They dismissed Peter for the present, sending him back to his cell.
He stayed there for two days with no one to advise him, and no hint
as to his fate. They did not allow newspapers in the jail, but they
had left Peter his money, and so on the second day he succeeded in
bribing one of his keepers and obtaining a copy of the American City
“Times,” with all the details of the amazing sensation spread out on
the front page.
For thirty years the “Times” had been standing for law and order
against all the forces of red riot and revolution; for thirty years
the “Times” had been declaring that labor leaders and walking
delegates and Socialists and Anarchists were all one and the same
thing, and all placed their reliance fundamentally upon one
instrument, the dynamite bomb. Here at last the “Times” was
vindicated, this was the “Times” great day! They had made the most
of it, not merely on the front page, but on two other pages, with
pictures of all the conspicuous conspirators, including Peter, and
pictures of the I. W. W. headquarters, and the suit-case, and the
sticks of dynamite and the fuses and the clock; also of the “studio”
in which the Reds had been trapped, and of Nikitin, the Russian
anarchist who owned this den. Also there were columns of speculation
about the case, signed statements and interviews with leading
clergymen and bankers, the president of the Chamber of Commerce and
the secretary of the Real Estate Exchange. Also there was a
two-column, double-leaded editorial, pointing out how the “Times”
had been saying this for thirty years, and not failing to connect up
the case with the Goober case, and the Lackman case, and the case of
three pacifist clergymen who had been arrested several days before
for attempting to read the Sermon on the Mount at a public meeting.
And Peter knew that he, Peter Gudge, had done all this! The forces
of law and order owed it all to one obscure little secret service
agent! Peter would get no credit, of course; the Chief of Police and
the district attorney were issuing solemn statements, taking the
honors to themselves, and with never one hint that they owed
anything to the secret service department of the Traction Trust.
That was necessary, of course; for the sake of appearances it had to
be pretended that the public authorities were doing the work,
exercising their legal functions in due and regular form. It would
never do to have the mob suspect that these activities were being
financed and directed by the big business interests of the city. But
all the same, it made Peter sore! He and McGivney and the rest of
Guffey’s men had a contempt for the public officials, whom they
regarded as “pikers”; the officials had very little money to spend,
and very little power. If you really wanted to get anything done in
America, you didn’t go to any public official, you went to the big
men of affairs, the ones who had the “stuff,” and were used to doing
things quickly and efficiently. It was the same in this business of
spying as in everything else.
Now and then Peter would realize how close he had come to ghastly
ruin. He would have qualms of terror, picturing himself shut up in
the hole, and Guffey proceeding to torture the truth out of him. But
he was able to calm these fears. He was sure this dynamite
conspiracy would prove too big a temptation for the authorities; it
would sweep them away in spite of themselves. They would have to go
thru with it, they would have to stand by Peter.
And sure enough, on the evening of the second day a jailer came and
said: “You’re to be let out.” And Peter was ushered thru the barred
doors and turned loose without another word.