100%: the Story of a Patriot, Page 2

  "Wh-what?" gasped Peter, his voice almost fainting. "B-b-bomb?"

  "Out with it!" cried the man, and his face came close to Peter's,his teeth gleaming as if he were going to bite off Peter's nose."Out with it! Quick! Who helped you?"

  "My G-God!" said Peter. "I d-dunno what you mean."

  "You dare lie to me?" roared the man; and he shook Peter as if hemeant to jar his teeth out. "No nonsense now! Who helped you makethat bomb?"

  Peter's voice rose to a scream of terror: "I never saw no bomb! Idunno what you're talkin' about!"

  "You, come this way," said the man, and started suddenly toward thedoor. It might have been more convenient if he had turned Peteraround, and got him by the back of his coat-collar; but heevidently held Peter's physical being as a thing too slight forconsideration--he just kept his grip in the bosom of Peter's jacket,and half lifted him and half shoved him back out of the room, anddown a long passage to the back part of the building. And all thetime he was hissing into Peter's face: "I'll have it out of you!Don't think you can lie to me! Make up your mind to it, you're goingto come thru!"

  The man opened a door. It was some kind of storeroom, and he walkedPeter inside and slammed the door behind him. "Now, out with it!" hesaid. The man thrust into his pocket the printed circular, orwhatever it was--Peter never saw it again, and never found out whatwas printed on it. With his free hand the man grabbed one of Peter'shands, or rather one finger of Peter's hand, and bent it suddenlybackward with terrible violence. "Oh!" screamed Peter. "Stop!" Andthen, with a wild shriek, "You'll break it."

  "I mean to break it! mean to break every bone in your body! I'lltear your finger-nails out; I'll tear the eyes out of your head, ifI have to! You tell me who helped you make that bomb!"

  Peter broke out in a storm of agonized protest; he had never heardof any bomb, he didn't know what the man was talking about; hewrithed and twisted and doubled himself over backward, trying toevade the frightful pain of that pressure on his finger.

  "You're lying!" insisted Guffey. "I know you're lying. You're one ofthat crowd."

  "What crowd? Ouch! I dunno what you mean!"

  "You're one of them Reds, aint you?"

  "Reds? What are Reds?"

  "You want to tell me you don't know what a Red is? Aint you beengiving out them circulars on the street?"

  "I never seen the circular!" repeated Peter. "I never seen a word init; I dunno what it is."

  "You try to stuff me with that?"

  "Some woman gimme that circular on the street! Ouch! Stop! Jesus! Itell you I never looked at the circular!"

  "You dare go on lying?" shouted the man, with fresh access of rage."And when I seen you with them Reds? I know about your plots, I'mgoing to get it out of you." He grabbed Peter's wrist and began totwist it, and Peter half turned over in the effort to save himself,and shrieked again, in more piercing tones, "I dunno! I dunno!"

  "What's them fellows done for you that you protect them?" demandedthe other. "What good'll it do you if we hang you and let themescape?"

  But Peter only screamed and wept the louder.

  "They'll have time to get out of town," persisted the other. "If youspeak quick we can nab them all, and then I'll let you go. Youunderstand, we won't do a thing to you, if you'll come thru and tellus who put you up to this. We know it wasn't you that planned it;it's the big fellows we want."

  He began to wheedle and coax Peter; but then, when Peter answeredagain with his provoking "I dunno," he would give another twist toPeter's wrist, and Peter would yell, almost incoherent with terrorand pain--but still declaring that he could tell nothing, he knewnothing about any bomb.

  So at last Guffey wearied of this futile inquisition; or perhaps itoccurred to him that this was too public a place for the prosecutionof a "third degree"--there might be some one listening outside thedoor. He stopped twisting Peter's wrist, and tilted back Peter'shead so that Peter's frightened eyes were staring into his.

