TOM HAS A CALLER
Late in the afternoon, as Tom lay stretched in glowering melancholy on
the greasy, dirt-browned board that did service as chair and bed to the
transitory tenants of the cell, steps paused in the corridor without and
a key rattled in his door. He rose dully out of his dejection. A
scowling officer admitted a man, round and short and with side whiskers,
and locked the door upon his back.
"This is a pretty how-to-do!" growled the man, coming forward.
Tom stared at his visitor. "Why, Mr. Driscoll!" he cried.
"That's who the most of my friends say I am," the contractor admitted
gruffly.
He deposited himself upon the bench that had seated and bedded so much
unwashed misfortune, and, his back against the cement wall, turned his
sour face about the bare room. "This is what I call a pretty poor sort
of hospitality to offer a visitor," he commented, in his surly voice.
"Not even a chair to sit on."
"There is also the floor; you may take your choice," Tom returned,
nettled by the other's manner. He himself took the bench.
Mr. Driscoll stared at him with blinking eyes, and he stared back
defiantly. In Tom's present mood of wrath and depression his temper was
tinder waiting another man's spark.
"Huh!" Mr. Driscoll ran his pudgy forefinger easefully about between his
collar and his neck, and removing his spectacles mopped his purple face.
"What's this funny business you've been up to now?" he asked.
"What do you mean?" Tom demanded, his irritation mounting.
"You ought to read the papers and keep posted on what you do. I just saw
a _Star_. There's half a page of your face, and about a pint of red
ink."
Tom groaned, and his jaws clamped ragefully.
"What I read gave me the impression you'd been having a sort of private
Fourth of July celebration," Mr. Driscoll pursued.
Tom turned on the contractor half savagely. "See here! I don't know what
you came here for, but if it was for this kind of talk--well, you can
guess how welcome you are!"
Mr. Driscoll emitted a little chuckling sound, or Tom thought for an
instant he did. But a glance at that sour face, with its straight
pouting mouth, corrected Tom's ears.
"Now, what was your fool idea in blowing up the Avon?"
Tom uprose wrathfully. "Do you mean to say you believe the lies those
blackguards told this morning?"
"I only know what I read in the papers."
"If you swallow everything you see in the papers, you must have an awful
maw!"
"Yes, I suppose you have got some sort of a story you put up."
Tom glared at his pudgy visitor who questioned with such an exasperating
presumption. "Did I ask you here?" he demanded.
The contractor's eyes snapped, and Tom expected hot words. But none
came. "Don't get hot under the collar," Mr. Driscoll advised, running
his comforting finger under his own. "Come, what's your side of the
story?"
Tom was of half a mind to give a curt refusal. But his wrong was too
great, too burning, for him to keep silent upon it. He would have talked
of it to any one--to his very walls. He took a turn in the cell, then
paused before his old employer and hotly explained his innocence and
Foley's guilt.
While Tom spoke Mr. Driscoll's head nodded excitedly.
"Just what I said!" he cried when Tom ended, and brought his fist down
on his knee. "Well, we'll show him!"
"Show him what?" Tom asked.
Mr. Driscoll stopped his fist midway in another excited descent. He
stood up, for he saw the officer's scowling face at the grated front of
the cell. "Oh, a lot of things before he dies. As for you, keep your
courage up. What else's it for?"
He held out his hand. Tom took it with bewildered perfunctoriness.
Mr. Driscoll passed through the door, held open by the officer. Outside
he turned about and growled through the bars: "Now don't be blowing up
any more buildings!"
Tom, stung anew, would have retorted in kind, but Mr. Driscoll's
footsteps had died away down the corridor before adequate words came to
him.
It was about an hour later that the officer appeared before his cell
again and unlocked his door. "Come on," he said shortly.
Tom, supposing he was at length to be removed to the county jail, put on
his hat and stepped outside the cell. He had expected to find policemen
in the corridor, and to be handcuffed. But the officer was alone.
Two cells away he saw Jake's malignant face peering at him through the
bars. "I guess this puts us about even!" Jake called out.
Tom shook his fist. "Wait till the trial! We'll see!" he cried
vengefully.
"Shut up, youse!" shouted the surly watchman. He pushed Tom through the
corridor and up a stairway. At its head Tom was guided through a door,
and found himself in the general hall of the police station.
"Here youse are," said the officer, starting for the sergeant's desk.
"Come on and sign the bail bond."
Tom caught his arm. "What's this mean?" he cried.
"Don't youse know? Youse're bailed out."
"Bailed out! Who by?"
"Didn't he tell youse?" Surprise showed in the crabbed face of the
officer. "Why, before he done anything he went down to talk it over with
youse."
"Not Mr. Driscoll?"
