Part 38

Then he sat down again in his chair and pushed a button. “Briggs,” he directed, “send in those three men from Danburg.”

He whirled his swivel-chair and sat there at his desk, his rectangular front squared to meet them.

The three men who came in were of the rural businessmen type, and their faces were not amiable. Two of them halted in the middle of the sumptuous apartment and the third stepped a couple of paces ahead of them. He carried a huge roll of engineers' plans under his arm.

“My name is Davis, as I suppose you know, Colonel Dodd,” he reported.

“Have seats, gentlemen.”

“We are tired of sitting,” stated the spokesmen, with sour significance.

“I understand, Mr. David. But mornings are very busy times for me. I was attending to appointments made beforehand. You made no appointment, and I was not expecting you.”

There was silence, and the three men glowered on him. It was evident that settled animosity emboldened these country merchants even in the presence of Colonel Symonds Dodd.

“I was not expecting you, I say.”

The colonel's demeanor displayed a little uncertainty; he had rather expected suppliants. He knew what a nasty blow had been dealt these men the day before.

“Probably not,” assented Davis. “You expected that after Stone & Adams yanked the gangplank out from under us yesterday we would put in at least one day tearing around to other banking firms, trying to place our bonds.”

“Why--why--Well, if Stone & Adams--You naturally wouldn't take the verdict of one banking-house on a matter of bonds, would you?”

“Look here, Colonel Dodd, we understand you--clear way down to the ground--and we may as well save wear on our tongues. And first of all we have come right here to save shoe-leather. We have come straight to headquarters. Do you suppose we're going to gallop around this city to bankers after the word has gone out about us? Not much! We are here in the captain's office, and you can't fool us about that.”

“I never heard such--” the colonel began to sputter.

“I know you never did--and it's getting your goat,” asserted the blunt countryman. “We've got a plain and pertinent question to put to you--do you intend to ram us to the wall in our water deal?”

The head of the state's water trust simulated anger perfectly, even if he didn't feel it. And there was astonishment in his anger.

“What have I to do with your dealings with bankers?” he demanded. “Probably your plant isn't up to pitch.”

“That talk doesn't go with us, not for a minute, Colonel Dodd,” shouted the undaunted Davis. “You're talking to business men, not to children. We offered to leave the matter of our plan to any three engineers in this state. Why is it that Stone & Adams refuse to take the word of anybody except your man, Snell?”

“They probably want the word of the best consulting-engineer in the state.”

“But he's your man.”

“He is our man because he is the best. We hire him for our work. But we do not control his opinions when he is consulted by others. Oh no! And I want to tell you, my men, that I refuse to listen to any more such talk from you.”

“Then call in one of your political policemen and have us put out,” invited the unterrified Davis.

“Build your plant right and your bonds will sell. Our bonds sell when Mr. Snell reports on our plants.”

“We'll save our strength in the matter of building plants and running around trying to place bonds with brokers who have been tipped off by the money trust of this state. We propose to get it straight from you first. You can't fool us for one minute, I repeat! We'll have our last wiggle right here. Will you take your hands off our affairs?”

“I haven't put my hands on your affairs,” shouted Colonel Dodd, furious at being baited in this amazing manner. Never before had any visitor dared to raise his voice in that office. “You're crazy.”

“You're right--we are--pretty nearly so. Myself and these two neighbors of mine have tied up every dollar we can rake and scrape to build a water-plant for our little village and give our folks clean water from a lake, not the rotten poison you would pump out of our millstream for us. We have tried to do this for our town and make an honest dollar for ourselves. Now you have got us lashed to the mast, financially, so you think, and you propose to step in and gobble our franchise. That's enough to make men crazy.”

“Get out of my office!”

“You grabbed the franchise and common stock of Westham that way,” declared Davis. “You scooped in Durham and Newry and a lot of others. But I'm here to warn you, Colonel Dodd. Danburg is going to choke you if you try to swallow it. We are only countrymen, and we know it. You have always done all the bossing and threatening in this state up to now. But I tell you, Colonel Dodd, there comes a time when the rabbit will spit in the bulldog's eye. If we three go out of this room in the same spirit in which we came into it something will drop in this state. We shall have a story to tell.”