Willy Cameron was free that evening. Although he had not slept at all
the night before, he felt singularly awake and active. The Committee
had made temporary quarters of his small back room at the pharmacy,
and there had sat in rather depressed conclave during a part of the
afternoon. Pink Denslow had come in late, and had remained, silent and
haggard, through the debate.
There was nothing to do but to start again in an attempt to get files
and card indexes. Greater secrecy was to be preserved and enjoined, the
location of the office to be known only to a small inner circle,
and careful policing of it and of the building which housed it to be
established. As a further safeguard, two duplicate files would be kept
in other places. The Committee groaned over its own underestimate of the
knowledge of the radicals.
The two buildings chosen for destruction were, respectively, the bank
building where their file was kept, and the club, where nine-tenths
of the officers of the Committee were members. The significance of the
double outrage was unquestionable.
When the meeting broke up Pink remained behind. He found it rather
difficult to broach the matter in his mind. It was always hard for him
to talk about Lily Cardew, and lately he had had a growing conviction
that Willy Cameron found it equally difficult. He wondered if Cameron,
too, was in love with Lily. There had been a queer look in his face on
those rare occasions when Pink had mentioned her, a sort of exaltation,
and an odd difficulty afterwards in getting back to the subject in hand.
Pink had developed an enormous affection and admiration for Willy
Cameron, a strange, loyal, half wistful, totally unselfish devotion. It
had steadied him, when the loss of Lily might have made him reckless,
and had taken the form in recent weeks of finding innumerable business
opportunities, which Willy Cameron cheerfully refused to take.
“I'll stay here until this other thing is settled,” was Willy's
invariable answer. “I have a certain amount of time here, and the
fellows can drop in to see me without causing suspicion. In an office it
would be different. And besides, I can't throw Mr. Davis down. His wife
is in bad shape.”
So, that afternoon, Pink waited until the Committee had dispersed, and
then said, with some difficulty:
“I saw her, Cameron. She has promised to leave.”
“To-day?”
“This afternoon. I wanted to take her away, but she had some things to
do.”
“Then she hadn't known before?”
“No. She thought it was just talk. And they'd kept the papers from her.
She hadn't heard about last night. Well, that's all. I thought you'd
want to know.”
Pink started out, but Willy Cameron called him back.
“Have any of your people any influence with the Cardews?”
“No one has any influence with the Cardews, if you mean the Cardew men.
Why?”
“Because Cardew has got to get out of the mayoralty campaign. That's
all.”
“That's a-plenty,” said Pink, grinning. “Why don't you go and tell him
so?”
“I'm thinking of it. He hasn't a chance in the world, but he'll defeat
Hendricks by splitting the vote, and let the other side in. And you know
what that means.”
“I know it,” Pink observed, “but Mr. Cardew doesn't, and he won't after
you've told him. They've put a lot of money in, and once a Cardew has
invested in a thing he holds on like death. Especially the old man.
Wouldn't wonder he was the fellow who pounded the daylights out of Akers
last night,” he added.
Willy Cameron, having carefully filled his pipe, closed the door into
the shop, and opened a window.
“Akers?” he inquired.
“Noon edition has it,” Pink said. “Claims to have been attacked in his
rooms by two masked men. Probably wouldn't have told it, but the doctor
talked. Looks as though he could wallop six masked men, doesn't he?”
“Yes,” said Willy Cameron, reflectively. “Yes; he does, rather.”
He felt more hopeful than he had for days. Lily on her way home, clear
once more of the poisonous atmosphere of Doyle and his associates; Akers
temporarily out of the way, perhaps for long enough to let the normal
influences of her home life show him to her in a real perspective; and a
rather unholy but very human joy that he had given Akers a part of what
was coming to him--all united to cheer him. He saw Lily going home, and
a great wave of tenderness flooded him. If only they would be tactful
and careful, if only they would be understanding and kind. If they would
only be normal and every-day, and accept her as though she had never
been away. These people were so hedged about with conventions and
restrictions, they put so much emphasis on the letter and so little on
the spirit. If only--God, if only they wouldn't patronize her!
