“Jo, if we could figure out something to turn the tables on these Democrats, we wouldn’t have to work for the rest of our lives,” Williams observed, blowing a cloud of cigarette smoke out of the other corner of his mouth.
“Yes, that’s right, Walt, but there ain’t a chance in the world. Old Gay is almost crazy, you know. Came in here slamming doors and snapping at everybody this morning,” Bonds remarked.
Williams leaned closer to him, lowered his flame-thatched head and then looking to the right and left whispered, “Listen here, do you know where Beard is?”
“No,” answered Bonds, starting and looking around to see if anyone was listening. “Where is he?”
“Well, I got a letter from him the other day. He’s down there in Richmond doing research work for the Anglo-Saxon Association under that Dr. Buggerie.”
“Do they know who he is?”
“Of course they don’t. He’s been white quite a while now, you know, and of course they’d never connect him with the Dr. Shakespeare A. Beard who used to be one of their most outspoken enemies.”
“Well, what about it?” persisted Bonds, eagerly. “Do you think he might know something on the Democrats that might help?”
“He might. We could try him out anyway. If he knows anything he’ll spill it because he hates that crowd.”
“How will you get in touch with him quickly? Write to him?”
“Certainly not,” growled Williams. “I’ll get expenses from Gay for the trip. He’ll fall for anything now.”
He rose and made for the elevator. Five minutes later he was standing before his boss, the National Chairman, a worried, gray little man with an aldermaniac paunch and a convict’s mouth.
“What is it, Williams?” snapped the Chairman.
“I’d like to get expenses to Richmond,” said Williams. “I have a friend down there in Snobbcraft’s office and he might have some dope we can use to our advantage.”
“Scandal?” asked Mr. Gay, brightening.
“Well, I don’t know right now, of course, but this fellow is a very shrewd observer and in six months’ time he ought to have grabbed something that’ll help us out of this jam.”
“Is he a Republican or a Democrat?”
“Neither. He’s a highly trained and competent social student. You couldn’t expect him to be either,” Williams observed. “But I happen to know that he hasn’t got any money to speak of, so for a consideration I’m sure he’ll spill everything he knows, if anything.”
“Well, it’s a gamble,” said Gay, doubtfully, “but any port in a storm.”
Williams left Washington immediately for Richmond. That night he sat in a cramped little room of the former champion of the darker races.
“What are you doing down there, Beard?” asked Williams, referring to the headquarters of the Anglo-Saxon Association.
“Oh, I’m getting, or helping to get, that data of Buggerie’s into shape.”
“What data? You told me you were doing research work. Now you say you’re arranging data. Have they finished collecting it?”
“Yes, we finished that job some time ago. Now we’re trying to get the material in shape for easy digestion.”
“What do you mean: easy digestion?” queried Williams. “What are you fellows trying to find out and why must it be so easily digested. You fellows usually try to make your stuff unintelligible to the herd.”
“This is different,” said Beard, lowering his voice to almost a whisper. “We’re under a pledge of secrecy. We have been investigating the family trees of the nation and so far, believe me, we certainly have uncovered astounding facts. When I’m finally discharged, which will probably be after election, I’m going to peddle some of that information. Snobbcraft and even Buggerie are not aware of the inflammatory character of the facts we’ve assembled.” He narrowed his foxy eyes greedily.
“Is it because they’ve been planning to release some of that they want it in easily digestible form, as you say?” pressed Williams.
“That’s it exactly,” declared Beard, stroking his now clean-shaven face. “I overheard Buggerie and Snobbcraft chuckling about it only a day or two ago.”
“Well, there must be a whole lot of it,” insinuated Williams, “if they’ve had all of you fellows working for six months. Where all did you work?”
“Oh, all over. North as well as South. We’ve got a whole basement vault full of index cards.”
“I guess they’re keeping close watch over it, aren’t they?” asked Williams.
“Sure. It would take an army to get in that vault.”
“Well, I guess they don’t want anything to happen to the stuff before they spring it,” observed the man from Republican headquarters.
Soon afterward Williams left Dr. Beard, took a stroll around the Anglo-Saxon Association’s stately headquarters building, noted the half-dozen tough-looking guards about it and then caught the last train for the capital city. The next morning he had a long talk with Gorman Gay.
“It’s okeh, Jo,” he whispered to Bonds later, as he passed his desk.
ELEVEN
“What’s the matter with you, Matt?” asked Bunny one morning about a month before election. “Ain’t everything going okeh? You look as if we’d lost the election and failed to elect that brilliant intellectual, Henry Givens, President of the United States.”
“Well, we might just as well lose it as far as I’m concerned,” said Matthew, “if I don’t find a way out of this jam I’m in.”
“What jam?”
“Well, Helen got in the family way last winter again. I sent her to Palm Beach and the other resorts, thinking the travel and exercise might bring on another miscarriage.”
“Did it?”
“Not a chance in the world. Then, to make matters worse, she miscalculates. At first she thought she would be confined in December; now she tells me she’s only got about three weeks to go.”
“Say not so!”
“I’m preaching gospel.”
