this nomination. It's a nomination to a place that makes its holder an
officer of the court, an officer of justice, yet the plain truth is your
father wants me to let these other men's money, or the power of their
money, buy me off from doing justice to them."
"Nonsense!" Forbes was strengthened by his daughter's meed of comfort.
"You won't be elected if you are nominated."
"They seem to think I will," said Luke.
"And somebody else," urged Betty, "could do just as well against them,
Luke."
"That's not the point, Betty. It's a personal question, a question of
personal morals; it's a matter of my own conscience."
She turned until she stood no longer between the two men. She stood at
her father's side. Her cheeks were damp from weeping, but her eyes
shone.
"But think, Luke," she said. "You _are_ young. Father's twice as old,
and he _must_ know more. He must be right. He wouldn't ask you to do
anything that was wrong, would you, father?"
Forbes shook his head.
"I know it's a lot for you to have to give up," she went on; "but you
ought to be willing to give up a lot if--if you----"
"If I love you?" asked Luke.
She met him.
"Yes," she said.
"She's right, Luke," nodded her father.
"Then," pursued Luke--the tone was his laziest--"what about her love for
me? Isn't it to----"
Betty interrupted. She had taken Forbes's hand:
"You're not going to make me choose between you and father, are you?"
she pleaded.
"I tell you," said Luke, "it isn't anything of that sort, Betty. I've
got to do what I'm going to do. You haven't any choice, and neither have
I. You might almost say it's a religious question. It's like saving my
soul. I've got to do it; I've just got to; just because it's the one
right thing, I've got to do it. Why"--his manner grew tense--"you don't
know; even your father doesn't know. This North Bridge wreck, with all
those people killed and wounded: that's what these men did, these men
that are trying to keep me out of the district-attorneyship."
"The North Bridge wreck?" snapped Forbes. "That was on the M. & N. What
are you talking about, Huber?"
Luke realized that he had gone further than the limits of his promise of
temporary silence concerning the letters, but he was too bitterly tried
not to go still further.
"Yes," he said, "I mean just that. Everybody knows the N. Y. & N. J.
crowd own the majority of the stock in the M. & N., and you know it,
too. What's more, this wreck was their direct fault. I can prove that
and I mean to. That's why they're after me: I mean to prove it if they
don't square things. And so they're afraid of me."
"Ridiculous!" said Forbes. "That's just the trouble with you, Huber:
you're going about making wild, unfounded statements like this."
"I ought not to tell even you two," Luke answered; "but the fact is, I
have letters written by one of these men that will substantiate every
word I say."
"You mean they'll show these people owned the road?"
"Practically, and ordered the poor rails that caused that wreck."
"Absurd: they couldn't do that. They didn't operate the road. This
sort of thing is what is upsetting legitimate business: a few men going
on the way you are. I don't think these people at the top are any
better than they should be--I've often said so to you--but you can't go
around calling them murderers. That's ridiculous."
Before Luke could reply, Betty again shifted the issue.
"Luke, you won't do it?" she appealed. "You'll give it up--for father's
sake?"
He started to speak, but she dropped her father's hand and came to him
with hers upraised.
"No," she said; "don't tell me now. Don't say anything now. Don't
speak. You'll only be sorry. You're hurt and angry. Of course, you
are. Go away. Wait. Go away just for to-night and think it over, and
come back to-morrow." Her hand crept into his. "I know it's awfully
hard for you to give it all up, even for a few years. I know what it
means to you. Don't think I don't know, Luke. But----" She looked into
his face. "Please, dear?"
His face was set.
"Good-by," he said.
"You'll be back to-morrow?"
He freed himself.
"Yes," he said. "Good-night."
Sec.7. It was simply that he could not stay any longer. He left the
house with his mind made up; he would not withdraw from the fight for
the district-attorneyship. To keep his word, he would go back to see
her next day, but he would go back only to end what he had not the heart
to end to-night.
The thing had ended itself. This was the conclusion of all his chances
for Betty. They were over.
He loved her. He went away from her with the certainty that nothing
which life might henceforth rob him of could be the equal of this loss.
Yet he did not blame her. Brought up as he had been, he believed that
her attitude was the inevitable one and the right. He had ventured that
single question about the test of her love for him, but he felt that it
was an unfair question. Until a girl married, her first duty was toward
her parents. His own duty and Betty's duty clashed. There was no
possibility of compromise. Forbes was a weakling, but, in cleaving to
Forbes, Betty, Luke felt, did the only thing that she rightly could do.
He wondered what would come of that side of his life which she had gone
out of. As much as might be, he would crowd its borders with the
activities of his professional and political work, but something of the
space would remain: it belonged. He was still black with the despair of
his loss when he turned into Thirty-ninth Street and saw, standing there
as if waiting for him, the girl that looked like Joan of Arc.
"I've been waitin' for you," she said.
Her cheeks and mouth were not painted to-night, and their lines were
softer; they spoke only of what she had suffered and not of what she had
inflicted. Her eyes were wet with tears; her underlip quivered.
"I thought I told you last night," began Luke.
"I know," she said. "An' then I wanted what you thought. But not now,
not to-night." She spoke rapidly as if determined that he should hear
her out before he could escape. "Don't mind the way I talk. I just
kind of talk that way because it gets like a habit. What I want's help.
I'm in trouble. Honest to God I am."
She was surely in trouble, and she was beautiful.
"You mean----" His hand went to his pocket.
"No, not money," she said. "It ain't that. It's about my sister.
They've got her; my fellow has. Listen." She seized his wrist. "Will
you listen a minute, please? Here, if you don't want no one to see you
in this here apartment house, come on over here toward Six' Av'nue.
They've got her: my kid sister!"
Luke looked at the woman. He could see nothing but sincerity. He was
not afraid of an attempt at robbery, and he could think of no other
reason for her request except the one she gave.
"Yes, I'll go with you," he said.
She hurried him into the darker street.
"Listen," she said: "I'm in the business. You know that. I don't let
on to be nothin' much. But I've got a kid sister that lives home; an'
she's straight, Jenny is. Well, I was talkin' to her to-night when my
fellow came up, an' he sent me on an errand--we was all standin' right
over on that corner--an' when I come back, they was gone, both of
them--an' I know he's got her in here in Pearl's Six' Av'nue place."
"How do you know that?"
"I guessed it, an' then I rang the bell an' one o' the girls told me I
was on, an' then Pearl came down an' yelled for the bouncer an' they
throwed me out."
In the lamplight of the street her face looked like the face of an
innocent girl.
"Why didn't you call a policeman?" asked Luke.
"Aw, you know them. Pearl stands in."
"But they'd have got your sister, anyhow."
"Not the cop on this beat. I wouldn't give up to him the other night,
and he run me in."
They stopped at a narrow door. There was a shop on one side of it and a
saloon on the other.
"This is the place," said the girl. "Pearl's joint's over the store."
"You want me," asked Luke, "to go in and bring your sister out?"
The girl assented. "She's only a kid. I know what I am all right; but
she's only a kid, an' she's straight; she's always been straight. You
won't have no trouble. They're always scared of anybody like you.
You'll do it, won't you?" She leaned toward him. "You ain't afraid?"
The infamy burned him.
"Afraid?" he said slowly. "No, I'm not afraid." He rang the bell.
The girl wrung her hands.
"You're good. You're awful good. Mamie'll owe just everything to you."
"Who will?" asked Luke.
"Mamie. That's my sister's name. She'll----"
"I see," said Luke.
The door opened. A negro servant stood in the darkened hallway before
them. Luke and the girl stepped inside.
"Wait a minute," said Luke quietly.
He brushed the servant's hand from the knob. He saw the two women
standing open-mouthed, but before words came to them, he stepped back
into the street, closing the door behind him. The girl's slip about her
sister's name had saved him.
Sec.8. He was glad to be in the light. He hurried across the street
with no purpose but that of getting as quickly and as far from the house
as possible. He was escaping.
For a minute or more he did not know what it was that he was escaping
from. Then he glanced back toward the doorway.
