Part 15

"I think you had better, Mr. Irwin. I sha'n't be going to bed for two or three hours yet."

Sec.5. Irwin left the telephone and hailed the first taxicab that passed. It was free, and he had himself driven to a political club with quarters not far from the office of Anson Quirk.

The quarters were over a saloon in Second Avenue. The entrance was a hallway and a stairway back of the saloon. Here Irwin rang a bell, which was immediately answered by a man in his shirt-sleeves.

"Mr. Quirk upstairs?"

"No," said the man. He eyed the questioner sullenly in the twilight of the hall. "I don't think he is," he added.

Irwin took a card from his pocket. He placed it in a blank envelope, sealed the envelope, and handed it to the doorkeeper.

"Give him this," he said, and stepped back into the street to wait.

The man closed the door upon him. It was presently reopened by Quirk, his round face smiling, his manner jovial.

"Hello," said Quirk. "It's time good little boys were in bed, but I'm glad to see you, anyhow. Come in and have a drink."

"No, thank you," Irwin replied. "I'll be back here in two hours. There's something you've got to do in the meantime."

"Me? Now?"

"You; right away. We've been too slow about that little business, Quirk. We can't stand them off much longer. There's not much more time for delay, and the people higher up want to be shown action."

"Want to see the goods, do they?" chuckled Quirk. He rattled some coins in the pocket under his round abdomen.

"Yes."

"Well, what do they want me to do?"

"Show the goods, I guess."

"Any suggestions?"

"No, that's up to you."

"I'm on," said Quirk. "Come back in two hours. I'll run right upstairs and get my hat. An' here, if you won't take a drink, have a cigar: it's a long wait. See you later."

Sec.6. The great bulk of Police Lieutenant Donovan was hunched up in an upholstered armchair beside the table in his private office when Quirk entered. He looked as if his caller was not welcome.

"Nothin' doin' so far," he said.

Quirk, too, was serious.

"I know it," said he. "They fell down so hard in that raid scheme that they must have had all the sense knocked out of them. Well, you've got to put some in."

Donovan's growl was wordless.

"You've got to," said Quirk. "To-night."

"To-night?" Donovan stood up. "What in hell do you think I am?"

The lawyer leaned across the table.

"I think you're a bluff," he said.

"Do you? Well, I'd just like you to have my job."

"Donovan," said Quirk, "if you don't put this thing across, an' do it soon, somebody'll have your job sooner than you think."

"What's that?" thundered the lieutenant. But before a reply was possible, his tone changed; his hands thrust deep in his pockets, he turned away, his shoulders drooping. "Oh, I know you've got the evidence to use for an excuse," he said: "I know you could do it, an' I know you would."

"I wouldn't do it if I didn't have to," said Quirk gently; "but you know how I'm fixed myself. Don't take it so hard, Hughie. You can pull this thing across, if you'll only try. I'm sorry, but if I haven't something to show pretty soon, I'll get it in the neck--hard, I will."

Donovan walked to the door of the rollroom. He opened it.

"Say, one o' you fellows," he called to a group of officers in plain clothes. "Go out an' find Guth an' tell him to come in here right away. I want him." Then he turned to Quirk: "It's got to be to-night?"

Quirk nodded:

"Make it an hour and a half if you can."

"Well, I can't."

"Then as near as you can."

"Gee," said Donovan, "I certainly am sick of this whole business! Well--come back in an hour an' forty-five minutes an' we'll see what's doin'."

Sec.7. He greeted Guth with a roar.

"You're a hell of a cop, you are! What sort of a job do you think you've got, anyway? Rag-pickin'?"

Guth, who was used to these rages, stood at attention. The scar from his mouth to the corner of his jaw-bone twitched heavily.

"I done all I could, Lieutenant," he said.

"You're a liar!" said Donovan. "You've been on this job Gawd knows how long, an' your foot's slipped twice. All you've found is that he hasn't got any safety-deposit box. You know he must have the goods at his office, an' you're afraid to get 'em."

"They might be at his apartment house," said Guth. He shifted his feet uneasily.

"They might be, but they ain't. I had Anderson play that end of it. What d'you mean lettin' Reddy Rawn t'row you down this way?"

