Chapter 39
Section 77 Peter was duly scolded, and put to work as an office man at his old salary of twenty dollars a week. It was his duty to consult with Guppy's many operatives, to tell them everything he knew about this individual red or that organization of reds. He would use his
inside knowledge of personalities and doctrines and movements to help in framing up testimony and in setting traps for too ardent agitators. He could no longer pose as a red himself, but sometimes there were cases where he could do detective work without being recognized, when for example there was a juror or of investigating the members of a panel. The IWWs had been put out of
business in American City, but the socialists were still active in spite of prosecutions and convictions. Also there was a new peril looming up. The returned soldiers were coming back, and a lot of them were dissatisfied, presuming to complain of their treatment in the army and of the lack of good jobs at home and even of the peace treaty which the president was arranging in Paris. They had
fought to make the world safe for democracy, and here, they said, it had been made safe for the profiteers. This was plain Bolshevism, and in its most dangerous form, because these fellows had learned to use guns and couldn't very well be expected to become pacifists right off the bat. There had been a great labor shortage during the war, and some of the more powerful unions had
taken the general rise in prices as an excuse for demanding higher wages. This naturally had made the members of the Chamber of Commerce and the Merchants and Manufacturers Association indignant, and now they saw their chance to use these returned soldiers to smash strikes and to break the organizations of the labor men. They proceeded to organize the soldiers for this purpose. In American
City, the Chamber of Commerce contributed $25,000 to furnish the clubroom for them, and when the trolleymen went on strike, the cars were run by returned soldiers in uniform. There was one veteran, a fellow by the name of Sidney, who objected to this program. He was publishing a paper, the veteran's friend, and began to use the paper to protest against his comrades acting as
what he called scabs. The secretary of the Merchants and Manufacturers Association sent for him and gave him a straight talking to, but he went right ahead with his campaign, and so Guffey's office was assigned the task of shutting him up. Peter, while he could not take an active part in the job, was the one who guided it behind the scenes. They proceeded to plant spies in
Sidney's office, and they had so many that it was really a joke. They used to laugh and say that they trod on one another's toes. Sidney was poor and had not enough money to run his paper, so he accepted any volunteer labor that came along, and Guffey sent him plenty of volunteers, no less than seven operatives, one keeping Sidney's books, another helping with his mailing, two
more helping to raise funds among the labor unions, others dropping in every day or two to advise him. Nevertheless, Sidney went right ahead with his program of denouncing the Merchants and Manufacturers Association and denouncing the government for its failure to provide farms and jobs for the veterans. One of Guffey's undercover operatives, that was the technical term for the
Peter Gudges and Joe Angels, was a man by the name of Jonas. This Jonas called himself a philosophic anarchist, and posed as the reddest red in American City. It was his habit to rise up in radical meetings and question the speaker, and try to tempt him to justify violence and insurrection and mass action. If he repudiated these ideas, then Jonas would denounce him as a
mollycoddle, a pink-tea socialist, a labor faker. Other people in the audience would applaud, and so Guffey's men would find out who were the real red sympathizers. Peter had long suspected Jonas, and now he was sent to meet him in room 427 of the American House, and together they framed up a job on Sydney. Jonas wrote a letter, supposed to come from a German
comrade, giving the names of some papers in Europe to which the editors should send sample copies of his magazine. This letter was mailed to Sydney, and next morning Jonas wandered into the office, and Sydney showed him the letter. And Jonas told him that these were labor papers, and the editors would no doubt be interested to know of the feelings of American
soldiers since the war. Sydney sat down to write a letter, and Jonas stood by his side and told him what to write. "'To my erstwhile enemies in arms I send fraternal greetings, and welcome you as brothers in the new cooperative commonwealth which is to be,' and so on, the usual internationalist patter, which all these agitators were
spouting day and night, and which ran off the ends of their pens automatically. Sydney mailed these letters, and the sample copies of the magazine, and Guffey's office tipped off the post office authorities who held up the letters. The bookkeeper, one of Guffey's operatives, went to the federal attorney and made affidavit that Sydney had been carrying on a
conspiracy with the enemy in wartime, and a warrant was issued and the offices of the magazine were raided, the subscription lists confiscated, and everything in the rooms dumped out into the middle of the floor. So there was a little job all Peter's own, except that Jonas, the scoundrel, claimed it for his, and tried to deprive Peter of the credit. So Peter was
glad when the federal authorities looked the case over and said it was a bum job, and they wouldn't monkey with it. However, the evidence was turned over to District Attorney Burchard, who wasn't quite so fastidious, and his agents made another raid and smashed up the office again and threw the returned soldier into jail. The judge fixed the bail at $15,000, and the
American City Times published the story with scare headlines all the way across the front page, how the editor of the Veteran's Friend had been caught conspiring with the enemy, and here was a photographic copy of his treasonable letter, and a copy of the letter of the mysterious German conspirator with whom he had been in relations. They spent more than a year