Three policemen were entering the doorway. As Luke reached the corner,
a gong clanged and a patrol-wagon turned into Sixth Avenue.
A messenger-boy, who had been standing on the corner, began to trot
after the wagon. Luke stopped him.
"What's the matter?" asked Luke.
The boy turned to him a leering face:
"It's a raid, I guess. I knowed there was somethin' doin' when I seen
that patrol standin' over on Thirty-nint' Street."
*CHAPTER XI*
Sec.1. Luke wanted to dismiss the episode of the raid as a coincidence.
He tried to argue that the girl had been a stool-pigeon employed to get
him into the Sixth Avenue house solely for the purpose of robbery by
confederates waiting for her there. Schemes of that sort were common
enough in New York and succeeded in spite of their clumsiness; the more
often one was reported in the papers and brought to the attention of the
papers, the readier a certain portion of the public was to succumb to
the next attempts. Luke wanted to believe that the appearance of the
police might have proved welcome enough for him.
It was the news Forbes had given him that weighed against any such
supposition. If his enemies were at work to ruin him financially, they
might well be at work to break him and bring him to terms by means of a
scandal in the police courts. It was all very well to say that the
attack on the Forbes company ought to suffice them: Luke began to feel
that these foes were the kind who want certainty enough to use more than
one method of securing it. He had heard of a rebellious city official
thus captured in a raid on a gambling-house. That man, he had been
told, was released from the police station only upon signing a
compromising paper, which was thereafter held by his political superiors
as a bond to assure his future obedience to their wishes. Luke saw how
a similar course could have been followed in regard to himself.
What worried him most, however, was, of course, the break with Betty and
the difficulties in which he had innocently entangled her father. He
was sincerely sorry for Forbes, whose shortcomings were forgivable
because of worship of tradition, and the loss of Betty meant a descent
into the pit of despair.
It was early morning before a sudden hope came to Luke. He had lain
sleepless for hours, not trying to solve his financial riddle, but only
contemplating its apparent impossibility of solution, and he had turned
from that to the machinations of his enemies with genuine relief. This
time the change must have rested his resourcefulness, for, in the midst
of tearing at the sticky strands in which Stein and the men behind Stein
had enmeshed him, the name of Ruysdael shot into his mind as the name of
one who could and might advance the money to save Forbes and bring back
Betty. He would go to Ruysdael at the earliest possible moment.
With that thought, he could dismiss all memory of the raid in Sixth
Avenue. Almost immediately he fell asleep.
Sec.2. The next day was not without its fresh warnings from the powers
that opposed him, and the first of these came from the headquarters of
the Municipal Reform League itself. Luke thought it better taste for
him to remain away from the headquarters while the formalities of the
nomination were gone through with by the committee that was then to make
its ticket regular by means of petition. But it was too early in the
day to call on Ruysdael, so he remained in his rooms at the Arapahoe,
and here, at eleven o'clock, Venable telephoned him.
"The meeting is over," said Venable.
"Good," said Luke. "The ticket is the one agreed on?"
"Yes. You have my congratulations, Mr. Huber."
"Thank you." Luke thought that the tone of his supporter was somewhat
strained. "I hope everything went off smoothly," he added.
"Well, no," said Venable, "it didn't. It is all right now, but I am
bound to tell you that a little opposition had developed against you.
We overcame it, but it was there and from some men that we had every
reason to believe would support you. I don't understand it, Mr. Huber;
it was mysterious."
"I'm coming right down," said Luke.
At headquarters he learned little more. The committee had met with no
indication of approaching trouble. Save for two or three persons whose
means of livelihood were the practical organization of reform political
movements, nearly all the members were business men, in small but sound
industries, each of unquestioned probity. The candidates slated for
every other post were accepted as a matter of course; but when Luke's
name was brought up by Venable for the district-attorneyship, one of the
politicians and several of the business men opposed acceptance. They
were dogged, but vague. The politician at last spoke of Luke as having
courted too much animosity from the upper regions of finance.
"He has talked too wild," said this one. "He oughtn't to have
threatened till after election. Of course, I know what he's got to do
if he's elected, but he needn't have begun it beforehand. I haven't got
anything against him, but he's shown his hand too soon, and so he won't
make a good candidate."
The business men spoke much as Forbes had spoken. The Municipal Reform
League was a radical organization, but it ought to be radical within
reason. Huber's public utterances had been too sweepingly radical.
They feared him; they thought him too hot-headed. He was still too
young. In pursuing Big Business, he was sure to trample smaller,
legitimate business; he would upset credit.
The majority of the committee was loyal to Luke and had its way. Luke
received the nomination, but such dissenters as were converted came to
him half-heartedly, and two of the timorous business men withdrew from
the organization.
"Then, there is Yeates, too," said Venable. "He wasn't at the meeting,
but he telephoned he was coming here to see you about this time, and I
gathered that he isn't in a particularly pleasant frame of mind."
Luke thought of Venable's long years of battle for reform.
"You know what's at the back of all this?" he said.
"I think I do," said Venable.
"I mean: you know _who's_ back of it?"
"I can guess. Your published attack was rather clear, Mr. Huber."
"Then, are you and the League prepared to go right ahead?"
"Yes, we are."
"You, too? You individually?"
Venable's old eyes glittered.
"I always suspected these people," he said. "I always felt sure they
were against us. They were never so strongly against us as they are
now, but their being so much more against us now only makes me the more
certain that what we are doing is right."
"They have a good deal of power, Mr. Venable."
"I know that better than you do, my boy; but they can't hurt me
personally, if that is what you mean. What little money I have comes
from the rents of an uptown apartment house. It's in a good
neighborhood and full of steady people. Nobody can take that away from
me. It isn't as if I drew my income from bonds, but if I did, and if
these people could ruin me"--he took Luke's hand--"I should go right
ahead."
They had been talking in Luke's office. Shortly after Venable left it,
Yeates was shown in. The young man was excited.
"Look here, Huber," he said. "A little bit's good, but you're going
pretty damned far."
He dragged a chair toward Luke's desk, turned it about, and sat down
astride of it with his arms folded across its back.
A smile twitched at Luke's mouth.
"What way-station do you want to get off at?" he inquired.
"I don't want you to make a monkey out of the League," said Yeates.
"I've been reading over your letters and interviews and things, and I
think you ought to realize that this is a reform organization and not a
bunch of Anarchists."
"You're a slow reader, Yeates. Haven't you been hearing these things
talked over, too?"
Yeates blushed, but he did not flinch.
"Well, what if I have? The people I've heard talking are the people
you've been slamming, and I want to tell you that those people are the
backbone of this country."
"I haven't mentioned any names."
"Oh, don't think I'm a fool, Huber, and don't think these people are
fools, either. Everybody knows. What do you do it for? It won't catch
any votes, if that's what you want."
"I rather wanted to do some good."
"Good? Good?" Yeates laughed angrily. "What are you talking about?
You're talking as if these men were pirates. You're talking like one of
those fellows that make speeches on a soap-box on the corner. It's all
right to fight police-graft, and it's all right to run the crooks out of
town--that's what the League's for and why I'm for the League--but I'm
not going to keep on with an organization that's mixing up the biggest
men in America with that sort of cattle. I won't stand for having my
personal friends called thieves. I can't stand for it, and I won't!"
Luke looked at his watch. He rose.
"I have to be uptown in half a hour," he said.
"But see here----" Yeates's chair clattered to the floor as Yeates
sprang up.
"When this nomination was offered to me," said Luke, "you were present.
Do you remember something you said--something about outside influences
and so on?"
"Oh, rot! Who's talking about outside influences?"
"I am. The nomination was given me along with certain promises. I've
accepted it. I mean to act on the strength of those promises."
"You mean you're going crazy."
"Then, the League's going crazy, too. As the only sane man in it, I'm
afraid you won't find yourself in congenial company, Yeates. You'd
better get out."
"Get out?" Yeates could scarcely credit his ears.
"Get out," Luke repeated.
"I like that!" shouted Yeates. "This is a nice reform party, this is!
Anti-boss! Why, you're more of a boss than Tim Heney ever dreamed of
being."
