Chapter 15

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_ CHAPTER XV

"So," said Puma, "you are quite convinced he has much wealth. Yes?"

"You betcha," replied Elmer Skidder. "That pious guy has got all kinds of it. Why, Alonzo D. Pawling can buy you and me like we were two subway tickets and then forget which pocket he put us in."

"He also is a sport? Yes?"

"On the quiet. Oh, I got his number some years ago. Ran into him once in New York, where you used to knock three times and ring twice before they slid the panel on you."

"A bank president?"

"Did you ever know one that didn't?" grinned Skidder, inserting pearl studs in his shirt.

"It is very bad--for a shake-down," mused Puma, smoothing his glossy top hat with one of Skidder's silk mufflers.

"Aw, you can't scare Alonzo D. Pawling. Say, Angy, what dames have you commandeered?"

"I ask Barclay and West. Also, they got another--Vanna Brown."

"Pictures?"

"No, she has a friend."

Skidder continued to attire himself in an over-braided evening dress; Puma, seated behind him, gazed absently at his partner's features reflected in the looking glass.

"A theatre on Broadway," he mused. "You say he has seemed interested, Elmer?"

"He didn't run away screaming."

"How did he behave?"

"Well, it's hard to size up Alonzo D. Pawling. He's a fly guy, Angy. What a man says at a little supper for four, with a peach pulling his Depews and a good looker sticking gardenias in his buttonhole, ain't what he's likely to say next day in your office."

"You have accompany him to Broadway and you have shown him the parcel?"

"I sure did."

"You explain how we can not lose out? You mention the option?"

Skidder cast aside his white tie and tried another, constructed on the butterfly plan.

"I put the whole thing up to him," he said. "No use stalling with Alonzo D. Pawling. I know him too well. So I let out straight from the shoulder, and he knows the scheme we've got in mind and he knows we want his money in it. That's how it stands to-night."

Puma nodded and softly joined his over-manicured finger-tips:

"We give him a good time," he said. "We give him a little dinner like there never was in New York. Yes?"

"You betcha."

"Barclay is a devil. You think she please him?"

"Alonzo D. Pawling is some bird himself," remarked Skidder, picking up his hat and turning to Puma, who rose with lithe briskness, put on his hat, and began to pull at his white gloves.

They went down to the street, where Puma's car was waiting.

"I stop at the office a moment," he said, as they entered the limousine. "You need not get out, Elmer."

At the studio he descended, saying to Skidder that he'd be back in a moment.

But it was very evident when he entered his office that he had not expected to find Max Sondheim there; and he hesitated on the threshold, his white-gloved hand still on the door-knob.

"Come in, Puma; I want to see you," growled Sondheim, retaining his seat but pocketing _The Call_, which he had been reading.

"To-morrow," said Puma coolly; "I have no time----"

"No, _now_!" interrupted Sondheim.

They eyed each other for a moment in silence, then Puma shrugged:

"Very well," he said. "But be quick, if you please----"

"Look here," interrupted the other in a menacing voice, "you're getting too damned independent, telling me to be quick! I had a date with you here at five o'clock. You thought you wouldn't keep it and you left at four-thirty. But I stuck around till you 'phoned in that you'd stop here to get some money. It's seven o'clock now, and I've waited for you. And I guess you've got enough time to hear what I'm going to say."

Puma looked at him without any expression at all on his sanguine features. "Go on," he said.

"What I got to say to you is this," began Sondheim. "There's a kind of a club that uses our hall on off nights. It's run by women."

Puma waited.

"They meet this evening at eight in our hall,--your hall, if you choose."

Puma nodded carelessly.

"All right. Put them out."

"What?"

"Put 'em out!" growled Sondheim. "We don't want them there to-night or any other night."

"You ask me to evict respectable people who pay me rent?"

"I don't ask you; I _tell_ you."

Puma turned a deep red: "And whose hall do you think it is?" he demanded in a silky voice.

"Yours. That's why I tell you to get rid of that bunch and their Combat Club."

"Why have you ask me such a----"

"Because they're fighting us and you know it. That's a good enough reason."

