Part 92

“Where is that man? Let me deal with him.”

“It must be done through me.”

“If you wasn't my nephew I'd think this was blackmail.”

Young Dodd stepped back to avoid the glare in his uncle's eyes.

The colonel turned away and listened. Farr's voice was raised now in solemn appeal.

“The idea of my letting myself get rattled by a crack-brained demagogue,” muttered the colonel. He had been fondling the outside of his coat furtively, locating his check-book. Now he took his hand away.

“It is well to respect service and to show courtesy, gentlemen. I have listened with interest to the eulogies which have been given Governor Harwood. He is, without doubt, an amiable gentleman. But let me tell you that the next legislature is going to be asked to pass a law which will be a club with which the people will rap the knuckles of Greed till that unholy clutch on the water systems of this state will be loosened for ever.”

The delegates stared at him for a few seconds when he paused, and then a tumult of applause greeted his utterance.

“I ask you, gentlemen, whether Governor Harwood--and you know him well and how he has been chosen--will ever sign a bill that will take profit from the hands of his political makers even to give that profit to the people who are the rightful owners?”

This time men were silent, but he knew what they thought from the manner in which they looked at him.

“I do not need to tell you that the veto of a bill by a governor means, in most cases, its death. Gentlemen, it would be polite and kind and gracious of you to bow low here to-day and hand up the nomination to the amiable Governor Harwood. But with the conditions as they are in this state are you going to be polite, merely, while the hearses are rumbling down your streets? I have no way of knowing how many of you into whose eyes I am looking have seen death enter your own homes from the taps of this much-promising, little-accomplishing water syndicate. But if you have seen death touch your loved ones, or if you go home from here and behold fever ravaging your community, it will be poor consolation to your soul to remember that at least you were polite to an amiable man who desired the honor of a renomination.”

The faces of the convention showed that this blunt yet shrewd appeal to the individual antagonism of men had produced profound effect.

“But that is only one feature of what this state demands and needs, gentlemen,” was Farr's ringing declaration. “This struggle for pure water has opened a broad avenue. The towns and cities of this state must take back into their own hands the properties and franchises which have been mismanaged by the men to whose hands unwise gift by the people has intrusted the people's own. We need a man in the Big Chair of State who will stand with the people in this crusade!”

This amazing declaration in open convention produced as much consternation on the platform as if Farr had dropped a bomb there.

He uttered something which was worse than mere political rebellion: he was proposing to take for the people properties which constituted the backbone of the oligarchy's power in state affairs.

Colonel Dodd had been growling behind the chairman, angrily endeavoring to get the ear of that gentleman. But the chairman seemed to be as wholly absorbed by this astonishing arraignment as were the delegates.

The head of the state machine, for the first time in his career, was compelled to come into the open instead of through the mouth of a lieutenant. He could not wait to give orders.

He rose and stamped to the front of the platform. His voice rang hoarse and loud.

“There can be no more of this unparliamentary and irregular nonsense. What has got into this convention? Don't you understand that no speaker is allowed to break the rules and attack a man under guise of nominating another? Mr. Chairman, I demand that this slanderer be removed from the hall and that we proceed to the nomination of a governor.”

There was a hush during which Farr and Colonel Dodd looked at each other, crossing their stares like long rapiers over the terraced heads.

“I fear I was wrong,” confessed Farr, gently. “But we poor folks down in the ranks don't know much about the rules, and when we are struggling to save the ones we love we are apt to forget and talk to the heart of things. I am not trying to show that I am a skilful orator, gentlemen of the convention.” He held up his arms. “I am crying for Justice!”

The delegates broke into applause once more.

And Walker Farr sent a queer look straight into the eyes of the colonel.

Conviction slapped Colonel Symonds Dodd in his mental face with a violence that made him blink!

This man was no amateur in understanding how to sway an audience. To be sure, he had transgressed parliamentary usage, but in those words he had driven home facts that all knew to be truths--truths which others had been afraid to voice, but which, once put into words in public, tied the hideous stamp of ring favoritism upon Governor Harwood, made him a candidate who could not be trusted.

The colonel understood, and he also saw plainly that the most of the audience had accepted the apology, and held no prejudice against the speaker.

“Now that I understand what the rules governing nominations are I will not break them again,” declared Farr.

But like a shrewd and not over-scrupulous lawyer he had jabbed into the proceedings a stinging truth which, though excluded by the rules, nevertheless served vitally the big purpose of his efforts; the colonel understood that, too, and turned back to his chair fairly livid with rage.