THE KILLING
I
Bunny passed his examinations, and was duly established as a “grave old
senior” in Southern Pacific University. And then he hunted up his
friends—and such a load of troubles as fell onto his shoulders!
Literally everybody had troubles! Rachel and Jacob Menzies had come back
from their summer’s fruit-picking, to find their two younger brothers,
the “left wingers,” in the county jail! The police had raided a
Communist meeting and arrested all the speakers, and the organizers, and
the literature sellers, and all who had red badges in their buttonholes.
They had raided the Communist headquarters—determined, so the
newspapers announced, to root every Moscow agent out of the city. They
had sorted the prisoners, and fined a few, and were holding the rest,
including the Menzies boys, under that convenient universal charge,
“suspicion of criminal syndicalism.”
These foolish boys had made their own trouble, said Rachel; but still it
was an outrage to arrest people for their beliefs; and it was tormenting
to think of your own flesh and blood shut up in those horrible cages.
Bunny asked the bail—it was two thousand dollars per brother. He began
explaining his troubles with his father, and his own impotence; and
Rachel said of course, she understood, they couldn’t expect him to bail
out the whole radical movement. And yet that did not entirely restore
his peace of mind.
Then Harry Seager, whose business college was on the rocks. The boycott
had wrecked it, and Harry was trying to sell the debris. He was going to
buy him a walnut ranch; it would be harder to boycott walnuts, you
couldn’t tell the “red” ones from the “white”!
And then Dan Irving, whose labor college was in almost as bad a way. The
orgy of arrests had frightened the old line labor leaders completely
off. The college was still going, but it was in debt, and the head of it
hadn’t had any salary for several months. Bunny wrote a check for two
hundred dollars, and went away debating the question that never would be
settled—to what extent had he a right to plunder his father for the
benefit of his father’s enemies?
From Dan Irving he learned that Paul had got out of jail, and was in
Angel City, together with Ruth. It was a dirty deal the oil workers had
got, said Dan; the operators had made one last use of the oil board, to
trick the men into a complete surrender. They had promised the oil board
there would be no discrimination against union men, but they had never
had the least intention of keeping this promise. They had kept all the
strike-breakers at work, and taken back just enough of the strikers to
make up their needs. All the active union fellows were begging jobs, and
the oil industry was a slave-yard of the “open shop.”
II
Bunny went at once to call on Paul and Ruth at the address which Dan
Irving gave him. It was a mean and dingy lodging-house, in a part of the
city given up to Mexicans and Chinese. An old woman sent him up to the
second floor, and told him which door to knock on, but he got no
response. He came back later, and found that Ruth had just got in. They
were crowded into one little room, with a gas plate and a sink in an
unventilated alcove, and another alcove with a curtain before it, and a
cot on which Paul slept. Ruth was ashamed to have Bunny see them in such
a place, but explained that it wouldn’t be long, just till Paul got a
job; he was out looking for one now. She herself had got work in a
department-store, and as soon as they could get ahead, she was going to
study trained nursing. She looked pale and worn, but smiled bravely; she
didn’t really mind anything, so long as Paul was out of jail.
Bunny wanted to know all the news, and plied Ruth with questions. Just
what had Paul done to get arrested? The first time, Ruth said, the
sheriff had raided the Rascum cabin, with a lot of rough, hateful men,
who had torn everything to pieces and carried off all of Paul’s books
and papers—they had them still. They had done the same thing to all the
other fellows that used to come to the cabin—they were going to prove
them “reds,” but what evidence they had or claimed to have was a secret
the sheriff or the district attorney or whoever it was was keeping to
himself. They had had a lot of spies on the bunch—one fellow was known
to be a spy, and two others had disappeared, and would no doubt turn up
as witnesses—but who could tell what they would testify? All the other
boys were still locked up in those horrible tanks, so dark and dirty,
and nothing to do all day or night. The trial was set for next February,
and apparently they were to stay there meantime. Paul was free, thanks
to Bunny’s ten thousand dollars; Ruth could never express her thanks—
Never mind about that, Bunny said—what about the second arrest? And
Ruth told how Judge Delano had issued an injunction forbidding anyone to
interfere with Excelsior Pete in the course of its business, the
production and marketing of oil. That meant that you mustn’t advocate or
encourage the strike; and of course Paul had done that, so the judge had
sent him to jail—that was all. Judges were getting so they did that all
the time, and what were union men going to do? It had been a fearful
ordeal for Paul, he was not very well, and of course he was terribly
bitter. He would never go back to Paradise again, it wasn’t the same
place at all. Ruth smiled a wan smile, “They’ve cut down all those
lovely trees that we planted, Bunny. They needed the room for tanks.”
Bunny hauled out his check-book, and sought to salve his conscience by
making a present to his friends. But Ruth said no, she was sure Paul
wouldn’t let him do that. They were going to get along all right. Paul
was a good carpenter, and sooner or later he would find some boss that
didn’t mind his having been in jail. Bunny argued, but Ruth was
obdurate; even though she were to take the check, Paul would send it
back.
