The next morning Robert awoke only after he had been called three
times. The sun was shining brightly into his window and he realized
that it was past the family breakfast hour. He lay in bed thinking
of what he would do, found that he was still in bed and stretched
leisurely. As long as he was late for breakfast he might as well be
still later. He suddenly remembered his resolve to see Margaret and
induce her to set their wedding as soon as possible.
Of course, he could not with propriety visit her this morning, after
having seen her only a few hours before. He would wait until afternoon.
In the meantime he must straighten those papers.
As his eyes fell upon the old envelope again he had an impulse to tear
it, another to send it to McCall, and a third, which he followed, to
keep it with his other records. He would keep it with certain other
letters, as a woman might keep old rose petals--not to bloom again, but
to remind one of the past.
He noticed a card, which he had at first mistaken for the postal
ordering him to report at Plattsburg. Now he saw it was a white card
with the words “Non Silba Sed Anthra” in large letters on the top line.
“Non Silba Sed Anthra?” Where had that come from? Let’s see. That was
Latin. Anyway, he knew what two of the words meant. He went to the
bookcase and pulled out his Latin dictionary. There it was.
Now he remembered. That fat man had given it to him. Oh, yes, Jarvis.
He picked up the card and read it:
“Sir, six thousand men who are preparing for eventualities have their
eyes upon you. You are being weighed in the balance!
“The Call is coming! Are you able and qualified to respond?
“Discuss this matter with no one.
“Oohay-Oohay-Oopay.”
It seemed rather ridiculous, some sort of a practical joke, until he
remembered the society with an equally ridiculous name--Trick Track
Tribe--of which Jarvis and the Pinkneys had spoken. The society
that was to protect the white race, womanhood, the United States
Constitution and several other things. That reminded Robert that he had
promised Howard Pinkney to see him.
Before his plate Robert found two letters. The one with the Chicago
postmark he opened first and read over his oatmeal. Mrs. Hamilton came
in and sat opposite, although she had long since eaten her breakfast.
“Oh, mother,” he exclaimed, “a letter from Bill McCall!”
“One of your college friends?”
“No. He’s the man I’ve been telling you about. Don’t you know? That
Chicago newspaper man!”
“Oh, yes, it’s too bad that he doesn’t live in Corinth.”
“I’ve never really told you or dad all that he’s done for me.”
He laid the letter to one side and looked grave.
“He’s going to have an operation--a serious operation--on his eye. It’s
going to take place tomorrow morning and he writes about it as though
it were a joke!”
“Well, dear, maybe it’s not so serious as you think. Surgeons can do
such marvelous things nowadays. Don’t you think you’d better finish
your breakfast? Did he get it in the war?”
Robert nodded.
“Yes. I never told you the details. I was afraid it might--upset you,
but Bill was wounded while trying to save me.”
Briefly he sketched the account of his rescue, minimizing as much as
possible the danger to himself. His mother covered her face with her
hands.
“If I had known it at the time I couldn’t have stood it, Robert.”
She took a seat beside him, placed her arm about his shoulders and
rested her head against him. Mammy Chloe’s dark face appeared for a
moment in the swinging door leading to the kitchen, a steaming plate
of corn fritters in her hand, but she did not enter. Robert took his
mother’s hand and was conscious of innumerable little details of color
and form.
“Just think,” he said, “not to be able to see anything!” Not to be
able to see, he thought, the sun gleaming through a window and falling
in bands of gold across the blue rug, with tiny dust motes dancing in
them. Not to see snowy linen or shining silverware or glittering glass.
Not to see the warm glow of polished rosewood and the cheerful glow
of ivory woodwork. Not to see one’s mother or one’s own face in the
mirror. He shut his eyes for a moment.
“And to think that I can’t do anything,” he said at length. “That I
can’t even talk to him. And he writes about ‘going over the top once
more.’”
His mother tried to comfort him.
“I’m sure he’ll come through it all right,” she said. “It’s too late to
send him a letter, but you could send him a telegram.”
“Yes.” Hamilton rose. “I must do that.” He took up the second envelope
mechanically and opened it. It was a card like the one Jarvis had given
him, with the same heading: “Non Silba Sed Anthra” across the top. The
Latin annoyed him, the childish air of mystery, evidently designed to
impress persons who did not own Latin dictionaries. There was the same
silly signature, Oohay-Oohay-Oopay--pig Latin, of course, for H. H.
P., Howard Pinkney. Who else would be asinine enough to think of it?
Another message, designed to be mysterious, followed the heading:
“Sir:
“You have been weighed in the balance and found not wanting!
“Strong Men--Brave Men (evidently Pinkney himself)--R-E-A-L Men
(probably little Jarvis). We need such men. We know you are one.
