"I promise. Good afternoon, Mr. Danner."
Hugo rose and walked toward the door. He was seething with surprise and
suspicion. Had he actually intimidated Melcher so easily? His hand
touched the knob. At that instant Melcher hit him on the head with a
chair. It broke in pieces. Hugo turned around slowly.
"I understand. You mistook me for a dangerous lunatic. I was puzzled for
a moment. Now--"
Melcher's jaw sagged in amazement when Hugo did not fall. An instant
later he threw himself forward, arms out, head drawn between his
shoulders. With one hand Hugo imprisoned his wrists. He lifted Melcher
from the floor and shook him. "I meant it, Melcher. And I will give you
a sign. Rotten politics, graft, bad government, are doomed." Melcher
watched with staring eyes while Hugo, with his free hand, rapidly
demolished the room. He picked up the great desk and smashed it, he tore
the stone mantelpiece from its roots; he kicked the fireplace apart; he
burst a hole in the brick wall--dragging the bulk of a man behind him as
he moved. "Remember that, Melcher. No one else on earth is like me--and
I will get you if you fail to stop. I'll come for you if you squeal
about this--and I leave it to you to imagine what will happen."
Hugo walked into the hall. "You're all done for--you cheap swindlers.
And I am doom." The door banged.
Melcher swayed on his feet, swallowed hard, and ran upstairs. "Pack," he
said to his valet.
He had gone; Hugo had removed the first of the public enemies. Yet Hugo
was not satisfied. His approach to Melcher had been dramatic,
terrifying, effective. There were rumours of that violent morning. The
rumours said that Melcher had been attacked, that he had been bought out
for bigger money, that something peculiar was occurring in Washington.
If ten, twenty men left and those rumours multiplied by geometrical
progression, sheer intimidation would work a vast good.
But other facts disconcerted Hugo. In the first place, his mind kept
reverting to Melcher's words: "Do you have the conceit to think that one
person can buck the will of millions?" No matter how powerful that
person, his logic added. Millions of dollars or people? the same logic
questioned. After all, did it matter? People could be perjured by
subtler influences than gold. Secondly, the parley over arms continued
to be an impasse despite the absence of Melcher. Perhaps, he argued, he
had not removed Melcher soon enough. A more carefully focused
consideration showed that, in spite of what Hatten had said. It was not
individuals against whom the struggle was made, but mass stupidity,
gigantic bulwarks of human incertitude. And a new man came in Melcher's
place--a man who employed different tactics. Hugo could not exorcise the
world.
A few days later Hugo learned that two radicals had been thrown into
jail on a charge of murder. The event had taken place in Newark, New
Jersey. A federal officer had attempted to break up a meeting. He had
been shot. The men arrested were blamed, although it was evident that
they were chance seizures, that their proved guilt could be at most only
a social resentfulness. At first no one gave the story much attention.
The slow wheels of Jersey justice--printed always in quotation marks by
the dailies--began to turn. The men were summarily tried and convicted
of murder in the first degree. A mob assaulted the jail where they were
confined--without success. Two of the mob were wounded by riot guns.
A meeting was held in Berlin, one in London, another in Paris. Moscow
was silent, but Moscow was reported to be in an uproar. The trial
assumed international proportions overnight. Embassies were stormed;
legations from America were forced to board cruisers. Strikes were
ordered; long queues of sullen men and women formed at camp kitchens.
The President delivered a message to Congress on the subject. Prominent
personages debated it in public halls, only to be acclaimed and booed
concomitantly. The sentence imposed on two Russian immigrants rocked the
world. In some cities it was not safe for American tourists to go abroad
in the streets. And all the time the two men drew nearer to the electric
chair.
It was then that Hugo met Skorvsky. Many people knew him; he was a
radical, a writer; he lived in Washington, he styled himself an
unofficial ambassador of the world. A small, dark man with a black
moustache who attended one of Hugo's informal afternoon discussions on a
vicarious invitation. "Come over and see Hugo Danner. He's something new
in Washington."
"Something new in Washington? I shall omit the obvious sarcasm. I shall
go." Skorvsky went.
Hugo listened to him talk about the two prisoners. He was lucid; he
made allowances for the American democracy, which in themselves were
burning criticism. Hugo asked him to dinner. They dined at Hugo's house.
"You have the French taste in wines," Skorvsky said, "but, as it is to
my mind the finest taste in the world, I can say only that."
Hugo tried to lead him back to the topic that interested both of them so
acutely. Skorvsky shrugged. "You are polite--or else you are curious. I
know you--an American business man in Washington with a purpose. Not an
apparent purpose--just now. No, no. Just now you are a host, cultivated
and genial, and retiring. But at the proper time--ah! A dam somewhere in
Arizona. A forest that you covet in Alaska. Is it not so?"
"What if it is not?"
Skorvsky stared at the ceiling. "What then? A secret? Yes, I thought
that about you while we were talking to the others to-day. There is
something deep about you, my new friend. You are a power. Possibly you
are not even really an American."
"That is wrong."
"You assure me that I am right. But I will agree with you. You are, let
us say, the very epitome of the man Mr. Mencken and Mr. Lewis tell us
about so charmingly. I am Russian and I cannot know all of America. You
might divulge your errand, perhaps?"
"Suppose I said it was to set the world aright?"