"I shall not do so," said Puma, moistening his lips with his tongue.

"Oh, I guess you will when you think it over," sneered Sondheim, getting up from his chair and stuffing his newspaper into his overcoat pocket. He crossed the floor and shot an ugly glance at Puma _en passant_. Then he jerked open the door and went out briskly.

Puma walked into the inner waiting room, where a telephone operator sat reading a book.

"Where's McCabe?" he asked.

"Here he comes now, Governor."

The office manager sauntered up, eating a slice of apple pie, and Puma stepped forward to meet him.

"For what reason have you permit Mr. Sondheim to wait in my office?" he demanded.

"He said you told him to go in and wait there."

"He is a liar! Hereafter he shall wait out here. You understand, McCabe?"

"Yes, sir. You're always out when he calls, ain't you?"

Puma meditated a few moments: "No. When he calls you shall let me know. Then I decide. But he shall not wait in my office."

"Very good, sir." And, as Puma turned to go: "The police was here again this evening, sir."

"Why?"

"They heard of the row in the hall last night."

"What did you tell them?"

"Oh, the muss was all swept up--windows fixed and the busted benches in the furnace, so I said there had been no row as far as I knew, and I let 'em go in and nose around."

"Next time," said Puma, "you shall say to them that there was a very bad riot."

"Sir?"

"A big fight," continued Puma. "And if there is only a little damage you shall make more. And you shall show it to the police."

"I get you, Governor. I'll stage it right; don't worry."

"Yes, you shall stage it like there never was in all of France any ruins like my hall! And afterward," he said, half to himself, "we shall see what we shall see."

He went back to his office, took a packet of hundred dollar bills from the safe, and walked slowly out to where the limousine awaited him.

"Say, what the hell--" began Skidder impatiently; but Puma leaped lightly to his seat and pulled the fur robe over his knees.

"Now," he said, in excellent humour, "we pick up Mr. Pawling at the Astor."

"Where are the ladies?"

"They join us, Hotel Rajah. It will be, I trust, an amusing evening."

* * * * *

About midnight, dinner merged noisily into supper in the private dining room reserved by Mr. Puma for himself and guests at the new Hotel Rajah.

There had been intermittent dancing during the dinner, but now the negro jazz specialists had been dismissed with emoluments, and a music-box substituted; and supper promised to become even a more lively repetition of the earlier banquet.

Puma was superb--a large, heavy man, he danced as lightly as any ballerina; and he and Tessa Barclay did a Paraguayan dance together, with a leisurely and agile perfection of execution that elicited uproarious demonstrations from the others.

Not a whit winded, Puma resumed his seat at table, laughing as Mr. Pawling insisted on shaking hands with him.

"You are far too kind to my poor accomplishments," he said in deprecation. "It was not at all difficult, that Paraguayan dance."

"It was art!" insisted Mr. Pawling, his watery eyes brimming with emotion. And he pressed the pretty waist of Tessa Barclay.

"Art," rejoined Puma, laying a jewelled hand on his shirt-front, "is an ecstatic outburst from within, like the song of the bird. Art is simple; art is not difficult. Where effort begins, art ends. Where self-expression becomes a labour, art already has perished!"

He thumped his shirt-front with an impassioned and highly-coloured fist.

"What is art?" he cried, "if it be not pleasure? And pleasure ceases where effort begins. For me, I am all heart, all art, like there never was in all the history of the Renaissance. As expresses itself the little innocent bird in song, so in my pictures I express myself. It is no effort. It is in me. It is born. Behold! Art has given birth to Beauty!"

"And the result," added Skidder, "is a _ne plus ultra par excellence_ which gathers in the popular coin every time. And say, if we had a Broadway theatre to run our stuff, and Angelo Puma to soopervise the combine--oh boy!--" He smote Mr. Pawling upon his bony back and dug him in the ribs with his thumb.

Mr. Pawling's mouth sagged and his melancholy eyes shifted around him from Tessa Barclay--who was now attempting to balance a bon-bon on her nose and catch it between her lips--to Vanna Brown, teaching Miss West to turn cart-wheels on one hand.

