The Best of Mary Roberts Rinehart
Page 286
He was still making speeches, and now and then his name was mentioned in the newspapers. Mrs. Boyd, now mostly confined to her room, spent much time in searching for these notices, and then in painfully cutting them out and pasting them in a book. On those days when there was nothing about him she felt thwarted, and was liable to sharp remarks on newspapers in general, and on those of the city in particular.
Then, just as he began to feel that the strike would pass off like other strikes, and that Doyle and his crowd, having plowed the field for sedition, would find it planted with healthier grain, he had a talk with Edith.
She came downstairs for the first time one Wednesday evening early in July, the scars on her face now only faint red blotches, and he placed her, a blanket over her knees, in the small parlor. Dan had brought her down and had made a real effort to be kind, but his suspicion of the situation made it difficult for him to dissemble, and soon he went out. Ellen was on the doorstep, and through the open window came the shrieks of numerous little Wilkinsons wearing out expensive shoe-leather on the brick pavement.
They sat in the dusk together, Edith very quiet, Willy Cameron talking with a sort of determined optimism. After a time he realized that she was not even listening.
"I wish you'd close the window," she said at last. "Those crazy Wilkinson kids make such a racket. I want to tell you something."
"All right." He closed the window and stood looking down at her. "Are you sure you want me to hear it?" he asked gravely.
"Yes. It is not about myself. I've been reading the newspapers while I've been shut away up there, Willy. It kept me from thinking. And if things are as bad as they say I'd better tell you, even if I get into trouble doing it. I will, probably. Murder's nothing to them."
"Who are 'them'?"
"You get the police to search the Myers Housecleaning Company, in the Searing Building."
"Don't you think you'd better tell me more than that? The police will want something definite to go on."
She hesitated.
"I don't know very much. I met somebody there, once or twice, at night. And I know there's a telephone hidden in the drawer of the desk in the back room. I swore not to tell, but that doesn't matter now. Tell them to examine the safe, too. I don't know what's in it. Dynamite, maybe."
"What makes you think the company is wrong? A hidden telephone isn't much to go on."
"When a fellow's had a drink or two, he's likely to talk," she said briefly, and before that sordid picture Willy Cameron was silent. After a time he said:
"You won't tell me the name of the man you met there?"
"No. Don't ask me, Willy. That's between him and me." He got up and took a restless turn or two about the little rooms. Edith's problem had begun to obsess him. Not for long would it be possible to keep her condition from Mrs. Boyd. He was desperately at a loss for some course to pursue.
"Have you ever thought," he said at last, "that this man, whoever he is, ought to marry you?"
Edith's face set like a flint.
"I don't want to marry him," she said. "I wouldn't marry him if he was the last man on earth."
He knew very little of Edith's past. In his own mind he had fixed on Louis Akers, but he could not be sure.
"I won't tell you his name, either," Edith added, shrewishly. Then her voice softened. "I will tell you this, Willy," she said wistfully. "I was a good girl until I knew him. I'm not saying that to let myself out. It's the truth."
"You're a good girl now," he said gravely.
Some time after he got his hat and came in to tell her he was going out.
"I'll tell what you've told me to Mr. Hendricks," he said. "And we may go on and have a talk with the Chief of Police. If you are right it may be important."
After that for an hour or two Edith sat alone, save when Ellen now and then looked in to see if she was comfortable.
Edith's mind was chaotic. She had spoken on impulse, a good impulse at that. But suppose they trapped Louis Akers in the Searing Building?
Ellen went now and then to the Cardew house, and brought back with her the news of the family. At first she had sternly refused to talk about the Cardews to Edith, but the days in the sick room had been long and monotonous, and Edith's jealousy of Lily had taken the form, when she could talk, of incessant questions.
So Edith knew that Louis Akers had been the cause of Lily's leaving home, and called her a poor thing in her heart. Quite lately she had heard that if Lily was not already engaged she probably would be, soon. Now her motives were mixed, and her emotions confused. She had wanted to tell Willy Cameron what she knew, but she wanted Lily to marry Louis Akers. She wanted that terribly. Then Lily would be out of the way, and—Willy was not like Dan; he did not seem to think her forever lost. He had always been thoughtful, but lately he had been very tender with her. Men did strange things sometimes. He might be willing to forget, after a long time. She could board the child out somewhere, if it lived. Sometimes they didn't live.
But if they arrested Louis, Lily Cardew would fling him aside like an old shoe.
She closed her eyes. That opened a vista of possibilities she would not face.
She stopped in her mother's room on her slow progress upstairs, moved to sudden pity for the frail life now wearing to its close. If that were life she did not want it, with its drab days and futile effort, its incessant deprivations, its hands, gnarled with work that got nowhere, its greatest blessing sleep and forgetfulness.
She wondered why her mother did not want to die, to get away.
"I'll soon be able to look after you a bit, mother," she said from the doorway. "How's the pain down your arm?"
"Bring me the mucilage, Edie," requested Mrs. Boyd. She was propped up in bed and surrounded by newspapers. "I've found Willy's name again. I've got fourteen now. Where's the scissors?"