“Well, hush my mouth! Whaddya gonna do? You can’t send her to one o’ Crookman’s hospitals, it would be too dangerous right now.”
“That’s just it. You see, I figured she wouldn’t be ready until about a month after election when everything had calmed down, and I could send her then.”
“Would she have gone?”
“She couldn’t afford not to with her old man the President of the United States.”
“Well, whaddya gonna do, Big Boy? Think fast! Think fast! Them three weeks will get away from here in no time.”
“Don’t I know it?”
“What about an abortion?” suggested Bunny, hopefully.
“Nothing doing. First place, she’s too frail, and second place she’s got some fool idea about that being a sin.”
“About the only thing for you to do then,” said Bunny, “is to get ready to pull out when that kid is born.”
“Oh, Bunny, I’d hate to leave Helen. She’s really the only woman I ever loved, you know. ’Course she’s got her prejudices and queer notions like everybody else but she’s really a little queen. She’s been an inspiration to me, too, Bunny. Every time I talk about pulling out of this game when things don’t go just right, she makes me stick it out. I guess I’d have been gone after I cleaned up that first million if it hadn’t been for her.”
“You’d have been better off if you had,” Bunny commented.
“Oh, I don’t know. She’s hot for me to become Secretary of State or Ambassador to England or something like that; and the way things are going it looks like I will be. That is, if I can get out of this fix.”
“If you can get out o’ this jam, Matt, I’ll sure take my hat off to you. An’ I know how you feel about scuttling out and leaving her. I had a broad like that once in Harlem. ’Twas through her I got that job in th’ bank. She was
crazy about me, Boy, until she caught me two-timin’. Then she tried to shoot me.”
“Squaws are funny that way,” Bunny continued, philosophically. “Since I’ve been white I’ve found out they’re all the same, white or black. Kipling was right. They’ll fight to get you, fight to keep you and fight you when they catch you playin’ around. But th’ kinda woman that won’t fight for a man ain’t worth havin’.”
“So you think I ought to pull out, eh Bunny?” asked the worried Matthew, returning to the subject.
“Well, what I’d suggest is this,” his plump friend advised, “about time you think Helen’s gonna be confined, get together as much cash as you can and keep your plane ready. Then, when the baby’s born, go to her, tell her everything an’ offer to take her away with you. If she won’t go, you beat it; if she will, why everything’s hotsy totsy.” Bunny extended his soft pink hands expressively.
“Well, that sounds pretty good, Bunny.”
“It’s your best bet, Big Boy,” said his friend and secretary.
—
Two days before election the situation was unchanged. There was joy in the Democratic camp, gloom among the Republicans. For the first time in American history it seemed that money was not going to decide an election. The propagandists and publicity men of the Democrats had so played upon the fears and prejudices of the public that even the bulk of Jews and Catholics were wavering and many had been won over to the support of a candidate who had denounced them but a few months before. In this they were but running true to form, however, as they had usually been on the side of white supremacy in the old days when there was a Negro population observable to the eye. The Republicans sought to dig up some scandal against Givens and Snobbcraft but were dissuaded by their Committee on Strategy which feared to set so dangerous a precedent. There were also politicians in their ranks who were guilty of adulteries, drunkenness and grafting.
The Republicans, Goosie and Gump, and the Democrats, Givens and Snobbcraft, had ended their swings around the country and were resting from their labors. There were parades in every city and country town. Minor orators beat the lectern from the Atlantic to the Pacific extolling the imaginary virtues of the candidates of the party that hired them. Dr. Crookman was burned a hundred times in effigy. Several lying-in hospitals were attacked. Two hundred citizens who knew nothing about either candidate were arrested for fighting over which was the better man.
The air was electric with expectancy. People stood around in knots. Small boys scattered leaflets on ten million doorsteps. Police were on the alert to suppress disorder, except what they created.
—
Arthur Snobbcraft, jovial and confident that he would soon assume a position befitting a member of one of the First Families of Virginia, was holding a brilliant pre-election party in his palatial residence. Strolling in and out amongst his guests, the master of the house accepted their premature congratulations in good humor. It was fine to hear oneself already addressed as Mr. Vice-President.
The tall English butler hastily edged his way through the throng surrounding the President of the Anglo-Saxon Association and whispered, “Dr. Buggerie is in the study upstairs. He says he must see you at once; that it is very, very important.”
Puzzled, Snobbcraft went up to find out what in the world could be the trouble. As he entered, the massive statistician was striding back and forth, mopping his brow, his eyes starting from his head, a sheaf of typewritten sheets trembling in his hand.
“What’s wrong, Buggerie?” asked Snobbcraft, perturbed.
“Everything! Everything!” shrilled the statistician.
“Be specific, please.”
“Well,” shaking the sheaf of papers in Snobbcraft’s face, “we can’t release any of this stuff! It’s too damaging! It’s too inclusive! We’ll have to suppress it, Snobbcraft. You hear me? We mustn’t let anyone get hold of it.” The big man’s flabby jowls worked excitedly.
“What do you mean?” snarled the F. F. V. “Do you mean to tell me that all of that money and work is wasted?”
