various shades. There was Korwsky, the secretary of the tailors'
union--whose first name I learned was Luka; also his fellow Russian,
the express-driver,--Simon Karlin, and Tom Moneta, the young Mexican
cigar-maker. There was Matthew Everett, free to be a guest on this
occasion, because T-S had brought along another stenographer. There
was Mark Abell, and another Socialist, a young Irishman named Andy
Lynch, a veteran of the late war who had come home completely cured
of militarism, and was now spending his time distributing Socialist
leaflets, and preaching to the workers wherever he could get two or
three to listen. Also there was Hamby, the pacifist whom I did not
like, and a second I. W. W., brought by Colver--a lad named Philip,
who had recently been indicted by the grand jury, and was at this
moment a fugitive from justice with a price upon his head.
The door of the room was opened, and another man came in; a striking
figure, tall and gaunt, with old and pitifully untidy clothing, and
a half month's growth of beard upon his chin. He wore an old black
hat, frayed at the edges; but under this hat was a face of such
gentleness and sadness that it made you think of Carpenter's own.
Withal, it was a Yankee face--of that lean, stringy kind that we
know so well. The newcomer's eyes fell upon Carpenter, and his face
lighted; he set down an old carpet-bag that he was carrying, and
stretched out his two hands, and went to him. “Carpenter! I've been
looking for you!”
And Carpenter answered, “My brother!” And the two clasped hands, and
I thought to myself with astonishment, “How does Carpenter know this
man?”
Presently I whispered to Abell, “Who is he?” I learned that he was
one I had heard of in the papers--Bartholomew Howard, the
“millionaire hobo;” he was grandson and heir of one of our great
captains of industry, and had taken literally the advice of the
prophet, to sell all that he had and give it to the unemployed. He
traveled over the country, living among the hobos and organizing
them into his Brotherhood. Now you would have thought that he and
Carpenter had known each other all their lives; as I watched them, I
found myself thinking: “Where are the clergy and the pillars of St.
Bartholomew's Church?” There were none of them at this supper-party!
LI
T-S had stopped at a caterer's on his way to the gathering, and had
done his humble best in the form of a strawberry short-cake almost
half as large around as himself; also several bottles of purple
color, with the label of grape juice. When the company gathered at
the table and these bottles were opened, they made a suspicious
noise, and so we all made jokes, as people have the habit of doing
in these days of getting used to prohibition. I noticed that
Carpenter laughed at the jokes, and seemed to enjoy the whole
festivity.
It happened that fate had placed me next to James, so I listened to
more asceticism. “He oughtn't to do things like this! People will
say he likes to eat rich food and to drink. It's bad for the
movement for such things to be said.”
“Cheer up, my friend!” I laughed. “Even the Bolsheviks have a feast
now and then, when they can get it.”
“You'll see what the newspapers do with this tomorrow,” growled the
other; “then you won't think it so funny.”
“Forget it!” I said. “There aren't any reporters here.”
“No,” said he, “but there are spies here, you may be sure. There are
spies everywhere, nowadays. You'll see!”
Presently Carpenter called on some of the company for speeches.
Would Bartholomew tell about the unemployed, what their organization
was doing, and what were their plans? And after that he asked John
Colver, who sat on his right hand, to recite some of his verses.
John and his friend Philip, a blue eyed, freckle-faced lad who
looked as if he might be in high school, told stories about the
adventures of outlaw agitators. For several months these two had
been traveling the country as “blanket stiffs,” securing employment
in lumber-camps and mines, gathering the workers secretly in the
woods to listen to the new gospel of deliverance. The employers were
organized on a nation-wide scale everywhere throughout the country,
and the workers with their feeble craft unions were like men using
bows and arrows against machine-guns. There must be One Big
Union--that was the slogan, and if you preached it, you went every hour
in peril of such a fate that you counted fourteen years in jail as
comparatively a happy ending.
Said Carpenter: “It is not such a bad thing for a cause to have its
preachers go to jail.”
“Well,” said the lad of the blue eyes and the freckled face, “we try
to keep a few outside, to tell what the rest are in for!”
Later on, I remember, John Colver told a funny story about this pal
of his. The story had to do with grape juice instead of with
propaganda, but it appealed to me because it showed the gay spirit
of these lads. The two of them had sought refuge from a storm in a
barn, and there, lying buried in the hay with the rain pouring down
on the roof, they had heard the farmer coming to milk his cows. The
man had evidently just parted from his wife, and there had been a
quarrel; but the farmer hadn't dared to say what he wanted to, so
now he took it out on the cows! “Na! na! na!” he shouted, with
furious vehemence. “That's it! Go on! Nag, nag, nag! Don't stop, or
I might manage to get a word in! Yes, I'm late, of course I'm late!
