TOM'S LEVEE
It was seven o'clock the next morning. Tom lay propped up on the couch
in his sitting-room, his foot on a pillow, waiting for Maggie to come
back with the morning papers. A minute before he had asked Ferdinand to
run down and get them for him, but Maggie, who just then had been
starting out for a loaf of bread, had said shortly to the boy that she
would get them herself.
When Maggie had opened the door the night before, while Petersen was
clumsily trying to fit Tom's key into the keyhole, the sight of Tom
standing against the wall on one foot, his clothes in disorder, had been
to her imagination a full explanation of what had happened. Her face had
hardened and she had flung up her clenched hands in fierce helplessness.
"Oh, my God! So you've been at Foley again!" she had burst out. "More
trouble! My God, my God! I can't stand it any longer!" She would have
gone on, but the presence of a third person had suddenly checked her.
She had stood unmoving in the doorway, her eyes flashing, her breast
rising and falling. For an instant Tom, remembering a former
declaration, had expected her to close the door in his face, but with a
gesture of infinite, rageful despair she had stepped back from the door
without a word, and Petersen had supported him to the couch. Almost
immediately a doctor had appeared, for whom Tom and Petersen had left a
message on their way home; and by the time the doctor and Petersen had
gone, leaving Tom in bed, her fury had solidified into that obdurate,
resentful silence which was the characteristic second stage of her
wrath. Her injustice had roused Tom's antagonism, and thus far not a
word had passed between them.
The nearest newsstand was only a dozen steps from the tenement's door,
but minute after minute passed and still Maggie did not return. After a
quarter hour's waiting Tom heard the hall door open and close, and then
Maggie came into the sitting-room. He was startled at the change fifteen
minutes had made in her expression. The look of set hardness was gone;
the face was white and drawn, almost staring. She dropped the papers on
a chair beside the couch. The top one, crumpled, explained the length of
her absence and her altered look.
Tom's heart began to beat wildly; she knew it then! She paused beside
him, and with his eyes down-turned he waited for her to speak. Seconds
passed. He could see her hands straining, and hear her deep breath
coming and going. Suddenly she turned about abruptly and went into the
kitchen.
Tom looked wonderingly after her a moment; then his eyes were caught by
a black line half across the top of the crumpled paper: "Contractors
Trap Foley." He seized the paper and his eyes took in the rest of the
headline at a glance. "Arrested, But Makes Spectacular Escape"; a dozen
words about the contractors' plan; and then at the very end, in smallest
display type: "Also Exposed in Union." He quickly glanced through the
headlines of the other papers. In substance they were the same.
Utterly astounded, he raced through the several accounts of Foley's
exposure. They were practically alike. They told of Mr. Baxter's visit
to the District Attorney, and then recited the events of the past three
weeks just as Mr. Baxter had given them to the official prosecutor: How
Foley had tried to hold the Executive Committee up for fifty thousand
dollars; how the committee had seen in his demand a chance to get him
into the hands of the law, and so rid labor and capital of a common
enemy; how, after much deliberation, they had decided to make the
attempt; how the sham negotiations had proceeded; how yesterday, to make
the evidence perfect, Foley had been given the fifty thousand dollars he
had demanded as the price of settlement--altogether a most complete and
plausible story. "A perfect case," the District Attorney had called it.
Tom's part in the affair was told in a couple of paragraphs under a
subhead.
One of the papers had managed to get in a hurried editorial on Mr.
Baxter's story. "Perhaps their way of trapping Foley smacks strongly of
gum-shoe detective methods," the editorial concluded; "but their end,
the exposure of a notorious labor brigand, will in the mind of the
public entirely justify their means. They have earned the right to be
called public benefactors." Such in tone was the whole editorial. It
was a prophecy of the editorial praise that was to be heaped upon the
contractors in the afternoon papers and those of the next morning.
Tom flung the papers from him in sickened, bewildered wrath. He had
expected a personal triumph before the public. He felt there was
something wrong; he felt Mr. Baxter had robbed him of his glory, just as
Foley had robbed him of his strike. But in the first dazedness of his
disappointment he could not understand. He hardly touched the breakfast
Maggie had quietly put upon the chair while he had been reading, but
sank back and, his eyes on the ceiling with its circle of clustered
grapes, began to go over the situation.
