Rosie Stern was her name, and she was a solid little Jewish working
girl, with bold black eyes, and a mass of shining black hair, and
flaming cheeks and a flashing smile. She was dressed as if she knew
about her beauty, and really appreciated it; so Peter wasn't
surprised when Miriam, introducing her, remarked that Rosie wasn't a
Red and didn't like the Reds, but had just come to help her, and to
see what a pacifist meeting was like. Perhaps Peter might help to
make a Red out of her! And Peter was very glad indeed, for he was
never more bored with the whining of pacifists than now when our
boys were hurling the Germans back from the Marne and writing their
names upon history's most imperishable pages.

Rosie was something new and unforeseen, and Peter went right after
her, and presently he realized with delight that she was interested
in him. Peter knew, of course, that he was superior to all this
crowd, but he wasn't used to having the fact recognized, and as
usual when a woman smiled upon him, the pressure of his self-esteem
rose beyond the safety point. Rosie was one of those people who take
the world as it is and get some fun out of it, so while the pacifist
meeting went on, Peter sat over in the corner and told her in
whispers his funny adventures with Pericles Priam and in the Temple
of Jimjambo. Rosie could hardly repress her laughter, and her black
eyes flashed, and before the evening was over their hands had
touched several times. Then Peter offered to escort her and Miriam,
and needless to say they took Miriam home first. The tenement
streets were deserted at this late hour, so they found a chance for
swift embraces, and Peter went home with his feet hardly touching
the ground.

Rosie worked in a paper-box factory, and next evening Peter took her
out to dinner, and their eager flirtation went on. But Rosie showed
a tendency to retreat, and when Peter pressed her, she told him the
reason. She had no use for Reds; she was sick of the jargon of the
Reds, she would never love a Red. Look at Miriam Yankovich--what a
wreck she had made of her life! She had been a handsome girl, she
might have got a rich husband, but now she had had to be cut to
pieces! And look at Sadie Todd, slaving herself to death, and Ada
Ruth with her poems that made you tired. Rosie jeered at them all,
and riddled them with the arrows of her wit, and of course Peter in
his heart agreed with everything she said; yet Peter had to pretend
to disagree, and that made Rosie cross and spoiled their fun, and
they almost quarreled.

Under these circumstances, naturally it was hard for Peter not to
give some hint of his true feeling. After he had spent all of his
money on Rosie and a lot of his time and hadn't got anywhere, he
decided to make some concession to her--he told her he would give up
trying to make a Red out of her. Whereupon Rosie made a face at him.
"Very kind indeed of you, Mr. Gudge! But how about my making a
`White' out of you?" And she went on to inform him that she wanted
a fellow that could make money and take care of a girl. Peter
answered that he was making money all right. Well, how was he making
money, asked Rosie. Peter wouldn't tell, but he was making it, and
he would prove it by taking her to the theater every night.

So the little duel went on, evening after evening. Peter got more
and more crazy about this black-eyed beauty, and she got more and
more coquettish, and more and more impatient with his radical
leanings. Rosie's father had brought her as a baby from Kisheneff,
but she was 100% American all the same, so she told him; those boys
in khaki who were over there walloping the Huns were the boys for
her, and she was waiting for one of them to come back. What was the
matter with Peter that he wasn't doing his part? Was he a
draft-dodger? Rosie had never had anything to do with slackers, and
wasn't keen for the company of a man who couldn't give an account of
himself. Only that day she had been reading in the paper about the
atrocities committed by the Huns. How could any man with red blood
in his veins sympathize with these pacifists and traitors? And if
Peter didn't sympathize with them, why did he travel round with them
and give them his moral support? When Peter made a feeble effort at
repeating some of the pacifists' arguments, Rosie just said, "Oh,
fudge! You've got too much sense to talk that kind of stuff to me."
And Peter knew, of course, that he _had_ too much sense, and it was
hard to keep from letting Rosie see it. He had just lost one girl
because of his Red entanglements. Was it up to him to lose another?

For a couple of weeks they sparred and fought. Rosie would let Peter
kiss her, and Peter's head would be quite turned with desire. He
decided that she was the most wonderful girl he had ever known; even
Nell Doolin had nothing on her. But then once more she would pin
Peter down on this business of his Redness, and would spurn him, and
refuse to see him any more. At last Peter admitted to her that he
had lost his sympathy with the Reds, she had converted him, and he
despised them. So Rosie replied that she was delighted; they would
go at once to see Miriam Yankovich, and Peter would tell her, and
try to convert her also. Peter was then in a bad dilemma; he had to
insist that Rosie should keep his conversion a secret. But Rosie
became indignant, she set her lips and declared that a conversion
that had to be kept secret was no conversion at all, it was simply a
low sham, and Peter Gudge was a coward, and she was sick of him! So
poor Peter went away, heartbroken and bewildered.