His mother would have known how to receive her. He felt, that afternoon,
a real homesickness for his mother. He saw her, ample and comfortable
and sane, so busy with the comforts of the body that she seemed to
ignore the soul, and yet bringing healing with her every matter-of-fact
movement.
If only Lily could have gone back to her, instead of to that great
house, full of curious eyes and whispering voices.
He saw Mr. Hendricks that evening on his way home to supper. Mr.
Hendricks had lost flesh and some of his buoyancy, but he was
persistently optimistic.
“Up to last night I'd have said we were done, son,” he observed. “But
this bomb business has settled them. The labor vote'll split on it, sure
as whooping cough.”
“They've bought a half-page in all the morning papers, disclaiming all
responsibility and calling on all citizens to help them in protecting
private property.”
“Have they, now,” said Hendricks, with grudging admiration. “Can you
beat that? Where do they get the money, anyhow? If I lost my watch these
days I'd have to do some high-finance before I'd be able to advertise
for it.”
“All right, see Cardew,” were his parting words. “But he doesn't want
this election any more than I want my right leg. He'll stick. You can
talk, Cameron, I'll say it. But you can't pry him off with kind words,
any more than you can a porous plaster.”
Behind Mr. Hendricks' colloquialisms there was something sturdy and
fine. His very vernacular made him popular; his honesty was beyond
suspicion. If he belonged to the old school in politics, he had most
of its virtues and few of its vices. He would take care of his friends,
undoubtedly, but he was careful in his choice of friends. He would make
the city a good place to live in. Like Willy Cameron, he saw it, not
a center of trade so much as a vast settlement of homes. Business
supported the city in his mind, not the city business.
Nevertheless the situation was serious, and it was with a sense of a
desperate remedy for a desperate disease that Willy Cameron, after a
careful toilet, rang the bell of the Cardew house that night. He had no
hope of seeing Lily, but the mere thought that they were under one roof
gave him a sense of nearness and of comfort in her safety.
Dinner was recently over, and he found both the Cardews, father and son,
in the library smoking. He had arrived at a bad moment, for the bomb
outrage, coming on top of Lily's refusal to come home under the given
conditions, had roused Anthony to a cold rage, and left Howard with a
feeling of helplessness.
Anthony Cardew nodded to him grimly, but Howard shook hands and offered
him a chair.
“I heard you speak some time ago, Mr. Cameron,” he said. “You made me
wish I could have had your support.”
“I came to talk about that. I am sorry to have to come in the evening,
but I am not free at any other time.”
“When we go into politics,” said old Anthony in his jibing voice, “the
ordinary amenities have to go. When you are elected, Howard, I shall
live somewhere else.”
Willy Cameron smiled.
“I don't think you will be put to that inconvenience, Mr. Cardew.”
“What's that?” Old Anthony's voice was incredulous. Here, in his own
house, this whipper-snapper--
“I am sure Mr. Howard Cardew realizes he cannot be elected.”
The small ragged vein on Anthony's forehead was the storm signal for the
family. Howard glanced at him, and said urbanely:
“Will you have a cigar, Mr. Cameron? Or a liqueur?”
“Nothing, thank you. If I can have a few minutes' talk with you--”
“If you mean that as a request for me to go out, I will remind you that
I am heavily interested in this matter myself,” said old Anthony. “I
have put in a great deal of money. If you people are going to drop out,
I want to hear it. You've played the devil with us already, with your
independent candidate who can't talk English.”
Willy Cameron kept his temper.
“No,” he said, slowly. “It wasn't a question of Mr. Hendricks
withdrawing. It was a question of Mr. Cardew getting out.”
Sheer astonishment held old Anthony speechless.
“It's like this,” Willy Cameron said. “Your son knows it. Even if we
drop out he won't get it. Justly or unjustly--and I mean that--nobody
with the name of Cardew can be elected to any high office in this city.