Bunny did not wait till Paul came home; he made some excuse, and went
away. He just did not have the nerve to sit there, in his fashionable
clothes which Vee had selected for him in New York, and with his new
sport-car waiting downstairs, and see Paul come in, half sick,
discouraged from seeking work in vain, and with all the black memories
of injustice and betrayal in his soul. Bunny could make excuses, of
course. Paul did not know that he had been spending the summer at play
with the world’s darling, Paul would believe that he had gone away on
his father’s account. But nothing could change the fact that it was on
money wrung from the Paradise workers that Bunny was living in luxury;
nothing could change the fact that it had been to increase the amount of
this money, to intensify the exploitation of the workers, that Paul had
spent three months in jail, and the other fellows were to spend nearly a
year in jail. So long as that was the truth, there was nothing Bunny
could do but just run away from Paul!
III
Money! Money! Money! It was pouring in upon Dad and Verne. Never had oil
prices been so high, never had the flow at Paradise been so rapid.
Millions and millions—and they were scheming to make it tens of
millions. It was a game, marvelous, irresistible; everybody was playing
it—and why could not Bunny be interested? Why did he have to go
sneaking around in the dressing-rooms and behind the grand-stands,
finding out dirty and disreputable facts about the players of this game
and their methods?
It seemed as if the fates had it in for Bunny. Just as sure as he made
some pitiful effort to be like his father and his father’s friends, some
new development would come along and knock him down! Here he had gone to
a university, a solemnly respectable university, trying to improve his
mind and make a gentleman of himself; he had turned over his young and
eager mind to the most orthodox and regular authorities—and surely they
would know how to make him good and honest and happy, surely they would
teach him wisdom, dignity, and honor! Such things were being taught to
all students in this great institution, which had begun as a Methodist
Sunday-school, and still had more courses on the religion of Jesus
Christ than on any other subject whatever! Oh, surely yes!
The university had grown great on the money of Pete O’Reilly, the oil
king; and Pete O’Reilly’s son was a graduate, and the two of them, “Old
Pete” and “Young Pete,” were the gods of the campus. When they came to
commencement, the faculty bowed down before them, and in all the stories
which the university’s publicity man sent to the newspapers, the names
of Pete O’Reilly, father and son, never failed to be featured. The son
was the most active of the alumni, and their god; when they had
banquets, he was toasted and flattered and cheered; he was the patron
saint of all the teams, the bounteous friend of all athletes. And of
course, if you know anything about American universities, you know that
this is what counts in the molding of the students’ minds; this is the
thing they do for themselves, and into which they put their hearts.
At first it seemed all right. You knew that S. P. U. was a glorious
college, and had splendid teams, and won victories that resounded up and
down the coast. And presently there was a stadium, and a vast business
of athletics, that resulted in infinite applause and free advertising
for your alma mater. Of this you were proud, the whole student body was
made one by it—the thing called “college spirit.” Bunny, a trackrunner,
had had his share of cheering; and here was a “game” he could play with
all his heart!
But now he was a senior, and on the inside of things, just as with the
oil-game, and with strikes, and with political campaigns. And what did
he find? Why, simply that all the football and track and other athletic
glory that had come to Southern Pacific had been stolen, and “Young
Pete” O’Reilly was the thief! The oil king’s son had put up a fund of
fifty thousand dollars every year, for the purpose of turning the game
of college athletics into a swindle! The fund was administered by a
secret committee of alumni and students, and used for the purpose of
going out into the market and buying athletes, to come and enroll
themselves under false pretenses and win victories for S. P. U. Husky
young truck-drivers and lumbermen and ranch-hands and longshoremen, who
could not speak correct English, but could batter down “interference”
and crash through to a goal! And the pious Methodists who constituted
the faculty were conniving at the procedure, to the extent of permitting
these young huskies to pass farcical examinations—well knowing that any
professor who presumed to flunk a promising quarterback would soon be
looking for some other university to presume in. Was not “Young Pete”
showing what he thought of professors, by paying a football coach three
times the salary of the best?
And of course these hired athletes were hired to win, and did not bother
about the rules of the game; they slugged and fouled, and the rival
teams paid them back, and there was a nasty mess, with charges and
countercharges, bribery and intimidation—all the atmosphere of a
criminal trial. Along with secret professionalism, came its
accompaniments of the underworld, bootleggers and bookmakers and
prostitutes. Study was a joke to hired gladiators, and quickly became a
joke to students who associated with them. The one purpose was to win
games, and the reward was two hundred thousand dollars in gate receipts;
and when it came to distributing this prize, there were just as many
kinds of graft as if it had been a county government: students putting
in bills for this and that, students looking for easy jobs, students and
alumni building up a machine, and paying themselves and their henchmen
with contracts and favors. Such was the result of an oil king’s resolve
to manufacture culture wholesale, by executive order!
IV
Bunny went to see the young lawyer whom the oil workers’ union had
engaged to defend the eight “political prisoners.” The union had since
become practically extinct, and the young lawyer had been wondering
where he was going to get his pay. When Bunny came to question him, it
was a great relief—for surely this young oil prince would put up
something for the defense of his friends! Or could it be that he was
sent as an emissary from the other side, to feel out the situation?
Young Mr. Harrington talked freely about the case. The thing which the
state was doing to these eight men was without precedent in our law, and
if it could stand, it meant the end of American justice. Every prisoner
was supposed to know the charges against him, the specific acts he was
alleged to have committed. But in all these “criminal syndicalism”
cases, the state simply alleged violation of the law in its vague
general terms, and that was all. How could you prepare a defense in such
a case? What witnesses would you summon—when you didn’t know the time,
or the place, or the particular things a man was alleged to have done,
or said, or written, or published? You were taken into court
blindfolded, bound and gagged. Yet, so completely were the courts
terrorized by the business crowd, no judge would order the district
attorney to make a detailed statement of the charges!
