Part 16

Now Peter was sitting in the back seat of his car, wearing the mask which McGivney had given him, a piece of cloth with two holes for his eyes and another hole for him to breathe thru. Peter hated these Reds, and wanted them punished, but he was not used to bloody sights, and was finding this endless thud, thud of the whip on human flesh rather more than he could stand. Why had he come? This wasn’t his part of the job of saving his country from the Red menace. He had done his share in pointing out the dangerous ones; he was a man of brains, not a man of violence. Peter saw that the next victim was Tom Duggan with his broken and bloody nose, and in spite of himself, Peter started with dismay. He realized that without intending it he had become a little fond of Tom Duggan. For all his queerness, Duggan was loyal, he was a good fellow when you had got underneath his surly manners. He had never done anything except just to grumble, and to put his grumbles into verses; they were making a mistake in whipping him, and for a moment Peter had a crazy impulse to interfere and tell them so.

The poet never made a sound. Peter got one glimpse of his face in the blazing white light, and in spite of the fact that it was smashed and bloody, Peter read Tom Duggan’s resolve--he would die before they would get a moan out of him. Each time the lash fell you could see a quiver all over his form; but there was never a sound, and he stood, hugging the tree in a convulsive grip. They lashed him until the whip was spattering blood all over them, until blood was running to the ground. They had taken the precaution to bring along a doctor with a little black case, and he now stepped up and whispered to the master of ceremonies. They unfastened Duggan, and broke the grip of his arms about the tree, and dumped him down beside Glikas.

Next came the turn of Donald Gordon, the Socialist Quaker, which brought a bit of cheap drama. Donald took his religion seriously; he was always shouting his anti-war sentiments in the name of Jesus, which made him especially obnoxious. Now he saw a chance to get off one of his theatrical stunts; he raised his two manacled hands into the air as if he were praying, and shouted in piercing tones: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!”

A murmur started in the crowd; you could hear it mounting to a roar. “Blasphemy!” they cried. “Stop his dirty mouth!” It was the same mouth that had been heard on a hundred platforms, denouncing the war and those who made money out of the war. They were here now, the men who had been denounced, the younger members of the Chamber of Commerce and the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association, the best people of the city, those who were saving the country, and charging no more than the service was worth. So they roared with fury at this sacreligious upstart. A man whose mask was a joke, because he was so burly and hearty that everybody in the crowd knew him, took up the bloody whip. It was Billy Nash, secretary of the “Improve America League,” and the crowd shouted, “Go to it, Billy! Good eye, old boy!” Donald Gordon might tell God that Billy Nash didn’t know what he was doing, but Billy thought that he knew, and he meant before he got thru to convince Donald that he knew. It didn’t take very long, because there was nothing much to the young Quaker but voice, and he fainted at the fourth or fifth stroke, and after the twentieth stroke the doctor interfered.

Then came the turn of Grady, secretary of the I. W. W., and here a terrible thing happened. Grady, watching this scene from one of the cars, had grown desperate, and when they loosed the handcuffs to get off his coat, he gave a sudden wrench and broke free, striking down one man after another. He had been brought up in the lumber country, and his strength was amazing, and before the crowd quite realized it, he was leaping between two of the cars. A dozen men sprang upon him from a dozen directions, and he went down in the midst of a wild melee. They pinned him with his face mashed into the dirt, and from the crowd there rose a roar as from wild beasts in the night-time,

“String him up! String him up!” One man came running with a rope, shouting, “Hang him!”

The master of ceremonies tried to protest thru his megaphone, but the instrument was knocked out of his hands, and he was hauled to one side, and presently there was a man climbing up the pine tree and hanging the rope over a limb. You could not see Grady for the jostling throng about him, but suddenly there was a yell from the crowd, and you saw him quite plainly--he shot high up into the air, with the rope about his neck and his feet kicking wildly. Underneath, men danced about and yelled and waved their hats in the air, and one man leaped up and caught one of the kicking feet and hung onto it.

Then, above all the din, a voice was heard thru the megaphone, “Let him down a bit! Let me get at him!” And those who held the rope gave way, and the body came down toward the ground, still kicking, and a man took out a clasp-knife, and cut the clothing away from the body, and cut off something from the body; there was another yell from the crowd, and the men in the automobiles slapped their knees and shrieked with satisfaction. Those in the car with Peter whispered that it was Ogden, son of the president of the Chamber of Commerce; and all over town next day and for weeks thereafter men would nudge one another, and whisper about what Bob Ogden had done to the body of Shawn Grady, secretary of the “damned wobblies.” And every one who nudged and whispered about it felt certain that by this means the Red Terror had been forever suppressed, and 100% Americanism vindicated, and a peaceful solution of the problem of capital and labor made certain.