Eternity was such a long time. Did she know? Could she know, and still sit among her pillows, snipping?
"I wonder," said Mrs. Boyd, "did anybody feed Jinx? That Ellen is so saving that she grudges him a bone."
"He looks all right," said Edith, and went on up to bed. Maybe the Lord did that for people, when they reached a certain point. Maybe He took away the fear of death, by showing after years of it that life was not so valuable after all. She remembered her own facing of eternity, and her dread of what lay beyond. She had prayed first, because she wanted to have some place on the other side. She had prayed to be received young and whole and without child. And her mother—
Then she had a flash of intuition. There was something greater than life, and that was love. Her mother was upheld by love. That was what the eternal cutting and pasting meant. She was lavishing all the love of her starved days on Willy Cameron; she was facing death, because his hand was close by to hold to.
For just a moment, sitting on the edge of her bed, Edith Boyd saw what love might be, and might do. She held out both hands in the darkness, but no strong and friendly clasp caught them close. If she could only have him to cling to, to steady her wavering feet along the gray path that stretched ahead, years and years of it. Youth. Middle age. Old age.
"I'd only drag him down," she muttered bitterly.
Willy Cameron, meanwhile, had gone to Mr. Hendricks with Edith's story, and together late that evening they saw the Chief of Police at his house. Both Willy Cameron and Mr. Hendricks advocated putting a watch on the offices of the Myers Housecleaning Company and thus ultimately getting the heads of the organization. But the Chief was unwilling to delay.
"Every day means more of their infernal propaganda," he said, "and if this girl's telling a straight story, the thing to do is to get the outfit now. Those clerks, for instance—we'll get some information out of them. That sort always squeals. They're a cheap lot."
"Going to ball it up, of course," Mr. Hendricks said disgustedly, on the way home. "Won't wait, because if Akers gets in he's out, and he wants to make a big strike first. I'll drop in to-morrow evening and tell you what's happened."
"What did I tell you, Cameron?" he demanded, breathing heavily. "Yes, they got them all right. Got a safe full of stuff so inflammable that, since I've read some of it, I'm ready to blow up myself. It's worse than that first lot I showed you. They got the two clerks, and a half-dozen foreigners, too. And that's all they got."
"They won't talk?"
"Talk? Sure they'll talk. They say they're employed by the Myers Housecleaning Company, that they never saw the inside of the vault, and they're squealing louder than two pigs under a gate about false arrest. They'll have to let them go, son. Here. You can do most everything. Can you read Croatian? No? Well, here's something in English to cut your wisdom teeth on. Overthrowing the government is where these fellows start."
It was intelligent, that propaganda. Willy Cameron thought he saw behind it Jim Doyle and other men like Doyle, men who knew the discontents of the world, and would fatten by them; men who, secretly envious of the upper classes and unable to attain to them, would pull all men to their own level, or lower. Men who cloaked their own jealousies with the garb of idealism. Intelligent it was, dangerous, and imminent.
The pamphlets spoke of "the day." It was a Prussian phrase. The revolution was Prussian. And like the Germans, they offered loot as a reward. They appealed to the ugliest passions in the world, to lust and greed and idleness.
At a signal the mass was to arise, overthrow its masters and rule itself.
Mr. Hendricks stood in the doorway of the pharmacy and stared out at the city he loved.
"Just how far does that sort of stuff go, Cameron?" he asked. "Will our people take it up? Is the American nation going crazy?"
"Not a bit of it," said Willy Cameron stoutly. "They're about as able to overthrow the government as you are to shove over the Saint Elmo Hotel."
"I could do that, with a bomb."
"No, you couldn't. But you could make a fairly sizeable hole in it. It's the hole we don't want."
Mr. Hendricks went away, vaguely comforted.
CHAPTER XXIII
To old Anthony the early summer had been full of humiliations, which he carried with an increased arrogance of bearing that alienated even his own special group at his club.
"Confound the man," said Judge Peterson, holding forth on the golf links one Sunday morning while Anthony Cardew, hectic with rage, searched for a lost ball and refused to drop another. "He'll hold us up all morning, for that ball, just as he tries to hold up all progress." He lowered his voice. "What's happened to the granddaughter, anyhow?"
Senator Lovell lighted a cigarette.
"Turned Bolshevist," he said, briefly.
The Judge gazed at him.
"That's a pretty serious indictment, isn't it?"
"Well, that's what I hear. She's living in Jim Doyle's house. I guess that's the answer. Hey, Cardew! D'you want these young cubs behind us to play through, or are you going to show some sense and come on?"
Howard, fighting his father tooth and nail, was compelled to a reluctant admiration of his courage. But there was no cordiality between them. They were in accord again, as to the strike, although from different angles. Both of them knew that they were fighting for very life; both of them felt that the strikers' demands meant the end of industry, meant that the man who risked money in a business would eventually cease to control that business, although if losses came it would be he, and not the workmen, who bore them. Howard had gone as far as he could in concessions, and the result was only the demand for more. The Cardews, father and son, stood now together, their backs against a wall, and fought doggedly.
