THE FLIGHT
I
This summer of 1923 was a pleasant one for Bunny. To be one of the
editors of a little paper, and be able to say what you thought, and
print it week by week and distribute it, with no Dean Squirge to take it
away from you, and no police or patriots to raid your office! To mail it
to every one you knew, and flatter yourself with the idea that they were
reading it, and being cured of their prejudices! Bunny had put all his
former class-mates on the mailing list of “The Young Student,” and in
the fall the “Ypsels” were going to sell it on the college campuses, and
maybe trouble would begin then, and they would get some advertising
free!
Dad was slowly picking up. He read the little paper every week, a sort
of loving censorship. But it wasn’t needed, because Rachel, orthodox
Socialist party member, was wasting no space on the left wingers. When
these extremists got hold of Bunny and cajoled him into thinking that
both sides ought to have a hearing, Rachel would say, what was the
matter with their getting out a paper of their own? So here was Bunny,
being “bossed” as usual—and by a woman! It was almost as bad as being
married!
Another source of relief—Vee was not quarreling with him so much. She
had been so shocked by his mad proposal to go off and get himself killed
in heavy industry, that she was glad to compromise and take half his
time, and let Rachel and “The Young Student” have the other half. Vee
was working hard on her new picture, “The Golden Couch,” telling about
an American darling of luxury who fell into the toils of a fake prince
from some Balkan country. To play the part they had got a real Roumanian
prince, who had most charming manners, and was willing to devote himself
to Vee at all times when Bunny was busy with his Socialist Jewess.
Also they were getting agreeable letters from Bertie, who had been
transported to heaven. Such a brilliant world, with such important
things going on! She had lunched with the Prince de This, and dined with
the Duchesse de That. Why wouldn’t Dad and Bunny come over and visit
them—Bunny might make a really brilliant marriage. Dad chuckled; the
idea of him going to Paree and trying to polly voo Francy!
The blackmailers were busy, of course; but since his illness Dad had
left all that trouble to Verne. Congress was on vacation, which meant a
partial respite; the senatorial reds might denounce the oil leases in
their home states, but the papers no longer had to print what they said.
A curious superstition, that when things were said in Congress, even the
most respectable newspapers found it necessary to mention them. Such
things brought politics into disrepute with business men.
The drilling of the Sunnyside tract was under way. A dozen wells were
flowing, and justifying all that had been expected of them. Sometimes
Dad was driven to the office, but most of the time the bright young
executives would come out to his home, and sit in the den and get their
orders. Such clean-cut efficient young men, with all their faculties
concentrated upon getting oil out of the ground! No visions tormenting
them, no strains of music haunting them, no hesitations, no
uncertainties, never a doubt that to get oil out of the ground was the
purpose of man’s life! So they kept their wits about them, and mastered
their departments, and increased their prestige and their salaries; and
when any one of them had taken his departure, there was an unuttered
sadness between Dad and his son. Why couldn’t Bunny have been like young
Simmons, or young Heimann, or young Bolling?
II
The doctor had said that Dad must not think about business more than two
hours a day; so Bunny would tempt him for a stroll, a very slow one, and
perhaps they would hear a sermon of Eli’s as they walked along the
street, and that never failed to divert Dad’s mind and set him to
chuckling. He took a kind of malicious delight in watching the glory
sweep of the Third Revelation; by proving that the masses were boobs,
you made it all right to take their naval reserves! Dad subscribed to a
little paper issued by one of the rival religious showmen of the town,
full of denunciations of Eli and exposures of his trickery.
The regular churches were jealous of this new Revelation, which had
burst so rudely upon them. Eli was an upstart and a mountebank, and Tom
Poober, the clerical rival, declared that he faked a lot of his alleged
cures, he hired people to stand up and tell how their crippled limbs had
healed and their cancers had disappeared. Also, Eli’s followers had not
been willing to give up their customs of rolling and talking in tongues,
and Eli had had to build for them a number of sound-proof rooms in the
Tabernacle, where these rites were carried on. “Tarrying rooms,” they
were called, because you went there to “tarry with Jesus”; and when
things got going, you would see a hundred men and women rolling on the
floor, pawing one another, tearing off their clothing; you would see a
woman jerking her head back, or leaping several feet at a time, here and
there, exactly like a chicken with its head cut off. The orgies would
end with a mass of human creatures piled into a heap, wriggling and
writhing, amid a smell of sweat that would make you ill.
The Reverend Poober would print such things, and send newsboys to sell
the paper in front of the Tabernacle; the newsboys would be fallen upon
and beaten, and the police would fail to arrest the assailants, or
having arrested them, would turn them loose. Were the politicians of
Angel City afraid of the power of this stuffed prophet? Tom Poober would
ask in large capital letters, and Dad would chuckle—in the mood of that
Western pioneer who came home and found his wife in a hand-to-hand
conflict with a bear, and rested his gun upon the fence and took a seat
and called, “Go it, woman! Go it, bear!”
There was another charge—the prophet was said to be fond of the company
of handsome young women. That was a cruel thing to hint, because Eli was
strenuous in denouncing fornications and adulteries, as much so as any
Hebrew prophet of the First Revelation. Dad chuckled and speculated;
until it happened one day that he and Bunny took a long drive, and
stopped at an unfrequented beach, looking for a place for Bunny to get a
swim. There was a cheap hotel on the waterfront, and coming out of the
door, whom should they run into but Eli Watkins, with an indubitably
handsome young woman! The young woman walked quickly on, and Eli
exchanged greetings with Dad and Bunny, and then excused himself. Dad
stood for a minute, looking after the couple and saying, “By golly!”
Then he turned and went into the hotel, and to the man at the desk
remarked, in a casual tone, “I met that gentleman, but his name has
slipped my memory—the one that just went out.”
