they drew
from the faucets. He seemed to be a crank on the water subject, so Peter
Brigg's note-book recorded.

The book also recorded that this queer Walker Farr strolled about
the streets in the poorer quarters, "currying favor": so Peter Briggs
expressed the young man's evening activities in the note-book. That
seemed to be all there was to it. At any rate, Peter Briggs decided that
he had finished his quest.

Thereupon he had snapped the elastic band with vigor and made up his
mind to tell Colonel Dodd the next morning that chasing that worthless
fellow around or thinking that such a fellow could do anything to
interfere with Colonel Dodd was poppycock. Peter Briggs hoped he would
dare to call it "poppycock" in the presence of his master--for he was
thoroughly sick of being a sleuth in the ill-smelling Eleventh Ward.

He did dare to call it poppycock. And Colonel Dodd shrugged
his shoulders and forgot one Walker Farr. The fellow seemed
inconsiderable--and Colonel Dodd found other matters very pressing.

For one thing, those three men from Danburg had brought suit against
both Stone & Adams and the Consolidated Water Company and had engaged
as counsel no less a personage than the Honorable Archer Converse, the
state's most eminent corporation lawyer, a man of such high ideals and
such scrupulous conception of legal responsibility that he had never
been willing to accept a retainer from the great System which dominated
state affairs. Colonel Symonds Dodd feared the Honorable Archer
Converse. It was hinted that the Danburg case would involve charges of
conspiracy with intent to restrain independents, and would be used to
show up what the opponents of the Consolidated insisted was general
iniquity in finance and politics.

Colonel Dodd outwardly was not intimidated. He sent no flag of truce.
He decided to intrench and fight. He cursed when he remembered the
interview with the Danburg triumvirate.

"Under ordinary circumstances I would buy them off in the usual way," he
informed Judge Warren. "But that damnation lunatic raved at me with all
the insults he could think of--then he up with his dirty bunch of plans
and knocked my flowers on to the floor--yes, sir, that was what the mad
bull did--he knocked my flowers on to the floor!"

And Colonel Dodd emphasized that as the crime unforgivable.

XIV

THE MATTER OF DOING WHAT ONE CAN

It was from Citizen Drew that Walker Farr heard the story of Captain
And