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100%: The Story of a Patriot, a fiction by Upton Sinclair |
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Section 72 |
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_ There was only one way out of this plight for Peter, and that was for him to tell Rosie the truth. And why should he not do it? He was wild about her, and he knew that she was wild about him, and only one thing--his great secret--stood in the way of their perfect bliss. If he told her that great secret, he would be a hero of heroes in her eyes; he would be more wonderful even than the men who were driving back the Germans from the Marne and writing their names upon history's most imperishable pages! So why should he not tell? He was in her room one evening, and his arms were about her, and she had almost but not quite yielded. "Please, please, Peter," she pleaded, "stop being one of those horrid Reds!" And Peter could stand it no longer. He told her that he really wasn't a Red, but a secret agent employed by the very biggest business men of American City to keep track of the Reds and bring their activities to naught. And when he told this, Rosie stared at him in consternation. She refused to believe him; when he insisted, she laughed at him, and finally became angry. It was a silly yarn, and did he imagine he could string her along like that? So Peter, irritated, set out to convince her. He told her about Guffey and the American City Land & Investment Company; he told her about McGivney, and how he met McGivney regularly at Room 427 of the American House. He told her about his thirty dollars a week, and how it was soon to be increased to forty, and he would spend it all on her. And perhaps she might pretend to be converted by him, and become a Red also, and if she could satisfy McGivney that she was straight, he would pay her too, and it would be a lot better than working ten and a half hours a day in Isaac & Goldstein's paper box factory. At last Peter succeeded in convincing the girl. She was subdued and frightened; she hadn't been prepared for anything like that, she said, and would have to have a little time to think it over. Peter then became worried in turn. He hoped she wouldn't mind, he said, and set to work to explain to her how important his work was, how it had the sanction of all the very best people in the city--not merely the great bankers and business men, but mayors and public officials and newspaper editors and college presidents, and great Park Avenue clergymen like the Rev. de Willoughby Stotterbridge of the Church of the Divine Compassion. And Rosie said that was all right, of course, but she was a little scared and would have to think it over. She brought the evening to an abrupt end, and Peter went home much disconcerted. Perhaps an hour later there came a sharp tap on the door of his lodging-house room, and he went to the door, and found himself confronted by David Andrews, the lawyer, Donald Gordon, and John Durand, the labor giant, president of the Seamen's Union. They never even said, "Howdy do," but stalked into the room, and Durand shut the door behind him, and stood with his back to it, folded his arms and glared at Peter like the stone image of an Aztec chieftain. So before they said a word Peter knew what had happened. He knew that the jig was up for good this time; his career as savior of the nation was at an end. And again it was all on account of a woman--all because he hadn't taken Guffey's advice about winking! But all other thoughts were driven from Peter's mind by one emotion, which was terror. His teeth began giving their imitation of an angry woodchuck, and his knees refused to hold him; he sat down on the edge of the bed, staring from one to another of these three stone Aztec faces. "Well, Gudge," said Andrews, at last, "so you're the spy we've been looking for all this time!" Peter remembered Nell's injunction, "Stick it out, Peter! Stick it out!" "Wh-wh-what do you mean, Mr. Andrews?" "Forget it, Gudge," said Andrews. "We've just been talking with Rosie, and Rosie was our spy." "She's been lying to you!" Peter cried. But Andrews said: "Oh rubbish! We're not that easy! Miriam Yankovich was listening behind the door, and heard your talk." So then Peter knew that the case was hopeless, and there was nothing left but to ascertain his fate. Had they come just to scold him and appeal to his conscience? Or did they plan to carry him away and strangle him and torture him to death? The latter was the terror that had been haunting Peter from the beginning of his career, and when gradually be made out that the three Aztecs did not intend violence, and that all they hoped for was to get him to admit how much he had told to his employers--then there was laughter inside Peter, and he broke down and wept tears of scalding shame, and said that it had all been because McCormick had told that cruel lie about him and little Jennie Todd. He had resisted the temptation for a year, but then he had been out of a job, and the Goober Defense Committee had refused him any work; he had actually been starving, and so at last he had accepted McGivney's offer to let him know about the seditious activities of the extreme Reds. But he had never reported anybody who hadn't really broken the law, and he had never told McGivney anything but the truth. Then Andrews proceeded to examine him. Peter denied that he had ever reported anything about the Goober case. He denied most strenuously that he had ever had anything to do with the McCormick "frame-up." When they tried to pin him down on this case and that, he suddenly summoned his dignity and declared that Andrews had no right to cross-question him, he was a 100%, red-blooded American patriot, and had been saving his country and his God from German agents and Bolshevik traitors. Donald Gordon almost went wild at that. "What you've been doing was to slip stuff into our pamphlet about conscientious objectors, so as to get us all indicted!" "That's a lie!" cried Peter. "I never done nothing of the kind!" "You know perfectly well you rubbed out those pencil marks that I drew through that sentence in the pamphlet." "I never done it!" cried Peter, again and again. And suddenly big John Durand clenched his hands, and his face became terrible with his pent-up rage. "You white-livered little sneak!" he hissed. "What we ought to do with you is to pull the lying tongue out of you!" He took a step forward, as if he really meant to do it. But David Andrews interfered. He was a lawyer, and knew the difference between what he could do and what Guffey's men could do. "No, no, John," he said, "nothing like that. I guess we've got all we can get out of this fellow. We'll leave him to his own conscience and his Jingo God. Come on, Donald." And he took the white-faced Quaker boy with one hand, and the big labor giant with the other, and walked them out of the room, and Peter heard them tramping down the stairs of his lodging house, and he lay on his bed and buried his face in the pillows, and felt utterly wretched, because once more he had been made a fool of, and as usual it was a woman that had done it. _ |
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