THE BEAST GLOATS.
"Fer Gawd's sake, let's have a light here, somebody!" panted the
dishevelled policeman. Outside, the ringing of a gong became audible.
Then came a clattering of hoofs, as the police-patrol, nicely-timed by
the conspirators, and summoned by a confederate, drew up at the box on
the corner.
Somebody struck another match, and a raw gas-light flared. From the
hallway, two or three others crowded into the wrecked room. Disjointed
exclamations, oaths and curses intermingled with harsh laughter.
The woman--Lillian Rafter, probably the finest actress and stool-pigeon
in the whole detective world of graft and crookedness--lighted a
cigarette at the gas-burner, and laughed with triumph.
"Some make-up, eh kid?" she demanded of the taller detective, who was
now nursing a bad "shiner," as a black eye is known in the under-world,
and whose face was battered to a bleeding pulp. "Believe me, as a job,
this is some job! From start to finish, a pippin. He was bound to fall
for it though. No help for him. Even if he hadn't butted into the
'plant' we fixed for him in the alley, there, I could have braced him in
the street with my tale of woe. He was just bound to be 'it,' this time.
We had him going, all ways for Sunday!"
Scornfully the woman Gabriel had befriended in her seeming misery, spat
at him as he lay there stunned and scarcely breathing on the dirty
floor.
"And just pipe this, will you, too?" she exulted, holding up the
five-dollar bill he had given her. "And this?" She exhibited his name
and address, written on a card. "In his own writing, boys. As evidence
to hold him on a white slave charge, is this some evidence or isn't it?"
"Oh, we'll hold him, all right!" growled the other detective, whose
right arm dangled limp, where the chair had struck him. "The ---- ----
of a ----! He'll go up for a finif, a five-spot, or I'm a liar! And once
we get him behind bars, good-night!"
He deliberately drew back his heavy boot and kicked Gabriel full in the
face.
"You ---- ----!" he cursed. "Try to bean _me_, will you? Damn you!
You've made _your_ last soap-box spiel!"
"Come on, now, boys, out with him, an' no more rag-chewin'!" the
policeman exclaimed. "Git him in the wagon, an' away, before a gang
piles in here! You, Caffery, take his feet. I'll manage his head. Jesus,
but he's some big guy, though, the ---- ---- of a ----!"
Together, the battered policeman and the detective who still had some
strength left in him, raised Gabriel's limp body and carried it from the
room. The woman, meanwhile, stood there inhaling cigarette-smoke and
laughing viciously to herself.
"You easy mutt!" she exclaimed. "Dead baby, room-rent due, wanted to get
home to sister--and you fell for that old gag with whiskers on it!
You're some wise guy all right, all right, I don't think. Well, as a
stall it was a beaut. And I must say I never screamed better in all my
life. And that wallop I handed out, was a peach. If I don't pull down
five hundred for this night's work--"
"Shut up, you ----!" snarled Caffery, as he turned into the stairway.
"Keep that lip o' yours quiet, will you, or--"
The woman stared at him a moment, then laughed insolently and snapped
her smoke-yellowed fingers at him in defiance.
"Mind you show up in court, in the mornin'!" panted the officer,
staggering downstairs under the weight of Gabriel's huge shoulders.
"Better arrest her now," suggested Caffery, "an' hold her."
"You will, like Hell!" retorted the woman.
"Shhh! In one door an' out the other," the second detective whispered in
her ear, as she stood there in the doorway. "I'll see to it you get
fifty extra for _that_!"
"Oh, if that's the game, fine business!" she smiled. "Go to it--I'm your
huckleberry!"
Thus it befell that, while a large and growing crowd observed, under the
arc-light on the corner--a crowd where no fewer than six reporters, all
duly tipped off in advance, were taking notes--Gabriel Armstrong, the
Socialist speaker and leader, was bundled, unconscious, into a patrol
wagon of the City of Rochester; and with him, a drunken-acting harlot,
babbling charges of white-slave extortion and violence against him; and
with them both, several witnesses, who would have sworn that Heaven was
Hell, for five dollars cash in hand.
Thus was the stage set, for the next session of the honorable court.
Thus were the wires pulled. Thus, the prison doors were swung wide open,
and, above all, the honor and the reputation of a man swept to the
garbage-heaps of life.
