Leave him here to-night, and come in to-morrow. We'll send you off to the back country with him. Ninemile would be a good place to start in.
Have a cigar?"
Mr. Dodge, much elated, sucked at his pipe, and blew through his nose a cloud of nearly solid smoke, through which the Genius sidled out.
They could hear him sneezing and choking all the way down the stairs.
Ninemile is a quiet little place, sleepy beyond description.
When the mosquitoes in that town settle on anyone, they usually go to sleep, and forget to bite him. The climate is so hot that the very grasshoppers crawl into the hotel parlours out of the sun, climb up the window curtains, and then go to sleep. The Riot Act never had to be read in Ninemile. The only thing that can arouse the inhabitants out of their lethargy is the prospect of a drink at somebody else's expense.
For these reasons it had been decided to start the Cast-iron Canvasser there, and then move him on to more populous and active localities if he proved a success. They sent up the Genius, and one of their men who knew the district well. The Genius was to manage the automaton, and the other was to lay out the campaign, choose the victims, and collect the money, geniuses being notoriously unreliable and loose in their cash. They got through a good deal of whisky on the way up, and when they arrived at Ninemile were in a cheerful mood, and disposed to take risks.
"Who'll we begin on?" said the Genius.
"Oh, hang it all," said the other, "let's make a start with Macpherson."
Macpherson was a Land Agent, and the big bug of the place.
He was a gigantic Scotchman, six feet four in his socks, and freckled all over with freckles as big as half-crowns.
His eyebrows would have made decent-sized moustaches for a cavalryman, and his moustaches looked like horns. He was a fighter from the ground up, and had a desperate "down" on canvassers generally, and on Sloper and Dodge's canvassers in particular.
Sloper and Dodge had published a book called "Remarkable Colonials", and Macpherson had written out his own biography for it. He was intensely proud of his pedigree and his relations, and in his narrative made out that he was descended from the original Fhairshon who swam round Noah's Ark with his title-deeds in his teeth.
He showed how his people had fought under Alexander the Great and Timour, and had come over to Scotland some centuries before William the Conqueror landed in England. He proved that he was related in a general way to one emperor, fifteen kings, twenty-five dukes, and earls and lords and viscounts innumerable. And then, after all, the editor of "Remarkable Colonials" managed to mix him up with some other fellow, some low-bred Irish McPherson, born in Dublin of poor but honest parents.
It was a terrible outrage. Macpherson became president of the Western District Branch of the "Remarkable Colonials" Defence League, a fierce and homicidal association got up to resist, legally and otherwise, paying for the book. He had further sworn by all he held sacred that every canvasser who came to harry him in future should die, and had put up a notice on his office-door, "Canvassers come in at their own risk."
He had a dog of what he called the Hold'em breed, who could tell a canvasser by his walk, and would go for him on sight.
The reader will understand, therefore, that, when the Genius and his mate proposed to start on Macpherson, they were laying out a capacious contract for the Cast-iron Canvasser, and could only have been inspired by a morbid craving for excitement, aided by the influence of backblock whisky.
The Inventor wound the figure up in the back parlour of the pub.
There were a frightful lot of screws to tighten before the thing would work, but at last he said it was ready, and they shambled off down the street, the figure marching stiffly between them.
It had a book tucked under its arm and an order-form in its hand.
When they arrived opposite Macpherson's office, the Genius started the phonograph working, pointed the figure straight at Macpherson's door, and set it going. Then the two conspirators waited, like Guy Fawkes in his cellar.
The automaton marched across the road and in at the open door, talking to itself loudly in a hoarse, unnatural voice.
Macpherson was writing at his table, and looked up.
The figure walked bang through a small collection of flower-pots, sent a chair flying, tramped heavily in the spittoon, and then brought up against the table with a loud crash and stood still. It was talking all the time.
"I have here," it said, "a most valuable work, an Atlas of Australia, which I desire to submit to your notice. The large and increasing demand of bush residents for time-payment works has induced the publishers of this ----"
"My God!" said Macpherson, "it's a canvasser. Here, Tom Sayers, Tom Sayers!" and he whistled and called for his dog. "Now," he said, "will you go out of this office quietly, or will you be thrown out?
It's for yourself to decide, but you've only got while a duck wags his tail to decide in. Which'll it be?"
"---- works of modern ages," said the canvasser. "Every person subscribing to this invaluable work will receive, in addition, a flat-iron, a railway pass for a year, and a pocket-compass.
If you will please sign this order ----"
Just here Tom Sayers came tearing through the office, and without waiting for orders hitched straight on to the canvasser's calf.
To Macpherson's amazement the piece came clear away, and Tom Sayers rolled about on the floor with his mouth full of a sticky substance which seemed to surprise him badly.
The long Scotchman paused awhile before this mystery, but at last he fancied he had got the solution. "Got a cork leg, have you?" said he-- "Well, let's see if your ribs are cork too," and he struck the canvasser an awful blow on the fifth button of the waistcoat.
Quicker than lightning came that terrific right-hand cross-counter.