At the end of a few minutes he was interrupted by Ferdinand, whom Maggie
had sent in with a letter that had just been delivered by a messenger.
Tom took it mechanically, then eagerly tore open the envelope. The
letter was from the detective agency, and its greater part was the
report of the observations made the previous evening by the detectives
detailed to watch Mr. Baxter. Tom read it through repeatedly. It brought
Foley's whispered words flashing back upon him: "I give it to youse for
what it's worth; Baxter started this trick." He began slowly to
understand.
But before he had fully mastered the situation there was a loud knock at
the hall door. Maggie opened it, and Tom heard a hearty voice sound out:
"Good-mornin', Mrs. Keating. How's your husband?"
"You'll find him in the front room, Mrs. Barry," Maggie answered. "All
of you go right in."
There was the sound of several feet, and then Mrs. Barry came in and
after her Barry and Pete. "Say, Tom, I'm just tickled to death!" she
cried, with a smile of ruddy delight. She held out a stubby, pillowy
hand and shook Tom's till her black straw hat, that the two preceding
summers had done their best to turn brown, was bobbing over one ear.
"Every rib I've got is laughin'. How're you feelin'?"
"First rate, except for my ankle. How're you, boys?" He shook hands with
Barry and Pete.
"Well, you want to lay still as a bed-slat for a week or two. A sprain
ain't nothin' to monkey with, I tell you what. Mrs. Keating, you see't
your husband keeps still."
"Yes," said Maggie, setting chairs for the three about the couch, and
herself slipping into one at the couch's foot.
Mrs. Barry sank back, breathing heavily, and wiped her moist face. "I
said to the men this mornin' that I'd give 'em their breakfast, but I
wouldn't wash a dish till I'd been over to see you. Tom, you've come out
on top, all right! An' nobody's gladder'n me. Unless, o' course, your
wife."
Maggie gave a little nod, and her hands clasped each other in her lap.
"It's easy to guess how proud you must be o' your man!" Mrs. Barry's red
face beamed with sympathetic exultation.
Maggie gulped; her strained lips parted: "Of course I'm proud."
"I wish you could 'a' heard the boys last night, Tom," cried Pete. "Are
they for you? Well, I should say! You'll be made walkin' delegate at the
very next meetin', sure."
"Well, I'd like to know what else they could do?" Mrs. Barry demanded
indignantly. "With him havin' fought an' sacrificed as he has for 'em!"
"He can have anything he wants now. Tokens of appreciation? They'll be
givin' you a gold watch an' chain for every pocket."
"But what'll they think after they've read the papers?" asked Tom.
"I saw how the bosses' fairy story goes. But the boys ain't kids, an'
they ain't goin' to swallow all that down. They'll think about the same
as me, an' I think them bosses ain't such holy guys as they say they
are. I think there was somethin' else we don't know nothin' about, or
else the bosses'd 'a' gone right through with the game. An' the boys'll
not give credit to a boss when they can give credit to a union man. You
can bet your false teeth on that. Anyhow, Tom, you could fall a big
bunch o' miles an' still be in heaven."
"Now, the strike, Tom; what d'you think about the strike?" Mrs. Barry
asked.
Before Tom could answer there was another knock. Maggie slipped away and
ushered in Petersen, who hung back abashed at this gathering.
"Hello, Petersen," Tom called out. "Come in. How are you?"
Petersen advanced into the room, took a chair and sat holding his derby
hat on his knees with both hands. "I be purty good,--oh, yah," he
answered, smiling happily. "I be movin' to-day."
"Where?" Tom asked. "But you haven't met Mrs. Barry, have you?"
"Glad to know you, Mr. Petersen." Mrs. Barry held out her hand, and
Petersen, without getting up, took it in his great embarrassed fist.
She turned quickly about on Tom. "What d'you think about the strike?"
she repeated.
"Yes, what about it?" echoed Barry and Pete.
