Chapter 34
So there it was. When Peter had heard this letter he understood that there was no more to be said, and he said it. His own weight had suddenly become more than he could support, and he saw a chair nearby and slipped into it, and sat with eyes of abject misery roaming from Guffey to McGivney, and from McGivney to Hammett, and then back to Guffey again. The head detective for all his anger was a practical man. He could not have managed the
very important and confidential work of the Traction Trust if he had not been. So now he proceeded to get down to business. Peter would please tell him everything about that dynamite frame-up, just how they had managed it and just who knew about it. And Peter, being also a practical man, knew that there was no use trying to hide anything. He told the story from beginning to end, taking particular pains to make clear that he and Nell alone
were in the secret, except that beyond doubt Nell had told her lover, Ted Crothers. It was probably Crothers that got the dynamite. From the conversation that ensued, Peter gathered that this young man with the face of a bulldog was one of the very fanciest safe-crackers in the country, and no doubt he was the real brains of the conspiracy. He had put Nell up to it, and managed every step. Suddenly Peter remembered all the kisses which Nell
had given him in the park, and he found a blush of shame stealing over him. Yes, there was no doubt about it. He was a boob where women were concerned. Peter began to plead for himself. Really, it wasn't his fault, because Nell had got a hold on him. In the temple of Jim Jumbo, when he was only a kid, he had been desperately in love with her. She was not only beautiful, she was so smart, she was the smartest woman he had ever known.
McGivney remarked that she had been playing with Peter even then. She had been in Guffy's pay at that time, collecting evidence to put Pashtion el Calandra in jail and break up the cult of Eleutherinian exoticism. She had done many such jobs for the secret service of the Traction Trust, while Peter was still travelling around with Pericles Priam, selling patent medicine. Nell had been used by Guffy to seduce a prominent labor leader in American
City. She had got him caught in a hotel room with her, and thus had broken the back of the biggest labor strike ever known in the city's history. Peter felt, suddenly, that he had a good defense. Of course, a woman like that had been too much for him. It was Guffy's own fault if he hired people like that and turned them loose. It suddenly dawned on Peter. Nell must have found out that he, Peter, was going to meet young Lackman in
the Hotel De Soto, and she must have gone there deliberately to ensnare him. When McGivney admitted that that was possibly true, Peter felt that he had a case, and proceeded to urge it with eloquence. He had been a fool, of course. Every kind of fool there was, and he hadn't a word to say for himself. But he had learned his lesson and learned it thoroughly. No more women for him, and no more high life, and if Mr. Guffy would give him another chance.
Guffy, of course, snorted at him. He wouldn't have a pudding head like Peter gudged within ten miles of his office. But Peter only pleaded the more abjectly. He really did know the Reds thoroughly, and where could Mr. Guffy find anybody that knew them as well? The Reds all trusted him. He was a real martyr. Look at the plasters all over him now. And he had just added another red laurel to his brow. He had been to see Mrs. God, and had had the
seat of his trousers kicked by Mr. God. And, of course, he could tell that story, and maybe he could catch some Reds in a conspiracy against Mr. God. Anyhow, they had that perfectly good case against McCormick and the rest of the IWWs. And now that things had gone so far, surely they couldn't back down on that case. All that was necessary was to explain matters to Mr. Ackerman. Peter realized that this was an unfortunate remark. Guffy was on his
feet again, pacing up and down the room, calling Peter the names of all the barnyard animals, and incidentally revealing that he had already had an interview with Mr. Ackerman, and that Mr. Ackerman was not disposed to receive amicably the news that the Secret Service Bureau, which he had been financing, and which was supposed to be protecting him, had been the means of introducing into his home a couple of high-class criminals who had cracked his safe and made
off with jewels that they guessed were worth $50,000, but that Mr. Ackerman claimed were worth $85,000. Peter was informed that he might thank his lucky stars that Guffy didn't shut him in the hole for the balance of his life, or take him into a dungeon and pull him to pieces inch by inch. As it was, all he had to do was to get himself out of Guffy's office and to take himself to hell by the quickest route he could find.
Go on, said Guffy. I mean it. Get out! And so Peter got to his feet and started unsteadily toward the door. He was thinking to himself, Shall I threaten them? Shall I say I'll go over to the Reds and tell what I know? No, he had better not do that. The least hint of that might cause Guffy to put him in the hole. But then, how was it possible for Guffy to let him go, to take a chance of his telling?
Right now, Guffy must be thinking to himself that Peter might go away, and in a fit of rage or of despair might let out the truth to one of the Reds, and then everything would be ruined forever. No, surely Guffy would not take such a chance. Peter walked very slowly to the door. He opened the door reluctantly. He stood there, holding on as if he were too weak to keep his balance. He waited, waited, and sure enough, Guffy spoke.
Come back here, you mutt! And Peter turned and started towards the head detective, stretching out his hands in a gesture of submission. If it had been in an Eastern country, he would have fallen on his knees and struck his forehead three times in the dust. Please, please, Mr. Guffy, he wailed, give me another chance.
If I put you to work again, snarled Guffy, will you do what I tell you and not what you want to do yourself? Yes, yes, Mr. Guffy. You'll do no more frame-ups but my frame-ups? Yes, yes, Mr. Guffy. All right, then. I'll give you one more chance. But, by God, if I find you so much as winking at another girl, I'll pull your eye-teeth out. And Peter's heart leaped with relief.
Oh, thank you, thank you, Mr. Guffy. I'll pay you twenty dollars a week and no more, said Guffy. You're worth more, but I can't trust you with money. Then you can take it or leave it. That'll be perfectly satisfactory, Mr. Guffy, said Peter. 168.
