They dragged Peter out thru a swarming tenement crowd, and clapped
him into an automobile, and whirled him away to police headquarters,
where they entered him in due form and put him in a cell. He was
uneasy right away, because he had failed to arrange with Hammett how
long he was to stay locked up. But barely an hour had passed before
a jailer came, and took him to a private room, where he found
himself confronted by McGivney and Hammett, also the Chief of Police
of the city, a deputy district attorney, and last but most important
of all--Guffey. It was the head detective of the Traction Trust who
took Peter in charge.
“Now, Gudge,” said he, “what’s this job you’ve been putting up on
us?”
It struck Peter like a blow in the face. His heart went down, his
jaw dropped, he stared like an idiot. Good God!
But he remembered Nell’s last solemn words: “Stick it out, Peter;
stick it out!” So he cried: “What do you mean, Mr. Guffey?”
“Sit down in that chair there,” said Guffey. “Now, tell us what you
know about this whole business. Begin at the beginning and tell us
everything--every word.” So Peter began. He had been at a meeting at
the I. W. W. headquarters the previous evening. There had been a
long talk about the inactivity of the organization, and what could
be done to oppose the draft. Peter detailed the arguments, the
discussion of violence, of dynamite and killing, the mention of
Nelse Ackerman and the other capitalists who were to be put out of
the way. He embellished all this, and exaggerated it greatly--it
being the one place where Nell had said he could do no harm by
exaggerating.
Then he told how after the meeting had broken up he had noticed
several of the men whispering among themselves. By pretending to be
getting a book from the bookcase he had got close to Joe Angell and
Jerry Rudd; he had heard various words and fragments of sentences,
“dynamite,” “suit-case in the cupboard,” “Nelse,” and so on. And
when the crowd went out he noticed that Angell’s pockets were
bulging, and assumed that he had the bombs, and that they were going
to do the job. He rushed to the drug-store and phoned McGivney. It
took a long time to get McGivney, and when he had given his message
and run out again, the crowd was out of sight. Peter was in despair,
he was ashamed to confront McGivney, he wandered about the streets
for hours looking for the crowd. He spent the rest of the night in
the park. But then in the morning he discovered the piece of paper
in his pocket, and understood that somebody had slipped it to him,
intending to invite him to the conspiracy; so he had notified
McGivney, and that was all he knew.
McGivney began to cross-question him. He had heard Joe Angell
talking to Jerry Rudd; had he heard him talking to anybody else? Had
he heard any of the others talking? Just what had he heard Joe
Angell say? Peter must repeat every word all over. This time, as
instructed by Nell, he remembered one sentence more, and repeated
this sentence: “Mac put it in the `sab-cat.’” He saw the others
exchange glances. “That’s just what I heard,” said Peter--“just those
words. I couldn’t figure out what they meant?”
“Sab-cat?” said the Chief of Police, a burly figure with a brown
moustache and a quid of tobacco tucked in the corner of his mouth.
“That means `sabotage,’ don’t it?”
“Yes,” said the rat-faced man.
“Do you know anything in the office that has to do with sabotage?”
demanded Guffey of Peter.
And Peter thought. “No, I don’t,” he said.
They talked among themselves for a minute or two. The Chief said
they had got all McCormick’s things out of his room, and might find
some clue to the mystery in these. Guffey went to the telephone, and
gave a number with which Peter was familiar--that of I. W. W.
headquarters. “That you, Al?” he said. “We’re trying to find if
there’s something in those rooms that has to do with sabotage. Have
you found anything--any apparatus or pictures, or writing--anything?”
Evidently the answer was in the negative, for Guffey said: “Go
ahead, look farther; if you get anything, call me at the chief’s
office quick. It may give us a lead.”
Then Guffey hung up the receiver and turned to Peter. “Now Gudge,”
he said, “that’s all your story, is it; that’s all you got to tell
us?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well then, you might as well quit your fooling right away. We
understand that you framed this thing up, and we’re not going to be
taken in.”
Peter stared at Guffey, speechless; and Guffey, for his part, took a
couple of steps toward Peter, his brows gathering into a terrible
frown, and his fists clenched. In a wave of sickening horror Peter
remembered the scenes after the Preparedness Day explosion. Were
they going to put him thru that again?
“We’ll have a show-down, Gudge, right here,” the head detective
continued. “You tell us all this stuff about Angell--his talk with
Jerry Rudd, and his pockets stuffed with bombs and all the rest of
it--and he denies every word of it.”
“But, m-m-my God! Mr. Guffey,” gasped Peter. “Of _course_ he’ll deny
it!” Peter could hardly believe his ears--that they were taking
seriously the denial of a dynamiter, and quoting it to him!
“Yes, Gudge,” responded Guffey, “but you might as well know the
truth now as later--Angell is one of our men; we’ve had him planted
on these `wobblies’ for the last year.”
The bottom fell out of Peter’s world; Peter went tumbling heels over
head--down, down into infinite abysses of horror and despair. Joe
Angell was a secret agent like himself! The Blue-eyed Angell, who
talked dynamite and assassination at a hundred radical gatherings,
who shocked the boldest revolutionists by his reckless
language--Angell a spy, and Peter had proceeded to plant a
“frame-up” on him!