Bunny went away, and in his desperation played a dirty trick on Vernon
Roscoe—he went to see Annabelle Ames. Annabelle was kind and gentle,
and he would wring her soul, and see if in that way he could not get
under the hide of the old petroleum pachyderm! He told her about these
boys, what they looked like, what they believed, what they were
suffering in the jail. Annabelle listened, and the tears came into her
eyes, and she said it was horrible that men could be so cruel. What
could she do? Bunny told her that the strike was over, the spring lamb
had been slaughtered and eaten, and Verne ought to be willing to cry
quits. It would be of no use for him to plead that he couldn’t do
anything, that the law must take its course; that was all rubbish,
because the district attorney had the right to ask for the dismissal of
the cases, and he would surely do it if Verne said the word.
Well, Bunny got under the hide of the old petroleum pachyderm! The way
Bunny heard about it, Dad came in in a terrible state, Verne had jumped
on him, Verne was mad as the very devil, Bunny sneaking into his home
and plotting against his domestic peace! He wanted it understood, by
Jees, if Dad couldn’t control his son, Verne would. Bunny wanted to know
what Verne meant to do, spank him? Or have him locked up with the
others?
Bunny had made up his mind, and stood his ground—he had a perfect right
to talk to Annabelle, she was a grown woman, and there was no way Verne
could stop him. He was going to do more talking before he got
through—he was sorry enough to make his father unhappy, but here was
the fact, if that case ever came to trial, he, Bunny Ross, was going to
take the stand as a witness for the eight defendants, and not merely a
character witness, but one with first-hand knowledge of the facts, he
had sat in the Rascum cabin night after night, and heard them discuss
the problems of the strike, and their own attitude to it, and he could
testify that every man of them had agreed on workers’ solidarity as the
way to victory, and acts of violence as a trap the operators would try
to lure them into. If there was no other way to get money for the
defense of these boys, Bunny would sell the car that Dad had given
him—“I suppose Verne won’t have any right to keep me from walking to
the university!”
Poor Dad, he couldn’t stand talk like that from his darling son; he
began to give way, and revealed that he and Verne had discussed the
possibility of a compromise with the rebels. Would they agree to get out
of the state, or at least to keep their hands off the oil industry? And
Bunny said, by God, if Vernon Roscoe wanted to make any such
proposition, he could be his own messenger boy! Bunny knew what Paul’s
answer would be—Paul had a right to try to organize oil workers, and he
would never quit while he lived. Bunny was sure the whole eight would
respond with a unanimous shout, they would rot in jail the rest of their
lives before they would make such a bargain!
Then, having said that very magnificently, the young idealist who was
gradually and painfully evolving into a man of the world, went on to
point out that as a matter of fact none of the eight would have much
chance to bother Verne. His efficient blacklist system would see to it
that they didn’t get work in the oil fields; and any organizing they
could do would be of a pitiful sort. On the other hand, Verne must
realize that if he persisted in trying to railroad these fellows to
jail, there was going to be a long trial, and a lot of publicity of a
kind the operators might find troublesome. The testimony would have to
be “framed”; and Bunny would do everything in his power to expose it,
and to see that the public got the facts. What if it should occur to the
defendants’ lawyer to subpoena Mr. Vernon Roscoe and ask what he knew
about the planting of spies on the Paradise workers?
“Oh, son!” cried Dad, “You wouldn’t do a dirty thing like that!”
Bunny answered, “Of course I wouldn’t. I said the lawyer might do it.
Wouldn’t you, if you were in his place?” And Dad, very uncomfortable,
said to let the matter ride, and he would see what he could do with
Verne.
V
One outcome of these negotiations, Dad appealed to Vee Tracy: couldn’t
she possibly do more to keep Bunny out of the hands of these awful reds?
Why, he wasn’t thinking about a thing else! Vee said she would try, and
she did, and it was a further strain upon their love and affection. For
Bunny was beginning to know what he wanted now, and he didn’t want to be
kept from it.
Vee was hard at work on “The Princess of Patchouli.” It was a silly
story, she would freely admit; yet her whole being was concentrated upon
making it real and vivid. If you asked her why, the answer would be, it
was her profession; which meant that she was getting four thousand a
week, with the possibility of increasing it to five thousand a week if
she “made good.” But what did she want with the five thousand a week? To
buy more applause and attention, as a means of getting more thousands
for more weeks? It was a vicious circle—exactly like Dad’s oil wells.
The wobblies had a song about it in their jungles: “We go to work to get
the cash to buy the food to get the strength to go to work to get the
cash to buy the food to get the strength to go to work—” and so on, as
long as your breath held out.
Vee wanted to talk about the picture and the problems that arose day by
day, and the various personalities and their jealousies and vanities,
their loves and hates. Bunny, who loved her, would pretend to be
interested, because it would hurt her if he wasn’t. And it was the same
with the Hollywood parties; once they had been new and startling, but
now they all seemed alike. Everybody was making a new picture, but it
would always be like the old pictures. Nobody did anything original, but
everybody followed fashions; the public’s taste ran to society pictures,
and nobody would look at a war picture—but presently the public would
want war pictures, and after that costume pictures, and then sea
pictures, and then back to society pictures. Vee’s friends changed their
bootleggers, but it was always the same stuff they drank. Also they
changed their lovers; a certain man slept with a certain woman, and then
presently it was a different woman—but the more it changed, the more it
was the same thing.