So there was the end of high life for Peter Gudge. He moved no more in the celestial circles of Mount Olympus. He never again saw the Chinese butler of Mr. Ackerman nor the French parlor maid of Mrs. God. He would no more be smiled at by the two hundred and twenty-four boy angels of the ceiling of the Hotel de Soto lobby. Peter would eat his meals now, seated on a stool in front of a lunch counter. He would really be the humble proletarian, the
Jimmy Higgins of his role. He put behind him bright dreams of an accumulated competence and settled down to the hard day's work of cultivating the acquaintance of agitators, visiting their homes and watching their activities, getting samples of the literature they were circulating, stealing their letters and address books and notebooks, and taking all these to room 427 of the American House.
These were busy times just now. In spite of the whippings and the lynchings and the jailings, or perhaps because of these very things, the radical movement was seething. The IWWs had reorganized secretly and was accumulating a defense fund for their prisoners. Also, the socialists of all shades of red and pink were busy, and the labor men had never ceased their agitation over the Guber case. Just now they were redoubling their activities
because Mrs. Guber was being tried for her life. Over in Russia, a mob of anarchists had made a demonstration in front of the American legation because of the mistreatment of a man they called Guba. At any rate, that was the way the news came over the cables, and the news distributing associations of the country had been so successful in keeping the Guber case from becoming known that the editors of the New York papers really did
not know any better, and printed the name as it came, Guba, which of course gave the radicals a fine chance to laugh at them and say how much they cared about labor. The extreme Reds seemed to have everything their own way in Russia. Late in the fall they overthrew the Russian government and took control of the country, and proceeded to make peace with Germany, which put the Allies in a frightful predicament and introduced
a new word into the popular vocabulary, the dread word Bolshevik. After that, if a man suggested municipal ownership of ice wagons, all you had to do was to call him Bolshevik, and he was done for. However, the extremists replied to this campaign of abuse by taking up the name and wearing it as a badge. The socialist local of American city adopted, amid a storm of applause, a resolution to call itself the Bolshevik local, and the
left-wingers had everything their own way for a time. The leader in this wing was a man named Herbert Ashton, editor of the American city Clarion, the party's paper. A newspaper man, lean, sallow, and incredibly bitter, Ashton apparently had spent all his life studying the intrigues of international capital, and one never heard an argument advanced that he was not ready with an answer. He saw the war as a struggle
between the old established commercialism of Great Britain, whose government he described as a gigantic trading corporation, and the newly arisen and more aggressive commercialism of Germany. Ashton would take the formulas of the war propagandists and treat them as a terrier treats a rat. So this was a war for democracy. The bankers of Paris had for the last 20 years been subsidizing the Russian Tsars, who had shipped 100,000 exiles to Siberia
to make the world safe for democracy. The British Empire also had gone to war for democracy, first in Ireland, then in India and Egypt, then in the Whitechapel slums. No, said Ashton, the workers were not to be fooled with such bunk. Wall Street had loaned some billions of dollars to the allied bankers, and now the American people were asked to shed their blood to make the world safe for those loans. Peter had been urging McGivney to put an
end to this sort of agitation, and now the rat-faced man told him that the time for action had come. There was to be a big mass meeting to celebrate the Bolshevik revolution, and McGivney warned Peter to keep out of sight at that meeting, because there might be some clubbing. Peter left off his red badge and the button with the clasped hands, and went up into the gallery and lost himself in the crowd. He saw a great many bulls, whom he knew scattered through
the audience, and also he saw the chief of police and the head of the city's detective bureau. When Herbert Ashton was halfway through his tirade, the chief strode up to the platform and ordered him under arrest, and a score of policemen put themselves between the prisoner and the howling audience. Altogether they arrested seven people, and next morning, when they saw how much enthusiasm their action had awakened in the newspapers, they decided to go farther yet. A dozen of
Guffey's men, with another dozen from the district attorney's office, raided the office of Ashton's paper, the Clarion, kicked the editorial staff downstairs or threw them out of the windows, and proceeded to smash the typewriters and the printing presses, and to carry off the subscription lists and burn a ton or two of literature in the backyard. Also, they raided the headquarters of the Bolshevik local, and placed the seven members of the executive committee
under arrest, and the judge fixed the bail of each of them at $25,000, and every day for a week or two the American City Times would send a man around to Guffey's office, and Guffey would furnish him with a mass of material which Peter had prepared, showing that the socialist program was one of terrorism and murder. Almost every day now Peter rendered some such service to his country. He discovered where the IWW had hidden a printing press with which they were getting out circulars
and leaflets, and this place was raided, and the press confiscated, and half a dozen more agitators thrown into jail. These men declared a hunger strike, and tried to starve themselves to death as a protest against the beatings they got, and then some hysterical women met in the home of Adderuth and drew up a circular of protest, and Peter kept track of the mailing of this circular, and all the copies were confiscated in the post office, and so one more conspiracy was foiled.
They now had several men at work in the post office, secretly opening the mail of the agitators, and every now and then they would issue an order forbidding mail to be delivered to persons whose ideas were not sound. Also the post office department canceled the second-class mailing privileges of the clarion, and later it barred the paper from the mails entirely. A couple of comrades with automobiles then took up the work of delivering the paper in the nearby towns,
so Peter was sent to get acquainted with these fellows, and in the night time some of Guffy's men entered the garage and fixed one of the cars so that its steering gear went wrong, and very nearly broke the driver's neck. So yet another conspiracy was foiled. End of sections 67 and 68.