"We're going to win it," Tom answered, with quiet confidence.
"You think so?"
"I do. We're going to win--certain!"
"If you do, we women'll all take turns kissin' your shoes."
"You'll be, all in a jump, the biggest labor leader in New York City!"
cried Pete. "What, to put Buck Foley out o' business, an' to win a
strike after the union had give it up!"
Within Tom responded to this by a wild exultation, but he maintained an
outward calm. "Don't lay it on so thick, Pete."
He stole a glance at Maggie. She was very pale. Her eyes, coming up from
her lap, met his. She rose abruptly.
"I must see to my work," she said, and hurried into the kitchen.
Tom's eyes came back to his friends. "Have you boys heard anything about
Foley?"
"He ain't been caught yet," answered Pete.
"He'll never be," Tom declared. Then after a moment's thought he went
on with conviction: "Boys, if Foley had had a fair start and had been
honest, he'd have been the biggest thing that ever happened in the labor
world."
Their loyalty prompted the others to take strong exception to this.
"No, I wouldn't have been in his class," Tom said decidedly, and led the
talk to the probabilities of the next few days. They chatted on for half
an hour longer, then all four departed. Pete, however, turned at the
door and came back.
"I almost forgot, Tom. There was something else. O' course you didn't
hear about Johnson. You know there's been someone in the union--more'n
one, I bet--that's been keepin' the bosses posted on all we do. Well,
Johnson got himself outside o' more'n a few last night, an' began to get
in some lively jaw-work. The boys got on from what he said that he'd
been doin' the spy business for a long time--that he'd seen Baxter just
before the meetin'. Well, a few things happened right then an' there. I
won't tell you what, but I got an idea Johnson sorter thinks this ain't
just the health resort for his kind o' disease."
Tom said nothing. Here was confirmation of, and addition to, one
sentence in the detectives' report.
Pete had been gone hardly more than a minute when he was back for the
third time. "Say, Tom, guess where Petersen's movin'?" he called out
from the dining-room door.
"I never can."
"On the floor above! A wagon load o' new furniture just pulled up down
in front. I met Petersen an' his wife comin' in. Petersen was carryin'
a bran' new baby carriage."
Pete's news had immediate corroboration. As he was going out Tom heard a
thin voice ask, "Is Mr. Keating in?" and heard Maggie answer, "Go right
through the next door;" and there was Mrs. Petersen, her child in her
arms, coming radiantly toward him.
"Bless you, brother!" she said. "I've heard all about your glorious
victory. I could hardly wait to come over an' tell you how glad I am.
I'd 'a' come with Nels, but I wasn't ready an' he had to hurry here to
be ready to look after the furniture when it come. I'm so glad! But
things had to come out that way. The Lord never lets sin
prevail!--praise His name!"
"Won't you sit down, Mrs. Petersen?" Tom said, in some embarrassment,
relinquishing the slight hand she had given him.
"I can't stop a minute, we're so busy. You must come up an' see us. I
pray God'll prosper you in your new work, an' make you a power for
right. Good-by."
As she passed through the dining-room Tom heard her thin vibrant voice
sound out again: "You ought to be the proudest an' happiest woman in
America, Mrs. Keating." There was no answer, and Tom heard the door
close.
In a few minutes Maggie came in and stood leaning against the back of
one of the chairs. "Tom," she said; and her voice was forced and
unnatural.
Tom knew that the scene he had been expecting so long was now at hand.
"Yes," he answered, in a kind of triumphant dread.
She did not speak at once, but stood looking down on him, her throat
pulsing, her face puckered in its effort to be immobile. "Well, it was
about time something of this sort was happening. You know what I've had
to put up with in the last five months. I suppose you think I ought to
beg your pardon. But you know what I said, I said because I thought it
was to our interest to do that. And you know if we'd done what I said
we'd never have seen the hard times we have."
"I suppose not," Tom admitted, with a dull sinking of his heart.
She stood looking down on him for a moment longer, then turned abruptly
about and went into the kitchen. These five sentences were her only
verbal acknowledgment that she had been wrong, and her only verbal
apology. She felt much more than this--grudgingly, she was proud that he
had succeeded, she was proud that others praised him, she was pleased at
the prospect of better times--but more than this she could not bend to
admit.
