menu_book Chapter 26

Section 51 Nell Sacrament's home was far out in the suburbs of the city, upon a knoll surrounded by forest. It was a couple of miles from the nearest trolley line which forced Peter to take a hot walk in the sun. Peter was a very smart man, and clearly the great banker in selecting the site of his residence had never once thought that anybody might want to get to it without an automobile.

Peter reflected as he walked that if he continued to move in these higher circles, he too would have to join the motor driving class. About the estate there ran a great bronze fence, ten feet high, with sharp, inhospitable spikes pointing outwards. Peter had read about this fence a long time ago in the American City Times. It was so and so many thousand yards long, and had so and so many spikes, and had cost so and so many thousands of dollars. There were big bronze gates locked tight and a sign that said, Beware the Dogs!

Inside the gates there were three guards carrying rifles and walking up and down. They were a consequence of the recent dynamite conspiracy. But Peter did not realize this. He took them for a regular institution, and a symbol of the importance of the man he was to visit. He pressed a button by the side of the gate. A lodgekeeper came out, and Peter, according to orders, gave the name Arthur G. McGillicuddy. The lodgekeeper went inside and telephoned, and then came back and opened the gate just enough to admit Peter.

You're to be searched, said the lodgekeeper, and Peter, who had been arrested many times, took no offense at this procedure, but found it more evidence of the importance of Nell Sacrament. The guards went through his pockets and felled him all over, and then one of them marched him up the long gravel avenue through the forest, climbed a flight of marble steps to the palace on the Knoll, and turned him over to a Chinese butler who walked on padded slippers. If Peter had not known that this was a private home, he would have thought it was an art gallery. There were great marble columns and paintings bigger than Peter, and tapestries with life-size horses.

There were men in armor and battle-axes and Japanese dancing devils, and many other strange sights. Ordinarily, Peter would have been interested in learning how a great millionaire decorated his house, and would have drunk deep of the joy of being amid such luxury. But now all his thoughts were taken up with his dangerous business. Nell had told him what to look for, and he looked. Mounting the velvet carpeted staircase, he noted a curtain behind which a man might hide, and a painting of a Spanish cavalier on the wall just opposite.

He would make use of these two sights. They went down a hall, like a corridor in the Hotel de Soto, and at the end of it the butler tapped softly upon a door. Peter was ushered into a big apartment in semi-darkness. The butler retired without a sound, closing the door behind him, and Peter stood hesitating, looking about to get his bearings. From the other side of the room he heard three faint coughs, suggesting a sick man.

There was a four-poster bed of some dark wood, with a canopy over it and draperies at the side, and a man in the bed sitting propped up with pillows. There were more coughs, and then a faint whisper, This way. So Peter crossed over and stood about ten feet from the bed, holding his hat in his hands. He was not able to see very much of the occupant of the bed, nor was he sure it would be respectful for him to try to see. So you're—

What's your name? Gudge, said Peter. You are the man that knows about the Reds? Yes, sir. The occupant of the bed coughed every two or three minutes through the conversation that followed, and each time Peter noticed that he put his hand up to his mouth as if he were ashamed of the noise.

Gradually Peter got used to the twilight and could see that Nels Ackerman was an old man with puffy, droopy cheeks and chin, and dark, puffy crescents under his eyes. He was quite bald and had on his head a skull cap of embroidered black silk and a short embroidered jacket over his night shirt. Beside the bed stood a table covered with glasses and bottles and pill boxes and also a telephone. Every few minutes this telephone would ring, and Peter would wait patiently while Mr. Ackerman settled some complex problem of business. I've told him my terms, he would say with irritation, and then he would cough.

And Peter, who was sharply watching every detail of the conduct of the rich, noted that he was too polite even to cough into the telephone. If they will pay $125,000 on account, I will wait, but not a cent less, Nels Ackerman would say. And Peter, awestricken, realized that he had now reached the very top of Mount Olympus. He was at the highest point he could hope to reach until he went to heaven. The old man fixed his dark eyes on his visitor.

Who wrote me that letter? whispered the husky voice. Peter had been expecting this. What letter, sir? A letter telling me to see you. I don't know anything about it, sir.

You mean? You didn't write me an anonymous letter? No, sir, I didn't. Then some friend of yours must have written it. I don't know that. It might have been some enemy of the police. Well, now, what's this about the Reds having an agent in my home?

