There was only one way out of this plight for Peter, and that was
for him to tell Rosie the truth. And why should he not do it? He was
wild about her, and he knew that she was wild about him, and only
one thing--his great secret--stood in the way of their perfect
bliss. If he told her that great secret, he would be a hero of
heroes in her eyes; he would be more wonderful even than the men who
were driving back the Germans from the Marne and writing their names
upon history’s most imperishable pages! So why should he not tell?
He was in her room one evening, and his arms were about her, and she
had almost but not quite yielded. “Please, please, Peter,” she
pleaded, “stop being one of those horrid Reds!” And Peter could
stand it no longer. He told her that he really wasn’t a Red, but a
secret agent employed by the very biggest business men of American
City to keep track of the Reds and bring their activities to naught.
And when he told this, Rosie stared at him in consternation. She
refused to believe him; when he insisted, she laughed at him, and
finally became angry. It was a silly yarn, and did he imagine he
could string her along like that?
So Peter, irritated, set out to convince her. He told her about
Guffey and the American City Land & Investment Company; he told her
about McGivney, and how he met McGivney regularly at Room 427 of the
American House. He told her about his thirty dollars a week, and how
it was soon to be increased to forty, and he would spend it all on
her. And perhaps she might pretend to be converted by him, and
become a Red also, and if she could satisfy McGivney that she was
straight, he would pay her too, and it would be a lot better than
working ten and a half hours a day in Isaac & Goldstein’s paper box
factory.
At last Peter succeeded in convincing the girl. She was subdued and
frightened; she hadn’t been prepared for anything like that, she
said, and would have to have a little time to think it over. Peter
then became worried in turn. He hoped she wouldn’t mind, he said,
and set to work to explain to her how important his work was, how it
had the sanction of all the very best people in the city--not merely
the great bankers and business men, but mayors and public officials
and newspaper editors and college presidents, and great Park Avenue
clergymen like the Rev. de Willoughby Stotterbridge of the Church of
the Divine Compassion. And Rosie said that was all right, of course,
but she was a little scared and would have to think it over. She
brought the evening to an abrupt end, and Peter went home much
disconcerted.
Perhaps an hour later there came a sharp tap on the door of his
lodging-house room, and he went to the door, and found himself
confronted by David Andrews, the lawyer, Donald Gordon, and John
Durand, the labor giant, president of the Seamen’s Union. They never
even said, “Howdy do,” but stalked into the room, and Durand shut
the door behind him, and stood with his back to it, folded his arms
and glared at Peter like the stone image of an Aztec chieftain. So
before they said a word Peter knew what had happened. He knew that
the jig was up for good this time; his career as savior of the
nation was at an end. And again it was all on account of a
woman--all because he hadn’t taken Guffey’s advice about winking!
But all other thoughts were driven from Peter’s mind by one emotion,
which was terror. His teeth began giving their imitation of an angry
woodchuck, and his knees refused to hold him; he sat down on the
edge of the bed, staring from one to another of these three stone
Aztec faces. “Well, Gudge,” said Andrews, at last, “so you’re the
spy we’ve been looking for all this time!”
Peter remembered Nell’s injunction, “Stick it out, Peter! Stick it
out!”
“Wh-wh-what do you mean, Mr. Andrews?”
“Forget it, Gudge,” said Andrews. “We’ve just been talking with
Rosie, and Rosie was our spy.”
“She’s been lying to you!” Peter cried.
But Andrews said: “Oh rubbish! We’re not that easy! Miriam Yankovich
was listening behind the door, and heard your talk.”
So then Peter knew that the case was hopeless, and there was nothing
left but to ascertain his fate. Had they come just to scold him and
appeal to his conscience? Or did they plan to carry him away and
strangle him and torture him to death? The latter was the terror
that had been haunting Peter from the beginning of his career, and
when gradually be made out that the three Aztecs did not intend
violence, and that all they hoped for was to get him to admit how
much he had told to his employers--then there was laughter inside
Peter, and he broke down and wept tears of scalding shame, and said
that it had all been because McCormick had told that cruel lie about
him and little Jennie Todd. He had resisted the temptation for a
year, but then he had been out of a job, and the Goober Defense
Committee had refused him any work; he had actually been starving,
and so at last he had accepted McGivney’s offer to let him know
about the seditious activities of the extreme Reds. But he had never
reported anybody who hadn’t really broken the law, and he had never
told McGivney anything but the truth.
Then Andrews proceeded to examine him. Peter denied that he had ever
reported anything about the Goober case. He denied most strenuously
that he had ever had anything to do with the McCormick “frame-up.”
When they tried to pin him down on this case and that, he suddenly
summoned his dignity and declared that Andrews had no right to
cross-question him, he was a 100%, red-blooded American patriot, and
had been saving his country and his God from German agents and
Bolshevik traitors.
Donald Gordon almost went wild at that. “What you’ve been doing was
to slip stuff into our pamphlet about conscientious objectors, so as
to get us all indicted!”
“That’s a lie!” cried Peter. “I never done nothing of the kind!”
“You know perfectly well you rubbed out those pencil marks that I
drew through that sentence in the pamphlet.”
“I never done it!” cried Peter, again and again.
And suddenly big John Durand clenched his hands, and his face became
terrible with his pent-up rage. “You white-livered little sneak!” he
hissed. “What we ought to do with you is to pull the lying tongue
out of you!” He took a step forward, as if he really meant to do it.
But David Andrews interfered. He was a lawyer, and knew the
difference between what he could do and what Guffey’s men could do.
“No, no, John,” he said, “nothing like that. I guess we’ve got all
we can get out of this fellow. We’ll leave him to his own conscience
and his Jingo God. Come on, Donald.” And he took the white-faced
Quaker boy with one hand, and the big labor giant with the other,
and walked them out of the room, and Peter heard them tramping down
the stairs of his lodging house, and he lay on his bed and buried
his face in the pillows, and felt utterly wretched, because once
more he had been made a fool of, and as usual it was a woman that
had done it.