menu_book Chapter 21

100% The Story of a Patriot by Upton Sinclair. Sections 73 to 76. Section 73. Peter could see it all very clearly when he came to figure over the thing. He could see what a whooping jackass he had been.

He might have known that it was up to him to be careful, at this time of all times, when he was suspected of having rubbed out Donald Gordon's pencil marks. They had picked out a girl whom Peter had never seen before, and she had come and posed as Miriam's friend, and had proceeded to take Peter by the nose and lead him to the edge of the precipice and shove him over.

And now she would be laughing at him, telling all her friends about her triumph, and about Peter's thirty dollars a week that he would never see again. Peter spent a good part of the night getting up the story that he was to tell McGivney next morning. He wouldn't mention Rosie Stern, of course.

He would say that the Reds had trailed him to room 427, and it must be they had a spy in Guffey's office. Peter repeated the story quite solemnly, and again realized too late that he had made a fool of himself. It wasn't twenty-four hours before every Red in American City knew the true, inside history

of the unveiling of Peter Gudge as a spy of the Traction Trust. The story occupied a couple of pages in that week's issue of the Clarion, and included Peter's picture and an account of the part that Peter had played in various frame-ups. It was nearly all true, and the fact that it was guesswork on Donald Gordon's part did not make it any the better for Peter.

Of course McGivney and Guffey and all his men read the story, and knew Peter for the whooping jackass that Peter knew himself. "'You go and get yourself a job with a pick and shovel,' said McGivney, and Peter sorrowfully took his departure. He had only a few dollars in his pocket, and these did not last very long, and he got down

to his last nickel and was confronting the wolf of starvation again when McGivney came to his lodging-house room with a new proposition. There was one job left, and Peter might take it if he thought he could stand the gaffe.' It was the job of state's witness. Peter had been through all the Red Movement, and he knew all the pacifists and socialists

and syndicalists and IWWs who were now in jail. In some cases the evidence of the government was far from satisfactory, so Peter might have his salary back again if he were willing to take the witness stand and tell what he was told to tell, and if he could manage to sit in a courtroom without falling in love with some of the lady jurors or some of the lady spies of the defence.

These deadly shafts of sarcasm Peter did not even feel, because he was so frightened by the proposition which McGivney put up to him, to come out into the open and face the blinding glare of the Red Hate, to place himself, the ant, between the smashing fists of the battling giants. Yes, it might seem dangerous, said McGivney, for a cowardly little whelp like himself,

but then a good many men had had the nerve to do it, and none of them had died yet. McGivney himself did not pretend to care very much whether Peter did it or not. He put the matter up to him on Guffey's orders. The job was worth forty dollars a week, and he might take it or leave it. And there sat Peter, with only a nickel and a couple of pennies in his pocket, and the

rent for his room two weeks overdue, and his landlady lying in wait in the hallway like an Indian with a tomahawk. Peter objected, What about all those bad things in his early record, Pericles Priam and the temple of Jim Jambo, which had ruined him as a witness in the Gouber case? McGivney answered dryly that he couldn't let himself out with that excuse.

He was invited to pose as a reformed wobbly, and the more crimes and riskalities he had in his record, the more convinced the jury would be that he had been a real wobbly. Peter asked, Just when would he be expected to appear? And McGivney answered, The very next week. They were trying seventeen of the wobblies on a conspiracy charge, and Peter would be

expected to take the stand and tell how he had heard them advocate violence, and heard them boast of having set fire to barns and wheat fields, and how they had put phosphorus bombs into haystacks and copper nails into fruit trees and spikes into sawmill logs and emery powder into engine bearings. Peter needn't worry about what he would have to say.

McGivney would tell him everything and would see him thoroughly posted, and he would find himself a hero in the newspapers, which would make clear that he had done everything from the very highest possible motives of 100% Americanism, and that no soldier in the war had been performing a more dangerous service. To Peter it seemed they might say that without troubling their conscience very much, but

McGivney went on to declare that he needn't be afraid, it was no part of Guffey's program to give the Reds the satisfaction of putting his star witness out of business. Peter would be kept in a safe place and would always have a bodyguard, while he was in the city giving his testimony they would put him up at the Hotel De Soto. And that of course settled it.