There's no reflection on anybody in my saying that. I am telling you a
fact.”
Howard had listened attentively and without anger. “For a long time, Mr.
Cameron,” he said, “I have been urging men of--of position in the city,
to go into politics. We have needed to get away from the professional
politician. I went in, without much hope of election, to--well, you can
say to blaze a trail. It is not being elected that counts with me, so
much as to show my willingness to serve.”
Old Anthony recovered his voice.
“The Cardews made this town, sir,” he barked. “Willingness to serve,
piffle! We need a business man to run the city, and by God, we'll get
it!”
“You'll get an anarchist,” said Willy Cameron, slightly flushed.
“If you want my opinion, young man, this is a trick, a political trick.
And how do we know that your Vigilance Committee isn't a trick, too?
You try to tell us that there is an organized movement here to do heaven
knows what, and by sheer terror you build up a machine which appeals to
the public imagination. You don't say anything about votes, but you see
that they vote for your man. Isn't that true?”
“Yes. If they can keep an anarchist out of office. Akers is an
anarchist. He calls himself something else, but that's what it amounts
to. And those bombs last night were not imaginary.”
The introduction of Louis Akers' name had a sobering effect on Anthony
Cardew. After all, more than anything else, he wanted Akers defeated.
The discussion slowly lost its acrimony, and ended, oddly enough, in
Willy Cameron and Anthony Cardew virtually uniting against Howard.
What Willy Cameron told about Jim Doyle fed the old man's hatred of
his daughter's husband, and there was something very convincing about
Cameron himself. Something of fearlessness and honesty that began,
slowly, to dispose Anthony in his favor.
It was Howard who held out.
“If I quit now it will look as though I didn't want to take a licking,”
he said, quietly obstinate. “Grant your point, that I'm defeated. All
right, I'll be defeated--but I won't quit.”
And Anthony Cardew, confronted by that very quality of obstinacy which
had been his own weapon for so many years, retired in high dudgeon to
his upper rooms. He was living in a strange new world, a reasonable soul
on an unreasonable earth, an earth where a man's last sanctuary, his
club, was blown up about him, and a man's family apparently lived only
to thwart him.
With Anthony gone, Howard dropped the discussion with the air of a man
who has made a final stand.
“What you have said about Mr. Doyle interests me greatly,” he observed,
“because--you probably do not know this--my sister married him some
years ago. It was a most unhappy affair.”
“I do know it. For that reason I am glad that Miss Lily has come home.”
“Has come home? She has not come home, Mr. Cameron. There was a
condition we felt forced to make, and she refused to agree to it.
Perhaps we were wrong. I--”
Willy Cameron got up.
“Was that to-day?” he asked.
“No.”
“But she was coming home to-day. She was to leave there this afternoon.”
“How do you know that?”
“Denslow saw her there this afternoon. She agreed to leave at once. He
had told her of the bombs, and of other things. She hadn't understood
before, and she was horrified. It is just possible Doyle wouldn't let
her go.”
“But--that's ridiculous. She can't be a prisoner in my sister's house.”
“Will you telephone and find out if she is there?” Howard went to the
telephone at once. It seemed to Willy Cameron that he stood there for
uncounted years, and as though, through all that eternity of waiting, he
knew what the answer would be. And that he knew, too, what that answer
meant, where she had gone, what she had done. If only she had come to
him. If only she had come to him. He would have saved her from herself.
He--
“She is not there,” Howard Cardew said, in a voice from which all life
had gone. “She left this afternoon, at four o'clock. Of course she has
friends. Or she may have gone to a hotel. We had managed to make it
practically impossible for her to come home.”
Willy Cameron glanced at his watch. He had discounted the worst before
it came, and unlike the older man, was ready for action. It was he who
took hold of the situation.
“Order a car, Mr. Cardew, and go to the hotels,” he said. “And if you
will drop me downtown--I'll tell you where--I'll follow up something
that has just occurred to me.”