"He ain't t'rowed me down. He wouldn't dare."

"Wouldn't he? Well, then, he's stallin' you all right, all right, an' he's had a cinch doin' it. This thing's got to stop. I got to have them letters right off. To-night. Now. Get that?"

The giant subordinate gnawed his upper lip.

"That's goin' some, Lieutenant," he said.

"If you don't do it, you'll be goin' more: you'll be goin' off the force. Now then: you beat it. Get Reddy on the job. Tell him Mitchell knows the officer on that beat an' 'll see he an' his friends ain't interfered with. Nobody'll be in the offices to-night; they've all been over to Cooper Union an' 'll be tired out. Reddy'll be as safe as if he was at home in bed. He'd better have the Kid to help him." Donovan banged the table with his fist. "I want you back here in an hour with everything that's inside that fellow Huber's safe. See?"

Sec.8. In that shadowy alley near Forty-third Street and Third Avenue, where he had talked to Reddy Rawn before, Patrolman Guth talked now with Reddy Rawn and the Kid.

"It ain't my fault," he said. "I've stood him off as long as I could. You gotta do it now, an' if you don't he'll have you two up for Crab Rotello's assault. I know it. He means business this time. You can crack a safe, Kid, can't you?"

Sec.9. On the stage at Cooper Union, Luke was holding an impromptu reception. Hundreds of people were streaming by him and shaking his hand. His arm ached, but he was proud and glad.

At the end of the stream came Betty and Nicholson. Luke saw the girl long before she could reach him, and he smiled to her over the heads of the crowd.

"You dear!" she whispered when, at last, her hand caught his. "I'm proud of you. I'm so proud!"

He pressed her hand.

"That's the best praise of all," he said, and to her companion: "I'm glad you're here, Mr. Nicholson."

Nicholson shook hands.

"I was glad to be here. I admired your delivery even where I disapproved of your treatment."

"What?" laughed Luke. "Is the church going to make friends with the mammon of unrighteousness?" He was hoarse and hot and nervous, but he was too warmly aglow with his success to heed seriously the reply that Nicholson was beginning when one of his friends on the stage plucked his sleeve. He turned. "What is it?" he asked.

"Nelson wants to see you. I don't know what about, but he says it's very important."

"All right." Luke faced Betty and Nicholson again. "You'll forgive me for just a moment, won't you?" he said. "I'll be right back, and then, if you'll let me, I'll drive over to Brooklyn with you both. I have a note from your father, Betty, asking me to come to the house."

"I thought he was at the office," said Betty; "but I do hope you'll come with us."

"He's back at the house now. This note came by messenger."

"Then," said Nicholson, "I shan't interfere with business. I'll go home from here. Run along, Mr. Huber. I'll guard Miss Forbes while you're gone."

Luke followed the man that had sought him and found Nelson standing at the farthest corner of the stage.

The wholesale druggist was in evident distress. He was an honorable man and a practical, and these qualities spoke in the lines of his troubled face. As soon as they were left together, Nelson came to the point.

"Huber," he said, "I've got to get out."

"Out? What of?"

"The League. I've got to leave it."

Nelson was almost the last man that Luke would have expected to desert. Moreover, he had so long been prominent in the reform movement that his defection would be a serious blow to the League. Luke had to call loudly on his lethargic manner to conceal his anxiety and surprise.

"Why?" he inquired. "What's wrong?"

"This speech of yours to-night," explained Nelson. "You've been getting nearer and nearer that fellow all along, but I'd no idea you meant to go right at him."

"What was the matter with the speech? I didn't tell anything but the truth."

"No, I dare say you didn't, but I can't honorably stand by you, Huber, now that you've openly taken this line."

Nelson swallowed hard. It was plain that he did not like the dish prepared for him.

"I don't understand," said Luke. "If it was true, and if we're to make a real fight for real reform, we've got to begin at the cause of corruption."

"I know. I admit it was the truth, but it wasn't the whole truth. He does lots of good."

"Good and bad are relative. Relatively he doesn't do any good."

"I'm not so sure of that."

"I am."

"Yes, but there's the League to think of."

"The League nominated me,"

"Of course it did, but you're not the whole ticket nor the whole movement."