Did the letter say that? It did. Well, sir, that's putting it too strong. I ain't sure. It's just an idea I've had. It'll need a lot of explaining. You're the man who discovered this plot, I understand? Yes, sir.

Well, take a chair there, said the banker. There was a chair near the bedside, but it seemed to Peter too close to be respectful, so he pulled it a little farther away and sat down on the front six inches of it, still holding his hat in his hands and twisting it nervously. Put down that hat, said the old man, irritably.

So Peter stuck the hat under his chair and said, I beg pardon, sir. Section 52 The old plutocrat was feeble and sick, but his mind was all there, and his eyes seemed to be boring Peter through.

Peter realized that he would have to be very careful. The least little slip would be fatal here. Now, Gudge, the old man began, I want you to tell me all about it. To begin with, how did you come to be among these Reds? Begin at the beginning.

So Peter told how he happened to get interested in the radical movement, laying particular stress upon the dangerousness of these Reds, and his own loyalty to the class which stood for order and progress and culture in the country. It ought to be stopped, Mr. Ackerman, he exclaimed, with a fine show of feeling, and the old banker nodded. Yes, yes, it ought to be stopped.

Well, said Peter, I said to myself, I'm going to find out about them fellows. I went to their meetings and little by little I pretended to get converted, and I tell you, Mr. Ackerman, our police are asleep. They don't know what these agitators are doing, what they're preaching. They don't know what a hold they've got on the mobs of the discontented.

Peter went on to tell in detail about the propaganda of social revolution and about conspiracies against law and order and the property and even the lives of the rich. Peter noticed that when the old man took a sip of water his hand trembled, so that he could hardly keep the water from spilling. And presently, when the phone rang again, his voice became shrill and imperious.

I understand they're applying for bail for these men. Now, Angus, that's an outrage. We'll not adhere to anything like that. I want you to see the judge at once and make absolutely certain that those men are held in jail. Then again the old banker had a coughing fit. Now, Gudge, he said, I know more or less all about that.

What I want to know is about this conspiracy against me. Tell me how you came to find out about it. Then Peter told, but of course he embellished it insofar as it related to Mr. Ackerman. These fellows were talking about Mr. Ackerman all the time. They had a special grudge against him.

But why? cried the old man. Why? They think you're fighting them, Mr. Ackerman. But I'm not. That's not true. Well, they say you put up money to hang Goober. They call you... You'll excuse me?

Yes, yes, of course. They call you the head money devil. They call you the financial king of American City. King? cried the banker. What rubbish! Why, Gudge, that's fool newspaper talk. I'm a poor man today. There are two dozen men in this city richer than I am, and who have more power.

Why? But the old man fell to coughing and became so exhausted that he sank back into his pillows until he recovered his breath. Peter waited respectfully. But of course he wasn't fooled. Peter had carried on bargaining many times in his life and had heard people proclaim their poverty and impotence.

Now, Gudge, the old man resumed, I don't want to be killed. I tell you, I don't want to be killed. No, of course not, said Peter. It was perfectly comprehensible to him that Mr. Ackerman didn't want to be killed. But Mr. Ackerman seemed to think it necessary to impress the idea upon him.

In the course of the conversation he came back to it a number of times, and each time he said it with the same solemn assurance, as if it were a brand new idea and a very unusual and startling idea. I don't want to be killed, Gudge. I tell you, I don't want to let those fellows get me. No, no, we've got to circumvent them. We've got to take precautions, every precaution.

I tell you, every possible precaution. I'm here for that purpose, Mr. Ackerman, said Peter solemnly. I'll do everything. We'll do everything, I'm sure. What's this about the police? demanded the banker. What's this about Guffy's Bureau? You say they're not competent?

Well, now, I tell you, Mr. Ackerman, said Peter. It's a little embarrassing. You see, they employ me. Nonsense, exclaimed the other. I employ you. I'm putting up the money for this work, and I want the facts. I want them all.

Well, said Peter, they've been very decent to me. I say, tell me everything, exclaimed the old man. He was a most irritable old man, and couldn't stand for a minute not having what he asked for. What's the matter with them? Peter answered as humbly as he could. I could tell you a great deal that it'd be of use to you, Mr. Ackerman,

but you've got to keep it between you and me. All right, said the other quickly. What is it? If you give a hint of it to anybody else, persisted Peter, then I'll get fired. You'll not get fired. I'll see to that. If necessary, I'll hire you direct. Ah, but you don't understand, Mr. Ackerman.

