§ 72
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.