Section 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.






Section 73





Peter could see it all very clearly when he came to figure over the
thing; he could see what a whooping jackass he had been. He might
have known that it was up to him to be careful, at this time of all
times, when he was suspected of having rubbed out Donald Gordon's
pencil marks. They had picked out a girl whom Peter had never seen
before, and she had come and posed as Miriam's friend, and had
proceeded to take Peter by the nose and lead him to the edge of the
precipice and shove him over. And now she would be laughing at him,
telling all her friends about her triumph, and about Peter's thirty
dollars a week that he would never see again.

Peter spent a good part of the night getting up the story that he
was to tell McGivney next morning. He wouldn't mention Rosie Stern,
of course; he would say that the Reds had trailed him to Room 427,
and it must be they had a spy in Guffey's office. Peter repeated
this story quite solemnly, and again realized too late that he had
made a fool of himself. It wasn't twenty-four hours before every Red
in American City knew the true, inside history of the unveiling of
Peter Gudge as a spy of the Traction Trust. The story occupied a
couple of pages in that week's issue of the "Clarion," and included
Peter's picture, and an account of the part that Peter had played in
various frame-ups. It was nearly all true, and the fact that it was
guess-work on Donald Gordon's part did not make it any the better
for Peter. Of course McGivney and Guffey and all his men read the
story, and knew Peter for the whooping jackass that Peter knew
himself.

"You go and get yourself a job with a pick and shovel," said
McGivney, and Peter sorrowfully took his departure. He had only a
few dollars in his pocket, and these did not last very long, and he
had got down to his last nickel, and was confronting the wolf of
starvation again, when McGivney came to his lodging house room with
a new proposition. There was one job left, and Peter might take it
if he thought he could stand the gaff.

It was the job of state's witness. Peter had been all thru the Red
movement, he knew all these pacifists and Socialists and
Syndicalists and I. W. Ws. who were now in jail. In some cases the
evidence of the government was far from satisfactory; so Peter might
have his salary back again, if he were willing to take the witness
stand and tell what he was told to tell, and if he could manage to
sit in a courtroom without falling in love with some of the lady
jurors, or some of the lady spies of the defense. These deadly
shafts of sarcasm Peter did not even feel, because he was so
frightened by the proposition which McGivney put up to him. To come
out into the open and face the blinding glare of the Red hate! To
place himself, the ant, between the smashing fists of the battling
giants!

Yes, it might seem dangerous, said McGivney, for a cowardly little
whelp like himself; but then a good many men had had the nerve to do
it, and none of them had died yet. McGivney himself did not pretend
to care very much whether Peter did it or not; he put the matter up
to him on Guffey's orders. The job was worth forty dollars a week,
and he might take it or leave it.

And there sat Peter, with only a nickel and a couple of pennies in
his pocket, and the rent for his room two weeks over-due, and his
landlady lying in wait in the hallway like an Indian with a
tomahawk. Peter objected, what about all those bad things in his
early record, Pericles Priam and the Temple of Jimjambo, which had
ruined him as a witness in the Goober case. McGivney answered dryly
that he couldn't let himself out with that excuse; he was invited to
pose as a reformed "wobbly," and the more crimes and rascalities he
had in his record, the more convinced the jury would be that he had
been a real "wobbly."

Peter asked, just when would he be expected to appear? And McGivney
answered, the very next week. They were trying seventeen of the
"wobblies" on a conspiracy charge, and Peter would be expected to
take the stand and tell how he had heard them advocate violence, and
heard them boast of having set fire to barns and wheat fields, and
how they had put phosphorus bombs into haystacks, and copper nails
into fruit trees, and spikes into sawmill logs, and emery powder
into engine bearings. Peter needn't worry about what he would have
to say, McGivney would tell him everything, and would see him
thoroughly posted, and he would find himself a hero in the
newspapers, which would make clear that he had done everything from
the very highest possible motives of 100% Americanism, and that no
soldier in the war had been performing a more dangerous service.

To Peter it seemed they might say that without troubling their
conscience very much. But McGivney went on to declare that he
needn't be afraid; it was no part of Guffey's program to give the
Reds the satisfaction of putting his star witness out of business.
Peter would be kept in a safe place, and would always have a
body-guard. While he was in the city, giving his testimony, they
would put him up at the Hotel de Soto.