It's the machine, and you can't run against it. You've got to understand it. You've got to handle it right. I'd like to help you, and I know I can help you, but you've got to let me explain it, and you've got to understand some things. All right, said the old man.

Go ahead. What is it? No, said Peter, it's like this. These police and all these fellows mean well, but they don't understand. It's too complicated. They ain't been in this movement long enough. They're used to dealing with criminals, but these Reds, you see, are cranks.

Criminals ain't organized. At least they don't stand together. But these Reds do, and if you fight them, they fight back, and they make what they call propaganda. And that propaganda is dangerous. If you make a wrong move, you may find you've made them stronger than they were before. Yes, I see that, said the old man.

Well, then again, the police don't know how dangerous they are. You try to tell them things, they won't really believe you. I've known for a long time there was a group of these people getting together to kill off all the rich men, the big men all over the country. They've been spying on these rich men, getting ready to kill them.

They know a lot about them, and you can't explain their knowing. That's how I got the idea they had somebody in your house, Mr. Ackerman. Tell me what you mean. Tell me at once. Well, sir, every once in a while I pick up scraps of conversation. One day I heard Mack.

Mack? That's McCormick, the one who's in jail. He's an IWW leader, and I think the most dangerous of all. I heard him whispering to another fellow, and it scared me, because it had to do with killing a rich man.

He'd been watching this rich man, and said he was going to shoot him down right in his own house. I didn't hear the name of the man. I walked away, because I didn't want him to think I was trying to listen in. They're awful suspicious, these fellows.

If you watch Mack, you see him looking around over his shoulder every minute or two. So I strolled off, and then I strolled back again, and he was laughing about something, and I heard him say these words. I heard him say, I was hiding behind the curtain, and there was a Spanish fellow painted on the wall,

and every time I peeked out that bugger was looking at me, and I wondered if he wasn't going to give me away. And Peter stopped. His eyes had got used to the twilight now, and he could see the old banker's eyes starting out from the crescents of dark, puffy flesh underneath. My God! whispered Nels Ackerman.

Now, that was all I heard, said Peter, and I didn't know what it meant. When I learned about that drawing that Mack had made of your house, I thought to myself, Jesus! I bet that was Mr. Ackerman he was waiting to shoot. Good God! Good God! whispered the old man, and his trembling fingers pulled at the embroidery on the coverlet.

The telephone rang, and he took up the receiver, and told somebody he was too busy now to talk. They would have to call him later. He had another coughing spell, so that Peter thought he was going to choke, and had to help him get some medicine down his throat.

Peter was a little bit shocked to see such obvious and abject fear in one of the gods. After all, they were just men, these Olympians, as much subject to pain and death as Peter Gudge himself. Also, Peter was surprised to find how easy Mr. Ackerman was. He made no lofty pretense of being indifferent to the Reds.

He put himself at Peter's mercy, to be milked at Peter's convenience, and Peter would make the most of this opportunity. Now, Mr. Ackerman, he began, you can see it wouldn't be any use to tell things like that to the police. They don't know how to handle such a situation. The honest truth is, they don't take these Reds seriously.

They'll spend ten times as much money to catch a plain burglar as they will to watch a whole gang like this. How can they have got into my home? cried the old man. They get in by ways you'd never dream of, Mr. Ackerman. They have people who agree with them. Why, you got no idea. There's some preachers that are Reds, and some college teachers, and some rich men like yourself.

I know, I know, said Ackerman, but surely. How can you tell? You may have a traitor right in your own family. So Peter went on, spreading the Red Terror in the soul of this old millionaire who did not want to be killed. He said again that he did not want to be killed, and explained his reluctance in some detail. So many people were dependent upon him for their livings. Peter could have no conception of it.

There were probably a hundred thousand men with their families right here in American City, whose jobs depended upon plans which Ackerman was carrying, and which nobody but Ackerman could possibly carry. Widows and orphans looked to him for protection of their funds. A vast network of responsibilities required his daily, even his hourly decisions. And sure enough, the telephone rang, and Peter heard Nell Ackerman declare that the Amalgamated Securities Company

would have to put off a decision about its dividends until tomorrow, because he was too busy to sign certain papers just then. He hung up the receiver and said, You see, you see, I tell you, Gudge, we must not let them get me.