Chapter 12

“Now, Gudge,” said McGivney, “here’s your story. You’ve been arrested on suspicion, you’ve been cross-questioned and put thru the third degree, but you succeeded in satisfying the police that you didn’t know anything about it, and they’ve released you. We’ve released a couple of others at the same time, so’s to cover you all right; and now you’re to go back and find out all you can about the Reds, and what they’re doing, and what they’re planning. They’re shouting, of course, that this is a `frame-up.’ You must find out what they know. You must be careful, of course--watch every step you take, because they’ll be suspicious for a while. We’ve been to your room and turned things upside down a bit, so that will help to make it look all right.”

Peter sallied forth; but he did not go to see the Reds immediately. He spent an hour dodging about the city to make sure no one was shadowing him; then he called up Nell at a telephone number she had given him, and an hour later they met in the park, and she flew to his arms and kissed him with rapturous delight. He had to tell her everything, of course; and when she learned that Joe Angell was a secret agent, she first stared at him in horror, and then she laughed until she almost cried. When Peter told how he had met that situation and got away with it, for the first time he was sure that he had won her love.

“Now, Peter,” she said, when they were calm again, we’ve got to get action at once. The papers are full of it, and old Nelse Ackerman must be scared out of his life. Here’s a letter I’m going to mail tonight--you notice I’ve used a different typewriter from the one I used last time. I went into a typewriter store, and paid them to let me use one for a few minutes, so they can never trace this letter to me.

The letter was addressed to Nelson Ackerman at his home, and marked “Personal.” Peter read:

“This is a message from a friend. The Reds had an agent in your home. They drew a plan of your house. The police are hiding things from you, because they can’t get the truth, and don’t want you to know they are incompetent. There is a man who discovered all this plot, and you should see him. They won’t let you see him if they can help it. You should demand to see him. But do not mention this letter. If you do not get to the right man, I will write you again. If you keep this a secret, you may trust me to help you to the end. If you tell anybody, I will be unable to help you.”

“Now,” said Nell, “when he gets that letter he’ll get busy, and you’ve got to know what to do, because of course everything depends on that.” So Nell proceeded to drill Peter for his meeting with the King of American City. Peter now stood in such awe of her judgment that he learned his lessons quite patiently, and promised solemnly that he would do exactly what she said and nothing else. He reaped his reward of kisses, and went home to sleep the sleep of the just.

Next morning Peter set out to do some of his work for McGivney, so that McGivney would have no ground for complaint. He went to see Miriam Yankovich, and this time Miriam caught him by his two hands and wrung them, and Peter knew that he had atoned for his crime against little Jennie. Peter was a martyr once more. He told how he had been put thru the third degree; and she told how the water from the washtub had leaked thru the ceiling, and the plaster had fallen, and ruined the dinner of a poor workingman’s family.

Also, she told him all about the frame-up as the Reds saw it. Andrews, the lawyer, was demanding the right to see the prisoners, but this was refused, and they were all being held without bail. On the previous evening Miriam had attended a gathering at Andrews’ home, at which the case was talked out. All the I. W. W.’s declared that the thing was the rankest kind of frame-up; the notes were obviously fake, and the dynamite had undoubtedly been planted by the police. They had used it as a pretext to shut up the I. W. W. headquarters, and to arrest a score of radicals. Worst of all, of course, was the propaganda; the hideous stories with which they were filling the papers. Had Peter seen this morning’s “Times?” A perfectly unmistakable incitement to mobs to gather and lynch the Reds!

Section 50

From Miriam’s, Peter went back to Room 427. It was Nell’s idea that Nelse Ackerman would not lose a minute next morning; and sure enough, Peter found a note on the dressing-table: “Wait for me, I want to see you.”

Peter waited, and before long McGivney came in and sat down in front of him, and began very solemnly: “Now Peter Gudge, you know I’m your friend.”

“Yes, of course.”

“I’ve stood by you,” said McGivney. “If it hadn’t been for me, the boss would have had you in the hole right now, trying to sweat you into confessing you planted that dynamite. I want you to know that, and I want you to know that I’m going to stand by you, and I expect you to stand by me and give me a square deal.”

