§ 82
Peter was so busy these days that he missed several nights' sleep,
and hardly even stopped to eat. He had his own private room, where the
prisoners were brought for examination, and he had half a dozen men
under his orders to do the "strong arm" work. It was his task to extract
from these prisoners admissions which would justify their being sent to
prison if they were citizens, or being deported if they were aliens.
There was of course seldom any way to distinguish between citizens and
aliens; you just had to take a chance on it, proceeding on the certainty
that all were dangerous. Many years ago, when Peter had been working for
Pericles Priam, they had spent several months in a boarding house, and
you could tell when there was going to be beef-steak for dinner, because
you heard the cook pounding it with the potato-masher to "tender it up;"
and Peter learned this phrase, and, now used the process upon his alien
Reds. When they came into the room, Peter's men would fall upon them and
beat them and cuff them, knocking them about from one fist to another.
If they were stubborn and would not "come across," Peter would take them
in hand himself, remembering how successful Guffey had been in getting
things out of him by the twisting of wrists and the bending back of
fingers.
It was amazing how clever and subtle some of these fellows were.
They were just lousy foreign laborers, but they spent all their spare
time reading; you would find large collections of books in their rooms
when you made your raids, and they knew exactly what you wanted, and
would parry your questions. Peter would say: "You're an Anarchist,
aren't you?" And the answer would be: "I'm not an Anarchist in the sense
of the word you mean" — as if
there could be two meanings of the word "Anarchist!" Peter would say,
"You believe in violence, do you not?" And then the fellow would become
impertinent: "It is you who believe in violence, look at my face that
you have smashed." Or Peter would say, "You don't like this government,
do you?" And the answer would be, "I always liked it until it treated me
so badly" — all kinds of evasions like that, and there would be a
stenographer taking it down, and unless Peter could get something into
the record that was a confession, it would not be possible to deport
that Red. So Peter would fall upon him and "tender him up" until be
would answer what he was told to answer; or maybe Peter would prepare an
interview as he wanted it to be, and the detectives would grab the man's
hand and make him sign it; or maybe Peter would just sign it himself.
These were harsh methods, but there was no way to help it, the
Reds were so cunning. They were secretly undermining the government, and
was the government to lie down and admit its helplessness? The answer of
100% Americanism was thundered from every wood and templed hill in the
country; also from every newspaper office. The answer was "No!" 100%
Americanism would find a way to preserve itself from the sophistries of
European Bolshevism; 100% Americanism had worked out its formula: "If
they don't like this country, let them go back where they come from."
But of course, knowing in their hearts that America was the best country
in the world, they didn't want to go back, and it was necessary to make
them go.
Peter was there for that purpose, and his devoted wife
was by his side, egging him on with her feminine implacability.
Gladys had always been accustomed to refer to these people as "cattle,"
and now, when she smelled them herded together in these office rooms for
several weeks, she knew that she was right, and that no fate could be
too stern for them. Presently with Peter's help she discovered another
bomb-plot, this time against the Attorney-General of the country, who
was directing these wholesale raids. They grabbed four Italian
Anarchists in American City, and kept them apart in special rooms, and
for a couple of months Peter labored with them to get what he wanted out
of them. Just as Peter thought be had succeeded, his efforts were
balked by one of them jumping out of the window. The room being on the
fourteenth story, this Italian Anarchist was no longer available as a
witness against himself. The incident set the parlor Bolsheviks all over
the country to raging, and caused David Andrews to get some kind of
court injunction, and make a lot of inconvenience to Guffey's office.
However, the work went on; the Reds were gradually sorted out,
and some who proved not to be Reds were let go again, and others were
loaded onto special Red trains and taken to the nearest ports. Some of
them went in grim silence, others went with furious cursings, and yet
others with wailings and shriekings; for many of them had families, and
they had the nerve to demand that the government should undertake to
ship their families also, or else to take care of their families for
them! The government, naturally, admitted no such responsibility. The
Reds had no end of money for printing seditious literature, so let them
use it to take care of their own!
In these various raids and examinations Peter of course
met a great many of the Reds whom he had once known as friends and
intimates. Peter had been wont to imagine himself meeting them, and to
tremble at the bare idea; but now he found that he rather enjoyed it. He
was entirely delivered from that fear of them, which had formerly
spoiled his appetite and disturbed his sleep. He had learned that the
Reds were poor creatures who did not fight back; they had no weapons,
and many of them did not even have muscles; there was really nothing to
them but talk. And Peter knew that he had the power of organized society
behind him, the police and the courts and the jails, if necessary the
army with its machine guns and airplanes and poison gas. Not merely was
it safe to pound these people, to tread on their toes and spit in their
eyes; it was safe also to frame up anything on them, because the
newspapers would always back you up, and the public would of course
believe whatever it read in its newspapers.
No, Peter was no longer afraid of the Reds! He made
up his mind that he was not even afraid of Mac, the most
dangerous Red of them all. Mac was safely put away in
jail for twenty years, and although his case had been appealed,
the court had refused to grant a stay of sentence or to let
him out on bail. As it happened, Peter got a glimpse into
Mac's soul in jail, and knew that even that proud, grim
spirit was breaking. Mac in jail had written a letter to
one of his fellow-Reds in American City, and the post-office
authorities had intercepted the letter, and Guffey had
shown it to Peter. "Write to us!" Mac had pleaded. "For
God's sake, write to us! The worst horror of being in
jail is that you are forgotten. Do at least let us know that
somebody is thinking about us!"
So Peter knew that he was the victor, he was "top dog." And when
he met these Reds whom he had been so afraid of, he took pleasure in
letting them feel the weight of his authority, and sometimes of his
fist. It was amusing to see the various ways in which they behaved
toward him. Some would try to plead with him, for the sake of old times;
some would cringe and whine to him; some would try to reason with him,
to touch his conscience. But mostly they would be haughty, they would
glare at him with hate, or put a sneer of contempt on their faces. So
Peter would set his "bulls" to work to improve their manners, and a
little thumb-bending and wrist-twisting would soon do the work.