This was a detail that Luke in his triumph had forgotten.

"Still," he said, "we can't dodge the facts. I won't dodge them, Nelson."

"I understand," Nelson said. "Perhaps you're right. Anyhow, right or wrong, you've done what you've done, and so I've got to go."

"But why?"

Nelson fidgeted.

"I may as well tell you," he at last said. "You know my business has always been one that didn't cross these fellows' trail. But lately they've been coming toward us. I think I mentioned that?"

Luke nodded.

"Well, I've been hard up. The other day I needed money badly. I had to have money or I'd have failed. I have a wife and family to think of, Huber. I tried everywhere to raise the wind, and there was only one place where I could raise it."

"You mean--" Luke wet his lips. "You mean that crowd?"

"Yes."

"It came from _him_?"

"It came direct from L. Bergen Rivington. But, of course, it really came from _him_."

Luke put out his hand. Nelson wrung it.

"I wasn't bought, Huber," he said. "You don't think that?"

"I know," said Luke kindly.

"I wish I'd told you sooner, Huber. I didn't expect you'd go so far."

"I'd have gone just as far, Nelson. I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry, too, Huber. Good-night."

Sec.10. "Betty," said Luke, as the girl nestled against him in the darkness of the cab that drove them toward her home, "this is going to be a hard battle."

"Then you'll win because you're right."

"I'm not so sure."

Her arms went round his neck.

"I don't care whether you win or not," she whispered, "so long as you ought to win."

Sec.11. Forbes was waiting for them in the library. His rapidly-graying hair was disordered, and his face was even more worried than Nelson's had been.

"You'd better run to bed, dear," he said to Betty as he kissed her. "It's late, and I've some heavy business to talk about to Luke."

"I'm wide awake," protested Betty. "I couldn't sleep if I did go to bed. I'll sleep late to-morrow."

"But then there is the business we must talk about."

"I don't care. I'll like it. I won't interrupt." She looked at Luke. "May I stay?" she asked.

Luke smiled.

"I wish you would," he said.

Forbes made a gesture of surrender.

"All right," said he. He turned to Luke and, as Betty seated herself between the two men, who remained standing, he continued: "They're going to strike."

"At the factory?" Luke had feared this. "What do they want?"

"They want us to meet the hours and the wages that the trust is giving."

"We can meet them as to hours, can't we?"

"We might. It would hurt us, but we might."

"But not the wages?"

"Not in five years."

Luke lit a cigarette. He noted that his hand was steady, and its steadiness gratified him.

"They're well enough paid, aren't they?"

"You know the scale."

"Well, it's a fair one, isn't it?"

"What does that matter to them when they think they can get more?"

"But you say they can't, Forbes."

"I can't convince them of it. Their attitude is that if we can't pay them what they want, the Business had better go out of existence.'

"You saw the men's committee?"

"This evening. That's why I couldn't come to your meeting."

"And they won't compromise?"

"They might have, but things have gone too far. A lot of these I.W.W. organizers and agitators have been at work among them. I don't know what will happen to the Business now."

"We can get in strike-breakers and run the factory in spite of them."

"If we do, there'll be rioting. They might burn the building. These Industrial Workers of the World--you don't know them."

"I don't see that we have any choice."

Forbes looked away.

"We have one," he muttered.

Luke caught his wrist.

"Look here," he demanded, "do you mean to say that this may have a political origin?"

"I believe it has. I believe those letters you told me about----"

"You want me to knuckle under?" asked Luke.

Forbes looked at him.

"Think what a strike might do to you politically," he said.

"I don't care about that."

"Your friends might."

"Not if they want to stay my friends. Besides, it can't be true. The writer of those letters hates the I.W.W. like poison. He can't have inspired them."

"Oh, not that. I know he can't. But if you'd be sensible about those letters, I believe he'd be willing to put down the trust's wages and join us in this fight."

"What did you tell the men's committee?"

"I didn't show them what I felt," said Forbes. "That would never do. You can't tell workmen what you really think. I just said if they wanted to strike, they would have to strike."

Luke flung aside Forbes's arm.

"Then stick to that," he said.

"But, Huber----"

Luke interrupted. He fronted Betty.