“Why, sure!” said Peter. “What is it?” Then McGivney proceeded to explain: Old Nelse Ackerman had got the idea that the police were holding back something from him. He was scared out of his wits about this case, of course. He had himself shut up in a cupboard at night, and made his wife pull down the curtains of her limousine when she went driving. And now he was insisting that he must have a talk with the man who had discovered this plot against him. McGivney hated to take the risk of having Peter become acquainted with anybody, but Nelse Ackerman was a man whose word was law. Really, he was Peter’s employer; he had put up a lot of the money for the secret service work which Guffey was conducting, and neither Guffey or any of the city authorities dared try to fool him.

“Well, that’s all right,” said Peter; “it won’t hurt for me to see him.”

“He’s going to question you about this case,” said McGivney. “He’s going to try to find out everything he can. So you got to protect us; you got to make him understand that we’ve done everything possible. You got to put us right with him.”

Peter promised solemnly he would do so; but McGivney wasn’t satisfied. He was in a state of trepidation, and proceeded to hammer and hammer at Peter, impressing upon him the importance of solidarity, of keeping faith with his fellows. It sounded exactly like some of the I. W. W.’s talking among themselves!

“You may think, here’s a chance to jump on us and climb out on top, but don’t you forget it, Peter Gudge, we’ve got a machine, and in the long run it’s the machine that wins. We’ve broken many a fellow that’s tried to play tricks on us, and we’ll break you. Old Nelse will get what he wants out of you; he’ll offer you a big price, no doubt--but before long he’ll be thru with you, and then you’ll come back to us, and I give you fair warning, by God, if you play us dirty, Guffey will have you in the hole in a month or two, and you’ll come out on a stretcher.”

So Peter pledged his faith again; but, seeing his chance, he added: “Don’t you think Mr. Guffey ought to do something for me, because of that plot I discovered?”

“Yes, I think that,” said McGivney; “that’s only fair.”

And so they proceeded to bargain. Peter pointed out all the dangers he had run, and all the credit which the others had got. Guffey hadn’t got credit in the papers, but he had got it with his employers, all right, and he would get still more if Peter stood by him with the king of American City. Peter said it ought to be worth a thousand dollars, and he said he ought to have it right away, before he went to see the king. At which Guffey scowled ferociously. “Look here, Gudge! you got the nerve to charge us such a price for standing by your frame-up?”

McGivney generally treated Peter as a coward and a feeble bluffer; but he had learned also that there was one time when the little man completely changed his nature, and that was when it was a question of getting hold of some cash. That was the question now; and Peter met McGivney scowl for scowl. “If you don’t like my frame-up,” he snarled, “you go kick to the newspapers about it!”

Peter was the bulldog again, and had got his teeth in the other bulldog’s nose, and he hung right there. He had seen the rat-faced man pull money out of his clothes before this, and he knew that this time, above all other times, McGivney would come prepared. So he insisted--a thousand or nothing; and as before, his heart went down into his boots when McGivney produced his wad, and revealed that there was more in the wad than Peter had demanded!

However, Peter consoled himself with the reflection that a thousand dollars was a tidy sum of money, and he set out for the home of Nelse Ackerman in a jovial frame of mind. Incidentally he decided that it might be the part of wisdom not to say anything to Nell about this extra thousand. When women found out that you had money, they’d never rest till they had got every cent of it, or at least had made you spend it on them!

Section 51

Nelse Ackerman’s home was far out in the suburbs of the city, upon a knoll surrounded by forest. It was a couple of miles from the nearest trolley line, which forced Peter to take a hot walk in the sun. Apparently the great banker, in selecting the site of his residence, had never once thought that anybody might want to get to it without an automobile. Peter reflected as he walked that if he continued to move in these higher circles, he too would have to join the motor-driving class.

About the estate there ran a great bronze fence, ten feet high, with sharp, inhospitable spikes pointing outwards. Peter had read about this fence a long time ago in the American City “Times”; it was so and so many thousand yards long, and had so and so many spikes, and had cost so and so many tens of thousands of dollars. There were big bronze gates locked tight, and a sign that said: “Beware the dogs!” Inside the gates were three guards carrying rifles and walking up and down; they were a consequence of the recent dynamite conspiracy, but Peter did not realize this, he took them for a regular institution, and a symbol of the importance of the man he was to visit.

