100%: the Story of a Patriot
Produced by Charles Aldarondo
100%: THE STORY OF A PATRIOT
By Upton Sinclair
Published By The Author
Pasadena, California
1920
TO MY WIFE
Who is the creator of the most charming character in this story, “Mrs. Godd,” and who positively refuses to permit the book to go to press until it has been explained that the character is a Grecian Godd and not a Hebrew Godd, so that no one may accuse the creator of sacrilege.
Section 1
Now and then it occurs to one to reflect upon what slender threads of accident depend the most important circumstances of his life; to look back and shudder, realizing how close to the edge of nothingness his being has come. A young man is walking down the street, quite casually, with an empty mind and no set purpose; he comes to a crossing, and for no reason that he could tell he takes the right hand turn instead of the left; and so it happens that he encounters a blue-eyed girl, who sets his heart to beating. He meets the girl, marries her--and she became your mother. But now, suppose the young man had taken the left hand turn instead of the right, and had never met the blue-eyed girl; where would you be now, and what would have become of those qualities of mind which you consider of importance to the world, and those grave affairs of business to which your time is devoted?
Something like that it was which befell Peter Gudge; just such an accident, changing the whole current of his life, and making the series of events with which this story deals. Peter was walking down the street one afternoon, when a woman approached and held out to him a printed leaflet. “Read this, please,” she said.
And Peter, who was hungry, and at odds with the world, answered gruffly: “I got no money.” He thought it was an advertising dodger, and he said: “I can’t buy nothin’.”
“It isn’t anything for sale,” answered the woman. “It’s a message.”
“Religion?” said Peter. “I just got kicked out of a church.”
“No, not a church,” said the woman. “It’s something different; put it in your pocket.” She was an elderly woman with gray hair, and she followed along, smiling pleasantly at this frail, poor-looking stranger, but nagging at him. “Read it some time when you’ve nothing else to do.” And so Peter, just to get rid of her, took the leaflet and thrust it into his pocket, and went on, and in a minute or two had forgotten all about it.
Peter was thinking--or rather Peter’s stomach was thinking for him; for when you have had nothing to eat all day, and nothing on the day before but a cup of coffee and one sandwich, your thought-centers are transferred from the top to the middle of you. Peter was thinking that this was a hell of a life. Who could have foreseen that just because he had stolen one miserable fried doughnut, he would lose his easy job and his chance of rising in the world? Peter’s whole being was concentrated on the effort to rise in the world; to get success, which means money, which means ease and pleasure--the magic names which lure all human creatures.
But who could have foreseen that Mrs. Smithers would have kept count of those fried doughnuts every time anybody passed thru her pantry? And it was only that one ridiculous circumstance which had brought Peter to his present misery. But for that he might have had his lunch of bread and dried herring and weak tea in the home of the shoe-maker’s wife, and might have still been busy with his job of stirring up dissension in the First Apostolic Church, otherwise known as the Holy Rollers, and of getting the Rev. Gamaliel Lunk turned out, and Shoemaker Smithers established at the job of pastor, with Peter Gudge as his right hand man.
Always it had been like that, thru Peter’s twenty years of life. Time after time he would get his feeble clutch fixed upon the ladder of prosperity, and then something would happen--some wretched thing like the stealing of a fried doughnut--to pry him loose and tumble him down again into the pit of misery.
So Peter walked along, with his belt drawn tight, and his restless blue eyes wandering here and there, looking for a place to get a meal. There were jobs to be had, but they were hard jobs, and Peter wanted an easy one. There are people in this world who live by their muscles, and others who live by their wits; Peter belonged to the latter class; and had missed many a meal rather than descend in the social scale.
Peter looked into the faces of everyone he passed, searching for a possible opening. Some returned his glance, but never for more than a second, for they saw an insignificant looking man, undersized, undernourished, and with one shoulder higher than the other, a weak chin and mouth, crooked teeth, and a brown moustache too feeble to hold itself up at the corners. Peters’ straw hat had many straws missing, his second-hand brown suit was become third-hand, and his shoes were turning over at the sides. In a city where everybody was “hustling,” everybody, as they phrased it, “on the make,” why should anyone take a second glance at Peter Gudge? Why should anyone care about the restless soul hidden inside him, or dream that Peter was, in his own obscure way, a sort of genius? No one did care; no one did dream.
It was about two o’clock of an afternoon in July, and the sun beat down upon the streets of American City. There were crowds upon the streets, and Peter noticed that everywhere were flags and bunting. Once or twice he heard the strains of distant music, and wondered what was “up.” Peter had not been reading the newspapers; all his attention had been taken up by the quarrels of the Smithers faction and the Lunk faction in the First Apostolic Church, otherwise known as the Holy Rollers, and great events that had been happening in the world outside were of no concern to him. Peter knew vaguely that on the other side of the world half a dozen mighty nations were locked together in a grip of death; the whole earth was shaken with their struggles, and Peter had felt a bit of the trembling now and then. But Peter did not know that his own country had anything to do with this European quarrel, and did not know that certain great interests thruout the country had set themselves to rouse the public to action.
This movement had reached American City, and the streets had broken out in a blaze of patriotic display. In all the windows of the stores there were signs: “Wake up, America!” Across the broad Main Street there were banners: “America Prepare!” Down in the square at one end of the street a small army was gathering--old veterans of the Civil War, and middle-aged veterans of the Spanish War, and regiments of the state militia, and brigades of marines and sailors from the ships in the harbor, and members of fraternal lodges with their Lord High Chief Grand Marshals on horseback with gold sashes and waving white plumes, and all the notables of the city in carriages, and a score of bands to stir their feet and ten thousand flags waving above their heads. “Wake up America!” And here was Peter Gudge, with an empty stomach, coming suddenly upon the swarming crowds in Main Street, and having no remotest idea what it was all about.
A crowd suggested one thing to Peter. For seven years of his young life he had been assistant to Pericles Priam, and had traveled over America selling Priam’s Peerless Pain Paralyzer; they had ridden in an automobile, and wherever there was a fair or a convention or an excursion or a picnic, they were on hand, and Pericles Priam would stop at a place where the crowds were thickest, and ring a dinner bell, and deliver his super-eloquent message to humanity--the elixir of life revealed, suffering banished from the earth, and all inconveniences of this mortal state brought to an end for one dollar per bottle of fifteen per cent opium. It had been Peter’s job to handle the bottles and take in the coin; and so now, when he saw the crowd, he looked about him eagerly. Perhaps there might be here some vender of corn-plasters or ink-stain removers, or some three card monte man to whom Peter could attach himself for the price of a sandwich.
Peter wormed his way thru the crowd for two or three blocks, but saw nothing more promising than venders of American flags on little sticks, and of patriotic buttons with “Wake up America!” But then, on the other side of the street at one of the crossings Peter saw a man standing on a truck making a speech, and he dug his way thru the crowd, elbowing, sliding this way and that, begging everybody’s pardon--until at last he was out of the crowd, and standing in the open way which had been cleared for the procession, a seemingly endless road lined with solid walls of human beings, with blue-uniformed policemen holding them back. Peter started to run across--and at that same instant came the end of the world.
Section 2
One who seeks to tell about events in words comes occasionally upon a fundamental difficulty. An event of colossal and overwhelming significance may happen all at once, but the words which describe it have to come one by one in a long chain. The event may reveal itself without a moment’s warning; but if one is to give a sense of it in words, one must prepare for it, build up to it, awaken anticipation, establish a climax. If the description of this event which fate sprung upon Peter Gudge as he was crossing the street were limited to the one word “BANG” in letters a couple of inches high across the page, the impression would hardly be adequate.
The end of the world, it seemed to Peter, when he was able to collect enough of his terrified wits to think about it. But at first there was no thinking; there was only sensation--a terrific roar, as if the whole universe had suddenly turned to sound; a blinding white glare, as of all the lightnings of the heavens; a blow that picked him up as if he had been a piece of thistledown, and flung him across the street and against the side of a building. Peter fell upon the sidewalk in a heap, deafened, blinded, stunned; and there he lay--he had no idea how long-until gradually his senses began to return to him, and from the confusion certain factors began to stand out: a faint gray smoke that seemed to lie upon the ground, a bitter odor that stung the nostrils and tongue, and screams of people, moaning and sobbing and general uproar. Something lay across Peter’s chest, and he felt that he was suffocating, and struggled convulsively to push it away; the hands with which he pushed felt something hot and wet and slimy, and the horrified Peter realized that it was half the body of a mangled human being.
Yes, it was the end of the world. Only a couple of days previously Peter Gudge had been a devout member of the First Apostolic Church, otherwise known as the Holy Rollers, and had listened at prayer-meetings to soul-shaking imaginings out of the Book of Revelations. So Peter knew that this was it; and having many sins upon his conscience, and being in no way eager to confront his God, he looked out over the bodies of the dead and the writhing wounded, and saw a row of boxes standing against the building, having been placed there by people who wished to see over the heads of the crowd. Peter started to crawl, and found that he was able to do so, and wormed his way behind one of these packing-boxes, and got inside and lay hidden from his God.
There was blood on him, and he did not know whether it was his own or other peoples’. He was trembling with fright, his crooked teeth were hammering together like those of an angry woodchuck. But the effects of the shock continued to pass away, and his wits to come back to him, and at last Peter realized that he never had taken seriously the ideas of the First Apostolic Church of American City. He listened to the moans of the wounded, and to the shouts and uproar of the crowd, and began seriously figuring out what could have happened. There had once been an earthquake in American City; could this be another one? Or had a volcano opened up in the midst of Main Street? Or could it have been a gas-main? And was this the end, or would it explode some more? Would the volcano go on erupting, and blow Peter and his frail packing-box thru the walls of Guggenheim’s Department-store?
So Peter waited, and listened to the horrible sounds of people in agony, and pleading with others to put them out of it. Peter heard voices of men giving orders, and realized that these must be policemen, and that no doubt there would be ambulances coming. Maybe there was something the matter with him, and he ought to crawl out and get himself taken care of. All of a sudden Peter remembered his stomach; and his wits, which had been sharpened by twenty years’ struggle against a hostile world, realized in a flash the opportunity which fate had brought to him. He must pretend to be wounded, badly wounded; he must be unconscious, suffering from shock and shattered nerves; then they would take him to the hospital and put him in a soft bed and give him things to eat--maybe he might stay there for weeks, and they might give him money when he came out.
Or perhaps he might get a job in the hospital, something that was easy, and required only alert intelligence. Perhaps the head doctor in the hospital might want somebody to watch the other doctors, to see if they were neglecting the patients, or perhaps flirting with some of the nurses--there was sure to be something like that going on. It had been that way in the orphans’ home where Peter had spent a part of his childhood till he ran away. It had been that way again in the great Temple of Jimjambo, conducted by Pashtian el Kalandra, Chief Magistrian of Eleutherinian Exoticism. Peter had worked as scullion in the kitchen in that mystic institution, and had worked his way upward until he possessed the confidence of Tushbar Akrogas, major-domo and right hand man of the Prophet himself.
Wherever there was a group of people, and a treasure to be administered, there Peter knew was backbiting and scandal and intriguing and spying, and a chance for somebody whose brains were “all there.” It might seem strange that Peter should think about such things, just then when the earth had opened up in front of him and the air had turned to roaring noise and blinding white flame, and had hurled him against the side of a building and dropped the bleeding half of a woman’s body across his chest; but Peter had lived from earliest childhood by his wits and by nothing else, and such a fellow has to learn to use his wits under any and all circumstances, no matter how bewildering. Peter’s training covered almost every emergency one could think of; he had even at times occupied himself by imagining what he would do if the Holy Rollers should turn out to be right, and if suddenly Gabriel’s trumpet were to blow, and he were to find himself confronting Jesus in a long white night-gown.
Section 3
Peter’s imaginings were brought to an end by the packing-box being pulled out from the wall. “Hello!” said a voice.
Peter groaned, but did not look up. The box was pulled out further, and a face peered in. “What you hidin’ in there for?”
Peter stammered feebly: “Wh-wh-what?”
“You hurt?” demanded the voice.
“I dunno,” moaned Peter.
The box was pulled out further, and its occupant slid out. Peter looked up, and saw three or four policemen bending over him; he moaned again.
“How did you get in there?” asked one.
“I crawled in.”
“What for?”
“To g-g-get away from the--what was it?”
“Bomb,” said one of the policemen; and Peter was astounded that for a moment he forgot to be a nervous wreck.
“Bomb!” he cried; and at the same moment one of the policemen lifted him to his feet.
“Can you stand up?” he demanded; and Peter tried, and found that he could, and forgot that he couldn’t. He was covered with blood and dirt, and was an unpresentable object, but he was really relieved to discover that his limbs were intact.
“What’s your name?” demanded one of the policemen, and when Peter answered, he asked, “Where do you work?”
“I got no job,” replied Peter.
“Where’d you work last?” And then another broke in, “What did you crawl in there for?”
“My God!” cried Peter. “I wanted to get away!”
The policemen seemed to find it suspicious that he had stayed hidden so long. They were in a state of excitement themselves, it appeared; a terrible crime had been committed, and they were hunting for any trace of the criminal. Another man came up, not dressed in uniform, but evidently having authority, and he fell onto Peter, demanding to know who he was, and where he had come from, and what he had been doing in that crowd. And of course Peter had no very satisfactory answers to give to any of these questions. His occupations had been unusual, and not entirely credible, and his purposes were hard to explain to a suspicious questioner. The man was big and burly, at least a foot taller than Peter, and as he talked he stooped down and stared into Peter’s eyes as if he were looking for dark secrets hidden back in the depths of Peter’s skull. Peter remembered that he was supposed to be sick, and his eyelids drooped and he reeled slightly, so that the policemen had to hold him up.
“I want to talk to that fellow,” said the questioner. “Take him inside.” One of the officers took Peter under one arm, and the other under the other arm, and they half walked and half carried him across the street and into a building.
Section 4
It was a big store which the police had opened up. Inside there were wounded people lying on the floor, with doctors and others attending them. Peter was marched down the corridor, and into a room where sat or stood several other men, more or less in a state of collapse like himself; people who had failed to satisfy the police, and were being held under guard.
Peter’s two policemen backed him against the wall and proceeded to go thru his pockets, producing the shameful contents--a soiled rag, and two cigarette butts picked up on the street, and a broken pipe, and a watch which had once cost a dollar, but was now out of order, and too badly damaged to be pawned. That was all they had any right to find, so far as Peter knew. But there came forth one thing more--the printed circular which Peter had thrust into his pocket. The policeman who pulled it out took a glance at it, and then cried, “Good God!” He stared at Peter, then he stared at the other policeman and handed him the paper.
At that moment the man not in uniform entered the room. “Mr. Guffey!” cried the policeman. “See this!” The man took the paper, and glanced at it, and Peter, watching with bewildered and fascinated eyes, saw a most terrifying sight. It was as if the man went suddenly out of his mind. He glared at Peter, and under his black eyebrows the big staring eyes seemed ready to jump out of his head.
“Aha!” he exclaimed; and then, “So I’ve got you!” The hand that held the paper was trembling, and the other hand reached out like a great claw, and fastened itself in the neck of Peter’s coat, and drew it together until Peter was squeezed tight. “You threw that bomb!”
hissed the man.
“Wh-what?” gasped Peter, his voice almost fainting. “B-b-bomb?”
“Out with it!” cried the man, and his face came close to Peter’s, his teeth gleaming as if he were going to bite off Peter’s nose. “Out with it! Quick! Who helped you?”
“My G-God!” said Peter. “I d-dunno what you mean.”
“You dare lie to me?” roared the man; and he shook Peter as if he meant to jar his teeth out. “No nonsense now! Who helped you make that bomb?”
Peter’s voice rose to a scream of terror: “I never saw no bomb! I dunno what you’re talkin’ about!”
“You, come this way,” said the man, and started suddenly toward the door. It might have been more convenient if he had turned Peter around, and got him by the back of his coat-collar; but he evidently held Peter’s physical being as a thing too slight for consideration--he just kept his grip in the bosom of Peter’s jacket, and half lifted him and half shoved him back out of the room, and down a long passage to the back part of the building. And all the time he was hissing into Peter’s face: “I’ll have it out of you! Don’t think you can lie to me! Make up your mind to it, you’re going to come thru!”
The man opened a door. It was some kind of storeroom, and he walked Peter inside and slammed the door behind him. “Now, out with it!” he said. The man thrust into his pocket the printed circular, or whatever it was--Peter never saw it again, and never found out what was printed on it. With his free hand the man grabbed one of Peter’s hands, or rather one finger of Peter’s hand, and bent it suddenly backward with terrible violence. “Oh!” screamed Peter. “Stop!” And then, with a wild shriek, “You’ll break it.”
“I mean to break it! mean to break every bone in your body! I’ll tear your finger-nails out; I’ll tear the eyes out of your head, if I have to! You tell me who helped you make that bomb!”
Peter broke out in a storm of agonized protest; he had never heard of any bomb, he didn’t know what the man was talking about; he writhed and twisted and doubled himself over backward, trying to evade the frightful pain of that pressure on his finger.
“You’re lying!” insisted Guffey. “I know you’re lying. You’re one of that crowd.”
“What crowd? Ouch! I dunno what you mean!”
“You’re one of them Reds, aint you?”
“Reds? What are Reds?”
“You want to tell me you don’t know what a Red is? Aint you been giving out them circulars on the street?”
“I never seen the circular!” repeated Peter. “I never seen a word in it; I dunno what it is.”
“You try to stuff me with that?”
“Some woman gimme that circular on the street! Ouch! Stop! Jesus! I tell you I never looked at the circular!”
“You dare go on lying?” shouted the man, with fresh access of rage. “And when I seen you with them Reds? I know about your plots, I’m going to get it out of you.” He grabbed Peter’s wrist and began to twist it, and Peter half turned over in the effort to save himself, and shrieked again, in more piercing tones, “I dunno! I dunno!”
“What’s them fellows done for you that you protect them?” demanded the other. “What good’ll it do you if we hang you and let them escape?”
But Peter only screamed and wept the louder.
“They’ll have time to get out of town,” persisted the other. “If you speak quick we can nab them all, and then I’ll let you go. You understand, we won’t do a thing to you, if you’ll come thru and tell us who put you up to this. We know it wasn’t you that planned it; it’s the big fellows we want.”
He began to wheedle and coax Peter; but then, when Peter answered again with his provoking “I dunno,” he would give another twist to Peter’s wrist, and Peter would yell, almost incoherent with terror and pain--but still declaring that he could tell nothing, he knew nothing about any bomb.
So at last Guffey wearied of this futile inquisition; or perhaps it occurred to him that this was too public a place for the prosecution of a “third degree”--there might be some one listening outside the door. He stopped twisting Peter’s wrist, and tilted back Peter’s head so that Peter’s frightened eyes were staring into his.
“Now, young fellow,” he said, “look here. I got no time for you just now, but you’re going to jail, you’re my prisoner, and make up your mind to it, sooner or later I’m going to get it out of you. It may take a day, or it may take a month, but you’re going to tell me about this bomb plot, and who printed this here circular opposed to Preparedness, and all about these Reds you work with. I’m telling you now--so you think it over; and meantime, you hold your mouth, don’t say a word to a living soul, or if you do I’ll tear your tongue out of your throat.”
Then, paying no attention to Peter’s wailings, he took him by the back of the collar and marched him down the hall again, and turned him over to one of the policemen. “Take this man to the city jail,”
he said, “and put him in the hole, and keep him there until I come, and don’t let him speak a word to anybody. If he tries it, mash his mouth for him.” So the policeman took poor sobbing Peter by the arm and marched him out of the building.
Section 5
The police had got the crowds driven back by now, and had ropes across the street to hold them, and inside the roped space were several ambulances and a couple of patrol-wagons. Peter was shoved into one of these latter, and a policeman sat by his side, and the bell clanged, and the patrol-wagon forced its way slowly thru the struggling crowd. Half an hour later they arrived at the huge stone jail, and Peter was marched inside. There were no formalities, they did not enter Peter on the books, or take his name or his finger prints; some higher power had spoken, and Peter’s fate was already determined. He was taken into an elevator, and down into a basement, and then down a flight of stone steps into a deeper basement, and there was an iron door with a tiny slit an inch wide and six inches long near the top. This was the “hole,” and the door was opened and Peter shoved inside into utter darkness. The door banged, and the bolts rattled; and then silence. Peter sank upon a cold stone floor, a bundle of abject and hideous misery.
These events had happened with such terrifying rapidity that Peter Gudge had hardly time to keep track of them. But now he had plenty of time, he had nothing but time. He could think the whole thing out, and realize the ghastly trick which fate had played upon him. He lay there, and time passed; he had no way of measuring it, no idea whether it was hours or days. It was cold and clammy in the stone cell; they called it the “cooler,” and used it to reduce the temperature of the violent and intractable. It was a trouble-saving device; they just left the man there and forgot him, and his own tormented mind did the rest.
And surely no more tormented mind than the mind of Peter Gudge had ever been put in that black hole. It was the more terrible, because so utterly undeserved, so preposterous. For such a thing to happen to him, Peter Gudge, of all people--who took such pains to avoid discomfort in life, who was always ready to oblige anybody, to do anything he was told to do, so as to have’an easy time, a sufficiency of food, and a warm corner to crawl into! What could have persuaded fate to pick him for the victim of this cruel prank; to put him into this position, where he could not avoid suffering, no matter what he did? They wanted him to tell something, and Peter would have been perfectly willing to tell anything--but how could he tell it when he did not know it?
The more Peter thought about it, the more outraged he became. It was monstrous! He sat up and glared into the black darkness. He talked to himself, he talked to the world outside, to the universe which had forgotten his existence. He stormed, he wept. He got on his feet and flung himself about the cell, which was six feet square, and barely tall enough for him to stand erect. He pounded on the door with his one hand which Guffey had not lamed, he kicked, and he shouted. But there was no answer, and so far as he could tell, there was no one to hear.
When he had exhausted himself, he sank down, and fell into a haunted sleep; and then he wakened again, to a reality worse than any nightmare. That awful man was coming after him again! He was going to torture him, to make him tell what he did not know! All the ogres and all the demons that had ever been invented to frighten the imagination of children were as nothing compared to the image of the man called Guffey, as Peter thought of him.
Several ages after Peter had been locked up, he heard sounds outside, and the door was opened. Peter was cowering in the corner, thinking that Guffey had come. There was a scraping on the floor, and then the door was banged again, and silence fell. Peter investigated and discovered that they had put in a chunk of bread and a pan of water.
Then more ages passed, and Peter’s impotent ragings were repeated; then once more they brought bread and water, and Peter wondered, was it twice a day they brought it, or was this a new day? And how long did they mean to keep him here? Did they mean to drive him mad? He asked these questions of the man who brought the bread and water, but the man made no answer, he never at any time spoke a word. Peter had no company in that “hole” but his God; and Peter was not well acquainted with his God, and did not enjoy a tete-a-tete with Him.
What troubled Peter most was the cold; it got into his bones, and his teeth were chattering all the time. Despite all his moving about, he could not keep warm. When the man opened the door, he cried out to him, begging for a blanket; each time the man came, Peter begged more frantically than ever. He was ill, he had been injured in the explosion, he needed a doctor, he was going to die! But there was never any answer. Peter would lie there and shiver and weep, and writhe, and babble, and lose consciousness for a while, and not know whether he was awake or asleep, whether he was living or dead. He was becoming delirious, and the things that were happening to him, the people who were tormenting him, became monsters and fiends who carried him away upon far journeys, and plunged him thru abysses of terror and torment.
And yet, many and strange as were the phantoms which Peter’s sick imagination conjured up, there was no one of them as terrible as the reality which prevailed just then in the life of American City, and was determining the destiny of a poor little man by the name of Peter Gudge. There lived in American City a group of men who had taken possession of its industries and dominated the lives of its population. This group, intrenched in power in the city’s business and also in its government, were facing the opposition of a new and rapidly rising power, that of organized labor, determined to break the oligarchy of business and take over its powers. The struggle of these two groups was coming to its culmination. They were like two mighty wrestlers, locked in a grip of death; two giants in combat, who tear up trees by the roots and break off fragments of cliffs from the mountains to smash in each other’s skulls. And poor Peter--what was he? An ant which happened to come blundering across the ground where these combatants met. The earth was shaken with their trampling, the dirt was kicked this way and that, and the unhappy ant was knocked about, tumbled head over heels, buried in the debris; and suddenly--Smash!--a giant foot came down upon the place where he was struggling and gasping!
Section 6
Peter had been in the “hole” perhaps three days, perhaps a week--he did not know, and no one ever told him. The door was opened again, and for the first time he heard a voice, “Come out here.”
Peter had been longing to hear a voice; but now he shrunk terrified into a corner. The voice was the voice of Guffey, and Peter knew what it meant. His teeth began to rattle again, and he wailed, “I dunno anything! I can’t tell anything!”
A hand reached in and took him by the collar, and he found himself walking down the corridor in front of Guffey. “Shut up!” said the man, in answer to all his wailings, and took him into a room and threw him into a chair as if he had been a bundle of bedding, and pulled up another chair and sat down in front of Peter.
“Now look here,” he said. “I want to have an understanding with you. Do you want to go back into that hole again?”
“N-n-no,” moaned Peter.
“Well, I want you to know that you’ll spend the rest of your life in that hole, except when you’re talking to me. And when you’re talking to me you’ll be having your arms twisted off you, and splinters driven into your finger nails, and your skin burned with matches--until you tell me what I want to know. Nobody’s going to help you, nobody’s going to know about it. You’re going to stay here with me until you come across.”
Peter could only sob and moan.
“Now,” continued Guffey, “I been finding out all about you, I got your life story from the day you were born, and there’s no use your trying to hide anything. I know your part in this here bomb plot, and I can send you to the gallows without any trouble whatever. But there’s some things I can’t prove on the other fellows. They’re the big ones, the real devils, and they’re the ones I want, so you’ve got a chance to save yourself, and you better be thankful for it.”
Peter went on moaning and sobbing.
“Shut up!” cried the man. And then, fixing Peter’s frightened gaze with his own, he continued, “Understand, you got a chance to save yourself. All you got to do is to tell what you know. Then you can come out and you won’t have any more trouble. We’ll take good care of you; everything’ll be easy for you.”
Peter continued to gaze like a fascinated rabbit. And such a longing as surged up in his soul--to be free, and out of trouble, and taken care of! If only he had known anything to tell; if only there was some way he could find out something to tell!
