“I know nothing about it,” stated Mr. Dodd, with dignity. “It's nothing of a political nature, I can assure you of that.”
The reporter noted that young Mr. Dodd's eyes were red and that his step wavered, and that he exhaled the peculiar odor which emanates from gentlemen who have been prolonging for some time what is known vulgarly as a “toot.” In fact, the reporter remembered then the rumor in newspaper circles that the chief clerk of the state treasury had been attending to stimulants instead of to business for almost two weeks.
“I assure you that I know all that's to be known about politics,” insisted Mr. Dodd. “If there's a convention here, who's running it?”
They had returned from the bar into the main office.
“I don't know--can't find out. That tall fellow over there seems to know everybody who had been coming in--all the bunch of outsiders. But I never saw him before.”
Mr. Dodd closed one eye in order to focus his attention on this unknown across the office.
A deep glow of antipathy and distrust came into the eye which located and identified Walker Farr.
Mr. Dodd cursed without using names, verbs, or information.
“Oh, you know him, do you?”
“No, I don't know him.” Mr. Dodd hung to his vengeful secret doggedly. He left the reporter and went and sat down in a chair and continued to stare at Farr, who remained oblivious to this inspection.
The reporter went across the office. There seemed to be more or less mystery about this man who had provoked all those curses from the secretive chief clerk of the treasury.
“Can you give me any information about these men who are meeting here to-day?”
“Meeting of the Independent Corn-Growers' Association.” The reporter's gaze was frankly skeptical, but Farr met it without a flicker of the eyelids.
“I never heard of any such association.”
“You have now, sir.”
“Is it open to the newspapers?”
“Closed doors--absolutely private.”
“Who'll give out the statement?”
Farr put his hand on the reporter's shoulder and gave him a smile.
“You see, it's to fight the packers' union and so we are not giving away our ammunition to the enemy. Keep it quiet and when the thing breaks I'll give you our side.”
“All right, sir. If it's to be an exclusive for me I'll steer away the other newspaper men. But do you know just why Richard Dodd--that man over there--is damning you into shoe-strings?”
Even at that distance Farr's keen gaze detected the filmy eyes and the flushed face.
“Perhaps it's because the Corn-Growers propose to put their corn into johnny-bread instead of using it for whisky?”
The newspaper man, his suspicions dulled by Farr's radiant good nature and wholesome frankness, went away about his business, but he halted long enough beside Dodd's chair to repeat “the corn-grower's” joke regarding the young man who had been glowering on him.
Dodd got up with as much alacrity as he could command and went across to Farr. Sober, the nephew of Colonel Dodd had treated this person with rather lofty contempt; drunk, he was not so finical in matters of caste--and, besides, this man now wore the garb of a gentleman, and young Mr. Dodd always placed much emphasis on clothes.
“Look here, my fellow, now that I have you where I don't need to consider the presence of ladies, I want to ask you how you dared to mess into my private business?”
Farr, towering above him, beamed down on him with tolerant indifference and did not answer.
“That Lochinvar business may sound good in a poem, but it doesn't go here in Marion--not when it's my business and my girl.”
Dodd raised his voice. He seemed about to become a bit hysterical.
Farr set slow, gripping, commanding clutch about the young man's elbow.
“If your business with me can possibly be any talk about a lady,” he advised, “you'd better come along into the reading-room.”
“It is about a lady,” persisted Dodd when they had swung in behind a newspaper-rack. The room was apparently empty. “You understand what you came butting in upon, don't you?”
“I took it to be a rehearsal of a melodrama, crudely conceived and very poorly played.”
“Say, you use pretty big words for a low-lived iceman.”
“State your business with me if you have any,” Farr reminded him. “I have something else to do besides swap talk with a drunken man--and your breath is very offensive.”
Dodd began to tap a finger on Farr's breast.
“I want you to understand that I've got a full line on you; you have been chumming with a Canuck rack-tender, you deserted a woman, and she committed suicide, and you took the brat--”
Farr's big hand released the elbow and set itself around Mr. Dodd's neck. Thumb and forefinger bored under the jaw and Mr. Dodd's epiglottis ceased vibrating.
