Chapter 6

Another gentleman arose. He was distinctly Hibernian. He wore an obtrusive ribbon-knot of green, white, and yellow, the colors of the flag of the Irish Republic. "Lanigan, ye may not be able to reply satisfact'rily to th' questions o' the sour-krauters, but when I ask ye whether or not the Hon'rable Danyel O'Donnell, riprisent'thive-ilict, put in that high office be th' votes o' th' Marion pathrits of a free Ireland, takes his sate, what does th' blood o' yer race say to me?"

Lanigan blinked and hesitated. He felt the sudden Celtic surging of a natural impulse to run with his kind, to swing the cudgel valiantly for the cause, and to ask questions after the shindy was over.

"You know th' principles o' th' Hon'rable O'Donnell," insisted the speaker in loud tones. "Tis his intint to raise his voice in th' halls o' state and shout ear-rly and late, 'Whativer it is ye're about, gents, it all may be very well, but what will ye be doing for the cause o' free Ireland?' That's th' kind of a hero we're putting in th' State House en the hill."

"Putting a pest there, ye mean!" returned Lanigan.

"Is that the blood o' yer race speaking?"

"No, it's the common sense up here," declared the commander, tapping his knuckles against the side of his head. "Look, here, Mulcahy, my man! You're spouting about a subject that's too big for me to understand or you to explain. And that's why you're muddling yourself and mixing up the minds of others with your questions. I ask you no questions. I'm going to tell you something--and it's so! If the kids in your family was down with the measles, and the missus was all snarled up with the tickdoolooroo and you wasn't feeling none too well yourself, what with a hold-over, a black eye, and a lot o' bumps, what would you--Hold on! I say, I ask no questions! I know the answer. If Tommy O'Rourke came howling and whooping into your back door and asked you to go out and shin up a tree and fetch down his tomcat, ye'd tell Tommy to bounce along and mind his own matters till ye'd settled your own--and if he didn't go you'd kick him out."

"I'm discussing th' rights and wrongs of a suffering people."

"And playing safe for yourself because the subject is so big--and putting others in wrong because they can't settle all the troubles of the universe offhand to suit ye! My family is America, Mulcahy! It ought to be yours, first, last, and all the time. But we've got our own aches to mind, right now! And the way I'm putting it, a plain man can understand. If the tomcat don't know enough to come down all by himself, leave him be up there till the doctor tells us we can be out and about."

Weisner put his demand again and Mulcahy made the affair a vociferous duet; other men were on their feet, shouting. But a top sergeant has a voice of his own and a manner to go with the voice: Lanigan yelled the chorus into silence.

While he was engaged in this undertaking a diversion at the door assisted him. The crowd parted. Men shouted, pleading, "Make way for the mayor!"

Morrison came up the aisle toward the platform, Blanchard at his heels.

There were cheers--plenty of them!

But sibilantly, steadily, ominously the derogatory hisses were threaded with the frank clamor of welcome; hisses whose sources were concealed.

The mayor ran up the steps of the platform and marched to Lanigan, doffing the silk hat and extending his hand cordially.

With his forearm the commander scrubbed off the sweat that was streaming down into his eyes. "It's been like hauling a seventy-five into action with mules, Your Honor! For the love o' Mike, shoot!"

The hisses continued along with the applause when Stewart faced the throng.

Lanigan leaped off the platform, not bothering with the stairs. "I'm going to wade through this grass," he yelped. "God pity the rattlesnake I locate!"

A shrill voice from somewhere dared to taunt, "Pipe the dude!"

Morrison smiled. He had unbuttoned his top-coat, and his evening garb, in that congress of the rough and ready, made him as conspicuous as a bird of paradise in a rookery. "I seem to be double-crossed by my scenic effects, Blanchard," he stated in an aside to the magnate, who had stepped upon the platform because that elevation seemed safer than a position on the floor. "We must fix that! Furthermore, it's hot up here!" He pulled off his top-coat. He realized that the full display of his formal dress only aggravated the situation. In St. Ronan's mill he mingled with men in his shirt-sleeves. He turned and saw Nicolai Krylovensky in the chair where Lanigan had thrust him. There was no other chair on the platform. Stewart hastily laid the coat across the alien's knees. "Keep 'em out of the dirt for me, will you, brother? I'm notional about good cloth!" He pushed his silk hat into the man's hand and then he stripped off the claw-hammer and white waistcoat, piled them upon the overcoat; and whirled to face his audience.

