Part 19

"You mean----" she began. Her hands clenched. "Oh!" she cried.

She tried to pass him.

Passion left him, but a great sorrow took its place as his master. He wanted to justify himself; he even so wanted to repair the hurt done her that he would have shut his eyes to the new light. He seized her hand.

"Betty!"

She wrenched her hand.

"Let me go! I want to go to father! Let me go!"

"But, Betty, wait--listen----"

She freed her hand.

"I shan't tell him. Don't be afraid. He has enough to worry him. Only don't let me ever see you again!"

Sec.4. All that night Luke walked the streets. It was breakfast-time when he returned to the Arapahoe. His letters and the morning papers were lying on the floor of his sitting-room where they had fallen when the bell-boy dropped them through the slit in the door.

He read the letters first. There were not many, for his correspondence had of late declined to almost nothing. The only things of interest were a note from Porcellis, announcing that he would soon return to New York and a letter from Luke's mother, saying that she had written Betty to pay her a visit: "It is only right that your fiancee should do this," wrote Mrs. Huber, "and that I should have an early chance of knowing the girl that is to be my son's wife."

Luke wondered how Betty would reply to the invitation. As he was thinking of this, his eye caught the heaviest headlines on the first page of the newspaper: during the night, a body of strikers at the Forbes factory had marched to the main entrance and battered down the door in an endeavor to drag out the Breil men who slept there as guards by night and worked there by day; the Breil men resisted; there was a general battle with at least two deaths; the attacking party were repulsed, but the police, summoned by a riot-call, gained what appeared to be no more than a preliminary skirmish, for the entire neighborhood was in arms and more bloodshed was expected to-day.

Luke dropped the paper with an oath. He was more hungry than before for a part in this fight--in any fight. If Religion was a coward, he would make one more appeal to Government, to force. He called Albany on the long-distance telephone. He kept on calling until he had brought the Governor to the other end of the wire, and then he was astonished to hear that the proper civil authorities in New York had already asked for troops.

"It is always best," he was told, "not to drag local men into an affair of this sort, if it can be helped; so I'm having the Adjutant General send down a company from Poughkeepsie. That ought to be enough for the present, and they ought to get there by noon."

Luke muttered his thanks and rang off.

"I know why that was done," he said to himself: "They think they'll make more trouble for us with the militia here than without it. Well, we'll see."

He stripped off his clothes, went to the bathroom, and began to run the water for a cold plunge. He was talking to himself.

"The worst of the crowd's dead," he said. "That was Forbes's way of putting it. There he had a glimpse. Started down to rock-bottom. But he didn't arrive. I felt that way till only a little while ago. But I see I was wrong. I thought this was a one-man show; I believed in a sort of personal Devil. I wish I'd been right. It would have been all so simple, if I'd been right in that. But I wasn't. It isn't the men; it's the system. The man didn't make the system; the system made the man."

He was wonderfully clear about that now. All his fight against evil had been directed toward one man, and the man was dead and the evil remained. He could almost pity that man in russet brown. That man who had sat at the fountain of forces reaching up and down through all the life of the world, seemed to originate the forces and use them for his own malign purpose; but now--and herein lay one of the reasons for Luke's present wonder at life--he perceived certainly that the man had been only a little better treated by the forces than the forces treated all the rest of mankind, was their creation and their slave just as wholly as the most obscure victim. Industrial evolution, working through the collective ignorance of the race, had devised the Great Evil. Here was a web that no spider wove, a web that killed spiders as well as flies, lived on with a life of its own, grew and spread of itself. So long as the web existed, there would always be a spider. The Web remained. It was the Web that must be broken.

Yet he wanted to fight. He would fight. The Gospel of Negation had given him its light; it had yet to teach him to see.

Sec.5. Other forces vitally affecting Luke were at work that day, at first far distant from the factory. They were forces that had affected him imperfectly heretofore, but that now were set in motion in a manner no longer to be diverted.

Ex-Judge Stein was summoned from his office almost at the moment of his appearance there. His motor-car took him into Wall Street, to a certain skyscraper, into which he went and was taken as far as the twentieth floor.