And that of course settled it. Here was poor Peter, with only a
nickel and two coppers in his pocket, and before him stood a chariot
of fire with magic steeds, and all he had to do was to step in, and
be whirled away to Mount Olympus. Peter stepped in!






Section 74





McGivney took him to Guffey's office, and Guffey wasted no time upon
preliminaries, but turned to his desk, and took out a long
typewritten document, a complete account of what the prosecution
meant to prove against the seventeen I. W. Ws. First, Peter told
what he himself had seen and heard--not very much, but a beginning,
a hook to hang his story upon. The I. W. W. hall was the meeting
place for the casual and homeless labor of the country, the
"bindle-stiffs" who took the hardest of the world's hard knocks, and
sometimes returned them. There was no kind of injustice these
fellows hadn't experienced, and now and then they had given blow for
blow. Also there were loose talkers among them, who worked off their
feelings by threats of vengeance upon their enemies. Now and then a
real criminal came along, and now and then a paid inciter, a Peter
Gudge or a Joe Angell. Peter told the worst that he had heard, and
all he knew about the arrested men, and Guffey wrote it all down,
and then proceeded to build upon it. This fellow Alf Guinness had
had a row with a farmer in Wheatland County; there had been a barn
burned nearby, and Guffey would furnish an automobile and a couple
of detectives to travel with Peter, and they would visit the scene
of that fire and the nearby village, and familiarize themselves with
the locality, and Peter would testify how he had been with Guinness
when he and a half dozen of the defendants had set fire to that
barn.

Peter hadn't intended anything quite so serious as that, but Guffey
was so business-like, and took it all so much as a matter of course,
that Peter was afraid to show the white feather. After all, this was
war-time; hundreds of men were giving up their lives every day in
the Argonne, and why shouldn't Peter take a little risk in order to
put out of business his country's most dangerous enemies?

So Peter and his two detectives blew themselves to a joy ride in the
country. And then Peter was brought back and made comfortable in a
room on the twelfth floor of the Hotel de Soto, where he diligently
studied the typewritten documents which McGivney brought him, and
thoroughly learned the story he was to tell. There was always one of
Guffey's men walking up and down in the hallway outside with a gun
on his hip, and they brought Peter three meals a day, not forgetting
a bottle of beer and a package of cigarettes. Twice a day Peter read
in the newspapers about the heroic deeds of our boys over there, and
also about the latest bomb plots which had been discovered all over
the country, and about various trials under the espionage act.

Also, Peter had the thrill of reading about himself in a real
newspaper. Hitherto he had been featured in labor papers, and
Socialist papers like the "Clarion," which did not count; but now
the American City "Times" came out with a long story of how the
district attorney's office had "planted" a secret agent with the I.
W. W., and how this man, whose name was Peter Gudge, had been
working as one of them for the past two years, and was going to
reveal the whole story of I. W. W. infamy on the witness stand.

Two days before the trial Peter was escorted by McGivney and another
detective to the district attorney's office, and spent the best part
of the day in conference with Mr. Burchard and his deputy, Mr.
Stannard, who were to try the case. McGivney had told Peter that the
district attorney was not in the secret, he really believed that
Peter's story was all true; but Peter suspected that this was
camouflage, to save Mr. Burchard's face, and to protect him in case
Peter ever tried to "throw him down." Peter noticed that whenever he
left any gap in his story, the district attorney and the deputy told
him to fill it, and he managed to guess what to fill it with.

Henry Clay Burchard came from the far South, and followed a style of
oratory long since gone out of date. He wore his heavy black hair a
little long, and when he mounted the platform he would pull out the
tremulo stop, stretching out his hands and saying in tones of
quivering emotion: "The ladies, God bless them!" Also he would say:
"I am a friend of the common man. My heart beats with sympathy for
those who constitute the real backbone of America, the toilers of
the shop and farm." And then all the banqueters of the Chamber of
Commerce and the Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association would
applaud, and would send their checks to the campaign fund of this
friend of the common man. Mr. Burchard's deputy, Mr. Stannard, was a
legal fox who told his chief what to do and how to do it; a dried-up
little man who looked like a bookworm, and sat boring you thru with
his keen eyes, watching for your weak points and preparing to pierce
you thru with one of his legal rapiers. He would be quite friendly
about it--he would joke with you in the noon hour, assuming that you
would of course understand it was all in the line of business, and
no harm meant.






Section 75





The two men heard Peter's story and changed it a little, and then
heard him over again and pronounced him all right, and Peter went
back to his hotel room and waited in trepidation for his hour in the
limelight. When they took him to court his knees were shaking, but
also he had a thrill of real importance, for they had provided him
with a body-guard of four big huskies; also he saw two "bulls" whom
he recognized in the hallway outside the court-room, and many others
scattered thru the audience. The place was packed with Red
sympathizers, but they had all been searched before they were
allowed to enter, and were being watched every moment during the
trial.