Do you expect me to drive by the clock? Maybe I did forget the
sugar! Maybe I've got nothing on my mind but errands! Whiskey? Maybe
it's whiskey, and maybe it's gin, and maybe it's grape-juice!” The
farmer set down his milk-pail and his lantern, and shook his
clenched fist at the patient cattle. “I'm a man, I am, and I'll have
you understand I'm master in my own house! I'll drink if I feel like
drinking, I'll stop and chat with my neighbors if I feel like
stopping, I'll buy sugar if I remember to buy it, and if you don't
like it, you can buy your own!” And so on--becoming more inspired
with his own eloquence--or maybe with the whiskey, or the gin, or
the grape-juice; until young Philip became so filled with the spirit
of the combat that he popped up out of the hay and shouted, “Good
for you, old man! Stand up for your rights! Don't let her down you!
Hurrah for men!” And the astounded farmer stood staring with his
mouth open, while the two “wobbles” leaped up and fled from the
barn, so convulsed with laughter they hardly noticed the floods of
rain pouring down upon them.
LII
But, of course, it wasn't long before this little company became
serious again. Carpenter told Franklin that he ought not stay here;
he, Carpenter, was too conspicuous a figure, the authorities were
certain to be watching him. Korwsky backed him up. There were sure
to be spies here! They would never leave such a man unwatched. They
would set to work to get something on him, and if they couldn't get
it they would make it. When Carpenter asked what he meant, he
explained, “Dey'll plant dynamite in de place vere you are, or
dey'll fake up some letters to show you been plannin' violence.”
“And do people believe such things?” asked Carpenter.
“Believe dem?” cried Korwsky. “If dey see it in de papers, dey
believe it--sure dey do!”
The prophet answered, “Let a man live so that the world will believe
him and not his enemies.” Then he added a startling remark. “There
is one among us who will betray me.”
Of course, they all looked at one another in consternation. They
were deeply distressed, and each tried in turn--“Comrade,” or
“Brother,” or “Fellow-worker,” or whatever term they used--“is it
I?” Presently the sturdy looking fellow named Hamby, who called
himself a pacifist, asked, “Is it I?” And Carpenter answered,
quietly, “You have said it.”
Then, of course, some of the others started up; they wanted to throw
him out, but Carpenter bade them sit down again, saying, “Let things
take their course; for the powers of this world will perish more
quickly if they are permitted to kill themselves.”
Apparently he saw no reason why this episode should be permitted to
interfere with the festivities. Mary Magna came in laughing, bearing
the strawberry short-cake, and set it on the table and proceeded to
portion it out. When it was served, Carpenter said, “I shall not be
with you much longer, my friends; but you will remember me when you
see this beautiful red fruit on top of a cake; and also you will
think of me and my message when you taste rich purple grape-juice
that has perhaps stayed a day or two too long in the bottle!”
Some of the company laughed, but others of them had tears in their
eyes; and I noticed that in the midst of the merriment the fellow
Hamby got up and slipped out of the room. Not long after that the
company began to disperse for various reasons. Karlin explained that
his old horse had been working all day, and had had no supper.
Colver was uneasy, not for himself, but for his friend, and I saw
him start every time the door was opened. Also, T-S was having some
night-scenes taken, and he and Mary were to see the work. Finally
Carpenter dismissed the Company, with the statement that he wished
to retire to Comrade Abell's private office to pray; and Abell and
his friend Lynch and the young Mexican said they would watch and
wait for him. The rest of us took our departure, not without
misgivings and sorrow in our hearts.
LIII
Now, you may find it hard to believe a confession which I have put
off making--the fact that at this time I was engaged to be married.
There was a certain member of what is called the “younger set,” whom
I had given reason to expect that I would think about her at least
once in a while. But here for precisely three days I had been
chasing about at the skirts of a prophet fresh from God, getting my
name into the newspapers in scandalous fashion, and not daring even
to call the young lady on the telephone and make apologies. That
evening there was a dinner-dance at her home, and I supposed I was
supposed to be there; but no one had bothered to invite me, and as a
matter of fact I would not have known of the affair if I had not
seen the announcement in the papers. I was too late for the dinner,
but I got myself a taxicab, and drove to my room and changed my
clothes, and hurried in my own car to the dance.