“That’s exactly what I mean,” squeaked Buggerie. “It would be suicidal to publish it.”
“Why? Get down to brass tacks, man, for God’s sake. You get my goat.”
“Now listen here, Snobbcraft,” replied the statistician soberly, dropping heavily into a chair. “Sit down and listen to me. I started this investigation on the theory that the data gathered would prove that around twenty million people, mostly of the lower classes, were of Negro ancestry, recent and remote, while about half that number would be of uncertain or unknown ancestry.”
“Well, what have you found?” insisted Snobbcraft, impatiently.
“I have found,” continued Buggerie, “that over half the population has no record of its ancestry beyond five generations!”
“That’s fine!” chortled Snobbcraft. “I’ve always maintained that there were only a few people of good blood in this country.”
“But those figures include all classes,” protested the larger man. “Your class as well as the lower classes.”
“Don’t insult me, Buggerie!” shouted the head of the Anglo-Saxons, half rising from his seat on the sofa.
“Be calm! Be calm!” cried Buggerie excitedly. “You haven’t heard anything yet.”
“What else, in the name of God, could be a worse libel on the aristocracy of this state?” Snobbcraft mopped his dark and haughty countenance.
“Well, these statistics we’ve gathered prove that most of our social leaders, especially of Anglo-Saxon lineage, are descendants of colonial stock that came here in bondage. They associated with slaves, in many cases worked and slept with them. They intermixed with the blacks and the women were sexually exploited by their masters. Then, even more than today, the illegitimate birth rate was very high in America.”
Snobbcraft’s face was working with suppressed rage. He started to rise but reconsidered. “Go on,” he commanded.
“There was so much of this mixing between whites and blacks of the various classes that very early the colonies took steps to put a halt to it. They managed to prevent intermarriage but they couldn’t stop intermixture. You know the old records don’t lie. They’re right there for everybody to see. . . .
“A certain percentage of these Negroes,” continued Buggerie, quite at ease now and seemingly enjoying his dissertation, “in time lightened sufficiently to be able to pass for white. They then merged with the general population. Assuming that there were one thousand such cases fifteen generations ago—and we have proof that there were more—their descendants now number close to fifty million souls. Now I maintain that we dare not risk publishing this information. Too many of our very first families are touched right here in Richmond!”
“Buggerie!” gasped the F. F. V., “Are you mad?”
“Quite sane, sir,” squeaked the ponderous man, somewhat proudly, “and I know what I know.” He winked a watery eye.
“Well, go on. Is there any more?”
“Plenty,” proceeded the statistician, amiably. “Take your own family, for instance. (Now don’t get mad, Snobbcraft.) Take your own family. It is true that your people descended from King Alfred, but he has scores, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of descendants. Some are, of course, honored and respected citizens, cultured aristocrats who are a credit to the country; but most of them, my dear, dear Snobbcraft, are in what you call the lower orders: that is to say, laboring people, convicts, prostitutes, and that sort. One of your maternal ancestors in the late seventeenth century was the offspring of an English serving maid and a black slave. This woman in turn had a daughter by the plantation owner. This daughter was married to a former indentured slave. Their children were all white and you are one of their direct descendants!” Buggerie beamed.
“Stop!” shouted Snobbcraft, the veins standing out on his narrow forehead and his voice trembling with rage. �
��You can’t sit there and insult my family that way, suh.”
“Now that outburst just goes to prove my earlier assertion,” the large man continued, blandly. “If you get so excited about the truth, what do you think will be the reaction of other people? There’s no use getting angry at me. I’m not responsible for your ancestry! Nor, for that matter, are you. You’re no worse off than I am, Snobbcraft. My great, great grandfather had his ears cropped for non-payment of debts and was later jailed for thievery. His illegitimate daughter married a free Negro who fought in the Revolutionary War.” Buggerie wagged his head almost gleefully.
“How can you admit it?” asked the scandalized Snobbcraft.
“Why not?” demanded Buggerie. “I have plenty of company. There’s Givens, who is quite a fanatic on the race question and white supremacy, and yet he’s only four generations removed from a mulatto ancestor.”
“Givens too?”
“Yes, and also the proud Senator Kretin. He boasts, you know, of being descended from Pocahontas and Captain John Smith, but so are thousands of Negroes. Incidentally, there hasn’t been an Indian unmixed with Negro on the Atlantic coastal plain for over a century and a half.”
“What about Matthew Fisher?”
“We can find no record whatever of Fisher, which is true of about twenty million others, and so,” he lowered his voice dramatically, “I have reason to suspect that he is one of those Negroes who have been whitened.”
“And to think that I entertained him in my home!” Snobbcraft muttered to himself. And then aloud: “Well, what are we to do about it?”
“We must destroy the whole shooting match,” the big man announced as emphatically as possible for one with a soprano voice, “and we’d better do it at once. The sooner we get through with it the better.”
“But I can’t leave my guests,” protested Snobbcraft. Then turning angrily upon his friend, he growled, “Why in the devil didn’t you find all of this out before?”
“Well,” said Buggerie, meekly, “I found out as soon as I could. We had to arrange and correlate the data, you know.”
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