Then came a few days in which Elmendorf was in his glory. To be in a
position where he could command attention, where he could practically
compel people of all classes and conditions to be his listeners, to hang
upon his words and regard him as clothed with power backed by authority,
this was indeed joy and triumph new to him, though still far below the
dreams he had dreamed. Though not even a member of the great railway
union, not even possessing the confidence of its leaders, the fervor of
his speeches had won him favor and admitted him to their councils. Not
even tolerated for days at head-quarters, he suddenly reappeared there
with all the assurance of the past, and during the first forty-eight
hours of the memorable strike no one man in all Chicago seemed to carry
on his shoulders the weight of information, authority, and influence of
John Allison's whilom tutor, whose note of dismissal, unopened, awaited
him at the deserted study. To the officials of the American Railway
Union he represented himself as deep in the confidence of the officials
at military head-quarters, personally intimate with most of the staff,
and a man to whose warnings the general himself ever lent attentive ear.
To the adjutant-general and others in authority, the chief being still
away, he declared himself the envoy of the leaders of the strike, a man
empowered to levy war or compass peace. In both assumptions he was
impudent, yet not without support. What he craved was prominence,
notoriety, the fame, if not the fact, of being an arbiter in the
destinies of Chicago in this crisis of her history. From the Pullman to
the Leland, from inner dépôt to outlying freight-yards, from meetings to
municipal offices, he sped, never stopping for rest or refreshment.
Irascible officers at Springfield, receiving despatches signed
Elmendorf, put an H to his name and lopped it off at the neck. There
were two precincts he left unpenetrated,--the head-quarters of the
railway managers and those of the National Guard. Allison had made him
known at the one, his public utterances and persistent sneers at "the
militia boys," "our tin soldier boys," at the other. His appearance in
the armory of any regiment in the city would have been the signal for a
demonstration he had no desire to face. Through the newspaper offices,
too, he flitted, shedding oracular statement and prophecy, claiming to
speak "by the card" when he had news to tell, and preserving
mysterious, suggestive silence when questioned on matters whereof he
knew nothing.
Two days had the strike been in force. Switchmen, yardmen, firemen, had
quit their posts, and they or sympathizing gangs of toughs stoned and
cursed the men who took their places. Yard-masters and master-mechanics
leaped into the cabs and handled the levers of switch-engines;
white-handed clerks and electricians swung lanterns and coupled cars;
conductors turned switchmen, superintendents became conductors, and
managers stepped down to yard-masters; and still the mob, gaining in
numbers and wrath and villany with every hour, blackguarded the
trainmen, blockaded the trains, and bombarded with sticks and stones and
coupling-pins the few shrinking and terrified passengers. Trains
reaching the city were towed in with every pane smashed and their
inmates a mass of cuts and bruises. Trains due in the city and seized by
the strikers were side-tracked at desolate prairie stations miles from
food and water, and helpless, pleading women and children were penned up
in them and left to hunger and thirst and tremble. In vain the railway
officials pleaded with the city authorities for protection for
passengers and trains. "We have been watching everywhere; we've seen no
violence," was the answer. Policemen along the railway lines laughed and
looked on while, almost within swing of their clubs, strikers were
kicking a victim to death. In vain all appeals to the State. This was a
popular movement,--a poor man's protest against the tyranny of a
grasping monopolist,--The People _vs._ Pullman. Let the railways join in
and discard his cars, and all would be well. Contracts be damned! What
cared they for the law of contract when on the eve of revolution--and
election? Feigning to believe that the managers were merely pretending
that their roads were blocked, openly asserting that the managers could
run their trains if they really wanted to, and slyly intimating that all
the destruction thus far effected was at the hands of paid emissaries of
the managers themselves, officials of a great State and of a great city,
sworn to preserve peace and good order and enforce the laws, dared to
look idly on and trust the masses, to whom they betrayed the honor of
the commonwealth, for the vindication of a re-election. Within three
days of the start, passenger traffic, except on the two or three roads
in the hands of the Federal courts, was practically ended, freight
traffic paralyzed, and the great stock-yards were in the hands of a mob
of frantically rejoicing men. "Not one wheel shall turn in any yard in
all Chicago with the morrow's sun," said Elmendorf, slyly and jeeringly
exultant in the presence and hearing of officers and clerks at the
Pullman building late that night. "The managers have played their last
card, made their last bluff. The State and the city virtually tell them
that it is their own fight, with their own men, men whom they have
systematically browbeaten, bullied, swindled, and starved until now the
worm has turned. At last you see the beginning of the end, the dawn of
the glorious future, the rise of labor against capital, and your friends
the magnates have the option of ruin or surrender. I tell you,
gentlemen, three hundred thousand freemen will line those tracks at noon
to-morrow, and if their----" But the officers to whom he addressed
himself turned impatiently away. Clerks were passing to and fro along
the hall between the office of the adjutant-general and their desks.