You would not be interested in the fact that when I arrived I was
treated as an unwelcome guest, and Miss Betty even went so far as to
remind me that I had not been invited. But after I had pleaded, she
consented to dance with me; and so for an hour or two I tried to
forget there were any people in the world who had anything to do but
be happy. Just as I was succeeding, the butler came, calling me to
the telephone, and I answered, and who should it be but Old Joe!
My surprise became consternation at his first words: “Billy, your
friend Carpenter is in peril!”
“What do you mean?”
“They are going to get him tonight.”
“Good God! How do you know?”
“It's a long story, and no time to tell it. Somebody's tipped me
off. Where can I meet you? Every minute is precious.”
“Where are you?” I asked, and learned that he was at his home, not
far away. I said I would come there, and I hurried to Betty and had
another scene with her, and left her weeping, vowing that she would
never see me again. I ran out and jumped into my car--and I would
hate to tell what I did to the speed laws of Western City. Suffice
it to say that a few minutes later I was in Old Joe's den, and he
was telling me his story.
Part of it I got then, and part of it later, but I might as well
tell it all at once and be done with it. It happened that at the
restaurant where Old Joe and I had dined before we went to the
mass-meeting, he had met a girl whom he knew too well, after the
fashion of young men about town. In greeting her on the way out, he
had told her he was going to hear the new prophet and had laughingly
suggested that the meeting was free. The girl, out of idle
curiosity, had come, and had been touched by Carpenter's physical,
if not by his moral charms. It chanced that this girl was living
with a man who stood high in the secret service department of “big
business” in our city; so she had got the full story of what was
being planned against Carpenter. That afternoon, it appeared, there
had been a meeting between Algernon de Wiggs, president of our
Chamber of Commerce, and Westerly, secretary of our “M. and M.,” and
Gerald Carson, organizer of our “Boosters' League.” These three had
put up six thousand dollars, and turned it over to their secret
service agents, with instructions that Carpenter's agitations in
Western City were to be ended inside of twenty-four hours.
A plan had been worked out, every detail of which had been phoned to
Old Joe. A group of ex-service men, members of the Brigade, had been
hired to seize the prophet and treat him to a tar and feathering. It
had not taken much to move them to action, for the afternoon papers
were full of accounts of Carpenter's speech on Main Street, his
denunciation of war, and of soldiers as “murderers” and “wolves.”
But that was not all, said Old Joe; and I saw that his hand was
trembling as he spoke. It appeared that there was an “operative”
named Hamby, who was one of Carpenter's followers.
“By God!” I burst out, in sudden fury. “I was sure that fellow was a
crook!”
“Yes,” said the other. “He's been telephoning in regular reports as
to Carpenter's doings. And now it's been arranged that he is to put
an infernal machine in the Socialist headquarters where Carpenter
has been staying!”
I was almost speechless. “You mean--to blow them up?”
“No, to blow up their reputations. Hamby is to lure Carpenter out to
the street, and when the gang grabs him, Hamby will fire a shot, and
there will be three or four secret agents in the crowd, who will
incite the others, and see to it that Carpenter is lynched instead
of being tarred and feathered!”
LIV
So there was the layout; and now, what was to be done? The first
thing was to call Abell on the phone, and see if anything had
happened. I picked up the receiver; but alas, the report was, “No
answer.” I urged “central” to try several times, but all I could get
was, “I am ringing them.” Carpenter, no doubt, was praying. What
were the others doing? I kept on trying, but finally gave up.
Could the mob have taken them away? But Old Joe answered, no, a
definite hour had been set. The ex-service men were to gather on the
stroke of midnight. We had nearly an hour yet.
My first thought was that we should hurry to the Socialist
headquarters and get Carpenter out of the way. But my friend pointed
out that the place was certain to be watched, and we might find
ourselves held up by the armed detectives; they would hardly take a
chance of letting their prey escape at this hour. Also, I realized
there was no use figuring on any plan that involved spiriting
Carpenter away quietly, by the roof, or a rear entrance, or anything
of that sort. He would insist on staying and facing his enemies.
