Section 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.