Section 7
Suddenly the man reached out and grasped one of Peter’s hands. He twisted the wrist again, the sore wrist which still ached from the torture. “Will you tell?”
“I’d tell if I could!” screamed Peter. “My God, how can I?”
“Don’t lie to me,” hissed the man. “I know about it now, you can’t fool me. You know Jim Goober.”
“I never heard of him!” wailed Peter.
“You lie!” declared the other, and he gave Peter’s wrist a twist.
“Yes, yes, I know him!” shrieked Peter.
“Oh, that’s more like it!” said the other. “Of course you know him. What sort of a looking man is he?”
“I--I dunno. He’s a big man.”
“You lie! You know he’s a medium-sized man!”
“He’s a medium-sized man.”
“A dark man?”
“Yes, a dark man.”
“And you know Mrs. Goober, the music teacher?”
“Yes, I know her.”
“And you’ve been to her house?”
“Yes, I’ve been to her house.”
“Where is their house?”
“I dunno--that is--”
“It’s on Fourth Street?”
“Yes, it’s on Fourth Street.”
“And he hired you to carry that suit-case with the bombs in it, didn’t he?”
“Yes, he hired me.”
“And he told you what was in it, didn’t he?”
“He--he--that is--I dunno.”
“You don’t know whether he told you?”
“Y-y-yes, he told me.”
“You knew all about the plot, didn’t you?”
“Y-y-yes, I knew.”
“And you know Isaacs, the Jew?”
“Y-y-yes, I know him.”
“He was the fellow that drove the jitney, wasn’t he?”
“Y-y-yes, he drove the jitney.”
“Where did he drive it?”
“H-h-he drove it everywhere.”
“He drove it over here with the suit-case, didn’t he?”
“Yes, he did.”
“And you know Biddle, and you know what he did, don’t you?”
“Yes, I know.”
“And you’re willing to tell all you know about it, are you?”
“Yes, I’ll tell it all. I’ll tell whatever you--”
“You’ll tell whatever you know, will you?”
“Y-y-yes, sir.”
“And you’ll stand by it? You’ll not try to back out? You don’t want to go back into the hole?”
“No, sir.”
And suddenly Guffey pulled from his pocket a paper folded up. It was several typewritten sheets. “Peter Gudge,” he said, “I been looking up your record, and I’ve found out what you did in this case. You’ll see when you read how perfectly I’ve got it. You won’t find a single mistake in it.” Guffey meant this for wit, but poor Peter was too far gone with terror to have any idea that there was such a thing as a smile in the world.
“This is your story, d’you see?” continued Guffey. “Now take it and read it.”
So Peter took the paper in his trembling hand, the one which had not been twisted lame. He tried to read it, but his hand shook so that he had to put it on his knee, and then he discovered that his eyes had not yet got used to the light. He could not see the print. “I c-c-can’t,” he wailed.
And the other man took the paper from him. “I’ll read it to you,” he said. “Now you listen, and put your mind on it, and make sure I’ve got it all right.”
And so Guffey started to read an elaborate legal document: “I, Peter Gudge, being duly sworn do depose and declare--” and so on. It was an elaborate and detailed story about a man named Jim Goober, and his wife and three other men, and how they had employed Peter to buy for them certain materials to make bombs, and how Peter had helped them to make the bombs in a certain room at a certain given address, and how they had put the bombs in a suit-case, with a time clock to set them off, and how Isaacs, the jitney driver, had driven them to a certain corner on Main Street, and how they had left the suit-case with the bombs on the street in front of the Preparedness Day parade.
It was very simple and clear, and Peter, as he listened, was almost ready to cry with delight, realizing that this was all he had to do to escape from his horrible predicament. He knew now what he was supposed to know; and he knew it. Why had not Guffey told him long ago, so that he might have known it without having his fingers bent out of place and his wrist twisted off?
“Now then,” said Guffey, “that’s your confession, is it?”
“Y-y-yes,” said Peter.
“And you’ll stand by it to the end?”
“Y-y-yes, sir.”
“We can count on you now? No more nonsense?”
“Y-y-yes, sir.”
“You swear it’s all true?”
“I do.”
“And you won’t let anybody persuade you to go back on it--no matter what they say to you?”
“N-n-no, sir,” said Peter.
“All right,” said Guffey; and his voice showed the relief of a business man who has closed an important deal. He became almost human as lie went on. “Now, Peter,” he said, “you’re our man, and we’re going to count on you. You understand, of course, that we have to hold you as a witness, but you’re not to be a prisoner, and we’re going to treat you well. We’ll put you in the hospital part of the jail, and you’ll have good grub and nothing to do. In a week or so, we’ll want you to appear before the grand jury. Meantime, you understand--not a word to a soul! People may try to worm something out of you, but don’t you open your mouth about this case except to me. I’m your boss, and I’ll tell you what to do, and I’ll take care of you all the way. You got that all straight?”
“Y-y-yes, sir,” said Peter.
Section 8
There was once, so legend declares, a darky who said that he liked to stub his toe because it felt so good when it stopped hurting. On this same principle Peter had a happy time in the hospital of the American City jail. He had a comfortable bed, and plenty to eat, and absolutely nothing to do. His sore joints became gradually healed, and he gained half a pound a day in weight, and his busy mind set to work to study the circumstances about him, to find out how he could perpetuate these comfortable conditions, and add to them the little luxuries which make life really worth living.
In charge of this hospital was an old man by the name of Doobman. He had been appointed because he was the uncle of an alderman, and he had held the job for the last six years, and during that time had gained weight almost as rapidly as Peter was gaining. He had now come to a condition where he did not like to get out of his armchair if it could be avoided. Peter discovered this, and so found it possible to make himself useful in small ways. Also Mr. Doobman had a secret vice; he took snuff, and for the sake of discipline he did not want this dreadful fact to become known. Therefore he would wait until everybody’s back was turned before he took a pinch of snuff; and Peter learned this, and would tactfully turn his back.
Everybody in this hospital had some secret vice, and it was Mr. Doobman’s duty to repress the vices of the others. The inmates of the hospital included many of the prisoners who had money, and could pay to make themselves comfortable. They wanted tobacco, whiskey, cocaine and other drugs, and some of them wanted a chance to practice unnamable horrors. All the money they could smuggle in they were ready to spend for license to indulge themselves. As for the attendants in the hospital, they were all political appointees, derelicts who had been unable to hold a job in the commercial world, and had sought an easy berth, like Peter himself. They took bribes, and were prepared to bribe Peter to outwit Mr. Doobman; Mr. Doobman, on the other hand, was prepared to reward Peter with many favors, if Peter would consent to bring him secret information. In such a situation it was possible for a man with his wits about him to accumulate quite a little capital.
For the most part Peter stuck by Doobman; having learned by bitter experience that in the long run it pays to be honest. Doobman was referred to by the other attendants as the “Old Man”; and always in Peter’s life, from the very dawn of childhood, there had been some such “Old Man,” the fountain-head of authority, the dispenser of creature comforts. First had been “Old Man” Drubb, who from early morning until late at night wore green spectacles, and a sign across his chest, “I am blind,” and made a weary little child lead him thru the streets by the hand. At night, when they got home to their garret-room, “Old Man” Drubb would take off his green goggles, and was perfectly able to see Peter, and if Peter had made the slightest mistake during the day he would beat him.
When Drubb was arrested, Peter was taken to the orphan asylum, and there was another “Old Man,” and the same harsh lesson of subservience to be learned. Peter had run away from the asylum; and then had come Pericles Priam with his Pain Paralyzer, and Peter had studied his whims and served his interests. When Pericles had married a rich widow and she had kicked Peter out, there had come the Temple of Jimjambo, where the “Old Man” had been Tushbar Akrogas, the major-domo--terrible when he was thwarted, but a generous dispenser of favors when once you had learned to flatter him, to play upon his weaknesses, to smooth the path of his pleasures. All these years Peter had been forced to “crook the pregnant hinges of the knee”; it had become an instinct with him--an instinct that went back far behind the twenty years of his conscious life, that went back twenty thousand years, perhaps ten times twenty thousand years, to a time when Peter had chipped flint spear-heads at the mouth of some cave, and broiled marrow-bones for some “Old Man” of the borde, and seen rebellious young fellows cast out to fall prey to the sabre-tooth tiger.
Section 9
Peter found that he was something of a personality in this hospital. He was the “star” witness in the sensational Goober case, about which the whole city, and in fact the whole country was talking. It was known that he had “turned State’s”; but just what he knew and what he had told was a mighty secret, and Peter “held his mouth” and looked portentous, and enjoyed thrills of self-importance.
But meantime there was no reason why he should not listen to others talk; no reason why he should not inform himself fully about this case, so that in future he might be able to take care of himself. He listened to what “Old Man” Doobman had to say, and to what Jan Christian, his Swedish assistant had to say, and to what Gerald Leslie, the “coke” fiend, had to say. All these, and others, had friends on the outside, people who were “in the know.” Some told one thing, and others told exactly the opposite; but Peter put this and that together, and used his own intrigue-sharpened wits upon it, and before long he was satisfied that he had got the facts.
Jim Goober was a prominent labor leader. He had organized the employees of the Traction Trust, and had called and led a tremendous strike. Also he had called building strikes, and some people said he had used dynamite upon uncompleted buildings, and made a joke of it. Anyhow, the business men of the city wanted to put him where he could no longer trouble them; and when some maniac unknown had flung a dynamite bomb into the path of the Preparedness parade, the big fellows of the city had decided that now was the opportunity they were seeking. Guffey, the man who had taken charge of Peter, was head of the secret service of the Traction Trust, and the big fellows had put him in complete charge. They wanted action, and would take no chances with the graft-ridden and incompetent police of the city. They had Goober in jail, with his wife and three of his gang, and thru the newspapers of the city they were carrying on a propaganda to prepare the public for the hanging of all five.
And that was all right, of course; Jim Goober was only a name to Peter, and of less importance than a single one of Peter’s meals. Peter understood what Guffey had done, and his only grudge was because Guffey had not had the sense to tell him his story at the beginning, instead of first nearly twisting his arm off. However, Peter reflected, no doubt Guffey had meant to teach him a lesson, to make sure of him. Peter had learned the lesson, and his purpose now was to make this clear to Guffey and to Doobman.
“Hold your mouth,” Guffey had said, and Peter never once said a word about the Goober case. But, of course, he talked about other matters. A fellow could not go around like a mummy all day long, and it was Peter’s weakness that he liked to tell about his exploits, the clever devices by which he had outwitted his last “Old Man.” So to Gerald Leslie, the “coke” fiend, he told the story of Pericles Priam, and how many thousands of dollars he had helped to wheedle out of the public, and how twice he and Pericles had been arrested for swindling. Also he told about the Temple of Jimjambo, and all the strange and incredible things that had gone on there. Pashtian el Kalandra, who called himself the Chief Magistrian of Eleutherinian Exoticism, gave himself out to his followers to be eighty years of age, but as a matter of fact he was less than forty. He was supposed to be a Persian prince, but had been born in a small town in Indiana, and had begun life as a grocer-boy. He was supposed to live upon a handful of fruit, but every day it had been Peter’s job to assist in the preparation of a large beef-steak or a roast chicken. These were “for sacrificial purposes,” so the prophet explained to his attendants; and Peter would get the remains of the sacrificial beef-steaks and chickens, and would sacrificially devour them behind the pantry door. That had been one of his private grafts, which he got in return for keeping secret from the prophet some of the stealings of Tushbar Akrogas, the major-domo.
A wonderful place had been this Temple of Jimjambo. There were mystic altars with seven veils before them, and thru these the Chief Magistrian would appear, clad in a long cream-colored robe with gold and purple borders, and with pink embroidered slippers and symbolic head-dress. His lectures and religious rites had been attended by hundreds--many of them rich society women, who came rolling up to the temple in their limousines. Also there had been a school, where children had been initiated into the mystic rites of the cult. The prophet would take these children into his private apartments, and there were awful rumors--which had ended in the raiding of the temple by the police, and the flight of the prophet, and likewise of the majordomo, and of Peter Gudge, his scullion and confederate.
Also, Peter thought it was fun to tell Gerald Leslie about his adventures with the Holy Rollers, into whose church he had drifted during his search for a job. Peter had taken up with this sect, and learned the art of “talking in tongues,” and how to fall over the back of your chair in convulsions of celestial glory. Peter had gained the confidence of the Rev. Gamaliel Lunk, and had been secretly employed by him to carry on a propaganda among the congregation to obtain a raise in salary for the underpaid convulsionist. But certain things which Peter had learned had caused him to go over to the faction of Shoemaker Smithers, who was trying to persuade the congregation that he could roll harder and faster than the Rev. Gamaliel. Peter had only held this latter job a few days before he had been fired for stealing the fried doughnut.
Section 10
All these things and more Peter told; thinking that he was safe now, under the protection of authority. But after he had spent about two months in the hospital, he was summoned one day into the office, and there stood Guffey, glowering at him in a black fury. “You damned fool!” were Guffey’s first words.
Peter’s knees went weak and his teeth began to chatter again. “Wh-wh-what?” he cried.
“Didn’t I tell you to hold your mouth?” And Guffey looked as if he were going to twist Peter’s wrist again.
“Mr. Guffey, I ain’t told a soul! I ain’t said one word about the Goober case, not one word!”
Peter rushed on, pouring out protests. But Guffey cut him short. “Shut up, you nut! Maybe you didn’t talk about the Goober case, but you talked about yourself. Didn’t you tell somebody you’d worked with that fellow Kalandra?”
“Y-y-yes, sir.”
“And you knew the police were after him, and after you, too?”
“Y-y-yes, sir.”
“And you said you’d been arrested selling fake patent medicines?”
“Y-y-yes, sir.”
“Christ almighty!” cried Guffey. “And what kind of a witness do you think you’ll make?”
“But,” cried Peter in despair, “I didn’t tell anybody that would matter. I only--”
“What do you know what would matter?” roared the detective, adding a stream of furious oaths. “The Goober people have got spies on us; they’ve got somebody right here in this jail. Anyhow, they’ve found out about you and your record. You’ve gone and ruined us with your blabbing mouth!”
“My Lord!” whispered Peter, his voice dying away.
“Look at yourself on a witness-stand! Look at what they’ll do to you before a jury! Traveling over the country, swindling people with patent medicines--and getting in jail for it! Working for that hell-blasted scoundrel Kalandra--” and Guffey added some dreadful words, descriptive of the loathsome vices of which the Chief Magistrian had been accused. “And you mixed up in that kind of thing!”
“I never done anything like that!” cried Peter wildly. “I didn’t even know for sure.”
“Tell that to the jury!” sneered Guffey. “Why, they’ve even been to that Shoemaker Smithers, and they’ll put his wife on the stand to prove you a sneak thief, and tell how she kicked you out. And all because you couldn’t hold your mouth as I told you to!”
Peter burst into tears. He fell down on his knees, pleading that he hadn’t meant any harm; he hadn’t had any idea that he was not supposed to talk about his past life; he hadn’t realized what a witness was, or what he was supposed to do. All he had been told was to keep quiet about the Goober case, and he had kept quiet. So Peter sobbed and pleaded--but in vain. Guffey ordered him back to the hole, declaring his intention to prove that Peter was the one who had thrown the bomb, and that Peter, instead of Jim Goober, had been the head and front of the conspiracy. Hadn’t Peter signed a confession that he had helped to make the bomb?
Section 11
Again Peter did not know how long he lay shivering in the black dungeon. He only knew that they brought him bread and water three times, before Guffey came again and summoned him forth. Peter now sat huddled into a chair, twisting his trembling hands together, while the chief detective of the Traction Trust explained to him his new program. Peter was permanently ruined as a witness in the case. The labor conspirators had raised huge sums for their defense; they had all the labor unions of the city, and in fact of the entire country behind them, and they were hiring spies and informers, and trying to find out all they could about the prosecution, the evidence it had collected and the moves it was preparing. Guffey did not say that he had been afraid to kick Peter out because of the possibility that Peter might go over to the Goober side and tell all he knew; but Peter guessed this while he sat listening to Guffey’s explanation, and realized with a thrill of excitement that at last he had really got a hold upon the ladder of prosperity. Not in vain had his finger been almost broken and his wrist almost dislocated!
“Now,” said Guffey, “here’s my idea: As a witness you’re on the bum, but as a spy, you’re it. They know that you blabbed, and that I know it; they know I’ve had you in the hole. So now what I want to do is to make a martyr of you. D’you see?”
Peter nodded; yes, he saw. It was his specialty, seeing things like that.
“You’re an honest witness, you understand? I tried to get you to lie, and you wouldn’t, so now you go over to the other side, and they take you in, and you find out all you can, and from time to time you meet somebody as I’ll arrange it, and send me word what you’ve learned. You get me?”
“I get you,” said Peter, eagerly. No words could portray his relief. He had a real job now! He was going to be a sleuth, like Guffey himself.
“Now,” said Guffey, “the first thing I want to know is, who’s blabbing in this jail; we can’t do anything but they get tipped off. I’ve got witnesses that I want kept hidden, and I don’t dare put them here for fear of the Goober crowd. I want to know who are the traitors. I want to know a lot of things that I’ll tell you from time to time. I want you to get next to these Reds, and learn about their ideas, so you can talk their lingo.
“Sure,” said Peter. He could not help smiling a little. He was supposed to be a “Red” already, to have been one of their leading conspirators. But Guffey had abandoned that pretence--or perhaps had forgotten about it!
It was really an easy job that Peter had set before him. He did not have to pretend to be anything different from what he was. He would call himself a victim of circumstances, and would be honestly indignant against those who had sought to use him in a frame-up against Jim Goober. The rest would follow naturally. He would get the confidence of the labor people, and Guffey would tell him what to do next.
“We’ll put you in one of the cells of this jail,” said the chief detective, “and we’ll pretend to give you a `third degree.’ You’ll holler and make a fuss, and say you won’t tell, and finally we’ll give up and kick you out. And then all you have to do is just hang around. They’ll come after you, or I miss my guess.”
So the little comedy was arranged and played thru. Guffey took Peter by the collar and led him out into the main part of the jail, and locked him in one of a row of open cells. He grabbed Peter by the wrist and pretended to twist it, and Peter pretended to protest. He did not have to draw on his imagination; he knew how it felt, and how he was supposed to act, and he acted. He sobbed and screamed, and again and again he vowed that he had told the truth, that he knew nothing else than what he had told, and that nothing could make him tell any more. Guffey left him there until late the next afternoon, and then came again, and took him by the collar, and led him out to the steps of the jail, and gave him a parting kick.
Peter was free! What a wonderful sensation--freedom! God! Had there ever been anything like it? He wanted to shout and howl with joy. But instead he staggered along the street, and sank down upon a stone coping, sobbing, with his head clasped in his hands, waiting for something to happen. And sure enough, it happened. Perhaps an hour passed, when he was touched lightly on the shoulder. “Comrade,”
said a soft voice, and Peter, looking between his fingers, saw the skirts of a girl. A folded slip of paper was pressed into his hand and the soft voice said: “Come to this address.” The girl walked on, and Peter’s heart leaped with excitement. Peter was a sleuth at last!
Section 12
Peter waited until after dark, in order to indulge his sense of the romantic; also he flattered his self-importance by looking carefully about him as he walked down the street. He did not know just who would be shadowing him, but Peter wanted to be sleuthy.
Also he had a bit of genuine anxiety. He had told the truth when he said to Guffey that he didn’t know what a “Red” was; but since then he had been making in quiries, and now he knew. A “Red” was a fellow who sympathized with labor unions and with strikes; who wanted to murder the rich and divide their property, and believed that the quickest way to do the dividing was by means of dynamite. All “Reds”
made bombs, and carried concealed weapons, and perhaps secret poisons--who could tell? And now Peter was going among them, he was going to become one of them! It was almost too interesting, for a fellow who aimed above everything to be comfortable. Something in him whispered, “Why not skip; get out of town and be done with it?”
But then he thought of the rewards and honors that Guffey had promised him. Also there was the spirit of curiosity; he might skip at any time, but first he would like to know a bit more about being a “dick.”
He came to the number which had been given him, a tiny bungalow in a poor neighborhood, and rang the doorbell. It was answered by a girl, and at a glance Peter saw that it was the girl who had spoken to him. She did not wait for him to announce himself, but cried impulsively, “Mr. Gudge! Oh, I’m so glad you’ve come!” She added, “Comrade!”--just as if Peter were a well-known friend. And then, “But _are_ you a comrade?”
“How do you mean?” asked Peter.
“You’re not a Socialist? Well, we’ll make one of you.” She brought him in and showed him to a chair, saying, “I know what they did to you; and you stood out against them! Oh, you were wonderful! Wonderful!”
Peter was at a loss what to say. There was in this girl’s voice a note of affection, as well as of admiration; and Peter in his hard life had had little experience with emotions of this sort. Peter had watched the gushings and excitements of girls who were seeking flirtations; but this girl’s attitude he felt at once was not flirtatious. Her voice tho soft, was just a trifle too solemn for a young girl; her deep-set, wistful grey eyes rested on Peter with the solicitude of a mother whose child has just escaped a danger.
She called: “Sadie, here’s Mr. Gudge.” And there entered another girl, older, taller, but thin and pale like her sister. Jennie and Sadie Todd were their names, Peter learned; the older was a stenographer, and supported the family. The two girls were in a state of intense concern. They started to question Peter about his experiences, but he had only talked for a minute or two before the elder went to the telephone. There were various people who must see Peter at once, important people who were to be notified as soon as he turned up. She spent some time at the phone, and the people she talked with must have phoned to others, because for the next hour or two there was a constant stream of visitors coming in, and Peter had to tell his story over and over again.
The first to come was a giant of a man with tight-set mouth and so powerful a voice that it frightened Peter. He was not surprised to learn that this man was the leader of one of the most radical of the city’s big labor unions, the seamen’s. Yes, he was a “Red,” all right; he corresponded to Peter’s imaginings--a grim, dangerous man, to be pictured like Samson, seizing the pillars of society and pulling them down upon his head. “They’ve got you scared, my boy,”
he said, noting Peter’s hesitating answers to his questions. “Well, they’ve had me scared for forty-five years, but I’ve never let them know it yet.” Then, in order to cheer Peter up and strengthen his nerves, he told how he, a runaway seaman, had been hunted thru the Everglades of Florida with bloodhounds, and tied to a tree and beaten into insensibility.
Then came David Andrews, whom Peter had heard of as one of the lawyers in the Goober case, a tall, distinguished-looking man with keen, alert features. What was such a man doing among these outcasts? Peter decided that he must be one of the shrewd ones who made money out of inciting the discontented. Then came a young girl, frail and sensitive, slightly crippled. As she crossed the room to shake his hand tears rolled down her cheeks, and Peter stood embarrassed, wondering if she had just lost a near relative, and what was he to say about it. From her first words he gathered, to his great consternation, that she had been moved to tears by the story of what he himself had endured.
Ada Ruth was a poet, and this was a new type for Peter; after much groping in his mind he set her down for one of the dupes of the movement--a poor little sentimental child, with no idea of the wickedness by which she was surrounded. With her came a Quaker boy with pale, ascetic face and black locks which he had to shake back from his eyes every now and then; he wore a Windsor tie, and a black felt hat, and other marks of eccentricity and from his speeches Peter gathered that he was ready to blow up all the governments of the world in the interests of Pacificism. The same was true of McCormick, an I. W. W. leader who had just served sixty days in jail, a silent young Irishman with drawn lips and restless black eyes, who made Peter uneasy by watching him closely and saying scarcely a word.
Section 13
They continued to come, one at a time or in groups; old women and young women, old men and young men, fanatics and dreamers, agitators who could hardly open their mouths without some white-hot words escaping, revealing a blaze of passion smouldering in the deeps of them. Peter became more and more uneasy, realizing that he was actually in the midst of all the most dangerous “Reds” of American City. They it was whom our law-abiding citizens dreaded, who were the objects of more concern to the police than all the plain, everyday burglars and bandits. Peter now could see the reason--he had not dreamed that such angry and hate-tormented people existed in the world. Such people would be capable of anything! He sat, with his restless eyes wandering from one face to another. Which one of this crowd had helped to set off the bomb? And would they boast about it to him this evening?
Peter half expected this; but then again, he wondered. They were such strange criminals! They called him “Comrade”; and they spoke with that same affection that had so bewildered him in little Jennie. Was this just a ruse to get his confidence, or did these people really think that they loved him--Peter Gudge, a stranger and a secret enemy? Peter had been at great pains to fool them; but they seemed to him so easy to fool that his pains were wasted. He despised them for this, and all the while he listened to them he was saying to himself, “The poor nuts!”
They had come to hear his story, and they plied him with questions, and made him tell over and over again every detail. Peter, of course, had been carefully instructed; he was not to mention the elaborate confession he had been made to sign; that would be giving too dangerous a weapon to these enemies of law and order. He must tell as brief a story as possible; how he had happened to be near the scene of the explosion, and how the police had tried to force him to admit that he knew something about the case. Peter told this, according to orders; but he had not been prepared for the minute questioning to which he was subjected by Andrews, the lawyer, aided by old John Durand, the leader of the seamen. They wanted to know everything that had been done to him, and who had done it, and how and when and where and why. Peter had a sense of the dramatic, and enjoyed being the center of attention and admiration, even tho it was from a roomful of criminal “Reds.” So he told all the picturesque details of how Guffey had twisted his wrist and shut him in a dungeon; the memory of the pain was still poignant, and came out of him now, with a realism that would have moved a colder group.
So pretty soon here were all these women sobbing and raging. Little Ada Ruth became inspired, and began reciting a poem--or was she composing it right here, before his eyes? She seemed entranced with indignation. It was something about the workers arising--the outcry of a mob--
“No further patience with a heedless foe--
Get off our backs, or else to hell you go!”
Peter listened, and thought to himself, “The poor nut!” And then Donald Gordon, the Quaker boy, took the floor, and began shaking his long black locks, and composing a speech, it seemed. And Peter listened, and thought again, “The poor nut!” Then another man, the editor of a labor journal, revealed the fact that he was composing an editorial; he knew Guffey, and was going to publish Guffey’s picture, and brand him as an “Inquisitionist.” He asked for Peter’s picture, and Peter agreed to have one taken, and to be headlined as “The Inquisitionist’s Victim.” Peter had no idea what the long word meant; but he assented, and thought again, “The poor nut!” All of them were “nuts”--taking other people’s troubles with such excitement!