Here was poor Peter with only a nickel and two coppers in his pocket, and before him stood a chariot of fire with magic steeds, and all he had to do was step in and be whirled away to Mount Olympus. Peter stepped in. Section 74

McGivney took him to Guffey's office, and Guffey wasted no time upon preliminaries, but turned to his desk and took out a long typewritten document, a complete account of what the prosecution meant to prove against the seventeen IWWs. First Peter told what he himself had seen and heard. Not very much, but a beginning, a hook to hang his story upon.

The IWW Hall was the meeting place for the casual and homeless labor of the country and the Bindelstiffs who took the hardest of the world's knocks and sometimes returned them. There was no kind of injustice these fellows hadn't experienced, and now and then they had given blow for blow. Also there were loose-talkers among them who worked off their feelings by threats of vengeance

upon their enemies. Now and then a real criminal came along, and now and then a paid insider, a Peter Gudge or a Joe Angel. Peter told the worst that he had heard, and all he knew about the arrested men, and Guffey wrote it all down and then proceeded to build upon it.

This fellow Alf Guinness had had a row with a farmer in Wheatland County. There had been a barn burnt nearby, and Guffey would furnish an automobile and a couple of detectives to travel with Peter, and they would visit the scene of that fire and the nearby village and familiarize themselves with the locality and Peter would testify how he had been with Guinness when he and a half-dozen of the defendants had set fire

to that barn. Peter hadn't intended anything quite so serious as that, but Guffey was so businesslike and took it all so much as a matter of course that Peter was afraid to show the white feather. After all, this was wartime. Hundreds of men were giving up their lives every day in the Argonne, and why shouldn't

Peter take a little risk in order to put out of business his country's most dangerous enemies? So Peter and his two detectives blew themselves to a joyride in the country, and then Peter was brought back and made comfortable in a room on the twelfth floor of the Hotel De Soto where he diligently studied the typewritten documents which McGivney brought him and thoroughly learned the story he was to tell.

There was always one of Guffey's men walking up and down in the hallway outside with a gun on his hip, and they brought Peter three meals a day, not forgetting a bottle of beer and a package of cigarettes. Twice a day Peter read in the newspapers about the heroic deeds of our boys over there, and also about the latest bomb plots which had been discovered all over the country, and

about various trials under the Espionage Act. Also Peter had the thrill of reading about himself in a real newspaper. Neither too, he had been featured in labour papers and socialist papers like the Clarion, which did not count. But now the American City Times came out with a long story of how the district attorney's

office had planted a secret agent with the IWW, and how this man, whose name was Peter Gudge, had been working as one of them for the past two years, and was going to reveal the whole story of the IWW infamy on the witness stand. Two days before the trial Peter was escorted by McGivney and another detective to the district attorney's office, and spent the best part of the day in conference with Mr.

Burchard and his deputy Mr. Stannard who were to try the case. McGivney told Peter that the district attorney was not in the secret, he really believed that Peter's story was all true. But Peter suspected that this was camouflage to save Mr. Burchard's face and to protect him in case Peter ever tried to throw him down.

