100%: the Story of a Patriot Part 28
Rosie worked in a paper-box factory, and next evening Peter took her out to dinner, and their eager flirtation went on. But Rosie showed a tendency to retreat, and when Peter pressed her, she told him the reason. She had no use for Reds; she was sick of the jargon of the Reds, she would never love a Red. Look at Miriam Yankovich--what a wreck she had made of her life! She had been a handsome girl, she might have got a rich husband, but now she had had to be cut to pieces! And look at Sadie Todd, slaving herself to death, and Ada Ruth with her poems that made you tired. Rosie jeered at them all, and riddled them with the arrows of her wit, and of course Peter in his heart agreed with everything she said; yet Peter had to pretend to disagree, and that made Rosie cross and spoiled their fun, and they almost quarreled.
Under these circ.u.mstances, naturally it was hard for Peter not to give some hint of his true feeling. After he had spent all of his money on Rosie and a lot of his time and hadn't got anywhere, he decided to make some concession to her--he told her he would give up trying to make a Red out of her. Whereupon Rosie made a face at him.
"Very kind indeed of you, Mr. Gudge! But how about my making a 'White' out of you?" And she went on to inform him that she wanted a fellow that could make money and take care of a girl. Peter answered that he was making money all right. Well, how was he making money, asked Rosie. Peter wouldn't tell, but he was making it, and he would prove it by taking her to the theater every night.
So the little duel went on, evening after evening. Peter got more and more crazy about this black-eyed beauty, and she got more and more coquettish, and more and more impatient with his radical leanings. Rosie's father had brought her as a baby from Kisheneff, but she was 100% American all the same, so she told him; those boys in khaki who were over there walloping the Huns were the boys for her, and she was waiting for one of them to come back. What was the matter with Peter that he wasn't doing his part? Was he a draft-dodger? Rosie had never had anything to do with slackers, and wasn't keen for the company of a man who couldn't give an account of himself. Only that day she had been reading in the paper about the atrocities committed by the Huns. How could any man with red blood in his veins sympathize with these pacifists and traitors? And if Peter didn't sympathize with them, why did he travel round with them and give them his moral support? When Peter made a feeble effort at repeating some of the pacifists' arguments, Rosie just said, "Oh, fudge! You've got too much sense to talk that kind of stuff to me."
And Peter knew, of course, that he _had_ too much sense, and it was hard to keep from letting Rosie see it. He had just lost one girl because of his Red entanglements. Was it up to him to lose another?
For a couple of weeks they sparred and fought. Rosie would let Peter kiss her, and Peter's head would be quite turned with desire. He decided that she was the most wonderful girl he had ever known; even Nell Doolin had nothing on her. But then once more she would pin Peter down on this business of his Redness, and would spurn him, and refuse to see him any more. At last Peter admitted to her that he had lost his sympathy with the Reds, she had converted him, and he despised them. So Rosie replied that she was delighted; they would go at once to see Miriam Yankovich, and Peter would tell her, and try to convert her also. Peter was then in a bad dilemma; he had to insist that Rosie should keep his conversion a secret. But Rosie became indignant, she set her lips and declared that a conversion that had to be kept secret was no conversion at all, it was simply a low sham, and Peter Gudge was a coward, and she was sick of him! So poor Peter went away, heartbroken and bewildered.
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There was only one way out of this plight for Peter, and that was for him to tell Rosie the truth. And why should he not do it? He was wild about her, and he knew that she was wild about him, and only one thing--his great secret--stood in the way of their perfect bliss. If he told her that great secret, he would be a hero of heroes in her eyes; he would be more wonderful even than the men who were driving back the Germans from the Marne and writing their names upon history's most imperishable pages! So why should he not tell?
He was in her room one evening, and his arms were about her, and she had almost but not quite yielded. "Please, please, Peter," she pleaded, "stop being one of those horrid Reds!" And Peter could stand it no longer. He told her that he really wasn't a Red, but a secret agent employed by the very biggest business men of American City to keep track of the Reds and bring their activities to naught.
And when he told this, Rosie stared at him in consternation. She refused to believe him; when he insisted, she laughed at him, and finally became angry. It was a silly yarn, and did he imagine he could string her along like that?
So Peter, irritated, set out to convince her. He told her about Guffey and the American City Land & Investment Company; he told her about McGivney, and how he met McGivney regularly at Room 427 of the American House. He told her about his thirty dollars a week, and how it was soon to be increased to forty, and he would spend it all on her. And perhaps she might pretend to be converted by him, and become a Red also, and if she could satisfy McGivney that she was straight, he would pay her too, and it would be a lot better than working ten and a half hours a day in Isaac & Goldstein's paper box factory.
At last Peter succeeded in convincing the girl. She was subdued and frightened; she hadn't been prepared for anything like that, she said, and would have to have a little time to think it over. Peter then became worried in turn. He hoped she wouldn't mind, he said, and set to work to explain to her how important his work was, how it had the sanction of all the very best people in the city--not merely the great bankers and business men, but mayors and public officials and newspaper editors and college presidents, and great Park Avenue clergymen like the Rev. de Willoughby Stotterbridge of the Church of the Divine Compa.s.sion. And Rosie said that was all right, of course, but she was a little scared and would have to think it over. She brought the evening to an abrupt end, and Peter went home much disconcerted.
