Chapter 2
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 hiding in there for? Peter stammered feebly. What? You hurt?
demanded the voice. I don't know, 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 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 un-presentable 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'd you crawl in there for? My God! cried Peter, I want 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 on to 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 up against the wall and proceeded to go through 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 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 to the neck of Peter's coat and drew it together until Peter was squeezed tight. You threw that bomb! hissed the man.
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! My God! said Peter. I don't know 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 don't know what you're talking 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. Wake up your mind to it.
You're gonna come through! The man opened a door. It was some kind of store room, 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 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 fingernails out. I'll tear your 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, and he didn't know what the man was talking about.
He rised and twisted, and doubled himself over backward, trying to evade the frightful pain of that pressure on his finger. You're lying, insisted Guffy. I know you're lying. You're one of that crowd.
What crowd? Ouch! I don't know what you mean. You're one of them Reds, ain't you? Reds?
What are Reds? You want to tell me you don't know what a Red is? Ain't you been giving out them circulars on the street? I never seen the circular, repeated Peter. I never seen a word in it.
I don't know what it is. You try to stuff me with that. Some woman give me that circular on the street. Ouch! Stop!
Jesus! I tell you I never looked at that circular. You dare go on lying, shouted the man, with fresh access of rage. And when I've 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 don't know, I don't know. What's them fellows done for you that protected 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 through 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 don't know, he would give another twist to Peter's wrist and Peter would yell, almost with terror and pain, but still declaring that he could tell nothing.
He knew nothing about any bomb. So at last Guffy 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 someone 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 go 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. In the 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 hall, and keep him there till 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 through 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 fingerprints.
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. And 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 Guffy had not lam'd, and kicked and 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 Guffy, 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 Guffy 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 raging 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 became 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 through 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, entrenched 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 Guffy, and Peter knew what it meant. His teeth began to rattle again and he wailed, I don't know 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 Guffy.
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?
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 fingernails 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 Guffy, I've been finding out all about you. I got your life story from the day you were born and there's no use you're 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've got a chance to save yourself, all you've got to do is 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 will be easy for you. Peter continued to gaze like a fascinated rabbit, and such a longing has 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. End of sections 3 to 6