Peter noticed that whenever he left a gap in his story the district attorney and the deputy told him to fill it, and he managed to guess what to fill it with. Henry Clay Burchard came from the far south and followed a style of oratory long since gone out of date. He wore his heavy black hair a little long, and when he mounted the platform he would

pull out the tremolo stop, stretching out his hands and saying in tones of quivering emotion, Also he would say, And then all the bankers of the Chamber of Commerce and the Merchants and Manufacturers Association would applaud and would send their checks to the campaign fund of this friend

of the common man. Mr. Burchard's deputy, Mr. Stannard, was a legal fox who told his chief what to do and how to do it. A dried up little man who looked like a bookworm and sat boring you through with his keen eyes, watching for your weak points and preparing to pierce you through with one of his legal

rapiers. He would be quite friendly about it, he would joke with you in the noon hour, assuming that you would of course understand it was all in the line of business and no harm meant. The two men heard Peter's story and changed it a little, and then heard him over again and pronounced him all right, and Peter went back to his hotel room and waited in trepidation

for his hour in the limelight. When they took him to court his knees were shaking, but also he had a thrill of real importance for they had provided him with a bodyguard of four big huskies. Also he saw two bulls whom he recognized in the hallway outside the courtroom and many others scattered through the audience.

The place was packed with red sympathizers, but they had all been searched before they were allowed to enter, and were being watched every moment during the trial. When Peter stepped into the witness box he felt as Tom Duggan and Donald Gordon must have felt that night when the white glare from 30 or 40 automobiles was beating upon them.

Peter felt the concentrated red hate of two or three hundred spectators and now and then their pent-up fury would break restraint. There would be a murmur of protest or perhaps a wave of sneering laughter, and the bailiff would bang on the table with his wooden mallet and the judge would half-rise from his seat and declare that if it happened again he would order the courtroom cleared.

Not far in front of Peter at a long table sat the 17 defendants, looking like trapped rats and every one of their 34 rat eyes were fixed upon Peter's face and never moved from it. Peter only glanced that way once, they bared their rat's teeth at him and he quickly looked in another direction, but there also he saw a face that brought him no comfort.

There sat Mrs. God in her immaculate white chiffons, her wide open blue eyes fixed upon his face, her expression full of grief and reproach. Oh, Mr. Gudge, she seemed to be saying, how can you? Mr. Gudge, is this peace, justice, truth, law? And Peter realized with a pang that he had cut himself off forever from Mount Olympus

and from the porch chair with the soft silken pillows. He turned away toward the box where sat the twelve jurymen and women. One old lady gave him a benevolent smile and a young farmer gave him a sly wink, so Peter knew that he had friends in that quarter, and after all, they were the ones who really counted in this trial.

Mrs. God was as helpless as any wobbly in the presence of this august court. Peter told his story and then came his cross-questioning, and who should rise and start the job but David Andrews, suave and humorous and deadly. Peter had always been afraid of Andrews, and now he winced. Nobody had told him he was to face an ordeal like this.

Nobody had told him that Andrews would be allowed to question him about every detail of these crimes which he said he had witnessed, and about all the conversations that had taken place and who else was present and what else had been said and how he had come to be there and what he had done afterwards and what he had had to eat for breakfast that morning. Only two things saved Peter.

First, the constant rapid-fire objections which Stannard kept making, to give Peter time to think, and second, the cyclone seller which Stannard had provided for him in advance. You can always fail to remember, the deputy had said. Nobody can punish you for forgetting something. So Peter would repeat the minute details of a conversation in which Alf Guinness had told

the barn, but he didn't remember who else had heard the conversation and he didn't remember what else had been said, nor what was the date of the conversation. Then came the blessed hour of noon, with a chance for Peter to get fixed up again before the court resumed it too. He was questioned again by Stannard, who patched up all the gaps in his testimony, and then

again he failed to remember things and so avoided the traps which Andrews set for his feet. He was told that he had done fine, and was escorted back to the Hotel De Soto in triumph, and there for a week he stayed while the defence made a feeble effort to answer his testimony. Peter read in the papers the long speeches in which the district attorney and the deputy

acclaimed him as a patriot, protecting his country from its enemies within. Also, he read a brief reference to the tirade of David Andrews, who had called him a rat and a slinking Judas. Peter didn't mind that, of course. It was all part of the game, and the calling of names is a pretty sure sign of impotence.