All eyes were engaged with the mayor.

Krylovensky, unobserved, let the garments slip to the floor and dropped the hat.

"Now, boys, we'll get down to business together in an understanding way! What's it all about?" Stewart invited, cheerily.

"Just a minute!" cried Lanigan, heading off all the possibilities that were threatening by a general powwow. "I've just been up against the bunch here, Mister Mayor, and they're trying to turn it into a congress-of-nations debate, and it ain't nothing of the kind. And I know you're in a hurry, and we don't expect a speech!"

"You won't get one!" retorted the mayor, tartly. "I have dropped down here merely in a business way to find out what's wanted of me as the executive head of this city."

"Your Honor, I have been preaching the notion of telling the truth to-night, and I'm going to come across with something about myself," confessed Lanigan, manfully. "I've gone off half cocked twice to-day. I've been thinking it over and I realize it. In your office I grabbed in on a word or two you said and took it for granted that you were going to lift the whole load of the people's case up at the State House and stop anything being put over on the people, whatever it is the Big Boys are planning. But you didn't promise me to do it."

"I did not, Joe!"

"And I've been telling this gang that you did promise me and that I'd get you down here to back up my word. I don't ask you to back up my lie. You're too square a proposition, Mayor Morrison!"

"After that man-talk, Joe, I've just naturally got to make a little of my own. And the boys can't help seeing that both you and I mean all right. I did give you good reasons for jumping at conclusions as you say you did, Joe! Understand that, boys! But my head isn't swelled to the extent that I believe I can settle everything.

"Now that I'm down here I'll say this. I'll do everything I can, as mayor of Marion, to straighten things out to-night so that the people won't be left guessing. Guessing starts gabble and gabble starts trouble! Don't do any more shouting about 'state steal,' and don't allow others to shout. Most of us don't know what it means, anyway, and others don't care, so long as it gives 'em a chance to stir up riots and grab off something for themselves under cover of the trouble. There are a lot of outsiders in this country, standing ready to make just such plays! Don't let your ears be scruffed by mischief-makers, boys. Let's have our city come through with a clean name! I'm going to do my part as best I can. But you've all got to do yours--understand that!" He smacked his fist down into his palm.

"Do you bromise me dot Karl Trimbach gets dot seat?" boomed Mr. Weisner.

"The same question goes as to th' Hon'rable Danyel O'Donnell," said Adherent Mulcahy.

"I cannot promise."

Then sounded that voice of the unknown troublemaker, sneeringly shrill, the senseless, passion-provoking common, human fife of the mob spirit, persistently present and consistently cowardly in concealment. "Of course you don't promise anything to the people! Dudes stand together! Go back and dance!"

Lanigan began to claw a passage for himself.

"Stand where you are, Joe!" commanded Stewart. "Don't flatter a fool by making any account of him!"

"Those kinds of fools are going to make trouble in this city before the night is over, Your Honor!"

"That's the trouble with politics," declared Mulcahy. "Ye can't get a square promise in politics fr'm th' Big Boys!"

Morrison put up a monitory forefinger.

"But you can get a square promise from me in business--and I can see that it's time to give that promise and make it specific. That's the way a business contract must be drawn. Hear me, then! It's the business of this city to see that no man abuses its good name or its hospitality, no matter whether he's a resident or comes here because it's the capital of the state. And I'll see to it that the men up at the State House end understand that they must play fair for the good of all of us. You must understand the same at this end. I'll take no sides in politics. The men who are entitled to their seats in this legislature will have those seats. I'm only one man, boys! But one man who is perfectly honest and is depending on the right will find the whole law of the land behind him--and wise men and good men have attended to the law. Will you take my word and let it stand that way between us?"

A chorused yell of assent greeted him.

"All right! It's a contract! Mind your end of it!"

