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Updated: June 25, 2025
"All the business I've done was to pay out the money. You know what stand I've took right along." "We know it, Cap'n, and we ain't blamin' you but we don't understand, and we can't find Consetena Tate. His folks don't know where he is. He's run away." "Potes are queer critters," sighed the Cap'n, compassionately. He turned to go in.
To have the town owe money made individual debtors feel that owing money was not a particularly heinous offence. To have the town free of debt might start too enterprising rivalry in liquidation. Therefore, for the first time in his life, Consetena Tate found one of his wild notions adopted, and gasped in profound astonishment at the alacrity of his townsmen.
Added to this literary gift was an artistic one. Consetena had painted half a dozen pictures that were displayed every year at the annual show of the Smyrna Agricultural Fair and Gents' Driving Association; therefore, admiring relatives accepted Mr. Tate as a genius, and treated him as such with the confident prediction that some day the outside world would know him and appreciate him.
Each held a "Per Consetena Tate" letter in his hand. "I have met with some amazing situations in my time in real life and in romance," stated a hard-faced man who had evidently been selected as spokesman. "But this seems so supremely without parallel that I am almost robbed of expression.
Consetena Tate was the secretary the town had foisted on his committee. Consetena Tate had made definite contracts. His lips twisted into a queer smile under his beard. "Gents," he said, "there isn't any mystery about them contracts, however. This town pays its bills. You say no one of you wants to orate? That is entirely satisfactory to me for I ain't runnin' that part. I'm here to pay bills.
The first ones he ventured to submit to the Cap'n before sealing them. But the chairman of the committee contemptuously refused to read them or to sign. Therefore Mr. Tate did that service for his superior, signing: "Capt. Aaron Sproul, Chairman. Per Consetena Tate, Secretary."
But he understood the temper of the populace of Smyrna in those piping days better than Cap'n Sproul did. Consetena Tate was not to be put aside with a wave of the hand. Hiram began again. At first he talked to deaf ears. He even had to drown out contumely. But his arguments were good! Consetena Tate could write the many letters that would be necessary.
Who be them plug-hatters from all over God's creation, chalkin' up railroad fares agin us like we had a machine to print money in this town?" "Them vouchers is all right, ain't they?" demanded the Cap'n. "Them vouchers with letters attached?" "Yes, they be," faltered the treasurer. "So fur as who strangers may be, you can ask Pote Consetena Tate, secretary, about that.
"Gents," he said, standing up and propping himself on the table by his knuckles, "there are things in this world that are deep mysteries. Of course, men like you reckon you know most everything there is to be known. But you see that on the bottom of each letter you have, there are the words: 'Per Consetena Tate. There's where the mystery is in this case."
"Do you mean to tell me," he raved, "that you've gone to work and pinned me into the same yoke with that long-legged cross between a blue heron and a monkey-wrench that started this whole infernal treasury steal?" "Consetena " began Hiram. The Cap'n dashed his clay pipe upon the brick hearth and ground the bits under his heel.
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