Some powerful but subdued excitement pervaded the building. Watchers of
the strikers had noted the increasing number of officers in civilian
dress long after the usual business hours, and Elmendorf, quick to take
the alarm, had hastened thither to ferret out the cause. Vain his effort
to communicate with his one victim. He was at his desk, and a vigilant
ex-sergeant-major of cavalry scowled at the would-be intruder and told
him visitors could not enter the clerks' rooms. Vain his effort to
extract news along the corridors. No man seemed to know why so many of
them were there. Perplexed, he rushed back to his associates, the
strike-leaders. "Are you sure they're stanch at Springfield?" he asked;
"sure they haven't asked for aid from Washington?" The idea was laughed
to scorn.
"The governor is with us to the bitter end," was the loud boast of
prominent sympathizers, "and until he touches the button no power in or
out of Illinois can stand between us and victory. To-morrow we lock the
lines from Pittsburg to the Pacific."
Exultant, he sprang into a cab and drove to the north side. It was late
at night, but he had his latch-key. A bath, a few hours' rest, a change
of linen, and he would issue forth on the morrow refreshed, invigorated,
ready to launch his shallop on this tide in his affairs which, taken at
full flood, must lead to everlasting fame and fortune. Who would now
dare crush him with curt refusal to listen? Who would pooh-pooh his
prophecies, who deny his views, who withhold the homage due him now, as
he strode, agitator, elevator, inspirer, _Anax andrôn_,--King of
men,--the divinely appointed, heaven-anointed leader of mankind in this
sublime movement for liberty and the Lord only knew what else? It was
late, and the great house was dark, but he let himself in, and, seeking
first the butler's pantry, ransacked the larder for refreshment. He had
eaten and drunk his fill, when the electric bell called his eye to the
indicator. Some one at the street door. Humming softly his blithe tune,
he shuffled over the tiled pavement and unbolted the inner door. A
telegraph-boy handed him two messages, with a receipt-book and pencil.
"John Allison," was all he said.
"I don't think he's home," said Elmendorf. "Did you try the club?"
For answer the boy sleepily pointed with grimy finger to the address on
the envelope. Street and number were distinct.
"Well, just wait, youngster, and I'll see if he's in," said Elmendorf,
and trotted swiftly, noiselessly up-stairs. Mr. Allison's room was open,
the gas burning dimly at the toilet-table, but no one was there. Even as
he hesitated what to do, a door at the east end of the wide corridor
quietly opened, and a flood of light from Miss Allison's boudoir shot
across the darkness. Elmendorf heard the soft rustle of silken folds,
and hastened towards the light. Florence stood there at the door-way in
some rich wrap of a pale, delicate shade of pink. Billows of creamy lace
broke away from the shoulders and down along the entire front. The short
elbow-sleeves seemed to burst into creamy foam, while a band of sable
fur encircled and contrasted with the pure white throat, and was caught
at the back by a knot of ribbon. It was one of her Parisian purchases, a
modern conceit, something she never wore except in her own room or Aunt
Lawrence's, but Elmendorf looked upon her with a glow of admiration in
his keen, eager eyes that even in her hour of anxiety and fatigue she
could not fail to notice and resent.
"If you have messages for my father, I will take charge of them," she
simply said.
"Er--pardon me. I was about to offer my services, Miss Allison, as these
may be immediate. If you will tell me where Mr. Allison is to be
found----"
"I will not trouble you," she answered, coldly, and the plump white
hand, extended for the messages, was the only thing about her that did
not seem to turn from him in dislike.
Flushed with the triumph of the two days gone, intoxicated, possibly, by
the dreams of his own dawning greatness, Elmendorf refused to accept
rebuff. Who was she to treat with scorn the man whose merest word now
could move a million stalwarts! "You must pardon me, Miss Allison," he
answered, with emphasis. "I am not here in the capacity of a menial in
the household. The events of the past few days have conspired to make me
a factor in affairs, with power and influence far exceeding that wielded
by my late employer. Furthermore, I should see him, or rather he should
seek to see me, within the next few hours, unless he has resigned
himself to the crash which must involve all he holds priceless in
business and may even involve all he holds precious here."
"May I trouble you for those despatches, Mr. Elmendorf?" she asked,
wearily, almost disgustedly.
Elmendorf flushed with wounded vanity. "The despatches are yours," he
said, bowing with marked reverence. "But, as this may be my last
opportunity of speaking to you in some days, I have that to say which I
urge you for your own sake, your brother's sake, your father's sake, to
hear and heed. On many occasions I have conscientiously striven to point
out to your honored, if somewhat opinionated, sire the injustice, indeed
I may say the brutality, of the views he so openly expresses towards the
labor class. He has not received my advice in the kindly spirit in which
it was offered, but, as possibly you know, matters have come to a
climax, and such is the gravity of the situation that not only is his
property in jeopardy, but his life. Nay, I know you have not forgiven me
for words spoken only through motives of the most loyal and honorable
devotion to your best interests. I see this bores you; but, Miss
Allison, let me say to you in so many words that if the P.Q. & R. road
persists in its refusal to restore those trainmen who were discharged
yesterday for side-tracking a Pullman car at Grand Crossing, your
father's life may be the forfeit."