He turned sharply from them and faced Krylovensky. The alien leaped up and kicked the mayor's garments to one side.

"Say! See here, my friend!" expostulated Stewart.

"Down with rulers!" screamed the man. "I'll be a martyr, but not a hat-rack!"

The mayor walked toward the frantic person. "I'm sorry! I was thoughtless!"

"You and your kind think of nothing but yourselves. You try to make slaves of free citizens of the world!" Krylovensky had been buffeted and had controlled himself. But the fires of his narrow fanaticism were now whirling in his brain; sitting there on high before the eyes of his fellows, the men to whom he had been preaching the doctrines of soviet sovereignty--the supremacy of the people--he had just suffered what his distorted views held as the enormity of ignominy; he had been used as a clothes-tree for discarded garments. Used by a ruler!

When Morrison, not realizing that the man had become little short of a maniac, stooped to pick up the garments Krylovensky dove forward and struck the mayor's face with open hand. "Now throw me to your dogs! I'll die a martyr to my cause!" he squalled.

The mayor snapped upright and laid restraining hands on the man who was threatening him with doubled fists.

A roaring mob came milling toward the platform.

"I'll be a martyr!" insisted the alien.

"I can't humor you to that extent," replied Morrison, in the tone of a father denying indulgence in the case of a wilful child.

He got between the man and the mob. He held Krylovensky from him with one hand and put up the other protestingly, authoritatively.

"No man that's a real man lets another man bang him in the face," declared Lanigan with fury.

"That's a nice point, to be argued later by us when things are quieter, Joe. Stand back!"

"I'm going to kill him even if you haven't got the grit to do it." Lanigan was showing the bitter disappointment of a worshiper kicking among the fragments of a shattered idol.

"I won't allow you to do that, Joe! A dead man can't answer questions. Stand back, all of you, I say!" He twisted the grip of his hand in the man's collar until Krylovensky ceased his struggles.

"Do you work in this city?" asked the mayor.

"He works in the Conawin," shouted Lanigan. "And I shook him down this evening for a gun, a knob-knocker, and a lot of red flags."

Blanchard was backed against the big Stars and Stripes, apprehensively seeking refuge from the crowd massing on the platform. Morrison caught his eye. "Seems to be one of your patriots, Blanchard! Shall I hand him over to you?"

"I never saw the renegade before."

"I'm sorry you don't get into your mill the way I do into mine. I'd like to know something about this gentleman who doesn't show any inclination to speak for himself."

"I'm not afraid to speak," declared the captive, all cautiousness burned out of him by the fires of his martyr zeal. "I'm an ambassador of the grand and good Soviet Government of Russia."

The mayor preserved his serenity.

"Ah, I think I understand! One of the estimable gentlemen who have been coming to us by the way of the Mexican border of late! When you picked up such a good command of our language, my friend, it's too bad you didn't pick up a better understanding of our country. I haven't any time just now to give you an idea of it, sir. I'll have a talk with you to-morrow."

The mayor had seen Officer Rellihan at the door of the hall. As a satellite, Rellihan was constant in his attendance on his controlling luminary in public places, even though the luminary issued no special orders to that effect; Morrison's intended visit to the hall had been quickly advertised down-town.

Stewart glanced about him and found Rellihan at his elbow.

"Here's the honorable ambassador of Soviet Russia, Rellihan," said his chief. "Take him along with you, keep harm from him on the way, and see that he is well lodged for the night in a place where enemies can't get at him."

"I know just the right place, Your Honor," stated the policeman, pulling his club from his belt and waving it to part the throng.

Morrison broke in upon Lanigan's mumbled threats. "Mind your manners, Joe!"

"But he hit you!"

The mayor picked up his garments, one by one, inspected them, and dusted them with his palm; then he pulled them on. The crowd gazed at him.

"He hit you!" Lanigan insisted, bellicosely. "When a man hits me, I lick him!"

"You're a good fighter, Joe," agreed His Honor, running his forearm about his silk hat to smooth the nap. "But let me tell you something! Unless you put yourself in better shape there'll be a fellow some day that you'll want to lick, and you won't be able to lick him, and you'll be almighty sorry because you can't turn the trick."