Bunny and Vee loved each other, just as passionately as ever. At least,
they told themselves it was as ever, but all the while the subtle
chemistry of change was at work. Men and women are not bodies only, and
cannot be satisfied with delights of the body only. Men and women are
minds, and have to have harmony of ideas. Can they be bored with each
other’s ideas, and still be just as much in love? Men and women are
characters, and these characters lead to actions—and what if they lead
to different actions? What if the man wants to read a book, while the
woman wants to go to a dance?
Vee had been so considerate in the matter of her adoring “Applesauce,”
so careful lest Bunny should be jealous; and now Bunny made the
irritating discovery that it was his turn to be careful! Vee had two
enemies among women—and Bunny persisted in keeping them as his
intimates. That Socialist girl at the university—of course he had to
see her there, but did he have to make dates to go to Socialist meetings
with her? Vee was ready to believe that he wasn’t in love with a common
little sweatshop Jewess; but what if Vee wanted to be taken to a “world
premiere” on the evening of the Socialist lecture?
And then—that Ruth Watkins! Of course Bunny wouldn’t be in love with an
ignorant country girl, without any education; but all the same, she was
setting her snares for him, and Vee had seen enough of men to know that
a woman can always get what she wants, if she keeps after it. Bunny kept
going to that lodging-house room, and plotting and scheming with Paul to
worry his father, and make trouble with Verne and Annabelle, so that
pretty soon they wouldn’t welcome Bunny any more at the Monastery, which
was practically Vee’s country club, and where you met the most important
people. It wasn’t just the social life, it was the business connections,
that meant everything in the career of an actress. In the screen world
promotion goes by favor, and Vee simply couldn’t afford to give up her
intimacy with Verne and Annabelle. She tried to convey this tactfully to
Bunny, but when he failed to heed it, she had to keep insisting, until
it began to sound like nagging. Bunny remembered her playful remark to
her Applesauce, “It’s as bad as if we were married!”
VI
Dad and Verne had a lot of negotiating to do with Pete O’Reilly,
concerning the new leases they were putting through, and Dad was invited
to spend a week-end at this famous man’s country place. Bunny was
included in the invitation, and Dad said he ought to come; Dad was
always nourishing the hope that something in this “great” world that so
impressed him would impress his fastidious son. Besides, he added with a
grin, the O’Reillys had a marriageable daughter.
Bunny had already met “Young Pete” at the university in connection with
athletic events. Bunny had been singled out for attention, because he
also was a scion of oil; some day he and “Young Pete” would be running
the government of the United States, as their two fathers were running
it now. “Young Pete” was a perfectly colorless business man, of the
nationally advertised brand; but the father was the real thing—an old
Irishman who had wandered over the deserts leading a burro loaded with a
pick, a blanket, a sack of bacon and beans, and a skin full of water.
This had continued up to middle age—he delighted to tell how, when he
had come to Angel City to print a prospectus about his find, the
printshop would not trust him for a thirteen-dollar job! Now, nobody
could guess his millions; but he was plain as an old shoe, a likeable
old fellow who wanted to sit in his shirt in hot weather, but was not
allowed to.
The boss of the family was Mrs. Pete, who had risen from a section
foreman’s daughter to this high station in Southern California society.
She was large and decisive; when she went into a department-store she
did not fool with the clerks, but strode at once to the floor-walker and
announced, “I am Mrs. Peter O’Reilly, and I wish to be waited on
promptly.” The functionary would hit the floor with his forehead, and
tear three clerks loose from their duties and set them rushing about at
the great lady’s behest.
Mrs. Peter it was who had summoned the architects and ordered the royal
palace in a park, and set the high bronze fence all about, and the
bronze gates; she it was who had caused the name of the owner of the
estate to be graven on the gates. She had negotiated for the yacht of a
fallen European monarch, and then torn it all out inside, and made it
over to be fit for an Irish-American oil prospector—finished in
Circassian walnut and blue satin, and with the owner’s name in plain
sight. Also there was a private car finished in Circassian walnut and
blue satin, and with the owner’s name on a brass plate. It was as fine
as a haberdashery shop.
Now Mrs. Peter had Dad and Bunny to practice “society” upon; to shake
hands high up in the air, and remark the early cold weather and the snow
upon the mountains. And then to introduce Patricia, and to watch while
Patricia did the stunts which her director had taught her, and which
gave Bunny an impulse to say “Camera!” Miss Patricia O’Reilly was tall
like her mother, and had a tendency to grow stout too early, so she was
taking reducing medicine, which was injuring her heart and making her
pale and aristocratic. She had learned every motion and every formula so
carefully that she was as interesting as a large French doll, and her
mother beamed upon the young couple—a possible union between two great
dynasties, and there would be a wedding in Holy Name Church, and fifty
thousand people outside, and pictures on the front pages of all the
newspapers. Bunny’s thoughts went even further—the “yellows” would
interview Vee Tracy, and she would be cold and haughty, and in secret
she would weep, and then catch a glimpse of her face in the mirror, and
the thought would come, “Hold it!”
