100%: the Story of a Patriot
by Upton Sinclair · English · Gutenberg #5776 · 550,189 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: 100%: the Story of a Patriot
Author: Upton Sinclair
Release date: May 1, 2004 [eBook #5776]
Most recently updated: October 13, 2016
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5776
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 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
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