Strange as it might seem, there was one member of the I. W. W. who agreed with them. One of the victims of that night had learned his lesson! When Tom Duggan was able to sit up again, which was six weeks later, he wrote an article about his experience, which was published in an I. W. W. paper, and afterwards in pamphlet form was read by many hundreds of thousands of workingmen. In it the poet said:

“The preamble of the I. W. W. opens with the statement that the employing class and the working class have nothing in common; but on this occasion I learned that the preamble is mistaken. On this occasion I saw one thing in common between the employing class and the working class, and that thing was a black-snake whip. The butt end of the whip was in the hands of the employing class, and the lash of the whip was on the backs of the working class, and thus to all eternity was symbolized the truth about the relationship of the classes!”

Section 61

Peter awoke next morning with a vivid sense of the pain and terror of life. He had been clamoring to have those Reds punished; but somehow or other he had thought of this punishment in an abstract way, a thing you could attend to by a wave of the hand. He hadn’t quite realized the physical side of it, what a messy and bloody job it would prove. Two hours and more he had listened to the thud of a whip on human flesh, and each separate stroke had been a blow upon his own nerves. Peter had an overdose of vengeance; and now, the morning after, his conscience was gnawing at him. He had known every one of those boys, and their faces rose up to haunt him. What had any of them done to deserve such treatment? Could he say that he had ever known a single one of them to do anything as violent as the thing they had all suffered?

But more than anything else Peter was troubled by fear. Peter, the ant, perceived the conflict of the giants becoming more ferocious, and realized the precariousness of his position under the giants’ feet. The passions of both sides were mounting, and the fiercer their hate became, the greater the chance of Peter’s being discovered, the more dreadful his fate if he were discovered. It was all very well for McGivney to assure him that only four of Guffey’s men knew the truth, and that all these might be trusted to the death. Peter remembered a remark he had heard Shawn Grady make, and which had caused him to lose his appetite for more than one meal. “They’ve got spies among us,” the young Irishman had said. “Well, sooner or later we’ll do a bit of spying of our own!”

And now these words came back to Peter like a voice from the grave. Suppose one of the Reds who had money were to hire somebody to get a job in Guffey’s office! Suppose some Red girl were to try Peter’s device, and seduce one of Guffey’s men--by no means a difficult task! The man mightn’t even mean to reveal that Peter Gudge was a secret agent; he might just let it slip, as little Jennie had let slip the truth about Jack Ibbetts! Thus Mac would know who had framed him up; and what would Mac do to Peter when he got out on bail? When Peter thought of things like that he realized what it meant to go to war; he saw that he had gained nothing by staying at home, he might as well have been in the front-line trenches! After all, this was war, class-war; and in all war the penalty for spying is death.

Also Peter was worried about Nell. She had been in her new position for nearly a week, and he hadn’t heard a word from her. She had forbidden him to write, for fear he might write something injudicious. Let him just wait, Edythe Eustace would know how to take care of herself. And that was all right, Peter had no doubt about the ability of Edythe Eustace to take care of herself. What troubled him was the knowledge that she was working on another “frame-up,” and he stood in fear of the exuberance of her imagination. The last time that imagination had been pregnant, it had presented him with a suit-case full of dynamite. What it might bring forth next time he did not know, and was afraid to think. Nell might cause him to be found out by Guffey; and that would be nearly as horrible as to be found out by Mac!

Peter got his morning “Times,” and found a whole page about the whipping of the Reds, portraying the job as a patriotic duty heroically performed; and that naturally cheered Peter up considerably. He turned to the editorial page, and read a two column “leader” that was one whoop of exultation. It served still more to cure Peter’s ache of conscience; and when he read on and found a series of interviews with leading citizens, giving cordial endorsement to the acts of the “vigilantes,” Peter became ashamed of his weakness, and glad that he had not revealed it to anyone. Peter was trying his best to become a real “he-man,” a 100% red-blooded American, and he had the “Times” twice each day, morning and evening, to guide, sustain and inspire him.