“The Bogeys of the Fourth Dimension will shortly issue their call. Be
discreet, preserve silence and bide the coming.
“Discuss this matter with no one.
“Oohay-Oohay-Oopay.”
Robert was thinking of McCall. The follow-up invitation of the Trick
Track Tribe jarred on him. He thrust the card in his pocket and walked
out to send his telegram.
As he walked toward his street car he offered little prayers to a God
whom he now realized he had invoked all too seldom of late. He wondered
why he should have been saved and McCall chosen to undergo this ordeal.
And how would Dorothy take it? Would she be at his bedside?
In Paris the operation had been accepted fatalistically and in a spirit
of bravado by both of them. That was because it lay still so far in the
future and, too, perhaps, because they then still retained the war-time
psychology, the callous outlook upon life and death that frequent
contact with these had formed.
The car jolted and was dirty. The blacks, he noticed, were squeezed
together in a section dirtier than the one in which he sat. It was
growing warm. In another few weeks summer would be there.
Pinkney was just leaving the telegraph office.
“Oh, yes, I was going to see you today,” said Robert with a guilty
feeling.
“So you got our summons from the Fourth Dimension?” inquired Pinkney
with an earnest smile. “We need brave men, real men, Hamilton, to carry
on our work.” There was an allusion to the flaming rood that Robert did
not understand and he was able to get away only long enough to send a
short message to McCall. Pinkney took his arm and insisted on escorting
him to his office. On the way they paused to exchange a few words
with acquaintances, some of whom referred mysteriously to the coming
concilium.
Pinkney’s office was a truly magnificent one, just off the main
office of the Corinth Lumber Company, with a commanding sweep of the
city’s principal thoroughfare. One’s feet sank into a soft, thick rug
of mauve and one’s eye immediately took in the glass-covered mahogany
desk and the decorations on the wall--a silk American flag under glass,
his captain’s commission in the home guards, a college diploma, a
membership in some civic organization and a poem “To My Mother”--all
framed. Not until they had come quite into the room did they notice
that they were not alone. A rather tall, wavy-haired man with shrewd
blue eyes and a straight-line mouth was standing at the window, chewing
a cigar. He wore a light checked suit and tan oxfords, and had the
appearance of looking older than he really was. As he saw Pinkney he
waved his right hand in an indefinite salute without, at the same time,
straightening up.
“Captain Hamilton,” said Pinkney, “this is Mr. Griffith.”
They shook hands, Robert mumbled an acknowledgment and Mr. Griffith
said he was very glad to meet him.
“Mr. Griffith--later you’ll know him by a rather more pretentious
title, Robert--is what I might term the brains of the Tribe,” remarked
Pinkney. “Won’t you gentlemen take a seat? Now we can talk more
comfortably. Cigars? Oh, try a _good_ brand.”
Griffith smiled so that all his teeth, including a gold tooth in front
and several gold-filled ones, shone.
“That’s just some o’ his bull. Don’t you pay any attention to him,” he
laughed.
“No, that’s the whole truth. You know, Captain, while you were fighting
for civilization on Flanders Fields, Griffith was one of the men who
was fighting the good fight over here through the most potent weapon
that man has ever devised.” Griffith grinned as though Pinkney were
quoting a phrase with which he was familiar, or, perhaps, had even
coined himself. “That weapon is nothing else than publicity!”
Hamilton nodded. Since his return he had learned that cotton, that
wood, that conservation of coal and food, that the county councils of
defense, that the women, that the Y. M. C. A., that a hundred different
things had won the war, and he was not surprised to hear now that
publicity was the most potent weapon of mankind.
“Griffith here is an old newspaper man.”
“Oh, I know a newspaper man,” said Hamilton, to make talk. “One of my
best friends in the army was correspondent for the Chicago Times.”
“What’s his name?”
“McCall.”
“Sure. I’ve read his stuff. So he was over with your outfit. Gee, he
could have cleaned up if he’d been home.”
Pinkney resumed charge of the conversation and employed it in briefly
sketching the more recent portion of Griffith’s biography. He had been
connected with some newspaper when the war broke out, what connection,
was evidently unimportant, Pinkney casting all newspaper men in one
huge category as he might walnut logs or hardwood. At the outbreak of
the World War he had foreseen the tremendous importance of publicity
and had offered his services to various organizations in raising
funds, recruiting members, and so forth. He had been secretary of the
first drive ever held in Corinth to raise money for the Belgian war
sufferers. Later when the Red Cross, the Y. M. C. A., the Y. W. C. A.,
the Salvation Army, the Near East, the Chinese, the French and several
local and state organizations had started their drives Griffith’s
services had been in demand.