True, at the morrow's great mass-meeting, there were destined to be
protests and calls for investigation. The Socialist press was destined
to take it up, defend him and demand the truth. But, swamped by a
perfectly overwhelming capitalist press, not only naturally hostile but
in this case already heavily subsidized; shattered by the close-knit,
circumstantial evidence; hamstrung and hampered in every way by the
power of unlimited money and Tammany pull, the Socialists might as well
have tried to sweep back the sea with a broom as save this man from
legal crucifixion. Worse still, they themselves, and the beaten strikers
with whom they had been fraternizing, got a black eye in the affair; and
many an editorial column, many a pulpit, unctuously discoursed thereon.
Many an anti-Socialist thug and grafter, loud-mouthed and blatant,
bellowed revamped platitudes of "immorality" and "breaking up the home,"
and the "nation of fatherless children," pointing at Gabriel Armstrong
as a shining example of Socialist hypocrisy and filth.
Press, law, church, capitalism itself nailed this man and the movement
he stood for, to the cross. And the pimps and parasites of the private
detective agency chuckled in their well-paid glee. The woman, Gabriel's
betrayer, counted her "thirty pieces of silver" and laughed in the foul
dark. The police cut a fine melon secretly handed them by Flint; and so,
too, did the local papers and more than one local pulpit.
So, in Gabriel's grief and woe and desolation, as he sat in his grim
cell with aching head, bruised face and bleeding heart, with all his
plans now broken, with the very soul within him dead--in this grief and
anguish, I say, the foul harpy-brood of Capitalism revelled and rioted
like maggots in carrion.
None more viciously than old Flint, himself. None with more brutal joy,
more savage satisfaction. One of the culminant moments of his life, he
felt, was on the evening after the dastardly plot had been carried to
its putrid conclusion.
Opening the Rochester "News-Intelligencer" which Slade had sent him, his
glittering eyes seemed to sparkle joy as a blue-penciled column met his
gaze.
Eagerly he read it all, every word, and weighed it, and re-read it, as
men do when news is dear to their souls. Already, through the New York
papers he had got the essentials of the affair. Already, by long
distance 'phone he had received the outlines of the news from Slade, as
well as a code telegram of more than 500 words, giving him additional
details. But this paper especially pleased him. The other Rochester
sheets, which Slade would send as fast as they appeared, he already was
looking forward to, with keenest pleasure.
"Ah! _This_ is what I call efficiency!" he exclaimed, settling himself
in his big chair, adjusting the pince-nez on his hawk-bill and preparing
to read the column for the third time. "The way this thing was planned
and carried out, and the manner in which Slade has managed to get it
played up in the papers, proves to me he's a general in his line, a true
Napoleon. I may safely intrust any affair of this sort to him and his
agency. No fee of his shall ever be questioned; and as for
bonuses--well, he shall have no reason to complain. An admirable man, in
every way--a wonderful organization! With men and agencies like _these_
at work in our interests, what have we, really, to be uneasy about?"
Smacking his mental lips, if I may be pardoned the phrase, he once more
slowly read the delightful, gratifying news:
_SOCIALIST WHITE-SLAVER!_
_Rotten Affair Unearthed by Police!_
_Gabriel Armstrong, Socialist Leader, Caught With the Goods!!!_
Rochester, July 4.
"In one of the most sensational raids ever made in this city, by
the vice squad, under the auspices of the Purity League, what is
believed to be a well-organized white-slave business was unearthed
last night. The leader and brains of the association, Gabriel
Armstrong, a Socialist speaker and worker of national prominence,
was arrested, and is now lodged in Police Headquarters, with
serious charges pending.
"The arrest was made as a result of the keen work of Officer
Michael P. Duffey, sergeant of the vice squad. Hearing screams in
the assignation house at 42A Belding street, he made his way up
stairs, accompanied by two or three citizens. The screams were
coming from a room on the second floor. Duffey promptly battered
the door down only to be met by a furious assault from Armstrong,
who was intoxicated and extremely violent.
"A savage hand-to-hand struggle took place, in which furniture was
broken, the policeman badly injured and two of the volunteers
knocked out. Armstrong was finally subdued, however, by the
jiu-jitsu method, in which Duffey is an expert, and was lodged in
the Central Station, together with the woman.
"According to her statement, the man, Armstrong, had not only been
guilty of grossly immoral practices with her, but had also been
trying to force her to share with him the proceeds of her life of
shame, thus making out against him a clear case under the Mann
White-Slave Traffic law. She has material evidence of this
fact--money which he had given her, to finance her till she could
begin bringing in revenue to him, and also his name and address,
written by his own hand. A significant fact is that the address
given by this white slaver is Socialist headquarters, in Chicago.
The police are now working on the theory that the entire Socialist
organization is honeycombed with this traffic, and that the
Socialist movement is only a blind to cover a wholesale
distribution of women for immoral purposes. Drastic Federal action
against the Socialist Party is now being considered.
