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They went to the office of the secret service department of theTraction Trust, a place where Peter had never been allowed to comehitherto. It was on the fourteenth floor of the Merchant's TrustBuilding, and the sign on the door read: "The American City Land &Investment Company. Walk In." When you walked in, you saw aconventional real estate office, and it was only when you hadpenetrated several doors that you came to the secret rooms whereGuffey and his staff conducted the espionage work of the bigbusiness interests of the city.
Peter was hustled into one of these rooms, and there stood Guffey;and the instant Guffey saw him, he bore down upon him, shaking hisfist. "You stinking puppy!" he exclaimed. "You miserable littlewhelp! You dirty, sneaking hound!" He added a number of otherdescriptive phrases taken from the vocabulary of the kennel.
Peter's knees were shaking, his teeth were chattering, and hewatched every motion of Guffey's angry fingers, and every grimace ofGuffey's angry features. Peter had been fully prepared for the mosthorrible torture he had experienced yet; but gradually he realizedthat he wasn't going to be tortured, he was only going to be scoldedand raged at, and no words could describe the wave of relief in hissoul. In the course of his street-rat's life Peter had been calledmore names than Guffey could think of if he spent the next monthtrying. If all Guffey was going to do was to pace up and down theroom, and shake his fist under Peter's nose every time he passedhim, and compare him with every kind of a domestic animal, Petercould stand it all night without a murmur.
He stopped trying to find out what it was that had happened, becausehe saw that this only drove Guffey to fresh fits of exasperation.Guffey didn't want to talk to Peter, he didn't want to hear thesound of Peter's whining gutter-pup's voice. All he wanted was topour out his rage, and have Peter listen in abject abasement, andthis Peter did. But meantime, of course, Peter's wits were workingat high speed, he was trying to pick up hints as to what the devilit could mean. One thing was quite clear--the damage, whatever itwas, was done; the jig was up, it was all over but the funeral. Theyhad taken Peter's money to pay for the funeral, and that was allthey hoped to get out of him.
Gradually came other hints. "So you thought you were going intobusiness on your own!" snarled Guffey, and his fist, which was underPeter's nose, gave an upward poke that almost dislocated Peter'sneck.
"Aha!" thought Peter. "Nelse Ackerman has given me away!"
"You thought you were going to make your fortune and retire for lifeon your income!"
Yes, that was it, surely! But what could Nelse Ackerman have toldthat was so very bad?
"You were going to have a spy of your own, set up your own bureau,and kick me out, perhaps!"
"My God!" thought Peter. "Who told that?"
Then suddenly Guffey stopped in front of him. "Was that what youthought?" he demanded. He repeated the question, and it appearedthat he really wanted an answer, and so Peter stammered, "N-n-no,sir." But evidently the answer didn't suit Guffey, for he grabbedPeter's nose and gave it a tweak that brought the tears into hiseyes.
"What was it then?" A nasty sneer came on the head detective'sface, and he laughed at Peter with a laugh of venomous contempt. "Isuppose you thought she really loved you! Was it that? You thoughtshe really loved you?" And McGivney and Hammett and Guffey ha-ha-edtogether, and to Peter it seemed like the mockery of demons in theundermost pit of hell. Those words brought every pillar of Peter'sdream castle tumbling in ruins about his ears. Guffey had found outabout Nell!
Again and again on the automobile ride to Guffey's office Peter hadreminded himself of Nell's command, "Stick it out, Peter! Stick itout!" He had meant to stick it out in spite of everything; but nowin a flash he saw that all was lost. How could he stick it out whenthey knew about Nell, and when Nell, herself, was no longer stickingit out?
Guffey saw these thoughts plainly written in Peter's face, and hissneer turned into a snarl. "So you think you'll tell me the truthnow, do you? Well, it happens there's nothing left to tell!"
Again he turned and began pacing up and down the room. The pressureof rage inside him was so great that it took still more time to workit off. But finally the head detective sat down at his desk, andopened the drawer and took out a paper. "I see you're sitting there,trying to think up some new lie to tell me," said he. And Peter didnot try to deny it, because any kind of denial only caused a freshaccess of rage. "All right," Guffey said, "I'll read you this, andyou can see just where you stand, and just how many kinds of a boobyou are."
So he started to read the letter; and before Peter had heard onesentence, he knew this was a letter from Nell, and he knew that thecastle of his dreams was flat in the dust forever. The ruins ofSargon and Nineveh were not more hopelessly flat!