I put my wits to work. We needed a good-sized crowd; we needed, in
fact, a mob of our own. And suddenly the word brought to me an
inspiration; that mob which T-S had drilled at Eternal City! I
recalled that a year or so ago I had been lured to sit through a
very dull feature picture which the magnate had made, showing the
salvation of our country by the Ku Klux Klan; and I knew enough
about studio methods to be sure they had not thrown away the
costumes, but would have them stored. Here was the way to save our
prophet! Here was the way to get what one wanted in Mobland!
I picked up the receiver and called Eternal City. Yes, Mr. T-S was
there, but he was “on the lot” and could not be disturbed. I gave my
name, and stated that it was a matter of life and death; Mr. T-S
must come to the phone instantly. A couple of minutes later I heard
his voice, and told him the situation, and also my scheme. He must
come himself, to make sure that his orders were obeyed; he must
bring several bus-loads of men, clad in the full regalia of
Mobland's great Secret Society; and they must arrive at Abell's
place precisely on the stroke of midnight. The men must be paid five
dollars apiece, and be told that if they succeeded in bringing away
the prophet unharmed, they would each get ten dollars extra. “I will
put up that money,” I said to T-S; but to my surprise he cried: “You
ain't gonna put up nuttin'! God damn dem fellers, I'll beat 'em if
it costs me a million!” So I realized that the prophet had made one
more convert!
“Have you got that bus with the siren?” I asked; and when he
answered, yes, I said, “Let that be the signal. When we hear it, Joe
and I will bring Carpenter down to the street, and if the Brigade is
there, it's up to you to persuade them you're the bigger mob!”
Then Old Joe and I ran down to my car, and drove at full speed to
the Socialist headquarters; and on the way we worked out our own
plan of campaign. The real danger-point was Hamby, the secret agent,
and we must manage to put him out of the way. Despite his pose of
“pacifism,” he was certain to be armed, said Old Joe; yet we must
take a chance, and do the job unarmed. If we should get into a
shooting-scrape, they would certainly put it onto us; and they would
make it a hanging matter, too.
I named over the members of Carpenter's party who had stayed with
him. Andy Lynch, the ex-soldier, was probably a useful man, and we
would get his help. We would get rid of Hamby, and then we would
wait for T-S and his siren. By the time these plans were thoroughly
talked out, we had reached the building in which the headquarters
were located. There were lights in the main room upstairs, and the
door which led up to them was open. The street was apparently
deserted, and we did not stop to look for any “operatives,” but left
our machine and stole quietly upstairs and into the room.
LV
Comrade Abell sat at the table, with his head bowed in his arms,
sound asleep. Lynch, the ex-soldier, and Tom Moneta, the Mexican,
were lying on the floor snoring. And on a chair near the doorway,
watching the scene, sat Hamby, wide awake. We knew he was awake,
because he leaped to his feet the instant we entered the door. “Oh,
it's you!” he said, recognizing me; I noted the alarm in his voice.
I beckoned to him, softly. “Come here a moment;” and he came out
into the ante-room. At the same time Old Joe stepped across the big
room, and stooped down and waked up Lynch. We had agreed that Joe
was to give Lynch a whispered explanation of the situation, while I
kept Hamby busy.
“Where is Mr. Carpenter?” I asked.
“He's in the private office, praying.”
“Well,” said I, “there's a sick woman who needs help very badly. I
wonder if we'd better disturb him.”
“I don't know,” said Hamby. “I've been here an hour, and haven't
heard a sound. Maybe he's asleep.”
I was uncertain what I should do, and I elaborately explained my
uncertainty. Of course, praying was an important and useful
occupation, and I knew that the prophet laid great stress upon it,
and all of us who loved him so dearly must respect his wishes.
“Yes, of course,” said Hamby.
Yet at the same time, I continued, this woman was very ill, a case
of ptomaine poisoning--
“Do you think he can cure that?” asked Hamby guilelessly; and at
that moment Old Joe and Lynch came from the big room. Hamby started
to turn, but he was too late. Old Joe's arms went around him, and
Hamby's two elbows were clamped to his sides, in a grip which more
than one professional wrestler in our part of the world has found it
impossible to break. At the same time I stooped on my knees and
grasped the man's two wrists; because we were taking no chances of
his gun. Lynch, the ex-soldier, had a cloth, taken from the big
table, and he flung this over the head of the “pacifist” and stifled
his cries.
I took a revolver from his hip-pocket, but Joe was not satisfied.