But Peter was frightened, too; he couldn’t altogether enjoy being a hero, in this vivid and startling fashion; having his name and fame spread from one end of the country to the other, so that organized labor might know the methods which the great traction interests of American City were employing to send a well-known labor leader to the gallows! The thing seemed to grow and grow before Peter’s frightened eyes. Peter, the ant, felt the earth shaking, and got a sudden sense of the mountain size of the mighty giants who were stamping in combat over his head. Peter wondered, had Guffey realized what a stir his story would make, what a powerful weapon he was giving to his enemies? What could Guffey expect to get from Peter, to compensate for this damage to his own case? Peter, as he listened to the stormy oratory in the crowded little room, found himself thinking again and again of running away. He had never seen anything like the rage into which these people worked themselves, the terrible things they said, the denunciations, not merely of the police of American City, but of the courts and the newspapers, the churches and the colleges, everything that seemed respectable and sacred to law-abiding citizens like Peter Gudge.
Peter’s fright became apparent. But why shouldn’t he be frightened? Andrews, the lawyer, offered to take him away and hide him, lest the opposition should try to make way with him. Peter would be a most important witness for the Goober defense, and they must take good care of him. But Peter recovered his self-possession, and took up his noble role. No, he would take his chances with the rest of them, he was not too much afraid.
Sadie Todd, the stenographer, rewarded him for his heroism. They had a spare bedroom in their little home, and if Peter cared to stay with them for a while, they would try to make him comfortable. Peter accepted this invitation, and at a late hour in the evening the gathering broke up. The various groups of “Reds” went their way, their hands clenched and their faces portraying a grim resolve to make out of Peter’s story a means of lashing discontented labor to new frenzies of excitement. The men clasped Peter’s hand cordially; the ladies gazed at him with soulful eyes, and whispered their admiration for his brave course, their hope, indeed their conviction, that he would stand by the truth to the end, and would study their ideas and join their “movement.” All the while Peter watched them, and continued saying to himself: “The poor nuts!”
Section 14
The respectable newspapers of American City of course did not waste their space upon fantastic accusations brought by radicals, charging the police authorities with using torture upon witnesses. But there was a Socialist paper published every week in American City, and this paper had a long account of Peter’s experiences on the front page, together with his picture. Also there were three labor papers which carried the story, and the Goober Defense Committee prepared a circular about it and mailed out thousands of copies all over the country. This circular was written by Donald Gordon, the Quaker boy. He brought Peter a proof of it, to make sure that he had got all the details right, and Peter read it, and really could not help being thrilled to discover what a hero he was. Peter had not said anything about his early career, and whoever among the Goober Defense Committee had learned those details chose to be diplomatically silent. Peter smiled to himself as he thought about that. They were foxy, these people! They were playing their hand for all it was worth--and Peter admired them for that. In Donald Gordon’s narrative Peter appeared as a poor workingman; and Peter grinned. He was used to the word “working,” but when he talked about “working people,” he meant something different from what these Socialists meant.
The story went out, and of course all sorts of people wanted to meet Peter, and came to the home of the Todd girls. So Peter settled down to his job of finding out all he could about these visitors, their names and occupations, their relations to the radical movement. Guffey had advised him not to make notes, for fear of detection, but Peter could not carry all this in his head, so he would retire to his room and make minute notes on slips of paper, and carefully sew these up in the lining of his coat, with a thrill of mystery.
Except for this note-taking, however, Peter’s sleuthing was easy work, for these people all seemed eager to talk about what they were doing; sometimes it frightened Peter--they were so open and defiant! Not merely did they express their ideas to one another and to him, they were expressing them on public platforms, and in their publications, in pamphlets and in leaflets--what they called “literature.” Peter had had no idea their “movement” was so widespread or so powerful. He had expected to unearth a secret conspiracy, and perhaps a dynamite-bomb or two; instead of which, apparently, he was unearthing a volcano!
However, Peter did the best he could. He got the names and details about some forty or fifty people of all classes; obscure workingmen and women, Jewish tailors, Russian and Italian cigar-workers, American-born machinists and printers; also some “parlor Reds”--large, immaculate and shining ladies who came rolling up to the little bungalow in large, immaculate and shining automobiles, and left their uniformed chauffeurs outside for hours at a time while they listened to Peter’s story of his “third degree.” One benevolent lady with a flowing gray veil, who wafted a sweet perfume about the room, suggested that Peter might be in need, and pressed a twenty dollar bill into his hand. Peter, thrilled, but also bewildered, got a new sense of the wonders of this thing called “the movement,” and decided that when Guffey got thru with him he might turn into a “Red” in earnest for a while.
Meantime he settled down to make himself comfortable with the Todd sisters. Sadie went off to her work before eight o’clock every morning, and that was before Peter got up; but Jennie stayed at home, and fixed his breakfast, and opened the door for his visitors, and in general played the hostess for him. She was a confirmed invalid; twice a week she went off to a doctor to have something done to her spine, and the balance of the time she was supposed to be resting, but Peter very seldom saw her doing this. She was always addressing circulars, or writing letters for the “cause,” or going off to sell literature and take up collections at meetings. When she was not so employed, she was arguing with somebody--frequently with Peter--trying to make him think as she did.
Poor kid, she was all wrought up over the notions she had got about the wrongs of the working classes. She gave herself no peace about it, day or night, and this, of course, was a bore to Peter, who wanted peace above all things. Over in Europe millions of men were organized in armies, engaged in slaughtering one another. That, of course, was, very terrible, but what was the good of thinking about it? There was no way to stop it, and it certainly wasn’t Peter’s fault. But this poor, deluded child was acting all the time as if she were to blame for this European conflict, and had the job of bringing it to a close. The tears would come into her deep-set grey eyes, and her soft chin would quiver with pain whenever she talked about it; and it seemed to Peter she was talking about it all the time. It was her idea that the war must be stopped by uprisings on the part of the working people in Europe. Apparently she thought this might be hastened if the working people of American City would rise up and set an example!
Section 15
Jennie talked about this plan quite openly; she would put a red ribbon in her hair, and pin a red badge on her bosom, and go into meeting-places and sell little pamphlets with red covers. So, of course, it would be Peter’s duty to report her to the head of the secret service of the Traction Trust. Peter regretted this, and was ashamed of having to do it; she was a nice little girl, and pretty, too, and a fellow might have had some fun with her if she had not been in such a hysterical state. He would sit and look at her, as she sat bent over her typewriter. She had soft, fluffy hair, the color of twilight, and even white teeth, and a faint flush that came and went in her cheeks--yes, she would not be bad looking at all, if only she would straighten up, and spend a little time on her looks, as other girls did.
But no, she was always in a tension, and the devil of it was, she was trying to get Peter into the same state. She was absolutely determined that Peter must get wrought up over the wrongs of the working classes. She took it for granted that he would, when he was instructed. She would tell him harrowing stories, and it was his duty to be duly harrowed; he must be continually acting an emotional part. She would give him some of her “literature” to read, and then she would pin him down and make sure that he had read it. He knew how to read--Pericles Priam had seen to that, because he wanted him to attend to the printing of his circulars and his advertisements in the country newspapers where he was traveling. So now Peter was penned in a corner and compelled to fix his attention upon “The A. B. C. of Socialism,” or “Capital and Proletariat,” or “The Path to Power.”
Peter told himself that it was part of his job to acquire this information. He was going to be a “Red,” and he must learn their lingo; but he found it awfully tiresome, full of long technical words which he had never heard before. Why couldn’t these fellows at least talk American? He had known that there were Socialists, and also “Arnychists,” as he called them, and he thought they were all alike. But now he learned, not merely about Socialists and “Arnychists,” but about State Socialists and Communist Anarchists, and Communist Syndicalists and Syndicalist Anarchists and Socialist Syndicalists, and Reformist Socialists and Guild Socialists, to say nothing about Single Taxers and Liberals and Progressives and numerous other varieties, whom he had to meet and classify and listen to respectfully and sympathetically. Each particular group insisted upon the distinctions which made it different, and each insisted that it had the really, truly truth; and Peter became desperately bored with their everlasting talk--how much more simple to lump them all together, as did Guffey and McGivney, calling them all “Reds!”
Peter had got it clearly fixed in his mind that what these “Reds”
wanted was to divide up the property of the rich. Everyone he had questioned about them had said this. But now he learned that this wasn’t it exactly. What they wanted was to have the State take over the industries, or to have the labor unions do it, or to have the working people in general do it. They pointed to the post office and the army and the navy, as examples of how the State could run things. Wasn’t that all right? demanded Jennie. And Peter said Yes, that was all right; but hidden back in Peter’s soul all the time was a whisper that it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference. There was a sucker born every minute, and you might be sure that no matter how they fixed it up, there would always be some that would find it easy to live off the rest. This poor kid, for example, who was ready to throw herself away for any fool notion, or for anybody that came along and told her a hard-luck story--would there ever be a state of society in which she wouldn’t be a juicy morsel to be gobbled up by some fellow with a normal appetite?
She was alone in the house all day with Peter, and she got to seem more and more pretty as he got to know her better. Also it was evident that she liked Peter more and more as Peter played his game. Peter revealed himself as deeply sympathetic, and a quick convert to the cause; he saw everything that Jennie explained to him, he was horrified at the horrible stories, he was ready to help her end the European war by starting a revolution among the working people of American City. Also, he told her about himself, and awakened her sympathy for his harsh life, his twenty years of privation and servitude; and when she wept over this, Peter liked it. It was fine, somehow, to have her so sorry for him; it helped to compensate him for the boredom of hearing her be sorry for the whole working class.
Peter didn’t know whether Jennie had learned about his bad record, but he took no chances--he told her everything, and thus took the sting out of it. Yes, he had been trapped into evil ways, but it wasn’t his fault, he hadn’t known any better, he had been a pitiful victim of circumstances. He told how he had been starved and driven about and beaten by “Old Man” Drubb, and the tears glistened in Jennie’s grey eyes and stole down her cheeks. He told about loneliness and heartsickness and misery in the orphan asylum. And how could he, poor lad, realize that it was wrong to help Pericles Priam sell his Peerless Pain Paralyzer? How could he know whether the medicine was any good or not--he didn’t even know now, as a matter of fact. As for the Temple of Jimjambo, all that Peter had done was to wash dishes and work as a kitchen slave, as in any hotel or restaurant.
It was a story easy to fix up, and especially easy because the first article in the creed of Socialist Jennie was that economic circumstances were to blame for human frailties. That opened the door for all varieties of grafters, and made the child such an easy mark that Peter would have been ashamed to make a victim of her, had it not been that she happened to stand in the path of his higher purposes--and also that she happened to be young, only seventeen, with tender grey eyes, and tempting, sweet lips, alone there in the house all day.
Section 16
Peter’s adventures in love had so far been pretty much of a piece with the rest of his life experiences; there had been hopes, and wonderful dreams, but very few realizations. Peter knew a lot about such matters; in the orphan asylum there were few vicious practices which he did not witness, few obscene imaginings with which he was not made familiar. Also, Pericles Priam had been a man like the traditional sailor, with a girl in every port; and generally in these towns and villages there had been no place for Peter to go save where Pericles went, so Peter had been the witness of many of his master’s amours and the recipient of his confidences. But none of these girls and women had paid any attention to Peter. Peter was only a “kid”; and when he grew up and was no longer a kid, but a youth tormented with sharp desires, they still paid no attention to him--why should they? Peter was nothing; he had no position, no money, no charms; he was frail and undersized, his teeth were crooked, and one shoulder higher than the other. What could he expect from women and girls but laughter and rebuffs?
Then Peter moved on to the Temple of Jimjambo, and there a devastating experience befell him--he tumbled head over heels and agonizingly in love. There was a chambermaid in the institution, a radiant creature from the Emerald Isles with hair like sunrise and cheeks like apples, and a laugh that shook the dish-pans on the kitchen walls. She laughed at Peter, she laughed at the major-domo, she laughed at all the men in the place who tried to catch her round the waist. Once or twice a month perhaps she would let them succeed, just to keep them interested, and to keep herself in practice.
The only one she really favored was the laundry deliveryman, and Peter soon realized why. This laundry fellow had the use of an automobile on Sundays, and Nell would dress herself up to kill, and roll away in state with him. He would spend all his week’s earnings entertaining her at the beach; Peter knew, because she would tell the whole establishment on Monday morning. “Gee, but I had a swell time!” she would say; and would count the ice-creams and the merry-go-rounds and the whirly-gigs and all the whang-doodle things. She would tell about the tattooed men and the five-legged calf and the woman who was half man, and all the while she would make the dishpans rattle.
Yes, she was a marvelous creature, and Peter suddenly realized that his ultimate desire in life was to possess a “swell lady-friend”
like Nell. He realized that there was one essential prerequisite, and that was money. None of them would look at you without money. Nell had gone out with him only once, and that was upon the savings of six months, and Peter had not been able to conceal the effort it cost him to spend it all. So he had been set down as a “tight-wad,”
and had made no headway.
Nell had disappeared, along with everybody else when the police raided the Temple. Peter never knew what had become of her, but the old longings still haunted him, and he would find himself imagining--suppose the police had got her; suppose she were in jail, and he with his new “pull” were able to get her out, and carry her away and keep her hid from the laundry man!
These were dreams; but meantime here was reality, here was a new world. Peter had settled down in the home of the Todd sisters; and what was their attitude toward these awful mysteries of love?
Section 17
It had been arranged with Guffey that at the end of a week Peter was to have a secret meeting with one of the chief detective’s men. So Peter told the girls that he was tired of being a prisoner in the house and must get some fresh air.
“Oh please, Mr. Gudge, don’t take such a chance!” cried Sadie, her thin, anxious face suddenly growing more anxious and thin. “Don’t you know this house is being watched? They are just hoping to catch you out alone. It would be the last of you.”
“I’m not so important as that,” said Peter; but she insisted that he was, and Peter was pleased, in spite of his boredom, he liked to hear her insist upon his importance.
“Oh!” she cried. “Don’t you know yet how much depends on you as a witness for the Goober defense? This case is of concern to millions of people all over the world! It is a test case, Mr. Gudge--are they to be allowed to murder the leaders of the working class without a struggle? No, we must show them that there is a great movement, a world-wide awakening of the workers, a struggle for freedom for the wage slaves--”
But Peter could stand no more of this. “All right,” he said, suddenly interrupting Sadie’s eloquence. “I suppose it’s my duty to stay, even if I die of consumption, being shut up without any fresh air.” He would play the martyr; which was not so hard, for he was one, and looked like one, with his thin, one-sided little figure, and his shabby clothes. Both Sadie and Jennie gazed at him with admiration, and sighed with relief.
But later on, Peter thought of an idea. He could go out at night, he told Sadie, and slip out the back way, so that no one would see him; he would not go into crowds or brightly lighted streets, so there would be no chance of his being recognized. There was a fellow he absolutely had to see, who owed him some money; it was way over on the other side of the city--that was why he rejected Jennie’s offer to accompany him.
So that evening Peter climbed a back fence and stole thru a neighbor’s chicken-yard and got away. He had a fine time ducking and dodging in the crowds, making sure that no one was trailing him to his secret rendezvous--no “Red” who might chance to be suspicious of his “comradeship.” It was in the “American House,” an obscure hotel, and Peter was to take the elevator to the fourth floor, without speaking to any one, and to tap three times on the door of Room 427. Peter did so, and the door opened, and he slipped in, and there he met Jerry McGivney, with the face of a rat.
“Well, what have you got?” demanded McGivney; and Peter sat down and started to tell. With eager fingers he undid the amateur sewing in the lining of his coat, and pulled out his notes with the names and descriptions of people who had come to see him.
McGivney glanced over them quickly. “Jesus!” he said, “What’s the good of all this?”
“Well, but they’re Reds!” exclaimed Peter.
“I know,” said the other, “but what of that? We can go hear them spout at meetings any night. We got membership lists of these different organizations. But what about the Goober case?”
“Well,” said Peter, “they’re agitating about it all the time; they’ve been printing stuff about me.”
“Sure, we know that,” said McGivney. “And the hell of a fine story you gave them; you must have enjoyed hearing yourself talk. But what good does that do us?”
“But what do you want to know?” cried Peter, in dismay.
“We want to know their secret plans,” said the other. “We want to know what they’re doing to get our witnesses; we want to know who it is that is selling us out, who’s the spy in the jail. Didn’t you find that out?”
“N-no,” said Peter. “Nobody said anything about it.”
“Good God!” said the detective. “D’you expect them to bring you things on a silver tray?” He began turning over Peter’s notes again, and finally threw them on the bed in disgust. He began questioning Peter, and Peter’s dismay turned to despair. He had not got a single thing that McGivney wanted. His whole week of “sleuthing” had been wasted!
The detective did not mince words. “It’s plain that you’re a boob,”
he said. “But such as you are, we’ve got to do the best we can with you. Now, put your mind on it and get it straight: we know who these Reds are, and we know what they’re teaching; we can’t send ‘em to jail for that. What we want you to find out is the name of their spy, and who are their witnesses in the Goober case, and what they’re going to say.”
“But how can I find out things like that?” cried Peter.
“You’ve got to use your wits,” said McGivney. “But I’ll give you one tip; get yourself a girl.”
“A girl?” cried Peter, in wonder.
“Sure thing,” said the other. “That’s the way we always work. Guffey says there’s just three times when people tell their secrets: The first is when they’re drunk, and the second is when they’re in love--”
Then McGivney stopped. Peter, who wanted to complete his education, inquired, “And the third?”
“The third is when they’re both drunk and in love,” was the reply. And Peter was silent, smitten with admiration. This business of sleuthing was revealing itself as more complicated and more fascinating all the time.
“Ain’t you seen any girl you fancy in that crowd?” demanded the other.
“Well--it might be--” said Peter, shyly.
“It ought to be easy,” continued the detective. “Them Reds are all free lovers, you know.”
“Free lovers!” exclaimed Peter. “How do you mean?”
“Didn’t you know about that?” laughed the other.
Peter sat staring at him. All the women that Peter had ever known or heard of took money for their love. They either took it directly, or they took it in the form of automobile rides and flowers and candy and tickets to the whang-doodle things. Could it be that there were women who did not take money in either form, but whose love was entirely free?
The detective assured him that such was the case. “They boast about it,” said he. “They think it’s right.” And to Peter that seemed the most shocking thing he had yet heard about the Reds.
To be sure, when he thought it over, he could see that it had some redeeming points; it was decidedly convenient from the point of view of the man; it was so much money in his pocket. If women chose to be that silly--and Peter found himself suddenly thinking about little Jennie Todd. Yes, she would be that silly, it was plain to see. She gave away everything she had; so of course she would be a “free lover!”
Peter went away from his rendezvous with McGivney, thrilling with a new and wonderful idea. You couldn’t have got him to give up his job now. This sleuthing business was the real thing!
It was late when Peter got home, but the two girls were sitting up for him, and their relief at his safe return was evident. He noticed that Jennie’s face expressed deeper concern than her sister’s, and this gave him a sudden new emotion. Jennie’s breath came and went more swiftly because he had entered the room; and this affected his own breath in the same way. He had a swift impulse towards her, an entirely unselfish desire to reassure her and relieve her anxiety; but with an instinctive understanding of the sex game which he had not before known he possessed, he checked this impulse and turned instead to the older sister, assuring her that nobody had followed him. He told an elaborate story, prepared on the way; he had worked for ten days for a fellow at sawing wood--hard work, you bet, and then the fellow had tried to get out of paying him! Peter had caught him at his home that evening, and had succeeded in getting five dollars out of him, and a promise of a few dollars more every week. That was to cover future visits to McGivney.
Section 18
Peter lay awake a good part of the night, thinking over this new job--that of getting himself a girl. He realized that for some time he had been falling in love with little Jennie; but he wanted to be sane and practical, he wanted to use his mind in choosing a girl. He was after information, first of all. And who had the most to give him? He thought of Miss Nebbins, who was secretary to Andrews, the lawyer; she would surely know more secrets than anyone else; but then, Miss Nebbins was an old maid, who wore spectacles and broad-toed shoes, and was evidently out of the question for love-making. Then he thought of Miss Standish, a tall, blond beauty who worked in an insurance office and belonged to the Socialist Party. She was a “swell dresser,” and Peter would have been glad to have something like that to show off to McGivney and the rest of Guffey’s men; but with the best efforts of his self-esteem, Peter could not imagine himself persuading Miss Standish to look at him. There was a Miss Yankovich, one of the real Reds, who trained with the I. W. W.; but she was a Jewess, with sharp, black eyes that clearly indicated a temper, and frightened Peter. Also, he had a suspicion that she was interested in McCormick--tho of course with these “free lovers” you could never tell.
But one girl Peter was quite sure about, and that was little Jennie; he didn’t know if Jennie knew many secrets, but surely she could find some out for him. Once he got her for his own, he could use her to question others. And so Peter began to picture what love with Jennie would be like. She wasn’t exactly what you would call “swell,” but there was something about her that made him sure he needn’t be ashamed of her. With some new clothes she would be pretty, and she had grand manners--she had not shown the least fear of the rich ladies who came to the house in their automobiles; also she knew an awful lot for a girl--even if most of what she knew wasn’t so!
Peter lost no time in setting to work at his new job. In the papers next morning appeared the usual details from Flanders; thousands of men being shot to pieces almost every hour of the day and night, a million men on each side locked in a ferocious combat that had lasted for weeks, that might last for months. And sentimental little Jennie sat there with brimming eyes, talking about it while Peter ate his oatmeal and thin milk. And Peter talked about it too; how wicked it was, and how they must stop it, he and Jennie together. He agreed with her now; he was a Socialist, he called her “Comrade,”
and told her she had converted him. Her eyes lighted up with joy, as if she had really done something to end the war.
They were sitting on the sofa, looking at the paper, and they were alone in the house. Peter suddenly looked up from the reading and said, very much embarrassed, “But Comrade Jennie--”
“Yes,” she said, and looked at him with her frank grey eyes. Peter was shy, truly a little frightened, this kind of detective business being new to him.
“Comrade Jennie,” he said, “I--I--don’t know just how to say it, but I’m afraid I’m falling a little in love.”
Jennie drew back her hands, and Peter heard her breath come quickly. “Oh, Mr. Gudge!” she exclaimed.
“I--I don’t know--” stammered Peter. “I hope you won’t mind.”
“Oh, don’t let’s do that!” she cried.
“Why not, Comrade Jennie?” And he added, “I don’t know as I can help it.”
“Oh, we were having such a happy time, Mr. Gudge! I thought we were going to work for the cause!”
“Well, but it won’t interfere--”
“Oh, but it does, it does; it makes people unhappy!”
“Then--” and Peter’s voice trembled--“then you don’t care the least bit for me, Comrade Jennie?”
She hesitated a moment. “I don’t know,” she said. “I hadn’t thought--”
And Peter’s heart gave a leap inside him. It was the first time that any girl had ever had to hesitate in answering that question for Peter. Something prompted him--just as if he had been doing this kind of “sleuthing” all his life. He reached over, and very gently took her hand. “You do care just a little for me?” he whispered.
“Oh, Comrade Gudge,” she answered, and Peter said, “Call me `Peter.’ Please, please do.”
“Comrade Peter,” she said, and there was a little catch in her throat, and Peter, looking at her, saw that her eyes were cast down.
“I know I’m not very much to love,” he pleaded. “I’m poor and obscure--I’m not good looking--”
“Oh, it isn’t that!” she cried, “Oh, no, no! Why should I think about such things? You are a comrade!”
Peter had known, of course, just how she would take this line of talk. “Nobody has ever loved me,” he said, sadly. “Nobody cares anything about you, when you are poor, and have nothing to offer--”
“I tell you, that isn’t it!” she insisted. “Please don’t think that! You are a hero. You have sacrificed for the cause, and you are going on and become a leader.”
“I hope so,” said Peter, modestly. “But then, what is it, Comrade Jennie? Why don’t you care for me?”
She looked up at him, and their eyes met, and with a little sob in her voice she answered, “I’m not well, Comrade Peter. I’m of no use; it would be wicked for me to marry.”
Somewhere back in the depths of Peter, where his inner self was crouching, it was as if a sudden douche of ice-cold water were let down on him. “Marry!” Who had said anything about marrying? Peter’s reaction fitted the stock-phrase of the comic papers: “This is so sudden!”
But Peter was too clever to reveal such dismay. He humored little Jennie, saying, “We don’t have to marry right away. I could wait, if only I knew that you cared for me; and some day, when you get well--”
She shook her head sadly. “I’m afraid I’ll never get really well. And besides, neither of us have any money, Comrade Peter.”
Ah, there it was! Money, always money! This “free love” was nothing but a dream.
“I could get a job,” said Peter--just like any other tame and conventional wooer.
“But you couldn’t earn enough for two of us,” protested the girl; and suddenly she sprang up. “Oh, Comrade Peter, let’s not fall in love with each other! Let’s not make ourselves unhappy, let’s work for the cause! Promise me that you will!”
Peter promised; but of course he had no remotest intention of keeping the promise. He was not only a detective, he was a man--and in both capacities he wanted Comrade Jennie. He had all the rest of the day, and over the addressing of envelopes which he undertook with her, he would now and then steal love-glances; and Jennie knew now what these looks meant, and the faint flush would creep over her cheeks and down into her neck and throat. She was really very pretty when she was falling in love, and Peter found his new job the most delightful one of his lifetime. He watched carefully, and noted the signs, and was sure he was making no mistake; before Sadie came back at supper-time he had his arms about Comrade Jennie, and was pressing kisses upon the lovely white throat; and Comrade Jennie was sobbing softly, and her pleading with him to stop had grown faint and unconvincing.
Section 19
There was the question of Sadie to be settled. There was a certain severe look that sometimes came about Sadie’s lips, and that caused Peter to feel absolutely certain that Comrade Sadie had no sympathy with “free love,” and very little sympathy with any love save her own for Jennie. She had nursed her “little sister” and tended her like a mother for many years; she took the food out of her mouth to give to Jennie--and Jennie in turn gave it to any wandering agitator who came along and hung around until mealtime. Peter didn’t want Sadie to know what had been going on in her absence, and yet he was afraid to suggest to Jennie that she should deceive her sister.
He managed it very tactfully. Jennie began pleading again: “We ought not to do this, Comrade Peter!” And so Peter agreed, perhaps they oughtn’t, and they wouldn’t any more. So Jennie put her hair in order, and straightened her blouse, and her lover could see that she wasn’t going to tell Sadie.