"Dear Mr. Guffey," read the letter, "I am sorry to throw you down,but fifty thousand dollars is a lot of money, and we all get tiredof work and need a rest. This is to tell you that Ted Crothers hasjust broke into Nelse Ackerman's safe in his home, and we have gotsome liberty bonds and some jewels which we guess to be worth fiftythousand dollars, and you know Ted is a good judge of jewels.
"Now of course you will find out that I was working in Mr.Ackerman's home and you will be after me hot-foot, so I might aswell tell you about it, and tell you it won't do you any good tocatch us, because we have got all the inside dope on the Gooberframe-up, and everything else your bureau has been pulling off inAmerican City for the last year. You can ask Peter Gudge and he'lltell you. It was Peter and me that fixed up that dynamiteconspiracy, but you mustn't blame Peter, because he only did what Itold him to do. He hasn't got sense enough to be really dangerous,and he will make you a perfectly good agent if you treat him kindand keep him away from the women. You can do that easy enough if youdon't let him get any money, because of course he's nothing much onlooks, and the women would never bother with him if you didn't payhim too much.
"Now Peter will tell you how we framed up that dynamite job, and ofcourse you wouldn't want that to get known to the Reds, and you maybe sure that if Ted and me get pinched, we'll find some way to letthe Reds know all about it. If you keep quiet we'll never say aword, and you've got a perfectly good dynamite conspiracy, with allthe evidence you need to put the Reds out of business, and you canjust figure it cost you fifty thousand dollars, and it was cheap atthe price, because Nelse Ackerman has paid a whole lot more for yourwork, and you never got anything half as big as this. I know you'llbe mad when you read this, but think it over and keep your shirt on.I send it to you by messenger so you can get hold of Nelse Ackermanright quick, and have him not say anything to the police; becauseyou know how it is--if those babies find it out, it will get to theReds and the newspapers, and it'll be all over town and do a lot ofharm to your frame-up. And you know after those Reds have got beatenup and Shawn Grady lynched, you wouldn't like to have any rumor getout that that dynamite was planted by your own people. Ted and mewill keep out of sight, and we won't sell the jewels for a while,and everything will be all right.
"Yours respectfully,
"Edythe.
"P. S. It really ain't Peter's fault that he's silly about women,and he would have worked for you all right if it hadn't been for mygood looks!"
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So there it was. When Peter had heard this letter, he understoodthat there was no more to be said, and he said it. His own weighthad suddenly become more than he could support, and he saw a chairnearby and slipped into it, and sat with eyes of abject miseryroaming from Guffey to McGivney, and from McGivney to Hammett, andthen back to Guffey again.
The head detective, for all his anger, was a practical man; he couldnot have managed the very important and confidential work of theTraction Trust if he had not been. So now he proceeded to get downto business. Peter would please tell him everything about thatdynamite frame-up; just how they had managed it and just who knewabout it. And Peter, being also a practical man, knew that there wasno use trying to hide anything. He told the story from beginning toend, taking particular pains to make clear that he and N
ell alonewere in the secret---except that beyond doubt Nell had told herlover, Ted Crothers. It was probably Crothers that got the dynamite.From the conversation that ensued Peter gathered that this young manwith the face of a bull-dog was one of the very fanciestsafecrackers in the country, and no doubt he was the real brains ofthe conspiracy; he had put Nell up to it, and managed every step.Suddenly Peter remembered all the kisses which Nell had given him inthe park, and he found a blush of shame stealing over him. Yes,there was no doubt about it, he was a boob where women wereconcerned!
Peter began to plead for himself, Really it wasn't his fault becauseNell had got a hold on him. In the Temple of Jimjambo, when he wasonly a kid, he had been desperately in love with her. She was notonly beautiful, she was so smart; she was the smartest woman he hadever known. McGivney remarked that she had been playing with Petereven then--she had been in Guffey's pay at that time, collectingevidence to put Pashtian el Kalandra in jail and break up the cultof Eleutherinian Exoticism. She had done many such jobs for thesecret service of the Traction Trust, while Peter was stilltraveling around with Pericles Priam selling patent medicine. Nellhad been used by Guffey to seduce a prominent labor leader inAmerican City; she had got him caught in a hotel room with her, andthus had broken the back of the biggest labor strike ever known inthe city's history.