  "Now, young fellow," he said, "look here. I got no time for you justnow, but you're going to jail, you're my prisoner, and make up yourmind to it, sooner or later I'm going to get it out of you. It maytake a day, or it may take a month, but you're going to tell meabout this bomb plot, and who printed this here circular opposed toPreparedness, and all about these Reds you work with. I'm tellingyou now--so you think it over; and meantime, you hold your mouth,don't say a word to a living soul, or if you do I'll tear yourtongue out of your throat."

  Then, paying no attention to Peter's wailings, he took him by theback of the collar and marched him down the hall again, and turnedhim over to one of the policemen. "Take this man to the city jail,"he said, "and put him in the hole, and keep him there until I come,and don't let him speak a word to anybody. If he tries it, mash hismouth for him." So the policeman took poor sobbing Peter by the armand marched him out of the building.

  Section 5

  The police had got the crowds driven back by now, and had ropesacross the street to hold them, and inside the roped space wereseveral ambulances and a couple of patrol-wagons. Peter was shovedinto one of these latter, and a policeman sat by his side, and thebell clanged, and the patrol-wagon forced its way slowly thru thestruggling crowd. Half an hour later they arrived at the huge stonejail, and Peter was marched inside. There were no formalities, theydid not enter Peter on the books, or take his name or his fingerprints; some higher power had spoken, and Peter's fate was alreadydetermined. He was taken into an elevator, and down into a basement,and then down a flight of stone steps into a deeper basement, andthere was an iron door with a tiny slit an inch wide and six incheslong near the top. This was the "hole," and the door was opened andPeter shoved inside into utter darkness. The door banged, and thebolts rattled; and then silence. Peter sank upon a cold stone floor,a bundle of abject and hideous misery.

  These events had happened with such terrifying rapidity that PeterGudge had hardly time to keep track of them. But now he had plentyof time, he had nothing but time. He could think the whole thingout, and realize the ghastly trick which fate had played upon him.He lay there, and time passed; he had no way of measuring it, noidea whether it was hours or days. It was cold and clammy in thestone cell; they called it the "cooler," and used it to reduce thetemperature of the violent and intractable. It was a trouble-savingdevice; they just left the man there and forgot him, and his owntormented mind did the rest.

  And surely no more tormented mind than the mind of Peter Gudge hadever been put in that black hole. It was the more terrible, becauseso utterly undeserved, so preposterous. For such a thing to happento him, Peter Gudge, of all people--who took such pains to avoiddiscomfort in life, who was always ready to oblige anybody, to doanything he was told to do, so as to have'an easy time, asufficiency of food, and a warm corner to crawl into! What couldhave persuaded fate to pick him for the victim of this cruel prank;to put him into this position, where he could not avoid suffering,no matter what he did? They wanted him to tell something, and Peterwould have been perfectly willing to tell anything--but how could hetell it when he did not know it?

  The more Peter thought about it, the more outraged he became. It wasmonstrous! He sat up and glared into the black darkness. He talkedto himself, he talked to the world outside, to the universe whichhad forgotten his existence. He stormed, he wept. He got on his feetand flung himself about the cell, which was six feet square, andbarely tall enough for him to stand erect. He pounded on the doorwith his one hand which Guffey had not lamed, he kicked, and heshouted. But there was no answer, and so far as he could tell, therewas no one to hear.

  When he had exhausted himself, he sank down, and fell into a hauntedsleep; and then he wakened again, to a reality worse than anynightmare. That awful man was coming after him again! He was goingto torture him, to make him tell what he did not know! All the ogresand all the demons that had ever been invented to frighten theimagination of children were as nothing compared to the image of theman called Guffey, as Peter thought of him.

  Several ages aft
er Peter had been locked up, he heard soundsoutside, and the door was opened. Peter was cowering in the corner,thinking that Guffey had come. There was a scraping on the floor,and then the door was banged again, and silence fell. Peterinvestigated and discovered that they had put in a chunk of breadand a pan of water.

  Then more ages passed, and Peter's impotent ragings were repeated;then once more they brought bread and water, and Peter wondered, wasit twice a day they brought it, or was this a new day? And how longdid they mean to keep him here? Did they mean to drive him mad? Heasked these questions of the man who brought the bread and water,but the man made no answer, he never at any time spoke a word. Peterhad no company in that "hole" but his God; and Peter was not wellacquainted with his God, and did not enjoy a tete-a-tete with Him.