"Betty," he said, "do you understand what your father is asking me to do? You know how I am placed, and you heard my speech to-night. Now, your father wants me to go back on all that in order to save him from poverty and you from poverty and me from poverty and defeat. I won't do it. Whether you like it or not, I won't do it!"

The girl got up slowly and put a hand on his shoulder. Her eyes, as she looked from one man to the other, were very beautiful, but they were firm.

"Father," she said, "I've learned a lot lately. Luke's right and--and I'm with him."

Forbes turned toward her irritably.

"Oh, go to bed!" said he.

Luke laughed and, reaching up, patted the hand that was on his shoulder.

"No, no," he protested, "you mustn't intrigue with my allies, Forbes."

"Well," said Forbes, "you'll see that I'm right if you keep on antagonizing these people."

"We can starve them out."

"Not before there is violence."

"The law will defend us there. We'll have the police: they can't deny us adequate protection in such a matter--and if we have to, we'll get the Governor to call out the troops."

Forbes argued and pleaded for a long time, but to no avail. Luke would not go over to his enemies: the strike must proceed.

"I've got to leave you now," he said. "I'll have to have a statement ready about this for the papers first thing in the morning. Perhaps I'll get out of the Subway at Fourteenth Street and open up the League's headquarters and get it ready there."

It was Betty that stopped this plan.

"You'll do nothing of the sort," she ordered. "You're tired out. I won't let you kill yourself." She kissed him on the mouth. "You must promise me to go straight to the Arapahoe and to sleep."

At the touch of her lips, he softened.

"All right," he promised, "but I'm no more sleepy now than you said you were an hour ago."

Sec.12. Luke would not have had to open the offices of the Municipal League; that was being attended to. While he was still in the Subway train returning from Brooklyn to Manhattan, two men, one of them carrying a small bundle, crossed Union Square and turned down Broadway. Before the entrance to the building in which the League was housed, they paused to speak to a policeman.

"That's all right," he told them. "I know. I got me orders ten minutes ago. That's why I'm standin' here. But get a move on, you fellows. I don't want to stick here all night."

The two men rounded a corner.

In the deserted street, the officer of the law walked up and down, twenty paces to the north, then twenty to the south. A party of strayed revelers came by and tried to talk with him; but he ordered them to move on if they didn't want him to arrest them. He resumed his walk when they had gone, his thumbs tucked in his belt, his lips pursed and whistling softly a popular tune. Once he heard the sound of a window opened overhead. A little later he saw a dim light pass from one window to another in the building above him. A dulled report sounded from behind the walls: the Elevated is not near Broadway at this spot, but in the night noises travel far, and this noise might have been the crash of a late train. The officer of the law did not raise his head....

Around the corner came two figures. Both of them carried bundles now.

The officer of the law strolled past them. He did not stop as he spoke.

"All right?" he asked.

"All right," said one of the figures.

The officer of the law walked on, whistling his popular tune.

Sec.13. Somewhat nearer the hour of sunrise, Mr. Irwin, his merry eyes grown weary, stood in the sitting-room of the Hon. Marcus Stein's suite of hotel apartments. He was bending over a table on which lay an opened bundle.

Stein was bending over the table, too. His dignified demeanor was ruffled.

"This is nothing but a collection of junk," he was saying. "It is no use to anybody but its owners. Get it out of here at once, Mr. Irwin, and tell your friends to return it to the place they got it from."

*CHAPTER XIV*

Sec.1. As every man has his day in court, so nearly every man has his day in the newspapers, and which is the more trying it is difficult to decide. The day following the night of the Cooper Union meeting was Luke's: the morning papers seemed to contain little news that did not refer to him; the editorial columns presented satiric paragraphs and serious leaders regarding his speech and his position before the public, and spread over the first pages were accounts of his address and stories of the strike in the factory, with which his connection was now loudly heralded.

Comment on the speech was about equally divided. Half of the press ridiculed it as the vaporing of a misinformed dreamer, and half denounced it as an anarchistic appeal to the violence of the mob. Some journals gave stenographic reports of the entire matter; most printed only those portions which, lifted from their context, were best suited to the policy of the paper using them. The extremes were shown by two headlines. One read:

NIGHTMARES OF A CANDIDATE

Br'er Huber Consults His Dream-Book And Says Innocent New York Is Being Tortured Without Knowing It

And the other flung across eight columns, in letters of vermilion, the legend:

CANDIDATE PREACHES PRIVATE WAR WITH FIRE AND SWORD!