Luke had not looked at the matter that way. He saw now that he was
indeed using boss-methods, but he also saw that boss-methods were
unavoidable.
"This League," he said, "is pledged to a course of action you don't
agree with, so you can't consistently remain in it."
"I will!--I _will_ get out!" cried Yeates. "I'd like to know who had
more to do with this League: you or me. Why, you only came in the other
day, and it was me and my friends got you in. But I'll get out all
right: you needn't worry about that. I'm through."
He left the room. It was a few weeks later when Luke heard of Yeates's
engagement to the girl whose diamond pendant Luke had admired the first
time that he went to the Ruysdaels' house. That, Huber knew, was indeed
coincidence, but the previous connection of Yeates with the Municipal
Reform League served the more to shake Luke's confidence in the
radicalism of some of its remaining members.
Sec.3. His mission to Ruysdael was far more satisfactory than his talk
with Yeates. Luke did not tell the millionaire the circumstances that
made it necessary for R. H. Forbes & Son to borrow money, nor, as things
fell out, did he have to explain why the Ruysdael estate, and not a
bank, was wanted as a creditor. He went into details only concerning
the nature of the securities that Forbes could offer; he was honest
about the chances of the business, which he believed to be good, and he
was no more pressing in his request than he thought it wise to be.
"So," said Ruysdael, smiling, "you find some use for predatory wealth,
after all?"
Luke remembered Jack Porcellis's assertion that the Ruysdaels were in
some way connected with the forces now opposed to the loan, but the
connection, if it existed, must be slight. The Ruysdael money was not
in a form that could well be hurt by Luke's enemies; and Ruysdael,
though subsequent pressure might well stop him from further aid, was the
sort of man who, having gone into such a venture as the present one,
would not undo anything he had already done.
"I don't consider you one of the pirates," said Luke.
"No? Well, I'm not active, perhaps," Ruysdael reassured him. "I was
just thinking you rather strong in some of your public utterances.
There's no use in attacks unless they can win, you know."
The swarthy man was interested in Huber's request, though solely on
Huber's own account. Ruysdael felt that he had been in a measure
responsible for Luke's investment, and he was anxious to protect that
investment so long as the protection was real and not a mere tossing of
good money after bad. He took Luke at once to the offices of the
Ruysdael estate.
There it was clear that, whatever influence Luke's enemies might have,
they had issued no orders against him. Perhaps they had not thought of
the possibility of his turning in this direction, perhaps they had meant
to do no more than frighten him by their show of power with the banks.
In any case, old Herbert Croy, the manager of the estate, was amiable
and suggested that Forbes be sent for without delay.
It was a moment of triumph for Luke. He met Forbes in one of the outer
offices of the suite used for the administration of the Ruysdael estate,
and he was not entirely sorry to find Forbes contrite.
"Is it--it's really true?" asked Forbes.
He had been having a bad time. His face was drawn, and the feverish
hand that grasped Luke's was trembling.
"Yes," said Luke. "I think I've induced Ruysdael to advance the money."
Forbes looked away.
"I'm sorry--very sorry for my attitude last night, Huber; and yet, you
must have seen----"
"That's all right. Forget it."
"I know. You're good. But I do want you to understand. And you have
turned out to be the real business man of the pair of us, after all!"
"So it seems," said Luke dryly.
Forbes missed the reflection on his own ability.
"Oh, but you have! Huber, you've--you've saved the Business!"
"No; that's up to you. I've only made it possible for you to get the
money. You have to finish convincing these people; so buck up."
"I will, I will."
"And they'll probably turn in and fight us in the market."
"We'll see about that." All of Forbes's courage had come back to him.
"Let them try. Huber, I can't thank you enough. I never can."
"Then don't try to." Luke took Forbes by the arm and led him to the
door behind which Ruysdael and Croy were waiting.
But Forbes felt that there was more to be said. "It was splendid of
you," he continued, as Luke drew him forward.
"Was it? You overlook the fact that I stood to lose a little money of
my own--if nothing else!"
"I did. I actually did! By Jove, I don't see how you can forgive me,
Huber."
Luke's answer was to push open the door. Within half an hour the
interview was concluded. Forbes had deposited his securities and
received a certified check. It was all so simple that, while Luke was
wondering why he had not thought of it twelve hours before, Forbes was
saying to himself:
"How was it _I_ didn't think of it last night?"
Sec.4. Luke intended to go from the Ruysdael offices to those of the
League, but as he parted from Forbes on the street after the loan had
been secured, something happened that changed his plans. At the foot of
the elevator-shaft of the building, he noticed a little man leaning
against the marble-paneled wall: the man was an unostentatious fellow,
commonplace as to both face and clothes, but Luke thought he had seen
the figure before.
He passed with Forbes through the revolving doors of the office-building
and walked to the curb. He glanced back and saw the commonplace man
coming through the doorway behind him. Then he remembered: when he left
the Arapahoe that morning, he saw this man walking down the other side
of Thirty-ninth Street. He had thought nothing of it at the time, but
now his experience of detectives told him that this man bore the marks
of the detective.
Luke called a taxicab. The man, he saw, prepared to call another.
"I'll try to keep my promise to see Betty to-night," said Luke to
Forbes.
"You must," said Forbes. His gratitude, though not so hot as it had
been, was still warm.
"I'll try. There's a lot to be done--politically, you know. But I'll
try-"
They shook hands. Forbes started away. Luke gave his chauffeur that
address in Wall Street at which he had issued his orders to the men who
were now fighting him.
He was disappointed; the person whom he sought was not there. Luke
doubted the statement of the doorkeeper, but could get no other. He
went to the offices of Hallett and to those of Rivington, but with no
better luck. At each descent from his taxi, he caught sight of the
detective and knew that the detective meant to be seen. Then he sought
the quarters of Stein, Falconridge, Falconridge & Perry, and was
immediately admitted to the presence of the head of that firm.
The Judge sat at his handsome desk, a telephone at one elbow and a vase
of Abel Chatney roses at the other. His plentiful white hair and his
smooth frock-coat still potent, still spread around him the aura of
dignity. He rose slowly as Luke came in and bowed with magisterial
calm.
"How do you do, Mr. Huber?" he said pleasantly. "I am glad to see
you--very glad, indeed."
He resumed his chair. Luke took a chair close by.
"The papers," pursued the Judge, "tell me that you are open to
congratulations. You have mine."
"Thank you," said Luke. He stretched his legs. "Yes, I got the
nomination. There was a little opposition, but I got it."
"Opposition?" The Judge raised his white eyebrows. "Hum! Well, of
course, Mr. Huber, you had to expect that in the circumstances."
"What were the circumstances, Judge?"
Stein shook his head and smiled benignantly.
"There you go," he said. "You will insist on flattering me with your
assumptions of my omniscience."
"But not of your omnipotence, Judge; for I did get the nomination. What
were the circumstances?"
The Judge still smiled:
"You can't expect to hurt the more important business interests without
hurting the lesser ones; and the lesser dislike being hurt even more
than the greater, Mr. Huber."
"I gathered that you might think so."
This time the Judge's smile was a song without words.
"Very well," said the younger man. "As I say, I overcame the opposition
inside the League. I believe I can overcome the same opposition at the
polls."
"I hope so," Stein answered. "But it is a pity that you have not more
powerful backing."
"I have a very active following at any rate."
"It will require a great deal of activity to overcome the prejudices of
the majority."
"Yes, but I'm not talking about the activity of the voters. I am
talking about the active following I am having from my apartments to my
office, and from my office wherever else I go."
Judge Stein leaned over to smell the roses on his desk. When he looked
up, his firm mouth seemed innocent. He offered the vase to Luke.
"Aren't they beautiful?" he asked.
"Quite."
"I often think it is such a pity that they haven't more perfume. What
they have is good, but it is not a great deal. What we gain in form, we
lose in scent. The law of compensation, I suppose."
"I know this detective had orders to let me see he was following me."
The Judge put down the vase.