And the next day they were kissing again and agreeing again that they mustn’t do it; and so once more Jennie didn’t tell Sadie. Before long Peter had managed to whisper the suggestion that their love was their own affair, and they ought not to tell anybody for the present; they would keep the delicious secret, and it would do no one any harm. Jennie had read somewhere about a woman poet by the name of Mrs. Browning, who had been an invalid all her life, and whose health had been completely restored by a great and wonderful love. Such a love had now come to her; only Sadie might not understand, Sadie might think they did not know each other well enough, and that they ought to wait. They knew, of course, that they really did know each other perfectly, so there was no reason for uncertainty or fear. Peter managed deftly to put these suggestions into Jennie’s mind as if they were her own.
And all the time he was making ardent love to her; all day long, while he was helping her address envelopes and mail out circulars for the Goober Defense Committee. He really did work hard; he didn’t mind working, when he had Jennie at the table beside him, and could reach over and hold her hand every now and then, or catch her in his arms and murmur passionate words. Delicious thrills and raptures possessed him; his hopes would rise like a flood-tide--but then, alas, only to ebb again! He would get so far, and every time it would be as if he had run into a stone wall. No farther!
Peter realized that McGivney’s “free love” talk had been a cruel mistake. Little Jennie was like all the other women--her love wasn’t going to be “free.” Little Jennie wanted a husband, and every time you kissed her, she began right away to talk about marriage, and you dared not hint at anything else because you knew it would spoil everything. So Peter was thrown back upon devices older than the teachings of any “Reds.” He went after little Jennie, not in the way of “free lovers,” but in the way of a man alone in the house with a girl of seventeen, and wishing to seduce her. He vowed that he loved her with an overwhelming and eternal love. He vowed that he would get a job and take care of her. And then he let her discover that he was suffering torments; he could not live without her. He played upon her sympathy, he played upon her childish innocence, he played upon that pitiful, weak sentimentality which caused her to believe in pacifism and altruism and socialism and all the other “isms” that were jumbled up in her head.
And so in a couple of weeks Peter had succeeded in his purpose of carrying little Jennie by storm. And then, how enraptured he was! Peter, with his first girl, decided that being a detective was the job for him! Peter knew that he was a real detective now, using the real inside methods, and on the trail of the real secrets of the Goober case!
And sure enough, he began at once to get them. Jennie was in love; Jennie was, as you might say, “drunk with love,” and so she fulfilled both the conditions which Guffey had laid down. So Jennie told the truth! Sitting on Peter’s knee, with her arms clasped about him, and talking about her girlhood, the happy days before her mother and father had been killed in the factory where they worked, little Jennie mentioned the name of a young man, Ibbetts.
“Ibbetts?” said Peter. It was a peculiar name, and sounded familiar.
“A cousin of ours,” said Jennie.
“Have I met him?” asked Peter, groping in his mind.
“No, he hasn’t been here.”
“Ibbetts?” he repeated, still groping; and suddenly he remembered. “Isn’t his name Jack?”
Jennie did not answer for a moment. He looked at her, and their eyes met, and he saw that she was frightened. “Oh, Peter!” she whispered. “I wasn’t to tell! I wasn’t to tell a soul!”
Inside Peter, something was shouting with delight. To hide his emotion he had to bury his face in the soft white throat. “Sweetheart!” he whispered. “Darling!”
“Uh, Peter!” she cried. “You know--don’t you?”
“Of course!” he laughed. “But I won’t tell. You needn’t mind trusting me.”
“Oh, but Mr. Andrews was so insistent!” said Jennie, “He made Sadie and me swear that we wouldn’t breathe it to a soul.”
“Well, you didn’t tell,” said Peter. “I found it out by accident. Don’t mention it, and nobody will be any the wiser. If they should find out that I know, they wouldn’t blame you; they’d understand that I know Jack Ibbetts--me being in jail so long.”
So Jennie forgot all about the matter, and Peter went on with the kisses, making her happy, as a means of concealing his own exultation. He had done the job for which Guffey had sent him! He had solved the first great mystery of the Goober case! The spy in the jail of American City, who was carrying out news to the Defense Committee, was Jack Ibbetts, one of the keepers in the jail, and a cousin of the Todd sisters!
Section 20
It was fortunate that this was the day of Peter’s meeting with McGivney. He could really not have kept this wonderful secret to himself over night. He made excuses to the girls, and dodged thru the chicken-yard as before, and made his way to the American House. As he walked, Peter’s mind was working busily. He had really got his grip on the ladder of prosperity now; he must not fail to tighten it.
McGivney saw right away from Peter’s face that something had happened. “Well?” he inquired.
“I’ve got it!” exclaimed Peter.
“Got what?”
“The name of the spy in the jail.”
“Christ! You don’t mean it!” cried the other.
“No doubt about it,” answered Peter.
“Who is he?”
Peter clenched his hands and summoned his resolution. “First,” he said, “you and me got to have an understanding. Mr. Guffey said I was to be paid, but he didn’t say how much, or when.”
“Oh, hell!” said McGivney. “If you’ve got the name of that spy, you don’t need to worry about your reward.”
“Well, that’s all right,” said Peter, “but I’d like to know what I’m to get and how I’m to get it.”
“How much do you want?” demanded the man with the face of a rat. Rat-like, he was retreating into a corner, his sharp black eyes watching his enemy. “How much?” he repeated.
Peter had tried his best to rise to this occasion. Was he not working for the greatest and richest concern in American City, the Traction Trust? Tens and hundreds of millions of dollars they were worth--he had no idea how much, but he knew they could afford to pay for his secret. “I think it ought to be worth two hundred dollars,”
he said.
“Sure,” said McGivney, “that’s all right. We’ll pay you that.”
And straightway Peter’s heart sank. What a fool he had been! Why hadn’t he had more courage, and asked for five hundred dollars? He might even have asked a thousand, and made himself independent for life!
“Well,” said McGivney, “who’s the spy?”
Peter made an agonizing, effort, and summoned yet more nerve. “First, I got to know, when do I get that money?”
“Oh, good God!” said McGivney. “You give us the information, and you’ll get your money all right. What kind of cheap skates do you take us for?”
“Well, that’s all right,” said Peter. “But you know, Mr. Guffey didn’t give me any reason to think he loved me. I still can hardly use this wrist like I used to.”
“Well, he was trying to get some information out of you,” said McGivney. “He thought you were one of them dynamiters--how could you blame him? You give me the name of that spy, and I’ll see you get your money.”
But still Peter wouldn’t yield. He was afraid of the rat-faced McGivney, and his heart was thumping fast, but he stood his ground. “I think I ought to see that money,” he said, doggedly.
“Say, what the hell do you take me for?” demanded the detective. “D’you suppose I’m going to give you two hundred dollars and then have you give me some fake name and skip?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t do that!” cried Peter.
“How do I know you wouldn’t?”
“Well, I want to go on working for you.”
“Sure, and we want you to go on working for us. This ain’t the last secret we’ll get from you, and you’ll find we play straight with our people--how’d we ever get anywheres otherwise? There’s a million dollars been put up to hang that Goober crowd, and if you deliver the goods, you’ll get your share, and get it right on time.”
He spoke with conviction, and Peter was partly persuaded. But most of Peter’s lifetime had been spent in watching people bargaining with one another--watching scoundrels trying to outwit one another--and when it was a question of some money to be got, Peter was like a bulldog that has got his teeth fixed tight in another dog’s nose; he doesn’t consider the other dog’s feelings, nor does he consider whether the other dog admires him or not.
“On time?” said Peter. “What do you mean by `on time’?”
“Oh, my God!” said McGivney, in disgust.
“Well, but I want to know,” said Peter. “D’you mean when I give the name, or d’you mean after you’ve gone and found out whether he really is the spy or not?”
So they worried back and forth, these snarling bulldogs, growing more and more angry. But Peter was the one who had got his teeth in, and Peter hung on. Once McGivney hinted quite plainly that the great Traction Trust had had power enough to shut Peter in the “hole” on two occasions and keep him there, and it might have power enough to do it a third time. Peter’s heart failed with terror, but all the same, he hung on to McGivney’s nose.
“All right,” said the rat-faced man, at last. He said it in a tone of wearied scorn; but that didn’t worry Peter a particle. “All right, I’ll take a chance with you.” And he reached into his pocket and pulled out a roll of bills--twenty dollar bills they were, and he counted out ten of them. Peter saw that there was still a lot left to the roll, and knew that he hadn’t asked as much money as McGivney had been prepared to have him ask; so his heart was sick within him. At the same time his heart was leaping with exultation--such a strange thing is the human heart!
Section 21
McGivney laid the money on the bed. “There it is,” he said, “and if you give me the name of the spy you can take it. But you’d better take my advice and not spend it, because if it turns out that you haven’t got the spy, by God, I believe Ed Guffey’d twist the arms out of you!”
Peter was easy about that. “I know he’s the spy all right.”
“Well, who is he?”
“He’s Jack Ibbetts.”
“The devil you say!” cried McGivney, incredulously.
“Jack Ibbetts, one of the night keepers in the jail.”
“I know him,” said the other. “But what put that notion into your head?”
“He’s a cousin of the Todd sisters.”
“Who are the Todd sisters?”
“Jennie Todd is my girl,” said Peter.
“Girl!” echoed the other; he stared at Peter, and a grin spread over his face. “You got a girl in two weeks? I didn’t know you had it in you!”
It was a doubtful compliment, but Peter’s smile was no less expansive, and showed all his crooked teeth. “I got her all right,”
he said, “and she blabbed it out the first thing--that Ibbetts was her cousin. And then she was scared, because Andrews, the lawyer, had made her and her sister swear they wouldn’t mention his name to a soul. So you see, they’re using him for a spy--there ain’t a particle of doubt about it.”
“Good God!” said McGivney, and there was genuine dismay in his tone. “Who’d think it possible? Why, Ibbetts is as decent a fellow as ever you talked to--and him a Red, and a traitor at that! You know, that’s what makes it the devil trying to handle these Reds--you never can tell who they’ll get; you never know who to trust. How, d’you suppose they manage it?”
“I dunno,” said Peter. “There’s a sucker born every minute, you know!”
“Well, anyhow, I see you ain’t one of ‘em,” said the rat-faced man, as he watched Peter take the roll of bills from the bed and tuck them away in an inside pocket.
Section 22
Peter was warned by the rat-faced man that he must be careful how he spent any of that money. Nothing would be more certain to bring suspicion on him than to have it whispered about that he was “in funds.” He must be able to show how he had come honestly by everything he had. And Peter agreed to that; he would hide the money away in a safe place until he was thru with his job.
Then he in turn proceeded to warn McGivney. If they were to fire Ibbetts from his job, it would certainly cause talk, and might direct suspicion against Peter. McGivney answered with a smile that he wasn’t born yesterday. They would “promote” Jack Ibbetts, giving him some job where he couldn’t get any news about the Goober case; then, after a bit, they would catch him up on some mistake, or get him into some trouble, and fire him.
At this meeting, and at later meetings, Peter and the rat-faced man talked out every aspect of the Goober case, which was becoming more and more complicated, and bigger as a public issue. New people were continually being involved, and new problems continually arising; it was more fascinating than a game of chess. McGivney had spoken the literal truth when he said that the big business interests of American City had put up a million dollars to hang Goober and his crowd. At the very beginning there had been offered seventeen thousand dollars in rewards for information, and these rewards naturally had many claimants. The trouble was that people who wanted this money generally had records that wouldn’t go well before a jury; the women nearly always turned out to be prostitutes, and the men to be ex-convicts, forgers, gamblers, or what not. Sometimes they didn’t tell their past records until the other side unearthed them, and then it was necessary to doctor court records, and pull wires all over the country.
There were a dozen such witnesses as this in the Goober case. They had told their stories before the grand jury, and innumerable flaws and discrepancies had been discovered, which made more work and trouble for Guffey and his lieutenants. Thru a miserable mischance it happened that Jim Goober and his wife had been watching the parade from the roof of a building a couple of miles away, at the very hour when they were accused of having planted the suit-case with the bomb in it. Somebody had taken a photograph of the parade from this roof, which showed both Goober and his wife looking over, and also a big clock in front of a jewelry store, plainly indicating the very minute. Fortunately the prosecution got hold of this photograph first; but now the defense had learned of its existence, and was trying to get a look at it. The prosecution didn’t dare destroy it, because its existence could be proven; but they had photographed the photograph, and re-photographed that, until they had the face of the clock so dim that the time could not be seen. Now the defense was trying to get evidence that this trick had been worked.
Then there were all the witnesses for the defense. Thru another mischance it had happened that half a dozen different people had seen the bomb thrown from the roof of Guggenheim’s Department Store; which entirely contradicted the suit-case theory upon which the prosecution was based. So now it was necessary to “reach” these various witnesses. One perhaps had a mortgage on his home which could be bought and foreclosed; another perhaps had a wife who wanted to divorce him, and could be persuaded to help get him into trouble. Or perhaps he was engaged in an intrigue with some other man’s wife; or perhaps some woman could be sent to draw him into an intrigue.
Then again, it appeared that very soon after the explosion some of Guffey’s men had taken a sledge hammer and smashed the sidewalk, also the wall of the building where the explosion had taken place. This was to fit in with the theory of the suit-case bomb, and they had taken a number of photographs of the damage. But now it transpired that somebody had taken a photograph of the spot before this extra damage had been done, and that the defense was in possession of this photograph. Who had taken this photograph, and how could he be “fixed”? If Peter could help in such matters, he would come out of the Goober case a rich man.
Peter would go away from these meetings with McGivney with his head full of visions, and would concentrate all his faculties upon the collecting of information. He and Jennie and Sadie talked about the case incessantly, and Jennie and Sadie would tell freely everything they had heard outside. Others would come in--young McCormick, and Miriam Yankovitch, and Miss Nebbins, the secretary to Andrews, and they would tell what they had learned and what they suspected, and what the defense was hoping to find out. They got hold of a cousin of the man who had taken the photograph on the roof; they were working on him, to get him to persuade the photographer to tell the truth. Next day Donald Gordon would come in, cast down with despair, because it had been learned that one of the most valuable witnesses of the defense, a groceryman, had once pleaded guilty to selling spoilt cheese! Thus every evening, before he went to sleep, Peter would jot down notes, and sew them up inside his jacket, and once a week he would go to the meeting with McGivney, and the two would argue and bargain over the value of Peter’s news.
Section 23
It had become a fascinating game, and Peter would never have tired of it, but for the fact that he had to stay all day in the house with little Jennie. A honeymoon is all right for a few weeks, but no man can stand it forever. Little Jennie apparently never tired of being kissed, and never seemed satisfied that Peter thoroughly loved her. A man got thru with his love-making after awhile, but a woman, it appeared, never knew how to drop the subject; she was always looking before and after, and figuring consequences and responsibilities, her duty and her reputation and all the rest of it. Which, of course, was a bore.
Jennie was unhappy because she was deceiving Sadie; she wanted to tell Sadie, and yet somehow it was easier to go on concealing than admit that one had concealed. Peter didn’t see why Sadie had to be told at all; he didn’t see why things couldn’t stay just as they were, and why he and his sweetheart couldn’t have some fun now and then, instead of always being sentimental, always having agonies over the class war, to say nothing of the world war, and the prospects of America becoming involved in it.
This did not mean that Peter was hard and feelingless. No, when Peter clasped trembling little Jennie in his arms he was very deeply moved; he had a real sense of what a gentle and good little soul she was. He would have been glad to help her--but what could he do about it? The situation was such that he could not plead with her, he could not try to change her; he had to give himself up to all her crazy whims and pretend to agree with her. Little Jennie was by her weakness marked for destruction, and what good would it do for him to go to destruction along with her?
Peter understood clearly that there are two kinds of people in the world, those who eat, and those who are eaten; and it was his intention to stay among the former, group. Peter had come in his twenty years of life to a definite understanding of the things called “ideas” and “causes” and “religions.” They were bait to catch suckers; and there is a continual competition between the suckers, who of course don’t want to be caught, and those people of superior wits who want to catch them, and therefore are continually inventing new and more plausible and alluring kinds of bait. Peter had by now heard enough of the jargon of the “comrades” to realize that theirs was an especially effective kind; and here was poor little Jennie, stuck fast on the hook, and what could Peter do about it?
Yet, this was Peter’s first love, and when he was deeply thrilled, he understood the truth of Guffey’s saying that a man in love wants to tell the truth. Peter would have the impulse to say to her: “Oh, drop all that preaching, and give yourself a rest! Let’s you and me enjoy life a bit.”
Yes, it would be all he could do to keep from saying this--despite the fact that he knew it would ruin everything. Once little Jennie appeared in a new silk dress, brought to her by one of the rich ladies whose heart was touched by her dowdy appearance. It was of soft grey silk--cheap silk, but fresh and new, and Peter had never had anything so fine in his arms before. It matched Jennie’s grey eyes, and its freshness gave her a pink glow; or was it that Peter admired her, and loved her more, and so brought the blood to her cheeks? Peter had an impulse to take her out and show her off, and he pressed his face into the soft folds of the dress and whispered, “Say kid, some day you an me got to cut all this hard luck business for a bit!”
He felt little Jennie stiffen, and draw away from him; so quickly he had to set to work to patch up the damage. “I want you to get well,”
he pleaded. “You’re so good to everybody--you treat everybody well but yourself!”
It had been something in his tone rather than his actual words that had frightened the girl. “Oh Peter!” she cried. “What does it matter about me, or about any other one person, when millions of young men are being shot to fragments, and millions of women and children are starving to death!”
So there they were, fighting the war again; Peter had to take up her burden, be a hero, and a martyr, and a “Red.” That same afternoon, as fate willed it, three “wobblies” out of a job came to call; and oh, how tired Peter was of these wandering agitators--insufferable “grouches!” Peter would want to say: “Oh, cut it out! What you call your `cause’ is nothing but your scheme to work with your tongues instead of with a pick and a shovel.” And this would start an imaginary quarrel in Peter’s mind. He would hear one of the fellows demanding, “How much pick and shovel work you ever done?” Another saying, “Looks to me like you been finding the easy jobs wherever you go!” The fact that this was true did not make Peter’s irritation any less, did not make it easier for him to meet with Comrade Smith, and Brother Jones, and Fellow-worker Brown just out of jail, and listen to their hard-luck stories, and watch them take from the table food that Peter wanted, and--the bitterest pill of all--let them think that they were fooling him with their patter!
The time came when Peter wasn’t able to stand it any longer. Shut up in the house all day, he was becoming as irritable as a chained dog. Unless he could get out in the world again, he would surely give himself away. He pleaded that the doctors had warned him that his health would not stand indoor life; he must get some fresh air. So he got away by himself, and after that he found things much easier. He could spend a little of his money; he could find a quiet corner in a restaurant and get himself a beefsteak, and eat all he wanted of it, without feeling the eyes of any “comrades” resting upon him reprovingly. Peter had lived in a jail, and in an orphan asylum, and in the home of Shoemaker Smithers, but nowhere had he fared so meagerly as in the home of the Todd sisters, who were contributing nearly everything they owned to the Goober defense, and to the “Clarion,” the Socialist paper of American City.
Section 24
Peter went to see Andrews, the lawyer, and asked for a job; he wanted to be active in the case, he said, so he was set to work in the offices of the Defense Committee, where he heard people talking about the case all day, and he could pick up no end of valuable tips. He made himself agreeable and gained friends; before long he was intimate with one of the best witnesses of the defense, and discovered that this man had once been named as co-respondent in a divorce case. Peter found out the name of the woman, and Guffey set to work to bring her to American City. The job was to be done cleverly, without the woman’s even knowing that she was being used. She would have a little holiday, and the spell of old love would reassert itself, and Guffey would have a half dozen men to spring the trap--and there would be a star witness of the Goober defense clean down and out! “There’s always something you can get them on!”
said McGivney, and cheerfully paid Peter Gudge five hundred dollars for the information he had brought.
Peter would have been wildly happy, but just at this moment a dreadful calamity befell him. Jennie had been talking about marriage more and more, and now she revealed to him a reason which made marriage imperative. She revealed it with downcast eyes, with blushes and trembling; and Peter was so overcome with consternation that he could not play the part that was expected of him. Hitherto in these love crises he had caught Jennie in his arms and comforted her; but now for a moment he let her see his real emotions.
Jennie promptly had a fit. What was the matter with him? Didn’t he mean to marry her, as he had promised? Surely he must realize now that they could no longer delay! And Peter, who was not familiar with the symptoms of hysterics, lost his head completely and could think of nothing to do but rush out of the house and slam the door.
The more he considered it, the more clearly he realized that he was in the devil of a predicament. As a servant of the Traction Trust, he had taken it for granted that he was immune to all legal penalties and obligations; but here, he had a feeling, was a trouble from which the powerful ones of the city would be unable to shield their agent. Were they able to arrange it so that one could marry a girl, and then get out of it when one’s job was done?
Peter was so uneasy that he had to call up the office of Guffey and get hold of McGivney. This was dangerous, because the prosecution was tapping telephone wires, and they feared the defense might be doing the same. But Peter took a chance; he told McGivney to come and meet him at the usual place; and there they argued the matter out, and Peter’s worst fears were confirmed. When he put the proposition up to McGivney, the rat-faced man guffawed in his face. He found it so funny that he did not stop laughing until he saw that he was putting his spy into a rage.
“What’s the joke?” demanded Peter. “If I’m ruined, where’ll you get any more information?”
“But, my God!” said McGivney. “What did you have to go and get that kind of a girl for?”
“I had to take what I could,” answered Peter. “Besides, they’re all alike--they get into trouble, and you can’t help it.”
“Sure, you can help it!” said McGivney. “Why didn’t you ask long ago? Now if you’ve got yourself tied up with a marrying proposition, it’s your own lookout; you can’t put it off on me.”
They argued back and forth. The rat-faced man was positive that there was no way Peter could pretend to marry Jennie and not have the marriage count. He might get himself into no end of trouble and certainly he would be ruined as a spy. What he must do was to pay the girl some money and send her somewhere to get fixed up. McGivney would find out the name of a doctor to do the job.
“Yes, but what excuse can I give her?” cried Peter. “I mean, why I don’t marry her!”
“Make something up,” said McGivney. “Why not have a wife already?”
Then, seeing Peter’s look of dismay: “Sure, you can fix that. I’ll get you one, if you need her. But you won’t have to take that trouble--just tell your girl a hard luck story. You’ve got a wife, you thought you could get free from her, but now you find you can’t; your wife’s got wind of what you’re doing here, and she’s trying to blackmail you. Fix it up so your girl can’t do anything on account of hurting the Goober defense. If she’s really sincere about it, she won’t disgrace you; maybe she won’t even tell her sister.”
Peter hated to do anything like that. He had a vision of little Jennie lying on the sofa in hysterics as he had left her, and he dreaded the long emotional scene that would be necessary. However, it seemed that he must go thru with it; there was no better way that he could think of. Also, he must be quick, because in a couple of hours Sadie would be coming home from work, and it might be too late.
Section 25
Peter hurried back to the Todd home, and there was white-faced little Jennie lying on the bed, still sobbing. One would think she might have used up her surplus stock of emotions; but no, there is never any limit to the emotions a woman can pour out. As soon as Peter had got fairly started on the humiliating confession that he had a wife, little Jennie sprang up from the bed with a terrified shriek, and confronted him with a face like the ghost of an escaped lunatic. Peter tried to explain that it wasn’t his fault, he had really expected to be free any day. But Jennie only clasped her hands to her forehead and screamed: “You have deceived me! You have betrayed me!” It was just like a scene in the movies, the bored little devil inside Peter was whispering.
He tried to take her hand and reason with her, but she sprang away from him, she rushed to the other side of the room and stood there, staring at him as if she were some wild thing that he had in a corner and was threatening to kill. She made so much noise that he was afraid that she would bring the neighbors in; he had to point out to her that if this matter became public he would be ruined forever as a witness, and thus she might be the means of sending Jim Goober to the gallows.
Thereupon Jennie fell silent, and it was possible for Peter to get in a word. He told her of the intrigues against him; the other side had sent somebody to him and offered him ten thousand dollars if he would sell out the Goober defense. Now, since he had refused, they were trying to blackmail him, using his wife. They had somehow come to suspect that he was involved in a love affair, and this was to be the means of ruining him.
Jennie still would not let Peter touch, her, but she consented to sit down quietly in a chair, and figure out what they were going to do. Whatever happened, she said, they must do no harm to the Goober case. Peter had done her a monstrous wrong in keeping the truth from her, but she would suffer the penalty, whatever it might be; she would never involve him.
Peter started to explain; perhaps it wasn’t so serious as she feared. He had been thinking things over; he knew where Pericles Priam, his old employer, was living, and Pericles was rich now, and Peter felt sure that he could borrow two hundred dollars, and there were places where little Jennie could go--there were ways to get out of this trouble--
But little Jennie stopped him. She was only a child in some ways, but in others she was a mature woman. She had strange fixed ideas, and when you ran into them it was like running into a stone wall. She would not hear of the idea Peter suggested; it would be murder.
“Nonsense,” said Peter, echoing McGivney. “It’s nothing; everybody does it.” But Jennie was apparently not listening. She sat staring with her wild, terrified eyes, and pulling at her dress with her fingers. Peter got to watching these fingers, and they got on his nerves. They behaved like insane fingers; they manifested all the emotions which the rest of little Jennie was choking back and repressing.
“If you would only not take it so seriously!” Peter pleaded. “It’s a miserable accident, but it’s happened, and now we’ve got to make the best of it. Some day I’ll get free; some day I’ll marry you.”
“Stop, Peter!” the girl whispered, in her tense voice. “I don’t want to talk to you any more, if that’s all you have to say. I don’t know that I’d be willing to marry you--now that I know you could deceive me--that you could go on deceiving me day after day for months.”
Peter thought she was going to break out into hysterics again, and he was frightened. He tried to plead with her, but suddenly she sprang up. “Go away!” she exclaimed. “Please go away and let me alone. I’ll think it over and decide what to do myself. Whatever I do, I won’t disgrace you, so leave me alone, go quickly!”
Section 26
She drove him out of the house, and Peter went, though with many misgivings. He wandered about the streets, not knowing what to do with himself, looking back over the blunders he had made and tormenting himself with that most tormenting of all thoughts: how different my life might have been, if only I had had sense enough to do this, or not to do that! Dinner time came, and Peter blew himself to a square meal, but even that did not comfort him entirely. He pictured Sadie coming home at this hour. Was Jennie telling her or not?