Peter had been told by McGivney to fix himself up and pose as one of the martyrs of the night’s affair, and this appealed to his sense of humor. He cut off the hair from a part of his head, and stuck some raw cotton on top, and plastered it over with surgical tape. He stuck another big wad of surgical tape across his forehead, and a criss-cross of it on his cheek, and tied up his wrist in an excellent imitation of a sprain. Thus rigged out he repaired to the American House, and McGivney rewarded him with a hearty laugh, and then proceeded to give some instructions which, entirely restored Peter’s usual freshness of soul. Peter was going up on Mount Olympus again!

The rat-faced man explained in detail. There was a lady of great wealth--indeed, she was said to be several times a millionaire--who was an openly avowed Red, a pacifist of the most malignant variety. Since the arrest of young Lackman she had come forward and put up funds to finance the “People’s Council,” and the “Anti-Conscription League,” and all the other activities which for the sake of convenience were described by the term “pro-German.” The only trouble was this lady was so extremely wealthy it was hard to do anything to her. Her husband was a director in a couple of Nelse Ackerman’s banks, and had other powerful connections. The husband was a violent, anti-Socialist, and a buyer of liberty bonds; he quarrelled with his wife, but nevertheless he did not want to see her in jail, and this made an embarrassing situation for the police and the district attorney’s office, and even for the Federal authorities, who naturally did not want to trouble one of the courtiers of the king of American City. “But something’s got to be done,” said McGivney. “This camouflaged German propaganda can’t go on.” So Peter was to try to draw Mrs. Godd into some kind of “overt

## action.”

“Mrs. Godd?” said Peter. It seemed to him a singular coincidence that one of the dwellers on Mount Olympus should bear that name. The great lady lived on a hilltop out in the suburbs, not so far from the hilltop of Nelse Ackerman. One of the adventures looked forward to by Reds and pacifists in distress was to make a pilgrimage to this palace and obtain some long, green plasters to put over their wounds. Now was the time at all times for Peter to go, said McGivney. Peter had many wounds to be plastered, and Mrs. Godd would be indignant at the proceedings of last night, and would no doubt express herself without restraint.

Section 62

Peter hadn’t been so excited since the time when he had waited to meet young Lackman. He had never quite forgiven himself for this costly failure, and now he was to have another chance. He took a trolley ride out into the country, and walked a couple of miles to the palace on the hilltop, and mounted thru a grove of trees and magnificent Italian gardens. According to McGivney’s injunctions, he summoned his courage, and went to the front door of the stately mansion and rang the bell.

Peter was hot and dusty from his long walk, the sweat had made streaks down his face and marred the pristine whiteness of his plasters. He was never a distinguished-looking person at best, and now, holding his damaged straw hat in his hands, he looked not so far from a hobo. However, the French maid who came to the door was evidently accustomed to strange-looking visitors. She didn’t order Peter to the servant’s entrance, nor threaten him with the dogs; she merely said, “Be seated, please. I will tell madame”--putting the accent on the second syllable, where Peter had never heard it before.

And presently here came Mrs. Godd in her cloud of Olympian beneficence; a large and ample lady, especially built for the role of divinity. Peter felt suddenly awe-stricken. How had he dared come here? Neither in the Hotel de Soto, with its many divinities, nor in the palace of Nelse Ackerman, the king, had he felt such a sense of his own lowliness as the sight of this calm, slow-moving great lady inspired. She was the embodiment of opulence, she was “the real thing.” Despite the look of kindliness in her wide-open blue eyes, she impressed him with a feeling of her overwhelming superiority. He did not know it was his duty as a gentleman to rise from his chair when a lady entered, but some instinct brought him to his feet and caused him to stand blinking as she crossed to him from the opposite end of the big room.

“How do you do?” she said in a low, full voice, gazing at him steadily out of the kind, wide-open blue eyes. Peter stammered, “How d-dy do, M--Mrs. Godd.”

In truth, Peter was almost dumb with bewilderment. Could it really, possibly be that this grand personage was a Red? One of the things that had most offended him about all radicals was their noisiness, their aggressiveness; but here was a grand serenity of looks and manner, a soft, slow voice--here was beauty, too, a skin unlined, despite middle years, and glowing with health and a fine cleanness. Nell Doolin had had a glowing complexion, but there was always a lot of powder stuck on, and when you investigated closely, as Peter had done, you discovered muddy spots in the edges of her hair and on her throat. But Mrs. Godd’s skin shone just as the skin of a goddess would be expected to shine, and everything about her was of a divine and compelling opulence. Peter could not have explained just what it was that gave this last impression so overwhelmingly. It was not that she wore many jewels, or large ones, for Mrs. James had beaten her at that; it was not her delicate perfume, for Nell Doolin scattered more sweetness on the air; yet somehow even poor, ignorant Peter felt the difference--it seemed to him that none of Mrs. Godd’s costly garments had ever been worn before, that the costly rugs on the floor had never been stepped on before, the very chair on which he sat had never been sat on before!