"I am sorry you don't care for roses," he said. "Yes, Mr. Huber, I dare
say you are followed. You are fighting the Democratic police force and
the Republican District-Attorney's office; they both have detectives
attached to them, and I have heard that they frequently use their
detectives to watch their political rivals. You are fighting the
Progressive organization, too, and they could use private detectives. I
quite agree with you that it isn't pleasant."
"This fellow isn't on the job to watch me. He's only used to frighten
me. I'm not easily frightened, Judge."
"No?"
"No. If I had been, I'd have turned tail when your friends tried to
ruin a business I am interested in, or when they tried to have me caught
in a police-raid." Luke spoke as if he were mentioning incidents in the
lives of people dead these thousand years. "The raiders didn't find me,
as you, of course, know. What you don't know is that the business move
has failed just as badly."
If he had not known it, the Judge's face betrayed no surprise.
"Really, Mr. Huber, I told you at our last interview that I had no
professional interest in this matter."
"You admitted that the people back of all this were your friends."
"I _said_ that I was a friend of certain persons."
"Then, you might as well say now that your friends intend to prevent my
election and that they'll use any means to do it."
"Don't get excited, Mr. Huber." The Judge's right hand waved a
deliberate protest against Luke's violent language. "Of course, I say
nothing of the sort. What I do say is that you must understand that
your own plan of action is bound to alienate the voters. There are more
people interested in this election than you and me--more even than my
friends. A great many people don't want to see you elected
District-Attorney. There are the business men, there are the police,
and there are the people of the underworld. You have been reckless
enough to make no ethical distinctions. You lump the good with the bad,
and attack everybody. Well, you must not be surprised at the result."
Luke kept to his low key.
"I only came here to tell you that I couldn't be scared."
"Why to me?"
"Perhaps just because I like to talk to you, Judge."
The Judge bowed a sincere acknowledgment.
"I have already told you," he said, "that I think you could go far if
you were cooler. Now you are confusing possible legitimate influence--I
say possible, not certain--with physical attack."
"They've both seemed probable, Judge."
"The former may be. As to the latter--well, like most young
enthusiasts, you have forgotten that elections go by majorities, and
that the majorities are controlled by the lower forces of society. That
is the one flaw in our republican system, and nothing but social
evolution, generations of free education, will cure it. You have not
only very wrongly assailed legitimate business; you have quite properly
threatened to close to the criminal classes their chief sources of
revenue. It is their livelihood against yours. My friends can have
nothing in common with these people. We cannot control them. You must
know that."
Luke shrugged his shoulders. Stein continued:
"As a politician and a lawyer, you must have counted on the opposition
of the criminal classes when you began your campaign. If you did not"
the Judge bent his head to the roses--"well, I don't want to alarm you,
but if I were in your place, I should leave the fight."
Luke got up.
"The alternative?" he inquired.
The Judge did not answer. He merely looked at Luke.
"I won't take it," said Luke.
"I tell you again, that we have nothing to do with the forces that seem
to worry you most."
"I know you say so. Well, we haven't got much further than at our last
talk, have we?"
"At that talk, Mr. Huber, I said to you that you could help yourself,
your party, the public good----"
"If I'd do what you wanted? I won't. I merely thought that if I told
you you'd failed so far, you might do what _I_ asked."
The Judge sadly shook his head.
"If you would only listen to reason!"
"I'll wait for the month and not a day longer. Meanwhile, I'm not the
kind that's easy scared. Nothing you can do--you, and your friends, or
anybody hired by your friends--will stop me."
The Judge stood up.
"I am afraid you will be stopped," he said.
"Try it," said Luke. "Good-by."
"Good-day, Mr. Huber," Stein replied. "I shall always be glad to have a
call from you. I am interested in your career--more genuinely
interested than you suppose."
Sec.5. That night it was Betty who came to the door when Luke rang the
bell. She ran to it.
"Luke," she cried, "father told me! I knew you would find a way out.
And, oh, Luke, I don't believe, in the end, I could have given you up,
even if you hadn't found one!"
*CHAPTER XII*
Luke had been lied to at the offices of Hallett and at those of
Rivington, but at the first office at which he had called, he was told
the truth: the stout man, with the bright, short-sighted eyes and the
pointed teeth was not at work that day. He was not at work for several
days, and breaths of rumors, tremulous, expectant, began to shake the
threads which centered at his working-place.
The business of that place proceeded with its usual regularity and
speed. Conover, promoted to the post of confidential clerk, went back
and forth from Wall Street to his master's house in one of his master's
motor-cars. Atwood and the other brokers telephoned hourly for orders
to the house uptown. Simpson saw callers. But in the inner room,
Washington wasted his stupid solemnity on emptiness, the ticker spun its
yards and yards of tape for none to see, and nobody looked from the high
windows down the maze of streets on which the people buzzed like flies.
All this had been thus before, and more frequently thus during the past
few years; the man with the hairy hands and crooked arms often suffered
attacks from some malady that the newspapers did not name. His world,
therefore, should not have taken the present seizure too seriously; but
it always leaped to the belief that each seizure was the last. Rumor
never learned from precedence, and on each occasion expected the worst.
Now official bulletins and authorized announcements of a slight cold and
a catarrhal affection of the mucous membrane of the throat did not check
rumor. The doctors said no more than that, the papers printed no more;
but news of another sort spread with a stronger conviction than the
doctors could secure and a wider circulation than the circulation of all
the newspapers combined.
Rumor said that the sick man had always been a glutton, and that now, at
last, his digestion had given way. Rumor said that he had been in the
habit of rising early and working late, in the dawn and through the
night, planning the crowded actions of the too brief business day; and
rumor added that the price of these exertions must, at last, be paid.
Rumor said that the man overworked his brain and nerves, and that, at
last, the brain was working no more and the nerves strained to
breaking-point. Rumor whispered of a projected sea-voyage and a change
of scene to Biskra or the Riviera, and rumor sagely shook its many
heads.
The luxurious house in which the sick man lived among the best things
that his money had bought him, and from which he used to dart out each
morning to his office in the maze, was closed to the reporters and to
most of the acquaintances who called there. L. Bergen Rivington went in
and came out, worried and elliptical. George J. Hallett went and came
out with loud, but brief, denials. The newspaper men, from the steps of
a house directly across the street, watched in relays and, every hour,
rang the muffled bell of the sick man's house and asked the same
questions, and were given the same answers, from the servant who came to
the door.
Then, one morning, at its old-accustomed hour, the motor-car that the
sick man had most affected purred up to the house. The door opened.
The sick man, apparently no longer a sick man, came out, neat and trim
in a suit of russet brown, stepped into the car and was started for his
office before the quickest reporter could get a word with him.
"He has quite recovered," said the doctors, when the newspaper men
overhauled them, and, although they swathed the answer in long phrases,
they would say no more than that.
"He's quite well again and will not leave New York," said Simpson to the
representatives of the press when they reached his Wall Street offices;
and Simpson would add nothing save that his employer was too busy with
accumulated work to have time for press interviewers.
Simpson, however, and Conover too, and all the office-force and all the
brokers, knew something more. They knew that, whereas their master was
generally not quick of temper, he had returned to work in an ugly mood.
There was, indeed, a great deal of work for him to do: enough to ruffle
the temper of any man. He did it all grimly, speedily, with no waste of
words. He attended to each detail with as much energy and care as he
gave to every other detail, and one detail that he dealt with in a
necessarily long talk with Hallett he dealt with thus:
"What about that Huber matter?" he asked.
Rivington was not in the room, but the master of the room was seated at
the head of the table just as he always seated himself when both Hallett
and Rivington were there. He crouched with his large hands on the
mahogany surface, the thick fingers extended, his elbows raised at right
angles to his torso and pointing ceilingward.
Hallett was as near to nervousness as he could be brought.
"Nothin' yet," he said.
"Hasn't any action been taken?" snapped the man at the head of the
table.
"A lot of action's been taken, but nothin's come of it yet."
"He hasn't been bought?"
"Stein says----"
"I know that. He hasn't been stopped?"
"No."
"Stop him. He's got to be stopped. Don't you know that he really might
hurt us? Stop him."
