Section 45
Peter was now in a state of utter funk. He knew that he would have
to face McGivney, and he just couldn't do it. All he wanted was
Nell; and Nell, knowing that he would want her, had agreed to be in
the park at half past eight. She had warned him not to talk to a
soul until he had talked to her. Meantime she had gone home and
renewed her Irish roses with French rouge, and restored her energy
with coffee and cigarettes, and now she was waiting for him, smiling
serenely, as fresh as any bird or flower in the park that summer
morning. She asked him in even tones how things had gone, and when
Peter began to stammer that he didn't think he could face McGivney,
she proceeded to build up his courage once more. She let him put his
arms about her, even there in broad daylight; she whispered to him
to get himself together, to be a man, and worthy of her.
What had he to be afraid of, anyway? They hadn't a single thing on
him, and there was no possible way they could get anything. His
hands were clean all the way thru, and all he had to do was to stick
it out; he must make up his mind in advance, that no matter what
happened, he would never break down, he would never vary from the
story he had rehearsed with her. She made him go over the story
again; how on the previous evening, at the gathering in the I. W. W.
headquarters, they had talked about killing Nelse Ackerman as a
means of bringing the war to an end. And after the talk he had heard
Joe Angell whisper to Jerry Rudd that he had the makings of a bomb
already; he had a suit-case full of dynamite stored there in the
closet, and he and Pat McCormick had been planning to pull off
something that very night. Peter had gone out, but had watched
outside, and had seen Angell, Henderson, Rudd and Gus come out.
Peter had noticed that Angell's pockets were stuffed, and had
assumed that they were going to do their dynamiting, so he had
phoned to McGivney from the drug-store. By this phoning he had
missed the crowd, and then he had been ashamed and afraid to tell
McGivney, and had spent the night wandering in the park. But early
in the morning he had found the note, and had understood that it
must have been slipped into his pocket, and that the conspirators
wanted him to come in on their scheme. That was all, except for
three or four sentences or fragments of sentences which Peter had
overheard between Joe Angell and Jerry Rudd. Nell made him learn
these sentences by heart, and she insisted that he must not under
any circumstances try to remember or be persuaded to remember
anything further.
At last Peter was adjudged ready for the ordeal, and went to Room
427 in the American House, and threw himself on the bed. He was so
exhausted that once or twice he dozed; but then he would think of
some new question that McGivney might ask him, and would start into
wakefulness. At last he heard a key turn, and started up. There
entered one of the detectives, a man named Hammett. "Hello, Gudge,"
said he. "The boss wants you to get arrested."
"Arrested!" exclaimed Peter. "Good Lord!" He had a sudden swift
vision of himself shut up in a cell with those Reds, and forced to
listen to "hard luck stories."
"Well," said Hammett, "we're arresting all the Reds, and if we skip
you, they'll be suspicious. You better go somewhere right away and
get caught."
Peter saw the wisdom of this, and after a little thought he chose
the home of Miriam Yankovitch. She was a real Red, and didn't like
him; but if he was arrested in her home, she would have to like him,
and it would tend to make him "solid" with the "left wingers." He
gave the address to Hammett, and added, "You better come as soon as
you can, because she may kick me out of the house."
"That's all right," replied the other, with a laugh. "Tell her the
police are after you, and ask her to hide you."
So Peter hurried over to the Jewish quarter of the city, and knocked
on a door in the top story of a tenement house. The door was opened
by a stout woman with her sleeves rolled up and her arms covered
with soap-suds. Yes, Miriam was in. She was out of a job just now,
said Mrs. Yankovitch. They had fired her because she talked
Socialism. Miriam entered the room, giving the unexpected visitor a
cold stare that said as plain as words: "Jennie Todd!"
But this changed at once when Peter told her that he had been to I.
W. W. headquarters and found the police in charge. They had made a
raid, and claimed to have discovered some kind of plot; fortunately
Peter had seen the crowd outside, and had got away. Miriam took him
into an inside room and asked him a hundred questions which he could
not answer. He knew nothing, except that he had been to a meeting at
headquarters the night before, and this morning he had gone there to
get a book, and had seen the crowd and run.
Half an hour later came a bang on the door, and Peter dived under
the bed. The door was burst open, and he heard angry voices
commanding, and vehement protests from Miriam and her mother. To
judge from the sounds, the men began throwing the furniture this way
and that; suddenly a hand came under the bed, and Peter was grabbed
by the ankle, and hauled forth to confront four policemen in
uniform.
It was an awkward situation, because apparently these policemen
hadn't been told that Peter was a spy; the boobs thought they were
getting a real dynamiter! One grabbed each of Peter's wrists, and
another kept him and Miriam covered with a revolver, while the
fourth proceeded to go thru his pockets, looking for bombs. When
they didn't find any, they seemed vexed, and shook him and hustled
him about, and made clear they would be glad of some pretext to
batter in his head. Peter was careful not to give them such a
pretext; he was frightened and humble, and kept declaring that he
didn't know anything, he hadn't done any harm.
"We'll see about that, young fellow!" said the officer, as he
snapped the handcuffs on Peter's wrists. Then, while one of them
remained on guard with the revolver, the other three proceeded to
ransack the place, pulling out the bureau-drawers and kicking the
contents this way and that, grabbing every scrap of writing they
could find and jamming it into a couple of suit-cases. There were
books with red bindings and terrifying titles, but no bombs, and no
weapons more dangerous than a carving knife and Miriam's tongue. The
girl stood there with her black eyes flashing lightnings, and told
the police exactly what she thought of them. She didn't know what
had happened in the I. W. W. headquarters, but she knew that
whatever it was, it was a frame-up, and she dared them to arrest
her, and almost succeeded in her fierce purpose. However, the police
contented themselves with kicking over the washtub and its contents,
and took their departure, leaving Mrs. Yankovitch screaming in the
midst of a flood.