"Show me the feller, Mister Mayor!"

"Go look in the glass, Joe."

"Lick myself--is that what you mean, sir?"

"Sure! If you can do it when it ought to be done, you'll have the right to feel rather proud of yourself."

He invited Blanchard with a side wag of his head and led the way from the hall.

"Morrison, let me say this," blurted the mill magnate, when they were on their way in the limousine. "By reason of this people-side-partner notion of yours, you have gone to work and got yourself into an infernal fix. How do you expect to make good that promise?"

"I suppose I did sound rather boastful, but I had to put it strong. A mealy-mouthed promise wouldn't hold them in line!"

"But that promise only encourages such muckers in the belief that they have a right to demand, to boss their betters, to call for accountings and concessions. You have put the devil into 'em!"

"I hope not! Faith in a contract--that's what I tried to put into 'em. They'll wait and let me operate!"

"Operate! You're one man against the whole state government and you're defying single-handed the political powers! You can't deliver the goods! That gang down-town will wait about so long and then 'twill be hell to pay to-night!"

Morrison had found his pipe in his overcoat pocket. He was soothing himself with a smoke on the way toward the Corson mansion.

"But why worry so much when the night is still young?" he queried, placidly.

VII

THE THIN CRUST OVER BOILING LAVA

Senator Corson, at the head of the receiving-line, attended strictly to the task in hand as an urbane and assiduous host.

Wonted by long political usage to estimate everything on the basis of votes for and against, he was entirely convinced, by the face of the returns that evening, that the reception he was tendering was a grand success, unanimously indorsed; he would have been immensely surprised to learn that under his roof there was a bitterly incensed, furiously resentful minority that was voting "No!"

The "Yes!" was by the applausive, open, _viva voce_ vote of all those who filed past him and shook his hand and thronged along toward the buffet that was operated in _de luxe_ style by a metropolitan caterer's corps of servants.

The Senator's mansion was spacious and luxuriously appointed, and the millions from the products of his timber-land barony were lavishly behind his hospitality. Consoled by the knowledge that Corson could well afford the treat, his guests, after that well-understood quality in human nature, relished the hospitality more keenly. At the buffet all the plates were piled high. In the smoking-room men took handfuls of the Senator's cigars from the boxes. And the pleasantry connected with Governor Lawrence North's custom in campaigning was frequently heard. It was related of North that he always thriftily passed his cigars by his own hand and counseled the recipient: "Help yourself! Take all you want! Take two!"

The guests adopted the comfortable attitude that Corson had dropped down home to Marion to pay a debt which he owed to his constituents, and they all jumped in with alacrity to help him pay it.

While the orchestra played and the ware of the buffet clattered, the joyous voices of the overwhelming majority gave Senator Corson to understand that he was the idol of his people and the prop of the state.

The minority kept her mouth closed and her teeth were set hard.

The minority was racked by agony that extended from finger-tips to shoulder.

The minority was distinctly groggy.

This minority was compassed in the person of a single young and handsome matron who was Mrs. J. Warren Stanton in her home city Blue Book, and Doris in the family register of Father Silas Daunt, and "Dorrie" in the good graces of Brother Coventry Daunt.

In addition she was the close friend, the social mentor, the volunteer chaperon for Lana Corson, whose mother had become voicelessly and meekly the mistress of the Corson mausoleum, as she had been meekly and unobtrusively the mistress of the Corson mansion.

Miss Lana had suddenly observed warning symptoms in the case of Mrs. Stanton.

Mrs. Stanton, according to a solicitous friend's best judgment, was no longer assisting in the receiving-line; Mrs. Stanton needed assistance!

Therefore, sooner than the social code might have permitted in an affair of more rigorously formal character, Lana left the receiving job to her father and the Governor and the aides, and rescued Mrs. Stanton and accompanied the young matron to the sanctuary of a boudoir above-stairs.

Mrs. Stanton extended to the tender touch of her maid a wilted hand, lifted by a stiffened arm, the raising of which pumped a groan from the lady. The white glove which incased the hand and arm was smutched liberally in telltale fashion.

