Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia

by Gruber, Frank

  “What else is there to do? As strikers, we’re within our rights. Covering up a murder—no!” Jackson looked as if he’d been expecting the worst to happen and now felt justified.

  “I don’t agree with you, Henry,” cut in Pete Walsh. “We tell the cops right now and we might just as well walk out of here. Call the strike off.”

  “And you, Smith, what’s your opinion?” asked Olinger.

  “I say bury him and keep our mouths shut!”

  Olinger looked questioningly at Steve Murphy.

  “I side with Jackson.”

  Olinger sighed. “That’s two for and two against. Which leaves the deciding vote up to me. All my life I’ve been a law-abiding person. But the folks in this plant voted me their leader; they’re counting on me to see them through. I can’t let them down. While I’m absolutely in favor of keeping within the law, this time I’ve got to go against it. We keep this quiet and go on with the strike!”

  Walsh and Smith nodded agreement. Murphy and Jackson sulked for a while, but finally agreed to abide by the decision of the majority.

  Olinger said to Quade, then: “And you, Quade, unless you want to be locked up in some store room somewhere, you’ll promise to keep your mouth shut?”

  “I’m the world’s greatest talker—when I’m paid to talk,” retorted Quade. “But no being paid, there’s a zipper on my mouth. But what about the girls?”

  “I think I can count on them not to talk,” Olinger said.

  Pete Walsh winked at the others. Olinger saw the wink and reddened. “Let’s get back to our business!” he snapped. “Walsh, you and Jackson remove—this! Hide the body in a box somewhere!”

  “Not me,” said Walsh, backing away. “I’ll touch ’em when they’re alive and I’ll sling ’em around when they’re sick, but when they’re dead, Mrs. Walsh’s boy, Peter, don’t touch them!”

  “You big cream-puff!” snorted Ford Smith. “I’ll help Steve.”

  The others returned to the office. Quade looked out of the front window. The office was on the second floor and afforded an excellent view of the street. Scores of pickets were parading back and forth outside the fence and across the street several hundred sympathizers stood and watched. In between them and the pickets, on the street, patrolled fifty or sixty uniformed policemen, all with pistols belted on the outside of their uniforms.

  Beyond the street, approximately a hundred yards from the cash register plant office was a three-story brick building. In an upper window a man was waving a couple of white flags on short poles.

  “Man over there, signaling, Olinger,” Quade remarked.

  Olinger came swiftly to the window. “That’s headquarters. We’ve disconnected the phones.” He watched quietly for a while, then said, “It’s Gaylord, boys. He says Bartlett’s having a powwow with the mayor and the city officials. He’ll let us know the results.”

  Steve Murphy’s piggish eyes, almost concealed in his fat cheeks, gleamed. “Ain’t the conference private?”

  Olinger grinned. “We’ve got a spy in the mayor’s office.”

  Ford Smith, who had just come in, looked nastily at Quade. “And I’ll bet a dime there’s spies in here, too!”

  “Mr. Smith,” Quade said bluntly, “I don’t think I like you!”

  “I’ll hold your coat, Smith,” jeered big Pete Walsh.

  But Ford Smith did not want to fight Quade. He glowered at him and retreated. Quade looked out of the windows again. “Better break out your flags, Olinger. Gaylord wants to know if things are O.K. over here?”

  Olinger looked at Quade in astonishment. “How do you know?”

  “I understand the code.”

  “No,” said Olinger. “You don’t understand that code. It’s not the regular Semaphore code.”

  “I know that,” replied Quade. “It’s the old Prussian Army code. The one they used so effectively during the Franco-Prussian War. It’s practically obsolete today, which is why you and Gaylord studied it, I suppose.” He grinned. “You remember I told you I was the Human Encyclopedia. I know everything.”

  Olinger got a couple of white flags from a desk drawer. “You know too much, Quade. Would you mind leaving this room, now? I want to talk to Gaylord, privately!”

  “I’ll go see how the boys in the back room are making out.”