There was a big mass meeting called by the Goober Defense Committee that evening, and Peter attended, and it proved to be the worst thing he could have done. His mind was in no condition to encounter the fierce passions of this crowded assemblage. Peter had the picture of himself being exposed and denounced; he wasn’t sure yet that it mightn’t happen to him. And here was this meeting--thousands of workingmen, horny handed blacksmiths, longshoremen with shoulders like barns and truckmen with fists like battering rams, long-haired radicals of a hundred dangerous varieties, women who waved red handkerchiefs and shrieked until to Peter they seemed like gorgons with snakes instead of hair.
Such were the mob-frenzies engendered by the Goober case; and Peter knew, of course, that to all these people he was a traitor, a poisonous worm, a snake in the grass. If ever they were to find out what he was doing--if for instance, someone were to rise up and expose him to this crowd--they would seize him and tear him to pieces. And maybe, right now, little Jennie was telling Sadie; and Sadie would tell Andrews, and Andrews would become suspicious, and set spies on Peter Gudge! Maybe they had spies on him already, and knew of his meetings with McGivney!
Haunted by such terrors, Peter had to listen to the tirades of Donald Gordon, of John Durand, and of Sorensen, the longshoremen’s leader. He had to listen to exposure after exposure of the tricks which Guffey had played; he had to hear the district attorney of the county denounced as a suborner of perjury, and his agents as blackmailers and forgers. Peter couldn’t understand why such things should be permitted--why these speakers were not all clapped into jail. But instead, he had to sit there and listen; he even had to applaud and pretend to approve! All the other secret operatives of the Traction Trust and of the district attorney’s office had to listen and pretend to approve! In the hall Peter had met Miriam Yankovich, and was sitting next to her. “Look,” she said, “there’s a couple of dicks over there. Look at the mugs on them!”
“Which?” said Peter.
And she answered: “That fellow that looks like a bruiser, and that one next to him, with the face of a rat.” Peter looked, and saw that it was McGivney; and McGivney looked at Peter, but gave no sign.
The meeting lasted until nearly midnight. It subscribed several thousand dollars to the Goober defense fund, and adopted ferocious resolutions which it ordered printed and sent to every local of every labor union in the country. Peter got out before it was over, because he could no longer stand the strain of his own fears and anxieties. He pushed his way thru the crowd, and in the lobby he ran into Pat McCormick, the I. W. W. leader.
There was more excitement in this boy’s grim face than Peter had ever seen there before. Peter thought it was the meeting, but the other rushed up to him, exclaiming: “Have you heard the news?”
“What news?”
“Little Jennie Todd has killed herself!”
“My God!” gasped Peter, starting back.
“Ada Ruth just told me. Sadie found a note when she got home. Jennie had left--she was going to drown herself.”
“But what--why?” cried Peter, in horror.
“She was suffering so, her health was so wretched, she begs Sadie not to look for her body, not to make a fuss--they’ll never find her.”
And horrified and stunned as Peter was, there was something inside him that drew a deep breath of relief. Little Jennie had kept her promise! Peter was, safe!
Section 27
Yes, Peter was safe, but it had been a close call, and he still had painful scenes to play his part in. He had to go back to the Todd home and meet the frantic Sadie, and weep and be horrified with the rest of them. It would have been suspicious if he had not done this; the “comrades” would never have forgiven him. Then to his dismay, he found that Sadie had somehow come to a positive conviction as to Jennie’s trouble. She penned Peter up in a corner and accused him of being responsible; and there was poor Peter, protesting vehemently that he was innocent, and wishing that the floor would open up and swallow him.
In the midst of his protestations a clever scheme occurred to him. He lowered his voice in shame. There was a man, a young man, who used to come to see Jennie off and on. “Jennie asked me not to tell.” Peter hesitated a moment, and added his master-stroke. “Jennie explained to me that she was a free-lover; she told me all about free love. I told her I didn’t believe in it, but you know, Sadie, when Jennie believed in anything, she would stand by it and act on it. So I felt certain it wouldn’t do any good for me to butt in.”
Sadie almost went out of her mind at this. She glared at Peter. “Slanderer! Devil!” she cried. “Who was this man?”
Peter answered, “He went by the name of Ned. That’s what Jennie called him. It wasn’t my business to pin her down about him.”
“It wasn’t your business to look out for an innocent child?”
“Jennie herself said she wasn’t an innocent child, she knew exactly what she was doing--all Socialists did it.” And to this parting shot he added that he hadn’t thought it was decent, when he was a guest in a home, to spy on the morals of the people in it. When Sadie persisted in doubting him, and even in calling him names, he took the easiest way out of the difficulty--fell into a rage and stormed out of the house.
Peter felt pretty certain that Sadie would not spread the story very far; it was too disgraceful to her sister and to herself; and maybe when she had thought it over she might come to believe Peter’s story; maybe she herself was a “free lover.” McGivney had certainly said that all Socialists were, and he had been studying them a lot. Anyhow, Sadie would have to think first of the Goober case, just as little Jennie had done. Peter had them there all right, and realized that he could afford to be forgiving, so he went to the telephone and called up Sadie and said: “I want you to know that I’m not going to say anything about this story; it won’t become known except thru you.”
There were half a dozen people whom Sadie must have told. Miss Nebbins was icy-cold to Peter the next time he came in to see Mr. Andrews; also Miriam Yankovich lost her former cordiality, and several other women treated him with studied reserve. But the only person who spoke about the matter was Pat McCormick, the I. W. W. boy who had given Peter the news of little Jennie’s suicide. Perhaps Peter hadn’t been able to act satisfactorily on that occasion; or perhaps the young fellow had observed something for himself, some love-glances between Peter and Jennie. Peter had never felt comfortable in the presence of this silent Irish boy, whose dark eyes would roam from one person to another in the room, and seemed to be probing your most secret thoughts.
Now Peter’s worst fears were justified. “Mac” got him off in a corner, and put his fist under his nose, and told him that he was “a dirty hound,” and if it hadn’t been for the Goober case, he, “Mac,”
would kill him without a moment’s concern.
And Peter did not dare open his mouth; the look on the Irishman’s face was so fierce that he was really afraid for his life. God, what a hateful lot these Reds were! And now here was Peter with the worst one of all against him! From now on his life would be in danger from this maniac Irishman! Peter hated him--so heartily and genuinely that it served to divert his thoughts from little Jennie, and to make him regard himself as a victim.
Yes, in the midnight hours when Jennie’s gentle little face haunted him and his conscience attacked him, Peter looked back upon the tangled web of events, and saw quite clearly how inevitable this tragedy had been, how naturally it had grown out of circumstances beyond his control. The fearful labor struggle in American City was surely not Peter’s fault; nor was it his fault that he had been drawn into it, and forced to act first as an unwilling witness, and then as a secret agent. Peter read the American City “Times” every morning, and knew that the cause of Goober was the cause of anarchy and riot, while the cause of the district attorney and of Guffey’s secret service was the cause of law and order. Peter was doing his best in this great cause, he was following the instructions of those above him, and how could he be blamed because one poor weakling of a girl had got in the way of the great chariot of the law?
Peter knew that it wasn’t his fault; and yet grief and terror gnawed at him. For one thing, he missed little Jennie, he missed her by day and he missed her by night. He missed her gentle voice, her fluffy soft hair, her body in his empty arms. She was his first love, and she was gone, and it is human weakness to appreciate things most when they have been lost.
Peter aspired to be a strong man, a “he-man,” according to the slang that was coming into fashion; he now tried to live up to that role. He didn’t want to go mooning about over this accident; yet Jennie’s face stayed with him--sometimes wild, as he had seen it at their last meeting, sometimes gentle and reproachful. Peter would remember how good she had been, how tender, how never-failing in instant response to an advance of love on his part. Where would he ever find another girl like that?
Another thing troubled him especially--a strange, inexplicable thing, for which Peter had no words, and about which he found himself frequently thinking. This weak, frail slip of a girl had deliberately given her life for her convictions; she had died, in order that he might be saved as a witness for the Goobers! Of course Peter had known all along that little Jennie was doomed, that she was throwing herself away, that nothing could save her. But somehow, it does frighten the strongest heart when people are so fanatical as to throw away their very lives for a cause. Peter found himself regarding the ideas of these Reds from a new angle; before this they had been just a bunch of “nuts,” but now they seemed to him creatures of monstrous deformity, products of the devil, or of a God gone insane.
Section 28
There was only one person whom Peter could take into his confidence, and that was McGivney. Peter could not conceal from McGivney the fact that he was troubled over his bereavement; and so McGivney took him in hand and gave him a “jacking up.” It was dangerous work, this of holding down the Reds; dangerous, because their doctrines were so insidious, they were so devilishly cunning in their working upon people’s minds. McGivney had seen more than one fellow start fooling with their ideas and turn into one himself. Peter must guard against that danger.
“It ain’t that,” Peter explained. “It ain’t their ideas. It’s just that I was soft on that kid.”
“Well, it comes to the same thing,” said McGivney. “You get sorry for them, and the first thing you know, you’re listening to their arguments. Now, Peter, you’re one of the best men I’ve got on this case--and that’s saying a good deal, because I’ve got charge of seventeen.” The rat-faced man was watching Peter, and saw Peter flush with pleasure. Yes, he continued, Peter had a future before him, he would make all kinds of money, he would be given responsibility, a permanent position. But he might throw it all away if he got to fooling with these Red doctrines. And also, he ought to understand, he could never fool McGivney; because McGivney had spies on him!
So Peter clenched his hands and braced himself up. Peter was a real “he-man,” and wasn’t going to waste himself. “It’s just that I can’t help missing the girl!” he explained; to which the other answered: “Well, that’s only natural. What you want to do is to get yourself another one.”
Peter went on with his work in the office of the Goober Defense Committee. The time for the trial had come, and the struggle between the two giants had reached its climax. The district attorney, who was prosecuting the case, and who was expecting to become governor of the state on the strength of it, had the backing of half a dozen of the shrewdest lawyers in the city, their expenses being paid by the big business men. A small army of detectives were at work, and the court where the trial took place was swarming with spies and agents. Every one of the hundreds of prospective jurors had been investigated and card-cataloged, his every weakness and every prejudice recorded; not merely had his psychology been studied, but his financial status, and that of his relatives and friends. Peter had met half a dozen other agents beside McGivney, men who had come to question him about this or that detail; and from the conversation of these men he got glimpses of the endless ramifications of the case. It seemed to him that the whole of American City had been hired to help send Jim Goober to the gallows.
Peter was now getting fifty dollars a week and expenses, in addition to special tips for valuable bits of news. Hardly a day passed that he didn’t get wind of some important development, and every night he would have to communicate with McGivney. The prosecution had a secret office, where there was a telephone operator on duty, and couriers traveling to the district attorney’s office and to Guffey’s office--all this to forestall telephone tapping. Peter would go from the headquarters of the Goober Defense Committee to a telephone-booth in some hotel, and there he would give the secret number, and then his own number, which was six forty-two. Everybody concerned was known by numbers, the principal people, both of the prosecution and of the defense; the name “Goober” was never spoken over the phone.
After the trial had got started it was hard to get anybody to work in the office of the Defense Committee--everybody wanted to be in court! Someone would come in every few minutes, with the latest reports of sensational developments. The prosecution had succeeded in making away with the police court records, proving the conviction of its star witness of having kept a brothel for negroes. The prosecution had introduced various articles alleged to have been found on the street by the police after the explosion; one was a spring, supposed to have been part of a bomb--but it turned out to be a part of a telephone! Also they had introduced parts of a clock--but it appeared that in their super-zeal they had introduced the parts of _two_ clocks! There was some excitement like this every day.
Section 29
The time came when the prosecution closed its case, and Peter was summoned to the office of Andrews, to be coached in his part as a witness. He would be wanted in two or three days, the lawyers told him.
Now Peter had never intended to appear as a witness; he had been fooling the defense all this time--“stringing them along,” as he phrased it, so as to keep in favor with them to the end. Meantime he had been figuring out how to justify his final refusal. Peter was eating his lunch when this plan occurred to him, and he was so much excited that he swallowed a piece of pie the wrong way, and had to jump up and run out of the lunch-room. It was his first stroke of genius; hitherto it was McGivney who had thought these things out, but now Peter was on the way to becoming his own boss! Why should he go on taking orders, when he had such brains of his own? He took the plan to McGivney, and McGivney called it a “peach,” and Peter was so proud he asked for a raise, and got it.
This plan had the double advantage that not merely would it save Peter’s prestige and reputation, among the Reds, it would ruin McCormick, who was one of the hardest workers for the defense, and one of the most dangerous Reds in American City, as well as being a personal enemy of Peter’s. McGivney pulled some of his secret wires, and the American City “Times,” in the course of its accounts of the case, mentioned a rumor that the defense proposed to put on the stand a man who claimed to have been tortured in the city jail, in an effort to make him give false testimony against Goober; the prosecution had investigated this man’s record and discovered that only recently he had seduced a young girl, and she had killed herself because of his refusal to marry her. Peter took this copy of the American City “Times” to the office of David Andrews, and insisted upon seeing the lawyer before he went to court; he laid the item on the desk, and declared that there was his finish as a witness in the Goober case. “It’s a cowardly, dirty lie!” he declared. “And the man responsible for circulating it is Pat McCormick.”
Such are the burdens that fall upon the shoulders of lawyers in hard-fought criminal trials! Poor Andrews did his best to patch things up; he pleaded with Peter--if the story was false, Peter ought to be glad of a chance to answer his slanderers. The defense would put witnesses on the stand to deny it. They would produce Sadie Todd to deny it.
“But Sadie told me she suspected me!”
“Yes,” said Andrews, “but she told me recently she wasn’t sure.”
“Much good that’ll do me!” retorted Peter. “They’ll ask me if anybody ever accused me, and who, and I’ll have to say McCormick, and if they put him on the stand, will he deny that he accused me?”
Peter flew into a rage against McCormick; a fine sort of radical he was, pretending to be devoted to the cause, and having no better sense than to repeat a cruel slander against a comrade! Here Peter had been working on this case for nearly six months, working for barely enough to keep body and soul together, and now they expected him to go on the and have a story like that brought out in the papers, and have the prosecution hiring witnesses to prove him a villain. “No, sir!” said Peter. “I’m thru with this case right now. You put McCormick on the witness stand and let him save Goober’s life. You can’t use me, I’m out!” And shutting his ears to the lawyer’s pleading, he stormed out of the office, and over to the office of the Goober Defense Committee, where he repeated the same scene.
Section 30
Thus Peter was done with the Goober case, and mighty glad of it he was. He was tired of the strain, he needed a rest and a little pleasure. He had his pockets stuffed with money, and a good fat bank account, and proposed to take things easy for the first time in his hard and lonely life.
The opportunity was at hand: for he had taken McGivney’s advise and got himself another girl. It was a little romance, very worldly and delightful. To understand it, you must know that in the judicial procedure of American City they used both men and women jurors; and because busy men of affairs did not want to waste their time in the jury-box, nor to have the time of their clerks and workingmen wasted, there had gradually grown up a class of men and women who made their living by working as jurors. They hung around the courthouse and were summoned on panel after panel, being paid six dollars a day, with numerous opportunities to make money on the side if they were clever.
Among this group of professional jurors, there was the keenest competition to get into the jury-box of the Goober case. It was to be a long and hard-fought case, there would be a good deal of prestige attached to it, and also there were numerous sums of money floating round. Anybody who got in, and who voted right, might be sure of an income for life, to say nothing of a life-job as a juror if he wanted it.
Peter happened to be in court while the talesmen were being questioned. A very charming and petite brunette--what Peter described as a “swell dresser”--was on the stand, and was cleverly trying to satisfy both sides. She knew nothing about the case, she had never read anything about it, she knew nothing and cared nothing about social problems; so she was accepted by the prosecution. But then the defense took her in hand, and it appeared that once upon a time she had been so indiscreet as to declare to somebody her conviction that all labor leaders ought to be stood up against the wall and filled with lead; so she was challenged by the defense, and very much chagrined she came down from the stand, and took a seat in the courtroom next to Peter. He saw a trace of tears in her eyes, and realizing her disappointment, ventured a word of sympathy. The acquaintance grew, and they went out to lunch together.
Mrs. James was her name, and she was a widow, a grass widow as she archly mentioned. She was quick and lively, with brilliant white teeth, and cheeks with the glow of health in them; this glow came out of a little bottle, but Peter never guessed it. Peter had got himself a good suit of clothes now, and made bold to spend some money on the lunch. As it happened, both he and Mrs. James were thru with the Goober case; both were tired and wanted a change, and Peter, blushing shyly, suggested that a sojourn at the beach might be fun. Mrs. James agreed immediately, and the matter was arranged.
Peter had seen enough of the detective business by this time to know what you can safely do, and what you had better not do. He didn’t travel with his grass widow, he didn’t pay her car-fare, nor do anything else to constitute her a “white slave.” He simply went to the beach and engaged himself a comfortable apartment; and next day, strolling on the board walk, he happened to meet the widow.
So for a couple of months Peter and Mrs. James set up housekeeping together. It was a wonderful experience for the former, because Mrs. James was what is called a “lady,” she had rich relatives, and took pains to let Peter know that she had lived in luxury before her husband had run away to Paris with a tight-rope walker. She taught Peter all those worldly arts which one misses when one is brought up in an orphan asylum, and on the road with a patent medicine vender. Tactfully, and without hurting his feelings, she taught him how to hold a knife and fork, and what color tie to select. At the same time she managed to conduct a propaganda which caused him to regard himself as the most favored of mankind; he was overwhelmed with gratitude for every single kiss from the lips of his grass widow. Of course he could not expect such extraordinary favors of fortune without paying for them; he had learned by now that there was no such thing as “free love.” So he paid, hand over fist; he not only paid all the expenses of the unregistered honeymoon, he bought numerous expensive presents at the lady’s tactful suggestion. She was always so vivacious and affectionate when Peter had given her a present! Peter lived in a kind of dream, his money seemed to go out of his pockets without his having to touch it.
Meantime great events were rolling by, unheeded by Peter and his grass widow who never read the newspapers. For one thing Jim Goober was convicted and sentenced to die on the gallows, and Jim Goober’s associate, Biddle, was found guilty, and sentenced to prison for life. Also, America entered the war, and a wave of patriotic excitement swept like a prairie fire over the country. Peter could not help hearing about this; his attention was attracted to one aspect of the matter--Congress was about to pass a conscription act. And Peter was within the age limit; Peter would almost certainly be drafted into the army!
No terror that he had ever felt in his life was equal to this terror. He had tried to forget the horrible pictures of battle and slaughter, of machine-guns and hand-grenades and torpedoes and poison gas, with which little Jennie had filled his imagination; but now these imaginings came crowding back upon him, now for the first time they concerned him. From that time on his honeymoon was spoiled. Peter and his grass widow were like a party of picnickers who are far away in the wilderness, and see a black thunder-storm come rolling up the sky!
Also, Peter’s bank account was running low. Peter had had no conception how much money you could spend on a grass widow who is a “swell dresser” and understands what is “proper.” He was overwhelmed with embarrassment; he put off telling Mrs. James until the last moment--in fact, until he wasn’t quite sure whether he had enough money in bank to meet the last check he had given to the landlady. Then, realizing that the game was up, he told.
He was surprised to see how charmingly a grass widow of “good breeding” could take bad tidings. Evidently it wasn’t the first time that Mrs. James had been to the beach. She smiled cheerfully, and said that it was the jury-box for her once more. She gave Peter her card, and told him she would be glad to have him call upon her again--when he had restored his fortunes. She packed up her suit-case and her new trunk full of Peter’s presents, and departed with the most perfect sweetness and good taste.
Section 31
So there was Peter, down and out once more. But fate was kind to him. That very day came a letter signed “Two forty-three,” which meant McGivney. “Two forty-three” had some important work for Peter, so would he please call at once? Peter pawned his last bit of jewelry for his fare to American City, and met McGivney at the usual rendezvous.
The purpose of the meeting was quickly explained. America was now at war, and the time had come when the mouths of these Reds were to be stopped for good. You could do things in war-time that you couldn’t do in peace-time, and one of the things you were going to do was to put an end to the agitation against property. Peter licked his lips, metaphorically speaking. It was something he had many times told McGivney ought to be done. Pat McCormick especially ought to be put away for good. These were a dangerous bunch, these Reds, and Mac was the worst of all. It was every man’s duty to help, and what could Peter do?
McGivney answered that the authorities were making a complete list of all the radical organizations and their members, getting evidence preliminary to arrests. Guffey was in charge of the job; as in the Goober case, the big business interests of the city were going ahead while the government was still wiping the sleep out of its eyes. Would Peter take a job spying upon the Reds in American City?
“I can’t!” exclaimed Peter. “They’re all sore at me because I didn’t testify in the Goober case.”
“We can easily fix that up,” answered the rat-faced man. “It may mean a little inconvenience for you. You may have to go to jail for a few days.”
“To jail!” cried Peter, in dismay.
“Yes,” said the other, “you’ll have to get arrested, and made into a martyr. Then, you see, they’ll all be sure you’re straight, and they’ll take you back again and welcome you.”
Peter didn’t like the idea of going to jail; his memories of the jail in American City were especially painful. But McGivney explained that this was a time when men couldn’t consider their own feelings; the country was in danger, public safety must be protected, and it was up to everybody to make some patriotic sacrifice. The rich men were all subscribing to liberty bonds; the poor men were going to give their lives; and what was Peter Gudge going to give? “Maybe I’ll be drafted into the army,” Peter remarked.
“No, you won’t--not if you take this job,” said McGivney. “We can fix that. A man like you, who has special abilities, is too precious to be wasted.” Peter decided forthwith that he would accept the proposition. It was much more sensible to spend a few days in jail than to spend a few years in the trenches, and maybe the balance of eternity under the sod of France.
Matters were quickly arranged. Peter took off his good clothes, and dressed himself as became a workingman, and went into the eating-room where Donald Gordon, the Quaker boy, always got his lunch. Peter was quite sure that Donald would be one of the leading agitators against the draft, and in this he was not mistaken.
Donald was decidedly uncordial in his welcoming of Peter; without saying a word the young Quaker made Peter aware that he was a renegade, a coward who had “thrown down” the Goober defense. But Peter was patient and tactful; he did not try to defend himself, nor did he ask any questions about Donald and Donald’s activities. He simply announced that he had been studying the subject of militarism, and had come to a definite point of view. He was a Socialist and an Internationalist; he considered America’s entry into the war a crime, and he was willing to do his part in agitating against it. He was going to take his stand as a conscientious objector; they might send him to jail if they pleased, or even stand him against a wall and shoot him, but they would never get him to put on a uniform.
It was impossible for Donald Gordon to hold out against a man who talked like that; a man who looked him in the eye and expressed his convictions so simply and honestly. And that evening Peter went to a meeting of Local American City of the Socialist Party, and renewed his acquaintance with all the comrades. He didn’t make a speech or do anything conspicuous, but simply got into the spirit of things; and next day he managed to meet some of the members, and whenever and wherever he was asked, he expressed his convictions as a conscientious objector. So before a week had passed Peter found that he was being tolerated, that nobody was going to denounce him as a traitor, or kick him out of the room.
At the next weekly meeting of Local American City, Peter ventured to say a few words. It was a red-hot meeting, at which the war and the draft were the sole subjects of discussion. There were some Germans in the local, some Irishmen, and one or two Hindoos; they, naturally, were all ardent pacifists. Also there were agitators of what was coming to be called the “left wing”; the group within the party who considered it too conservative, and were always clamoring for more radical declarations, for “mass action” and general strikes and appeals to the proletariat to rise forthwith and break their chains. These were days of great events; the Russian revolution had electrified the world, and these comrades of the “left wing” felt themselves lifted upon pinions of hope.
Peter spoke as one who had been out on the road, meeting the rank and file; he could speak for the men on the job. What was the use of opposing the draft here in a hall, where nobody but party members were present? What was wanted was for them to lift up their voices on the street, to awaken the people before it was too late! Was there anybody in this gathering bold enough to organize a street meeting?
There were some who could not resist this challenge, and in a few minutes Peter had secured the pledges of half a dozen young hot-heads, Donald Gordon among them. Before the evening was past it had been arranged that these would-be-martyrs should hire a truck, and make their debut on Main Street the very next evening. Old hands in the movement warned them that they would only get their heads cracked by the police. But the answer to that was obvious--they might as well get their heads cracked by the police as get them blown to pieces by German artillery.
Section 32
Peter reported to McGivney what was planned, and McGivney promised that the police would be on hand. Peter warned him to be careful and have the police be gentle; at which McGivney grinned, and answered that he would see to that.
It was all very simple, and took less than ten minutes of time. The truck drew up on Main Street, and a young orator stepped forward and announced to his fellow citizens that the time had come for the workers to make known their true feelings about the draft. Never would free Americans permit themselves to be herded into armies and shipped over seas and be slaughtered for the benefit of international bankers. Thus far the orator had got, when a policeman stepped forward and ordered him to shut up. When he refused, the policeman tapped on the sidewalk with his stick, and a squad of eight or ten came round the corner, and the orator was informed that he was under arrest. Another orator stepped forward and took up the harangue, and when he also had been put under arrest, another, and another, until the whole six of them, including Peter, were in hand.
The crowd had had no time to work up any interest one way or the other, A patrol-wagon was waiting, and the orators were bundled in and driven to the station-house, and next morning they were haled before a magistrate and sentenced each to fifteen days. As they had been expecting to get six months, they were a happy bunch of “left wingers.”
And they were still happier when they saw how they were to be treated in jail. Ordinarily it was the custom of the police to inflict all possible pain and humiliation upon the Reds. They would put them in the revolving tank, a huge steel structure of many cells which was turned round and round by a crank. In order to get into any cell, the whole tank had to be turned until that particular cell was opposite the entrance, which meant that everybody in the tank got a free ride, accompanied by endless groaning and scraping of rusty machinery; also it meant that nobody got any consecutive sleep. The tank was dark, too dark to read, even if they had had books or papers. There was nothing to do save to smoke cigarettes and shoot craps, and listen to the smutty stories of the criminals, and plot revenge against society when they got out again. But up in the new wing of the jail were some cells which were clean and bright and airy, being only three or four feet from a row of windows. In these cells they generally put the higher class of criminals--women who had cut the throats of their sweethearts, and burglars who had got I away with the swag, and bankers who had plundered whole communities. But now, to the great surprise of five out of the six anti-militarists, the entire party was put in one of these big cells, and allowed the privilege of having reading matter and of paying for their own food. Under these circumstances martyrdom became a joke, and the little party settled down to enjoy life. It never once occurred to them to think of Peter Gudge as the source of this bounty. They attributed it, as the French say, “to their beautiful eyes.”