He entered an unmarked door and passed an attendant who bowed to him respectfully. He passed another attendant. A third, at sight of him, got up and went through a second door, leaving the Judge to wait in dignified repose. Then the last attendant reappeared and nodded, and the Judge passed the second door.

He remained inside for an hour. When he came out his mien was undisturbed, but his strong and kindly face was even graver than usual. He almost forgot to return the farewells of the attendants as he left them. He rang twice for the elevator, although the elevator was not long delayed.

"The office," he said to his chauffeur as he climbed again into the car.

Sec.6. Returned at his own quarters at half-past ten, he sent immediately for Irwin, to whom he talked for perhaps forty-five minutes. He spoke with a sad inevitability.

"No more excuses, no more extensions of time, no more delays," he concluded--"and no more failures."

The twinkle left Irwin's eyes.

"I understand," he said.

He could not fail to understand. His superior had been once and for all explicit. Judge Stein, during his service to the public on the bench, had never been called upon to pronounce a sentence of death, but, had he been so called upon, he would have spoken much as he now spoke to Irwin.

Sec.7. "I hate to have to tell you this," said Irwin to Quirk at noon in the latter's shabby law-office, "but if that job isn't done before to-morrow morning, those affidavits charging you with jury-fixing are going to be turned over to the District-Attorney, and the people that have them are now in a position to make Leighton act on them, too."

Irwin also had become specific. The plump Mr. Quirk lost his habitual smile.

"It's a rotten business," he said.

"It is," Irwin agreed; "but your arrest would be a worse one--for you."

"We may have to go the limit," said Quirk.

"Then," said Irwin, "you'd better go it. That's no affair of mine."

Sec.8. "This time," said Quirk, "you've got till to-night to make up your mind."

He was talking to Police-Lieutenant Donovan. It was just after lunch-time.

"What about?" asked Donovan.

"Whether you want to bluff us again or lose your job."

"We never did bluff you."

"Well, then: whether you want to get those letters or get fired. Not _try_ to get them: _get_ them. It's get them or get out." All the kindliness and good-fellowship was missing from Quirk's voice. "It's one thing or the other. We got evidence to fire you on. You knew we had, last time I talked to you. Well, they were easy on you then, Hughie. This time they mean business."

Donovan looked at Quirk.

"Suppose somebody gets hurt?" he said.

Quirk shrugged his shoulders.

Sec.9. When Guth came in late in the afternoon, Donovan said:

"I got a warrant in my desk for you, Guth. A friend o' mine swore it out. If I don't stop him, it means a criminal trial where you won't have the chance of a goat. You know what it's for: that little girl up in Fifty-second Street. The only way I can get him to hold off's for you to get Reddy Rawn to do what you'd ought t' got him to do long ago. If somebody gets hurt, it ain't our fault."

Sec.10. At eight p.m. in the shadowy alley near Forty-third Street and Third Avenue, Patrolman Guth's twisted mouth was menacing the darkness.

"He's down at the Forbes factory now," said Guth. "There's sure to be a fight there to-night, an' anybody can get in. It's a cinch."

The darkness did not reply.

"Anyhow, you got to," said Guth. "The old man's crazy mad. He says it's the chair for yours if you fall down this time. Crab Rotello's got worse. He can't live the night, an' the old man says he's goin' to have you railroaded soon as Crab cashes in, if you don't do what he says. He means it, too, Reddy."

Out of the darkness came the answer:

"I'll maybe have to croak this guy."

"That's up to you," said Guth. "It'll look like some strikers done it. It's his own fault for bein' a fool. What in hell do you care, anyway? We'll look out for you."

"All right," said the darkness.

"Mind you," Guth repeated, "no more stallin' this time. If you don't get the goods, an' get 'em to-night, you're a dead boy, Reddy."

There was an instant of silence. Then the darkness spoke again:

"It won't be me's the dead one."

