100%: the Story of a Patriot Part 17

Ten minutes pa.s.sed, fifteen minutes, twenty minutes. At last an automobile rushed up the street, and McGivney stepped out, and the automobile sped on. Peter got McGivney's eye, and then stepped back into the shelter of a doorway. McGivney followed. "Have you got them?" he cried.

"I d-d-dunno!" chattered Peter. "They s-s-said they were c-coming at eight!"

"Let me see that note!" commanded McGivney; so Peter pulled out one of Nell's notes which he had saved for himself:

"If you really believe in a bold stroke for the workers' rights, meet me in the studios, Room 17, tomorrow morning at eight o'clock.

No names and no talk. Action!"

"You found that in your pocket?" demanded the other.

"Y-yes, sir."

"And you've no idea who put it there."

"N-no, but I think Joe Angell--"

McGivney looked at his watch. "You've got twenty minutes yet," be said.

"You got the d.i.c.ks?" asked Peter.

"A dozen of them. What's your idea now?"

Peter stammered out his suggestions. There was a little grocery store just across the street from the entrance to the studio building. Peter would go in there, and pretend to get something to eat, and would watch thru the window, and the moment he saw the right men come in, he would hurry out and signal to McGivney, who would be in a drugstore at the next corner. McGivney must keep out of sight himself, because the "Reds" knew him as one of Guffey's agents.

It wasn't necessary to repeat anything twice. McGivney was keyed up and ready for business, and Peter hurried down the street, and stepped into the little grocery store without being observed by anyone. He ordered some crackers and cheese, and seated himself on a box by the window and pretended to eat. But his hands were trembling so that he could hardly get the food into his mouth; and this was just as well, because his mouth was dry with fright, and crackers and cheese are articles of diet not adapted to such a condition.

He kept his eyes glued on the dingy doorway of the old studio building, and presently--hurrah!--he saw McCormick coming down the street! The Irish boy turned into the building, and a couple of minutes later came Gus the sailor, and before another five minutes had pa.s.sed here came Joe Angell and Henderson. They were walking quickly, absorbed in conversation, and Peter could imagine he heard them talking about those mysterious notes, and who could be the writer, and what the devil could they mean?

Peter was now wild with nervousness; he was afraid somebody in the grocery store would notice him, and he made desperate efforts to eat the crackers and cheese, and scattered the crumbs all over himself and over the floor. Should he wait for Jerry Rudd, or should he take those he had already? He had got up and started for the door, when he saw the last of his victims coming down the street. Jerry was walking slowly, and Peter couldn't wait until he got inside. A car was pa.s.sing, and Peter took the chance to slip out and bolt for the drug store. Before he had got half way there McGivney had seen him, and was on the run to the next corner.

Peter waited only long enough to see a couple of automobiles come whirling down the street, packed solid with husky detectives. Then he turned off and hurried down a side street. He managed to get a couple of blocks away, and then his nerves gave way entirely, and he sat down on the curbstone and began to cry--just the way little Jennie had cried when he told her he couldn't marry her! People stopped to stare at him, and one benevolent old gentleman came up and tapped him on the shoulder and asked what was the trouble.

Peter, between his tear-stained fingers, gasped: "My m-m-mother died!" And so they let him alone, and after a while he got up and hurried off again.

Section 45

Peter was now in a state of utter funk. He knew that he would have to face McGivney, and he just couldn't do it. All he wanted was Nell; and Nell, knowing that he would want her, had agreed to be in the park at half past eight. She had warned him not to talk to a soul until he had talked to her. Meantime she had gone home and renewed her Irish roses with French rouge, and restored her energy with coffee and cigarettes, and now she was waiting for him, smiling serenely, as fresh as any bird or flower in the park that summer morning. She asked him in even tones how things had gone, and when Peter began to stammer that he didn't think he could face McGivney, she proceeded to build up his courage once more. She let him put his arms about her, even there in broad daylight; she whispered to him to get himself together, to be a man, and worthy of her.