There was Donald Gordon, who was the son of a well-to-do business man, and had been to college, until he was expelled for taking the doctrines of Christianity too literally and expounding them too persistently on the college campus. There was a big, brawny lumber-jack from the North, Jim Henderson by name, who had been driven out of the camps for the same reason, and had appalling stories to tell of the cruelties and hardships of the life of a logger. There was a Swedish sailor by the name of Gus, who had visited every port in the world, and a young Jewish cigar-worker who had never been outside of American City, but had travelled even more widely in his mind.
The sixth man was the strangest character of all to Peter; a shy, dreamy fellow with eyes so full of pain and a face so altogether mournful that it hurt to look at him. Duggan was his name, and he was known in the movement as the “hobo poet.” He wrote verses, endless verses about the lives of society’s outcasts; he would get himself a pencil and paper and sit off in the corner of the cell by the hour, and the rest of the fellows, respecting his work, would talk in whispers so as not to disturb him. He wrote all the time while the others slept, it seemed to Peter. He wrote verses about the adventures of his fellow-prisoners, and presently he was writing verses about the jailers, and about other prisoners in this part of the jail. He would have moods of inspiration, and would make up topical verses as he went along; then again he would sink back into his despair, and say that life was hell, and making rhymes about it was childishness.
There was no part of America that Tom Duggan hadn’t visited, no tragedy of the life of outcasts that he hadn’t seen. He was so saturated with it that he couldn’t think of anything else. He would tell about men who had perished of thirst in the desert, about miners sealed up for weeks in an exploded mine, about matchmakers poisoned until their teeth fell out, and their finger nails and even their eyes. Peter could see no excuse for such morbidness, such endless harping upon the horrible things of life. It spoiled all his happiness in the jail--it was worse than little Jennie’s talking about the war!
Section 33
One of Duggan’s poems had to do with a poor devil named Slim, who was a “snow-eater,” that is to say, a cocaine victim. This Slim wandered about the streets of New York in the winter-time without any shelter, and would get into an office building late in the afternoon, and hide in one of the lavatories to spend the night. If he lay down, he would be seen and thrown out, so his only chance was to sit up; but when he fell asleep, he would fall off the seat--therefore he carried a rope in his pocket, and would tie himself in a sitting position.
Now what was the use of a story like that? Peter didn’t want to hear about such people! He wanted to express his disgust; but he knew, of course, that he must hide it. He laughed as he exclaimed, “Christ Almighty, Duggan, can’t you give us something with a smile? You don’t think it’s the job of Socialists to find a cure for the dope habit, do you? That’s sure one thing that ain’t caused by the profit system.”
Duggan smiled his bitterest smile. “If there’s any misery in the world today that ain’t kept alive by the profit system, I’d like to see it! D’you think dope sells itself? If there wasn’t a profit in it, would it be sold to any one but doctors? Where’d you get your Socialism, anyhow?”
So Peter beat a hasty retreat. “Oh, sure, I know all that. But here you’re shut up in jail because you want to change things. Ain’t you got a right to give yourself a rest while you’re in?”
The poet looked at him, as solemn as an owl. He shook his head. “No,” he said. “Just because we’re fixed up nice and comfortable in jail, have we got the right to forget the misery of those outside?”
The others laughed; but Duggan did not mean to be funny at all. He rose slowly to his feet and with his arms outstretched, in the manner of one offering himself as a sacrifice, he proclaimed:
“While there is a lower class, I am in it.
“While there is a criminal element, I am of it.
“While there is a soul in jail, I am not free.”
Then he sat down and buried his face in his hands. The group of rough fellows sat in solemn silence. Presently Gus, the Swedish sailor, feeling perhaps that the rebuke to Peter had been too severe, spoke timidly: “Comrade Gudge, he ban in jail twice already.”
So the poet looked up again. He held out his hand to Peter. “Sure, I know that!” he said, clasping Peter in the grip of comradeship. And then he added: “I’ll tell you a story with a smile!”
Once upon a time, it appeared, Duggan had been working in a moving picture studio, where they needed tramps and outcasts and all sorts of people for crowds. They had been making a “Preparedness” picture, and wanted to show the agitators and trouble-makers, mobbing the palace of a banker. They got two hundred bums and hoboes, and took them in trucks to the palace of a real banker, and on the front lawn the director made a speech to the crowd, explaining his ideas. “Now,” said he, “remember, the guy that owns this house is the guy that’s got all the wealth that you fellows have produced. You are down and out, and you know that he’s robbed you, so you hate him. You gather on his lawn and you’re going to mob his home; if you can get hold of him, you’re going to tear him to bits for what he’s done to you.” So the director went on, until finally Duggan interrupted: “Say, boss, you don’t have to teach us. This is a real palace, and we’re real bums!”
Apparently the others saw the “smile” in this story, for they chuckled for some time over it. But it only added to Peter’s hatred of these Reds; it made him realize more than ever that they were a bunch of “sore heads,” they were green and yellow with jealousy. Everybody that had succeeded in the world they hated--just because they had succeeded! Well, _they_ would never succeed; they could go on forever with their grouching, but the mass of the workers in America had a normal attitude toward the big man, who could do things. They did not want to wreck his palace; they admired him for having it, and they followed his leadership gladly.
It seemed as if Henderson, the lumber-jack, had read Peter’s thought. “My God!” he said. “What a job it is to make the workers class-conscious!” He sat on the edge of his cot, with his broad shoulders bowed and his heavy brows knit in thought over the problem of how to increase the world’s discontent. He told of one camp where he had worked--so hard and dangerous was the toil that seven men had given up their lives in the course of one winter. The man who owned this tract, and was exploiting it, had gotten the land by the rankest kind of public frauds; there were filthy bunk-houses, vermin, rotten food, poor wages and incessant abuse. And yet, in the spring-time, here came the young son of this owner, on a honeymoon trip with his bride. “And Jesus,” said Henderson, “if you could have seen those stiffs turn out and cheer to split their throats! They really meant it, you know; they just loved that pair of idle, good-for-nothing kids!”
Gus, the sailor, spoke up, his broad, good-natured face wearing a grin which showed where three of his front teeth had been knocked out with a belaying pin. It was exactly the same with the seamen, he declared. They never saw the ship-owners, they didn’t know even the names of the people who were getting the profit of their toil, but they had a crazy loyalty to their ship, Some old tanker would be sent out to sea on purpose to be sunk, so that the owners might get the insurance. But the poor A. Bs. would love that old tub so that they would go down to the bottom with her--or perhaps they would save her, to the owners great disgust!
Thus, for hours on end, Peter had to sit listening to this ding donging about the wrongs of the poor and the crimes of the rich. Here he had been sentenced for fifteen days and nights to listen to Socialist wrangles! Every one of these fellows had a different idea of how he wanted the world to be run, and every one had a different idea of how to bring about the change. Life was an endless struggle between the haves and the have-nots, and the question of how the have-nots were to turn out the haves was called “tactics.” When you talked about “tactics” you used long technical terms which made your conversation unintelligible to a plain, ordinary mortal. It seemed to Peter that every time he fell asleep it was to the music of proletariat and surplus value and unearned increment, possibilism and impossibilism, political action, direct action, mass action, and the perpetual circle of Syndicalist-Anarchist, Anarchist-Communist, Communist-Socialist and Socialist-Syndicalist.
Section 34
In company such as this Peter’s education for the role of detective was completed by force, as it were. He listened to everything, and while he did not dare make any notes, he stored away treasures in his mind, and when he came out of the jail he was able to give McGivney a pretty complete picture of the various radical organizations in American City, and the attitude of each one toward the war.
Peter found that McGivney’s device had worked perfectly. Peter was now a martyr and a hero; his position as one of the “left wingers”
was definitely established, and anyone who ventured to say a word against him would be indignantly rebuked. As a matter of fact, no one desired to say much. Pat McCormick, Peter’s enemy, was out on an organizing trip among the oil workers.
Duggan had apparently taken a fancy to Peter, and took him to meet some of his friends, who lived in an old, deserted warehouse, which happened to have skylights in the roof; this constituted each room a “studio,” and various radicals rented the rooms, and lived here a sort of picnic existence which Peter learned was called “Bohemian.”
They were young people, most of them, with one or two old fellows, derelicts; they wore flannel shirts, and soft ties, or no ties at all, and their fingers were always smeared with paint. Their life requirements were simple; all they wanted was an unlimited quantity of canvas and paint, some cigarettes, and at long intervals a pickle or some sauer-kraut and a bottle of beer. They would sit all day in front of an easel, painting the most inconceivable pictures--pink skies and green-faced women and purple grass and fantastic splurges of color which they would call anything from “The Woman with a Mustard Pot” to “A Nude Coming Downstairs.” And there would be others, like Duggan, writing verses all day; pounding away on a typewriter, if they could manage to rent or borrow one. There were several who sang, and one who played the flute and caused all the others to tear their hair. There was a boy fresh from the country, who declared that he had run away from home because the family sang hymns all day Sunday, and never sang in tune.
From people such as these you would hear the most revolutionary utterances; but Peter soon realized that it was mostly just talk with them. They would work off their frenzies with a few dashes of paint or some ferocious chords on the piano. The really dangerous ones were not here; they were hidden away in offices or dens of their own, where they were prompting strikes and labor agitations, and preparing incendiary literature to be circulated among the poor.
You met such people in the Socialist local, and in the I. W. W. headquarters, and in numerous clubs and propaganda societies which Peter investigated, and to which he was welcomed as a member. In the Socialist local there was a fierce struggle going on over the war. What should be the attitude of the party? There was a group, a comparatively small group, which believed that the interests of Socialism would best be served by helping the Allies to the overthrow of the Kaiser. There was another group, larger and still more determined, which believed that the war was a conspiracy of allied capitalism to rivet its power upon the world, and this group wanted the party to stake its existence upon a struggle against American participation. These two groups contested for the minds of the rank and file of the members, who seemed to be bewildered by the magnitude of the issue and the complexity of the arguments. Peter’s orders were to go with the extreme anti-militarists; they were the ones whose confidence he wished to gain, also they were the trouble-makers of the movement, and McGivney’s instructions were to make all the trouble possible.
Over at the I. W. W. headquarters was another group whose members were debating their attitude to the war. Should they call strikes and try to cripple the leading industries of the country? Or should they go quietly on with their organization work, certain that in the end the workers would sicken of the military adventure into which they were being snared? Some of these “wobblies” were Socialist party members also, and were active in both gatherings; two of them, Henderson, the lumber-jack, and Gus Lindstrom, the sailor, had been in jail with Peter, and had been among his intimates ever since.
Also Peter met the Pacifists; the “Peoples’ Council,” as they called themselves. Many of these were religious people, two or three clergymen, and Donald Gordon, the Quaker, and a varied assortment of women--sentimental young girls who shrunk from the thought of bloodshed, and mothers with tear-stained cheeks who did not want their darlings to be drafted. Peter saw right away that these mothers had no “conscientious objections.” Each mother was thinking about her own son and about nothing else. Peter was irritated at this, and took it for his special job to see that those mother’s darlings did their duty.
He attended a gathering of Pacifists in the home of a school-teacher. They made heart-breaking speeches, and finally little Ada Ruth, the poetess, got up and wanted to know, was it all to end in talk, or would they organize and prepare to take some action against the draft? Would they not at least go out on the street, get up a parade with banners of protest, and go to jail as Comrade Peter Gudge had so nobly done?
Comrade Peter was called on for “a few words.” Comrade Peter explained that he was no speaker; after all, actions spoke louder than words, and he had tried to show what he believed. The others were made ashamed by this, and decided for a bold stand at once. Ada Ruth became president and Donald Gordon secretary of the “Anti-conscription League”--a list of whose charter members was turned over to McGivney the same evening.
Section 35
All this time the country had been going to war. The huge military machine was getting under way, the storm of public feeling was rising. Congress had voted a huge loan, a country-wide machine of propaganda was being organized, and the oratory of Four Minute Men was echoing from Maine to California. Peter read the American City “Times” every morning, and here were speeches of statesmen and sermons of clergymen, here were cartoons and editorials, all burning with the fervor’s of patriotism. Peter absorbed these, and his soul became transfigured. Hitherto Peter had been living for himself; but there comes a time in the life of every man who can use his brain at all when he realizes that he is not the one thing of importance in the universe, the one end to be served. Peter very often suffered from qualms of conscience, waves of doubt as to his own righteousness. Peter, like every other soul that ever lived, needed a religion, an ideal.
The Reds had a religion, as you might call it; but this religion had failed to attract Peter. In the first place it was low; its devotees were wholly lacking in the graces of life, in prestige, and that ease which comes with assurance of power. They were noisy in their fervors, and repelled Peter as much as the Holy Rollers. Also, they were always harping upon the sordid and painful facts of life; who but a pervert would listen to “sob stories,” when he might have all the things that are glorious and shining and splendid in the world?
But now here was the religion Peter wanted. These clergymen in their robes of snow white linen, preaching in churches with golden altars and stained-glass windows; these statesmen who wore the halo of fame, and went about with the cheering of thousands in their ears; these mighty captains of industry whose very names were magic--with power, when written on pieces of paper, to cause cities to rise in the desert, and then to fall again beneath a rain of shells and poison gas; these editors and cartoonists of the American City “Times,” with all their wit and learning--these people all combined to construct for Peter a religion and an ideal, and to hand it out to him, ready-made and precisely fitted to his understanding. Peter would go right on doing the things he had been doing before; but he would no longer do them in the name of Peter Gudge, the ant, he would do them in the name of a mighty nation of a hundred and ten million people, with all its priceless memories of the past and its infinite hopes for the future; he would do them in the sacred name of patriotism, and the still more sacred name of democracy. And--most convenient of circumstances--the big business men of American City, who had established a secret service bureau with Guffey in charge of it, would go right on putting up their funds, and paying Peter fifty dollars a week and expenses while he served the holy cause!
It was the fashion these days for orators and public men to vie with one another in expressing the extremes of patriotism, and Peter would read these phrases, and cherish them; they came to seem a part of him, he felt as if he had invented them. He became greedy for more and yet more of this soul-food; and there was always more to be had--until Peter’s soul was become swollen, puffed up as with a bellows. Peter became a patriot of patriots, a super-patriot; Peter was a red-blooded American and no mollycoddle; Peter was a “he-American,” a 100% American--and if there could have been such a thing as a 101% American, Peter would have been that. Peter was so much of an American that the very sight of a foreigner filled him with a fighting impulse. As for the Reds--well, Peter groped for quite a time before he finally came upon a formula which expressed his feelings. It was a famous clergyman who achieved it for him--saying that if he could have his way he would take all the Reds, and put them in a ship of stone with sails of lead, and send them forth with hell for their destination.
So Peter chafed more and more at his inability to get action. How much more evidence did the secret service of the Traction Trust require? Peter would ask this question of McGivney again and again, and McGivney would answer: “Keep your shirt on. You’re getting your pay every week. What’s the matter with you?”
“The matter is, I’m tired of listening to these fellows ranting,”
Peter would say. “I want to stop their mouths.”
Yes, Peter had come to take it as a personal affront that these radicals should go on denouncing the cause which Peter had espoused. They all thought of Peter as a comrade, they were most friendly to him; but Peter had the knowledge of how they would regard him when they knew the real truth, and this imagined contempt burned him like an acid. Sometimes there would be talk about spies and informers, and then these people would exhaust their vocabulary of abuse, and Peter, of course, would apply every word of it to himself and become wild with anger. He would long to answer back; he was waiting for the day when he might vindicate himself and his cause by smashing these Reds in the mouth.
Section 36
“Well,” said McGivney one day, “I’ve got something interesting for you now. You’re going into high society for a while!”
And the rat-faced man explained that there was a young man in a neighboring city, reputed to be a multi-millionaire, who had written a book against the war, and was the financial source of much pacificism and sedition. “These people are spending lots of money for printing,” said McGivney, “and we hear this fellow Lackman is putting it up. We’ve learned that he is to be in town tomorrow, and we want you to find out all about his affairs.”
So Peter was to meet a millionaire! Peter had never known one of these fortunate beings, but he was for them--he had always been for them. Ever since he had learned to read, he had liked to find stories about them in the newspapers, with pictures of them and their palaces. He had read these stories as a child reads fairy tales. They were his creatures of dreams, belonging to a world above reality, above pain and inconvenience.
And then in the days when Peter had been a servant in the Temple of Jimjambo, devoted to the cult of Eleutherinian Exoticism, he had found hanging in the main assembly room a picture labelled, “Mount Olympus,” showing a dozen gods and goddesses reclining at ease on silken couches, sipping nectar from golden goblets and gazing down upon the far-off troubles of the world. Peter would peer from behind the curtains and see the Chief Magistrian emerging from behind the seven mystic veils, lifting his rolling voice and in a kind of chant expounding life to his flock of adoring society ladies. He would point to the picture and explain those golden, Olympian days when the Eleutherinian cult had originated. The world had changed much since then, and for the worse; those who had power must take it as their task to restore beauty and splendor to the world, and to develop the gracious possibilities of being.
Peter, of course, hadn’t really believed in anything that went on in the Temple of Jimjambo; and yet he had been awed by its richness, and by the undoubtedly exclusive character of its worshippers; he had got the idea definitely fixed in his head that there really had been a Mount Olympus, and when he tried to imagine the millionaires and their ways, it was these gods and goddesses, reclining on silken couches and sipping nectar, that came to his mind!
Now since Peter had come to know the Reds, who wanted to blow up the palaces of the millionaires, he was more than ever on the side of his gods and goddesses. His fervors for them increased every time he heard them assailed; he wanted to meet some of them, and passionately, yet respectfully, pour out to them his allegiance. A glow of satisfaction came over him as he pictured himself in some palace, lounging upon a silken conch and explaining to a millionaire his understanding of the value of beauty and splendor in the world.
And now he was to meet one; it was to be a part of his job to cultivate one! True, there was something wrong with this particular millionaire--he was one of those freaks who for some reason beyond imagining gave their sympathy to the dynamiters and assassins. Peter had met “Parlor Reds” at the home of the Todd sisters; the large shining ladies who came in large shining cars to hear him tell of his jail experiences. But he hadn’t been sure as to whether they were really millionaires or not, and Sadie, when he had inquired particularly, had answered vaguely that every one in the radical movement who could afford an automobile or a dress-suit was called a millionaire by the newspapers.
But young Lackman was a real millionaire, McGivney positively assured him; and so Peter was free to admire him in spite of all his freak ideas, which the rat-faced man explained with intense amusement. Young Lackman conducted a school for boys, and when one of the boys did wrong, the teacher would punish himself instead of the boy! Peter must pretend to be interested in this kind of “education,” said McGivney, and he must learn at least the names of Lackman’s books.
“But will he pay any attention to me?” demanded Peter.
“Sure, he will,” said McGivney. “That’s the point--you’ve been in jail, you’ve really done something as a pacifist. What you want to do is to try to interest him in your Anti-conscription League. Tell him you want to make it into a national organization, you want to get something done besides talking.”
The address of young Lackman was the Hotel de Soto; and as he heard this, Peter’s heart gave a leap. The Hotel de Soto was the Mount Olympus of American City! Peter had walked by the vast white structure, and seen the bronze doors swing outward, and the favored ones of the earth emerging to their magic chariots; but never had it occurred to him that he might pass thru those bronze doors, and gaze upon those hidden mysteries!
“Will they let me in?” he asked McGivney, and the other laughed. “Just walk in as if you owned the place,” he said. “Hold up your head, and pretend you’ve lived there all your life.”
That was easy for McGivney to say, but not so easy for Peter to imagine. However, he would try it; McGivney must be right, for it was the same thing Mrs. James had impressed upon him many times. You must watch what other people did, and practice by yourself, and then go in and do it as if you had never done anything else. All life was a gigantic bluff, and you encouraged yourself in your bluffing by the certainty that everybody else was bluffing just as hard.
At seven o’clock that evening Peter strolled up to the magic bronze doors, and touched them; and sure enough, the blue-uniformed guardians drew them back without a word, and the tiny brass-button imps never even glanced at Peter as he strode up to the desk and asked for Mr. Lackman.
The haughty clerk passed him on to a still more haughty telephone operator, who condescended to speak into her trumpet, and then informed him that Mr. Lackman was out; he had left word that he would return at eight. Peter was about to go out and wander about the streets for an hour, when he suddenly remembered that everybody else was bluffing; so he marched across the lobby and seated himself in one of the huge leather arm-chairs, big enough to hold three of him. There he sat, and continued to sit--and nobody said a word!
Section 37
Yes, this was Mount Olympus, and here were the gods: the female ones in a state of divine semi-nudity, the male ones mostly clad in black coats with pleated shirt-fronts puffing out. Every time one of them moved up to the desk Peter would watch and wonder, was this Mr. Lackman? He might have been able to pick out a millionaire from an ordinary crowd; but here every male god was got up for the precise purpose of looking like a millionaire, so Peter’s job was an impossible one.
In front of him across the lobby floor there arose a ten-foot pillar to a far-distant roof. This pillar was of pale, green-streaked marble, and Peter’s eyes followed it to the top, where it exploded in a snow-white cloud-burst, full of fascination. There were four cornucopias, one at each corner, and out of each cornucopia came tangled ropes of roses, and out of these roses came other ropes, with what appeared to be apples and leaves, and still more roses, and still more emerging ropes, spreading in a tangle over the ceiling. Here and there, in the midst of all this splendor, was the large, placidly smiling face of a boy angel; four of these placidly smiling boy angels gazed from the four sides of the snow-white cloud-burst, and Peter’s eye roamed from one to another, fascinated by the mathematics of this architectural marvel. There were fourteen columns in a row, and four such rows in the lobby. That made fifty-six columns in all, or two hundred and twenty-four boy angels’ heads. How many cornucopias and how many roses and how many apples it meant, defied all calculation. The boy angels’ heads were exactly alike, every head with the same size and quality of smile; and Peter marvelled--how many days would it take a sculptor to carve the details of two hundred and twenty-four boy angel smiles?
All over the Hotel de Soto was this same kind of sumptuous magnificence; and Peter experienced the mental effect which it was contrived to produce upon him--a sense of bedazzlement and awe, a realization that those who dwelt in the midst of this splendor were people to whom money was nothing, who could pour out treasures in a never-ceasing flood. And everything else about the place was of the same character, contrived for the same effect--even the gods and the goddesses! One would sweep by with a tiara of jewels in her hair; you might amuse yourself by figuring out the number of the jewels, as you had figured out the number of the boy angels’ heads. Or you might take her gown of black lace, embroidered with golden butterflies, every one patiently done by hand; you might figure--so many yards of material, and so many golden butterflies to the yard! You might count the number of sparkling points upon her jet slippers, or trace the intricate designs upon her almost transparent stockings--only there was an inch or two of the stockings which you could not see.
Peter watched these gorgeous divinities emerge from the elevators, and sweep their way into the dining-room beyond. Some people might have been shocked by their costumes; but to Peter, who had the picture of Mount Olympus in mind, they seemed most proper. It all depended on the point of view: whether you thought of a goddess as fully clothed from chin to toes, and proceeded with a pair of shears to cut away so much of her costume, or whether you imagined the goddess in a state of nature, and proceeded to put veils of gauze about her, and a ribbon over each shoulder to hold the veils in place.
Twice Peter went to the desk, to inquire if Mr. Lackman had come in yet; but still he had not come; and Peter--growing bolder, like the fox who spoke to the lion--strolled about the lobby, gazing at the groups of gods at ease. He had noticed a great balcony around all four sides of this lobby, the “mezzanine floor,” as it was called; he decided he would see what was up there, and climbed the white marble stairs, and beheld more rows of chairs and couches, done in dark grey velvet. Here, evidently, was where the female gods came to linger, and Peter seated himself as unobtrusively as possible, and watched.
Directly in front of him sat a divinity, lolling on a velvet couch with one bare white arm stretched out. It was a large stout arm, and the possessor was large and stout, with pale golden hair and many sparkling jewels. Her glance roamed lazily from place to place. It rested for an instant on Peter, and then moved on, and Peter felt the comment upon his own insignificance.
Nevertheless, he continued to steal glances now and then, and presently saw an interesting sight. In her lap this Juno had a gold-embroidered bag, and she opened it, disclosing a collection of mysterious apparatus of which she proceeded to make use: first a little gold hand-mirror, in which she studied her charms; then a little white powder-puff with which she deftly tapped her nose and cheeks; then some kind of red pencil with which she proceeded to rub her lips; then a golden pencil with which she lightly touched her eyebrows. Then it seemed as if she must have discovered a little hair which had grown since she left her dressing-room. Peter couldn’t be sure, but she had a little pair of tweezers, and seemed to pull something out of her chin. She went on with quite an elaborate and complicated toilet, paying meantime not the slightest attention to the people passing by.
Peter looked farther, and saw that just as when one person sneezes or yawns everybody else in the room is irresistibly impelled to sneeze or yawn, so all these Dianas and Junos and Hebes on the “mezzanine floor” had suddenly remembered their little gold or silver hand-mirrors, their powder-puffs and red or golden or black pencils. One after another, the little vanity-bags came forth, and Peter, gazing in wonder, thought that Mount Olympus had turned into a beauty parlor.
Peter rose again and strolled and watched the goddesses, big and little, old and young, fat and thin, pretty and ugly--and it seemed to him the fatter and older and uglier they were, the more intently they gazed into the little hand-mirrors. He watched them with hungry eyes, for he knew that here he was in the midst of high life, the real thing, the utmost glory to which man could ever hope to attain, and he wanted to know all there was to know about it. He strolled on, innocent and unsuspecting, and the two hundred and twenty-four white boy angels in the ceiling smiled their bland and placid smiles at him, and Peter knew no more than they what complications fate had prepared for him on that mezzanine floor!
