_ CHAPTER VI. THE MAN'S WORD OF THE MAYOR OF MARION
Commander Lanigan had constituted himself the presiding officer of the assemblage that had been gathered under no special auspices and by no formal call. It was a flocking together of those uneasy persons who had been informing one another that they wanted to be shown! Mr. Lanigan's unconventional methods in the chair were tolerated because he had displayed much alacrity in putting the mob in the way of securing information from such high authority as the mayor of Marion. Chairman Lanigan's compelling methods in pumping this time-filler kept up the interest of the auditors.
"I belong to der Socialist party," stated Weisner.
"We don't want no Boche speeches!" warned a voice.
In his absorption in affairs, Lanigan was still hanging on to the captured red necktie. He noted that fact and held the danger signal aloft. "I don't approve of this color at this time," he remarked. "But when I have seen it waved in times past I have known that it meant a blast going off or a train coming on, and I have never taken foolish chances. Does the objecting gent down there in the corner need any further instruction from here, or shall I come down and whisper in his ear?"
Silence assured him and again he ordered Mr. Weisner to ask his question.
The querist ceased from showing deference to the volunteer in the chair; Weisner turned his back on Lanigan and addressed all in hearing, shaking his fist over his head: "Who tells me dis vhat I don'd know? Does Karl Trimbach his seat haf in der State House vhere der Socialists haf elected him?"
"If he has been elected, sure he'll have his seat," declared Lanigan, loyally. "That's the way we do things in this country! Why shouldn't he have his seat?"
"Den vhere--vhere is dot zertificate dot should show to Karl Trimbach dot he shall valk into der State House und sit on his seat? He don't get it. Why don'd dey send it?" Weisner bellowed his questions. He threshed his arms wildly about him.
"This is no time to be starting anything, Weisner! Don't stand there and be a Dutch windmill--be an American citizen! Soothe yourself!"
Another gentleman arose. He was distinctly Hibernian. He wore an obtrusive ribbon-knot of green, white, and yellow, the colors of the flag of the Irish Republic. "Lanigan, ye may not be able to reply satisfact'rily to th' questions o' the sour-krauters, but when I ask ye whether or not the Hon'rable Danyel O'Donnell, riprisent'thive-ilict, put in that high office be th' votes o' th' Marion pathrits of a free Ireland, takes his sate, what does th' blood o' yer race say to me?"
Lanigan blinked and hesitated. He felt the sudden Celtic surging of a natural impulse to run with his kind, to swing the cudgel valiantly for the cause, and to ask questions after the shindy was over.
"You know th' principles o' th' Hon'rable O'Donnell," insisted the speaker in loud tones. "Tis his intint to raise his voice in th' halls o' state and shout ear-rly and late, 'Whativer it is ye're about, gents, it all may be very well, but what will ye be doing for the cause o' free Ireland?' That's th' kind of a hero we're putting in th' State House en the hill."
"Putting a pest there, ye mean!" returned Lanigan.
"Is that the blood o' yer race speaking?"
"No, it's the common sense up here," declared the commander, tapping his knuckles against the side of his head. "Look, here, Mulcahy, my man! You're spouting about a subject that's too big for me to understand or you to explain. And that's why you're muddling yourself and mixing up the minds of others with your questions. I ask you no questions. I'm going to tell you something--and it's so! If the kids in your family was down with the measles, and the missus was all snarled up with the tickdoolooroo and you wasn't feeling none too well yourself, what with a hold-over, a black eye, and a lot o' bumps, what would you--Hold on! I say, I ask no questions! I know the answer. If Tommy O'Rourke came howling and whooping into your back door and asked you to go out and shin up a tree and fetch down his tomcat, ye'd tell Tommy to bounce along and mind his own matters till ye'd settled your own--and if he didn't go you'd kick him out."
"I'm discussing th' rights and wrongs of a suffering people."
"And playing safe for yourself because the subject is so big--and putting others in wrong because they can't settle all the troubles of the universe offhand to suit ye! My family is America, Mulcahy! It ought to be yours, first, last, and all the time. But we've got our own aches to mind, right now! And the way I'm putting it, a plain man can understand. If the tomcat don't know enough to come down all by himself, leave him be up there till the doctor tells us we can be out and about."
Weisner put his demand again and Mulcahy made the affair a vociferous duet; other men were on their feet, shouting. But a top sergeant has a voice of his own and a manner to go with the voice: Lanigan yelled the chorus into silence.
While he was engaged in this undertaking a diversion at the door assisted him. The crowd parted. Men shouted, pleading, "Make way for the mayor!"
Morrison came up the aisle toward the platform, Blanchard at his heels.
There were cheers--plenty of them!
But sibilantly, steadily, ominously the derogatory hisses were threaded with the frank clamor of welcome; hisses whose sources were concealed.
The mayor ran up the steps of the platform and marched to Lanigan, doffing the silk hat and extending his hand cordially.
With his forearm the commander scrubbed off the sweat that was streaming down into his eyes. "It's been like hauling a seventy-five into action with mules, Your Honor! For the love o' Mike, shoot!"
The hisses continued along with the applause when Stewart faced the throng.