[Illustration: "May I trouble you for those despatches, Mr. Elmendorf?"]
"And yet the strike-leaders declare there is no violence, and that the
strikers will commit none," she said, wearily.
"That was the spirit with which they entered upon this controversy; but
when the managers persisted in hiring men to fill their places, and even
dared to discharge employees for no worse crime than sympathy with their
own brothers, even they who have listened to and obeyed me in the past
murmur and threaten now. It will take my uttermost--as it shall be my
sweetest--effort to stand between you and harm----"
But here the pink corded silk swished disdainfully about, its Watteau
pleat flashed out of sight through the door-day, and that portal was
slammed in the speaker's face. The mover of multitudes found himself
alone in the darkened hall, snubbed and wrathful. Cary's room was just
above, and the tutor smiled sardonically as, peering in there, he saw
the boy lying half dressed upon his bed, covered by a Navajo blanket
that Forrest had given him on his birthday, a revolver on the chair. A
moment later, in his own room, he found pinned on his toilet-table a
note addressed in Allison's well-known hand. It was a curt dismissal
from his service, subject to the stipulated "one month's notice," and an
intimation that in the interim his services and his presence could both
be dispensed with. No reason was assigned, though the teeming columns of
the press contained reason more than enough.
"Turned out like a dog," he snarled. "Let us see what they'll say in the
morning."
And then he started and listened, for down on the floor below, light
hurried foot-falls sped along the corridor. It was Florence hastening to
her father's room. Stealthily Elmendorf sprang to the landing without,
leaned over the balustrade, and bent his ear. He heard the unmistakable
r-r-r-r-ing of the telephone bell,--Allison's own room, too. Then he had
had to yield one pet prejudice at least as a result of the wide-spread
influence of the strike. "He'll have to yield to more than that," said
Elmendorf.
"Give me 332,--quick, please," he heard her call, her voice tremulous
with excitement. That was not Allison's office; that was not the club
nor the managers' association. Where then was he? What scheme was afoot?
Hist! "Is that the superintendent's office P.Q. & R.?" she asked, "Is
Mr. Allison there--Mr. John Allison? No? Where? Down at the dépôt?
Please send for him at once to come to the 'phone. Say his daughter has
despatches for him of the utmost importance. Yes, I'll hold the line."
Silence for a long, long minute. Elmendorf could hear his heart thumping
loud. What on earth could Allison be doing at the dépôt of the P.Q. & R.
at one in the morning? The tracks of the road in a dozen places between
the station and the suburbs were piled high with wrecked freight-cars at
nine o'clock. The beautiful Silver Special, scheduled to leave each
night at eleven-thirty, had been stalled there since the strike began,
yet rumor had it that the management meant to launch it southwestward,
mails, express, buffet, chair-car, and sleepers complete, if they had to
cram its roofs and platforms with deputies armed with Winchesters.
Could it be that already wrecking-trains were clearing a passage, and
that this hated train, the reddest rag that could be flaunted in the
face of the raging bull of the strike, was to burst the blockade and
cover the strikers with derision? Perish all thought of sleep or change
of linen! That station was a long three miles away, but he could get
there, and to the haunts of the strikers farther beyond. But first he
must hear the purport of those despatches. Now--her voice again!
"Yes. What is it? Oh, papa? Can you hear me?--distinctly? Then listen.
Here are two despatches, the first from Washington--Wait! I must close
the door----" Bang! And then came only muffled and inarticulate sound.
Down the winding stairs he sped and knelt at Allison's door. Oh, wise
young daughter! not only that, but the inner, the closet door, was shut.
No time for squeamishness this. Noiselessly turning the knob, he
stealthily entered and tiptoed to the closet just in time to catch these
words:
"Entire system will be tied up. Trainmen cannot face such assaults."
"Did you hear? Yes? They were handed Mr. Elmendorf at the door ten
minutes--What? Certainly. He came in after midnight. Yes--At least I
think he is--He went up to his room--Don't let him get what?--the
contents? the despatches? Certainly not. Who will come for them? Why?
Aren't you ever coming home? Oh, papa, do be careful! You've no idea of
the wild things that--that fellow said. What? The Silver Special going
out in an hour--Oh, goody!"
But Elmendorf did not stop to hear more. Slinking away, he sped down the
stairway, and in another moment was hastening southward through the
starlit summer night.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]