  What troubled Peter most was the cold; it got into his bones, andhis teeth were chattering all the time. Despite all his movingabout, he could not keep warm. When the man opened the door, hecried out to him, begging for a blanket; each time the man came,Peter begged more frantically than ever. He was ill, he had beeninjured in the explosion, he needed a doctor, he was going to die!But there was never any answer. Peter would lie there and shiver andweep, and writhe, and babble, and lose consciousness for a while,and not know whether he was awake or asleep, whether he was livingor dead. He was becoming delirious, and the things that werehappening to him, the people who were tormenting him, becamemonsters and fiends who carried him away upon far journeys, andplunged him thru abysses of terror and torment.

  And yet, many and strange as were the phantoms which Peter's sickimagination conjured up, there was no one of them as terrible as thereality which prevailed just then in the life of American City, andwas determining the destiny of a poor little man by the name ofPeter Gudge. There lived in American City a group of men who hadtaken possession of its industries and dominated the lives of itspopulation. This group, intrenched in power in the city's businessand also in its government, were facing the opposition of a new andrapidly rising power, that of organized labor, determined to breakthe oligarchy of business and take over its powers. The struggle ofthese two groups was coming to its culmination. They were like twomighty wrestlers, locked in a grip of death; two giants in combat,who tear up trees by the roots and break off fragments of cliffsfrom the mountains to smash in each other's skulls. And poorPeter--what was he? An ant which happened to come blundering acrossthe ground where these combatants met. The earth was shaken withtheir trampling, the dirt was kicked this way and that, and theunhappy ant was knocked about, tumbled head over heels, buried inthe debris; and suddenly--Smash!--a giant foot came down upon theplace where he was struggling and gasping!

  Section 6

  Peter had been in the "hole" perhaps three days, perhaps a week--hedid not know, and no one ever told him. The door was opened again,and for the first time he heard a voice, "Come out here."

  Peter had been longing to hear a voice; but now he shrunk terrifiedinto a corner. The voice was the voice of Guffey, and Peter knewwhat it meant. His teeth began to rattle again, and he wailed, "Idunno anything! I can't tell anything!"

  A hand reached in and took him by the collar, and he found himselfwalking down the corridor in front of Guffey. "Shut up!" said theman, in answer to all his wailings, and took him into a room andthrew him into a chair as if he had been a bundle of bedding, andpulled up another chair and sat down in front of Peter.

  "Now look here," he said. "I want to have an understanding with you.Do you want to go back into that hole again?"

  "N-n-no," moaned Peter.

  "Well, I want you to know that you'll spend the rest of your life inthat hole, except when you're talking to me. And when you're talkingto me you'll be having your arms twisted off you, and splintersdriven into your finger nails, and your skin burned withmatches--until you tell me what I want to know. Nobody's going tohelp you, nobody's going to know about it. You're going to stay herewith me until you come across."

  Peter could only sob and moan.

  "Now," continued Guffey, "I been finding out all about you, I gotyour life story from the day you were born, and there's no use yourtrying to hide anything. I know your part in this here bomb plot,and I can send you to the gallows without any trouble whatever. Butthere's some things I can't prove on the other fellows. They're thebig ones, the real devils, and they're the ones I want, so you'vegot a chance to save yourself, and you better be thankful for it."

  Peter went on moaning and sobbing.

  "Shut up!" cried the man. And then, fixing Peter's frightened gazewith his own, he continued, "Understand, you got a chance to saveyourself. All you got to do is to tell what you know. Then you cancome out and you won't have any more trouble. We'll take good careof you; everything'll be easy for you."

  Peter continued to gaze like a fascinated rabbit. And such a longingas surged up in his soul--to be free, and out of trouble, and takencare of! If only he had known anything to tell; if only there wassome way he could find out something to tell!

