Part 40

The capitalist sank back in his chair, his face growing greenish white.

“Don't you throw that bomb!” he gasped. In his panic he was not able to deduce any other explanation for the presence of this stranger who had so strenuously disclaimed all reasonable motives for his visit. He quailed before this man who seemed to be a dangerous crank--for Farr's attire was out of the ordinary and his eyes were flashing and his poise was that of a man sure of himself.

“What do you think I have here in this package?”

“Dynamite!” mumbled the magnate.

“It's worse.”

Colonel Dodd rolled his head to and fro on the back of his chair, shutting his eyes in vain attempt to find somebody to whom to appeal for help. He started a furtive hand in the direction of the battery of buttons.

“Keep your hands in your lap,” commanded Farr. “I say that what I have here in this package is worse than dynamite.” He tore the paper and disclosed a half-dozen faucets that were still dripping with slime. “You know now what I mean, Colonel Dodd. This is the stuff your water company is pumping through the pipes in this state.”

The president of the Consolidated straightened in his chair, but he had been thoroughly frightened.

While Farr talked on the colonel seemed to be gathering himself--recovering his voice.

“It's a mighty bold act for me to come in here like this, Colonel Dodd. I understand it. I'm a poor man and a stranger in this city. Just consider me a voice--call me Balaam's ass if you want to. But I've come up from the tenement-house districts where the children are dying.”

“What do you want?” The magnate discharged the question explosively.

“Pure water in the city mains.”

“Whom do you represent?”

Farr hesitated. Colonel Dodd scented possible political strategy in this visit, and was controlling his ire in order to probe the matter.

“Come, my man. Out with it! Who commissioned you to come here?”

“I'll not claim that I have any powers delegated to me, sir.”

“How did you dare to force your way in here?”

“Considering what kind of a man I was a few weeks ago, I'm having pretty hard work to explain to myself what I'm doing, sir.”

The colonel knotted bushy brows. This person seemed to be playing with him. “Who told you to come here?”

“The soul of a little girl who was named Rosemarie.”

Colonel Dodd came out of his chair, thoroughly angry--and yet he repressed his anger. This person, more than ever, seemed to him to be a crank with vagaries.

Farr put up a protesting palm. His tones trembled, and into them he put all the appeal a human voice can compass.

“I know I astonish you, Colonel,” he added. “I astonish myself. I'm not much on self-analysis. I don't know just what has come over me the last few weeks. But they do say the Deity picks out queer instruments when He wants things done. Man to man, now, forgetting you're a mighty man and I'm a small one, won't you say you'll give the people of this state pure water instead of poison?”

“You don't think you can stroll in here and coax me to build over the whole Consolidated system, do you?”

“That isn't the idea at all, sir. Treat me simply as a voice--a jog of your conscience--a reminder. I'll go away and you'll never see me again.”

“If you think the cranks in this state can influence me in the least item about running my own business you're the worst lunatic outside the state asylum,” declared the colonel, with passion.

“You mean that what I have asked on behalf of women and children hasn't had any effect on you?”

“Not the slightest. Get out!” In his present mood Colonel Dodd would not admit to this interloper that he planned reforms, and in that moment he unwittingly created his Frankenstein's monster.