trying that editor, and although he was out on bail, Guffey saw to it that he could not get a job anywhere in American City. His paper was smashed, and his family near to starvation. Section 78. Peter had now been working faithfully for six or eight months, and all that time he religiously carried out his promise to Guffey and did not wink at a woman. But that is an
unnatural life for a man, and Peter was lonely. His dreams were haunted by the faces of Nell Doolan and Rosie Stern, and even of little Jenny Todd. One day another face came back to him, the face of Miss Frisbee, the little manicurist who had spurned him because he was a red. Now suddenly Peter realized that he was no longer a red. On the contrary, he was a hero. His
picture had been published in the American City Times, and no doubt Miss Frisbee had seen it. Miss Frisbee was a good girl, a straight girl, and surely all right for him to know. So Peter went to the manicure parlor, and sure enough there was the little golden-haired lady, and sure enough she had read all about him. She had been dreaming that some day she might meet him
again, and so Peter invited her to go to a picture show. On the way home they became very chummy, and before a week went by it was as if they had been friends for life. When Peter asked Miss Frisbee if he might kiss her, she answered coyly that he might, but after he had kissed her a few times she explained to him that she was a self-supporting woman, alone and
defenseless in the world, and she had nobody to speak for her but herself. She must tell him that she had always been a respectable woman, and she wanted him to know that before he kissed her any more. And Peter thought it over and decided that he had sowed his full share of wild oats in this life. He was ready to settle down, and the next time he saw Miss Frisbee he told her so, and before
the evening was by they were engaged. Then Peter went to see Guffy, and seated himself on the edge of the chair alongside Guffy's desk, and twisted his hand in his hands, and flushed very red, and began to stammer out his confession. He expected to be received with a gale of ridicule. He was immensely relieved when Guffy said that if Peter had really found a good
girl and wanted to marry her, he, Guffy, was for it. There was nothing like the influence of a good woman, and Guffy much preferred his operatives should be married men, living a settled and respectable life. They could be trusted then, and sometimes when a woman operative was needed they had a partner ready to hand. If Peter had got married long ago he might have had a
good sum of money in the bank by now. Peter ventured to point out that $20 a week was not exactly a marrying salary in the face of the present high cost of living. Guffy answered that that was true, and he would raise Peter to $30 right away. Only first he demanded the right to talk to Peter's fiance, and judge for himself whether she was worthy. Peter was delighted, and Miss
Frisbee had a private and confidential interview with Peter's boss. But afterwards Peter wasn't quite so delighted, for he realized what Guffy had done. Peter's future wife had been told all about Peter's weakness, and how Peter's boss looked to her to take care of her husband and make him walk the chalk line. So a week after Peter had entered the holy bonds of matrimony,
when he and Mrs. Gudge had their first little family tiff, Peter suddenly discovered who was going to be top dog in that family. He was shown his place once for all, and he took it. Alongside that husband who described his domestic arrangements by saying that he and his wife got along beautifully together, they had come to an arrangement by which he was to
have his way on all major issues, and she was to have her way on all minor issues, and so far no major issues had arisen. But really it was a very good thing, for Gladys Frisbee Gudge was an excellent manager, and set to work making herself a nest as busily as any female beaver. She still hung on to her manicurist job, for she had figured it out that the Red
Movement must be just about destroyed by now, and pretty soon Peter might find himself without work. In the evenings she took to house hunting, and during her noon hour, without consulting Peter, she selected the furniture and the wallpaper, and pretty nearly bought out the stock of a five and ten cent store to equip the beaver's nest. Gladys Frisbee Gudge
was a diligent reader of the fashion magazines, and kept herself right up to the minute with the styles. Also she had got herself a book on etiquette, and learned it by heart from cover to cover, and now she took Peter in hand and taught it to him. Why must he always be a Jimmy Higgins of the whites? Why should he not acquire the vocabulary of an educated man, the
arts and graces of the well-to-do? Gladys knew that it is these subtleties which determine your salary in the long run, so every Sunday morning she would dress him up with a new brown derby and a new pair of brown kid gloves, and take him to the Church of the Divine Compassion, and they would listen to the patriotic sermon of the Reverend De Willeby Stutterbridge,
and Gladys would bow her head in prayer, and out of the corner of her eye would get points on costumes from the lady in the next pew. And afterwards they would join the Sunday parade, and Gladys would point out to Peter the marks of what she called gentility. In the evenings they would go walking, and she would stop in front of the big shop windows, or take him into the
hotel lobbies where the rich could be seen free of charge. Peter would be hungry, and would want to go to a cheap restaurant and fill himself up with honest grub. But Gladys, who had the appetite of a bird, would insist on marching him into the dining-room of the Hotel de Soto and making a meal upon a cup of broth and some bread and butter, just in order that
they might gaze upon a scene of elegance and see how genteel people ate their food. End of sections 77 and 78.