“That’s Mr. T. C. Brown, of Santa Ynez.”
“Is he staying here”?
“He just checked out.”
Dad began to glance over the hotel register, and there he read, as big
as life, “T. C. Brown and wife, Santa Ynez.” And in the crude scrawly
handwriting of Eli Watkins, which Dad had at home upon several business
letters! It was all Dad could do to keep from bursting out laughing. By
golly, if he were to tip off Tom Poober to the contents of that hotel
register, he would knock the Third Revelation as high as a kite!
III
President Harding died; and Dan Irving wrote Bunny the gossip from
Washington. The old gentleman had been reluctant to take the oil men’s
money, so Barney Brockway and his “fixer” had fixed things for him—they
had “carried an account” in a Wall Street brokerage, a method whereby
business men make life comfortable for statesmen. Every now and then
they would bring the old gentleman a bundle of liberty bonds which they
had “won” for him. And now his widow had found several hundred thousand
dollars of these bonds in a safe deposit box, and become convinced that
he had meant them for another woman, and was in such a fury about it
that she was telling all her friends, and giving great glee to
Washington gossip.
And then the new president: a little man whose fame was based upon the
legend that he had put down a strike of the Boston policemen, when the
truth was that he had been hiding in his hotel room, with a black eye
presented to him by the mayor of the city. His dream in life, as
reported by himself, was to keep a store, and that was the measure of
his mentality. He didn’t know what to say, and so the newspapers called
him a “strong silent man.”
Bunny didn’t publish much of this, because Rachel didn’t approve of
gossip. But they did publish some of the inside facts about
professionalism in college athletics, and when this was offered for sale
on the campuses, the athletic students mobbed the “Ypsels.” But even the
mobbers read the paper, and Bunny was having the time of his life.
In December the new Congress assembled, and an alarming state of affairs
was revealed; the “insurgents” had the balance of power in the Senate,
and their first move was to combine with the Democrats and order an
investigation of the oil leases. This news fell upon Dad and Verne like
a thunderbolt—their scouts in Washington had failed to foresee such a
calamity, and Verne had to jump into his private car and hurry to
Washington, to see what a last-minute expenditure of cash might do.
Apparently it didn’t do much, for the committee proceeded to put
witnesses on the stand and “grill” them—a terrifying newspaper phrase,
but really it was not so much a culinary operation as an explosion, with
the debris scattered all over the front pages of the press.
The thing was too sensational to be held down any longer. It didn’t read
like politics, but like some blood and thunder movie. Secretary Crisby
hadn’t had the sense to put his oil money into liberty bonds and hide
them in a safe deposit box—he had gone like a fool and paid off a big
mortgage on his Texas ranch, and bought a lot of stuff that everybody
could see; he had even told the foreman of his ranch that he had got
sixty-eight thousand dollars from Vernon Roscoe, and the foreman had
told one of the ranch-hands. Now the senators put the badly rattled
foreman on the witness stand, and he had to explain that it was all a
misunderstanding—what he had said was not “sixty-eight thousand
dollars,” but “six or eight cows.” You can see how easy it was for such
a mistake to happen!
But then it was shown that Secretary Crisby had deposited a hundred
thousand dollars in his bank one day; and where had he got that? A great
Washington newspaper publisher came forward to declare that he had
loaned his dear friend the secretary that little sum for no particular
reason. The great publisher then went off to Florida to spend the
winter, and he was sick and couldn’t possibly be disturbed. But the
perverse committee sent one of its members to Florida and put the
publisher on the witness stand, and in the presence of half a hundred
newspaper reporters pinned him down and made him admit that his story
had been a friendly fairy-tale.
Where had the hundred thousand come from? The scandalmongers were busy,
of course—fellows like Dan Irving running to the committee with tales
of what Washington gossip was saying. So the committee grabbed “Young
Pete” O’Reilly, and “grilled” him, and made him admit that he had
carried the trifling sum of a hundred thousand dollars to Secretary
Crisby in a little black bag—more stuff right out of a movie! And then
they grabbed “Old Pete,” and he claimed it was just a loan—he had got a
note, but he couldn’t recollect where the note was. He finally produced
a signature which he said had been cut off the note, but he couldn’t
tell what had become of the rest of it; he was very careless about
notes, and thought he had given this one to his wife, who had misplaced
all but the signature. And these scandalous details about the leaders of
the most fashionable society in Washington and Angel City! The
newspapers published it, even while they shivered at their own
irreverence.
IV
Every day Dad was getting long telegrams from Verne, not coming direct,
of course, but addressed to Mrs. Bolling, the wife of the trusty young
executive; they were signed “A. H. Dory”—a play upon Dad’s favorite
formula, “All hunkydory.” They were not the sort of telegrams that a
doctor would have picked out for the soothing of his patient’s nerves;
no, they kept the patient in a fever of anxiety—how many, many times he
wished that he had listened to the warnings of his young idealist, and
kept clear of this mess of corruption! But of course Bunny couldn’t say
that now; he could only read the news and wait and wonder at what hour
the thunderbolt would descend upon them.
Annabelle’s new picture was done, “A Mother’s Heart,” and there was
going to be an especially grand premiere, and Bunny was to take Vee, of
course, and Dad was to take Aunt Emma, and everything would be all
hunkydory for that one night at least. Bunny came home from reading the
proofs of the next issue of the paper, and there in the entrance hall he
found his aunt waiting for him, her hands shaking with excitement, and
her teeth chattering. “Oh, Bunny! The most dreadful thing! They’re
trying to arrest your father!”
“Arrest him?”