When Peter stepped into the witness box he felt as Tom Duggan and
Donald Gordon must have felt that night when the white glare from
thirty or forty automobiles was beating upon them. Peter felt the
concentrated Red hate of two or three hundred spectators, and now
and then their pent-up fury would break restraint; there would be a
murmur of protest, or perhaps a wave of sneering laughter, and the
bailiff would bang on the table with his wooden mallet, and the
judge would half rise from his seat, and declare that if that
happened again he would order the court-room cleared.

Not far in front of Peter at a long table sat the seventeen
defendants, looking like trapped rats, and every one of their
thirty-four rat eyes were fixed upon Peter's face, and never moved
from it. Peter only glanced that way once; they bared their rats'
teeth at him, and he quickly looked in another direction. But there
also he saw a face that brought him no comfort; there sat Mrs. Godd,
in her immaculate white chiffons, her wide-open blue eyes fixed upon
his face, her expression full of grief and reproach. "Oh, Mr.
Gudge!" she seemed to be saying. "How can you? Mr. Gudge, is this
Peace. . . justice. . . Truth. . . Law?" And Peter realized with a
pang that he had cut himself off forever from Mount Olympus, and
from the porch chair with the soft silken pillows! He turned away
toward the box where sat the twelve jurymen and women. One old lady
gave him a benevolent smile, and a young farmer gave him a sly wink,
so Peter knew that he had friends in that quarter--and after all,
they were the ones who really counted in this trial. Mrs. Godd was
as helpless as any "wobbly," in the presence of this august court.

Peter told his story, and then came his cross-questioning, and who
should rise and start the job but David Andrews, suave and humorous
and deadly. Peter had always been afraid of Andrews, and now he
winced. Nobody had told him he was to face an ordeal like this!
Nobody had told him that Andrews would be allowed to question him
about every detail of these crimes which he said he had witnessed,
and about all the conversations that had taken place, and who else
was present, and what else had been said, and how he had come to be
there, and what he had done afterwards, and what he had had to eat
for breakfast that morning. Only two things saved Peter, first the
constant rapid-fire of objections which Stannard kept making, to
give Peter time to think; and second, the cyclone-cellar which
Stannard had provided for him in advance. "You can always fail to
remember," the deputy had said; "nobody can punish you for
forgetting something." So Peter would repeat the minute details of a
conversation in which Alf Guinness had told of burning down the
barn, but he didn't remember who else had heard the conversation,
and he didn't remember what else had been said, nor what was the
date of the conversation.

Then came the blessed hour of noon, with a chance for Peter to get
fixed up again before the court resumed at two. He was questioned
again by Stannard, who patched up all the gaps in his testimony, and
then again he failed to remember things, and so avoided the traps
which Andrews set for his feet. He was told that he had "done fine,"
and was escorted back to the Hotel de Soto in triumph, and there for
a week he stayed while the defense made a feeble effort to answer
his testimony. Peter read in the papers the long speeches in which
the district attorney and the deputy acclaimed him as a patriot,
protecting his country from its "enemies within;" also he read a
brief reference to the "tirade" of David Andrews, who had called him
a "rat" and a "slinking Judas." Peter didn't mind that, of
course--it was all part of the game, and the calling of names is a
pretty sure sign of impotence.

Less easy to accept placidly, however, was something which came to
Peter that same day--a letter from Mrs. Godd! It wasn't written to
him, but he saw Hammett and another of the "bulls" chuckling
together, and he asked what was the joke, and they told him that
Mrs. Godd had somehow found out about Guffey, and had written him a
letter full of insults, and Guffey was furious. Peter asked what was
in it, and they told him, and later on when he insisted, they
brought it and showed it to him, and Peter was furious too. On very
expensive stationery with a stately crest at the top, the mother of
Mount Olympus had written in a large, bland, girlish hand her
opinion of "under cover" men and those who hired them:

"You sit like a big spider and weave a net to catch men and destroy
them. You destroy alike your victims and your tools. The poor boy,
Peter Gudge, whom you sent to my home--my heart bleeds when I think
of him, and what you have put him up to! A wretched, feeble-minded
victim of greed, who ought to be sent to a hospital for deformed
souls, you have taken him and taught him a piece of villainy to
recite, so that he may send a group of sincere idealists to prison."

