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100%: The Story of a Patriot, a fiction by Upton Sinclair |
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Section 45 |
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_ 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 rehearsed 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 assumed 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 circumstances 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. "Hello, 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 boobs 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 scrap of writing they could find and jamming it into a couple of suit-cases. There were books with red bindings and terrifying titles, 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. _ |
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