He pressed a button by the side of the gate, and a lodgekeeper came out, and Peter, according to orders, gave the name “Arthur G. McGillicuddy.” The lodge-keeper went inside and telephoned, and then came back and opened the gate, just enough to admit Peter. “You’re to be searched,” said the lodge-keeper; and Peter, who had been arrested many times, took no offense at this procedure, but found it one more evidence of the importance of Nelse Ackerman. The guards went thru his pockets, and felt him all over, and then one of them marched him up the long gravel avenue thru the forest, climbed a flight of marble steps to the palace on the knoll, and turned him over to a Chinese butler who walked on padded slippers.

If Peter had not known that this was a private home he would have thought it was an art gallery. There were great marble columns, and paintings bigger than Peter, and tapestries with life-size horses; there were men in armor, and battle axes and Japanese dancing devils, and many other strange sights. Ordinarily Peter would have been interested in learning how a great millionaire decorated his house, and would have drunk deep of the joy of being amid such luxury. But now all his thoughts were taken up with his dangerous business. Nell had told him what to look for, and he looked. Mounting the velvet-carpeted staircase, he noted a curtain behind which a man might hide, and a painting of a Spanish cavalier on the wall just opposite. He would make use of these two sights.

They went down a hall, like a corridor in the Hotel de Soto, and at the end of it the butler tapped softly upon a door, and Peter was ushered into a big apartment in semi-darkness. The butler retired without a sound, closing the door behind him and Peter stood hesitating, looking about to get his bearings. From the other side of the room he heard three faint coughs, suggesting a sick man. There was a four-poster bed of some dark wood, with a canopy over it and draperies at the side, and a man in the bed, sitting propped up with pillows. There were more coughs, and then a faint whisper, “This way.” So Peter crossed over and stood about ten feet from the bed, holding his hat in his hands; he was not able to see very much of the occupant of the bed, nor was he sure it would be respectful for him to try to see.

“So you’re--(cough) what’s your name?”

“Gudge,” said Peter.

“You are the man--(cough) that knows about the Reds?”

“Yes, sir.”

The occupant of the bed coughed every two or three minutes thru the conversation that followed, and each time Peter noticed that he put his hand up to his mouth as if he were ashamed of the noise. Gradually Peter got used to the twilight, and could see that Nelse Ackerman was an old man with puffy, droopy cheeks and chin, and dark puffy crescents under his eyes. He was quite bald, and had on his head a skull cap of embroidered black silk, and a short, embroidered jacket over his night shirt. Beside the bed stood a table covered with glasses and bottles and pill-boxes, and also a telephone. Every few minutes this telephone would ring, and Peter would wait patiently while Mr. Ackerman settled some complex problem of business. “I’ve told them my terms,” he would say with irritation, and then he would cough; and Peter, who was sharply watching every detail of the conduct of the rich, noted that he was too polite even to cough into the telephone. “If they will pay a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars on account, I will wait, but not a cent less,” Nelse Ackerman would say. And Peter, awe-stricken, realized that he had now reached the very top of Mount Olympus, he was at the highest point he could hope to reach until he went to heaven.

The old man fixed his dark eyes on his visitor. “Who wrote me that letter?” whispered the husky voice.

Peter had been expecting this. “What letter, sir?”

“A letter telling me to see you.”

“I don’t know anything about it, sir.”

“You mean--(cough) you didn’t write me an anonynious letter?”

“No, sir, I didn’t.”

“Then some friend of yours must have written it.”

“I dunno that. It might have been some enemy of the police.”

“Well, now, what’s this about the Reds having an agent in my home?”

“Did the letter say that?”

“It did.”

“Well, sir, that’s putting it too strong. I ain’t sure, it’s just an idea I’ve had. It’ll need a lot of explaining.”