Perhaps an hour later there came a sharp tap on the door of his lodging-house room, and he went to the door, and found himself confronted by David Andrews, the lawyer, Donald Gordon, and John Durand, the labor giant, president of the Seamen's Union. They never even said, "Howdy do," but stalked into the room, and Durand shut the door behind him, and stood with his back to it, folded his arms and glared at Peter like the stone image of an Aztec chieftain. So before they said a word Peter knew what had happened. He knew that the jig was up for good this time; his career as savior of the nation was at an end. And again it was all on account of a woman--all because he hadn't taken Guffey's advice about winking!
But all other thoughts were driven from Peter's mind by one emotion, which was terror. His teeth began giving their imitation of an angry woodchuck, and his knees refused to hold him; he sat down on the edge of the bed, staring from one to another of these three stone Aztec faces. "Well, Gudge," said Andrews, at last, "so you're the spy we've been looking for all this time!"
Peter remembered Nell's injunction, "Stick it out, Peter! Stick it out!"
"Wh-wh-what do you mean, Mr. Andrews?"
"Forget it, Gudge," said Andrews. "We've just been talking with Rosie, and Rosie was our spy."
"She's been lying to you!" Peter cried.
But Andrews said: "Oh rubbish! We're not that easy! Miriam Yankovich was listening behind the door, and heard your talk."
So then Peter knew that the case was hopeless, and there was nothing left but to ascertain his fate. Had they come just to scold him and appeal to his conscience? Or did they plan to carry him away and strangle him and torture him to death? The latter was the terror that had been haunting Peter from the beginning of his career, and when gradually be made out that the three Aztecs did not intend violence, and that all they hoped for was to get him to admit how much he had told to his employers--then there was laughter inside Peter, and he broke down and wept tears of scalding shame, and said that it had all been because McCormick had told that cruel lie about him and little Jennie Todd. He had resisted the temptation for a year, but then he had been out of a job, and the Goober Defense Committee had refused him any work; he had actually been starving, and so at last he had accepted McGivney's offer to let him know about the seditious activities of the extreme Reds. But he had never reported anybody who hadn't really broken the law, and he had never told McGivney anything but the truth.
Then Andrews proceeded to examine him. Peter denied that he had ever reported anything about the Goober case. He denied most strenuously that he had ever had anything to do with the McCormick "frame-up."
When they tried to pin him down on this case and that, he suddenly summoned his dignity and declared that Andrews had no right to cross-question him, he was a 100%, red-blooded American patriot, and had been saving his country and his G.o.d from German agents and Bolshevik traitors.
Donald Gordon almost went wild at that. "What you've been doing was to slip stuff into our pamphlet about conscientious objectors, so as to get us all indicted!"
"That's a lie!" cried Peter. "I never done nothing of the kind!"
"You know perfectly well you rubbed out those pencil marks that I drew through that sentence in the pamphlet."
"I never done it!" cried Peter, again and again.
And suddenly big John Durand clenched his hands, and his face became terrible with his pent-up rage. "You white-livered little sneak!" he hissed. "What we ought to do with you is to pull the lying tongue out of you!" He took a step forward, as if he really meant to do it.
But David Andrews interfered. He was a lawyer, and knew the difference between what he could do and what Guffey's men could do.
"No, no, John," he said, "nothing like that. I guess we've got all we can get out of this fellow. We'll leave him to his own conscience and his Jingo G.o.d. Come on, Donald." And he took the white-faced Quaker boy with one hand, and the big labor giant with the other, and walked them out of the room, and Peter heard them tramping down the stairs of his lodging house, and he lay on his bed and buried his face in the pillows, and felt utterly wretched, because once more he had been made a fool of, and as usual it was a woman that had done it.
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Peter could see it all very clearly when he came to figure over the thing; he could see what a whooping jacka.s.s 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 this 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 guess-work 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 jacka.s.s 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 had 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 gaff.
It was the job of state's witness. Peter had been all thru the Red movement, he knew all these pacifists and Socialists and Syndicalists and I. W. Ws. 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 defense. 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 over-due, 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 Jimjambo, which had ruined him as a witness in the Goober 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 rascalities 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 body-guard. 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 to step in, and be whirled away to Mount Olympus. Peter stepped in!
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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 doc.u.ment, a complete account of what the prosecution meant to prove against the seventeen I. W. Ws. First, Peter told what he himself had seen and heard--not very much, but a beginning, a hook to hang his story upon. The I. W. W. hall was the meeting place for the casual and homeless labor of the country, the "bindle-stiffs" who took the hardest of the world's hard 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 inciter, a Peter Gudge or a Joe Angell. 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 burned 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 business-like, and took it all so much as a matter of course, that Peter was afraid to show the white feather. After all, this was war-time; 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 joy ride 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 doc.u.ments 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. Hitherto he had been featured in labor 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 I.
W. W., 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 I. W. W. 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 had 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 any 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.