“Men are after him—right in front of the house! You’ve got to get away
without being seen—they’ll follow you—oh, I’m so frightened—oh,
please, please, be careful! Don’t let them catch your father!”
He managed to get the story, and it was really almost as melodramatic as
her wild words conveyed. Young Bolling, the trusty executive, had been
to the house a few minutes ago, looking for Bunny with a message from
Dad of the utmost urgency; he had written it out, and Bunny read it: he
was to drive in his car, and make absolutely certain that he was not
being followed—there would be men trying to follow him, in order to
trail Dad. As soon as he had shaken off these men, he must leave his
car, which of course had his name on the license; he must go to some
automobile place where he was not known, and buy a closed car under an
assumed name; it must not be a new car, because they might have to do
very fast driving. Still making sure that he was not being followed,
Bunny must proceed to the suburban town of San Pasqual, and at a certain
corner Dad would join him. Mr. Bolling had given Aunt Emma five thousand
dollars in bills, and then had gone away, hoping that the men who were
watching the house would follow him.
Bunny said a few words to comfort the poor old lady. Nobody wanted to
put Dad into jail, they just wanted to get him on the witness stand, the
way they had done the “Petes,” young and old. Bunny threw a few clothes
into an old suit-case, that had no name or initials on it, and hurried
out to his car. Sure enough, there was another car just down the street,
and when Bunny started, this other started also. Bunny swung round half
a dozen corners, but the other car kept on his trail. He bethought
himself of the traffic jam in the heart of the city, which was at its
worst right now, between five and six in the evening. The traffic was
controlled by signals, with two or three officers at the crowded
corners, and it would be possible by dodging here and there to get
several cars between you and a pursuing car, and sooner or later to get
across just as the bell rang and compelled your pursuer to wait.
Bunny worked the trick, and shook off the other car; then he left his
own in a public garage for storage, and made the purchase of a
two-passenger closed car under the name of “Alex H. Jones.” The dealers’
receipt would serve for a license temporarily, and Bunny counted out
eighteen of his hundred dollar bills, and drove away. Half an hour later
he was in the town of San Pasqual, driving past the corner specified. He
passed it twice, and the second time Dad stepped out of a hotel, and
Bunny slowed up, and then away they went! “Anybody following you?” were
Dad’s first words, and Bunny said, “I don’t think so, but we’ll make
sure.” They swung round several corners, and Dad kept watch through the
rear window. “All hunkydory,” he said, at last, and Bunny asked, “Where
are we going?” The answer was, “To Canada”; and Bunny, who had been
prepared for anything, took the boulevard that led North out of San
Pasqual.
While he drove, Dad told him the news. The first thing, Verne had
skipped to Europe; at least, his steamer was sailing today, and it was
hoped he had not been caught. “A. H. Dory” had telegraphed to Mrs.
Bolling, advising her that it was absolutely necessary for Mr.
Paradise—that was Dad’s code name—to meet his friends in Vancouver
immediately, and he must start tonight, otherwise he would be too late
for the appointment. Dad hadn’t needed any further hint; he had learned
yesterday—though he had kept the painful news from Bunny—that the
Senate investigators had got wind of that Canadian corporation, and were
planning to subpoena all its organizers. Undoubtedly the subpoenas had
been issued that day, and telegraphed to Angel City, with instructions
to the United States marshal to serve them at once. Dad and young
Bolling had made their get-away from the office by means of a
fire-escape—more movie stuff, you see! And here they were, Alex H.
Jones and Paul K. Jones, driving all night on a rain-battered highway,
not daring to stop at any hotel, because a United States marshal might
be lurking in the lobby; not daring even to pass through the big cities,
for fear the all-seeing eye of their irate Uncle Sam might be spying
from a window!
V
They got to Vancouver in a heavy snow-storm; and immediately dropped
their uncomfortable aliases, and put up at the best hotel. Straightway,
of course, the newspaper reporters came running; and Dad said with his
quiet dignity that it was all rubbish about their being fugitives from
the Senate investigation, they were American business men who had come
to British Columbia to consider investments. That scandal in Washington
was nothing but cheap and silly politics, the leases had been most
advantageous to the government, and as for the Canadian corporation, it
had been an enterprise of great benefit to Canada. Did Mr. Ross and his
son plan to explore for oil in British Columbia? asked the reporters,
eagerly; and Dad said that he had nothing to communicate as yet.
Here they were: comfortable in the physical sense, but mentally not at
all so, in a city which to them was a frontier place, with cold weather
and nothing of interest. Yet Dad was likely to be in exile for a long
time; the new Congress would be in session half a year, and the
trouble-makers would certainly keep the oil scandal going, so as to have
something to use in next fall’s presidential election. Dad sent
telegrams to his office, and wireless messages to Verne on board ship;
and presently came a reply from Verne requesting Dad to meet him in
London immediately.
Dad had to go; and then, what about Bunny? He had his sweetheart at
home, and also his paper, so perhaps he should return to Angel City. But
Bunny said nonsense, it was out of the question for Dad to cross a
continent and an ocean in winter-time alone. His son would go with him,
and after they had talked things out with Verne, they could go over to
Paris, and spend a while with Bertie, and meet those swell diplomatic
friends of hers. Then, if necessary, Bunny might come back alone—they
would see about that later.
The old man was pitifully glad of this decision. Bunny was all he had to
care about now. In his secret heart he must have been humiliated before
his son, but he had to go on with the pretense that he was a dignified
business man, persecuted by unscrupulous political enemies. He talked
about the matter very little with Bunny, but to other people he would
discourse for hours; this sudden talkativeness about his affairs was the
most pitiful of all signs of his weakening.