"All right," said Hallett.
"And now what about this Memphis & New Orleans deal?" the man in russet
brown went on. His beady eyes glittered, and the tips of his stumpy
fingers caressed the shining surface of the table.
*CHAPTER XIII*
Sec.1. Luke was no longer inclined to doubt the wide extent and the
unscrupulous power of the influences opposing him. When he had first
come to acknowledge their evil, he thought it latent rather than active.
Disillusioned in this respect, he then minimized its activity,
maintaining that there was a vast difference between merely questionable
moves in the game of business and the hiring of criminal violence. He
assumed a tolerant skepticism toward the vague stories of how his
enemies, long before they became his personal enemies, employed the
basest tactics to crush rivals or gain ends, and even when he narrowly
escaped arrest in the raid on the house in Sixth Avenue, he tried to
tell himself that these enemies were only endeavoring to frighten him.
Now his second interview with Stein convinced him of the truth.
Notwithstanding this, he stubbornly persevered. He no more belittled the
puissance of the wrong against which he had arrayed himself, but he
believed too firmly in the strength of his own right. Had he accurately
perceived relative values, he might have broken his promise and tried to
make the Rollins letters public; but he was sure that he could evade
harm until the month was past, and so he kept his word and went about
his hurrying and harrowing political work with the letters scornfully
bestowed in an inside pocket among a collection of trivial memoranda.
Events moved rapidly. The Ruysdael loan served its turn, but its turn
soon gave evidence of being brief. As if from plans matured at least a
year before, the ready-made clothing trust that Forbes had feared sprang
into full being. It issued from the offices of Hallett, but it
originated, almost as frankly, from the brain of the man whose
lieutenant Hallett was. It threatened the life of the Forbes firm.
Controlling nearly all the other large firms of the country, it could
dictate to the retail trade, and secure favors from the railways. It so
combined its mills as to reduce running-expenses as a whole while
lowering prices on the one hand and, on the other, raising wages in its
consolidated factories.
Luke had no doubt that this trust had been long prepared; he also had no
doubt that its birth had been hurried as a new move in the war against
him. He knew that the combination was contrary to the most rudimentary
business ethics, and he hastened to inquire into its charter and
organization, in the hope of finding some chink in its armor through
which the blade of the Sherman anti-trust law might be thrust. He
overhauled the law-reports in the libraries, he consulted the most
eminent corporation authorities in his profession; but he discovered
nothing to his liking. The trust was built upon the statute itself; the
weakness of the latter was the firm rock on which the former was
founded. Its strength lay in its iniquity.
"It is absurd for us to suppose," the greatest lawyer in New York told
him, "that we can end the trust by passing laws. The trusts are a step
in social evolution, and you can't successfully legislate against
evolution. When the trusts can't hire the law's makers, they will still
be able to hire better lawyers to build new trusts within the law than
such lawyers as the voters can afford to elect to Congress to frame new
anti-trust laws. The laws against the trusts are of no more practical
use than the laws in favor of the unions."
Luke returned to Forbes with this dictum.
"Can't we get some of the outside firms to join us?" asked Luke.
Forbes did not approve the idea.
"I have had several offers of the kind," he said, "and I am suspicious
of them. I think the firms that made them weren't really independent.
I think it was a move to let the trust into our concern. Besides, this
house has always been a Forbes house, and it must remain that or go down
honorably."
"There'll be trouble," Luke prophesied.
"I think I know something about the trade," Forbes said: he had moments
when he did not wholly like the superior ability shown by Luke in
securing the Ruysdael loan. "This is my part of the Business."
Luke was too much occupied by the political campaign not to acknowledge
that, weak or strong, Forbes must be left in control of the firm. The
battle for votes was four-cornered without being square; it was hot and
bitter. On the issue of the district-attorneyship, the Democrats and
Progressives were helping Leighton and the Republicans by directing all
their energies against Luke and the Municipal Reform League. They
raised high the accusation of demagogism and appealed to business large
and small to rescue credit from the hurts that Huber threatened.
Leighton, supported by the full strength of his organization, was
pretending that Luke's disaffection was that of a discharged servant;
the District-Attorney pleaded for a safe and sane conduct of the office
of the public prosecutor.
Although the League's lesser workers undertook the task of canvassing
the city, treating with politicians and employers, advertising, arguing,
pleading, promising, and threatening, doing all the mysterious multitude
of things that are necessary to practical politics; although, too, the
other candidates and the volunteer and hired speakers performed heavy
shares of the speech-making from cart-ends and stages, on street and in
hall, Luke was constantly being called on to help his associates and had
more than enough in his own department to keep him busy from the time
when he got out of bed of a morning until, often the next morning, he
got in again.
By telegraph, telephone, motor-car, and messenger, he had to be in
perpetual touch with every election-precinct in the city and with every
important Leaguer in every precinct. He had to answer hundreds of
letters, see hundreds of callers, give out scores of interviews, compose
and deliver from three to a dozen speeches a day to as many different
sorts of audiences. There was nothing considered too small to merit his
attention, nothing too large to be beyond his watchfulness. Once every
day he was in each quarter of New York, and he was nowhere for more than
half an hour at a time.
Only his elaborately acquired calm and his inherited strength of
constitution saved him from nervous breakdown. Except for them, his
burning sincerity, his zeal, and the endless calls made upon these
characteristics, would have driven him to a hospital. Even so, his body
grew leaner and his face deeply lined. He was fighting with every ounce
of muscle and every particle of brain.
For now, as in every alley and at every turning, his political progress
revealed some new though ever partial phase of the power he attacked,
Luke saw all that he hated centered in one figure, originated by one
mind. He individualized Evil. That entire meshwork of wrong which he
was trying to tear into shreds, he traced directly to the plump, pale
man in russet brown, the malignant thing with the hairy hands and beady
eyes, the creature that he had once seen crouched at the end of a
mahogany table in a Wall Street skyscraper, from the windows of which
the maze of streets resembled the strands of a web with men and women
struggling on them like entangled flies.
Of all the fine and fatal threads that were snaring alike the helpless
and the strong, what threads were not spun by _him_? Of all the
corruption that was poisoning the country and infecting the ideals of
the Republic, what was there that did not proceed from his fangs? Luke
seemed to see it all now--was certain that he saw it--with awful
clarity. The Rollins letters, the interview in Wall Street, the action
of the banks, and Osserman's hint from the City Chamberlain, the part
played by the street-girl, the raid by the police, the talks with Stein
and the daily partial liftings of the political curtain: these, reviewed
in the lurid glow of the campaign, confirmed the accumulated gossip of
years, corroborated every wild story that came to him on the teeming
battlefield: of bribery and thieving, of perjury and murder, of all the
crimes that men have known, each committed again and again and
again--safely committed in the dark, cravenly done under the protection
of bought-and-paid-for law.
What mattered now this power's culture? What mattered its benefactions,
its colleges for the ignorant, its hospitals for the ill? As Luke saw
them now, these were only dust for the eyes of the public, cheap
peace-offerings for intricate wrongs. The good could be counted on the
fingers of the hand, the evil was as the sands of the sea.
It was everywhere. It mocked religion, because It supported churches;
It debauched Government, because It governed the governors; It destroyed
Law, because It controlled the Law's administrators. It was master of
the means of production and distribution; It owned the storehouses of
wealth; the clothes upon the backs of the people, the houses that they
lived in; the meat on the tables of the rich, the bread in the bellies
of the poor. It secured Its own prices for them, and withheld them as
It chose. Directly or indirectly, the whole nation took Its wages--such
wages as It chose to pay.
At the great League meeting in Cooper Union, Luke, fronting a wilderness
of faces, shouted his defiance of this Power. He said no name, but none
that heard him could doubt whom he meant. For that night, Luke Huber's
friends no longer knew the languid young lawyer in this shouting,
quivering, torch-bearing evangel on the historic Cooper Union Stage.
The boy had died that, bound for New York, thought himself as a Templar
entering Jerusalem, but from his ashes there rose a new Peter the Hermit
preaching a new crusade.