*CHAPTER XVIII*

Sec.1. The text of the newspaper article, which Luke read carefully while he dressed, added few facts to those marshaled in its headlines. To Luke it was evident that the past few days had brought the strikers to desperation. Their own funds were gone, and they had no help from outside. They were not strong in numbers, and many of them were women. The ranks of the men had, however, been swelled to a formidable figure by unsought additions from the hundreds of hooligans that, in every city, are attracted to seats of industrial war, and these provided an element which the leaders were unable to control. The affair had gone the usual way: a picket had jeered at a non-union worker; two policemen attacked the offending picket; the crowd ran to the rescue, and a general disturbance, with the assault on the mill, was the inevitable result. Now there was no telling to what extent the trouble might go.

Luke was savagely glad that physical action was imperative. He wanted something that would stop thought. He wanted rest from thought: from the spiritual strain, from the yearning for Betty. Again and again, as he hurried through a breakfast forced upon himself only by the knowledge of his need, he found his mind playing with the childish idea of the carpenter that he wanted to be, tramping the country roads from casual job to job. He might well come to that. Meanwhile, it was good to have this chance for a fight.

Sec.2. Luke drove to the factory in a taxicab that he insisted should be open. As he neared his destination through rows of grimy buildings and vacant lots in which goats grazed among ash-heaps and tin cans and "For Sale" signs, the streets began to look as if a heavy skirmish had been fought through them. Knots of idle sightseers already lined the uneven sidewalks and pointed to the relics of the conflict; at corners the former workers were gathered in low-speaking groups--shrunken figures; slouching forms in poor clothing, whose business was the making of better clothes for luckier beings; faces angry and sullen, faces savage, debased, hungry; women's faces as sexless as the men's--and everywhere, furtive and sinister, those other faces, the faces most to be feared, of the gathered condors of the underworld, the feeders on economic carrion, who had slunk here from the darkest corners of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Jersey City, rising from a hundred alleys and pot-houses, and circling toward the factory as birds of prey come from the four quarters of the compass toward a battlefield; he saw them crouched at the shadowy thresholds of tumble-down dwellings, leering from fetid passageways, peering from the swinging doors of stinking saloons, stealthy, determined.

Overhead the sky was clear sapphire. A strong breeze came in from the Sound, laden with health. It fanned the memories of yesterday out of his brain and for a moment made the present seem a picture from the remote past. It was unreal: he felt himself an unimportant spectator of some unconvincing play.

Then, rising above rows of rickety houses, the mill came into sight, blocking the street-end, and restored his appreciation of the imminent. A wrecked coal-wagon lay horseless in the middle of the street opposite a bent lamp-post, the coal heaped where it had fallen. Battered hats were in the gutter, and on the pavement was a coat, torn and muddy. No smoke curled to-day from the chimney of the mill's engine-room, and in front of its shattered main-door, rudely repaired by unpainted planks of fresh pine, two policemen lounged, facing a string of mute pickets.

Luke passed the door unmolested and entered the office. The superintendent, a whiskered man named Whitaker, was there, and one or two pasty and frightened clerks.

"Mr. Forbes down yet?" asked Luke briskly.

"No, sir," said Whitaker. "He just sent word he was sick."

"Sick? What's the matter with him?"

"I don't know exactly, Mr. Huber. It was Miss Forbes telephoned, and she said he'd had a kind of fainting fit right after breakfast."

Luke sat down at the desk and called up the Forbes house.

"Mr. Forbes there?" he asked of the maid that answered him.

"No, sir. Mr. Forbes is in bed."

"Ill?"

"Not very well."

"Ask Miss Forbes to come to the 'phone. This is Mr. Huber talking. I'm at the factory, and I must know something about Mr. Forbes' condition."

The maid assented, but, after he had waited, it was again she that spoke to him.

"Miss Forbes asks you please to excuse her. She's very busy. She says to tell you Mr. Forbes was a little dizzy and had to lie down. He thinks he can get to his office late in the day."

Luke felt the mortification that it was patently intended he should feel; but he lost no time over it. He turned at once to Whitaker and the clerks, and secured from them what verification he could of the newspaper's story. Then he sent for the brawny, flannel-shirted Breil and learned what remained for him to know.

"You think there'll be more trouble?" he asked, after he had sent Whitaker and his assistant from the room.