While Tom lay on the couch reasoning himself into a fuller and fuller
understanding of Mr. Baxter's part in last night's events, out in the
kitchen Maggie's resentment over having been proved wrong was slowly
disappearing under the genial influence of thoughts of the better days
ahead. Her mind ran with eagerness over the many things that could be
done with the thirty-five dollars a week Tom would get as walking
delegate--new dresses, better than she had ever had before; new things
for the house; a better table. And she thought of the social elevation
Tom's new importance in the union would give her. She forgot her
bitterness. She became satisfied; then exultant; then, unconsciously,
she began humming.
Presently her new pride had an unexpected gratification. In the midst of
her dreams there was a rapping at the hall door. Opening it she found
before her a man she had seen only once--Tom had pointed him out to her
one Sunday when they had walked on Fifth Avenue--but she recognized him
immediately.
"Is Mr. Keating at home?" the man asked.
"Yes." Maggie, awed and embarrassed, led the way into the sitting-room.
"Mr. Keating," said the man, in a quiet, even voice.
"Mr. Baxter!" Tom ejaculated.
"I saw in the papers this morning that you were hurt. Thank you very
much, Mrs. Keating." He closed the door after Maggie had withdrawn, as
though paying her a courtesy by the act, and sat down in the chair she
had pushed beside the couch for him. "Your injury is not serious, I
hope."
Tom regarded the contractor with open amazement. "No," he managed to
say. "It will keep me in the house for a while, though."
"I thought so, and that's why I came. I saw from the papers that you
would doubtless be the next leader of the union. As you know, it is
highly important to both sides that we come to an agreement about the
strike as early as possible. It seemed to me desirable that you and I
have a chat first and arrange for a meeting of our respective
committees. And since I knew you could not come to see me, I have come
to see you."
Mr. Baxter delivered these prepared sentences smoothly, showing his
white teeth in a slight smile. This was the most plausible reason his
brain had been able to lay hold of to explain his coming. And come he
must, for he had a terrifying dread that Tom knew the facts he was
trying to keep from the public. It had taxed his ingenuity frightfully
that morning to make an explanation to his wife that would clear
himself. If Tom did know, and were to speak--there would be public
disgrace, and no explaining to his wife.
Tom's control came back to him, and he was filled with a sudden exultant
sense of mastery over this keen, powerful man. "It is of course
desirable that we settle the strike as soon as possible," he agreed
calmly, not revealing that he recognized Mr. Baxter's explanation to be
a fraud.
"It certainly will be a relief to us to deal with a man of integrity. I
think we have both had not very agreeable experiences with one whose
strong point was not his honor."
"Yes."
There was that in Mr. Baxter's manner which was very near frank
cordiality. "Has it not occurred to you as somewhat remarkable, Mr.
Keating, that both of us, acting independently, have been working to
expose Mr. Foley?"
Tom had never had the patience necessary to beat long about the bush. He
was master, and he swept Mr. Baxter's method aside. "The sad feature of
both our efforts," he said calmly, but with fierce joy, "has been that
we have failed, so far, to expose the chief villain."
The corners of Mr. Baxter's mouth twitched the least trifle, but when he
spoke he showed the proper surprise. "Have we, indeed! Whom do you
mean?"
Tom looked him straight in the eyes. "I wonder if you'd care to know
what I think of you?"
"That's an unusual question. But--it might be interesting."
"I think you are an infernal hypocrite!--and a villain to boot!"
"What?" Mr. Baxter sprang to his feet, trying to look angry and amazed.
"Sit down, Mr. Baxter," Tom said quietly. "That don't work with me. I'm
on to you. We got Foley, but you're the man we've failed to expose--so
far."
Mr. Baxter resumed his chair, and for an instant looked with piercing
steadiness at Tom's square face.
"What do you know?--think you know?"
