"Use my den, Daunt! If I can get away from my gang, here, I'll run in on you," stated the Senator. He smacked his palm on Stewart's shoulder. "I know you always put business ahead of pleasure, though it may be hard to do it in this case, my boy! But after you and my friend Daunt get matters all tied up snug you won't have a thing to do for the rest of the night but enjoy yourself and be nice to the girls--not another thing, Stewart."

VIII

A ROD IN PICKLE

With great prompt.i.tude Attorney Despeaux fastened upon Blanchard, of the Conawin, the moment the latter left the company of Mayor Morrison on the arrival of the twain at the Corson mansion; and Mr. Blanchard seemed alertly willing to break off his companionship with the pa.s.senger he had brought in his limousine.

"What's that bull-headed fool been stirring up down-town?" demanded Despeaux when he had Blanchard safely to himself in a corner.

"Have you heard something about it?"

"I was called on the 'phone a few minutes ago."

"Who called you?"

"No matter! But hold on, Blanchard! I may as well tell you that I'm using a part of our fund to have Morrison shadowed. I suppose the reason you went along was to get a line on him. But it was imprudent. It looked like lending your countenance."

Blanchard explained sullenly why he did accompany Morrison to the meeting.

"Well, I'm glad you were there and heard him inflaming the mob," admitted the syndicate's lobbyist and lawyer. "I want to have Senator Corson fully informed on the point and it will come better from you than from a paid detective. Give it to Corson, and give it to him strong!"

"I don't know that I can justly say that he was inflaming the mob,"

demurred Blanchard.

"But you've got to say it! You must make it appear that way! Blanchard, it has come to a clinch and we must smash Morrison's credit in every direction. I didn't realize till to-day that he is out to blow up the whole works. Didn't he preach to you on the text of that infernal people-partner notion of his?"

"Yes! He's crazy!"

"The people own the moon, if you want to put it that way! But they can't do anything sensible with it, any more than they can with ownership of the state's water-power."

The Conawin magnate exhibited bewilderment. "Despeaux, I'm a business man.

I suppose you lawyers go to work in a different way than we do in business. But as I have read the propaganda you're putting out--as I understand it--_you_ are shouting for the people's rights, too!"

"I am! Strongly! Right out open! I even preached on people's rights to Morrison this very day--and looked him right in that canny Scotch eye of his while I preached. I like to keep in good practice!"

"Then why is Morrison so dangerous, if he's only doing what you do?"

inquired the business man, with an artlessness that the attorney greeted with an oath.

"Because the infernal ramrod means what he says, Blanchard!"

"But if you don't mean it--if you have put yourself on record--and if you're obliged to step up and honor the draft you've sanctioned--what's going to happen in the showdown?"

Attorney Despeaux moderated his mordancy and became tolerantly patient in enlightening the ignorance of one of his employers. "The people are hungry for some kind of fodder in this water-power proposition. I've been telling all you power-owners so! We'll have to admit it, Blanchard! The time is played out when you can drive the people in this country. You've got to be a nice, kind shepherd and get their confidence and lead 'em. I'm a shepherd! See?" He patted himself on the breast. "There are two cribs!"

"You'll have to name 'em to me, Despeaux. I'm apt to be pretty dull outside of matters in my own line."

"I guess I'd do better to designate the chaps who are managing the cribs."

The two men were in a window embrasure. Despeaux pointed to one side of the niche. "Over there, behold Morrison and his 'storage and power' crowd, made up of pig-headed engineers and scientific experts who are thinking only of how much power can be developed for the people as proprietors; over here, the public utilities commission made up of safe men, judiciously appointed, tractable in politics, consistently on the side of vested interests and right on the job to see to it that the state keeps its contracts with capital. I propose to be something of a shepherd and lead the people to the public utilities crib! And I'm going to show folks that they'll be eating poison-ivy out of the Morrison crib--even if I have to put the poison-ivy in there myself. This is no time to be squeamish, Blanchard! You've got to do your part in nailing a disturber like Morrison to the cross. Speak like a business man and say that he is dangerous in good business. We've got a Governor who is safe; we've got to have a legislature that will see to it that the committees are all right. And that's why we're standing no monkey business from any mob up on Capitol Hill to-night! Down at that hall, so my man told me, Morrison talked as if he's going to take hold and run the state! Didn't he?"

"Well, one might draw some such conclusions, I suppose, by stretching his words!"

"Blanchard, you must stretch words when you talk to Senator Corson and to all others who need to be stirred up and can help us. If that wild Scotchman b.u.t.ts into this plan he's inviting trouble, and we've got to see that he gets it. He's got to be choked now or never! Don't have any mercy!

Just look at it this way! Talk it this way! He's turning on his own, if he does what he threatens! He played the sneak, he, a mill-owner, getting on to that commission! And he proposes to shove in a report that will smother development by outside capital. Play up the reason for his interest in the thing along that line! A hog for himself! It's easy to turn public sentiment by the right kind of talk! If I really start out to go the limit I can have him tarred and feathered as a chief conspirator, rigging a scheme to have our big industries knocked in the head."