On one of the big lounges there sat a girl, a radiant creature from the Emerald Isles, with hair like sunrise and cheeks like apples. Peter took one glance at her, and his heart missed three successive beats, and then, to make up for lost time, began leaping like a runaway race-horse. He could hardly believe what his eyes told him; but his eyes insisted, his eyes knew; yes, his eyes had gazed for hours and hours on end upon that hair like sunrise and those cheeks like apples. The girl was Nell, the chambermaid of the Temple of Jimjambo!
She had not looked Peter’s way, so there was time for him to start back and hide himself behind a pillar; there he stood, peering out and watching her profile, still arguing with his eyes. It couldn’t be Nell; and yet it was! Nell transfigured, Nell translated to Olympus, turned into a goddess with a pale grey band about her middle, and a pale grey ribbon over each shoulder to hold it in place! Nell reclining at ease and chatting vivaciously to a young man with the face of a bulldog and the dinner-jacket of a magazine advertisement!
Peter gazed and waited, while his heart went on misbehaving. Peter learned in those few fearful minutes what real love is, a most devastating force. Little Jennie was forgotten, Mrs. James, the grass widow was forgotten, and Peter knew that he had never really admired but one woman in the world, and that was Nell, the Irish chambermaid of the Temple of Jimjambo. The poets have seen fit to represent young love as a mischievous little archer with a sharp and penetrating arrow, and now Peter understood what they had meant; that arrow had pierced him thru, and he had to hold on to the column to keep himself from falling.
Section 38
Presently the couple rose and strolled away to the elevator, and Peter followed. He did not dare get into the elevator with them, for he had suddenly become accutely aware of the costume he was wearing in his role of proletarian anti-militarist! But Peter was certain that Nell and her escort were not going out of the building, for they had no hats or wraps; so he went downstairs and hunted thru the lobby and the dining-room, and then thru the basement, from which he heard strains of music. Here was another vast room, got up in mystic oriental fashion, with electric lights hidden in bunches of imitation flowers on each table. This room was called the “grill,”
and part of it was bare for dancing, and on a little platform sat a band playing music.
The strangest music that ever assailed human ears! If Peter had heard it before seeing Nell, he would not have understood it, but now its weird rhythms fitted exactly to the moods which were tormenting him. This music would groan, it would rattle and squeak; it would make noises like swiftly torn canvas, or like a steam siren in a hurry. It would climb up to the heavens and come banging down to hell. And every thing with queer, tormenting motions, gliding and writhing, wriggling, jerking, jumping. Peter would never have known what to make of such music, if he had not had it here made visible before his eyes, in the behavior of the half-naked goddesses and the black-coated gods on this dancing floor. These celestial ones came sliding across the floor like skaters, they came writhing like serpents, they came strutting like turkeys, jumping like rabbits, stalking solemnly like giraffes. They came clamped in one another’s arms like bears trying to hug each other to death; they came contorting themselves as if they were boa-constrictors trying to swallow each other. And Peter, watching them and listening to their music, made a curious discovery about himself. Deeply buried in Peter’s soul were the ghosts of all sorts of animals; Peter had once been a boa-constrictor, Peter had once been a bear, Peter had once been a rabbit and a giraffe, a turkey and a fox; and now under the spell of this weird music these dead creatures came to life in his soul. So Peter discovered the meaning of “jazz,” in all its weirdly named and incredible varieties.
Also Peter discovered that he had once been a caveman, and had hit his rival over the head with a stone axe and carried off his girl by the hair. All this he discovered while he stood in the doorway of the Hotel de Soto grill, and watched Nell, the ex-chambermaid of the Temple of Jimjambo, doing the turkey-trot and the fox-trot and the grizzly-bear and the bunny-hug in the arms of a young man with the face of a bulldog.
Peter stood for a long while in a daze. Nell and the young man sat down at one of the tables to have a meal, but still Peter stood watching and trying to figure out what to do. He knew that he must not speak to her in his present costume; there would be no way to make her understand that he was only playing a role--that he who looked like a “dead one” was really a prosperous man of important affairs, a 100% red-blooded patriot disguised as a proletarian pacifist. No, he must wait, he must get into his best before he spoke to her. But meantime, she might go away, and he might not be able to find her again in this huge city!
After an hour or two he succeeded in figuring out a way, and hurried upstairs to the writing-room and penned a note:
“Nell: This is your old friend Peter Gudge. I have struck it rich and have important news for you. Be sure to send word to me. Peter.”
To this he added his address, and sealed it in an envelope to “Miss Nell Doolin.”
Then he went out into the lobby, and signalled to one of the brass-button imps who went about the place calling names in shrill sing-song; he got this youngster off in a corner and pressed a dollar bill into his hand. There was a young lady in the grill who was to have this note at once. It was very important. Would the brass-button imp do it?
The imp said sure, and Peter stood in the doorway and watched him walk back and forth thru the aisles of the grill, calling in his shrill sing-song, “Miss Nell Doolin! Miss Nell Doolin!” He walked right by the table where Nell sat eating; he sang right into her face, it seemed to Peter; but she never gave a sign.
Peter did not know what to make of it, but he was bound to get that note to Nell. So when the imp returned, he pointed her out, and the imp went again and handed the note to her. Peter saw her take it--then he darted away; and remembering suddenly that he was supposed to be on duty, be rushed back to the office and inquired for Mr. Lackman. To his horror he learned that Mr. Lackman had returned, paid his bill, and departed with his suitcase to a destination unknown!
Section 39
Peter had a midnight appointment with McGivney, and now had to go and admit this humiliating failure. He had done his best, he declared; he had inquired at the desk, and waited and waited, but the hotel people had failed to notify him of Lackman’s arrival. All this was strictly true; but it did not pacify McGivney, who was in a black fury. “It might have been worth thousands of dollars to you!”
he declared. “He’s the biggest fish we’ll ever get on our hook.”
“Won’t he come again?” asked grief-stricken Peter.
“No,” declared the other. “They’ll get him at his home city.”
“But won’t that do?” asked Peter, naively.
“You damned fool!” was McGivney’s response. “We wanted to get him here, where we could pluck him ourselves.”
The rat-faced man hadn’t intended to tell Peter so much, but in his rage he let it out. He and a couple of his friends had planned to “get something” on this young millionaire, and scare the wits out of him, with the idea that he would put up a good many thousand dollars to be let off. Peter might have had his share of this--only he had been fool enough to let the bird get out of his net!
Peter offered to follow the young man to his home city, and find some way to lure him back into McGivney’s power. After McGivney had stormed for a while, he decided that this might be possible. He would talk it over with the others, and let Peter know. But alas, when Peter picked up an afternoon newspaper next day, he read on the front page how young Lackman, stepping off the train in his home city that morning, had been placed under arrest; his school had been raided, and half a dozen of the teachers were in jail, and a ton of Red literature had been confiscated, and a swarm of dire conspiracies against the safety of the country had been laid bare!
Peter read this news, and knew that he was in for another stormy hour with his boss. But he hardly gave a thought to it, because of something which had happened a few minutes before, something of so much greater importance. A messenger had brought him a special delivery letter, and with thumping heart he had torn it open and read:
“All right. Meet me in the waiting-room of Guggenheim’s Department Store at two o’clock this afternoon. But for God’s sake forget Nell Doolin. Yours, Edythe Eustace.”
So here was Peter dressed in his best clothes, as for his temporary honeymoon with the grass widow, and on the way to the rendezvous an hour ahead of time. And here came Nell, also dressed, every garment so contrived that a single glance would tell the beholder that their owner was moving in the highest circles, and regardless of expense. Nell glanced over her shoulder now and then as she talked, and explained that Ted Crothers, the man with the bulldog face, was a terror, and it was hard to get away from him, because he had nothing to do all day.
The waiting-room of a big department-store was not the place Peter would have selected for the pouring out of his heart; but he had to make the best of it, so he told Nell that he loved her, that he would never be able to love anybody else, and that he had made piles of money now, he was high up on the ladder of prosperity. Nell did not laugh at him, as she had laughed in the Temple of Jimjambo, for it was easily to be seen that Peter Gudge was no longer a scullion, but a man of the world with a fascinating air of mystery. Nell wanted to know forthwith what was he doing; he answered that he could not tell, it was a secret of the most desperate import; he was under oath. These were the days of German spies and bomb-plots, when kings and kaisers and emperors and tsars were pouring treasures into America for all kinds of melodramatic purposes; also the days of government contracts and secret deals, when in the lobbies and private meeting-places of hotels like the de Soto there were fortunes made and unmade every hour. So it was easy for Nell to believe in a real secret, and being a woman, she put all her faculties upon the job of guessing it.
She did not again ask Peter to tell her; but she let him talk, and tactfully guided the conversation, and before long she knew that Peter was intimate with a great many of the most desperate Reds, and likewise that he knew all about the insides of the Goober case, and about the great men of American City who had put up a million dollars for the purpose of hanging Goober, and about the various ways in which this money had been spent and wires had been pulled to secure a conviction. Nell put two and two together, and before long she figured out that the total was four; she suddenly confronted Peter with this total, and Peter was dumb with consternation, and broke down and confessed everything, and told Nell all about his schemes and his achievements and his adventures--omitting only little Jennie and the grass widow.
He told about the sums he had been making and was expecting to make; he told about Lackman, and showed Nell the newspaper with pictures of the young millionaire and his school. “What a handsome fellow!”
said Nell. “It’s a shame!”
“How do you mean?” asked Peter, a little puzzled. Could it be that Nell had any sympathy for these Reds?
“I mean,” she answered, “that he’d have been worth more to you than all the rest put together.”
Nell was a woman, and her mind ran to the practical aspect of things. “Look here, Peter,” she said, “you’ve been letting those `dicks’ work you. They’re getting the swag, and just giving you tips. What you need is somebody to take care of you.”
Peter’s heart leaped. “Will you do it?” he cried.
“I’ve got Ted on my hands,” said the girl. “He’d cut my throat, and yours too, if he knew I was here. But I’ll try to get myself free, and then maybe--I won’t promise, but I’ll think over your problem, Peter, and I’ll certainly try to help, so that McGivney and Guffey and those fellows can’t play you for a sucker any longer.”
She must have time to think it over, she said, and to make inquiries about the people involved--some of whom apparently she knew. She would meet Peter again the next day, and in a more private place than here. She named a spot in the city park which would be easy to find, and yet sufficiently remote for a quiet conference.
Section 40
Peter had been made so bold by Nell’s flattery and what she had said about his importance, that he did not go back to McGivney to take his second scolding about the Lackman case. He was getting tired of McGivney’s scoldings; if McGivney didn’t like his work, let McGivney go and be a Red for a while himself. Peter walked the streets all day and a part of the night, thinking about Nell, and thrilling over the half promises she had made him.
They met next day in the park. No one was following them, and they found a solitary place, and Nell let him kiss her several times, and in between the kisses she unfolded to him a terrifying plan. Peter had thought that he was something of an intriguer, but his self-esteem shriveled to nothingness in the presence of the superb conception which had come to ripeness in the space of twenty-four hours in the brain of Nell Doolin, alias Edythe Eustace.
Peter had been doing the hard work, and these big fellows had been using him, handing him a tip now and then, and making fortunes out of the information he brought them. McGivney had let the cat out of the bag in this case of Lackman; you might be sure they had been making money, big money, out of all the other cases. What Peter must do was to work up something of his own, and get the real money, and make himself one of the big fellows. Peter had the facts, he knew the people; he had watched in the Goober case exactly how a “frame-up” was made, and now he must make one for himself, and one that would pay. It was a matter of duty to rid the country of all these Reds; but why should he not have the money as well?
Nell had spent the night figuring over it, trying to pick out the right person. She had hit on old “Nelse” Ackerman, the banker. Ackerman was enormously and incredibly wealthy; he was called the financial king of American City. Also he was old, and Nell happened to know he was a coward; he was sick in bed just now, and when a man is sick he is still more of a coward. What Peter must do was to discover some kind of a bomb-plot against old “Nelse” Ackerman. Peter might talk up the idea among some of his Reds and get them interested in it, or he might frame up some letters to be found upon them, and hide some dynamite in their rooms. When the plot was discovered, it would make a frightful uproar, needless to say; the king would hear of it, and of Peter’s part as the discoverer of it, and he would unquestionably reward Peter. Perhaps Peter might arrange to be retained as a secret agent to protect the king from the Reds. Thus Peter would be in touch with real money, and might hire Guffey and McGivney, instead of their hiring him.
If Peter had stood alone, would he have dared so perilous a dream as this? Or was he a “piker”; a little fellow, the victim of his own fears and vanities? Anyhow, Peter was not alone; he had Nell, and it was necessary that he should pose before Nell as a bold and desperate blade. Just as in the old days in the Temple, it was necessary that Peter should get plenty of money, in order to take Nell away from another man. So he said all right, he would go in on that plan; and proceeded to discuss with Nell the various personalities he might use.
The most likely was Pat McCormick. “Mac,” with his grim, set face and his silent, secretive habits, fitted perfectly to Peter’s conception of a dynamiter. Also “Mac” was Peter’s personal enemy; “Mac” had just returned from his organizing trip in the oil fields, and had been denouncing Peter and gossiping about him in the various radical groups. “Mac” was the most dangerous Red of them all! He must surely be one of the dynamiters!
Another likely one was Joe Angell, whom Peter had met at a recent gathering of Ada Ruth’s “Anti-conscription League.” People made jokes about this chap’s name because he looked the part, with his bright blue eyes that seemed to have come out of heaven, and his bright golden hair, and even the memory of dimples in his cheeks. But when Joe opened his lips, you discovered that he was an angel from the nether regions. He was the boldest and most defiant of all the Reds that Peter had yet come upon. He had laughed at Ada Ruth and her sentimental literary attitude toward the subject of the draft. It wasn’t writing poems and passing resolutions that was wanted; it wasn’t even men who would refuse to put on the uniform, but men who would take the guns that were offered to them, and drill themselves, and at the proper time face about and use the guns in the other direction. Agitating and organizing were all right in their place, but now, when the government dared challenge the workers and force them into the army, it was men of action that were needed in the radical movement.
Joe Angell had been up in the lumber country, and could tell what was the mood of the real workers, the “huskies” of the timberlands. Those fellows weren’t doing any more talking; they had their secret committees that were ready to take charge of things as soon as they had put the capitalists and their governments out of business. Meantime, if there was a sheriff or prosecuting attorney that got too gay, they would “bump him off.” This was a favorite phrase of “Blue-eyed Angell.” He would use it every half hour or so as he told about his adventures. “Yes,” he would say; “he got gay, but we bumped him off all right.”
Section 41
So Nell and Peter settled down to work out the details of their “frame-up” on Joe Angell and Pat McCormick. Peter must get a bunch of them together and get them to talking about bombs and killing people; and then he must slip a note into the pockets of all who showed interest, calling them to meet for a real conspiracy. Nell would write the notes, so that no one could fasten the job onto Peter. She pulled out a pencil and a little pad from her handbag, and began: “If you really believe in a bold stroke for the workers’ rights, meet me--” And then she stopped. “Where?”
“In the studios,” put in Peter.
And Nell wrote, “In the studios. Is that enough?”
“Room 17.” Peter knew that this was the room of Nikitin, a Russian painter who called himself an Anarchist.
So Nell wrote “Room 17,” and after further discussion she added: “Tomorrow morning at eight o’clock. No names and no talk. Action!”
This time was set because Peter recollected that there was to be a gathering of the “wobblies” in their headquarters this very evening. It was to be a business meeting, but of course these fellows never got together very long without starting the subject of “tactics.”
There was a considerable element among them who were dissatisfied with what they called the “supine attitude” of the organization, and were always arguing for action. Peter was sure he would be able to get some of them interested in the idea of a dynamite conspiracy.
As it turned out, Peter had no trouble at all; the subject was started without his having to put in a word. Were the workers to be driven like sheep to the slaughter, and the “wobblies” not to make one move? So asked the “Blue-eyed Angell,” vehemently, and added that if they were going to move, American City was as good a place as any. He had talked with enough of the rank and file to realize that they were ready for action; all they needed was a battle-cry and an organization to guide them.
Henderson, the big lumber-jack, spoke up. That was just the trouble; you couldn’t get an organization for such a purpose. The authorities would get spies among you, they would find out what you were doing, and drive you underground.
“Well,” cried Joe, “we’ll go underground!”
“Yes,” agreed the other, “but then your organization goes bust. Nobody knows who to trust, everybody’s accusing the rest of being a spy.”
“Hell!” said Joe Angell. “I’ve been in jail for the movement, I’ll take my chances of anybody’s calling me a spy. What I’m not going to do is to sit down and see the workers driven to hell, because I’m so damn careful about my precious organization.”
When others objected, Angell rushed on still more vehemently. Suppose they did fail in a mass-uprising, suppose they were driven to assassination and terrorism? At least they would teach the exploiters a lesson, and take a little of the joy out of their lives.
Peter thought it would be a good idea for him to pose as a conservative just now. “Do you really think the capitalists would give up from fear?” he asked.
And the other answered: “You bet I do! I tell you if we’d made it understood that every congressman who voted this country into war would be sent to the front trenches, our country would still be at peace.”
“But,” put in Peter, deftly, “it ain’t the congressmen. It’s people higher up than them.”
“You bet,” put in Gus, the Swedish sailor. “You bet you! I name you one dozen big fellows in dis country--you make it clear if we don’t get peace dey all get killed--we get peace all right!”
So Peter had things where he wanted them. “Who are those fellows?”
he asked, and got the crowd arguing over names. Of course they didn’t argue very long before somebody mentioned “Nelse” Ackerman, who was venomously hated by the Reds because he had put up a hundred thousand dollars of the Anti-Goober fund. Peter pretended not to know about Nelse; and Jerry Rudd, a “blanket-stiff” whose head was still sore from being cracked open in a recent harvesters’ strike, remarked that by Jesus, if they’d put a few fellows like that in the trenches, there’d be some pacifists in Ameriky sure enough all right.
It seemed almost as if Joe Angell had come there to back up Peter’s purpose. “What we want,” said he, “is a few fellows to fight as hard for themselves as they fight for the capitalists.”
“Yes,” assented Henderson, grimly. “We’re all so good--we wait till our masters tell us we can kill.”
That was the end of the discussion; but it seemed quite enough to Peter. He watched his chance, and one by one he managed to slip his little notes into the coat-pockets of Joe Angell, Jerry Rudd, Henderson, and Gus, the sailor. And then Peter made his escape, trembling with excitement. The great dynamite conspiracy was on! “They must be got rid of!” he was whispering to himself. “They must be got rid of by any means! It’s my duty I’m doing.”
Section 42
Peter had an appointment to meet Nell on a street corner at eleven o’clock that same night, and when she stepped off the street-car, Peter saw that she was carrying a suit-case. “Did you get your job done?” she asked quickly, and when Peter answered in the affirmative, she added: “Here’s your bomb!”
Peter’s jaw fell. He looked so frightened that she hastened to reassure him. It wouldn’t go off; it was only the makings of a bomb, three sticks of dynamite and some fuses and part of a clock. The dynamite was wrapped carefully, and there was no chance of its exploding--if he didn’t drop it! But Peter wasn’t much consoled. He had had no idea that Nell would go so far, or that he would actually have to handle dynamite. He wondered where and how she had got it, and wished to God he was out of this thing.
But it was too late now, of course. Said Nell: “You’ve got to get this suit-case into the headquarters, and you’ve got to get it there without anybody seeing you. They’ll be shut up pretty soon, won’t they?”
“We locked up when we left,” said Peter.
“And who has the key?”
“Grady, the secretary.”
“There’s no way you can get it?”
“I can get into the room,” said Peter, quickly. “There’s a fire escape, and the window isn’t tight. Some of us that know about it have got in that way when the place was locked.”
“All right,” said Nell. “We’ll wait a bit; we mustn’t take chances of anyone coming back.”
They started to stroll along the street, Nell still carrying the suit-case, as if distrusting the state of Peter’s nerves, Meantime she explained, “I’ve got two pieces of paper that we’ve got to plant in the room. One’s to be torn up and thrown into the trash-basket. It’s supposed to be part of a letter about some big plan that’s to be pulled off, and it’s signed `Mac.’ That’s for McCormick, of course. I had to type it, not having any sample of his handwriting. The other piece is a drawing; there’s no marks to show what it is, but of course the police’ll soon find out. It’s a plan of old Ackerman’s home, and there’s a cross mark showing his sleeping-porch. Now, what we want to do is to fix this on McCormick. Is there anything in the room that belongs to him?”
Peter thought, and at last remembered that in the bookshelves were some books which had been donated by McCormick, and which had his name written in. That was the trick! exclaimed Nell. They would hide the paper in one of these books, and when the police made a thorough search they would find it. Nell asked what was in these books, and Peter thought, and remembered that one was a book on sabotage. “Put the paper in that,” said Nell. “When the police find it, the newspapers’ll print the whole book.”
Peter’s knees were trembling so that he could hardly walk, but he kept reminding himself that he was a “he-man,” a 100% American, and that in these times of war every patriot must do his part. His part was to help rid the country of these Reds, and he must not flinch. They made their way to the old building in which the I. W. W. headquarters were located, and Peter climbed up on the fence and swung over to the fire-escape, and Nell very carefully handed the suit-case to him, and Peter opened the damaged window and slipped into the room.
He knew just where the cupboard was, and quickly stored the suit-case in the corner, and piled some odds and ends of stuff in front of it, and threw an old piece of canvas over it. He took out of his right-hand pocket a typewritten letter, and tore it into small pieces and threw them into the trash-basket. Then he took out of his left-hand pocket the other paper, with the drawing of Ackerman’s house. He went to the bookcase and with shaking fingers struck a match, picked out the little redbound book entitled “Sabotage,” and stuck the paper inside, and put the book back in place. Then he climbed out on the fire-escape and dropped to the ground, jumped over the fence, and hurried down the alley to where Nell was waiting for him.
“It’s for my country!” he was whispering to himself.
Section 43
The job was now complete, except for getting McCormick to the rendezvous next morning. Nell had prepared and would mail in the postoffice a special delivery letter addressed to McCormick’s home. This would be delivered about seven o’clock in the morning, and inside was a typewritten note, as follows:
“Mac: Come to Room 17 of the studios at eight in the morning. Very important. Our plan is all ready, my part is done. Joe.”
Nell figured that McCormick would take this to be a message from Angell. He wouldn’t know what it was about, but he’d be all the more certain to come and find out. The essential thing was that the raid by the detectives must occur the very minute the conspirators got together, for as soon as they compared notes they would become suspicious, and might scatter at once. McGivney must have his men ready; he must be notified and have plenty of time to get them ready.
But there was a serious objection to this--if McGivney had time, he would demand a talk with Peter, and Nell was sure that Peter couldn’t stand a cross-questioning at McGivney’s hands. Peter, needless to say, agreed with her; his heart threatened to collapse at the thought of such an ordeal. What Peter really wanted to do was to quit the whole thing right there and then; but he dared not say so, he dared not face the withering scorn of his confederate. Peter clenched his hands and set his teeth, and when he passed a street light he turned his face away, so that Nell might not read the humiliating terror written there. But Nell read it all the same; Nell believed that she was dealing with a quivering, pasty-faced coward, and proceeded on that basis; she worked out the plans, she gave Peter his orders, and she stuck by him to see that he carried them out.
Peter had McGivney’s home telephone number, which he was only supposed to use in the most desperate emergency. He was to use it now, and tell McGivney that he had just caught some members of the I. W. W., with Pat McCormick as their leader, preparing to blow up some people with dynamite bombs. They had some bombs in a suit-case in their headquarters, and were just starting out with other bombs in their pockets. Peter must follow them, otherwise he would lose them, and some crime might be committed before he could interfere. McGivney must have his agents ready with automobiles to swoop down upon any place that Peter indicated. Peter would follow up the conspirators, and phone McGivney again at the first opportunity he could find.
Nell was especially insistent that when Peter spoke to McGivney he must have only a moment to spare, no time for questions, and he must not stop to answer any. He must be in a state of trembling excitement; and Peter was sure that would be very easy! He rehearsed over to Nell every word he must say, and just how he was to cut short the conversation and hang up the receiver. Then he went into an all night drug-store just around the corner from the headquarters, and from a telephone booth called McGivney’s home.
It was an apartment house, and after some delay Peter heard the voice of his employer, surly with sleep. But Peter waked him up quickly. “Mr. McGivney, there’s a dynamite plot!”
“_What_?”
“I. W. W. They’ve got bombs in a suit-case! They’re starting off to blow somebody up tonight.”
“By God! What do you mean? Who?”
“I dunno yet. I only heard part of it, and I’ve got to go. They’re starting, I’ve got to follow them. I may lose them and it’ll be too late. You hear me, I’ve got to follow them!”
“I hear you. What do you want me to do?”
“I’ll phone you again the first chance I get. You have your men ready, a dozen of them! Have automobiles, so you can come quick. You get me?”
“Yes, but--”
“I can’t talk any more, I may lose them, I haven’t a second! You be at your phone, and have your men ready--everything ready. You get me?”
“Yes, but listen, man! You sure you’re not mistaken?”
“Yes, yes, I’m sure!” cried Peter, his voice mounting in excitement. “They’ve got the dynamite, I tell you--everything! It’s a man named Nelse.”
“Nelse what?”
“The man they’re going to kill. I’ve got to go now, you get ready. Good-bye!” And Peter hung up the receiver. He had got so excited over the part he was playing that he sprang up and ran out of the drug-store, as if he really had to catch up with some I. W. W. conspirators carrying a dynamite bomb!
But there was Nell, and they strolled down the street again. They came to a small park, and sat on one of the benches, because Peter’s legs would no longer hold him up. Nell walked about to make sure there was no one on any of the other benches; then she came back and rehearsed the next scene with Peter. They must go over it most carefully, because before long the time was coming when Peter wouldn’t have Nell to coach him, and must be prepared to stand on his own legs. Peter knew that, and his legs failed him. He wanted to back down, and declare that he couldn’t go ahead with it; he wanted to go to McGivney and confess everything. Nell divined what was going on in his soul, and wished to save him the humiliation of having it known. She sat close to him on the bench, and put her hand on his as she talked to him, and presently Peter felt a magic thrill stealing over him. He ventured to put his arm about Nell, to get still more of this delicious sensation; and Nell permitted the embraces, for the first time she even encouraged them. Peter was a hero now, he was undertaking a bold and desperate venture; he was going to put it thru like a man, and win Nell’s real admiration. “Our country’s at war!” she exclaimed. “And these devils are stopping it!”