Bunny wrote long letters to Vee, telling her the situation and pledging
his love; and to Rachel, turning over the paper to her, and arranging
for the thousand dollars a month to be paid to her. Dad wrote long
letters to his efficient young executives—thank God for their
efficiency right now! They would keep in touch with him and Verne by
cable; and Verne’s agents in Washington would send the “low down” on the
investigation. Bunny arranged to get Dan Irving’s weekly letter, and the
various radical papers he was reading; so father and son would be in
position to carry on their controversy in Europe!
They spent four days on a train crossing the snowy plains of Canada. It
was bitter cold outside, but snug and warm within, and on the rear of
the train was an observation car, made use of by a score or two of
business men, American and Canadian. In an hour or two they had learned
that the great J. Arnold Ross was among them, and after that Dad held
court, and told his troubles to all and sundry. It was curious to Bunny
to see the class-consciousness of these men, an instant, automatic
reaction; every one of them was with Dad, every one knew that the
exposure was the work of malicious political disturbers, and that the
leases had been a good bargain for the public. The savings that
intelligent business men effected always made up many times over for
what profits the business men took.
When they got to Montreal, there was a palatial steamer waiting, with
several hundred wage-slaves of various sorts prepared to serve them in
return for a few hundred barrels of the stolen oil. They went on board,
and the steamer proceeded down the St. Lawrence river; it stopped at
Quebec, and there were newspapers, and Bunny read that Federal agents
had raided a secret convention of the Workers’ party, and arrested all
the delegates. It was a highly sensational event, and the Canadian
papers gave full particulars—they too had this problem! Their account
gave the names of the criminals who had been trapped, and one of them
was Paul Watkins!
VI
Not all the oil money in the world could make the winter passage to
England other than cold and stormy. Dad proved to be a poor sailor, and
so he was a forlorn object when he got to Vernon Roscoe’s hotel in
London. But Verne cheered him up; yes, truly, Dad began to revive with
the first thump upon the back and the first boom of Verne’s voice in the
hotel lobby. “By Jees, the old skeezicks! I believe the reds have got
his nerve!”
Nobody had got Verne’s nerve, you bet; he was sitting on the top of the
world! That investigation—shucks, that was a circus stunt to entertain
the yokels. It would blow over and be forgotten in a few months—Verne
quoted a chieftain of Tammany Hall who had been up against the same kind
of racket, and said, “Dis is a nine day town. If yez kin stand de gaff
fer nine days, ye’re all right.” No, by Jees—and Verne gave his partner
another thump—they were getting the oil out of Sunnyside, and the money
was going into their bank accounts, and not into anybody’s else, and
they were going to have one hell of a lark spending it. What was more,
they were going to turn the tables on those blankety-blank red
senators—just let Dad wait a few days, and he’d see some stuff that
would get on the front pages of the papers, even here in England!
Jim Junior got his due share of back-slapping. The boy Bolsheviki must
take his old man around and show him some of the sights of London;
hadn’t he learned about ’em in the history books—the places where men
had had their heads chopped off five hundred years ago, and such
cheerful spectacles? After the old man had got rested up, then Verne
would show him some oil propositions that would make his eyes pop open.
Verne hadn’t been losing any time—not he! He had put five million into
a project that was to reopen a great oil field in Roumania that had been
burned during the German invasion, and it was a deal that would beat
Sunnyside, and Verne had got fifty-one percent and full control, and was
going to bring over a complete American outfit, and show those gypsies
or whatever they were what a real oil job looked like. And now he was
fighting with some of the British oil men over the Persian situation,
and Verne and the state department between them were waking old John
Bull from a long sweet dream.
It was a curious situation that was unveiled to Bunny here. Vernon
Roscoe was a fugitive from the oil investigating committee of the
Senate, but at the same time he was master of the foreign policy of the
United States government concerning oil, and the ambassadors abroad and
the secretary of state at home behaved as his office boys. Of course
there were other oil men; Excelsior Pete and Victor and the rest of the
Big Five all had their agents, hundreds of them, abroad; but Verne was
so active, and had so much the best word in Washington, that the rest
had come to follow his lead. President Harding might be dead, but his
spirit lived on, and Verne and his crowd had bought and paid for it.
The American magnate came among these Britishers with as much tact and
grace as one of his long-horned steers from the southwestern plains. He
wasn’t going to put on any society flummery, he was an old
cattle-puncher from Oklahoma, and if “Old Spats and Monocle,” as he
called Great Britain’s leading oil magnate, didn’t like him, by Jees he
could lump him! Bunny attended a banquet at which a group of the rivals
sat down together, and it seemed to Bunny that Verne was more noisy and
more slangy than even at his own dinner-table at the Monastery. There
was method in it, the younger man suspected; Verne frightened these
strangers with his wild western airs, and that was the proper mood for
negotiations! They had needed our navy damn bad a few years ago, and had
got it free of charge, but they weren’t going to get it that way again,
and Verne was the feller to tell them so. The next time, it would be the
oil crowd’s say about the battleships—and the same with the dollars, by
Jees.
There was a new deal in American diplomacy since the war. The state
department had taken charge of foreign investments made by our bankers,
and told them where to go and where to stay away from. The bankers had
to obey, because they never knew when they might need the help of the
marines to collect their interest. What it meant in practice was that a
few fighting men like Vernon Roscoe could go to foreign business men and
say, let me in on this and give me a share of that, or you can whistle
for the next loan from Wall Street. The procedure is known to all cattle
men, they call it “horning in”; and after a few of the Britishers had
been “horned in on,” they learned what the little fellows had learned
back home—who were the real masters of America!
