“They got their poke from Stone & Adams yesterday afternoon, did they?”

“Yes, Colonel.  My report to Stone & Adams showed that the Danburg plan of levels is faulty, that their unions are not up to contract, that their station and pumps are inefficient for the demands.  So Stone & Adams had to tell ’em that their bonds were turned down.”

“Do you know whether they have tried another banking-house yet?”

“I don’t believe they have had time, Colonel.”

“But such fellows always do try.  Their banging in here on me so quickly looks a little irregular.  In business, you know, Snell, if you tie a tin can to a dog and he runs and ki-yi’s, that’s perfectly natural and you can sit back and wait for nature to take its course.  If the dog doesn’t run, but sits down and gnaws the string in two—­then look out for the dog.”

“I must admit they’re coming here sudden after their jolt.  They look mad.  But I figure they must have quit.  The jolt was a hard one, for Stone & Adams had been leading ’em on—­according to orders.”

The colonel stared at a bouquet.

“Have you got your other report—­the side report—­in shape for me to get a hasty idea?  If they have come here with a proposition—­want to quit and cover themselves, I need information right now.”

Engineer Snell laid papers on the desk.  He proceeded to explain.

“If you don’t feel you have time to go over it—­don’t want to keep the Danburg crowd waiting—­I can tell you that the plant is pretty nearly all right.  So much all right that you can afford to slip ’em a couple of thousand apiece on top of what they have already spent.  I don’t suppose you want ’em to holler too loud.  I can tell you that Davis, Erskine, and Owen—­those men out there—­are cleaned out.  They have put in all their ready money.  They were depending on Stone & Adams for the first instalment from the bonds, so as to take up some thirty-day notes and pay bills due on material.”

Colonel Dodd meditated, pulling on his wisp of whisker.

“It’s one thing to encourage enterprise in this state—­it’s another thing to be everlastingly paying rake-offs to local promoters who grab a franchise when we’re not looking and then hold us up.  I don’t want to hurt the Danburg men.  But my stockholders expect certain things of me and it’s about time men in this state understand that we propose to control the water question.  Snell, you go and talk to those Danburg men like a father to children.  Send them in here smoothed down and we’ll do the right thing by them.”

He signaled for Briggs and told him to admit Dr. Dohl.

The doctor, chairman of the State Board of Health, was a chubby man with a tow-colored, fan-shaped beard.  He sat down and sprung his eye-glasses on his bulgy nose and drew out a package of manuscript.

“Colonel, I have felt it my duty to write a special chapter on the typhoid situation in this state for the report of the State Board of Health.”