Lanigan leaped off the platform, not bothering with the stairs. "I'm going to wade through this grass," he yelped. "God pity the rattlesnake I locate!"
A shrill voice from somewhere dared to taunt, "Pipe the dude!"
Morrison smiled. He had unbuttoned his top-coat, and his evening garb, in that congress of the rough and ready, made him as conspicuous as a bird of paradise in a rookery. "I seem to be double-crossed by my scenic effects, Blanchard," he stated in an aside to the magnate, who had stepped upon the platform because that elevation seemed safer than a position on the floor. "We must fix that! Furthermore, it's hot up here!" He pulled off his top-coat. He realized that the full display of his formal dress only aggravated the situation. In St. Ronan's mill he mingled with men in his shirt-sleeves. He turned and saw Nicolai Krylovensky in the chair where Lanigan had thrust him. There was no other chair on the platform. Stewart hastily laid the coat across the alien's knees. "Keep 'em out of the dirt for me, will you, brother? I'm notional about good cloth!" He pushed his silk hat into the man's hand and then he stripped off the claw-hammer and white waistcoat, piled them upon the overcoat; and whirled to face his audience.
All eyes were engaged with the mayor.
Krylovensky, unobserved, let the garments slip to the floor and dropped the hat.
"Now, boys, we'll get down to business together in an understanding way! What's it all about?" Stewart invited, cheerily.
"Just a minute!" cried Lanigan, heading off all the possibilities that were threatening by a general powwow. "I've just been up against the bunch here, Mister Mayor, and they're trying to turn it into a congress-of-nations debate, and it ain't nothing of the kind. And I know you're in a hurry, and we don't expect a speech!"
"You won't get one!" retorted the mayor, tartly. "I have dropped down here merely in a business way to find out what's wanted of me as the executive head of this city."
"Your Honor, I have been preaching the notion of telling the truth to-night, and I'm going to come across with something about myself," confessed Lanigan, manfully. "I've gone off half cocked twice to-day. I've been thinking it over and I realize it. In your office I grabbed in on a word or two you said and took it for granted that you were going to lift the whole load of the people's case up at the State House and stop anything being put over on the people, whatever it is the Big Boys are planning. But you didn't promise me to do it."
"I did not, Joe!"
"And I've been telling this gang that you did promise me and that I'd get you down here to back up my word. I don't ask you to back up my lie. You're too square a proposition, Mayor Morrison!"
"After that man-talk, Joe, I've just naturally got to make a little of my own. And the boys can't help seeing that both you and I mean all right. I did give you good reasons for jumping at conclusions as you say you did, Joe! Understand that, boys! But my head isn't swelled to the extent that I believe I can settle everything.
"Now that I'm down here I'll say this. I'll do everything I can, as mayor of Marion, to straighten things out to-night so that the people won't be left guessing. Guessing starts gabble and gabble starts trouble! Don't do any more shouting about 'state steal,' and don't allow others to shout. Most of us don't know what it means, anyway, and others don't care, so long as it gives 'em a chance to stir up riots and grab off something for themselves under cover of the trouble. There are a lot of outsiders in this country, standing ready to make just such plays! Don't let your ears be scruffed by mischief-makers, boys. Let's have our city come through with a clean name! I'm going to do my part as best I can. But you've all got to do yours--understand that!" He smacked his fist down into his palm.
"Do you bromise me dot Karl Trimbach gets dot seat?" boomed Mr. Weisner.
"The same question goes as to th' Hon'rable Danyel O'Donnell," said Adherent Mulcahy.
"I cannot promise."
Then sounded that voice of the unknown troublemaker, sneeringly shrill, the senseless, passion-provoking common, human fife of the mob spirit, persistently present and consistently cowardly in concealment. "Of course you don't promise anything to the people! Dudes stand together! Go back and dance!"
Lanigan began to claw a passage for himself.
"Stand where you are, Joe!" commanded Stewart. "Don't flatter a fool by making any account of him!"
"Those kinds of fools are going to make trouble in this city before the night is over, Your Honor!"
"That's the trouble with politics," declared Mulcahy. "Ye can't get a square promise in politics fr'm th' Big Boys!"
Morrison put up a monitory forefinger.
"But you can get a square promise from me in business--and I can see that it's time to give that promise and make it specific. That's the way a business contract must be drawn. Hear me, then! It's the business of this city to see that no man abuses its good name or its hospitality, no matter whether he's a resident or comes here because it's the capital of the state. And I'll see to it that the men up at the State House end understand that they must play fair for the good of all of us. You must understand the same at this end. I'll take no sides in politics. The men who are entitled to their seats in this legislature will have those seats. I'm only one man, boys! But one man who is perfectly honest and is depending on the right will find the whole law of the land behind him--and wise men and good men have attended to the law. Will you take my word and let it stand that way between us?"
A chorused yell of assent greeted him.
"All right! It's a contract! Mind your end of it!"
He turned sharply from them and faced Krylovensky. The alien leaped up and kicked the mayor's garments to one side.
"Say! See here, my friend!" expostulated Stewart.
"Down with rulers!" screamed the man. "I'll be a martyr, but not a hat-rack!"