But only anxiety held them together.
His father was now backing Howard's campaign for the mayoralty, but he was rather late with his support, and in private he retained his cynical attitude. He had not come over at all until he learned that Louis Akers was an opposition candidate. At that his wrath knew no bounds and the next day he presented a large check to the campaign committee.
Mr. Hendricks, hearing of it, was moved to a dry chuckle.
"Can't you hear him?" he demanded. "He'd stalk into headquarters as important as an office boy who's been sent to the bank for money, and he'd slam down his check and say just two words."
"Which would be?" inquired Willy Cameron.
"'Buy 'em'," quoted Mr. Hendricks. "The old boy doesn't know that things have changed since the 80's. This city has changed, my lad. It's voting now the way it thinks, right or wrong. That's why these foreign language papers can play the devil with us. The only knowledge the poor wretches have got of us is what they're given to read. And most of it stinks of sedition. Queer thing, this thinking. A fellow can think himself into murder."
The strike was going along quietly enough. There had been rioting through the country, but not of any great significance. It was in reality a sort of trench warfare, with each side dug in and waiting for the other to show himself in the open. The representatives of the press, gathered in the various steel cities, with automobiles arranged for to take them quickly to any disturbance that might develop, found themselves with little news for the telegraph, and time hung heavy on their hands.
On an evening in July, Howard found Grace dressing for dinner, and realized with a shock that she was looking thin and much older. He kissed her and then held her off and looked at her.
"You've got to keep your courage up, dear," he said. "I don't think it will be long now."
"Have you seen her?"
"No. But something has happened. Don't look like that, Grace. It's not—"
"She hasn't married that man?"
"No. Not that. It only touches her indirectly. But she can't stay there. Even Elinor—" he checked himself. "I'll tell you after dinner."
Dinner was very silent, although Anthony delivered himself of one speech rather at length.
"So far as I can make out, Howard," he said, "this man Hendricks is getting pretty strong. He has a young fellow talking for him who gets over pretty well. It's my judgment that Hendricks had better be bought off. He goes around shouting that he's a plain man, after the support of the plain people. Although I'm damned if I know what he means by that."
Anthony Cardew was no longer comfortable in his own house. He placed the blame for it on Lily, and spent as many evenings away from home as possible. He considered that life was using him rather badly. Tied to the city in summer by a strike, his granddaughter openly gone over to his enemy, his own son, so long his tool and his creature, merely staying in his house to handle him, an income tax law that sent him to his lawyers with new protests almost daily! A man was no longer master even in his own home. His employees would not work for him, his family disobeyed him, his government held him up and shook him. In the good old days—
"I'm going out," he said, as he rose from the table. "Grace, that chef is worse than the last. You'd better send him off."
"I can't get any one else. I have tried for weeks. There are no servants anywhere."
"Try New York."
"I have tried—it is useless."
No cooks, either. No servants. Even Anthony recognized that, with the exception of Grayson, the servants in his house were vaguely hostile to the family. They gave grudging service, worked short hours, and, the only class of labor to which the high cost of food was a negligible matter, demanded wages he considered immoral.
"I don't know what the world's coming to," he snarled. "Well, I'm off. Thank God, there are still clubs for a man to go to."
"I want to have a talk with you, father."
"I don't want to talk."
"You needn't. I want you to listen, and I want Grace to hear, too."
In the end he went unwillingly into the library, and when Grayson had brought liqueurs and coffee and had gone, Howard drew the card from his pocket.
"I met young Denslow to-day," he said. "He came in to see me. As a matter of fact, I signed
a card he had brought along, and I brought one for you, sir. Shall I read it?"
"You evidently intend to."
Howard read the card slowly. Its very simplicity was impressive, as impressive as it had been when Willy Cameron scrawled the words on the back of an old envelope. Anthony listened.
"Just what does that mean?"
"That the men behind this movement believe that there is going to be a general strike, with an endeavor to turn it into a revolution. Perhaps only local, but these things have a tendency to spread. Denslow had some literature which referred to an attempt to take over the city. They have other information, too, all pointing the same way."
"Strikers?"
"Foreign strikers, with the worst of the native born. Their plans are fairly comprehensive; they mean to dynamite the water works, shut down the gas and electric plants, and cut off all food supplies. Then when they have starved and terrorized us into submission, we'll accept their terms."
"What terms?"
"Well, the rule of the mob, I suppose. They intend to take over the banks, for one thing."
"I don't believe it. It's incredible."
"They meant to do it in Seattle."
"And didn't. Don't forget that."
"They may have learned some things from Seattle," Howard said quietly.
"We have the state troops."
"What about a half dozen similar movements in the state at the same time? Or rioting in other places, carefully planned to draw the troops and constabulary away?"
In the end old Anthony was impressed, if not entirely convinced. But he had no faith in the plain people, and said so. "They'll see property destroyed and never lift a hand," he said. "Didn't I stand by in Pittsburgh during the railroad riots, and watch them smile while the yards burned? Because the railroads meant capital to them, and they hate capital."