“You’re the man who discovered this plot, I understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, take a chair, there,” said the banker. There was a chair near the bedside, but it seemed to Peter too close to be respectful, so he pulled it a little farther away, and sat down on the front six inches of it, still holding his hat in his hands and twisting it nervously. “Put down that hat,” said the old man, irritably. So Peter stuck the hat under his chair, and said: “I beg pardon, sir.”

Section 52

The old plutocrat was feeble and sick, but his mind was all there, and his eyes seemed to be boring Peter through. Peter realized that he would have to be very careful--the least little slip would be fatal here.

“Now, Gudge,” the old man began, “I want you to tell me all about it. To begin with, how did you come to be among these Reds? Begin at the beginning.”

So Peter told how he had happened to get interested in the radical movement, laying particular stress upon the dangerousness of these Reds, and his own loyalty to the class which stood for order and progress and culture in the country. “It ought to be stopped, Mr. Ackerman!” he exclaimed, with a fine show of feeling; and the old banker nodded. Yes, yes, it ought to be stopped!

“Well,” said Peter, “I said to myself, `I’m going to find out about them fellows.’ I went to their meetings, and little by little I pretended to get converted, and I tell you, Mr. Ackerman, our police are asleep; they don’t know what these agitators are doing, what they’re preaching. They don’t know what a hold they’ve got on the mobs of the discontented!”

Peter went on to tell in detail about the propaganda of social revolution, and about conspiracies against law and order, and the property and even the lives of the rich. Peter noticed that when the old man took a sip of water his hand trembled so that he could hardly keep the water from spilling; and presently, when the phone rang again, his voice became shrill and imperious. “I understand they’re applying for bail for those men. Now Angus, that’s an outrage! We’ll not hear to anything like that! I want you to see the judge at once, and make absolutely certain that those men are held in jail.”

Then again the old banker had a coughing fit. “Now, Gudge,” he said, “I know more or less about all that. What I want to know is about this conspiracy against me. Tell me how you came to find out about it.”

And Peter told; but of course he embellished it, in so far as it related to Mr. Ackerman--these fellows were talking about Mr. Ackerman all the time, they had a special grudge against him.

“But why?” cried the old man. “Why?”

“They think you’re fighting them, Mr. Ackerman.”

“But I’m not! That’s not true!”

“Well, they say you put up money to hang Goober. They call you--you’ll excuse me?”

“Yes, yes, of course.”

“They call you the `head money devil.’ They call you the financial king of American City.”

“King!” cried the banker. “What rubbish! Why, Gudge, that’s fool newspaper talk! I’m a poor man today. There are two dozen men in this city richer than I am, and who have more power. Why--” But the old man fell to coughing and became so exhausted that he sank back into his pillows until he recovered his breath. Peter waited respectfully; but of course he wasn’t fooled. Peter had carried on bargaining many times in his life, and had heard people proclaim their poverty and impotence.

“Now, Gudge,” the old man resumed. “I don’t want to be killed; I tell you I don’t want to be killed.”

“No, of course not,” said Peter. It was perfectly comprehensible to him that Mr. Ackerman didn’t want to be killed. But Mr. Ackerman seemed to think it necessary to impress the idea upon him; in the course of the conversation he came back to it a number of times, and each time he said it with the same solemn assurance, as if it were a brand new idea, and a very unusual and startling idea. “I don’t want to be killed, Gudge; I tell you I don’t want to let those fellows get me. No, no; we’ve got to circumvent them, we’ve got to take precautions--every precaution--I tell you every possible precaution.”

“I’m here for that purpose, Mr. Ackerman,” said Peter, solemnly. “I’ll do everything. We’ll do everything, I’m sure.”

“What’s this about the police?” demanded the banker. “What’s this about Guffey’s bureau? You say they’re not competent?”

“Well now, I’ll tell you, Mr. Ackerman,” said Peter, “It’s a little embarrassing. You see, they employ me--”

“Nonsense!” exclaimed the other. “_I_ employ you! I’m putting up the money for this work, and I want the facts!--I want them all.”

“Well,” said Peter, “they’ve been very decent to me--”

“I say tell me everything!” exclaimed the old man. He was a most irritable old man, and couldn’t stand for a minute not having what he asked for. “What’s the matter with them?”