VII
Dad of course had no trace of interest in seeing the place where men had
had their heads chopped off five hundred years ago; and Bunny tried it,
and found that he didn’t have much either. What Bunny wanted was to meet
the men who were in danger of having their heads chopped off now. There
was a great labor movement in England, with a well developed system of
workers’ education, supported by the old line leaders; also a bunch of
young rebels making war on it because of its lack of clear revolutionary
purpose. “The Young Student” had been exchanging with the “Plebs,” and
now Bunny went to see these rebels, and soon was up to his ears in the
British struggle—a wonderful meeting at Albert Hall, and labor members
of Parliament and other interesting people to meet.
A couple of papers published interviews with the young oil prince who
had gone in for “radicalism,” as the Americans called it. And this
brought an agonized letter from Bertie. She had been begging them to
come over to Paris and meet the best people; but now, here was Bunny,
six thousand miles away from home, still making his stinks! Couldn’t he
for God’s sake stop to think what he was doing to his relatives? Eldon
just about to get a promotion, and here his brother-in-law coming in and
queering it all! You could see Bertie making a strong moral effort on
paper, controlling herself and patiently explaining to her brother the
difference between Europe and California. People really took the red
peril seriously over here, and Bunny would find himself a complete
social outcast. How could Eldon’s superiors trust him in delicate
matters of state policy, if they knew that members of his family were in
sympathy with the murderous ruffians of Moscow?
Bunny replied that it was very sad indeed, but Bertie and her husband
had better repudiate him and not see him, for he had no intention of
failing to make acquaintance with the labor and Socialist movements of
the countries he visited. Having got that off his chest, Bunny sat down
to write for “The Young Student” an account of all the red things he had
seen and the red people he had met so far.
The little paper was coming, and Bunny was reading it from the upper
left hand corner of page one to the lower right hand corner of page
four, and finding it all good. Yes, Rachel Menzies was going to make a
real editor—a lot better one than Bunny himself, he humbly decided. She
had started a series of papers called “Justice and the Student,”
discussing the problems of the younger generation. She saw it all so
clearly, and was so dignified and persuasive in manner—not angry, as
the young reds so easily got! Even Dad was impressed, yes, that was a
clever girl; you wouldn’t think it to look at her—but those Jews were
always smart.
Also the labor press service was coming, with Dan Irving’s Washington
letter and other news from the oil scandal. And very soon Bunny saw what
Verne had meant by predicting the collapse of the investigation. The
whole power of the attorney-general’s office had been turned against the
insurgent senators. Barney Brockway, backed against the wall, was
fighting for the life of himself and his “Ohio gang.” Secret service
agents had raided the offices of the senators conducting the
investigation and rifled their papers; they were raking up scandals
against these men, sending women to try to “get” them, preparing a
series of “frame-ups” in their home states—every trick they had
rehearsed on the Communists and the I. W. W. now applied to the exposers
of the oil steal. Presently they had one of the senators under
indictment; and just as Verne had predicted, the big newspapers came to
their senses, and took the crimes of the oil men off the front page, and
put the crimes of the reds in their place.
There was quite a bunch of “magnates” now in exile; Fred Orpan, and John
Groby, and all those who had formed the Canadian corporation, and
distributed two million dollars of bribes in Washington. Dad and Bunny
would lunch with them, and they would have confidential telegrams, and
it was curious to watch their reactions. They all made a joke of
it—“Hello, old jailbird!” would be their greeting; but underneath they
were eaten with worry. Among other developments, the new President was
preparing to throw them overboard, in anticipation of next fall’s
elections. He, Cautious Cal, had never had any oil stains on him—oh,
no! oh, no! The oil men would jeer—the little man had sat in the
cabinet all the time the leases were being put through, he had been the
bosom friend of all of them. The first time any of Verne’s crowd enjoyed
the exposures was when the Senate committee began digging into a file of
telegrams which showed the immaculate one as heavily smeared as the
other politicians; he had been sending secret messages, trying to stave
off the exposure, trying to save this one and that. But now he was
getting ready to kick their agents out of the cabinet, and how they did
despise him! “The little hop-toad,” was Verne’s regular description of
the Chief Magistrate of his country!
VIII
Dad didn’t get well as quickly as they had hoped. Apparently the cold
damp darkness of London was not good for him, so Bunny took him to
Paris. Bertie relented, and met them at the station; even her husband
risked his diplomatic career, and everything was polite and friendly for
a few hours. But then the brother and sister got to arguing; Bertie
wanted Bunny not to investigate the Socialist movement of France, at
least, and Bunny said he had already promised Rachel an article about
it. There was a “youth” paper here that was on their exchange list, and
there was to be a Socialist meeting that very week which Bunny was going
to attend. Bertie said that settled it, he would never meet the Prince
de This and the Duchesse de That, and Bunny was so ignorant, he didn’t
know what he was missing.
Paris was wet and cold also, and Dad had a cough, and sat around in a
hotel lobby and was so forlorn it made your heart ache. He would let you
drive him around, and would look at public buildings—yes, it was very
fine, a beautiful city; people had been working on it a long while, we
hadn’t had time to get anything so good at home. But all the while you
could see that Dad didn’t really care about it; he didn’t like this
strange people with their jabber, the men looked like popinjays and the
women immoral, and people were always trying to pass off lead money on
you, and the food had fancy fixings so you couldn’t tell what it tasted
like, and why in the world Americans wanted to come chasing over here
was beyond Dad’s power to imagine.
It was decided to take him to the Riviera till spring. And here they
were settled in a villa looking over the Mediterranean, and there was
sunshine at last, a pale copy of California. Bertie came for a visit,
and then Aunt Emma to keep house for them, and it was a sort of a home.
Aunt Emma and Bertie got along beautifully, because the elder lady never
failed to admire the right things—oh, how perfectly lovely, how refined
and elegant, the most magnificent buildings, the most life-like
paintings, the most fashionable costumes! Aunt Emma would meet the
Prince de This and the Duchesse de That, and never injure the diplomatic
career of her nephew-in-law!