  They were making out all right. Quade found poker games going on in almost every room of the plant. There were plenty of checker boards in sight, too; even chess. The recreation room was the scene of a tremendous crap game. Everyone seemed to be in high spirits. It was the first afternoon of the strike.

  At five o’clock Olinger announced that the mayor’s conference had broken up in a disagreement. Bartlett and his officials had decided to fight the strike. There was much cursing at that. Olinger stilled it by announcing there would be a dance immediately after supper. “But we’ll keep it in this recreation room!” he warned.

  There was a big cafeteria in the plant for it was located out of the city a ways; the strikers had taken it over and drawn lots as to who would cook. There was plenty of food, well-cooked.

  Later, the fifty female sit-down strikers came down from the second floor. There were musicians and musical instruments.

  Quade did not dance. He wasn’t in the mood. This plant, he felt, was a smoldering volcano. The body of John Hocker was hidden in a packing box in the stock room, an overt move outside the plant, anything, might be a spark that would set off the volcano.

  Around eight-thirty, a man came into the recreation room, whispered in Bob Olinger’s ear. Olinger left the room, and returned fifteen minutes later, his forehead furrowed. Quade saw him whisper to Murphy, Walsh, Smith and Jackson, in turn. They left the room with extravagant casualness. Quade slipped after them.

  “You stay here!” snapped Smith.

  “Oh, let him come along,” said Olinger. “He’s in as deep as us.”

  They went to the office, and Olinger got out the signal flags, wigwagged rapidly for five minutes. Then he stopped to watch the windows across the street …

  “Bartlett claims we’re holding Hocker a prisoner here,” Olinger reported. “Says Hocker was in the plant today. His family claims he never came home from the office. They want us to let the police in here.”

  “Nothing doing!” cried Walsh. “If we’re in this so deep, let’s fight it out.”

  “We’ll have to,” said Olinger. “We couldn’t let them find Hocker’s body after denying that he was here.” Olinger signaled the refusal. Then he turned around.

  “Gaylord’ll keep them out. He realizes the importance of not letting the police crash in here. But the Bartlett officials voted to fight us. Hocker, who’s dead, was ordinarily sympathetic to our cause. Samuel Sharp, the next biggest stockholder after Bartlett, is inactive in the business. Besides, he’s in New York. Cassoway, the treasurer, is on the fence. So when Hocker was killed, our cause was hurt. Now, Bartlett says he’ll not even arbitrate until we leave the plant.

  “If we leave, we’re licked. Bartlett’d get in a flock of strikebreakers. If we last two weeks, we can win. There’s talk that the company isn’t any too well fixed. If we hold up production for two weeks, Bartlett will surrender on our terms. He can’t stand a shutdown more than that. The orders the company has will go to a competitor.”

  “Say, Bartlett could shut up this business right now and never have to worry about the rent,” Walsh growled. “I see by the paper the other day where that dizzy daughter of his is figuring on marrying herself a phony duke.”

  Something clicked in Oliver Quade’s brain. With one of the finest memories in existence, he never forgot a name or face and yet … a while ago he had seen a face and had not been able to identify it. But now he knew …

  Quade slipped out of the office and returned to the recreation room. Many of the strikers had retired for the night, but t
here were still quite a few dancers there. Ruth Larson was among them.

  Quade went up to her. “Would you mind stepping aside with me?”

  “Why, Mr. Quade!” she mocked him. “It’s against the rules to go out on the veranda.”

  “I know it—Miss Bartlett!”

  She caught her breath. “How did you know?”

  “I saw your picture in a newspaper, once. I never forget a face, and when one of the lads mentioned Bartlett’s daughter being in Europe, I tumbled to your name. Why—”

  She colored. “A lark, I guess you’d call it.”

  “No. I wouldn’t. Ruth Bartlett wouldn’t work in her father’s plant. How long—a month?”

  “Two.”

  “Bob Olinger?”

  She bit her lip. Then, “Yes, he’s the reason. I met him three months ago at a schoolmate’s home. I was just one of several rich girls there, to him. He couldn’t tell one of us from another, but I—”

  “So you got a job here, where you’d see him. Your father know?”