So pretty soon Peter was ready to face the whole world; Peter was ready to go himself and blow up the king of American City with a dynamite bomb! In that mood he stayed thru the small hours of the morning, sitting on the bench clasping his girl in his arms, and wishing she would give a little more time to heeding his love-making, and less to making him recite his lessons.
Section 44
So the day began to break and the birds to sing. The sun rose on Peter’s face gray with exhaustion and the Irish apples in Nell’s cheeks badly faded. But the time for action had come, and Peter went off to watch McCormick’s home until seven o’clock, when the special delivery letter was due to arrive.
It came on time, and Peter saw McCormick come out of the house and set forth in the direction of the studios. It was too early for the meeting, so Peter figured that he would stop to get his breakfast; and sure enough “Mac” turned into, a little dairy lunch, and Peter hastened to the nearest telephone and called his boss.
“Mr. McGivney,” he said, “I lost those fellows last night, but now I got them again. They decided not to do anything till today. They’re having a meeting this morning and we’ve a chance to nab them all.”
“Where?” demanded McGivney.
“Room seventeen in the studios; but don’t let any of your men go near there, till I make sure the right fellows are in.”
“Listen here, Peter Gudge!” cried McGivney. “Is this straight goods?”
“My God!” cried Peter. “What do you take me for? I tell you they’ve got loads of dynamite.”
“What have they done with it?”
“They’ve got some in their headquarters. About the rest I dunno. They carried it off and I lost them last night. But then I found a note in my pocket--they were inviting me to come in.”
“By God!” exclaimed the rat-faced man.
“We’ve got the whole thing, I tell you! Have you got your men ready?”
“Yes.”
“Well then, have them come to the corner of Seventh and Washington Streets, and you come to Eighth and Washington. Meet me there just as quick as you can.”
“I get you,” was the answer, and Peter hung up, and rushed off to the appointed rendezvous. He was so nervous that he had to sit on the steps of a building. As time passed and McGivney didn’t appear, wild imaginings began to torment him. Maybe McGivney hadn’t understood him correctly! Or maybe his automobile might break down! Or his telephone might have got out of order at precisely the critical moment! He and his men would arrive too late, they would find the trap sprung, and the prey escaped.
Ten minutes passed, fifteen minutes, twenty minutes. At last an automobile rushed up the street, and McGivney stepped out, and the automobile sped on. Peter got McGivney’s eye, and then stepped back into the shelter of a doorway. McGivney followed. “Have you got them?” he cried.
“I d-d-dunno!” chattered Peter. “They s-s-said they were c-coming at eight!”
“Let me see that note!” commanded McGivney; so Peter pulled out one of Nell’s notes which he had saved for himself:
“If you really believe in a bold stroke for the workers’ rights, meet me in the studios, Room 17, tomorrow morning at eight o’clock. No names and no talk. Action!”
“You found that in your pocket?” demanded the other.
“Y-yes, sir.”
“And you’ve no idea who put it there.”
“N-no, but I think Joe Angell--”
McGivney looked at his watch. “You’ve got twenty minutes yet,” be said.
“You got the dicks?” asked Peter.
“A dozen of them. What’s your idea now?”
Peter stammered out his suggestions. There was a little grocery store just across the street from the entrance to the studio building. Peter would go in there, and pretend to get something to eat, and would watch thru the window, and the moment he saw the right men come in, he would hurry out and signal to McGivney, who would be in a drugstore at the next corner. McGivney must keep out of sight himself, because the “Reds” knew him as one of Guffey’s agents.
It wasn’t necessary to repeat anything twice. McGivney was keyed up and ready for business, and Peter hurried down the street, and stepped into the little grocery store without being observed by anyone. He ordered some crackers and cheese, and seated himself on a box by the window and pretended to eat. But his hands were trembling so that he could hardly get the food into his mouth; and this was just as well, because his mouth was dry with fright, and crackers and cheese are articles of diet not adapted to such a condition.
He kept his eyes glued on the dingy doorway of the old studio building, and presently--hurrah!--he saw McCormick coming down the street! The Irish boy turned into the building, and a couple of minutes later came Gus the sailor, and before another five minutes had passed here came Joe Angell and Henderson. They were walking quickly, absorbed in conversation, and Peter could imagine he heard them talking about those mysterious notes, and who could be the writer, and what the devil could they mean?
Peter was now wild with nervousness; he was afraid somebody in the grocery store would notice him, and he made desperate efforts to eat the crackers and cheese, and scattered the crumbs all over himself and over the floor. Should he wait for Jerry Rudd, or should he take those he had already? He had got up and started for the door, when he saw the last of his victims coming down the street. Jerry was walking slowly, and Peter couldn’t wait until he got inside. A car was passing, and Peter took the chance to slip out and bolt for the drug store. Before he had got half way there McGivney had seen him, and was on the run to the next corner.
Peter waited only long enough to see a couple of automobiles come whirling down the street, packed solid with husky detectives. Then he turned off and hurried down a side street. He managed to get a couple of blocks away, and then his nerves gave way entirely, and he sat down on the curbstone and began to cry--just the way little Jennie had cried when he told her he couldn’t marry her! People stopped to stare at him, and one benevolent old gentleman came up and tapped him on the shoulder and asked what was the trouble. Peter, between his tear-stained fingers, gasped: “My m-m-mother died!” And so they let him alone, and after a while he got up and hurried off again.
Section 45
Peter was now in a state of utter funk. He knew that he would have to face McGivney, and he just couldn’t do it. All he wanted was Nell; and Nell, knowing that he would want her, had agreed to be in the park at half past eight. She had warned him not to talk to a soul until he had talked to her. Meantime she had gone home and renewed her Irish roses with French rouge, and restored her energy with coffee and cigarettes, and now she was waiting for him, smiling serenely, as fresh as any bird or flower in the park that summer morning. She asked him in even tones how things had gone, and when Peter began to stammer that he didn’t think he could face McGivney, she proceeded to build up his courage once more. She let him put his arms about her, even there in broad daylight; she whispered to him to get himself together, to be a man, and worthy of her.
What had he to be afraid of, anyway? They hadn’t a single thing on him, and there was no possible way they could get anything. His hands were clean all the way thru, and all he had to do was to stick it out; he must make up his mind in advance, that no matter what happened, he would never break down, he would never vary from the story he had rehearsed with her. She made him go over the story again; how on the previous evening, at the gathering in the I. W. W. headquarters, they had talked about killing Nelse Ackerman as a means of bringing the war to an end. And after the talk he had heard Joe Angell whisper to Jerry Rudd that he had the makings of a bomb already; he had a suit-case full of dynamite stored there in the closet, and he and Pat McCormick had been planning to pull off something that very night. Peter had gone out, but had watched outside, and had seen Angell, Henderson, Rudd and Gus come out. Peter had noticed that Angell’s pockets were stuffed, and had assumed that they were going to do their dynamiting, so he had phoned to McGivney from the drug-store. By this phoning he had missed the crowd, and then he had been ashamed and afraid to tell McGivney, and had spent the night wandering in the park. But early in the morning he had found the note, and had understood that it must have been slipped into his pocket, and that the conspirators wanted him to come in on their scheme. That was all, except for three or four sentences or fragments of sentences which Peter had overheard between Joe Angell and Jerry Rudd. Nell made him learn these sentences by heart, and she insisted that he must not under any circumstances try to remember or be persuaded to remember anything further.
At last Peter was adjudged ready for the ordeal, and went to Room 427 in the American House, and threw himself on the bed. He was so exhausted that once or twice he dozed; but then he would think of some new question that McGivney might ask him, and would start into wakefulness. At last he heard a key turn, and started up. There entered one of the detectives, a man named Hammett. “Hello, Gudge,”
said he. “The boss wants you to get arrested.”
“Arrested!” exclaimed Peter. “Good Lord!” He had a sudden swift vision of himself shut up in a cell with those Reds, and forced to listen to “hard luck stories.”
“Well,” said Hammett, “we’re arresting all the Reds, and if we skip you, they’ll be suspicious. You better go somewhere right away and get caught.”
Peter saw the wisdom of this, and after a little thought he chose the home of Miriam Yankovitch. She was a real Red, and didn’t like him; but if he was arrested in her home, she would have to like him, and it would tend to make him “solid” with the “left wingers.” He gave the address to Hammett, and added, “You better come as soon as you can, because she may kick me out of the house.”
“That’s all right,” replied the other, with a laugh. “Tell her the police are after you, and ask her to hide you.”
So Peter hurried over to the Jewish quarter of the city, and knocked on a door in the top story of a tenement house. The door was opened by a stout woman with her sleeves rolled up and her arms covered with soap-suds. Yes, Miriam was in. She was out of a job just now, said Mrs. Yankovitch. They had fired her because she talked Socialism. Miriam entered the room, giving the unexpected visitor a cold stare that said as plain as words: “Jennie Todd!”
But this changed at once when Peter told her that he had been to I. W. W. headquarters and found the police in charge. They had made a raid, and claimed to have discovered some kind of plot; fortunately Peter had seen the crowd outside, and had got away. Miriam took him into an inside room and asked him a hundred questions which he could not answer. He knew nothing, except that he had been to a meeting at headquarters the night before, and this morning he had gone there to get a book, and had seen the crowd and run.
Half an hour later came a bang on the door, and Peter dived under the bed. The door was burst open, and he heard angry voices commanding, and vehement protests from Miriam and her mother. To judge from the sounds, the men began throwing the furniture this way and that; suddenly a hand came under the bed, and Peter was grabbed by the ankle, and hauled forth to confront four policemen in uniform.
It was an awkward situation, because apparently these policemen hadn’t been told that Peter was a spy; the boobs thought they were getting a real dynamiter! One grabbed each of Peter’s wrists, and another kept him and Miriam covered with a revolver, while the fourth proceeded to go thru his pockets, looking for bombs. When they didn’t find any, they seemed vexed, and shook him and hustled him about, and made clear they would be glad of some pretext to batter in his head. Peter was careful not to give them such a pretext; he was frightened and humble, and kept declaring that he didn’t know anything, he hadn’t done any harm.
“We’ll see about that, young fellow!” said the officer, as he snapped the handcuffs on Peter’s wrists. Then, while one of them remained on guard with the revolver, the other three proceeded to ransack the place, pulling out the bureau-drawers and kicking the contents this way and that, grabbing every scrap of writing they could find and jamming it into a couple of suit-cases. There were books with red bindings and terrifying titles, but no bombs, and no weapons more dangerous than a carving knife and Miriam’s tongue. The girl stood there with her black eyes flashing lightnings, and told the police exactly what she thought of them. She didn’t know what had happened in the I. W. W. headquarters, but she knew that whatever it was, it was a frame-up, and she dared them to arrest her, and almost succeeded in her fierce purpose. However, the police contented themselves with kicking over the washtub and its contents, and took their departure, leaving Mrs. Yankovitch screaming in the midst of a flood.
Section 46
They dragged Peter out thru a swarming tenement crowd, and clapped him into an automobile, and whirled him away to police headquarters, where they entered him in due form and put him in a cell. He was uneasy right away, because he had failed to arrange with Hammett how long he was to stay locked up. But barely an hour had passed before a jailer came, and took him to a private room, where he found himself confronted by McGivney and Hammett, also the Chief of Police of the city, a deputy district attorney, and last but most important of all--Guffey. It was the head detective of the Traction Trust who took Peter in charge.
“Now, Gudge,” said he, “what’s this job you’ve been putting up on us?”
It struck Peter like a blow in the face. His heart went down, his jaw dropped, he stared like an idiot. Good God!
But he remembered Nell’s last solemn words: “Stick it out, Peter; stick it out!” So he cried: “What do you mean, Mr. Guffey?”
“Sit down in that chair there,” said Guffey. “Now, tell us what you know about this whole business. Begin at the beginning and tell us everything--every word.” So Peter began. He had been at a meeting at the I. W. W. headquarters the previous evening. There had been a long talk about the inactivity of the organization, and what could be done to oppose the draft. Peter detailed the arguments, the discussion of violence, of dynamite and killing, the mention of Nelse Ackerman and the other capitalists who were to be put out of the way. He embellished all this, and exaggerated it greatly--it being the one place where Nell had said he could do no harm by exaggerating.
Then he told how after the meeting had broken up he had noticed several of the men whispering among themselves. By pretending to be getting a book from the bookcase he had got close to Joe Angell and Jerry Rudd; he had heard various words and fragments of sentences, “dynamite,” “suit-case in the cupboard,” “Nelse,” and so on. And when the crowd went out he noticed that Angell’s pockets were bulging, and assumed that he had the bombs, and that they were going to do the job. He rushed to the drug-store and phoned McGivney. It took a long time to get McGivney, and when he had given his message and run out again, the crowd was out of sight. Peter was in despair, he was ashamed to confront McGivney, he wandered about the streets for hours looking for the crowd. He spent the rest of the night in the park. But then in the morning he discovered the piece of paper in his pocket, and understood that somebody had slipped it to him, intending to invite him to the conspiracy; so he had notified McGivney, and that was all he knew.
McGivney began to cross-question him. He had heard Joe Angell talking to Jerry Rudd; had he heard him talking to anybody else? Had he heard any of the others talking? Just what had he heard Joe Angell say? Peter must repeat every word all over. This time, as instructed by Nell, he remembered one sentence more, and repeated this sentence: “Mac put it in the `sab-cat.’” He saw the others exchange glances. “That’s just what I heard,” said Peter--“just those words. I couldn’t figure out what they meant?”
“Sab-cat?” said the Chief of Police, a burly figure with a brown moustache and a quid of tobacco tucked in the corner of his mouth. “That means `sabotage,’ don’t it?”
“Yes,” said the rat-faced man.
“Do you know anything in the office that has to do with sabotage?”
demanded Guffey of Peter.
And Peter thought. “No, I don’t,” he said.
They talked among themselves for a minute or two. The Chief said they had got all McCormick’s things out of his room, and might find some clue to the mystery in these. Guffey went to the telephone, and gave a number with which Peter was familiar--that of I. W. W. headquarters. “That you, Al?” he said. “We’re trying to find if there’s something in those rooms that has to do with sabotage. Have you found anything--any apparatus or pictures, or writing--anything?”
Evidently the answer was in the negative, for Guffey said: “Go ahead, look farther; if you get anything, call me at the chief’s office quick. It may give us a lead.”
Then Guffey hung up the receiver and turned to Peter. “Now Gudge,”
he said, “that’s all your story, is it; that’s all you got to tell us?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well then, you might as well quit your fooling right away. We understand that you framed this thing up, and we’re not going to be taken in.”
Peter stared at Guffey, speechless; and Guffey, for his part, took a couple of steps toward Peter, his brows gathering into a terrible frown, and his fists clenched. In a wave of sickening horror Peter remembered the scenes after the Preparedness Day explosion. Were they going to put him thru that again?
“We’ll have a show-down, Gudge, right here,” the head detective continued. “You tell us all this stuff about Angell--his talk with Jerry Rudd, and his pockets stuffed with bombs and all the rest of it--and he denies every word of it.”
“But, m-m-my God! Mr. Guffey,” gasped Peter. “Of _course_ he’ll deny it!” Peter could hardly believe his ears--that they were taking seriously the denial of a dynamiter, and quoting it to him!
“Yes, Gudge,” responded Guffey, “but you might as well know the truth now as later--Angell is one of our men; we’ve had him planted on these `wobblies’ for the last year.”
The bottom fell out of Peter’s world; Peter went tumbling heels over head--down, down into infinite abysses of horror and despair. Joe Angell was a secret agent like himself! The Blue-eyed Angell, who talked dynamite and assassination at a hundred radical gatherings, who shocked the boldest revolutionists by his reckless language--Angell a spy, and Peter had proceeded to plant a “frame-up” on him!
Section 47
It was all up with Peter. He would go back into the hole! He would be tortured for the balance of his days! In his ears rang the shrieks of ten thousand lost souls and the clang of ten thousand trumpets of doom; and yet, in the midst of all the noise and confusion, Peter managed somehow to hear the voice of Nell, whispering over and over again: “Stick it out, Peter; stick it out!”
He flung out his hands and started toward his accuser. “Mr. Guffey, as God is my witness, I don’t know a thing about it but what I’ve told you. That’s what happened, and if Joe Angell tells you anything different he’s lying.”
“But why should he lie?”
“I don’t know why; I don’t know anything about it!”
Here was where Peter reaped the advantage of his lifelong training as an intriguer. In the midst of all his fright and his despair, Peter’s subconscious mind was working, thinking of schemes. “Maybe Angell was framing something up on you! Maybe he was fixing some plan of his own, and I come along and spoiled it; I sprung it too soon. But I tell you it’s straight goods I’ve given you.” And Peter’s very anguish gave him the vehemence to check Guffey’s certainty. As he rushed on, Peter could read in the eyes of the detective that he wasn’t really as sure as he talked.
“Did you see that suit-case?” he demanded.
“No, I didn’t see no suit-case!” answered Peter. “I don’t even know if there was a suit-case. I only know I heard Joe Angell say `suit-case,’ and I heard him say `dynamite.’”
“Did you see anybody writing anything in the place?”
“No, I didn’t,” said Peter. “But I seen Henderson sitting at the table working at some papers he had in his pocket, and I seen him tear something up and throw it into the trash-basket.” Peter saw the others look at one another, and he knew that he was beginning to make headway.
A moment later came a diversion that helped to save him. The telephone rang, and the Chief of Police answered and nodded to Guffey, who came and took the receiver. “A book?” he cried, with excitement in his tone. “What sort of a plan? Well, tell one of your men to take the car and bring that book and the plan here to the chief’s office as quick as he can move; don’t lose a moment, everything may depend on it.”
And then Guffey turned to the others. “He says they found a book on sabotage in the book-case, and in it there’s some kind of a drawing of a house. The book has McCormick’s name in it.”
There were many exclamations over this, and Peter had time to think before the company turned upon him again. The Chief of Police now questioned him, and then the deputy of the district attorney questioned him; still he stuck to his story. “My God!” he cried. “Would you think I’d be mad enough to frame up a job like this? Where’d I get all that stuff? Where’d I get that dynamite?”--Peter almost bit off his tongue as he realized the dreadful slip he had made. No one had ever told him that the suit-case actually contained dynamite! How had he known there was dynamite in it? He was desperately trying to think of some way he could have heard; but, as it happened, no one of the five men caught him up. They all knew that there was dynamite in the suit-case; they knew it with overwhelming and tremendous certainty, and they overlooked entirely the fact that Peter wasn’t supposed to know it. So close to the edge of ruin can a man come and yet escape!
Peter made haste to get away from that danger-spot. “Does Joe Angell deny that he was whispering to Jerry Rudd?”
“He doesn’t remember that,” said Guffey. “He may have talked with him apart, but nothing special, there wasn’t any conspiracy.”
“Does he deny that he talked about dynamite?”
“They may have talked about it in the general discussion, but he didn’t whisper anything.”
“But I heard him!” cried Peter, whose quick wits had thought up a way of escape, “I know what I heard! It was just before they were leaving, and somebody had turned out some of the lights. He was standing with his back to me, and I went over to the book-case right behind him.”
Here the deputy district attorney put in. He was a young man, a trifle easier to fool than the others. “Are you sure it was Joe Angell?” he demanded.
“My God! Of course it was!” said Peter. “I couldn’t have been mistaken.” But he let his voice die away, and a note of bewilderment be heard in it.
“You say he was whispering?”
“Yes, he was whispering.”
“But mightn’t it have been somebody else?”
“Why, I don’t know what to say,” said Peter. “I thought for sure it was Joe Angell; but I had my back turned, I’d been talking to Grady, the secretary, and then I turned around and moved over to the book-case.”
“How many men were there in the room?”
“About twenty, I guess.”
“Were the lights turned off before you turned around, or after?”
“I don’t remember that; it might have been after.” And suddenly poor bewildered Peter cried: “It makes me feel like a fool. Of course I ought to have talked to the fellow, and made sure it was Joe Angell before I turned away again; but I thought sure it was him. The idea it could be anybody else never crossed my mind.”
“But you’re sure it was Jerry Rudd that was talking to him?”
“Yes, it was Jerry Rudd, because his face was toward me.”
“Was it Rudd or was it the other fellow that made the reply about the `sab-cat’?” And then Peter was bewildered and tied himself up, and led them into a long process of cross-questioning; and in the middle of it came the detective, bringing the book on sabotage with McCormick’s name written in the fly-leaf, and with the ground plan of a house between the pages.
They all crowded around to look at the plan, and the idea occurred to several of them at once: Could it be Nelse Ackerman’s house? The Chief of Police turned to his phone, and called up the great banker’s secretary. Would he please describe Mr. Ackerman’s house; and the chief listened to the description. “There’s a cross mark on this plan--the north side of the house, a little to the west of the center. What could that be?” Then, “My God!” And then, “Will you come down here to my office right away and bring the architect’s plan of the house so we can compare them?” The Chief turned to the others, and said, “That cross mark in the house is the sleeping porch on the second floor where Mr. Ackerman sleeps!”
So then they forgot for a while their doubts about Peter. It was fascinating, this work of tracing out the details of the conspiracy, and fitting them together like a picture puzzle. It seemed quite certain to all of them that this insignificant and scared little man whom they had been examining could never have prepared so ingenious and intricate a design. No, it must really be that some master mind, some devilish intriguer was at work to spread red ruin in American City!
Section 48
They dismissed Peter for the present, sending him back to his cell. He stayed there for two days with no one to advise him, and no hint as to his fate. They did not allow newspapers in the jail, but they had left Peter his money, and so on the second day he succeeded in bribing one of his keepers and obtaining a copy of the American City “Times,” with all the details of the amazing sensation spread out on the front page.
For thirty years the “Times” had been standing for law and order against all the forces of red riot and revolution; for thirty years the “Times” had been declaring that labor leaders and walking delegates and Socialists and Anarchists were all one and the same thing, and all placed their reliance fundamentally upon one instrument, the dynamite bomb. Here at last the “Times” was vindicated, this was the “Times” great day! They had made the most of it, not merely on the front page, but on two other pages, with pictures of all the conspicuous conspirators, including Peter, and pictures of the I. W. W. headquarters, and the suit-case, and the sticks of dynamite and the fuses and the clock; also of the “studio”
in which the Reds had been trapped, and of Nikitin, the Russian anarchist who owned this den. Also there were columns of speculation about the case, signed statements and interviews with leading clergymen and bankers, the president of the Chamber of Commerce and the secretary of the Real Estate Exchange. Also there was a two-column, double-leaded editorial, pointing out how the “Times”
had been saying this for thirty years, and not failing to connect up the case with the Goober case, and the Lackman case, and the case of three pacifist clergymen who had been arrested several days before for attempting to read the Sermon on the Mount at a public meeting.
And Peter knew that he, Peter Gudge, had done all this! The forces of law and order owed it all to one obscure little secret service agent! Peter would get no credit, of course; the Chief of Police and the district attorney were issuing solemn statements, taking the honors to themselves, and with never one hint that they owed anything to the secret service department of the Traction Trust. That was necessary, of course; for the sake of appearances it had to be pretended that the public authorities were doing the work, exercising their legal functions in due and regular form. It would never do to have the mob suspect that these activities were being financed and directed by the big business interests of the city. But all the same, it made Peter sore! He and McGivney and the rest of Guffey’s men had a contempt for the public officials, whom they regarded as “pikers”; the officials had very little money to spend, and very little power. If you really wanted to get anything done in America, you didn’t go to any public official, you went to the big men of affairs, the ones who had the “stuff,” and were used to doing things quickly and efficiently. It was the same in this business of spying as in everything else.
Now and then Peter would realize how close he had come to ghastly ruin. He would have qualms of terror, picturing himself shut up in the hole, and Guffey proceeding to torture the truth out of him. But he was able to calm these fears. He was sure this dynamite conspiracy would prove too big a temptation for the authorities; it would sweep them away in spite of themselves. They would have to go thru with it, they would have to stand by Peter.
And sure enough, on the evening of the second day a jailer came and said: “You’re to be let out.” And Peter was ushered thru the barred doors and turned loose without another word.
Section 49
Peter went to Room 427 of the American House and there was McGivney waiting for him. McGivney said nothing about any suspicion of Peter, nor did Peter say anything--he understood that by-gones were to be by-gones. The authorities were going to take this gift which the fates had handed to them on a silver platter. For years they had been wanting to get these Reds, and now magically and incredibly, they had got them!
“Now, Gudge,” said McGivney, “here’s your story. You’ve been arrested on suspicion, you’ve been cross-questioned and put thru the third degree, but you succeeded in satisfying the police that you didn’t know anything about it, and they’ve released you. We’ve released a couple of others at the same time, so’s to cover you all right; and now you’re to go back and find out all you can about the Reds, and what they’re doing, and what they’re planning. They’re shouting, of course, that this is a `frame-up.’ You must find out what they know. You must be careful, of course--watch every step you take, because they’ll be suspicious for a while. We’ve been to your room and turned things upside down a bit, so that will help to make it look all right.”
Peter sallied forth; but he did not go to see the Reds immediately. He spent an hour dodging about the city to make sure no one was shadowing him; then he called up Nell at a telephone number she had given him, and an hour later they met in the park, and she flew to his arms and kissed him with rapturous delight. He had to tell her everything, of course; and when she learned that Joe Angell was a secret agent, she first stared at him in horror, and then she laughed until she almost cried. When Peter told how he had met that situation and got away with it, for the first time he was sure that he had won her love.
“Now, Peter,” she said, when they were calm again, we’ve got to get action at once. The papers are full of it, and old Nelse Ackerman must be scared out of his life. Here’s a letter I’m going to mail tonight--you notice I’ve used a different typewriter from the one I used last time. I went into a typewriter store, and paid them to let me use one for a few minutes, so they can never trace this letter to me.
The letter was addressed to Nelson Ackerman at his home, and marked “Personal.” Peter read:
“This is a message from a friend. The Reds had an agent in your home. They drew a plan of your house. The police are hiding things from you, because they can’t get the truth, and don’t want you to know they are incompetent. There is a man who discovered all this plot, and you should see him. They won’t let you see him if they can help it. You should demand to see him. But do not mention this letter. If you do not get to the right man, I will write you again. If you keep this a secret, you may trust me to help you to the end. If you tell anybody, I will be unable to help you.”
“Now,” said Nell, “when he gets that letter he’ll get busy, and you’ve got to know what to do, because of course everything depends on that.” So Nell proceeded to drill Peter for his meeting with the King of American City