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 butts 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 lustful 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.