  “Oh, no! He thinks I’m in Europe. A girl chum of mine sends him a telegram every week, signing my name. No one here knows me, none of the office help or the officials.”

  “No.” She looked down at her denim work apron. “There are four hundred girls in this plant. Half of them dress like this. In the assembly room where I work, there are a hundred girls. We work alike, look alike, and none of the officials ever look close at a factory hand.”

  Quade shook his head. “But why’d you stay here?”

  Before she could answer, Pete Walsh bore down on them. “Time to break up,” he said, “Olinger’s orders.”

  Quade watched her walk off.

  In the machine shops Quade found a couple of hundred folding cots, already set up. He appropriated one, loosened his shoe laces and stretched out. He was asleep in a few minutes.

  Breakfast consisted of coffee and bread.

  Having eaten, Quade went to the office on the second floor. He found Olinger and his four captains holding a council of war.

  “I judge by your faces the strike isn’t going so good this morning,” he greeted the strikers.

  “It’s now 7:30,” said Olinger. “In twenty minutes a force of strikebreakers will try to crash through the line. They’ll be escorted by a hundred special deputies and police. There’re eight hundred of our men outside those gates, besides a thousand sympathizers. They don’t intend to let those strikebreakers through the gates.”

  Quade whistled. “Does Bartlett know of your attitude?”

  “Gaylord—across the street—warned him. Bartlett’s gotten in touch with the governor. The governor has refused to act until the sheriff requests it. Sheriff Spiess is a fool. He thinks we’re bluffing.”

  “I still think the boys should have some guns,” cut in Ford Smith. “Them deputies is armed. They’re professional gunmen, spoiling for a fight. Everyone of them was shipped in here by that strike-breakin’ outfit in New York.”

  “You’re a captain,” suggested Henry Jackson, sarcastically. “Would you like to go down there and lead the men?”

  Pete Walsh jeered and Ford Smith flushed angrily. “You think I’m afraid! Let me tell you—”

  Jackson turned to the window. “The strikebreakers are coming!”

  The pickets and sympathizers outside saw them, too. The picket lines stopped, stiffened into a formation along the fence.

  Olinger snapped orders to his captains. “Walsh, Smith, get down among the men quickly. They’re not to leave the plant. Jackson, Murphy, you two get out in front of the doors. See that no one leaves! Our men are not to get mixed in outside, no matter what happens!”

  The four captains ran from the room. Olinger stared out the window and Quade saw the worried look on the young strike leader’s face.

  Then the epic outside took Quade’s full attention. A fleet of trucks was coming slowly up the street, surrounded by a convoy of police cars. All along the front of the plant, outside the high steel wire, the strikers were three deep, their arms linked together in a chain. If they held …

  On the other side of the street were hundreds and hundreds of friends and relatives of the strikers. Over on the other side, in the brick building, the windows were black with union officials, organizers, strike chieftains.

  The trucks and their convoys stopped when they came to within a hundred feet of the main gate. One of the police cars rolled ahead. Several men stepped out of the line of the strikers, went to talk with the officials in the open car. The din of the pickets subsided. Everyone seemed to want to hear what the dickering would lead to: fight or parley.

  “That’s the fool sheriff, Speiss!” mumbled Olinger. “I hope he listens to reason!”

  The parley went on for a full minute. The sheriff, conspicuous by his light gray Stetson, waved his hands and shouted. The strikers on the street argued and waved their hands too.

  “As long as they talk,” Quade said, “things will be all right. Talking men don’t fight.”

  Then a gun cracked somewhere and the sheriff reeled and fell back against a couple of his deputies. “I’m hit!” he cried.

  Hell broke loose then. A couple of deputies in the car threw up riot guns and blazed away—straight into the chain of pickets.

  The strikers surged toward the cars and a hail of lead from other automobiles met them. Tear gas cartridges popped and exploded everywhere into clouds of gray smoke. Above it all, the screams and yells and cries of two thousand men and women. And the scuffing and rushing and turmoil!