Peter felt suddenly that he had a good defense. Of course a womanlike that had been too much for him! It was Guffey's own fault if hehired people like that and turned them loose! It suddenly dawned onPeter--Nell must have found out that he, Peter, was going to meetyoung Lackman in the Hotel de Soto, and she must have gone theredeliberately to ensnare him. When McGivney admitted that that waspossibly true, Peter felt that he had a case, and proceeded to urgeit with eloquence. He had been a fool, of course, every kind of foolthere was, and he hadn't a word to say for himself; but he hadlearned his lesson and learned it thoroughly. No more women for him,and no more high life, and if Mr. Guffey would give him anotherchance--
Guffey, of course, snorted at him. He wouldn't have a pudding-headlike Peter Gudge within ten miles of his office! But Peter onlypleaded the more abjectly. He really did know the Reds thoroughly,and where could Mr. Guffey find anybody that knew them as well? TheReds all trusted him; he was a real martyr--look at the plasters allover him now! And he had just added another Red laurel to hisbrow--he had been to see Mrs. Godd, and had had the seat of histrousers kicked by Mr. Godd, and of course he could tell that story,and maybe he could catch some Reds in a conspiracy against Mr. Godd.Anyhow, they had that perfectly good case against McCormick and therest of the I. W. Ws. And now that things had gone so far, surelythey couldn't back down on that case! All that was necessary was toexplain matters to Mr. Ackerman--
Peter realized that this was an unfortunate remark. Guffey was onhis feet again, pacing up and down the room, calling Peter the namesof all the barnyard animals, and incidentally revealing that he hadalready had an interview with Mr. Ackerman, and that Mr. Ackermanwas not disposed to receive amicably the news that the secretservice bureau which he had been financing, and which was supposedto be protecting him, had been the means of introducing into hishome a couple of high-class criminals who had cracked his safe andmade off with jewels that they guessed were worth fifty thousanddollars, but that Mr. Ackerman claimed were worth eighty-fivethousand dollars. Peter was informed that he might thank his luckystars that Guffey didn't shut him in the hole for the balance of hislife, or take him into a dungeon and pull him to pieces inch byinch. As it was, all he had to do was to get himself out of Guffey'soffice, and take himself to hell by the quickest route he couldfind. "Go on!" said Guffey. "I mean it, get out!"
And so Peter got to his feet and started unsteadily toward the door.He was thinking to himself: "Shall I threaten them? Shall I say I'llgo over to the Reds and tell what I know?" No, he had better not dothat; the least hint of that might cause Guffey to put him in thehole! But then, how was it possible for Guffey to let him go, totake a chance of his telling? Right now, Guffey must be thinking tohimself that Peter might go away, and in a fit of rage or of despairmight let out the truth to one of the Reds, and then everythingwould be ruined forever. No, surely Guffey would not take such achance! Peter walked very slowly to the door, he opened the doorreluctantly, he stood there, holding on as if he were too weak tokeep his balance; he waited--waited--
And sure enough, Guffey spoke. "Come back here, you mut!" And Peterturned and started towards the head detective, stretching out hishands in a gesture of submission; if it had been in an Easterncountry, he would have fallen on his knees and struck his foreheadthree times in the dust. "Please, please, Mr. Guffey!" he wailed."Give me another chance!"
"If I put you to work again," snarled Guffey, "will you do what Itell you, and not what you want to do yourself?"
"Yes, yes, Mr. Guffey."
"You'll do no more frame-ups but my frame-ups?"
"Yes, yes, Mr. Guffey."
"All right, then, I'll give you one more chance. But by God, if Ifind you so much as winking at another girl, I'll pull your eyeteeth out!"
And Peter's heart leaped with relief. "Oh, thank you, thank you, Mr.Guffey!"
"I'll pay you twenty dollars a week, and no more," said Guffey."You're worth more, but I can't trust you with money, and you cantake it or leave it."
"That'll be perfectly satisfactory, Mr. Guffey," said Peter.
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So there was the end of high life for Peter Gudge. He moved no morein the celestial circles of Mount Olympus. He never again saw theChinese butler of Mr. Ackerman, nor the French parlor-maid of Mrs.Godd. He would no more be smiled at by the two hundred andtwenty-four boy angels of the ceiling of the Hotel de Soto lobby.Peter would eat his meals now seated on a stool in front of a lunchcounter, he would really be the humble proletarian, the "JimmieHiggins" of his role. He put behind him bright dreams of anaccumulated competence, and settled down to the hard day's work ofcultivating the acquaintance of agitators, visiting their homes andwatching their activities, getting samples of the literature theywere circulating, stealing their letters and address-books andnote-books, and taking all these to Room 427 of the American House.