"If we had the eyes to see," he said, "we'd know that from this city,
the center of our civilization, slender threads, so numerous as to be
beyond our counting, run out to every corner of the land. Slender
threads: the merest gossamer, but so tough that, once entangled in them,
no man escapes. No man, no woman, and no child. The delicate filaments
catch and hold us by the thousand every day. They catch us at our birth
and they hold us till our death: life-prisoners even when we are unaware
of it, more desperately prisoners when we are unaware of it. The good
and the bad and the hopelessly neither-good-nor-bad; efficient and
inefficient, every sort and condition, men and boys, women and
girls--the net has use for us all: for the labor of the child, the body
of the woman, the hand or the brain, the money or the muscles, of the
man. It has uses for our virtues and more use for our vices. All are
needed, none that is caught goes free. If we had the eyes to see, we
should see it; but the strands are as fine as they are tough, and only
when a victim has so much blood in him that his dying struggles
ensanguine the thread that holds him do we, noting his blood, note what
has received his blood--and even there, we rarely consider that thread
in relation to its fellows, hardly ever realize that it is part of a
plan, hardly ever trace it to its center."
Luke followed the Power along thread after thread through the labyrinth
of American life, and he made it clear that the Power was one man. He
pictured the stock-market, where the trade in traitors began and where
the fortunes of speculators and the riches of the country were counters
in the game of roulette that this Power conducted with a braced wheel.
He passed on, across the map of the Union, through the wrecks of
industries that this Power had razed. He showed how it had ruined
numberless houses and spoiled countless lives. He pointed to the
bloated bodies of the suicides it had flung into rivers it had never
seen, the graves it had filled in the potters' fields of distant towns,
the twisted limbs of children it had enslaved, the bodies of women it
had forced into the arms of lust, the muscles of men it had condemned to
lifelong servitude. He described its command over Congress,
legislatures, and judges; its collar around the necks of the police, who
brought to its service, in return for criminal immunity, gamblers,
thieves, highwaymen, tramps, prostitutes, and pimps. He clutched its
hairy hand in the ballot-box, and called upon his hearers to end this
Power's practices as they loved their souls.
Luke pledged himself, if elected, to drive the thing out of every
department of the city's life that the District-Attorney could in any
way influence. He pledged himself to fear no man and to serve none.
"You have the eyes!" he shouted. "If you'll only use them, you have the
eyes to see. Look about you, and what you see will give you the
strength you need. This thing thwarts and perverts the purposes of
Government, and you know it! The men that are pledged to the people, it
buys with gold. These are its crimes, but not the worst of its crimes.
The worst it does is not what it does to things material. The worst it
does is what it does to things spiritual. The spoiling of high aims,
the rape and ravage of honorable purposes: these are its sins against
the Holy Ghost!"
Sec.2. Betty had gone to the mass-meeting, and so had the Rev. Pinkney
Nicholson. Even in the rush of his campaign, Luke had found time to see
Betty every day, and, because the Ruysdael loan had resolved all her
doubts, she was his most ardent supporter. He sent her two
stage-tickets to the gathering at Cooper Union, one of which he hoped
that her father would use; but Forbes was busy with plans to meet the
competition of the clothing trust and to quiet the grumblings of his
employees, who wanted a raise of wages to the sums paid by his rivals,
and so was kept late at the offices of the firm. Betty, therefore,
brought Nicholson with her, and Nicholson, thinking that it would not be
wise for a clergyman to seem to give the sanction of the Church to any
party in a political fight, had taken her not to the stage, but to the
body of the auditorium.
The girl listened to Luke's speech with parted lips and flushed face.
She was inspired by her lover's every word and proud for each
interruption of applause. She was so inspired and so proud that she did
not notice the increasing frigidity of her companion.
"Isn't he wonderful?" she demanded of Nicholson as the meeting ended
with the entire audience on its feet.
The band was playing "The Star-Spangled Banner," and it had been hoped
that the crowd would sing that national anthem. Most of the people
present did not, however, know the words, and those who did know them
had voices of too slight a range to accede to the severe demands of the
music.
"Isn't he just wonderful?" repeated Betty. She caught Nicholson's arm.
"He reminds me of a French orator father and I once heard in the Chamber
of Deputies in Paris. You must take me up to the stage to tell him so."
Nicholson had listened with mixed emotions. His attention, moreover,
was loose because he had lately been much worried by the presence of a
heavy debt on his church.
"I think he is an excellent speaker," said Nicholson, "but I'm afraid I
don't approve of his tone."
"His tone?" Betty turned sharply. "What's the matter with his tone?"
Nicholson's ascetic face relaxed. He quoted:
"Too rash, too unadvis'd, too sudden;
Too like the lightning."
"He isn't rash; he's brave," said Betty. "And he isn't unadvised or
sudden, for he has been thinking of all these things for a long time.
But he is like the lightning, and these people he says are so wrong will
find that out."
Sec.3. Mr. Irwin was at the mass-meeting, too; he of the gray Vandyck
beard and pink cheeks and twinkling eyes, the member of the law firm of
Stein, Falconridge, Falconridge & Perry, whose name did not appear on
the firm's letter-heads.
Irwin left Cooper Union directly the chief speech of the evening ended.
He had been seated in an unostentatious corner high in air and close
beneath the roof. The people about him must have thought him a warm
admirer of the speaker, since he was so busy taking notes of what was
said that he had leisure for only the most perfunctory applause. Irwin
hurried down the Bowery. He went into the nearest public telephone
booth, and from it he called up the hotel in which ex-Judge Stein made
his home.
Sec.4. Ex-Judge Stein had himself experienced a trying day, and Irwin
was absent from the office, or he would have known it. Somebody, it
seemed, had asked embarrassing questions of George J. Hallett and issued
exacting orders to Hallett, who had passed on the embarrassing questions
and the exacting orders to Stein. The questions and the orders gained
in intensity by transmission, and Stein was upset.
"Yes, yes, this is Judge Stein," he answered into the black transmitter
of the telephone when Irwin called him. "Who's talking, please?"
"Irwin."
"Eh? Well, where have you been, Mr. Irwin? I have wanted you to-day on
some important business.
"I think I have been attending to it, Judge."
"Where have you been?"
"Several places. To-night I've been to that mass-meeting in Cooper
Union."
"Yes. Was there much enthusiasm?"
"A great deal."
"Spontaneous? Genuine?"
"Partly."
"And the tone of the speech?"
Mr. Irwin went at some length into that side of the subject. He read
excerpts from his notes. It was evident that, since the afternoon when
his senior partner had first discussed Huber with him, necessity, had
forced a greater degree of confidence.
The present conversation continued for several minutes. No
eavesdropper, unless previously acquainted with the facts of the case,
could have gathered much from it, but it was intelligent and significant
to the principals. At its end, Stein said:
"There is very little time left us, and this young man means us to
understand that he will keep his word. The people for whom we are
acting are rather importunate, Mr. Irwin. They are not satisfied; not
at all satisfied; and I've already had to extend to you the time-limit I
first gave you. I have received instructions to the effect that we must
act at once."
"Yes, sir."
"You understand?"
"I understand."
"At once."
"All right, Judge."
"That had better mean to-night."
"I'll do my best."
"I think you had better, Mr. Irwin. I sha'n't be going to bed for two
or three hours yet."
Sec.5. Irwin left the telephone and hailed the first taxicab that
passed. It was free, and he had himself driven to a political club with
quarters not far from the office of Anson Quirk.
The quarters were over a saloon in Second Avenue. The entrance was a
hallway and a stairway back of the saloon. Here Irwin rang a bell,
which was immediately answered by a man in his shirt-sleeves.
"Mr. Quirk upstairs?"
"No," said the man. He eyed the questioner sullenly in the twilight of
the hall. "I don't think he is," he added.
Irwin took a card from his pocket. He placed it in a blank envelope,
sealed the envelope, and handed it to the doorkeeper.
"Give him this," he said, and stepped back into the street to wait.
The man closed the door upon him. It was presently reopened by Quirk,
his round face smiling, his manner jovial.