There were other guests, including Dr. Alonzo T. Cowper, D.D., Ph.D.,
LL.D., than whom it was not possible to imagine a human being radiating
more cordiality. He was delighted that Bunny had passed his examinations
successfully, and charmed to have been able to oblige his father, and
again delighted that Dad was pleased with his son’s progress. When they
were alone, he ventured some playful remark about Bunny’s red measles,
and was much distressed to learn that the patient had not yet recovered;
he took occasion to question the young man—was it really true that the
reds were making such alarming progress in Angel City. Dr. Cowper wanted
to talk about these shocking doctrines, in the same way that a small boy
wants to read a naughty book!
Bunny was not called in to the conference between Old Pete and his
father, but on the way home Dad told him about it. They were having the
devil’s own time; buying a government was not so simple a matter as they
had thought. Everybody had to have a “rake-off,” all the way down the
line; by golly, the very office boy that brought you a letter about the
matter expected a ten-dollar bill! Bunny took the occasion to plead, why
not get out of the thing, surely they had enough money! But Dad said
they were in too deep, the thing had cost him personally nearly six
hundred thousand dollars, and it was real money, and it had hurt. No,
they would go through with it, and when they had got the leases, it
would be all hunkydory.
Two troubles had arisen. The naval reserve lands had been under the
control of the navy department, and it had been necessary to get them
shifted to the control of Secretary Crisby. There had been question
whether this could be done by executive decree, or did it require an act
of Congress. The officials had made a lot of delay, but of course it was
just a hold-up; they wanted more money for this one and that. Old Pete
had sent his son on to Washington to act as paymaster. The other
difficulty was that some little oil company had got onto the Sunnyside
tract—the one that Verne and Dad were to get—and had started drilling
under an old lease. They would have to be ejected, and it must be done
quietly, they must fix matters up with the newspapers somehow. Verne
wanted Dad to go up there and look the ground over, and maybe he and
Bunny might make a trip of it. Sunnyside was going to be the world’s
wonder of an oil field—it would beat Paradise many times over, and when
they had got it safely tucked away, Dad would take a good long rest.
VII
There was a telephone call for Bunny—he was to call “long distance” in
a city a hundred miles up the state. When he did so, there was a nurse
in a hospital, with a message from Bertie; she wanted him to come to
her. She was not in any danger, and there was no use worrying the
family, therefore she wished him to say nothing about the matter. Bunny
of course jumped into his car and made all haste. His sister had been
visiting the Normans, a long way from this hospital.
When he got there, the attendants told him that Bertie had had an
operation for appendicitis, and was doing well. He was taken up to her
room, and there she lay, pale, and strange-looking, because he had never
seen her without her colors. Everything about her was spotlessly clean,
a lacy white nightgown, and soft white pillows in which she lay
sunken—nun-like, and pathetic in her gladness to see him. “Gee whiz,
Bertie! How did this happen?”
“It came quite suddenly. It was pretty bad, but I’m all right now.
Everybody’s been so good to me.” There was a nurse in the room, and
Bertie waited until she had gone out and closed the door. Then she fixed
her tired eyes on her brother, and said, “We call it appendicitis,
because that’s the conventional thing, and what you’ll have to tell Dad
and Aunt Emma. But you might as well know the truth—I was going to have
a baby.”
“Oh, my God!” Bunny stared at her, aghast.
“You needn’t begin acting up—you’re no spring chicken, Bunny.”
“Who is the man?”
“Now, don’t start any melodrama. You know it might happen to anybody.”
“Yes—but who was it, Bertie?”
“I want you to get this straight at the beginning—it wasn’t his fault.
I did it on purpose.”
Bunny didn’t know what to make of that. “You might as well tell me,
Bertie.”
“Well, I want you to behave yourself. I’m my own boss, and I knew what I
was doing. I wouldn’t marry him now for a million dollars—not for all
his millions, because he’s a yellow pup, and I despise him.”
“You mean Charlie Norman!”
She nodded in assent; and as she saw Bunny’s hands clench, she said,
“You don’t have to do any heroics. There can’t be a shot-gun wedding
when the bride refuses to attend.”
“Tell me about it, Bertie.”
“Well, we were in love quite desperately for a while, and I thought he
was going to marry me. But then I saw he wouldn’t lay off other women,
and I thought it over, and I decided, if I had a baby, he’d have to
marry me, so I tried it.”
“Good God, Bertie!”
“You needn’t make faces. Thousands of women do it—it’s one of our
tricks. But Charlie’s a yellow cur. When I told him about it, he behaved
so disgustingly, I told him to go to hell. I got the name of a doctor
that would fix me up, and Dad will have a thousand dollars to pay, and
that’s all the damage.”
“Bertie,” he whispered, “why in the world do you have to do things like
that?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll not do it again. I had to learn, like everybody
else.”
“But why did you have to do it once? Trying to trap a rich man into
marriage! Doesn’t Dad give you enough money?”
“That’s very easy for you to say, Bunny, you’re satisfied to get off in
a corner and read some old book. But I’m not like that, I have to have a
little life. Dad gives me pocket money, but that’s not what I want. I
want a career—something of my own. And don’t start preaching at me,
because I’m weak as a kitten and can’t stand anything just now. I wanted
what every woman wants, a home of my own, and I didn’t want a bungalow,
I wanted a place I could invite people to, and make some use of my
talents as a hostess. Well, I fell down, and now I want somebody to be
kind to me for a few minutes, if you’ve possibly got that in you.”
It looked as if the tears were coming into her eyes, so Bunny hastened
to say, “All right, old girl, I’ll lay off. But naturally I was taken
aback.”