"I don't know his name. That red-faced old geezer in the glasses.
Huh!--his coin comes easier'n mine."
Tom put his name to the bond, already signed by Mr. Driscoll, and
stumbled out into the street, half blinded by the rush of sunlight into
his cell-darkened eyes, and struck through with bewilderment at his
unexpected liberation. He threw off a number of quizzing reporters, who
had got quick news of his release, and walked several aimless blocks
before he came back to his senses. Then he set out for Mr. Driscoll's
office, almost choking with emotion at the prospect of meeting Ruth
again. But he reached it too late to spend his thanks or to test his
self-control. It was past six and the office was locked.
He started home, and during the car ride posted himself upon his recent
doings by reading the accounts of the trial and his part in the Avon
outrage. On reaching the block in which he lived he hesitated long
before he found the courage to go up to the ordeal of telling Maggie his
last misfortune. When he entered his flat it was to find it empty. He
sat down at the window, with its backyard view of clothes-lines and of
fire-escape landings that were each an open-air pantry, and rehearsed
the sentences with which he should break the news to her, his suspense
mounting as the minutes passed. At length her key sounded in the lock,
he heard her footsteps, then saw her dim shape come into the
sitting-room.
In the same instant she saw him at the window. "What--Tom!" she cried,
with the tremulous relief of one who ends a great suspense.
He had been nerving himself to face another mood than this. He was taken
aback by the unexpected note in her voice--a sympathetic note he had not
heard for such a time it seemed he had never heard it at all.
He rose, embarrassed. "Yes," he said.
She had come quickly to his side, and now caught his arm. "You are here,
Tom?"
"Why, yes," he answered, still dazed and at a loss. "Where have you
been, Maggie?"
Had the invading twilight not half blindfolded him, Tom could have seen
the rapid change that took place in Maggie's face--the relief at finding
him safe yielding to the stronger emotion beneath it. When she answered
her voice was as of old. "Been? Where haven't I been? To the jail the
last place."
"To the jail?" He was again surprised. "Then ... you know all?"
"Know all?" She laughed harshly, a tremolo beneath the harshness. "How
could I help knowing all? The newsboys yelling down in the street! The
neighbors coming in with their sympathy!" She did not tell him how to
these visitors she had hotly defended his innocence.
"I didn't know you were at the police station," he said weakly, still at
a loss.
"Of course not. When I got there they told me you'd been let out." Her
breath was coming rapidly, deeply. "What a time I had! I didn't know
how to get to the jail! Dragging myself all over town! Those awful
papers everywhere! Everybody looking at me and guessing who I was! Oh,
the disgrace! The disgrace!"
"But, Maggie, I didn't do this!"
"The world don't know that!" The rage and despair that had been held in
check all afternoon by her concern for him now completely mastered her.
"We're disgraced! You've been in jail! You're now only out on bail!
Fifteen thousand dollars bail! Why that boss, Mr. Driscoll, went on it,
heaven only knows! You're going to be tried. Even if you get off we'll
never hear the last of it. Hadn't we had trouble enough? Now it's
disgrace! And why's this come on us? You tell me that!"
She was shaking all over, and for her to speak was a struggle with her
sobs. She supported herself with arms on the table, and looked at him
fiercely, wildly, through the dim light.
Tom took her arm. "Sit down, Maggie," he said, and tried to push her
into a chair.
She repulsed him. "Answer me. Why has this trouble come on us?"
He was silent.
"Oh, you know! Because you wouldn't take a little advice from your wife!
Other men got along with Foley and held their jobs. But you wanted to be
different; you wanted to fight Foley. Well, you've had your way; you've
fought him. And what of it? We're ruined! Disgraced! You're working for
less than half what you used to get. We're ashamed to show our faces in
the street. All because you wouldn't pay any attention to me. And
me--how I've got to suffer for it! Oh, my God! My God!"
Tom recognized the justice, from her point of view, in her wild phrases
and did not try to dispute her. He again tried to push her into a chair.
She threw off his hand, and went hysterically on, now beating her
knuckles upon the table. "Leave me alone! I've made up my mind about one
thing. You won't listen to reason. I've given you good advice. I've been
right every time. You've paid no attention to me and we're ruined! Well,
I've made up my mind. If you do this sort of thing again, I'll lock you
out of the house! D'you hear? I'll lock you out of the house!"
She fell of her own accord into a chair, and with her head in her hands
abandoned herself to sobbing. Tom looked at her silently. In a narrow
way, she was right. In a broad way, he knew he was right. But he could
not make her understand, so there was nothing he could say. Presently he
noticed that her hair had loosened and her hat had fallen over one
cheek. With unaccustomed hands he took out the pins and laid the hat
upon the table. She gave no sign that she had noted the act.... Her sobs
became fewer and less violent.