Evidently Art had its consolations; and the single track genius who lived for art alone got a bonus, too. Also, what General Sherman once said about Art seemed to be only too obvious.

A detail, however, worried Mr. Pawling. Financially, he had always been afraid of Jews. And the nose of Angelo Puma made him uneasy every time he looked at it.

But an inch is a mile on a man's nose; and his own was bigger, yet entirely Yankee; so he had about concluded that there was no racial occasion for financial alarm.

What he should have known was that no Jew can compete with a Connecticut Yankee; but that any half-cast Armenian is master of both. Especially when born in Mexico of a Levantine father.

Now, in spite of Angelo Puma's agile gaiety and exotic exuberances, his brain remained entirely occupied with two matters. One of these concerned the possibility of interesting Mr. Pawling in a plot of ground on Broadway, now defaced by several taxpayers.

The other matter which fitfully preoccupied him was his unpleasant and unintentional interview with Sondheim.

For it had come to a point, now, that the perpetual bullying of former associates was worrying Mr. Puma a great deal in his steadily increasing prosperity.

The war was over. Besides, long ago he had prudently broken both his pledged word and his dangerous connections in Mexico, and had started what he believed to be a safe and legitimate career in New York, entirely free from perilous affiliations.

Government had investigated his activities; Government had found nothing for which to order his internment as an enemy alien.

It had been a close call. Puma realised that. But he had also realised that there was no law in Mexico ten miles outside of Mexico City;--no longer any German power there, either;--when he severed all connections with those who had sent him into the United States camouflaged as a cinema promoter, and under instruction to do all the damage he could to everything American.

But he had not counted on renewing his acquaintance with Karl Kastner and Max Sondheim in New York. Nor did they reveal themselves to him until he had become too prosperous to denounce them and risk investigation and internment under the counter-accusations with which they coolly threatened him.

So, from the early days of his prosperity in New York, it had been necessary for him to come to an agreement with Sondheim and Kastner. And the more his prosperity increased the less he dared to resent their petty tyranny and blackmail, because, whether or not they might suffer under his public accusations, it was very certain that internment, if not imprisonment for a term of years, would be the fate reserved for himself. And that, of course, meant ruin.

So, although Puma ate and drank and danced with apparent abandon, and flashed his dazzling smile over everybody and everything, his mind, when not occupied by Alonzo D. Pawling, was bothered by surmises concerning Sondheim. And also, at intervals, he thought of Palla Dumont and the Combat Club, and he wondered uneasily whether Sondheim's agents had attempted to make any trouble at the meeting in his hall that evening.

* * * * *

There had been some trouble. The meeting being a public one, under municipal permission, Kastner had sent a number of his Bolshevik followers there, instructed to make what mischief they could. They were recruited from all sects of the Reds, including the American Bolsheviki, known commonly as the I. W. W. Also, among them were scattered a few pacifists, hun-sympathisers, conscientious objectors and other birds of analogous plumage, quite ready for interruptions and debate.

Palla presided, always a trifle frightened to find herself facing any audience, but ashamed to avoid the delegated responsibility.

Among others on the platform around her were Ilse and Marya and Questa Terrett and the birth-control lady--Miss Thane--neat and placid and precise as usual, and wearing long-distance spectacles for a more minute inspection of the audience.

Palla opened the proceedings in a voice which was clear, and always became steadier under heckling.

Her favourite proposition--the Law of Love and Service--she offered with such winning candour that the interruption of derisive laughter, prepared by several of Kastner's friends, was postponed; and Terry Hogan, I. W. W., said to Jerry Smith, I. W. W.:

"God love her, she's but a baby. Lave her chatter."

However, a conscientious objector got up and asked her whether she considered that the American army abroad had conformed to her Law of Love and Service, and when she answered emphatically that every soldier in the United States army was fulfilling to the highest degree his obligations to that law, both pacifists and conscientious objectors dissented noisily, and a student from Columbia College got up and began to harangue the audience.

Order was finally obtained: Palla added a word or two and retired; and Ilse Westgard came forward.

Somebody in the audience called out: "Say, just because you're a good-looker it don't mean you got a brain!"