“You needn’t be. The doctor says it’s done a million times a year in the
United States. I amused myself figuring that out—it’s about once every
thirty seconds. Life is a messy business. Let’s talk about something
else!”
It was a time for confidences, and she wanted to know about him and
Vee—was he going to marry her? He said he didn’t know if she would have
him. Bertie laughed—she would have him all right, she was playing her
cards cleverly. But Bunny told how many times she got irritated at him,
and why, and that gave Bertie occasion for a discourse. She was the same
old Bertie; she might weaken for a few minutes, and ask him to be kind,
but she still believed in money, and the things money bought. She
discussed Vee from that point of view; it would be more dignified, and
safer in the long run, for him to marry a lady, rather than an actress;
but all the same, Vee had a lot of sense, and he might do worse. To go
and wreck their happiness for the sake of his fool Bolshevik
notions—that was just sickening!
Then she wanted to know about Dad’s affairs, and how that deal in
Washington was going; would they really get the leases? And was it true
that Dad had any real pull with the administration in Washington? Bunny
was sure he had; and Bertie revealed what she had in mind. “I’ve been
thinking it over—I’ve had a lot of time to think, lying here. I believe
that what I’ll do is to go back to Eldon Burdick. He’s a good deal of a
dub, but you always know where to find him, and that seems to me a
virtue right now.”
“Would you tell him about this?” asked Bunny, wonderingly.
“No, why should I? He’s made his mistakes, I guess, and he doesn’t
advertise them. He knows I’ve been living with Charlie, but I think he’s
still in love with me. What I have in mind is that I could make a career
for him; I’d get Dad or Verne to pull some wires and get him a good
diplomatic post. I believe I’d like to live in Paris, you meet all the
important people there, and it’s very good form. We’re going to have to
take charge of Europe, Eldon says, and I think he’s the sort of man
they’ll need. How does that strike you?”
“Well, if it’s what you want, I’ve no doubt you can get it. But it’ll be
rather tough on Eldon to have me for a brother-in-law.”
“Oh, you’re going to behave yourself,” said Bertie, easily. “This is
just a sort of children’s complaint that you’ll get over.”
VIII
The navy department ousted the little company which had started drilling
on the Sunnyside naval reserve. It sent in a bunch of marines to do it,
and this unprecedented move attracted a lot of attention, which worried
Dad and Verne. The latter had a man up there, to fix matters with the
newspaper correspondents; and “Young Pete” was in Washington, seeing to
things there. You began to notice in the newspapers items to the effect
that the navy department was greatly worried because companies occupying
lands adjoining the naval reserves were drilling, and draining the
navy’s oil; this would be a calamity, and the authorities were of the
opinion that in order to avoid it the reserves should be turned over to
the department of the interior, which would lease them upon terms
advantageous to the government.
Bunny didn’t need to ask his father about that propaganda; he knew what
it meant, and he waited, wondering—was it possible to get away with
anything so crude? Could anybody fail to see that the government could
have taken the adjoining lands, under the same powers which had set
aside the present reserves? Or that the navy could have put down offset
wells on its own property, exactly as any oil man would have done? But
no, this administration was not thinking about the navy—it was thinking
about Dad and Verne! When the oil men had bought the Republican
convention, they had also got the machinery of the party, and that
included the press, which now accepted meekly the “dope” sent out from
Washington, and commended the prompt measures of the administration to
protect the navy’s precious oil.
Then a peculiar thing happened. Dan Irving called Bunny on the phone,
and made a date for lunch. The first thing he said, “Well, the labor
college is flooey—naa poo!” He went on to declare, it was a waste of
time to try to keep such an enterprise alive, so long as the present
labor leaders were in power; they didn’t want the young workers to be
educated—it wouldn’t be so easy for the machine to control them. Last
week somebody had raided the college at night, and taken most of its
belongings, except the debts; Dan had decided to pay these out of his
savings and quit.
“What are you going to do?” asked Bunny. And Dan explained he had been
sending in news to a little press service which a bunch of radicals were
maintaining in Chicago, and he had got a lot of information from
Washington that had attracted attention. He had some friends there on
the inside, and the upshot of it was that Dan had been offered fifteen
dollars a week to go to the national capital as correspondent of this
press service. “I can exist on that, and it’s the best job I can do.”
Bunny was enthusiastic. “Dan, that’s fine! There’s plenty of rascals
that need to be smoked out!”
“I know it; and that’s what I want to see you about. One of the things
I’ve got my eye on is these naval reserve oil leases. They look mighty
fishy to me. Unless I’m missing my guess, the people behind it are
Vernon Roscoe and Pete O’Reilly, and there’s bound to be black wherever
their hands have touched.”
“I suppose so,” replied Bunny, trying to keep his voice from going weak.
“There’s talk in Washington that that’s how Crisby came into the
cabinet. The deal was fixed up before Harding got his nomination.
General Wood says the nomination was offered to him if he’d make such a
deal, and he turned it down.”
“Good Lord!” said Bunny.
“Of course I don’t know yet, but I’m going to dig it out. Then I
remembered that Roscoe is an associate of your father’s, and it occurred
to me, it would be awkward as the devil if I was to come on
anything—well, you know what I mean, Bunny—after your father was so
kind to me, and you put up money for the college—”
“Sure, I know,” said Bunny. “You don’t have to worry about that, Dan.