"Still further and more sensational facts are expected to develop
at the preliminary hearing, which will take place tomorrow morning.
In case Armstrong is bound over to the Grand Jury, and convicted,
he may get a heavy fine and as much as five years in a Federal
penitentiary. He is described as being a surly, low type, reticent
and vindictive, of vicious characteristics and mentally defective.
The local Socialists have already taken up arms in his defense, as
was to be expected.
"Interest is added to the case by the fact that Armstrong is known
to be the man who, at the time of the recent automobile accident to
Miss Catherine Flint--daughter of Isaac Flint, of Englewood,
N. J.--gave the alarm. A theory is now being formed that he
was, in some way, involved in a plot with Miss Flint's chauffeur to
wreck the machine and share a big reward for rescuing the girl. The
plot, however, evidently miscarried, for the chauffeur was killed,
and Armstrong, after giving the alarm, feared to divulge his
identity but fled in disguise.
"Public interest is greatly aroused in this matter. And if, as now
seems positively certain, this arrest and forthcoming conviction
break up the vicious white-slave gang for some time operating in
Rochester and Ontario Beach, the public will have a still greater
debt of gratitude toward the Purity League, the Vice Squad and the
untiring efforts and bravery of Sergeant Duffey."
"That, ah that," remarked old Flint, as he finished his last reading,
"is what I call literature! It may not be Scott or Shelley or Dickens,
but it's got far more than _they_ ever had--tremendous value to--er--to
the rightful masters of society. I dare say that this article and also
others like it that are bound to be printed during the trial and after,
will do more to secure our position in society than a whole army with
machine guns. Socialism, eh? After this campaign gets through, by God,
we'll sweep up the leavings in a dustpan and throw them out the window!"
Again he surveyed the article, smiling thinly.
"Literature, yes," he repeated. "The writer of those lines, and the
master-minds who engineered the whole affair, must and shall be
liberally rewarded. Editors, preachers, writers, they're all on our
side. All safe and sane--that is, nearly all--enough, at any event, to
assure our safety. I rejoice that I have lived to see this day!"
He turned the sheets of the paper, to see if any other notice of the
affair was printed; and as he looked, he pondered.
"Imagine the effect of this, on Kate!" thought he. "It will be just as I
planned it. Nothing will be left in her mind now, but loathing, hate and
rage against this man. In two days, she and Waldron will have patched up
their little difference, and all will be well. A master-stroke on my
part, eh? Yes, yes indeed, a master-stroke!"
His eye caught another blue-pencilling.
"Editorial, eh?" said he, adjusting his glasses. "Better and better!
This affair will sweep those troublemakers off the map, or I'm a
beggar!"
Then, with the keenest of satisfaction, he focussed his attention on the
sapient editorial:
_SOCIALISM UNVEILED_.
The arrest and impending conviction of Gabriel Armstrong, the noted
Socialist leader, on a white-slave traffic charge, will do much to
set all sane thinkers right in regard to this whole matter of
Socialist ethics. Socialists, as we have all heard, contend that
their system of thought teaches a high and pure form of morality.
How will they square this assertion with the hard, cold facts, as
brought to light in this most revolting case?
Much more seems to lie beneath the surface than at first sight
appears. Though we desire to suspend judgment until all the data
are known, it appears conclusively proved that Armstrong is but one
of a band of white-slavers operating through the organization of,
and with the consent of the Socialist party, or at least of its
responsible officials.
If this prove to be the case, it will substantiate the suspicion
long felt in many quarters that this whole movement, ostensibly
political, is really a menace to the moral and social welfare of
the nation. A foreign importation, openly standing against the
home, the family and religion, may well be expected to foster such
crimes and to be a "culture-medium" for the growth of such vile
microbes as this man Armstrong, and others of his kind.
Turn on the light! Bring the social antiseptics! Let all the facts
be established; and when known, if--as we anticipate--they prove
this nasty conspiracy, let us make an end, now and forever, to this
un-American, immoral and filthy thing, Socialism! To this object
this paper now and henceforth pledges its policy; and all decent
publications, all citizens who love their country, their God, their
homes, their flag, will join with it in a nation-wide crusade to
choke this slimy monster of Anarchy and Free-love, and fling it
back into the Pit where it belongs.
Long live religion, purity and the flag! Down with Socialism!
Flint regarded this masterpiece with an approving eye. Then, chuckling
to himself, he arose and with slow steps advanced toward the dining-room
where already Catherine was awaiting him.
"Now," he murmured to himself, and smiled thinly, "now for a little
scene with Kate!"