II
And then to the hangers-on in the shop there was another
addition--an Irish working man named Reilly. The Irishman was a
peculiar problem in the war--the thorn of the Allied conscience, the
weak spot in their armour, the broken link in their chain of
arguments; and so every German was happy when an Irishman entered
the room. This fellow Reilly came to have a punctured tyre mended,
and stopped to tell what he thought about the world-situation. Old
man Kumme slapped him over the back, and shook him by the hand, and
told him he was the right sort, and to come again. So Reilly took to
hanging about; he would pull from his pocket a paper called
Hibernia, and Kummc would produce from under the counter a paper
called Germania, and the two would denounce "perfidious Albion" by
the hour. Jimmie, bending over the straightening of a sprocket,
would look up and grin, and exclaim, "You bet!"
It was winter-time, and darkness came early, and Jimmie was doing
his work by electric light in the back of the shop, when Reilly came
and mysteriously drew him into a corner. Did he really mean what he
said about hatred of war, and willingness to fight against it? The
Empire Shops were now turning out thousands of shell-casings every
day, to be used in the murder of men. It was useless to try to start
a strike, there were so many spies at work, and they fired every man
who opened his mouth; if an outsider tried it they would send him to
jail--for, of course, old Granitch had the city government in his
vest-pocket.
All this was an old story to Jimmie; but now the Irishman went on to
a new proposition. There was a way to stop the work of the Empire, a
way that had been tried in other places, and had worked. Reilly knew
where to get some T.N.T.--an explosive many times more powerful than
dynamite. They could make bombs out of the steel tubing of bicycles,
and Jimmie, knowing the Empire Shops as he did, could find a way to
get in and arrange matters. There was big money in it--the fellows
who did that job might live on Easy Street the rest of their lives.
Jimmie was stunned. He had been perfectly sincere in classifying
German spies with sea-serpents; and here was a sea-serpent right
before his eyes, raising his head through the floor of Kumme's
bicycle-shop!
Jimmie answered that he had never had anything to do with that sort
of thing. That wasn't the way to stop war; that was only making more
war. The other began to argue with him, showing that it wouldn't
hurt anybody; the explosion would take place at night, and all that
would be damaged would be Abel Granitch's purse. But Jimmie was
obdurate; fortunately one thing that had been incessantly pounded
into his head at the local was that the movement could not use
conspiracy, it must work by open propaganda, winning the minds and
consciences of men.
First the Irishman became angry, and called him a coward and a
molly-coddle. Then he became suspicious, and wanted to know if
Jimmie would sell him out to the Empire. Jimmie laughed at this; he
had no love for Abel Granitch--the damned old skunk might do his own
spying. Jimmie would simply have nothing to do with the matter, one
way or the other. And so the project was dropped; but the little
machinist was moved to keep his eyes open after that, and he made
note of how many Germans, all strangers, were making the shop a
meeting-place; also the quick intimacy which had developed between
the Irishman and Heinrich, Kumme's nephew, who held himself so
straight and had no back to his head.
Matters came to a climax with startling suddenness--the explosion
of a bomb, though not the kind which Jimmie was expecting. It was an
evening in February, just as he was about to close up, when he saw
the door of the shop open, and four men walk in. They came with a
peculiar, business-like air, two of them to the puzzled Jimmie, and
the other two to Kumme. One turned back the lapel of his coat,
showing a large gold star, and announcing, "I am an agent of the
government, and you are under arrest." And at the same time the
other seized Jimmie's arms and slipped a pair of handcuffs over his
wrists. He passed his hands over his prisoner, a ceremony known as
"frisking"; and at the same time the other men had seized Kumme.
Jimmie saw two more men enter at the rear door of the shop, but they
had nothing to do, for both Jimmie and Kumme had been too much
startled to make any move to escape.
They were led out to an automobile, shoved in and whirled away. No
questions were answered, so after a bit they stopped asking
questions and sat still, reflecting upon all the sins they had ever
committed in their lives, and upon the chances of these sins being
known to the police.