That was enough! Peter put down the letter--he would not dignify
such stuff by reading it. He realized that he would have to put his
mind on the problem of Mrs. Godd once more. One woman like that, in
her position of power, was more dangerous than all the seventeen
"wobblies" who had been haled before the court. Peter inquired, and
learned that Guffey had already been to see Nelse Ackerman about it,
and Mr. Ackerman had been to see Mr. Godd, and Mr. Godd had been to
see Mrs. Godd. Also the "Times" had an editorial referring to the
"nest of Bolshevism" upon Mount Olympus, and all Mrs. Godd's friends
were staying away from her luncheon-parties--so she was being made
to suffer for her insolence to Peter Gudge!

"A hospital for deformed souls," indeed! Peter was so upset that his
joy in life was not restored even by the news that the jury had
found the defendants guilty on the first ballot. He told McGivney
that the strain of this trial had been too much for his nerves, and
they must take care of him; so an automobile was provided, and Peter
was taken to a secret hiding place in the country to recuperate.

Hammett went with him, and Hammett was a first-class gunman, and
Peter stayed close by him; in the evening he stayed up in the second
story of the farm-house, lest perchance one of the "wobblies" should
take too literally the testimony Peter had given concerning their
habit of shooting at their enemies out of the darkness. Peter knew
how they all must hate him; he read in the paper how the judge
summoned the guilty men before him and sentenced them, incidentally
forcing them to listen to a scathing address, which was published in
full in the "Times." The law provided a penalty of from one to
fourteen years, and the judge sentenced sixteen of them to fourteen
years, and one to ten years, thus tempering justice with mercy.

Then one day McGivney sent an automobile, and Peter was brought to
Guffey's office, and a new plan was unfolded to him. They had
arrested another bunch of "wobblies" in the neighboring city of
Eldorado, and Peter was wanted there to repeat his testimony. It
happened that he knew one of the accused men, and that would be
sufficient to get his testimony in--his prize stuff about the
burning barns and the phosphorus bombs. He would be taken care of
just as thoroughly by the district attorney's office of Eldorado
County; or better yet, Guffey would write to his friend Steve
Ellman, who did the detective work for the Home and Fireside
Association, the big business organization of that city.

Peter hemmed and hawed. This was a pretty hard and dangerous kind of
work, it really played the devil with a man's nerves, sitting up
there in the hotel room all day, with nothing to do but smoke
cigarettes and imagine the "wobblies" throwing bombs at you. Also,
it wouldn't last very long; it ought to be better paid. Guffey
answered that Peter needn't worry about the job's lasting; if he
cared to give this testimony, he might have a joy ride from one end
of the country to the other, and everywhere he would live on the fat
of the land, and be a hero in the newspapers.

But still Peter hemmed and hawed. He had learned from the American
City "Times" how valuable a witness he was, and he ventured to
demand his price, even from the terrible Guffey; he stuck it out, in
spite of Guffey's frowns, and the upshot was that Guffey said, All
right, if Peter would take the trip he might have seventy-five
dollars a week and expenses, and Guffey would guarantee to keep him
busy for not less than six months.






Section 76





So Peter went to Eldorado, and helped to send eleven men to the
penitentiary for periods varying from three to fourteen years. Then
he went to Flagland, and testified in three different trials, and
added seven more scalps to his belt. By this time he got to realize
that the worst the Reds could do was to make faces at him and show
the teeth of trapped rats. He learned to take his profession more
easily, and would sometimes venture to go out for an evening's
pleasure without his guards. When he was hidden in the country he
would take long walks. regardless of the thousands of blood-thirsty
Reds on his trail.

It was while Peter was testifying in Flagland that a magic word was
flashed from Europe, and the whole city went mad with joy. Everyone,
from babies to old men, turned out on the streets and waved flags
and banged tin cans and shouted for peace with victory. When it was
learned that the newspapers had fooled them, they waited three days,
and then turned out and went thru the same performance again. Peter
was a bit worried at first, for fear the coming of peace might end
his job of saving the country; but presently he realized that there
was no need for concern, the smashing of the Reds was going on just
the same.

They had some raids on the Socialists while Peter was in Flagland,
and the detectives told him he might come along for the fun of it.
So Peter armed himself with a black-jack and a revolver, and helped
to rush the Socialist headquarters. The war was over, but Peter felt
just as military as if it were still going on; when he got the
little Jewish organizer of the local pent up in a corner behind his
desk and proceeded to crack him over the head, Peter understood
exactly how our boys had felt in the Argonne. When he discovered the
thrill of dancing on typewriter keys with his boots, he even
understood how the Huns had felt.