"Pull it off, Hibbert! But careful! Don't pull off my fingers unless they are very loose and beyond hope. But hurry! Let me know the worst as soon as possible."

"I realize that the reception--" began Lana.

"Reception!" Mrs. Stanton snapped her head around to survey her youthful hostess. The flame on the matron's cheeks matched the fire in her tones.

"Reception, say you? Lana Corson, don't you know the difference between a reception and a political rally?"

"I'm sorry, Doris! But father simply must do this duty thing when the legislature meets. The members expect it. It keeps up his fences, he says. It's politics!"

"I'm glad my father is a banker instead of a United States Senator. If this is what a Senator has to do when he comes back to his home, I think he'd better stay in Washington and send down a carload of food and stick a glove on the handle of the town pump and let his constituents operate that! At any rate, the power wouldn't be wasted in a dry time!"

Lana surveyed her own hand. The glove was not immaculate any more, but it covered a firm hand that was unweary. "Father has given me good advice. It's to shake the hand of the other chap, not let yours be shaken."

"Those brutes gave me no chance!"

"I noticed that they were very enthusiastic, Doris. I'm afraid you're too handsome!"

But that flattery did not placate Mrs. Stanton. "It's only a rout and a rabble, Lana! The feminine element does not belong in it. My father dines his gentlemen and accomplishes his objects. And I think you have become one of these political hypocrites! You actually looked as if you were enjoying that performance down-stairs."

"I was enjoying it, Doris! I was helping my father as best I could, and at the same time I was meeting many of my old, true friends. I'm glad to be home again." The girl was unaffectedly sincere in her statement.

The glove was off and Mrs. Stanton was surveying her hand, wriggling the fingers tentatively.

"And they all seemed so glad to see me that I'm a bit penitent," Lana went on. "I'm ashamed to own up to myself that I have allowed California and Palm Beach to coax me away from Marion these last two winters. I ought to have come down here with father. I'm not talking like a politician now, Doris. Honestly, I'm stanch for old friends!"

"I trust you don't think I'm an ingrate in the case of my own old friends, Lana!" Mrs. Stanton, unappeased, was willing to take issue right then with anybody, on that topic. "But the main trouble with old friends is, they take too many liberties. Your old friends certainly did take liberties with my poor hand, and they took liberties with your own private business in my hearing."

"How--in what way?"

"I overheard persons say distinctly, over and over again, that one feature of this--no, I'll not muddle my own ideas of society functions by calling it a reception--they declared that your father proposes to announce to-night in his home town your engagement to Coventry."

The question that she did not put into words she put into the searching, quizzical stare she gave Lana.

"Ah!" remarked Miss Corson, revealing nothing either by tone or countenance.

"It looks to me as if you've been receiving other lessons from your father, outside of the hand-shaking art. You are about as non-committal as the best of our politicians, Lana dear!"

For reply the Senator's daughter smiled. The smile was so ingenuous that it ought to have disarmed the young matron of her petulance.

But Mrs. Stanton went on with the sharp insistence of one who had discovered an opportunity and proposed to make the most of it. "Seeing that the matter has come up in this way--quite by chance--" Mrs. Stanton did not even blink when she said it--"though I never would have presumed to speak of it to you, Lana, without good and sufficient provocation--I think that you and Coventry should have confided in me, first of all. Of course, I know well enough how matters stand! I really believe I do! But I think I'm entitled to know, officially, to put it that way, as much as your highly esteemed old friends here in Marion know."

"Yes," agreed Miss Corson.

"But _first_, Lana dear! To know it first--as a sister should! I'm not blaming you! I realize that you met some of those aforesaid old, true friends while you were out around the city to-day. One does drop confidences almost without realizing how far one goes, when old friends are met. I'm sure such reports as I overheard couldn't be made up out of whole cloth."

Mrs. Stanton's air and tone were certainly provoking, but Miss Corson's composure was not ruffled. "Out of the knowledge that you profess in regard to old friends, Doris, you must realize that they are energetic and liberal guessers." She turned toward the door.

"Where are you going?"

"To my room for a fresh pair of gloves, dear."

"Do you mean to tell me that you're going back for another turn among those jiu-jitsu experts?"

"We're to have dancing later."