  It was hell. It lasted only a half minute, but that was long enough to strew a number of bodies along the street.

  “Oh, God!” cried Bob Olinger in the plant. “It happened!”

  “That first bullet,” Quade gritted. “It came from this building. Upstairs!”

  Olinger blinked stupidly. Then: “Of course! The sheriff was facing this way when he was hit. He jerked backwards from the impact. Lord! Who—”

  “The same man who did for Hocker…. Olinger, you’ve got to get that man. There’s going to be plenty of hell about that out there. If you don’t get the person responsible for it—”

  “I know that. But how can I find one man among three hundred?”

  “He’s got a gun, a rifle. You ought to find it.”

  “In a plant of this size?”

  Quade scowled. “Olinger, have you thought that perhaps all of this, the murder of Hocker, that shot, are all part of an insidious plot?”

  “To make us lose the strike?”

  “Not exactly—Look, the trucks are backing away.”

  “But the police and deputies are staying. They’re driving back our men.”

  “What if they try to drive you out of here?”

  Olinger swung around. “I don’t think they’ll try that. The men outside are unarmed, out in the open. They can’t fight against a hundred guns. But in here—no, I don’t think they’ll try that. Anyway, not with the sheriff out of it.”

  “But the National Guard!”

  Olinger swore. “Above all, Gaylord and the rest of us didn’t want the National Guard here. The governor was opposed to our strike in the first place.”

  “He’s a fair man, though. You’ll get a square deal from him. Perhaps it’ll be a good thing if the Guard does come,” Quade said.

  “Oh, they’ll come all right. I understand a couple of companies were already mobilizing last night, just in case.”

  “And then comes the investigation—and they’ll find the body here.”

  Olinger’s shoulders stiffened. “We’re licked? Is that what you mean?”

  Quade was looking out of the window. “The flags, Olinger. Gaylord says the shot came from the fourth floor, directly over us. But it was too far away to recognize who did the shooting.”

  “Let’s go
!”

  The room on the fourth floor was a typists’ office. The door was unlocked; the room was empty.

  “He’s gone!” cried Olinger.

  “He’s done his work. You didn’t expect him to stick around.” Quade was looking around the floor. Olinger watched him, puzzled. Quade suddenly stooped and picked up something.

  “The empty shell,” he said. “It’s a thirty-thirty—the same gun that killed Hocker. Hardly be two such guns in the plant. Now to find the gun.”

  “You don’t think he’d leave it here, do you?”

  Quade shrugged. “Where else? It’s daylight now and he’d hardly take a chance walking through the plant with a rifle. He probably brought it up here last night and hid it. Let’s see, where would I hide a rifle in here?”

  He looked around the room. There were steel lockers and filing cabinets and many desks. He frowned. “Perhaps under a desk, fastened there with a couple of bent nails or string …”

  Olinger, too, got down on his knees and began looking under desks. It was Quade, though, who found the gun—under a desk.

  “A thirty-thirty repeating rifle,” he commented, examining the stock critically. He sighed. “He wiped it off. No fingerprints.”

  Quade worked the lever of the rifle. The gun tossed out four loaded cartridges; he put them in his pocket.

  They returned to the main office. The four strike captains were there. Olinger told them about the bullet coming from the fourth-floor window. The captains looked at the gun in Quade’s hands.

  “The man who fired from that window was the same one who killed John Hocker,” said Olinger.

  “Gaylord signaling again,” said Jackson by the window.

  Olinger stepped to the window, looked across to union headquarters. “Spiess is alive, but badly wounded,” he translated. “Five of our boys got hurt, two killed. Sheriff Spiess has sent the call to the governor. Two companies of Guardsmen will be here this evening.”

  Pete Walsh and Ford Smith swore lustily. Steve Murphy’s forehead washboarded. “That’ll mean an investigation, huh?”

  Olinger shrugged. “I don’t see how we can prevent it. I’m only hoping—Damn!” He was still looking out of the window. “The chief of police wants to know if he can come in to look for Hocker. Gaylord signals he insists.”