Little Ada Ruth had called Mrs. Godd “the mother of all the world;” and now suddenly she became the mother of Peter Gudge. She had read the papers that morning, she had received a half dozen telephone calls from horrified and indignant Reds, and so a few words sufficed to explain to her the meaning of Peter’s bandages and plasters. She held out to him a beautiful cool hand, and quite without warning, tears sprang into the great blue eyes.

“Oh, you are one of those poor boys! Thank God they did not kill you!” And she led him to a soft couch and made him lie down amid silken pillows. Peter’s dream of Mount Olympus had come literally true! It occurred to him that if Mrs. Godd were willing to play permanently the role of mother to Peter Gudge, he would be willing to give up his role of anti-Red agent with its perils and its nervous strains; he would forget duty, forget the world’s strife and care; he would join the lotus-eaters, the sippers of nectar on Mount Olympus!

She sat and talked to him in the soft, gentle voice, and the kind blue eyes watched him, and Peter thought that never in all his life had he encountered such heavenly emotions. To be sure, when he had gone to see Miriam Yankovich, old Mrs. Yankovich had been just as kind, and tears of sympathy had come into her eyes just the same. But then, Mrs. Yankovich was nothing but a fat old Jewess, who lived in a tenement and smelt of laundry soap and partly completed washing; her hands had been hot and slimy, and so Peter had not been in the least grateful for her kindness. But to encounter tender emotions in these celestial regions, to be talked to maternally and confidentially by this wonderful Mrs. Godd in soft white chiffons just out of a band-box _this _was quite another matter!

Section 63

Peter did not want to set traps for this mother of Mount Olympus, he didn’t want to worm any secrets from her. And as it happened, he found that he did not have to, because she told him everything right away, and without the slightest hesitation. She talked just as the “wobblies” had talked in their headquarters; and Peter, when he thought it over, realized that there are two kinds of people who can afford to be frank in their utterance--those who have nothing to lose, and those who have so much to lose that they cannot possibly lose it.

Mrs. Godd said that what had been done to those men last night was a crime, and it ought to be punished if ever a crime was punished, and that she would like to engage detectives and get evidence against the guilty ones. She said furthermore that she sympathized with the Reds of the very reddest shade, and if there were any color redder than Red she would be of that color. She said all this in her quiet, soft voice. Tears came into her eyes now and then, but they were well-behaved tears, they disappeared of their own accord, and without any injury to Mrs. Godd’s complexion, or any apparent effect upon her self-possession.

Mrs. Godd said that she didn’t see how anybody could fail to be a Red who thought about the injustices of present-day society. Only a few days before she had been in to see the district attorney, and had tried to make a Red out of him! Then she told Peter how there had come to see her a man who had pretended to be a radical, but she had realized that he didn’t know anything about radicalism, and had told him she was sure he was a government agent. The man had finally admitted it, and showed her his gold star--and then Mrs. Godd had set to work to convert him! She had argued with him for an hour or two, and then had invited him to go to the opera with her. “And do you know,” said Mrs. Godd, in an injured tone, “he wouldn’t go! They don’t want to be converted, those men; they don’t want to listen to reason. I believe the man was actually afraid I might influence him.”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” put in Peter, sympathetically; for he was a tiny bit afraid himself.

“I said to him, `Here I live in this palace, and back in the industrial quarter of the city are several thousand men and women who slave at machines for me all day, and now, since the war, all night too. I get the profits of these peoples’ toil--and what have I done to earn it? Absolutely nothing! I never did a stroke of useful work in my life.’ And he said to me, `Suppose the dividends were to stop, what would you do?’ ‘I don’t know what I’d do,’ I answered, `I’d be miserable, of course, because I hate poverty, I couldn’t stand it, it’s terrible to think of--not to have comfort and cleanliness and security. I don’t see how the working-class stand it--that’s exactly why I’m a Red, I know it’s wrong for anyone to be poor, and there’s no excuse for it. So I shall help to overthrow the capitalist system, even if it means I have to take in washing for my living!”