The detectives were joined by a bunch of college boys, who took to
that kind of thing with glee. Having got their blood up, they
decided they might as well clean out the Red movement entirely, so
they rushed a place called the "International Book-Shop," kept by a
Hawaiian. The proprietor dodged into the kitchen of a Chinese
restaurant next door, and put on an apron; but no one had ever seen
a Chinaman with a black mustache, so they fell on him and broke
several of the Chinaman's sauce-pans over his head. They took the
contents of the "International Book-Shop" into the back yard and
started a bon-fire with it, and detectives and college boys on a
lark joined hands and danced an imitation of the Hawaiian hula-hula
around the blaze.

So Peter lived a merry life for several months. He had one or two
journeys for nothing, because an obstinate judge refused to admit
that anything that any I. W. W. had ever said or done anywhere
within the last ten years was proper testimony to be introduced
against a particular I. W. W. on trial. But most judges were willing
to co-operate with the big business men in ridding the country of
the Red menace, and Peter's total of scalps amounted to over a
hundred before his time was up, and Guffey sent him his last cheek
and turned him loose.

That was in the city of Richport, and Peter having in an inside
pocket something over a thousand dollars in savings, felt that he
had earned a good time. He went for a stroll on the Gay White Way of
the city, and in front of a moving picture palace a golden-haired
girl smiled at him. This was still in the days of two and
three-fourths per cent beer, and Peter invited her into a saloon to
have a glass, and when he opened his eyes again it was dark, and he
had a splitting headache, and he groped around and discovered that
he was lying in a dark corner of an alleyway. Terror gripped his
heart, and he clapped his hand to the inside pocket where his wallet
had been, and there was nothing but horrible emptiness. So Peter was
ruined once again, and as usual it was a woman that had done it!

Peter went to the police-station, but they never found the woman, or
if they did, they divided with her and not with Peter. He threw
himself on the mercy of the sergeant at the desk, and succeeded in
convincing the sergeant that he, Peter, was a part of the machinery
of his country's defense, and the sergeant agreed to stand sponsor
for ten words to Guffey. So Peter sat himself down with a pencil and
paper, and figured over it, and managed to get it into ten words, as
follows: "Woman again broke any old job any pay wire fare." And it
appeared that Guffey must have sat himself down with a pencil and
paper and figured over it also, for the answer came back in ten
words, as follows: "Idiot have wired secretary chamber commerce will
give you ticket."

So Peter repaired forthwith to the stately offices of the Chamber of
Commerce, and the hustling, efficient young business-man secretary
sent his clerk to buy Peter a ticket and put him on the train. In a
time of need like that Peter realized what it meant to have the
backing of a great and powerful organization, with stately offices
and money on hand for all emergencies, even when they arose by
telegraph. He took a new vow of sobriety and decency, so that he
might always have these forces of law and order on his side.






Section 77





Peter was duly scolded, and put to work as an "office man" at his
old salary of twenty dollars a week. It was his duty to consult with
Guffey's many "operatives," to tell them everything he knew about
this individual Red or that organization of Reds. He would use his
inside knowledge of personalities and doctrines and movements to
help in framing up testimony, and in setting traps for too ardent
agitators. He could no longer pose as a Red himself, but sometimes
there were cases where he could do detective work without being
recognized; when, for example, there was a question of fixing a
juror, or of investigating the members of a panel.

The I. W. Ws. had been put out of business in American City, but the
Socialists were still active, in spite of prosecutions and
convictions. Also there was a new peril looming up; the returned
soldiers were coming back, and a lot of them were dissatisfied,
presuming to complain of their treatment in the army, and of the
lack of good jobs at home, and even of the peace treaty which the
President was arranging in Paris. They had fought to make the world
safe for democracy, and here, they said, it had been made safe for
the profiteers. This was plain Bolshevism, and in its most dangerous
form, because these fellows had learned to use guns, and couldn't
very well be expected to become pacifists right off the bat.

There had been a great labor shortage during the war, and some of
the more powerful unions had taken the general rise in prices as an
excuse for demanding higher wages. This naturally had made the
members of the Chamber of Commerce and the Merchants' and
Manufacturers' Association indignant, and now they saw their chance
to use these returned soldiers to smash strikes and to break the
organizations of the labor men. They proceeded to organize the
soldiers for this purpose; in American City the Chamber of Commerce
contributed twenty-five thousand dollars to furnish the club-rooms
for them, and when the trolley men went on strike the cars were run
by returned soldiers in uniform.