Less easy to accept placidly, however, was something which came to Peter that same day, a letter from Mrs. God. It wasn't written to him, but he saw Hammett and another of the bulls chuckling together, and he asked what was the joke, and they told him that Mrs. God had somehow found out about Guffey and had written him a letter full of insults, and Guffey was furious.

Peter asked what was in it, and they told him, and later on, when he insisted, they brought it and showed it to him, and Peter was furious too. On very expensive stationery with a stately crest at the top, the mother of Mount Olympus had written in a large, bland, girlish hand her opinion of Undercover Man and those who hired them.

You sit like a big spider and weave a net to catch men and destroy them. You destroy alike your victims and your tools. The poor boy Peter Gudge whom you sent to my home. My heart bleeds when I think of him and what you have put him up to. A wretched, feeble-minded victim of greed who ought to be sent to a hospital for deformed

souls. You have taken him and taught him a piece of villainy to recite, so that he may send a group of sincere idealists to prison. That was enough. Peter put down the letter.

He would not dignify such stuff by reading it. He realized that he would have to put his mind on the problem of Mrs. Gawd once more. One woman like that in her position of power was more dangerous than all the seventeen wobblies who had been hailed before the court. Peter inquired and learned that Guffey had already been to see Nelson Ackerman about

Mr. Ackerman had been to see Mr. Gawd and Mr. Gawd had been to see Mrs. Gawd. Also the Times had an editorial referring to the nest of Bolshevism upon Mount Olympus, and all Mrs. Gawd's friends were staying away from her luncheon parties. So she was being made to suffer for her insolence to Peter Gudge. A hospital for deformed souls indeed.

Peter was so upset that his joy in life was not restored even by the news that the jury had found the defendants guilty on the first ballot. He told McGivney that the strain of this trial had been too much for his nerves and that they must take care of him. So an automobile was provided and Peter was taken to a secret hiding place in the country

to recuperate. Hammett went with him and Hammett was a first-class gunman, and Peter stayed close by him. In the evening he stayed up in the second storey of the farmhouse lest perchance one of the Wobblies should take to literally the testimony Peter had given concerning their habit of shooting at their enemies out of the darkness.

Peter knew how they must all hate him. He read in the paper how the judge summoned the guilty men before him and sentenced them, incidentally forcing them to listen to a scathing address which was published in full in the Times. The law provided a penalty of from 1 to 14 years, and the judge sentenced 16 of them

to 14 years and 1 to 10 years, thus tempering justice with mercy. Then one day McGivney sent an automobile and Peter was brought to Guffey's office and a new plan was unfolded to him. They had arrested another bunch of Wobblies in the neighbouring city of El Dorado and Peter was wanted there to repeat his testimony.

It happened that he knew one of the accused men and that would be sufficient to get his testimony in. His prize stuff about the burning barns and the phosphorus bombs. He would be taken care of just as thoroughly by the district attorney's office of El Dorado County or better yet, Guffey would write to his friend Steve Elman, who did the detective

work for the Home and Fireside Association, the big business organisation of that city. Peter hemmed and hawed. This was a pretty hard and dangerous kind of work. It really played the devil with a man's nerves, sitting up there in the hotel room all day with nothing to do but smoke cigarettes and imagine the Wobblies throwing bombs at you.

Also, it wouldn't last very long. It ought to be better paid. Guffey answered that Peter needn't worry about the jobs lasting. If he cared to give this testimony, he might have a joyride from one end of the country to the other and everywhere he would live on the fat of the land and be a hero in the

newspapers. But still Peter hemmed and hawed. He had learned from the American City Times how valuable a witness he was and he ventured to demand his price, even from the terrible Guffey. He stuck it out, in spite of Guffey's frowns, and the upshot was that Guffey said,

Alright, if Peter would take the trip he might have seventy-five dollars a week and expenses and Guffey would guarantee to keep him busy for not less than six months. Section 76 So Peter went to El Dorado and helped to send eleven men to the penitentiary for periods varying from three to fourteen years.