Tom quietly lit the gas. "Where's Ferdinand?" he asked, in his ordinary
voice.
"I left him with Mrs. Jones," she answered through her hands.
When Tom came back with the boy she was in the kitchen, a big apron over
her street dress, beginning the dinner. Tom looked in upon her, then
obeying an impulse long unstirred he began to set the table. She
glanced furtively at this unusual service, but said nothing. She sat
through the meal with hard face, but did not again refer to the day's
happenings; and, since the day was Wednesday, as soon as he had eaten
Tom hurried away to Potomac Hall.
Tom was surrounded by friends the minute he entered the hall. The ten
o'clock edition of the evening papers, out before seven, had acquainted
them with his release. The accounts in this edition played up the
anomaly of this labor ruffian, shown by his act to be the arch-enemy of
the employers, being bailed out by one of the very contractors with whom
the union was at war. Two of the papers printed interviews with Mr.
Driscoll upon the question, why had he done it? One interview was, "I
don't know"; the other, "None of your business."
Tom's friends had the curiosity of the papers, and put to him the
question the news sheets had put to Mr. Driscoll. "If Mr. Driscoll don't
know, how can I?" was all the answer he could give them. Their
curiosity, however, was weak measured by their indignation over the turn
events had taken in the court-room. They would stand by him at his
trial, they declared, and show what his relations had been with Jake,
Bill and Arkansas.
Before the meeting was opened there was talk among the Foleyites against
Tom being allowed to preside, but he ended their muttering by marching
to his table and pounding the union to order. He immediately took the
floor and in a speech filled with charges against Foley gave to the
union his side of the facts that had already been presented them from a
different viewpoint in the papers. When he ended Foley's followers
looked to their chief to make reply, but Foley kept his seat. Connelly,
seeing it his duty to defend his leader, was rising to his feet when a
glance from Foley made him sink back into his chair. The talk from Tom's
side went hotly on for a time, but, meeting with no resistance, and
having no immediate purpose, it dwindled away.
The union then turned to matters pertaining to the management of the
strike. As the discussion went on followers of Foley slipped quietly
about the hall whispering in the ears of their brethren. The talk became
tedious. Tom's friends, wearied and uninterested, sat in silence.
Foleyites spoke at great length upon unimportant details. Foley himself
made a long speech, the like of which had never before come from him, it
was that dull and purposeless. At half-past ten, by which time the men
usually were restless to be out of the hall and bound toward their beds,
adjournment seemed as far off as at eight. Sleepy and bored by the
stupid discussion, members began to go out, and most of those that left
were followers of Tom. The pointless talk went on; men kept slipping
out. At twelve o'clock not above two hundred were in the hall, and of
these not two dozen were Tom's friends.
Tom saw Foley cast his eyes over the thinned crowd, and then give a
short nod at Connelly. The secretary stood up and claimed Tom's
recognition.
"Mr. President, I move we suspend the constitution."
The motion was instantly seconded. Tom promptly ruled it out of order,
on the ground that it was unconstitutional to suspend the constitution.
But he was over-ruled, only a score siding with him. The motion was put
and was carried by the same big majority that had voted against his
decision.
Connelly rose a second time. "I make a motion that we remove the
president from office on the charge that he is the instigator of an
outrage that has blackened the fair name of our union before all the
world."
A hundred voices cried a second to the motion. Tom rose and looked with
impotent wrath into the faces of the crowd from which Foley's cunning
had removed his followers. Then he tossed the gavel upon the table.
"I refuse to put the motion!" he shouted; and picking up his hat he
strode down the middle aisle. Half-way to the door he heard Connelly, in
the absence of the vice-president, put the motion; and turning as he
passed out he glimpsed the whole crowd on its feet.
The next morning Tom saw by his newspaper that Connelly was the union's
new president; also that he had been dropped from the strike committee,
Hogan now being in his place. The reports in the papers intimated that
the union had partially exonerated itself by its prompt discardure of
the principal in the Avon explosion. The editorial pages expressed
surprise that the notorious Foley bore no relation to an outrage that
seemed a legitimate offspring of his character.
Tom had not been at work more than an hour when a boy brought him word
that the superintendent of the shipping department desired to see him.
He hurried to his superior's office.
"You were not at work yesterday?" the superintendent said.
"No," Tom admitted.
The head of the department drew a morning paper from a pigeon-hole and
pointed at a face on its first page. "Your likeness, I believe."
"It was intended for me."
He touched a button, and a clerk appeared. "Phillips, make out Keating's
time check." He turned sharply back upon Tom. "That's all. We've got no
use for anarchists in our business."