You go ahead and do your job, just as if you’d never known us.”
“That’s fine of you. But listen—I was afraid maybe some day there might
be a misunderstanding, unless I got this clear, that I never got any
hint on this subject from you. My recollection is positive, you’ve never
mentioned it in my hearing. Is that right?”
“It’s absolutely right, Dan.”
“You’ve never discussed your father’s business with me at all—except
the strike; and you haven’t discussed Roscoe’s or O’Reilly’s, either.”
“That is true, Dan. There’ll never be any question about that.”
“There will be, Bunny, rest assured—if I should bust loose in
Washington, nothing would ever convince Roscoe and O’Reilly that I
hadn’t wormed it out of you. I’m afraid nothing would convince your
father, either. But I want to be sure that your own mind is clear, I
haven’t been dishonorable.”
Bunny gave him his hand on it; and not one of the veteran poker-players
who sat all night in the smoke-filled living-room of the “ranch-house”
at Paradise could have acted more perfectly the part of impassivity.
Bunny even made himself finish lunch, and he wrote a check to cover part
of the debt of the labor college, and gave his friend a hearty farewell
and best wishes for his new job. Then he drove off in his car, and was
free to look as he felt, which was quite unhappy!
He decided that it was his duty to tell his father about this
conversation. It couldn’t make any difference to Dan Irving’s work, and
it might yet be possible to keep Dad out of the mess. But when the elder
Ross got home that evening, Bunny had no time to get in a word. “Well,
son, we got those leases!”
“You don’t say, Dad!”
“They’ve been approved, and Verne left for Washington today. They’ll be
signed next week, and you and me are going to take a trip and have some
fun!”
IX
Joe and Ikey Menzies had been out of jail for a couple of months, their
comrades of the Workers’ party having scraped together the bail. Now
came their trial, with several other members of the party. The state was
undertaking to show that this organization was nothing but the Communist
party under a camouflage; it was the “legal” part of the organization,
but the real direction was in the hands of an “underground” group, which
received funds and took orders from Moscow. It advocated the forcible
overthrow of the “capitalist state,” and the setting up of a
“dictatorship of the proletariat,” after the Russian pattern. On the
other hand, the indicted men claimed that they had organized a
legitimate working-class political party, and their attitude to violence
was purely defensive. They believed the capitalists would never permit
the power to be taken from them peaceably; it was the capitalists who
would overthrow the constitution, and the workers would have to defend
themselves.
The prisoners were all tried at once, and the procedure took three weeks
and was quite an education in contemporary problems—or would have been,
had the newspapers reported both sides. To get the workers’ side, you
had to sit in the court room; and Bunny went whenever he could get loose
from the university. He was there when the prosecution sprung a
“surprise” witness, and it was a surprise to Bunny also—his boyhood
friend, Ben Skutt! Ben, it appeared, had grown a moustache and taken a
course in the Moscow dialect, and had turned up as an oil worker out of
a job, and been admitted to the Workers’ party, and before long had got
a job in the office. Now he had harrowing stories to tell of the
criminal things he had heard said, and of efforts the party had made to
incite the oil workers to rise and destroy the wells. On the other hand,
so Bunny was told by Ikey Menzies, the Communists were ready to swear
that Ben Skutt had himself done all the proposing of destruction—at the
crisis of the strike he had spent his time insisting that the only way
to save the situation was to get a bunch of real fighting men and burn
up half a dozen oil fields.
Bunny went home to his father. “Dad, just what was it made you get rid
of Ben Skutt?”
“Why, I found he’d been taking commissions from the other feller. He’d
been up to other rascalities, too.”
“Just what?”
Dad laughed. “He had a scheme that was a wonder. You know, down there at
Prospect Hill, people were in a crazy hurry to drill; the owner of the
next lot was getting his well down first, and draining all the oil away.
Ben and another feller would find a bunch of lot owners jist on the
point of making a good lease; and Ben would have his pal give him a
quit-claim deed to one of those lots. Ben would record the deed, and of
course, when the title company come to report on the property, there was
that cloud on the title. The owner would come hustling after Ben Skutt
in a panic, what the hell was this? And Ben would look shocked, and tell
how he had bought the lot from some feller in good faith. Who was the
feller? Well, the feller had disappeared, and nobody could find him. But
there Ben had the lease tied up, and the drilling couldn’t start. The
lot owner would rage and swear—all the lot owners in the lease was all
tied up together, and nobody could do anything with their property till
that one lot had got free. To go into court and clear the title would
take six months or so, and meantime the chance to lease would be gone;
so the owners would have to chip in and pay Ben five thousand or
so—whatever he claimed he had paid to the other man.”
“I should think that trick would have been tried a lot of times,”
remarked Bunny; and Dad answered, it would be tried just long enough for
the news to git round, and then some lot owner would stick a gun under
Ben’s nose, and settle it that way. What had happened in his case was
the usual thing, a woman had got hold of him and plucked him clean, and
that was why he was doing spy work for the patriotic societies.