"Hello," said Quirk. "It's time good little boys were in bed, but I'm
glad to see you, anyhow. Come in and have a drink."
"No, thank you," Irwin replied. "I'll be back here in two hours.
There's something you've got to do in the meantime."
"Me? Now?"
"You; right away. We've been too slow about that little business,
Quirk. We can't stand them off much longer. There's not much more time
for delay, and the people higher up want to be shown action."
"Want to see the goods, do they?" chuckled Quirk. He rattled some coins
in the pocket under his round abdomen.
"Yes."
"Well, what do they want me to do?"
"Show the goods, I guess."
"Any suggestions?"
"No, that's up to you."
"I'm on," said Quirk. "Come back in two hours. I'll run right upstairs
and get my hat. An' here, if you won't take a drink, have a cigar: it's
a long wait. See you later."
Sec.6. The great bulk of Police Lieutenant Donovan was hunched up in an
upholstered armchair beside the table in his private office when Quirk
entered. He looked as if his caller was not welcome.
"Nothin' doin' so far," he said.
Quirk, too, was serious.
"I know it," said he. "They fell down so hard in that raid scheme that
they must have had all the sense knocked out of them. Well, you've got
to put some in."
Donovan's growl was wordless.
"You've got to," said Quirk. "To-night."
"To-night?" Donovan stood up. "What in hell do you think I am?"
The lawyer leaned across the table.
"I think you're a bluff," he said.
"Do you? Well, I'd just like you to have my job."
"Donovan," said Quirk, "if you don't put this thing across, an' do it
soon, somebody'll have your job sooner than you think."
"What's that?" thundered the lieutenant. But before a reply was
possible, his tone changed; his hands thrust deep in his pockets, he
turned away, his shoulders drooping. "Oh, I know you've got the
evidence to use for an excuse," he said: "I know you could do it, an' I
know you would."
"I wouldn't do it if I didn't have to," said Quirk gently; "but you know
how I'm fixed myself. Don't take it so hard, Hughie. You can pull this
thing across, if you'll only try. I'm sorry, but if I haven't something
to show pretty soon, I'll get it in the neck--hard, I will."
Donovan walked to the door of the rollroom. He opened it.
"Say, one o' you fellows," he called to a group of officers in plain
clothes. "Go out an' find Guth an' tell him to come in here right away.
I want him." Then he turned to Quirk: "It's got to be to-night?"
Quirk nodded:
"Make it an hour and a half if you can."
"Well, I can't."
"Then as near as you can."
"Gee," said Donovan, "I certainly am sick of this whole business!
Well--come back in an hour an' forty-five minutes an' we'll see what's
doin'."
Sec.7. He greeted Guth with a roar.
"You're a hell of a cop, you are! What sort of a job do you think
you've got, anyway? Rag-pickin'?"
Guth, who was used to these rages, stood at attention. The scar from
his mouth to the corner of his jaw-bone twitched heavily.
"I done all I could, Lieutenant," he said.
"You're a liar!" said Donovan. "You've been on this job Gawd knows how
long, an' your foot's slipped twice. All you've found is that he hasn't
got any safety-deposit box. You know he must have the goods at his
office, an' you're afraid to get 'em."
"They might be at his apartment house," said Guth. He shifted his feet
uneasily.
"They might be, but they ain't. I had Anderson play that end of it.
What d'you mean lettin' Reddy Rawn t'row you down this way?"
"He ain't t'rowed me down. He wouldn't dare."
"Wouldn't he? Well, then, he's stallin' you all right, all right, an'
he's had a cinch doin' it. This thing's got to stop. I got to have
them letters right off. To-night. Now. Get that?"
The giant subordinate gnawed his upper lip.
"That's goin' some, Lieutenant," he said.
"If you don't do it, you'll be goin' more: you'll be goin' off the
force. Now then: you beat it. Get Reddy on the job. Tell him Mitchell
knows the officer on that beat an' 'll see he an' his friends ain't
interfered with. Nobody'll be in the offices to-night; they've all been
over to Cooper Union an' 'll be tired out. Reddy'll be as safe as if he
was at home in bed. He'd better have the Kid to help him." Donovan
banged the table with his fist. "I want you back here in an hour with
everything that's inside that fellow Huber's safe. See?"
Sec.8. In that shadowy alley near Forty-third Street and Third Avenue,
where he had talked to Reddy Rawn before, Patrolman Guth talked now with
Reddy Rawn and the Kid.
"It ain't my fault," he said. "I've stood him off as long as I could.
You gotta do it now, an' if you don't he'll have you two up for Crab
Rotello's assault. I know it. He means business this time. You can
crack a safe, Kid, can't you?"
Sec.9. On the stage at Cooper Union, Luke was holding an impromptu
reception. Hundreds of people were streaming by him and shaking his
hand. His arm ached, but he was proud and glad.
At the end of the stream came Betty and Nicholson. Luke saw the girl
long before she could reach him, and he smiled to her over the heads of
the crowd.
"You dear!" she whispered when, at last, her hand caught his. "I'm
proud of you. I'm so proud!"
He pressed her hand.
"That's the best praise of all," he said, and to her companion: "I'm
glad you're here, Mr. Nicholson."
Nicholson shook hands.
"I was glad to be here. I admired your delivery even where I
disapproved of your treatment."
"What?" laughed Luke. "Is the church going to make friends with the
mammon of unrighteousness?" He was hoarse and hot and nervous, but he
was too warmly aglow with his success to heed seriously the reply that
Nicholson was beginning when one of his friends on the stage plucked his
sleeve. He turned. "What is it?" he asked.
"Nelson wants to see you. I don't know what about, but he says it's
very important."
"All right." Luke faced Betty and Nicholson again. "You'll forgive me
for just a moment, won't you?" he said. "I'll be right back, and then,
if you'll let me, I'll drive over to Brooklyn with you both. I have a
note from your father, Betty, asking me to come to the house."
"I thought he was at the office," said Betty; "but I do hope you'll come
with us."
"He's back at the house now. This note came by messenger."
"Then," said Nicholson, "I shan't interfere with business. I'll go home
from here. Run along, Mr. Huber. I'll guard Miss Forbes while you're
gone."
Luke followed the man that had sought him and found Nelson standing at
the farthest corner of the stage.
The wholesale druggist was in evident distress. He was an honorable man
and a practical, and these qualities spoke in the lines of his troubled
face. As soon as they were left together, Nelson came to the point.
"Huber," he said, "I've got to get out."
"Out? What of?"
"The League. I've got to leave it."
Nelson was almost the last man that Luke would have expected to desert.
Moreover, he had so long been prominent in the reform movement that his
defection would be a serious blow to the League. Luke had to call
loudly on his lethargic manner to conceal his anxiety and surprise.
"Why?" he inquired. "What's wrong?"
"This speech of yours to-night," explained Nelson. "You've been getting
nearer and nearer that fellow all along, but I'd no idea you meant to go
right at him."
"What was the matter with the speech? I didn't tell anything but the
truth."
"No, I dare say you didn't, but I can't honorably stand by you, Huber,
now that you've openly taken this line."
Nelson swallowed hard. It was plain that he did not like the dish
prepared for him.
"I don't understand," said Luke. "If it was true, and if we're to make
a real fight for real reform, we've got to begin at the cause of
corruption."
"I know. I admit it was the truth, but it wasn't the whole truth. He
does lots of good."
"Good and bad are relative. Relatively he doesn't do any good."
"I'm not so sure of that."
"I am."
"Yes, but there's the League to think of."
"The League nominated me,"
"Of course it did, but you're not the whole ticket nor the whole
movement."
This was a detail that Luke in his triumph had forgotten.
"Still," he said, "we can't dodge the facts. I won't dodge them,
Nelson."
"I understand," Nelson said. "Perhaps you're right. Anyhow, right or
wrong, you've done what you've done, and so I've got to go."
"But why?"
Nelson fidgeted.
"I may as well tell you," he at last said. "You know my business has
always been one that didn't cross these fellows' trail. But lately
they've been coming toward us. I think I mentioned that?"