  Section 7

  Suddenly the man reached out and grasped one of Peter's hands. Hetwisted the wrist again, the sore wrist which still ached from thetorture. "Will you tell?"

  "I'd tell if I could!" screamed Peter. "My God, how can I?"

  "Don't lie to me," hissed the man. "I know about it now, you can'tfool me. You know Jim Goober."

  "I never heard of him!" wailed Peter.

  "You lie!" declared the other, and he gave Peter's wrist a twist.

  "Yes, yes, I know him!" shrieked Peter.

  "Oh, that's more like it!" said the other. "Of course you know him.What sort of a looking man is he?"

  "I--I dunno. He's a big man."

  "You lie! You know he's a medium-sized man!"

  "He's a medium-sized man."

  "A dark man?"

  "Yes, a dark man."

  "And you know Mrs. Goober, the music teacher?"

  "Yes, I know her."

  "And you've been to her house?"

  "Yes, I've been to her house."

  "Where is their house?"

  "I dunno--that is--"

  "It's on Fourth Street?"

  "Yes, it's on Fourth Street."

  "And he hired you to carry that suit-case with the bombs in it,didn't he?"

  "Yes, he hired me."

  "And he told you what was in it, didn't he?"

  "He--he--that is--I dunno."

  "You don't know whether he told you?"

  "Y-y-yes, he told me."

  "You knew all about the plot, didn't you?"

  "Y-y-yes, I knew."

  "And you know Isaacs, the Jew?"

  "Y-y-yes, I know him."

  "He was the fellow that drove the jitney, wasn't he?"

  "Y-y-yes, he drove the jitney."

  "Where did he drive it?"

  "H-h-he drove it everywhere."

  "He drove it over here with the suit-case, didn't he?"

  "Yes, he did."

  "And you know Biddle, and you know what he did, don't you?"

  "Yes, I know."

  "And you're willing to tell all you know about it, are you?"

  "Yes, I'll tell it all. I'll tell whatever you--"

  "You'll tell whatever you know, will you?"

  "Y-y-yes, sir."

  "And you'll stand by it? You'll not try to back out? You don't wantto go back into the hole?"

  "No, sir."

  And suddenly Guffey pulled from his pocket a paper folded up. It wasseveral typewritten sheets. "Peter Gudge," he said, "I been lookingup your record, and I've found out what you did in this case. You'llsee when you read how perfectly I've got it. You won't find a singlemistake in it." Guffey meant this for wit, but poor Peter was toofar gone with terror to have any idea that there was such a thing asa smile in the world.

  "This is your story, d'you see?" continued Guffey. "Now take it andread it."

  So Peter took the paper in his trembling hand, the one which had notbeen twisted lame. He tried to read it, but his hand sh
ook so thathe had to put it on his knee, and then he discovered that his eyeshad not yet got used to the light. He could not see the print. "Ic-c-can't," he wailed.

  And the other man took the paper from him. "I'll read it to you," hesaid. "Now you listen, and put your mind on it, and make sure I'vegot it all right."

  And so Guffey started to read an elaborate legal document: "I, PeterGudge, being duly sworn do depose and declare--" and so on. It wasan elaborate and detailed story about a man named Jim Goober, andhis wife and three other men, and how they had employed Peter to buyfor them certain materials to make bombs, and how Peter had helpedthem to make the bombs in a certain room at a certain given address,and how they had put the bombs in a suit-case, with a time clock toset them off, and how Isaacs, the jitney driver, had driven them toa certain corner on Main Street, and how they had left the suit-casewith the bombs on the street in front of the Preparedness Dayparade.

  It was very simple and clear, and Peter, as he listened, was almostready to cry with delight, realizing that this was all he had to doto escape from his horrible predicament. He knew now what he wassupposed to know; and he knew it. Why had not Guffey told him longago, so that he might have known it without having his fingers bentout of place and his wrist twisted off?

  "Now then," said Guffey, "that's your confession, is it?"

  "Y-y-yes," said Peter.

  "And you'll stand by it to the end?"

  "Y-y-yes, sir."

  "We can count on you now? No more nonsense?"