Bunny knew that his father didn’t owe anything to this slippery rascal,
and wouldn’t mind his being exposed, provided Bunny’s name was not
dragged in. It would be easy to trace the matter down, by looking up
Ben’s real estate transactions in the county records; he would have
given a quit-claim deed to the lot owners whom he had held up, and if
these men were still in the neighborhood, no doubt they would testify,
or could be made to. Bunny saw Rachel at the university next morning and
told her the story, and gave her a hundred dollar bill to cover the
costs of a title search. She passed it on to Joe or Ikey, and two days
later Ben was confronted by half a dozen infuriated citizens, male and
female, who did a good deal to shake the jury’s faith in his testimony
as to secret conspiracies in the Workers’ party! The jury disagreed in
the case of all but two men, the leading party directors; these got six
years apiece, but the Menzies boys got off, and the party held a
celebration, which was described in the newspapers as an orgy of red
revolutionary raving.
X
Dad was not so much troubled by the news which Bunny told him, that Dan
Irving was on the trail of Vernon Roscoe in the national capital. There
was bound to be gossip about the lease, of course; there were always
“soreheads,” trying to make trouble, but everybody would understand it
was jist politics. It was the biggest “killing” of Dad’s life-time, and
of Verne’s, too; they would go ahead and drill the land and get out the
oil, and nothing else would count. You had to be a sort of hard-shell
crab in this game; it was too bad Bunny wasn’t able to grow the
necessary shell. Also, it was too bad that a nice young feller like “the
professor” couldn’t find anything better to do with himself than to go
smelling round Verne’s out-house.
There had been a new company formed, to develop this greatest oil field
in America, and Dad was part owner of the stock, and a vice-president,
with another hundred thousand a year for directing the development work.
But he wasn’t going to wear himself out with detail, he promised Bunny;
he had trained some competent young fellers by now, and all he had to do
was direct them. It was a wonderful job, and he was all wrapped up in
putting it through, working harder than ever, in defiance of his
doctors.
A telegram came from Verne; the leases had been signed. Bunny arranged
to get a week off from his studies—such favors could be had by a grave
old senior, especially when there was hope that his father might endow a
chair of research in petroleum chemistry. They took a long drive to
Sunnyside, a remote part of the state, grazing country, with very few
settlers, and poor roads. They stayed in a crude country hotel, and
inspected the new fields, riding horseback part of the time. Dad’s
geologists were there, and the engineers and surveyors; they decided
upon the drilling sites, and the roads, and the pipe-lines, and the
tank-farm—yes, even a town, and how the streets were to run, and where
the moving picture theatre and the general store were to be! The
necessary wires had been pulled, and the county was to start work on a
paved road next week. It was all hunkydory!
Bunny ought to have been interested in all this; he ought to have been
proud of the “killing,” like any loyal son. Instead of that, here he was
as usual, “smelling round the out-house” to use the ex-mule-driver’s
crude phrase. The fates which willed that Bunny should be always on the
wrong side of his father’s work followed him here to this country hotel,
and brought him into contact with an old ranchman, a feeble-faced,
pathetic old fellow with skin turned to leather by sixty years of baking
heat and winds. Anxious watery blue eyes he had, and a big case of
papers under his arm, which he wouldn’t leave in his room for fear they
would be stolen. He wanted Dad to consider a lease, and of course Dad
had no time to fool with little leases, and told him so, and that
settled it. But the old man found out somehow that Bunny lacked the
customary hard-shell of the big oil-crabs, and succeeded in luring the
young man to his room and showing his documents. It was a certified file
from the department of the interior, all fixed up with impressive red
seals and blue ribbons—but all the same it wasn’t complete, the old man
declared; somebody had stolen the essential documents from the
government files, which showed how “Mid-Central Pete” had done him out
of his homestead. “It’s a feller named Vernon Roscoe, one of the big
crooks in this game.”
The old man, Carberry, had set out to homestead a claim to some lands
nearby; and oil had been discovered, and Mid-Central Pete had just come
in and shoved him out, paying him not a cent for his twenty-two hundred
dollars of improvements. They could do this—the old man had a copy of
the law to show how it read, excluding “mineral lands” from homestead
rights; there were thousands in this part of the state who had been
caught in that trap. But Carberry had actually got a patent on his land,
and so had a valid claim; but somebody had managed to doctor the
government records, and now for several years he had been struggling for
redress. With pathetic trustfulness he had written to his congressman,
to get a lawyer in Washington to represent him, and the congressman had
recommended a lawyer, and Carberry had sent him money several times with
no result—and then, going to Washington, had discovered that the
alleged lawyer was simply a clerk in the congressman’s office,
plundering land claimants and presumably dividing the graft with his
employer!
A pitiful, pitiful story—and the worst part of it, you could see it
wasn’t a single case, but a system. One more way by which the rich and
powerful were plundering the poor and weak! Carberry had with him a
government document he had managed to get in Washington, the report of a
congressional investigation of California land cases. Bunny spent an
evening glancing through it—a thousand pages of wholesale fraud and
stealing in close print. For example, the seizure of oil rights by the
railroads! The government land grants had turned over to the railroads
every other section of land along their right of way, but had
specifically exempted all “mineral lands.” Wherever minerals might be
discovered, the roads were bound to surrender these sections and take
other sections. Under the law, the word “minerals” included petroleum;
but were the railroads paying any attention to that law? The Southern
Pacific alone had California oil lands to a value of more than a billion
dollars; but every effort to recover these properties for the state had
been blocked by cunning lawyers and purchased politicians and judges. As
they drove home, Bunny tried to tell his father about this; but what
could Dad do? What could he do about old Carberry, who had been robbed
of his home by “Mid-Central Pete”? You could be sure that Dad wasn’t
going “smelling round Verne’s out-house”!