“I don't like to assault a man, but talk doesn't seem to fit your case and I can't stop long enough to talk, anyway. This choking is my comment on your lies.” He pushed Mr. Dodd relentlessly down into the nearest chair and spanked his face slowly and deliberately with the flat of his hand. “And this will indicate to you just how much I care for your threats. You'll remember it longer than you will recollect words.”
He finished and went away, leaving his victim getting his breath in the chair. Dodd, peering under the rack, saw him hasten and join the Honorable Archer Converse in the hotel lobby and they went up the broad stairs together.
The chief clerk of the state treasury sat there and smoothed his smarting face with trembling hands and worked his jaws to dislodge the grinding ache in his neck. But the stinging, malevolent rancor within him burned hotter and hotter. He started to get up out of the chair and sat back again, much disturbed.
A man who had been hidden by an adjoining rack of newspapers was now leaning forward, jutting his head past the ambuscade. He was an elderly man with an up-cocked gray mustache, and there was a queer little smile in his shrewd blue eyes. Dodd knew him; he was one Mullaney, a state detective.
“What are you doing here--practicing your sneak work?” demanded the young man. As a state official he did not entertain a high opinion of the free-lance organization to which Mullaney belonged.
“I'm here reading a paper--supposed it's what the room is for,” returned Detective Mullaney. “But excuse me--I'll get out. Room seems to be reserved for prize-fighters.”
“You keep your mouth shut about that--that insult.”
“I never talk--it would hurt my business.”
“I don't fight in a public place. I'm a gentleman. I want you to remember what you saw, Mullaney! I'll get to that cheap bum in a way he won't forget.”
“Do you mind telling me who your friend is?” asked the detective.
Dodd shot him a sour side-glance and muttered profanity.
“I couldn't help wondering what particular kind of business you and he could have, seeing how it was transacted,” pursued the detective.
Dodd glowered at the floor. “Look here, Mullaney! There's a whole lot about that man I want to know, if you can help me and keep your mouth closed. I haven't got much confidence in the work you fellows do--they tell me you can't detect mud on your own boots.”
Mr. Mullaney pulled his chair out from behind the papers and leaned back in it and crossed his hands over his stomach and smiled without a trace of resentment.
“I might tell you something right now about that tall friend of yours that would jump you, Mr. Dodd--I'm that much of a detective!”
“Tell me, then.”
“Just as it stands it's guesswork--considerable guesswork.”
“What does that amount to?”
“A great deal in my business. Take this city of one hundred thousand! I'm the only man in it who is making guesswork about strangers his special line of work. The rest of the citizens rub elbows with all passers and don't give a hoot. There are a good many thousand men in this country whom the law wants and whom the law can't find. That fellow may be one of them, for all I know. I guess he is, for instance. Then I make it my business to prove guesswork.”
“You must be doing a devil of a rushing business!” sneered Dodd.
“I manage to make a good living. I don't talk about my business, for if I should blow it I wouldn't have any. I say, I _guess_! Then I spend my spare time hunting through my books of pointers. For ten years I have read every newspaper I could get hold of. I come in here and study papers from all over. Every crime that has been committed, every man wanted, every chap who has got away, I write down all I can find out about him. Then, if anything comes up to make me guess about a man I begin to hunt my books through.”
“Well, if I'm any good on a guess,” snorted Dodd, “that renegade who just insulted me is down in your books, somewhere. You'd better hunt.”
“It's slow work and eats up time,” sighed Mr. Mullaney.
Dodd looked at him for a time and then began to pull crumpled bills from his waistcoat pocket. He straightened five ten-dollar bills, creased them into a trough, and stuck the end toward the detective.
“Follow his trail back. I never heard of your book scheme before. Take this money for a starter. If you can't find him in your books, pick out half a dozen of the worst crimes any man can commit and hitch 'em on to him somehow,” urged Dodd, with fury. “Go after him. And when we get him good and proper I want to do some gloating through the bars. He's the first man who ever smacked my face for me--and I'll see that he gets his.”