There was one veteran, a fellow by the name of Sydney, who objected
to this program. He was publishing a paper, the "Veteran's Friend,"
and began to use the paper to protest against his comrades acting as
what he called "scabs." The secretary of the Merchants' and
Manufacturers' Association sent for him and gave him a straight
talking to, but he went right ahead with his campaign, and so
Guffey's office was assigned the task of shutting him up. Peter,
while he could not take an active part in the job, was the one who
guided it behind the scenes. They proceeded to plant spies in
Sydney's office, and they had so many that it was really a joke;
they used to laugh and say that they trod on one another's toes.
Sydney was poor, and had not enough money to run his paper, so he
accepted any volunteer labor that came along. And Guffey sent him
plenty of volunteers--no less than seven operatives--one keeping
Sydney's books, another helping with his mailing, two more helping
to raise funds among the labor unions, others dropping in every day
or two to advise him. Nevertheless Sydney went right ahead with his
program of denouncing the Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association,
and denouncing the government for its failure to provide farms and
jobs for the veterans.

One of Guffey's "under cover operatives"--that was the technical
term for the Peter Gudges and Joe Angells--was a man by the name of
Jonas. This Jonas called himself a "philosophic anarchist," and
posed as the reddest Red in American City; it was his habit to rise
up in radical meetings and question the speaker, and try to tempt
him to justify violence and insurrection and "mass-action." If he
repudiated these ideas, then Jonas would denounce him as a
"mollycoddle," a "pink tea Socialist," a "labor faker." Other people
in the audience would applaud, and so Guffey's men would find out
who were the real Red sympathizers.

Peter had long suspected Jonas, and now he was sent to meet him in
Room 427 of the American House, and together they framed up a job on
Sydney. Jonas wrote a letter, supposed to come from a German
"comrade," giving the names of some papers in Europe to which the
editor should send sample copies of his magazine. This letter was
mailed to Sydney, and next morning Jonas wandered into the office,
and Sydney showed him the letter, and Jonas told him that these were
labor papers, and the editors would no doubt be interested to know
of the feelings of American soldiers since the war. Sydney sat down
to write a letter, and Jonas stood by his side and told him what to
write: "To my erstwhile enemies in arms I send fraternal greetings,
and welcome you as brothers in the new co-operative commonwealth
which is to be"--and so on, the usual Internationalist patter, which
all these agitators were spouting day and night, and which ran off
the ends of their pens automatically. Sydney mailed these letters,
and the sample copies of the magazine, and Guffey's office tipped
off the postoffice authorities, who held up the letters. The
book-keeper, one of Guffey's operatives, went to the Federal
attorney and made affidavit that Sydney had been carrying on a
conspiracy with the enemy in war-time, and a warrant was issued, and
the offices of the magazine were raided, the subscription-lists
confiscated, and everything in the rooms dumped out into the middle
of the floor.

So there was a little job all Peter's own; except that Jonas, the
scoundrel, claimed it for his, and tried to deprive Peter of the
credit! So Peter was glad when the Federal authorities looked the
case over and said it was a bum job, and they wouldn't monkey with
it. However, the evidence was turned over to District-attorney
Burchard, who wasn't quite so fastidious, and his agents made
another raid, and smashed up the office again, and threw the
returned soldier into jail. The judge fixed the bail at fifteen
thousand dollars, and the American City "Times" published the story
with scare-headlines all the way across the front page--how the
editor of the "Veteran's Friend" had been caught conspiring with the
enemy, and here was a photographic copy of his treasonable letter,
and a copy of the letter of the mysterious German conspirator with
whom he had been in relations! They spent more than a year trying
that editor, and although he was out on bail, Guffey saw to it that
he could not get a job anywhere in American City; his paper was
smashed and his family near to starvation.






Section 78





Peter had now been working faithfully for six or eight months, and
all that time he religiously carried out his promise to Guffey and
did not wink at a woman. But that is an unnatural life for a man,
and Peter was lonely, his dreams were haunted by the faces of Nell
Doolin and Rosie Stern, and even of little Jennie Todd. One day
another face came back to him, the face of Miss Frisbie, the little
manicurist who had spurned him because he was a Red. Now suddenly
Peter realized that he was no longer a Red! On the contrary, he was
a hero, his picture had been published in the American City "Times,"
and no doubt Miss Frisbie had seen it. Miss Frisbie was a good girl,
a straight girl, and surely all right for him to know!

So Peter went to the manicure parlor, and sure enough, there was the
little golden-haired lady; and sure enough, she had read all about
him, she had been dreaming that some day she might meet him
again--and so Peter invited her to go to a picture show. On the way
home they became very chummy, and before a week went by it was as if
they had been friends for life. When Peter asked Miss Frisbie if he
might kiss her, she answered coyly that he might, but after he had
kissed her a few times she explained to him that she was a
self-supporting woman, alone and defenseless in the world, and she
had nobody to speak for her but herself; she must tell him that she
had always been a respectable woman, and that she wanted him to know
that before he kissed her any more. And Peter thought it over and
decided that he had sowed his full share of wild oats in this life;
he was ready to settle down, and the next time he saw Miss Frisbie
he told her so, and before the evening was by they were engaged.