"Sure there will," said Breil cheerfully, "but not before to-night."

"When'll the soldiers get here?"

"'Long about noon, I guess."

"How many police have they given us?"

"Half a dozen. I couldn't beg more."

"Better send some of them out to have that coal cleared away."

"I tried to, but they said it wasn't their duty, an' I couldn't get any satisfaction at City Hall. You know how these cops are."

"Couldn't you have a detail of your own men do it?"

"I'd like to first-rate; but it'd mean a fight, an' we don't want to put ourselves in the position, to the public, of courtin' that. Mr. Forbes said Saturday----"

"He was right. How many men have you in good shape?"

"Seventy-two. I'd send for more, but they're on a job at Hazleton."

"Will City Hall send more police if there's trouble?"

"Not till they can't help doin' it."

The hours passed slowly. Luke made the rounds of the mill as the commander of a fortress inspects it before an attack. He saw that the strike-breakers, an anxious lot of men, were stationed at the vulnerable places, and he talked again with Breil.

Forbes did not appear, and Luke was too proud to try a second time to question Betty about him; but reporters came and sent in urgent requests for a statement from the company. Luke refused to see them. It was his turn to refuse the newspapers.

"Better feed 'em a little pap," Breil advised.

"I won't so much as look at them," said Luke.

"They'll knock us if you don't."

"That can't hurt us. I won't see them and you're not to talk to them either, Breil."

He began to chafe under the delay. He made the rounds of the mill again and smoked incessantly at cigars that he found in a box in Forbes's desk. He bolted a cold lunch sent in at noon, and he wondered why the soldiers were late.

The soldiers came at two o'clock. Out in the street there were some derisive shouts, and then the regular tramp of marching feet. Luke hurried to an office above Forbes's, a room furnished with a small desk at one side, a large table in the center, and a few chairs, and there, from a window, saw the column of men in khaki, advancing four abreast, down the street.

"They're nothing but a lot of boys," he said as, when they drew nearer, he looked at their young faces. "It's a shame to send a lot of kids like that into--a mix-up of this kind."

He received the Captain and the first-lieutenant in the main office. The Captain had taken off his broad-brimmed service hat and was mopping his face with a blue bandana handkerchief.

"Phew!" he said. "This looks as if it was goin' to be the real thing!"

"It _is_ the real thing," said Luke.

"You haven't got a drink handy, have you?" asked the Captain. He was an olive-complexioned young man of twenty-two or -three with a girlish mouth and bright black eyes.

Luke produced a bottle and glasses, and the Captain drank. He spoke in the high tone of excitement as he rattled on:

"Somebody threw a brick at us just up here. Did you see 'em? It near cracked Sergeant Schmidt's coco. Poor old Schmidt; he was scared yellow, wasn't he, Terry?"

Terry was the lieutenant, a raw Irish lad with the face of a fighter.

"You bet," said he.

Luke drew the Captain aside.

"You may as well understand at once," said he, "that this isn't any picnic. You've been sent here to protect our property, and you may have a hot time doing it. We have seventy-two strike-breakers here under Mr. Breil; the superintendent; one or two clerks; and five foremen who've remained loyal to the company. That, with me, makes up the inside force. There's half a dozen police, too. What I want you to do is to draw a cordon of your men along the front of the building. Stand them on the pavement. Breil's men'll watch the back. Half your people had better go on duty now and be relieved by the other half at five o'clock. But from seven on, we'll need your whole company on the job."

The Captain looked serious and worried.

"You think there'll be real trouble to-night?"

"I shouldn't be a bit surprised, especially as I see the Governor's sent us just enough of you fellows to excite a mob and yet be powerless against it. What were your instructions from up top?"

"I was to use my own discretion."

Luke looked at the young man and smiled at the idea of intrusting men's lives to such discretion.

"Well, the main thing is not to lose your head," said Luke.

"They'll outnumber us?"

"If they attacked, yes--undoubtedly."

The Captain returned to the whiskey bottle.

"And we'd be powerless, unless----" He hesitated.

"Unless you fired," Luke concluded for him.