Ilse threw back her golden head and her healthy laughter rang uncontrolled.

"Comrade," she said, "we all have to do the best we can with what brain we have, don't we?"

"Sure!" came from her grinning heckler, who seemed quite won over by her good humour.

So, an armistice established, Ilse plunged vigorously into her theme:

"Let me tell you something which you all know in your hearts: any class revolution based on violence and terrorism is doomed to failure."

"Don't be too sure of that!" shouted a man.

"I am sure of it. And you will never see any reign of terror in America."

"But you may see Bolshevism here--Bolshevist propaganda--Bolshevist ideas penetrating. You may see these ideas accepted by Labor. You may see strikes--the most senseless and obsolete weapon ever wielded by thinking men; you may see panics, tie-ups, stagnation, misery. But you never shall see Bolshevism triumphant here, or permanently triumphant anywhere.

"Because Bolshevism is autocracy!"

"The hell it is!" yelled an I. W. W.

"Yes," said Ilse cheerfully, "as you have said it is hell. And hell is an end, not a means, not a remedy.

"Because it is the negation of all socialism; the death of civilisation. And civilisation has an immortal destiny; and that destiny is socialism!"

A man interrupted, but she asked him so sweetly for a few moments more that he reseated himself.

"Comrades," she said, "I know something about Bolshevism and revolution. I was a soldier of Russia. I carried a rifle and full pack. I was part of what is history. And I learned to be tolerant in the trenches; and I learned to love this unhappy human race of ours. And I learned what is Bolshevism.

"It is one of many protests against the exploitation of men by men. It is one of the many reactions against intolerable wrong. It is not a policy; it is an outburst against injustice; against the stupidity of present conditions, where the few monopolise the wealth created by the many; and the many remain poor.

"And Bolshevism is the remedy proposed--the violent superimposition of a brand new autocracy upon the ruins of the old!

"It does not work. It never can work, because it imposes the will of one class upon all other classes. It excludes all parties excepting its own from government. It is, therefore, not democratic. It is a tyranny, imposing upon capital and labour alike its will.

"And I tell you that Labour has just won the greatest of all wars. Do you suppose Labour will endure the autocracy of the Bolsheviki? The time is here when a more decent division is going to be made between the employer and the labourer.

"I don't care what sort of production it may be, the producer is going to receive a much larger share; the employer a much smaller. And the producer is going to enjoy a better standard of living, opportunities for leisure and self-cultivation; and the three spectres that haunt him from childhood to grave--lack of money to make a beginning; fear for a family left on its own resources by his death; terror of poverty in old age--shall vanish.

"Against these three evil ghosts that haunt his bedside when the long day is done, there are going to be guarantees. Because those who won for us this righteous war, whether abroad or at home, are going to have something to say about it.

"And it will be they, not the Bolsheviki--it will be labourer and employer, not incendiary and assassin, who shall determine what is to be the policy of this Republic toward those to whom it owes its salvation!"

A man stood up waving his arms: "All right! All right! The question is whether the sort of government we have is worth saving. You talk very flip about the Bolsheviki, but I'll tell you they'll run this country yet, and every other too, and run 'em to suit themselves! It's our turn; you've had your inning. Now, you'll get a dose of what you hand to us if we have to ram it down with a gun barrel!"

There was wild cheering from Kastner's men scattered about the hall; cries of "That's the stuff! Take away their dough! Kick 'em out of their Fifth Avenue castles and set 'em to digging subways!"

Ilse said calmly: "Thank you very much for proving my contention for all these people who have been so kind as to listen to me.

"I said to you that Bolshevism is merely a new and more immoral autocracy which wishes to confiscate all property, annihilate all culture and set up in the public places a new god--the god of Ignorance!

"You have been good enough to corroborate me. And I and my audience now know that Bolshevism is on its way to America, and that its agents are already here.

"It is in view of such a danger that this Combat Club has been organised. And it was time to organise it.