Bunny got himself a tutor, and rapidly unlearned the French he had
acquired at Southern Pacific. Of course he had to pick out a Socialist
tutor, a weird-looking, moth-eaten young man who did not seem to have
had a square meal in many years—a poet, he was reported to be. Other
Socialists came round, and a few Communists and Anarchists and
Syndicalists and hybrids of these; they wore loose ties, or none at all,
and hair hanging into their eyes, and looked to Dad and Aunt Emma as if
they were spying out the premises with intentions of burglary. Even here
there were radical meetings, on this Coast of Gold, where the rich of
Europe gambled and played; and poor devils dangling always on the verge
of starvation roused the pity of a young American millionaire, who lived
in luxury and had a guilty conscience. When it was ascertained that he
would lend money, there were some to ask, and most of them were
frauds—but how was a young American millionaire to know?
Aunt Emma had been escorted from Angel City by Dad’s private secretary,
bringing two big brief cases full of reports and letters. And so Dad was
busy and happy for a while, he studied these papers, and wrote long
instructions, and sent cablegrams in code, and fretted because some of
the replies were not clear. Yes, it was a hard matter to carry on an oil
business six thousand miles away. They were putting down test wells in
the north half of Sunnyside, and you wanted to be there to examine the
cores. Why, the damn fools had even failed to send the full text of the
geologists’ reports!
Dad wasn’t well enough to go into the big new deals with Verne; he must
rest first. But the rest didn’t help him, because he fretted for
something to do, and for his secretary to do. To go driving up and down
the same coast was monotonous; while to sit at tea-parties and chatter
with fashionable idlers—Dad had unutterable contempt for these people,
they weren’t even crude and healthy, like the rich in California, no,
they were rotten to the core, vicious and terrible people. The
ex-mule-driver took one look into their gilded gambling palace, that was
famed all over the world, and he went outside and spit on the
steps—faugh! He was even willing to consider Bunny’s argument, that
such people were made by generations of hereditary privilege; let things
go as they were going in California, and Dad’s grand-children would be
giving this crowd lessons in depravity. For that matter, some of them
were giving it now right here on the Riviera—rich Americans setting the
pace in frivolity and ostentation.
Anyhow, said Dad, give him Americans! He wandered out and found a
retired department-store proprietor from Des Moines, just as desperately
bored as himself, and the two would sit for hours on the esplanade and
tell about their business and their troubles. Presently there was added
a banker from South Dakota, and then a farmer who had struck oil in
Texas. The women folks insisted on these fool European tours, and all
the fathers could do was to get off by themselves and grumble at the
bills. But here were four of them, and they gave one another courage,
and fixed up a little place to pitch horseshoes—and in their
shirtsleeves, by heck, just as if they had never made the mistake of
making too much money and ruining their family-life!
IX
The weather grew hot, and they went back to Paris. Dad liked it better
now, he could stroll on the boulevards, and sit in those outdoor cafes,
where you sipped things to drink; there was always a waiter who
understood English, and maybe he had been in God’s country and would
chat about it. There were numbers of Americans to meet; Dad found the
express company office where they got their mail, and he even ran into
people from Angel City there! The newspapers from home came twice a
week, and lasted a long time.
Also, friends turned up—Annabelle Ames, for example, to attend the
London premiere of “A Mother’s Heart,” and to visit Roumania with Verne,
and also Constantinople. It appeared that Verne was backing the Turkish
government, as a means of squeezing a bigger share of the Mosul oil out
of the British. A funny thing—Excelsior Pete, Verne’s bitterest rival
at home, had offered to take him in on these concessions. Yes, you were
getting something when you bought the leading cabinet members of the
United States government! Excelsior Pete’s action showed how much real
importance they attributed to the oil scandals, and to the new
President’s public attitude.
Annabelle was a business woman, and understood these matters, which made
her a comfort to Dad. She pleaded with Bunny, in her gentle, loving
way—it was all right for him to set up new standards in business, but
was it fair to judge his father by them? Certainly no big business men
followed such standards. And surely America was entitled to its share of
the world’s oil; but there was no way to take it from these greedy
foreign rivals, except to mass the power of the government against them.
Annabelle had lots of news from home. Not gossip, she didn’t tell mean
things; but there was one story she couldn’t help telling, it was so
funny, and it caused Dad many a chuckle. A sudden fit of modesty had
struck the O’Reilly family; they had taken down all those bronze and
brass signs that had announced their progress about the world! No name
on their front gates, none on the “Conqueror,” their yacht, none on the
private car with its Circassian walnut and blue satin upholstery! No
longer was it a glorious thing to be an oil magnate’s wife—some fanatic
might throw a bomb at you!
Congress had adjourned for the summer, and Verne was going back. But he
wanted Dad to stay for a while, because that Canadian corporation was
the most vulnerable of all the oil men’s actions; it had never done
anything except to distribute that two million dollars of bribes. It was
more than ever important to keep the story down, because the government
was proceeding to bring suits for the return of all the naval reserves.
That would tie up the profits in the courts—all that good money, by
Jees, it was terrible!
Dad would stay, of course; and Bunny would have to stay with him. To
make matters easier, the great Schmolsky came along, fresh from the job
of buying most of the great German moving picture stars—another step in
the process of taking over the industry. Annabelle appealed to him, and
he was a good sport, he said yes, it was a damn shame the way old Jim
had been treated, and it was fine of the kid to stick by him—the Jews
are strong for the family; so Schmolsky would arrange several premieres
for “The Golden Couch” in Europe, and Vee might spend a long holiday
with her Bunny-rabbit. Lest Schmolsky should forget about the matter,
Annabelle made him dictate a cablegram right then; so Bunny saw a
demonstration of what it means to have influential friends! It was good
business as well as good nature, of course; because, when the world’s
darlings have these glory-progresses, a publicity man precedes them from
one great capital to the next, and the news of the crowds and the clamor
is cabled back to the United States, and takes the front page every
time.