In the treatment of the strike, Luke fared even worse. He was held up as a hypocrite that championed the People from the platform and sweated the poor in the shops. He was paraded as the real owner of R. H. Forbes & Son. The papers generally most bitter against labor movements published long accounts of the strike, denunciatory interviews with the strike-leaders, and tables showing how badly the wages paid by the Forbes firm compared with the wage-scale already in operation in the factories controlled by the clothing-trust. There was a hurriedly drawn cartoon that depicted Luke wearing a Liberty-cap and hurling a bomb at a figure labeled "Conservative Business": he was addressing a mob from a soap-box that was supported by the bowed shoulders of his oppressed employees. The most respectable newspaper in New York hinted that his political attack was made against his business rivals solely because they were his business rivals, and the least respectable declared that his quarrel with the workers stamped his election doctrines as the gospel of Murder for Profit.

As Luke entered the door of the Broadway building in which the Municipal Reform League had its headquarters, he came up with Venable also going in. The old man's hand trembled as he greeted the candidate.

"We seem to have raised a real thunderstorm," said Luke, smiling. "I hope it'll clear the atmosphere."

"Then you know?" asked Venable. "You've seen it in the papers?"

"How could I help it?" said Luke. "It's all over them."

"Oh, the speech?"

"That and this strike at the Forbes factory, yes."

"I didn't mean those things," said Venable. "I meant this."

He took from his coat-pocket a folded newspaper open at the financial and real estate page. He pointed a shaking finger at first one and then another obscure paragraph, both printed in small type and far separated.

Luke read the paragraphs. Each applied to the same block of an uptown street. The former said that a new branch of an elevated railroad would be run through this street, and the latter curtly announced that two of the apartment houses in the block were about to be converted into tenements for negroes.

"My apartment house," said Venable simply, "the one that all my money is invested in, will have those 'L'-tracks running in front of its second-floor windows. It is just between the two houses that are to to be made into tenements."

Luke swore softly.

"Who's back of this?" he demanded.

"You know what influences control that elevated road," said Venable.

"And the tenements?"

"They've just been bought by Hallett."

"It's ruin?"

"It will be very close to it."

Luke gripped Venable's shoulder.

"You get out of this," he commanded. "Leave the League and go to them; they'll change their plans: that's why they've made their plans the way they have."

"No," said Venable, "I won't do it. I can't. I'm pretty old to be poor, but I'm too old to change my opinions."

He was still talking in this manner when they entered the League's quarters and were greeted with the news that burglars had been there the night before.

"Nothin's been touched in any of the offices but yours, Mr. Huber," said the breathless clerk who poured out this story to them; "but there the safe's been blown open, and I don't know what's missin'. I sent for the police right away."

"The police?" said Luke. "Stop your joking, Charley."

"I'm not jokin', Mr. Huber. I did send for them. They've been here. They said they'd have a detective over from headquarters before long."

Luke hurried to his office. Bits of charred blanket and several match-ends lay about the floor. The door of the safe swung lamely upon a single hinge. Inside was a tumbled mass of papers. Otherwise the room seemed undisturbed.

Quickly, Luke ran over the papers in the yawning safe. He looked up at Venable.

"Everything's here," he said.

"Are you sure?" asked Venable.

"Quite." Luke went to his desk. Its lock had been forced. There had been a rude attempt to restore the contents to the order in which Luke had left them when he quitted the office the day before, but he saw at once that everything had been examined. "And they didn't get anything from here, either," he added.

"I wonder what they were after?" said Venable.

"So do I," said Luke acridly. "At any rate, they didn't get it." The telephone rang as he bent beside it. He took the receiver from its hook. "Yes?" he said. "Oh, Mr. Venable? Yes, he's here--right: he's here in my office, I say. Want to talk to him?" He held up the receiver. "It's that new worker, Jarvie," he explained. "He wants to talk to you."