"I'll tell you, be glad to, for I want you to know I'm thoroughly on to
you. You suggested this scheme to Foley, and it wasn't a scheme to catch
Foley, but to cheat the union." And Tom went on to outline the parts of
the story Mr. Baxter had withheld from the newspapers.
"That sounds very interesting, Mr. Keating," Mr. Baxter said, his lips
trembling back from his teeth. "But even supposing that were true, it
isn't evidence."
"I didn't say it was--though part of it is. But suppose I gave to the
papers what I've said to you? Suppose I made this point: if Baxter had
really intended to trap Foley, wouldn't he have had him arrested the
minute after the money had been turned over, so that he would have stood
in no danger of losing the money, and so Foley would have been caught
with the goods on? And suppose I presented these facts: Mr. Baxter had
tickets bought for 'The Maid of Mexico,' and was on the point of leaving
for the theater with his wife when a union man, his spy, who had learned
of my plan to expose the scheme, came to his house and told him I was on
to the game and was going to expose it. Mr. Baxter suddenly decides not
to go to the theater, and rushes off to the District Attorney with his
story of having trapped Foley. Suppose I said these things to the
papers--they'd be glad to get 'em, for it's as good a story as the one
this morning--what'd people be saying about you to-morrow? They'd say
this: Up to the time he heard from his spy Baxter had no idea of going
to the District Attorney. He was in the game for all it was worth, and
only went to the District Attorney when he saw it was his only chance to
save himself. They'd size you up for what you are--a briber and a liar!"
A faint tinge of color showed in Mr. Baxter's white cheeks. "I see
you're a grafter, too!" he said, yielding to an uncontrollable desire to
strike back. "Well--what's _your_ price?"
Tom sat bolt upright and glared at the contractor.
"Damn you!" he burst out. "If it wasn't for this ankle, I'd kick you out
of the room, and down to the street, a kick to every step! Now you get
out of here!--and quick!"
"I'm always glad to leave the presence of a blackmailer, my dear sir."
Mr. Baxter turned with a bow and went out.
Tom, in a fury, swung his feet off the couch and started to rise, only
to sink back with a groan.
At the door of the flat Mr. Baxter thought of the morrow, of what the
public would say, of what his wife would say. He came back, closed the
door, and stood looking steadily down on Tom. "Well--what are you going
to do about it?"
"Give it to the papers, that's what!"
"Suppose you do, and suppose a few persons believe it. Suppose, even,
people say what you think they will. What then? You will have given
your--ah--your information away, and how much better off are you for
it?"
"Blackmailer, did you call me!"
Mr. Baxter did not heed the exclamation, but continued to look steadily
downward, waiting.
A little while before Tom had been thinking vaguely of the possible use
he could make of his power over Mr. Baxter. With lowered gaze, he now
thought clearly, rapidly. The moral element of the situation did not
appeal to him as strongly at that moment as did the practical. If he
exposed Mr. Baxter it would bring himself great credit and prominence,
but what material benefit would that exposure bring the union? Very
little. Would it be right then for him, the actual head of the union,
to use an advantage for his self-glorification that could be turned to
the profit of the whole union?
After a minute Tom looked up. "No, I shall not give this to the
newspapers. I'm going to use it otherwise--as a lever to get from you
bosses what belongs to us. I hate to dirty my hands by using such means;
but in fighting men of your sort we've got to take every advantage we
get. If I had a thief by the throat I'd hardly let go so we could fight
fair. I wouldn't be doing the square thing by the union if I refused to
use an advantage of this sort."
He paused an instant and looked squarely into Mr. Baxter's eyes. "Yes, I
have a price, and here it is. We're going to win this strike. You
understand?"
"I think I do."
"Well?"
"You are very modest in your demands,"--sarcastically. Tom did not heed
the remark.
Mr. Baxter half closed his eyes and thought a moment. "What guarantee
have I of your silence?"
"My word."
"Nothing else?"
"Nothing else."
Mr. Baxter was again silent for a thoughtful moment.
"Well?" Tom demanded.
Mr. Baxter's face gave a faint suggestion that a struggle was going on
within. Then his little smile came out, and he said:
"Permit me to be the first to congratulate you, Mr. Keating, on having
won the strike."