Then he went to Flagland and testified in three different trials and added seven more scalps to his belt. By this time he got to realize that the worst the Reds could do was to make faces at him and show the teeth of trapped rats. He learned to take his profession more easily and would sometimes venture to go out for

an evening's pleasure without his guards. When he was hidden in the country he would take long walks regardless of the thousands of bloodthirsty Reds on his trail. It was while Peter was testifying in Flagland that a magic word was flashed from Europe and the whole city went mad with joy.

Everyone from babies to old men turned out on the streets and waved flags and banged tin cans and shouted for peace with victory. When it was learned that the newspapers had fooled them, they waited three days and then turned out and went through the same performance again. Peter was a bit worried at first for fear the coming of peace might end his job of saving

the country, but presently he realized that there was no need for concern, the smashing of Reds was going on just the same. They had some raids on the socialists while Peter was in Flagland and the detectives told him that he might come along for the fun of it. So Peter armed himself with a blackjack and a revolver and helped to rush the socialist

headquarters. The war was over, but Peter felt just as military as if it were still going on. When he got the little Jewish organizer of the local pent up in a corner behind his desk and proceeded to crack him over the head, Peter understood exactly how our boys had felt in the Argonne.

When he discovered the thrill of dancing on typewriter keys with his boots, he even understood how the Huns had felt. The detectives were joined by a bunch of college boys who took to that kind of thing with glee. Having got their blood up, they decided they might as well clean out the Red Movement entirely, so they rushed a place called the International Bookshop kept by a Hawaiian.

The proprietor dodged into the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant next door and put on an apron, but no one had ever seen a Chinaman with a black mustache, so they fell upon him and broke several of the Chinaman's saucepans over his head. They took the contents of the International Bookshop into the backyard and started a bonfire with it, and the detectives and college boys, on a lark, joined hands and danced in imitation

of the Hawaiian hula hula around the blaze. So Peter lived a merry life for several months. He had one or two journeys for nothing because an obstinate judge refused to admit that anything that any IWW had ever said or done anywhere within the last ten years was proper testimony to be introduced against a particular IWW on trial.

But most judges were willing to cooperate with the big businessmen in ridding the country of the Red Menace, and Peter's total of scalps amounted to over a hundred before his time was up, and Guffey sent him his last cheque and turned him loose. That was in the city of Richport, and Peter having in an inside pocket something over a thousand dollars in savings, felt that he had earned a good time.

He went for a stroll on the gay white way of the city, and in front of a moving picture palace a golden-haired girl smiled at him. This was still in the days of two-and-three-fourths percent beer, and Peter invited her into a saloon to have a glass, and when he opened his eyes again it was dark, and he had a splitting headache, and he groped around and discovered that he was lying in a dark corner of an alleyway.

Terror gripped his heart, and he clapped his hand to the inside pocket where his wallet had been, and there was nothing but horrible emptiness. So Peter was ruined once again, and as usual it was a woman that had done it. Peter went to the police station, but they never found the woman, or if they did they divided with her and not with Peter.

He threw himself on the mercy of the sergeant at the desk, and succeeded in convincing the sergeant that he, Peter, was a part of the machinery of his country's defense, and the sergeant agreed to stand sponsor for ten words to Guffy. So Peter sat himself down with a pencil and paper, and figured over it, and managed to get into ten words as follows.

Woman, again, broke. Any old job. Any pay. Wire, fare. It appeared that Guffy must have sat himself down with a pencil and paper and figured it

over also, for the answer came back in ten words as follows. Idiot, have wired secretary, chamber commerce, will give you ticket. So Peter repaired forthwith to the stately offices of the chamber of commerce, and the hustling, efficient young businessman secretary sent his clerk to buy Peter a ticket and put him on the train.

In a time of need like that, Peter realized what it meant to have the backing of a great and powerful organization, with stately offices and money on hand for all emergencies, even when they arose by telegraph. He took a new vow of sobriety and decency, so that he might always have these forces of law and order on his side.

End of sections 73 to 76