The mayor walked toward the frantic person. "I'm sorry! I was thoughtless!"
"You and your kind think of nothing but yourselves. You try to make slaves of free citizens of the world!" Krylovensky had been buffeted and had controlled himself. But the fires of his narrow fanaticism were now whirling in his brain; sitting there on high before the eyes of his fellows, the men to whom he had been preaching the doctrines of soviet sovereignty--the supremacy of the people--he had just suffered what his distorted views held as the enormity of ignominy; he had been used as a clothes-tree for discarded garments. Used by a ruler!
When Morrison, not realizing that the man had become little short of a maniac, stooped to pick up the garments Krylovensky dove forward and struck the mayor's face with open hand. "Now throw me to your dogs! I'll die a martyr to my cause!" he squalled.
The mayor snapped upright and laid restraining hands on the man who was threatening him with doubled fists.
A roaring mob came milling toward the platform.
"I'll be a martyr!" insisted the alien.
"I can't humor you to that extent," replied Morrison, in the tone of a father denying indulgence in the case of a wilful child.
He got between the man and the mob. He held Krylovensky from him with one hand and put up the other protestingly, authoritatively.
"No man that's a real man lets another man bang him in the face," declared Lanigan with fury.
"That's a nice point, to be argued later by us when things are quieter, Joe. Stand back!"
"I'm going to kill him even if you haven't got the grit to do it." Lanigan was showing the bitter disappointment of a worshiper kicking among the fragments of a shattered idol.
"I won't allow you to do that, Joe! A dead man can't answer questions. Stand back, all of you, I say!" He twisted the grip of his hand in the man's collar until Krylovensky ceased his struggles.
"Do you work in this city?" asked the mayor.
"He works in the Conawin," shouted Lanigan. "And I shook him down this evening for a gun, a knob-knocker, and a lot of red flags."
Blanchard was backed against the big Stars and Stripes, apprehensively seeking refuge from the crowd massing on the platform. Morrison caught his eye. "Seems to be one of your patriots, Blanchard! Shall I hand him over to you?"
"I never saw the renegade before."
"I'm sorry you don't get into your mill the way I do into mine. I'd like to know something about this gentleman who doesn't show any inclination to speak for himself."
"I'm not afraid to speak," declared the captive, all cautiousness burned out of him by the fires of his martyr zeal. "I'm an ambassador of the grand and good Soviet Government of Russia."
The mayor preserved his serenity.
"Ah, I think I understand! One of the estimable gentlemen who have been coming to us by the way of the Mexican border of late! When you picked up such a good command of our language, my friend, it's too bad you didn't pick up a better understanding of our country. I haven't any time just now to give you an idea of it, sir. I'll have a talk with you to-morrow."
The mayor had seen Officer Rellihan at the door of the hall. As a satellite, Rellihan was constant in his attendance on his controlling luminary in public places, even though the luminary issued no special orders to that effect; Morrison's intended visit to the hall had been quickly advertised down-town.
Stewart glanced about him and found Rellihan at his elbow.
"Here's the honorable ambassador of Soviet Russia, Rellihan," said his chief. "Take him along with you, keep harm from him on the way, and see that he is well lodged for the night in a place where enemies can't get at him."
"I know just the right place, Your Honor," stated the policeman, pulling his club from his belt and waving it to part the throng.
Morrison broke in upon Lanigan's mumbled threats. "Mind your manners, Joe!"
"But he hit you!"
The mayor picked up his garments, one by one, inspected them, and dusted them with his palm; then he pulled them on. The crowd gazed at him.
"He hit you!" Lanigan insisted, bellicosely. "When a man hits me, I lick him!"
"You're a good fighter, Joe," agreed His Honor, running his forearm about his silk hat to smooth the nap. "But let me tell you something! Unless you put yourself in better shape there'll be a fellow some day that you'll want to lick, and you won't be able to lick him, and you'll be almighty sorry because you can't turn the trick."
"Show me the feller, Mister Mayor!"
"Go look in the glass, Joe."
"Lick myself--is that what you mean, sir?"
"Sure! If you can do it when it ought to be done, you'll have the right to feel rather proud of yourself."
He invited Blanchard with a side wag of his head and led the way from the hall.
"Morrison, let me say this," blurted the mill magnate, when they were on their way in the limousine. "By reason of this people-side-partner notion of yours, you have gone to work and got yourself into an infernal fix. How do you expect to make good that promise?"
"I suppose I did sound rather boastful, but I had to put it strong. A mealy-mouthed promise wouldn't hold them in line!"
"But that promise only encourages such muckers in the belief that they have a right to demand, to boss their betters, to call for accountings and concessions. You have put the devil into 'em!"
"I hope not! Faith in a contract--that's what I tried to put into 'em. They'll wait and let me operate!"
"Operate! You're one man against the whole state government and you're defying single-handed the political powers! You can't deliver the goods! That gang down-town will wait about so long and then 'twill be hell to pay to-night!"
Morrison had found his pipe in his overcoat pocket. He was soothing himself with a smoke on the way toward the Corson mansion.
"But why worry so much when the night is still young?" he queried, placidly. _