Then Peter went to see Guffey, and seated himself on the edge of the
chair alongside Guffey's desk, and twisted his hat in his hands, and
flushed very red, and began to stammer out his confession. He
expected to be received with a gale of ridicule; he was immensely
relieved when Guffey said that if Peter had really found a good girl
and wanted to marry her, he, Guffey, was for it. There was nothing
like the influence of a good woman, and Guffey much preferred his
operatives should be married men, living a settled and respectable
life. They could be trusted then, and sometimes when a woman
operative was needed, they had a partner ready to hand. If Peter had
got married long ago, he might have had a good sum of money in the
bank by now.

Peter ventured to point out that twenty dollars a week was not
exactly a marrying salary, in the face of the present high cost of
living. Guffey answered that that was true, and he would raise Peter
to thirty dollars right away--only first he demanded the right to
talk to Peter's fiancee, and judge for himself whether she
was worthy. Peter was delighted, and Miss Frisbie had a private and
confidential interview with Peter's boss. But afterwards Peter
wasn't quite so delighted, for he realized what Guffey had done.
Peter's future wife had been told all about Peter's weakness, and
how Peter's boss looked to her to take care of her husband and make
him walk the chalkline. So a week after Peter had entered the holy
bonds of matrimony, when he and Mrs. Gudge had their first little
family tiff, Peter suddenly discovered who was going to be top dog
in that family. He was shown his place once for all, and he took
it,--alongside that husband who described his domestic arrangements
by saying that he and his wife got along beautifully together, they
had come to an arrangement by which he was to have his way on all
major issues, and she was to have her way on all minor issues, and
so far no major issues had arisen.

But really it was a very good thing; for Gladys Frisbie Gudge was an
excellent manager, and set to work making herself a nest as busily
as any female beaver. She still hung on to her manicurist job, for
she had figured it out that the Red movement must be just about
destroyed by now, and pretty soon Peter might find himself without
work. In the evenings she took to house-hunting, and during her noon
hour, without consulting Peter she selected the furniture and the
wall-paper, and pretty nearly bought out the stock of a
five-and-ten-cent store to equip the beaver's nest.

Gladys Frisbie Gudge was a diligent reader of the fashion magazines,
and kept herself right up to the minute with the styles; also she
had got herself a book on etiquette, and learned it by heart from
cover to cover, and now she took Peter in hand and taught it to him.
Why must he always be a "Jimmie Higgins" of the "Whites?" Why
should he not acquire the vocabulary of an educated man, the arts
and graces of the well-to-do? Gladys knew that it is these
subtleties which determine your salary in the long run; so every
Sunday morning she would dress him up with a new brown derby and a
new pair of brown kid gloves, and take him to the Church of the
Divine Compassion, and they would listen to the patriotic sermon of
the Rev. de Willoughby Stotterbridge, and Gladys would bow her head
in prayer, and out of the corner of her eye would get points on
costumes from the lady in the next pew. And afterwards they would
join the Sunday parade, and Gladys would point out to Peter the
marks of what she called "gentility." In the evenings they would go
walking, and she would stop in front of the big shop-windows, or
take him into the hotel lobbies where the rich could be seen free of
charge. Peter would be hungry, and would want to go to a cheap
restaurant and fill himself up with honest grub; but Gladys, who had
the appetite of a bird, would insist on marching him into the
dining-room of the Hotel de Soto and making a meal upon a cup of
broth and some bread and butter--just in order that they might gaze
upon a scene of elegance and see bow "genteel" people ate their
food.






Section 79





And just as ardently as Gladys Frisbie Gudge adored the rich, so
ardently did she object to the poor. If you pinned her down to it,
she would admit that there had to be poor; there could not be
gentility, except on the basis of a large class of ungentility. The
poor were all right in their place; what Gladys objected to was
their presuming to try to get out of their place, or to criticise
their betters. She had a word by which she summed up everything that
she despised in the world, and that word was "common;" she used it
to describe the sort of people she declined to meet, and she used it
in correcting Peter's manners and his taste in hats. To be "common"
was to be damned; and when Gladys saw people who were indubitably
and inescapably "common," presuming to set themselves up and form
standards of their own, she took it as a personal affront, she
became vindictive and implacable towards them. Each and every one of
them became to her a personal enemy, an enemy to something far more
precious than her person, an enemy to the thing she aspired to
become, to her ideal.