They looked at each other, the man and the boy.

"You mustn't fire," said Luke.

"No," said the boy.

"Unless you have to," said the man....

The afternoon dragged by. Luke gave up all hope of Forbes and spent most of the time in the upper office, looking at the soldiers stationed in front of the building and at the groups of men staring at the soldiers. It seemed to Luke that the numbers of the staring men were increasing....

Sec.3. The night was dark. The purple arc-lamp that burned directly in front of the main entrance to the factory flared vividly upon a circle of the street beneath it, but beyond this circle, which was long empty, one could scarcely see, one could rather only feel, the presence of a slowly gathering, silent crowd. In the main office, Luke was again consulting with the Captain, Breil, and a policeman. The policeman, as if acting under instructions, had sneered at the idea of further trouble so long as the crowd was unmolested, and Luke would not ask again for aid from City Hall. His lieutenants were standing about the room in attitudes of uncertainty. All were agreed against precipitating a fight by attempts to disperse the enemy.

The Captain drew up his boyish form.

"My men----" he began.

"Your kids," corrected Breil.

"We're all right, anyhow," the Captain lamely concluded, his cheeks hot under this indignity.

Raucous cries came now and then from the street.

"You've got enough to take care of with your own affairs," said Luke. He turned to the policeman.

"Are there many in that crowd out there?" he asked.

"Not many," said the policeman, "but I think there's more comin'!"

Still smarting under Breil's rebuke, the Captain felt some show of his bravery to be a duty to the organization to which he belonged.

"We can handle 'em all right," he said, "however many there are. They're mostly nothin' but foreigners, anyhow."

Luke wanted above all to preserve harmony in his ranks, but an imp of perversity whipped his tongue.

"What's your name?" he asked the Captain.

"Antonio Facciolati," said the Captain, "but I'm a naturalized American citizen."

Luke patted his shoulder.

"That's all right," he said reassuringly. "What have your men got in their guns, Captain? Blank cartridges?"

"Not much," said the Captain boldly: "ball."

"Good," Luke smiled. "But don't use it. Butts are best for this work."

He decided that Forbes, well or ill, ought to know how things were going. He bent to the telephone, placing the receiver to his ear.

There was no answer. He rattled the hook impatiently.

"What's the matter with this 'phone?" he growled.

He rattled the hook again, but could get no reply.

Breil left the room. Presently he returned.

"I've tried the one in the hall," he said, "and the one in the cloth-room. The wires are cut."

For a moment nobody spoke. Facciolati's hand crept to his sword-hilt, and the sword clattered. From somewhere far up the street came a choral murmur of voices:

"_Hall_eyloolyah, I'm a bum--bum!"

Breil stepped to the window.

"That's them. That's the others. They're comin'," he said.

Sec.4. The men ran to their posts. Luke climbed to the upper office and went to its window.

They were coming indeed. They were there, vividly from the circle of light beneath him, vaguely to the walls of the tumbledown dwellings across the street. At his feet was a line of khaki-clad militiamen, standing at ease beside their magazine-rifles, along the curb; beyond them a few yards of open street, and then what at first looked to Luke like a field of wheat under a high gale, gigantic wheat, black of stalk and white of head, tossing in the wind: the shoving, swaying bodies, the gesticulating arms, the threatening faces of the mob.

They had come to complete the work of the previous night. His startled eyes could pick out no one individual, his ears could select no single word; but he could see leaders, who had lost their leadership, making gestures of despair; men, who had seized license, waving fists and shaking sticks; could hear a turmoil of cries and curses. The whole impression was blurred and general; yet, as he looked, the wheatfield changed to a roaring sea, the black pitching and tossing of a terrible tide ever mounting nearer, nearer to the soldiers drawn up in front of the broken factory door.

The thought mastered him: this was his property which only that frail door separated from them--that frail door and those frightened boys in khaki. They were going to destroy his property--his!

A second street-lamp, farther up the way, lighted the rear of the crowd, and into the circle of its illumination Luke saw running a motor-car. He saw the mob scatter, the car stop, the crowd close around it. He heard more distant shouts above the shouts that were nearer.