Bunny could salve his conscience, because nobody needed him at home. The
magazine was getting along all right. Fifty-two issues had been
published, more than half of them of Rachel’s own editing; it was
something to count upon, the same as the sunrise—and it was the most
interesting paper in the world!
Also Paul was out of immediate trouble. One of the nineteen men arrested
at the Communist convention had been convicted and had appealed; the
cases of the rest were held up until that one was decided, and meantime
Paul and the others were out on bail. Ruth wrote Bunny the news; it was
a torment to have a twenty year jail sentence hanging over you, but they
were getting used to it. Ruth was going on with her nurse’s work, and
getting along fine. Paul had gone on a long journey—she was not at
liberty to say where.
But the capitalist press was at liberty, and did so. From time to time
you would read in the French papers items of news about Russia, made, of
course, to sound as hateful as possible. Soon after getting Ruth’s
letter, the papers reported that there had been a dispute among the
American Communists as to tactics, and the two factions had carried
their case to the chiefs of the Third International. There were half a
dozen leaders of the American party now in Moscow, and one of those
named was Paul Watkins, under indictment at home for participation in an
illegal convention.
X
Several interesting events came along, to keep them busy in their exile.
First, Aunt Emma fell in love; yes, by golly, when it comes to such
things, you jist never can tell what will happen to either ladies or
gentlemen! It was a respectable elderly hardware merchant from Nebraska,
who was occupying his leisure collecting cameos. Maybe Aunt Emma
reminded him of one; anyhow, after beauing her around for several
months, he suddenly popped the question, and they had a quiet family
wedding, and went off on a honeymoon—to Nebraska!
It left Dad quite lonesome; but presently he hunted up an adventure for
himself, and that was stranger still—you couldn’t have guessed it in a
million years. SPOOKS!! It happened that Bunny went off one evening to a
meeting at which the Socialists and the Communists engaged in violent
warfare, as appeared to be their custom in Paris; and when he got back,
he found that Dad was not in his room. Next morning the old man told
about it—hesitatingly, with not a little embarrassment. Just what did
Bunny think about Spiritualism? Bunny said he didn’t think at all, he
didn’t know; and Dad revealed that he had had an amazing experience—a
long talk last night with grandma!
Holy smoke! said Bunny; and Dad said yes, he might well be surprised,
but there was jist no getting away from it. She had told him all about
his childhood, described the ranch where they had lived, and asked all
about her paintings, what had he done with that one of the Germans
drinking out of steins, and did he still have the one of the mansion
with the fountain in front and the carriage with the two horses and the
lady and gentleman sitting in it? She had called him “Little Jim,” and
it was all so real, it had made tears come into Dad’s eyes.
Bunny wanted to know, where had this happened, and Dad told him, there
was a lady living in this hotel, Mrs. Olivier—she was a lady from
Boston who had been married to a Frenchman, and her husband had died a
year or two ago. Dad had got to talking with her, and she had told him
about being a Spiritualist, and how she had a famous medium who gave
seances in her rooms here in the hotel, and she had invited Dad to
attend, and that was the way of it. Most amazing things had happened,
there had been horns floating in the air, and voices coming out of them,
and lights flickering about; then the ghosts had appeared, and finally
this old lady ghost, who had asked for “Little Jim,” and started right
off to tell these things that had taken Dad’s breath away. How could a
medium possibly have known such things?
Well, here was Dad with something to occupy his time! Of course he went
to the next seance, and the next; very soon he was learning all the
patter of the Spiritualists, taking it as seriously as a religion. You
could see how it was—he had got along without any religion, so long as
he was well and busy, but now that he was old and tired and sick, he
craved something to lean on. He was shame-faced about it, afraid his son
would ridicule him. But after all, did Bunny know any reason why the
soul might not survive after death? Bunny didn’t, and thereupon Dad
invited him to go to a seance. Obviously, this was something more
important than Socialism. If it was really true that we lived forever,
why then it would be easy to endure any temporary discomfort, it was
hardly worth arguing about such things as money. This from J. Arnold
Ross!
Bunny, who always tried to oblige, went to a seance, and witnessed the
strange phenomena. He knew that such things can be done by sleight of
hand, and that he had no way of telling the difference; no chance was
given in this company, made up of believers in a state of emotional
exaltation. So one session was enough, and he went back to the
Socialists. But let Dad be a Spiritualist if it made him happy!
Not so Bertie, who found out about it, and went into a regular tantrum.
What did Bunny mean by letting his father fall into such hands? It was
the worst kind of swindling in the world! And that woman, Mrs. Olivier,
it was perfectly obvious what her scheme was—she wanted to marry Dad!
Here Bertie and Bunny had worked all their lives to help him accumulate
a fortune and save it—and a designing adventuress would jump in and
grab the money, and Bunny hadn’t even sense enough to know what was
happening! Never had he seen his sister so mad in her whole life—she
called him a fool seven times running—when he said that the
Spiritualist widow might have her share, if only she could help the poor
old man to find happiness.
XI
Then another strange affair for them to discuss: one you would have
found still harder to guess! The American newspapers in Paris published
a despatch from Angel City, setting forth that Eli Watkins, self-styled
prophet of religion, was believed to be drowned. He had gone swimming at
the beach, leaving his clothing in a hotel room, and had never been seen
since; a search was being made for the body. That was all the news for a
time; and Dad shook his head, and said, golly, what a strange thing—a
man whose God had saved so many others, but couldn’t save His own
prophet! What would become of that big Tabernacle, that had been Eli’s
personal property?