“Search him carefully,” said he, and so I discovered another weapon
in a side-pocket. Then I made hasty search in a big closet of the
room, and found a lot of bundles of books and magazines tied with
stout cords. I took the cords, and we bound the “pacifist's” wrists
and ankles, and put a gag in his mouth, and then we felt sure he was
really a pacifist. We carried him to the closet and laid him on the
floor, where a humorous idea came to us. These bundles of magazines
and books were no doubt the ones which the mob had confiscated from
Comrade Abell. Since they were no longer saleable, they might as
well be put to some use, so I gathered armfuls of them and
distributed them over the form of Hamby, until there was no longer a
trace of him visible.
And while I was doing this, I noticed in one corner of the closet,
under the bundles, a wooden box about a foot square. Upon trying to
lift it, I discovered that it weighed several times as much as it
should have weighed if it had contained printed matter. “Here's our
infernal machine,” I whispered, and I picked it up gingerly, and
tiptoed out of the room, and back to the kitchen, and down a rear
stairway of the building. I unlocked the door and opened it--and
there, crouching in the shadows alongside the door, just as I
expected, I saw a man.
“Hello!” I whispered.
“Hello!” said he, badly startled.
“Here's something belonging to Hamby. He wants me to give it to you.
Be careful, it's heavy.” I deposited the box in his hands, and shut
the door, and turned the lock again, and groped my way upstairs,
chuckling to myself as I imagined the man's plight. He would not
know what to make of this incident, and I had an idea he would not
be able to find out, because he could not leave his post. Nor would
he have much time to figure over the matter; for when I got back to
the light, I looked at my watch, and it lacked just three minutes to
twelve.
I found that Lynch and Old Joe had shut the pacifist in the closet,
and were in the ante-room waiting for me. I whispered that
everything was all right. A moment later we heard a sound in the big
room, and peered in, and saw a door at the far end open--and there
was Carpenter, standing with his white robes gleaming in the light.
After a moment I realized that they gleamed even more than was
natural; I perceived once more that strange “aura” which had been
noticed at the mass-meeting; and by means of it I noticed an even
more startling thing. There were drops of sweat on Carpenter's
forehead, as always when he had labored intensely in his soul. This
time I saw that the drops were large, and they were drops of blood!
A trembling seized me. I was awe-stricken before this man--afraid to
go on with what I was doing, and equally afraid to back out. I
remained staring helplessly, and saw him approach the sleeping
figures, and stand looking at them. “Could you not watch with me one
hour?” he said, in his gentle, sad voice; and he put his hand on
Comrade Abell's shoulder, with the words: “The time has come.”
Abell started to his feet, and began to apologize. The other said
nothing, but stooped and waked Moneta. And at that moment I heard
the shrill blast of a whistle outside on the street! “There's the
Brigade!” whispered Old Joe.
LVI
I ran down the stairs, and peered through the doorway, and sure
enough, there were four or five automobiles stopped before the
headquarters, having approached from opposite direction. I stood
just long enough to see a crowd of men in khaki uniforms jumping
out; then I ran back, and leaving Old Joe and Lynch to keep guard at
the top of the stairs, I walked in and greeted Carpenter.
He expressed no surprise at seeing me. Evidently his thoughts were
on other things. For my part, I was trembling with excitement, so
that my knees would barely hold me. How long would it be before T-S
and his crowd appeared? I could figure the time it should take them
to drive from Eternal City; but suppose something held them up? How
long would the ex-service men stay out on the street, waiting for
Hamby to answer their signal? Surely not many minutes! They would
storm the place, and hunt out their victim for themselves. And
suppose they should carry him off before the others arrived?
I had Hamby's two revolvers in my pocket. Should we use them, or
not? The thought hit me all of a sudden; and apparently it hit Old
Joe at the same moment. “Give me those guns, Billy,” he whispered,
and I put them obediently into his hands, and he went quickly into
the rear rooms. At the end of a minute, he returned, saying, “I
unloaded them and threw them out of the back window.” And even as he
spoke, the silence of the night outside was shattered by the scream
of that siren, which served to warn people out of the way when T-S
was moving his companies about “on location.”
I went up to Carpenter. I didn't enjoy telling him a lie; in fact, I
had an idea that one couldn't lie to him successfully. But I tried
it. “Mr. Carpenter, Hamby left a message; he had to go downstairs,
and said he wanted to see you. Would you come down and meet him?”
“Ah, yes!” said Carpenter. And he walked to the door and down the
stairs without another word. The rest of us followed him; Abell and
Moneta first, they being innocent and unsuspicious; and then Lynch,
and then Joe and I.