Despeaux spoke low, but his tone conveyed the malice and the menace of a man who had been nursing a grudge for a long time. "Two years ago his newspaper letters and his rant killed that Consolidated project, and I had a contingent fee of fifty thousand dollars at stake; as it was, I got only a little old regular lobby fee and my expense money. And the power hasn't been developed by the infernal, dear, protected people, has it?" he sneered. "If the Consolidated folks had been let alone and given their franchise, we'd now be marketing over our high-tension wires two millions of horse-power in big centers two or three hundred miles from this state."

"Well, I'm not so awfully strong, myself, for making a mere power station of our own state, and letting outsiders ship our juice over the border."

"But you ought to be devilish strong against a man who is proposing to have the state break existing contracts, take back power rights and franchises and make you simply a lessee of what you already own! You've got yours! Give the outsiders a show! It's all snarled up together, Blanchard, and you've got to kill him and his crowd and their whole mushy, socialistic scheme and eliminate him from the proposition. Then we can go ahead and do something sensible in this state!" affirmed Mr. Despeaux, with the l.u.s.tful ardor of one who foresaw the possibility of eliminating, also, the hateful word "contingent" in the case of fees.

But Business-man Blanchard was displaying symptoms of worriment.

The lawyer viewed with concern this evidence of backsliding, but his attention was suddenly diverted from his companion; then Despeaux nudged Blanchard and directed the latter's gaze by a thumb jerk.

They saw Morrison hurry up the stairs to greet Lana Corson when she appeared with her house guest. The attorney seemed to be vastly interested in the scene.

"I don't mean to scare you," went on Despeaux, his manner milder. "I'm not planning to commit murder or steal a state! It's Morrison right now! He's the one we're after! This whole thing may be taken care of in another way--so easily that it may make us smile. I've been keeping my eyes open, Blanchard--ears, too! Did you see Morrison rush to the Senator's daughter?

A fellow can work himself into a terrible state of worry over the dear, unprotected people, when he has nothing else better to take up his mind.

But after a Scotchman goes crazy over a girl--well, when the whole of 'em hold Poet Bobby Burns up as the type of their race, they know what they're talking about!"

"I can hardly conceive of Morrison being a poet or relishing poetry or the ways of a poet," returned Blanchard, dryly.

"And he probably has never read a line of it in his whole life," agreed Despeaux. "But that isn't the point! You may think I've gone off on a queer tack, all of a sudden, but I know human nature! That girl is back here with a slick young fellow, and he's the pepper in a certain mess of Scotch broth that has been heated up all over again, if I'm any guesser.

That girl has been living in Washington, Blanchard. It's a great school!

I've been watching her shake hands. You saw her just now when she shook with our friend, the mayor. That girl isn't down here on this trip simply to see whether the care-takers have been looking after the Corson mansion in good shape," opined the cynical Mr. Despeaux, having excellent personal reasons to distrust everybody else in the matter of motives.

"That sort of a trick is beneath Senator Corson and his daughter."

"Well," drawled the lawyer, "that all depends how closely he and Silas Daunt are tied up in a common interest in this water-power question and other matters. I suspect everybody in this world. I go on that principle.

It eases my mind about slipping something over on the other fellow when I get the chance. I'm talking out pretty frankly, Blanchard, to a man who has his money in the syndicate pool, as you have! But I play square with the crowd I take money from, so long's I'm with 'em. The fee makes me yours to command, heart and soul! There's something--some one thing--that can control every man, according to his tastes. Stewart Morrison can be controlled right now by that black-eyed Corson girl more effectually than he can by any other person or consideration on G.o.d's earth. I've known him ever since he was a boy--I have watched the thing between 'em--and now that she's back here where he can see her, be near her, and be worried by the sight of another fellow trailing her, he'll be doing more thinking about her than he will about the partner-people, as he calls that dream of his about something that isn't so! I wish I could know just how sly the Senator is! I wish I could get a line on what's underneath that girl's curly topknot," he said, fervently.

Apparently absorbed by that speculation, Lawyer Despeaux again gave close attention to the tableau on the landing presented by Lana, Mrs. Stanton, and Morrison.

When Governor North marched up the stairs, said his vociferous say, and marched down again Despeaux grunted his satisfaction. "That's the talk, old boy! Show him where he gets off!"

The manner in which Senator Corson handed Morrison over to Silas Daunt elicited further commendation from the lawyer. "He's being pulled into camp smoothly and scientifically, Blanchard! The Senator is on to his job, but did you see Morrison's mug when he had to leave the girl?"

"I'll admit that it's the first time I ever saw him make up a face when he was called on to tend to business!"

"The Senator is a wise old bird! He knows human nature down to the ground.

He's got the right kind of a daughter to help him, and he's making her useful. It's a case of shutting Morrison's mouth, and Corson is hep to the right play. I don't think the Senator needs any advice from us, but a little of the proper kind of information about Morrison's latest demfoolishness will make Corson understand that he needs to put some hot pep as well as sugar into his politeness. We'll get to him as soon as we can. Make it strong, Blanchard, make it strong!"

As soon as opportunity offered, Blanchard did make it strong. He was harboring a pretty large-sized grudge of his own in the case of Morrison, and it was easy to put malice into the report he gave the Senator.