What had he to be afraid of, anyway? They hadn't a single thing on him, and there was no possible way they could get anything. His hands were clean all the way thru, and all he had to do was to stick it out; he must make up his mind in advance, that no matter what happened, he would never break down, he would never vary from the story he had rehea.r.s.ed with her. She made him go over the story again; how on the previous evening, at the gathering in the I. W. W.

headquarters, they had talked about killing Nelse Ackerman as a means of bringing the war to an end. And after the talk he had heard Joe Angell whisper to Jerry Rudd that he had the makings of a bomb already; he had a suit-case full of dynamite stored there in the closet, and he and Pat McCormick had been planning to pull off something that very night. Peter had gone out, but had watched outside, and had seen Angell, Henderson, Rudd and Gus come out.

Peter had noticed that Angell's pockets were stuffed, and had a.s.sumed that they were going to do their dynamiting, so he had phoned to McGivney from the drug-store. By this phoning he had missed the crowd, and then he had been ashamed and afraid to tell McGivney, and had spent the night wandering in the park. But early in the morning he had found the note, and had understood that it must have been slipped into his pocket, and that the conspirators wanted him to come in on their scheme. That was all, except for three or four sentences or fragments of sentences which Peter had overheard between Joe Angell and Jerry Rudd. Nell made him learn these sentences by heart, and she insisted that he must not under any circ.u.mstances try to remember or be persuaded to remember anything further.

At last Peter was adjudged ready for the ordeal, and went to Room 427 in the American House, and threw himself on the bed. He was so exhausted that once or twice he dozed; but then he would think of some new question that McGivney might ask him, and would start into wakefulness. At last he heard a key turn, and started up. There entered one of the detectives, a man named Hammett. "h.e.l.lo, Gudge,"

said he. "The boss wants you to get arrested."

"Arrested!" exclaimed Peter. "Good Lord!" He had a sudden swift vision of himself shut up in a cell with those Reds, and forced to listen to "hard luck stories."

"Well," said Hammett, "we're arresting all the Reds, and if we skip you, they'll be suspicious. You better go somewhere right away and get caught."

Peter saw the wisdom of this, and after a little thought he chose the home of Miriam Yankovitch. She was a real Red, and didn't like him; but if he was arrested in her home, she would have to like him, and it would tend to make him "solid" with the "left wingers." He gave the address to Hammett, and added, "You better come as soon as you can, because she may kick me out of the house."

"That's all right," replied the other, with a laugh. "Tell her the police are after you, and ask her to hide you."

So Peter hurried over to the Jewish quarter of the city, and knocked on a door in the top story of a tenement house. The door was opened by a stout woman with her sleeves rolled up and her arms covered with soap-suds. Yes, Miriam was in. She was out of a job just now, said Mrs. Yankovitch. They had fired her because she talked Socialism. Miriam entered the room, giving the unexpected visitor a cold stare that said as plain as words: "Jennie Todd!"

But this changed at once when Peter told her that he had been to I.

W. W. headquarters and found the police in charge. They had made a raid, and claimed to have discovered some kind of plot; fortunately Peter had seen the crowd outside, and had got away. Miriam took him into an inside room and asked him a hundred questions which he could not answer. He knew nothing, except that he had been to a meeting at headquarters the night before, and this morning he had gone there to get a book, and had seen the crowd and run.

Half an hour later came a bang on the door, and Peter dived under the bed. The door was burst open, and he heard angry voices commanding, and vehement protests from Miriam and her mother. To judge from the sounds, the men began throwing the furniture this way and that; suddenly a hand came under the bed, and Peter was grabbed by the ankle, and hauled forth to confront four policemen in uniform.

It was an awkward situation, because apparently these policemen hadn't been told that Peter was a spy; the b.o.o.bs thought they were getting a real dynamiter! One grabbed each of Peter's wrists, and another kept him and Miriam covered with a revolver, while the fourth proceeded to go thru his pockets, looking for bombs. When they didn't find any, they seemed vexed, and shook him and hustled him about, and made clear they would be glad of some pretext to batter in his head. Peter was careful not to give them such a pretext; he was frightened and humble, and kept declaring that he didn't know anything, he hadn't done any harm.