Luke nodded.
"Well, I've been hard up. The other day I needed money badly. I had to
have money or I'd have failed. I have a wife and family to think of,
Huber. I tried everywhere to raise the wind, and there was only one
place where I could raise it."
"You mean--" Luke wet his lips. "You mean that crowd?"
"Yes."
"It came from _him_?"
"It came direct from L. Bergen Rivington. But, of course, it really
came from _him_."
Luke put out his hand. Nelson wrung it.
"I wasn't bought, Huber," he said. "You don't think that?"
"I know," said Luke kindly.
"I wish I'd told you sooner, Huber. I didn't expect you'd go so far."
"I'd have gone just as far, Nelson. I'm sorry."
"I'm sorry, too, Huber. Good-night."
Sec.10. "Betty," said Luke, as the girl nestled against him in the
darkness of the cab that drove them toward her home, "this is going to
be a hard battle."
"Then you'll win because you're right."
"I'm not so sure."
Her arms went round his neck.
"I don't care whether you win or not," she whispered, "so long as you
ought to win."
Sec.11. Forbes was waiting for them in the library. His rapidly-graying
hair was disordered, and his face was even more worried than Nelson's
had been.
"You'd better run to bed, dear," he said to Betty as he kissed her.
"It's late, and I've some heavy business to talk about to Luke."
"I'm wide awake," protested Betty. "I couldn't sleep if I did go to
bed. I'll sleep late to-morrow."
"But then there is the business we must talk about."
"I don't care. I'll like it. I won't interrupt." She looked at Luke.
"May I stay?" she asked.
Luke smiled.
"I wish you would," he said.
Forbes made a gesture of surrender.
"All right," said he. He turned to Luke and, as Betty seated herself
between the two men, who remained standing, he continued: "They're going
to strike."
"At the factory?" Luke had feared this. "What do they want?"
"They want us to meet the hours and the wages that the trust is giving."
"We can meet them as to hours, can't we?"
"We might. It would hurt us, but we might."
"But not the wages?"
"Not in five years."
Luke lit a cigarette. He noted that his hand was steady, and its
steadiness gratified him.
"They're well enough paid, aren't they?"
"You know the scale."
"Well, it's a fair one, isn't it?"
"What does that matter to them when they think they can get more?"
"But you say they can't, Forbes."
"I can't convince them of it. Their attitude is that if we can't pay
them what they want, the Business had better go out of existence.'
"You saw the men's committee?"
"This evening. That's why I couldn't come to your meeting."
"And they won't compromise?"
"They might have, but things have gone too far. A lot of these I.W.W.
organizers and agitators have been at work among them. I don't know
what will happen to the Business now."
"We can get in strike-breakers and run the factory in spite of them."
"If we do, there'll be rioting. They might burn the building. These
Industrial Workers of the World--you don't know them."
"I don't see that we have any choice."
Forbes looked away.
"We have one," he muttered.
Luke caught his wrist.
"Look here," he demanded, "do you mean to say that this may have a
political origin?"
"I believe it has. I believe those letters you told me about----"
"You want me to knuckle under?" asked Luke.
Forbes looked at him.
"Think what a strike might do to you politically," he said.
"I don't care about that."
"Your friends might."
"Not if they want to stay my friends. Besides, it can't be true. The
writer of those letters hates the I.W.W. like poison. He can't have
inspired them."
"Oh, not that. I know he can't. But if you'd be sensible about those
letters, I believe he'd be willing to put down the trust's wages and
join us in this fight."
"What did you tell the men's committee?"
"I didn't show them what I felt," said Forbes. "That would never do.
You can't tell workmen what you really think. I just said if they
wanted to strike, they would have to strike."
Luke flung aside Forbes's arm.
"Then stick to that," he said.
"But, Huber----"
Luke interrupted. He fronted Betty.
"Betty," he said, "do you understand what your father is asking me to
do? You know how I am placed, and you heard my speech to-night. Now,
your father wants me to go back on all that in order to save him from
poverty and you from poverty and me from poverty and defeat. I won't do
it. Whether you like it or not, I won't do it!"
The girl got up slowly and put a hand on his shoulder. Her eyes, as she
looked from one man to the other, were very beautiful, but they were
firm.
"Father," she said, "I've learned a lot lately. Luke's right and--and
I'm with him."
Forbes turned toward her irritably.
"Oh, go to bed!" said he.
Luke laughed and, reaching up, patted the hand that was on his shoulder.
"No, no," he protested, "you mustn't intrigue with my allies, Forbes."
"Well," said Forbes, "you'll see that I'm right if you keep on
antagonizing these people."
"We can starve them out."
"Not before there is violence."
"The law will defend us there. We'll have the police: they can't deny
us adequate protection in such a matter--and if we have to, we'll get
the Governor to call out the troops."
Forbes argued and pleaded for a long time, but to no avail. Luke would
not go over to his enemies: the strike must proceed.
"I've got to leave you now," he said. "I'll have to have a statement
ready about this for the papers first thing in the morning. Perhaps
I'll get out of the Subway at Fourteenth Street and open up the League's
headquarters and get it ready there."
It was Betty that stopped this plan.
"You'll do nothing of the sort," she ordered. "You're tired out. I
won't let you kill yourself." She kissed him on the mouth. "You must
promise me to go straight to the Arapahoe and to sleep."
At the touch of her lips, he softened.
"All right," he promised, "but I'm no more sleepy now than you said you
were an hour ago."
Sec.12. Luke would not have had to open the offices of the Municipal
League; that was being attended to. While he was still in the Subway
train returning from Brooklyn to Manhattan, two men, one of them
carrying a small bundle, crossed Union Square and turned down Broadway.
Before the entrance to the building in which the League was housed, they
paused to speak to a policeman.
"That's all right," he told them. "I know. I got me orders ten minutes
ago. That's why I'm standin' here. But get a move on, you fellows. I
don't want to stick here all night."
The two men rounded a corner.
In the deserted street, the officer of the law walked up and down,
twenty paces to the north, then twenty to the south. A party of strayed
revelers came by and tried to talk with him; but he ordered them to move
on if they didn't want him to arrest them. He resumed his walk when
they had gone, his thumbs tucked in his belt, his lips pursed and
whistling softly a popular tune. Once he heard the sound of a window
opened overhead. A little later he saw a dim light pass from one window
to another in the building above him. A dulled report sounded from
behind the walls: the Elevated is not near Broadway at this spot, but in
the night noises travel far, and this noise might have been the crash of
a late train. The officer of the law did not raise his head....
Around the corner came two figures. Both of them carried bundles now.
The officer of the law strolled past them. He did not stop as he spoke.
"All right?" he asked.
"All right," said one of the figures.
The officer of the law walked on, whistling his popular tune.
Sec.13. Somewhat nearer the hour of sunrise, Mr. Irwin, his merry eyes
grown weary, stood in the sitting-room of the Hon. Marcus Stein's suite
of hotel apartments. He was bending over a table on which lay an opened
bundle.
Stein was bending over the table, too. His dignified demeanor was
ruffled.
"This is nothing but a collection of junk," he was saying. "It is no
use to anybody but its owners. Get it out of here at once, Mr. Irwin,
and tell your friends to return it to the place they got it from."
*CHAPTER XIV*
Sec.1. As every man has his day in court, so nearly every man has his
day in the newspapers, and which is the more trying it is difficult to
decide. The day following the night of the Cooper Union meeting was
Luke's: the morning papers seemed to contain little news that did not
refer to him; the editorial columns presented satiric paragraphs and
serious leaders regarding his speech and his position before the public,
and spread over the first pages were accounts of his address and stories
of the strike in the factory, with which his connection was now loudly
heralded.
Comment on the speech was about equally divided. Half of the press
ridiculed it as the vaporing of a misinformed dreamer, and half
denounced it as an anarchistic appeal to the violence of the mob. Some
journals gave stenographic reports of the entire matter; most printed
only those portions which, lifted from their context, were best suited
to the policy of the paper using them. The extremes were shown by two
headlines. One read: