"Oh, Bupps!" laughed Mary, "if you'd only make love to me in that
ardent fashion, I'd drag you to the altar by your few remaining hairs."
I stood up, blushing in spite of myself. She can always make me feel
that whatever I am doing is either stupid or foolish.
"Dinner is served, and I'm starving. Come on, people!" she announced,
leading the way to the dining-room.
"Where's Helen?" I asked.
"She's not coming down. She has a slight headache," Mary answered,
giving me a warning look. "I am delegated to be lady of the manor this
evening." She looked so adorable as she curtsied to us that I felt an
almost uncontrollable impulse to grab her in my arms and smother her
with kisses, but remembering what she had done to me once when I
yielded to impulse, I refrained.
When we sat down to the table, Helen's empty place threatened to cast a
gloom over the party, so Mary told Wicks to remove it.
"It's too much like Banquo's ghost," she whispered, laughing merrily at
Jim.
"Speaking of ghosts," said Jim turning to me, "I hear the labor people
are asking the governor to pardon Zalnitch."
"A lot of good it will do them," I responded. "If ever a man deserved
hanging, he does."
"I know, but labor is awfully strong now, and with the unsettled social
conditions in the state, a bigger man than Governor Fallon might find
it expedient to let Zalnitch off."
"Who is Zalnitch? Don't think I've met the gentleman," Mary said.
"He's the Russian who was supposed to be the ring-leader of the gang
that blew up the Yellow Funnel steamship piers in 1915," I explained.
"Do you mean to say he hasn't been hanged yet?"
"Yes!" Jim answered. "And what's more, I'm afraid he's going to be
pardoned."
"Not really, Jim?" I queried.
"Yes! I'm almost sure of it. Fallon is a machine man before
everything else, although he was elected on a pro-American ticket.
They are threatening to do all kinds of things to him, just as they
threatened me, unless Zalnitch goes free, and I think Fallon is afraid
of them, not physically perhaps, but politically. He wants reelection."
Jim had helped the prosecuting attorney convict Zalnitch; in fact it
was Jim's work more than anything else that had sent the Russian to
prison. At the time, Jim had received a lot of threatening letters,
just as every other American who denounced the Germans before we
entered the war had received them. Nothing had come of it, of course,
and after we went in, the whole matter dropped from public attention.
Zalnitch had been sent to prison, but his friends had worked constantly
for commutation of his sentence. With labor's new power, due to the
fear of Bolshevism, they were again bringing influence to bear on the
governor.
Wicks had removed the soup plates and was bringing in the roast, when
Annie appeared. The girl was both frightened and angry.
"Mr. Felderson?"