Then the New York papers came; and later on, the papers from Angel City,
with the story spread all over the front page day after day. The body of
Eli could not be found. The people of the temple employed divers—they
had searchlights sweeping the water at night, and thousands of the
faithful patrolling the sands, holding revival services there, weeping
and praying to God to give them back their beloved leader in his green
bathing suit. This went on for a week, for two weeks; and it was
puzzling, because the longest time a body could stay in the sea without
floating was nine days, and never before had it happened that a drowned
body had failed to be washed ashore.
Then, more and more amazing, there began to be rumors in the
papers—they were afraid to say anything direct, but they hinted, and
quoted others who hinted—Eli was possibly not drowned; Eli had been
seen here, he had been seen there—and always in the company of a
certain young woman, whom rumor declared to have been the keeper of the
sacred robes in the Tabernacle. Of course, the first time Dad saw one of
those hints, he remembered what he and Bunny had seen that day at the
beach hotel, and he went up into the air. “By God, that fellow’s playing
a trick! He’s gone off on a spree with a woman!”
There was a thrill for you! Dad talked about it for hours—it almost
drove the spooks out of his mind! It was no joking matter, because in
the course of the search for Eli’s body two men had lost their
lives—one diver had been taken with pneumonia, and a member of the
Tabernacle, seeing what he thought was a body, had swam out too far and
gone down. And here was Dad with the key to the mystery! Was it his duty
to cable the facts to the Reverend Poober?
More sensations yet—the people at the Tabernacle began getting letters
from kidnappers, who alleged that they had taken Eli in his green
bathing suit, and had him in hiding, and demanded half a million dollars
ransom for him! What was that? Nobody in Angel City could be sure. Had
the prophet really been kidnapped? Or was it true that he was driving
over the state, in company with Miss X, as the newspapers referred to
the former keeper of the sacred robes? One of the funniest aspects of
the scandal was that various young couples who had gone off on
love-expeditions in motor-cars—a favorite diversion of the
well-to-do—now found themselves in an embarrassing situation; all over
the state newspaper reporters and police officials were looking for Eli
and Miss X, and woe to any tall blond man who happened to register at a
hotel with a girl and no marriage certificate!
The denouement, when it finally came, was so sensational that it got
itself cabled, and thus spared Dad a tedious wait. Thirty-five days
after Eli’s disappearance, some fishermen, rowing in a harbor several
hundred miles from Angel City, encountered a man swimming to shore, and
picked him up; and behold, it was a tall blond man in a green bathing
suit—in short, it was the prophet! The story he told was that, finding
himself being carried out to sea, he had prayed to the Lord, and the
Lord had heard his prayer, and had sent three angels to hold him up in
the water. The name of one of these angels was Steve, and the second was
a lady angel, whose name was Rosie, and the third was a Mexican angel,
and his name was Felipe. These angels had taken turns holding onto the
shoulder-straps of Eli’s green bathing suit; and when he grew faint, one
of them would fly away and bring him food. They had upheld him, even
while he slept, quite peacefully in the water. For the entire period of
thirty-five days Eli had been thus alternately swimming and sleeping.
The devil had come, with wings of flame, and driven the good angels
away, and bound Eli’s hands behind him so that he had nearly drowned.
But he had prayed to the Lord, and the angels had floated him to a rusty
old can, and held it while he rubbed his bonds against the sharp edges,
and severed the bonds and was able to swim again.
So here was the prophet, none the worse for his adventure; and when he
had landed on the shore, and got some clothing, here came the reporters
hot-foot—for there have not been so many miracles in these skeptical
recent days, and this was an indubitable one. Crowds of people swarmed
about the prophet, they sang hosannas, and strewed his path with
flowers, and when he got back to Angel City, you just couldn’t imagine
the excitement—fifty thousand people at the railroad station, it beat
anything that even the greatest movie stars had achieved. And when he
got to the Tabernacle, there were his followers falling on their knees
and weeping for joy, because the Lord had answered their prayers and
given them back their prophet; six times a day the vast auditorium was
packed, and outside a park was filled with people, and Eli’s mighty
bellow was conveyed by a dozen loud-speakers, and men and women fell
down at the sound and shouted “Praise the Lord!”
Of course there were skeptics, people with the devil in their hearts who
refused to believe Eli’s story, and persisted in talking about a
blue-colored automobile driven by a good-looking girl, having a heavily
veiled man wearing goggles in the seat beside her. They talked about
signatures on hotel-registers, and handwriting experts, and other such
obscenities; but all that made no difference to the glory-shouters at
the Tabernacle, which was packed all day and all night, as never before
in the history of religions. Over and over Eli would tell his story,
full of the most convincing details—why, he even told how the angels’
wings had swished, and sometimes splashed water into his face; he told
the very words the angels had spoken to him. Said the prophet, if God in
His Omnipotence could keep Jonah three days in the belly of a whale, and
Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the burning fiery furnace, why could
he not keep Eli Watkins afloat on the sea? It is obvious that no one
could answer that.
And then came an incident which settled the matter, completing the glory
of the Third Revelation. Eli happened to look inside his green bathing
suit, and what should he find but a snow-white feather! He recognized
it, of course—a proof of his story, left there by the mercy of the
Lord! When this fresh miracle was announced, the hosannas of the
faithful shook the roof; and presently the angel’s feather was mounted
in a glass case, and set up behind the place where Eli preached, and,
such was the Lord’s mercy, whoever even looked upon this relic, was
instantly cured of all his ailments and had his sins forgiven—yes, even
the most deadly sin of fornication!