"We'll see about that, young fellow!" said the officer, as he snapped the handcuffs on Peter's wrists. Then, while one of them remained on guard with the revolver, the other three proceeded to ransack the place, pulling out the bureau-drawers and kicking the contents this way and that, grabbing every sc.r.a.p of writing they could find and jamming it into a couple of suit-cases. There were books with red bindings and terrifying t.i.tles, but no bombs, and no weapons more dangerous than a carving knife and Miriam's tongue. The girl stood there with her black eyes flashing lightnings, and told the police exactly what she thought of them. She didn't know what had happened in the I. W. W. headquarters, but she knew that whatever it was, it was a frame-up, and she dared them to arrest her, and almost succeeded in her fierce purpose. However, the police contented themselves with kicking over the washtub and its contents, and took their departure, leaving Mrs. Yankovitch screaming in the midst of a flood.

Section 46

They dragged Peter out thru a swarming tenement crowd, and clapped him into an automobile, and whirled him away to police headquarters, where they entered him in due form and put him in a cell. He was uneasy right away, because he had failed to arrange with Hammett how long he was to stay locked up. But barely an hour had pa.s.sed before a jailer came, and took him to a private room, where he found himself confronted by McGivney and Hammett, also the Chief of Police of the city, a deputy district attorney, and last but most important of all--Guffey. It was the head detective of the Traction Trust who took Peter in charge.

"Now, Gudge," said he, "what's this job you've been putting up on us?"

It struck Peter like a blow in the face. His heart went down, his jaw dropped, he stared like an idiot. Good G.o.d!

But he remembered Nell's last solemn words: "Stick it out, Peter; stick it out!" So he cried: "What do you mean, Mr. Guffey?"

"Sit down in that chair there," said Guffey. "Now, tell us what you know about this whole business. Begin at the beginning and tell us everything--every word." So Peter began. He had been at a meeting at the I. W. W. headquarters the previous evening. There had been a long talk about the inactivity of the organization, and what could be done to oppose the draft. Peter detailed the arguments, the discussion of violence, of dynamite and killing, the mention of Nelse Ackerman and the other capitalists who were to be put out of the way. He embellished all this, and exaggerated it greatly--it being the one place where Nell had said he could do no harm by exaggerating.

Then he told how after the meeting had broken up he had noticed several of the men whispering among themselves. By pretending to be getting a book from the bookcase he had got close to Joe Angell and Jerry Rudd; he had heard various words and fragments of sentences, "dynamite," "suit-case in the cupboard," "Nelse," and so on. And when the crowd went out he noticed that Angell's pockets were bulging, and a.s.sumed that he had the bombs, and that they were going to do the job. He rushed to the drug-store and phoned McGivney. It took a long time to get McGivney, and when he had given his message and run out again, the crowd was out of sight. Peter was in despair, he was ashamed to confront McGivney, he wandered about the streets for hours looking for the crowd. He spent the rest of the night in the park. But then in the morning he discovered the piece of paper in his pocket, and understood that somebody had slipped it to him, intending to invite him to the conspiracy; so he had notified McGivney, and that was all he knew.

McGivney began to cross-question him. He had heard Joe Angell talking to Jerry Rudd; had he heard him talking to anybody else? Had he heard any of the others talking? Just what had he heard Joe Angell say? Peter must repeat every word all over. This time, as instructed by Nell, he remembered one sentence more, and repeated this sentence: "Mac put it in the 'sab-cat.'" He saw the others exchange glances. "That's just what I heard," said Peter--"just those words. I couldn't figure out what they meant?"

"Sab-cat?" said the Chief of Police, a burly figure with a brown moustache and a quid of tobacco tucked in the corner of his mouth.

"That means 'sabotage,' don't it?"

"Yes," said the rat-faced man.

"Do you know anything in the office that has to do with sabotage?"

demanded Guffey of Peter.

And Peter thought. "No, I don't," he said.

They talked among themselves for a minute or two. The Chief said they had got all McCormick's things out of his room, and might find some clue to the mystery in these. Guffey went to the telephone, and gave a number with which Peter was familiar--that of I. W. W.