These were busy times just now. In spite of the whippings and thelynchings and the jailings--or perhaps because of these verythings--the radical movement was seething. The I. W. Ws. hadreorganized secretly, and were accumulating a defense fund for theirprisoners; also, the Socialists of all shades of red and pink werebusy, and the labor men had never ceased their agitation over theGoober case. Just now they were redoubling their activities, becauseMrs. Goober was being tried for her life. Over in Russia a mob ofAnarchists had made a demonstration in front of the AmericanLegation, because of the mistreatment of a man they called "Guba."At any rate, that was the way the news came over the cables, and thenews-distributing associations of the country had been so successfulin keeping the Goober case from becoming known that the editors ofthe New York papers really did not know any better, and printed thename as it came, "Guba!" which of course gave the radicals a finechance to laugh at them, and say, how much they cared about labor!
The extreme Reds seemed to have everything their own way in Russia.Late in the fall they overthrew the Russian government, and tookcontrol of the country, and proceeded to make peace with Germany;which put the Allies in a frightful predicament, and introduced anew word into the popular vocabulary, the dread word "Bolshevik."After that, if a man suggested municipal ownership of ice-wagons,all you had to do was to call him a "Bolshevik" and he was done for.
However, the extremists replied to this campaign of abuse by takingup the name and wearing it as a badge. The Socialist local ofAmerican City adopted amid a storm of applause a resolution to callitself the "Bolshevik local," and the "left-wingers" had everythingtheir own way for a time. The leader in this wing was a man namedHerbert Ashton, editor of the American City "Clarion," the party'spaper. A newspaper-man, lean, sallow, and incredibly bitter, Ashtonapparently had spent all his life st
udying the intrigues ofinternational capital, and one never heard an argument advanced thathe was not ready with an answer. He saw the war as a strugglebetween the old established commercialism of Great Britain, whosegovernment he described as "a gigantic trading corporation," and thenewly arisen and more aggressive commercialism of Germany.
Ashton would take the formulas of the war propagandists and treatthem as a terrier treats a rat. So this was a war for democracy! Thebankers of Paris had for the last twenty years been subsidizing theRussian Tsars, who had shipped a hundred thousand exiles to Siberiato make the world safe for democracy! The British Empire also hadgone to war for democracy--first in Ireland, then in India andEgypt, then in the Whitechapel slums! No, said Ashton, the workerswere not to be fooled with such bunk. Wall Street had loaned somebillions of dollars to the Allied bankers, and now the Americanpeople were asked to shed their blood to make the world safe forthose loans!
Peter had been urging McGivney to put an end to this sort ofagitation, and now the rat-faced man told him that the time foraction had come. There was to be a big mass meeting to celebrate theBolshevik revolution, and McGivney warned Peter to keep out of sightat that meeting, because there might be some clubbing. Peter leftoff his red badge, and the button with the clasped hands and went upinto the gallery and lost himself in the crowd. He saw a great many"bulls" whom he knew scattered thru the audience, and also he sawthe Chief of Police and the head of the city's detective bureau.When Herbert Ashton was half way thru his tirade, the Chief strodeup to the platform and ordered him under arrest, and a score ofpolicemen put themselves between the prisoner and the howlingaudience.
Altogether they arrested seven people; and next morning, when theysaw how much enthusiasm their action had awakened in the newspapers,they decided to go farther yet. A dozen of Guffey's men, withanother dozen from the District Attorney's office, raided the officeof Ashton's paper, the "Clarion," kicked the editorial staffdownstairs or threw them out of the windows, and proceeded to smashthe typewriters and the printing presses, and to carry off thesubscription lists and burn a ton or two of "literature" in the backyard. Also they raided the headquarters of the "Bolshevik local,"and placed the seven members of the executive committee underarrest, and the judge fixed the bail of each of them at twenty-fivethousand dollars, and every day for a week or two the American City"Times" would send a man around to Guffey's office, and Guffey wouldfurnish him with a mass of material which Peter had prepared,showing that the Socialist program was one of terrorism and murder.
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