"I guess," said Waterman, "that hasn't anything to do with the case. If what you say's true—"
"Oh, it's true, all right enough. You go over to the 'Star' office and ask why they've shut up about Sycamore; ask Judge Walters why certain damage suits against the Sycamore Company haven't been tried; go out among the people who had put the savings of years into the traction company and ask them who's buying their bonds. And then, just for a joke, telegraph the Comptroller at Washington and ask him why he sent out a special agent of the Treasury to look over the First National after the examiner's last visit. I tell you, this town's going to have a big jar in a day or two, and it's just about up to you to get out among the people and tell 'em how they're being worked."
"The people like being worked," replied Waterman, who had been trying to bring the people to a realizing sense of their wrongs in every campaign for twenty years. In a few months they would again be choosing a Representative in Congress for the seat he had long coveted, and it was conceivable that if he should now show himself valiant in their behalf he might avert his usual biennial defeat. It was worth considering.
"The thing to do is to hold a mass meeting and make one of your big speeches, pitching into Walters for refusing to bring those damage suits to trial, and telling the truth about what Kirkwood and Amzi are doing, and then go over to Indianapolis and bring suit for the appointment of a receiver. And, by the way, I'm not as altruistic as I look. I'll take the receivership and you'll be the receiver's attorney, of course. Between us we ought to clear up something handsome, besides rendering a great public service that you can cash in here any way you like."
Only that day Judge Walters had granted the request of Wright and Fitch, the Indianapolis attorneys, for a postponement of the trial of a damage suit against the Sycamore Company in which Waterman represented the plaintiff, and this now assumed new significance in the lawyer's mind. If he got before a mass meeting with a chance to arraign the courts for their subservience to corporations, he was confident that it would redound to his credit at the fall election. His affairs were in such shape that some such miracle as his election to Congress was absolutely necessary to his rehabilitation.
"You don't think the First National's going under, do you? Bill isn't fool enough to let it come to that?"
Holton winked knowingly to whet his auditor's appetite.
"I don't think it; I know it! Kirkwood's a merciless devil, and he's got Bill and my hopeful nephew Charlie where the hair's short. If Sam had lived he'd have taken care of this traction business; Sam was a genius, all right. Sam could sell lemons for peaches, and when people made faces he sugared the lemons and proved they were peaches. Sam was no second-story man; he worked on the ground floor in broad daylight. Good old Sam!"
A Chicago newspaper had given currency to a rumor that the Sycamore line was soon to be put into the hands of a receiver, and while Kirkwood denied this promptly, there were many disquieting stories afloat as to the fate of the road.