Peter answered, as humbly as he could: “I could tell you a great deal that’d be of use to you, Mr. Ackerman, but you got to keep it between you and me.”

“All right!” said the other, quickly. “What is it?”

“If you give a hint of it to anybody else,” persisted Peter, “then I’ll get fired.”

“You’ll not get fired, I’ll see to that. If necessary I’ll hire you direct.”

“Ah, but you don’t understand, Mr. Ackerman. It’s a machine, and you can’t run against it; you gotta understand it, you gotta handle it right. I’d like to help you, and I know I can help you, but you gotta let me explain it, and you gotta understand some things.”

“All right,” said the old man. “Go ahead, what is it?”

“Now,” said Peter, “it’s like this. These police and all these fellows mean well, but they don’t understand; it’s too complicated, they ain’t been in this movement long enough. They’re used to dealing with criminals; but these Reds, you see, are cranks. Criminals ain’t organized, at least they don’t stand together; but these Reds do, and if you fight ‘em, they fight back, and they make what they call `propaganda.’ And that propaganda is dangerous--if you make a wrong move, you may find you’ve made ‘em stronger than they were before.”

“Yes, I see that,” said the old man. “Well?”

“Then again, the police dunno how dangerous they are. You try to tell them things, they won’t really believe you. I’ve known for a long time there was a group of these people getting together to kill off all the rich men, the big men all over the country. They’ve been spying on these rich men, getting ready to kill them. They know a lot about them that you can’t explain their knowing. That’s how I got the idea they had somebody in your house, Mr. Ackerman.”

“Tell me what you mean. Tell me at once.”

“Well, sir, every once in a while I pick up scraps of conversation. One day I heard Mac--”

“Mac?”

“That’s McCormick, the one who’s in jail. He’s an I. W. W. leader, and I think the most dangerous of all. I heard him whispering to another fellow, and it scared me, because it had to do with killing a rich man. He’d been watching this rich man, and said he was going to shoot him down right in his own house! I didn’t hear the name of the man--I walked away, because I didn’t want him to think I was trying to listen in. They’re awful suspicious, these fellows; if you watch Mac you see him looking around over his shoulder every minute or two. So I strolled off, and then I strolled back again, and he was laughing about something, and I heard him say these words; I heard him say, `I was hiding behind the curtain, and there was a Spanish fellow painted on the wall, and every time I peeked out that bugger was looking at me, and I wondered if he wasn’t going to give me away.’”

And Peter stopped. His eyes had got used to the twilight now, and he could see the old banker’s eyes starting out from the crescents of dark, puffy flesh underneath. “My God!” whispered Nelse Ackerman.

“Now, that was all I heard,” said Peter. “And I didn’t know what it meant. But when I learned about that drawing that Mac had made of your house, I thought to myself, Jesus, I bet that was Mr. Ackerman he was waiting to shoot!”

“Good God! Good God!” whispered the old man; and his trembling fingers pulled at the embroidery on the coverlet. The telephone rang, and he took up the receiver, and told somebody he was too busy now to talk; they would have to call him later. He had another coughing spell, so that Peter thought he was going to choke, and had to help him get some medicine down his throat. Peter was a little bit shocked to see such obvious and abject fear in one of the gods. After all, they were just men, these Olympians, as much subject to pain and death as Peter Gudge himself!

Also Peter was surprised to find how “easy” Mr. Ackerman was. He made no lofty pretence of being indifferent to the Reds. He put himself at Peter’s mercy, to be milked at Peter’s convenience. And Peter would make the most of this opportunity.

“Now, Mr. Ackerman,” he began, “You can see it wouldn’t be any use to tell things like that to the police. They dunno how to handle such a situation; the honest truth is, they don’t take these Reds serious. They’ll spend ten times as much money to catch a plain burglar as they will to watch a whole gang like this.”

“How can they have got into my home?” cried the old man.

“They get in by ways you’d never dream of, Mr. Ackerman. They have people who agree with them. Why, you got no idea, there’s some preachers that are Reds, and some college teachers, and some rich men like yourself.”

“I know, I know,” said Ackerman. “But surely--”