“Corinth went over the top on every drive through this man,” said
Pinkney proudly.
The expression “over the top” grated on Hamilton. It was the same
phrase McCall had used in describing his coming operation.
“Weren’t you the first man to use ‘over the top’ to describe exceeding
a quota?” asked Pinkney.
“Some say I was,” smiled Griffith. “But I’ve got to be going, folks.
I’m mapping out a campaign to cover the entire United States.” He
leaned over the desk, and drew diagrams on it with his finger as he
spoke. There were hard, practical lines about his mouth, and his eyes
narrowed almost to slits. “See, we’ll cover every section. We’ll have a
perfect military organization with a commander-in-chief at the head.”
He went on, sketching rapidly with his forefinger on the mahogany his
idea of a feudalistic system that would make the Tribe all powerful in
the United States. There were strategic positions to be carried at all
costs--certain localities in each state which offered an easy entrance.
There were districts, corresponding to congressional districts, that
must be covered by an army of Bogeys. Here was a citadel hard to
break through. Here a breach in the walls. He waxed more and more
enthusiastic over his plan. His words came more and more forcibly. His
forefinger flashed faster and faster. His eyes gleamed. He leaned over
the desk and pounded on it with his fist.
A transformed figure, Hamilton thought, from the man who had slouched
against the wall when he had first entered--an almost fanatical
leader, carried away with an idea. The plan was made up of bits of
military science, of salesmanship, perhaps picked up through some
correspondence course, of the technique of carrying on drives. Out of
his miscellaneous reading, evidently, and out of an idea upon which
he had been brooding perhaps for years, this man had evolved his huge
“campaign.” Hamilton guessed that he was a few years above the draft
age and reflected ironically what might have happened if Griffith, with
his almost insane imagination, had been placed in charge of a body of
troops in France.
“And we’re going to have you with us, Captain Hamilton,” exclaimed
Griffith at last, shaking hands and making for the door. “Got a blank?
All right, let him fill it out. The concilium meets Tuesday night. Only
a few more days and we can get him in on this. Well, I’m glad I met
you, Captain.”
Griffith put on his soft felt hat a little to one side and walked out.
Hamilton made a movement as if to follow, too.
“Wait a minute, Robert, fill this out!”
Pinkney removed a card from his drawer and handed it to Robert.
“What we need is men who have been overseas, preferably officers, in
order to get the soldiers interested in it.”
Robert looked at the row of questions on the card. Was his motive in
answering serious? His age, occupation, birthplace, length of local
residence and so forth.
“This is worse than an income tax questionnaire,” laughed Robert. “They
want to know the color of my hair and eyes, where my parents were born,
and my religion. Well, that’s easy enough. But what’s the idea of
asking my politics?”
Pinkney smiled. “Oh, some of the questions, I suppose, aren’t really
necessary. But we wish to be absolutely exclusive. Suppose a man should
answer that he was a Socialist or an Anarchist?”
“Why in the devil would an Anarchist want to join the Trick Track
Tribe? He’s opposed to all government. Why should he pay dues to belong
to a sort of feudal government, according to the way Griffith outlined
it?”
“Well, he might--I suppose he really wouldn’t, but that really isn’t
it. Oh, you’ll find out after you join.”
Robert had been asked to join other secret organizations. In every
case there had been a certain air of mystery about it and a great to
do about selecting only persons of a high level for membership, and,
although he had joined only the exclusive Corinth Club, he had always
suspected that the mysteriousness and air of exclusiveness of the
others had been maintained principally with a view to making membership
seem more difficult and hence more desirable. A few questions struck
his attention, however, as he jotted down his answers:
“Were your parents born in the United States of America?
“Are you a Gentile or a Jew?
“Do you believe in the principles of Pure Americanism?
“Do you believe in white supremacy?
“What is your religious faith?
“Of what church are you a member, if any?
“Of what religious faith are your parents?
“Do you owe any kind of allegiance to any foreign nation, government,
institution, sect, people, ruler or person?”
Robert finished answering the questions and signed a statement
“asserting and affirming” that the questions had been truthfully
answered.
“Well,” he rose, “I don’t know whether I’ve answered all your questions
satisfactorily or not--”
“We’ll let you know,” Pinkney waved the card dry and extended his hand.
“But don’t worry about that. The initiation will be next Tuesday. We’ll
tell you exactly where to be. Don’t forget!”
Robert walked out of the office with Pinkney’s injunction ringing in
his ear. After all, the insistence of every one to have him join the
Tribe was rather flattering. But the rest of the day his mind was not
so much on the coming ceremony as on the outcome of McCall’s operation.