any of them? Our analyses show that we're giving clean water. How about dirty milkmen and the sanitary arrangements in these tenement-houses and all such? It's the fashion to blame a corporation for everything bad that happens in this world.”

“We have placed blame on milkmen where any blame is due,” stated Dr. Dohl. He tapped his manuscript. “But I have spent considerable of my department's money in making a house-to-house canvass, tracing the sources. The man before me guessed. I have made sure! Colonel Dodd, the Consolidated water is pretty poisonous stuff these days.”

“What's the matter in this state all of a sudden?” snapped the colonel. “I am told that a lunatic almost broke up our city government meeting the other night, shouting that the Consolidated is trying to poison folks. You're too level-headed a man to get into that class, Dr. Dohl.”

“I'll allow you to set me down in any class which seems fitting from your point of view,” replied the doctor, stiffly. “But if that lunatic, as you call him, got an angle-worm or a frog's leg out of his tap I don't blame him for breaking up a meeting of the city government which will tolerate the water which is being pumped through the city mains just now.”

“We're working on the filtering-plant--it will be all right in a little while. It got out of hand before we realized it,” said the colonel, now a bit apologetic.

“In this crisis your filter amounts to about that!” The doctor snapped a pudgy finger into a plump palm. “The river-water in this state has been poisoned. You must go into the hills--to the lakes, Colonel Dodd.”

“You don't mean to say that you recommend that in your report, Doctor?”

“Absolutely--emphatically.”

“Without stopping to think of the millions it will cost my company to build over its plants?”

“It has come to a point where it isn't a question of money, Colonel.”

“We can't afford it.”

“Then let the cities and towns of the state buy in their water-plants and do it.”