"It is evident, too, that the newspapers agree with us. Let us read you what one of them has to say:

"'We fully realise the atrocity of the Bolshevik propaganda, which is really the doctrine of communism and anarchy. We realise the perilous ferment which endangers civilisation. But in the countries which have held fast to moral standards during the war we believe the factors of safety are sufficiently great, the forces of sanity are far stronger than those of chaos----'"

Here, those whose role it was to interrupt with derisive laughter, broke out at a preconcerted signal. But Ilse read on:

"'In a word, as a mere matter of self-interest and common sense, we can only see the people, as a whole, in any country, as opposed to anarchy in any form. In our own land, even granted that there are a hundred thousand "red" agitators, or say a quarter of a million--and we have no real belief that this is so--what are these in a population of one hundred and five millions? Are the ninety and nine sane, moral, law abiding men and women going to allow themselves to be stampeded into ruin by a handful of criminals and lunatics?

"'We do not for a moment believe it. These agitators and incendiaries have a sort of maniacal impetus that fills the air with dust and noise and alarms the credulous. Perhaps it may be wise to counteract this with a little quiet promotion of ideas of safety and prosperity, based on order and law. It may be well to calm the nerves of the timorous and it can do no harm to set in motion a counter wave of horror and repulsion against those who are planning to lead the world back to conditions of tribal savagery. Educational work is always beneficent. Let us have much of that but no panic. The power of truth and reason is in calm confidence.'"

And now a bushy-headed man got on his feet and levelled his forefinger at Ilse: "Take shame for your-selluf!" he shouted. "I know you! You fought mit Korniloff! You took orders from Kerensky, from aristocrats, from cadets!"

Ilse said pleasantly. "I fought for Russia, my friend. And when the robbers and despoilers of Russia became the stronger, I took a vacation."

Some people laughed, but a harsh voice cried: "We know what you did. You rescued the friend of the Romanoffs--that Carmelite nun up there on the platform behind you, who calls herself Miss Dumont!"

And from the other side of the hall another man bawled out: "You and the White Nun have done enough mischief. And you and your club had better get out of here while the going is good!"

Estridge, who was standing in the rear of the hall with Shotwell, came down along the aisle. Jim followed.

"Who said that?" he demanded, scanning the faces on that side while Shotwell looked among the seats beyond.

Nobody said anything, for John Estridge stood over six feet and Jim looked physically very fit.

Estridge, standing in the aisle, said in his cool, penetrating voice:

"This club is a forum for discussion. All are free to argue any point. Only swine would threaten violence.

"Now go on and argue. Say what you like. But the next man who threatens these ladies or this club with violence will have to leave the hall."

"Who'll put him out?" piped an unidentified voice.

Then the two young men laughed; and their mirth was not reassuring to the violently inclined.

* * * * *

There were disturbances during the evening, but no violence, and only a few threats--those that made them remaining in prudent incognito.

Miss Thane made a serene, precise and perfectly logical address upon birth control.

Somebody yelled that the millionaires didn't have to resort to it, being already sufficiently sterile to assure the dwindling of their class.

A woman rose and said she had always done what she pleased in the matter, law or no law, but that if it were true the Bolsheviki in America were but a quarter of a million to a hundred million of the bourgeoisie, then it was time to breed and breed to the limit.

"And let the kids starve?" cried another woman--a mere girl. "That isn't the way. The way to do is to even things with a hundred million hand grenades!"

Instantly the place was in an uproar; but Palla came forward and said that the meeting was over, and Estridge and Shotwell and two policemen kept the aisles fairly clear while the wrangling audience made their way to the street.

"Aw, it's all lollipop!" said a man. "What d' yeh expect from a bunch of women?"

"The Red Flag Club is better," rejoined another. "Say, bo! There's somethin' doin' when Sondheim hands it out!"

* * * * *

Ilse went away with Estridge. Palla came along among the other women, and turned aside to offer her hand to Jim.

"Did you expect to take me home?" she asked demurely.

"Didn't you expect me to?" he inquired uneasily.

"I? Why should I?" She slipped her arm into his with a little nestling gesture. "And it's a very odd thing, Jim, that they left the chafing dish on the table. And that before she went to bed my waitress laid covers for two." _

Read next: Chapter 16

Read previous: Chapter 14

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