 CHAPTER 22 The new movement was growing rapidly and with a surprising catholicity of range. Already it included lawyers and doctors, chauffeurs, butchers, clergymen, clerks of all sorts, truck gardeners from the surrounding county, railroad employees, and some of the strikers from the mills, men who had obeyed their union order to quit work but had obeyed it unwillingly, men who resented bitterly the invasion of the ranks of labor by the lawless element which was formenting trouble. Dan had joined. On the day that Lily received her engagement ring from Louis Acres, one of the cards of the new vigilance committee was being inspected with cynical amusement by two clerks in a certain suite of offices in the Searing Building. They studied it with interest while the man who had brought it stood by. Where'd you pick it up, Cusick? One of our men brought it into the store, said you might want to see it. The three men bent over it. The Myers House Cleaning Company had a suite of three rooms. During the day two stenographers, both men, sat before machines and made a pretense of business at such times as the door opened or when an occasional client seeing the name came in to inquire for rates. At such times the clerks were politely regretful. The firm's contracts were all they could handle from months ahead. There was a constant ebb and flow of men in the office, presumably professional cleaners. They came and went or sat along the walls, waiting. A large percentage were foreigners but the clerks proved to be accomplished linguists. They talked with more or less fluency with croats, serbs, poles, and slabs. There was a supply room off the office, a room filled with pales and brushes, soap, and ladders. But there was a great safe also, and its compartments were filled with pamphlets and many tongues, a supply constantly depleted and yet never diminishing. Workmen carrying out the pales of honest labor carried them loaded down with the literature it was their only business to circulate. Thus openly and yet with infinite caution was spread the doctrine of no God, of no government, and of no church, of the confiscation of private property, of strikes and unrest, of revolution, rape, arson, and pillage. And around this social cancer the city worked and played. Its theatres were crowded, its expensive shops, its hotels. Two classes of people were spending money prodigally, women with shawls over their heads, women who in all their peasant lives had never owned a hat, drove in automobiles to order their winter supply of coal, and vast amounts of liquors were being bought by the foreign element against the approaching prohibition law and stored in untidy cellars. On the other hand, the social life of the city was gay with reaction from war. The newspapers were filled with the summer plans of the wealthy and with predictions of lavish entertaining in the fall. Among the list of debutants Lily's name always appeared. And in between the upper and the nether millstone were being ground the professional and salaried men with families, the women clerks, the vast army who asked nothing but the right to work and live. They went through their days doggedly with little anxious lines around their eyes, suffering a thousand small deprivations, bewildered, tortured with apprehension of tomorrow, and yet patiently believing that as things could not be worse, they must soon commence to improve. It's bound to clear up soon, said Joe Wilkinson over the back fence one night late in June to Willie Carman. Joe supported a large family of younger brothers and sisters in the house next door and was employed in a department store. I figure it's this way. Both sides need each other, don't they? Something like marriage, you know? It'll all be over in six months. Only I'm thanking heaven just now at summer because our kids are hell on shoes. I hope so, said Willie Carman. What are you doing over there anyhow? Wait and see, said Joe cryptically. If you think you're going to be the only central park in this vicinity you've got to think again. He hesitated and glanced around, but the small Wilkinsons were searching for worms in the overturned garden mold. How's Edith? He asked. She's all right, Joe. Seeing anybody yet? Not yet. In a day or so she'll be downstairs. You might tell her I've been asking about her. There was something in Joe's voice that caught Willie Carman's attention. He thought about Joe a great deal that night. Joe was another one who must never know about Edith's trouble. The boy had little enough and if he had built a dream about Edith Boyd he must keep his dream. He was rather discouraged that night, was Willie Carman, and he began to think that dreams were the best things in life. They were sort of sanctuary to which one fled to escape realities. Perhaps no reality was ever as beautiful as one's dream of it. Lily had passed very definitely out of his life. Sometimes during his rare leisure he walked to Cardew Way through the warm night and passed the doil house, but he never saw her and because it did not occur to him that she might want to see him he never made an attempt to call. Always after those futile excursions he was inclined along silences and only jinx could have told how many hours he sat in his room at night in the second hand easy chair he had bought, pipe in hand and eyes on nothing in particular, lost in a dream world where the fields bore a strong resemblance to the parade ground of an army camp and through which field he and Lily wandered like children, hand in hand. But he had many things to think of. So grave were the immediate problems of food and rent, of Mrs. Boyd and Edith, that a little of his fine frenzy as to the lurking danger of revolution departed from him. The meetings in the back room at the pharmacy took on a political bearing and Hendricks was generally the central figure. The ward felt that Mr. Hendricks was already elected and called him Mr. Mayor. At the same time the steel strike pursued a course of comparative calm. At friendship and at Baxter there had been rioting and a fatality or two, but the state constabulary had the situation well in hand. On a Sunday morning Willie Cameron went out to Baxter on the trolley and came home greatly comforted. The cool-eyed efficiency of the state police reassured him. He compared them, disciplined, steady, calm with the calmness of their dangerous calling, with the rabble of foreigners who shuffled along the sidewalks and he felt that his anxiety had been rather absurd. He was still making speeches and now and then his name was mentioned in the newspapers. Mrs. Boyd, now mostly confined to her room, spent much time in searching for these notices and then in painfully cutting them out and pasting them in a book. On those days when there was nothing about him she felt thwarted and was liable to sharp remarks on newspapers in general and on those of the city in particular. Then, just as he began to feel that the strike would pass off like other strikes and that Doyle and his crowd having plowed the field for sedition would find it planted with healthier grain, he had a talk with Edith. She came downstairs for the first time one Wednesday evening early in July, the scars on her face now only faint red blotches and he placed her, a blanket over her knees in the small parlor. Dan had brought her down and had made a real effort to be kind but his suspicion of the situation made it difficult for him to dissemble and soon he went out. Ellen was on the doorstep and through the open window came the shrieks of numerous little Wilkinsons wearing out expensive shoe leather on the brick pavement. They sat in the dusk together. Edith very quiet, Willie Cameron talking with a sort of determined optimism. After a time he realized that she was not even listening. I wish you'd closed the window, she said at last, those crazy Wilkinson kids make such a racket. I want to tell you something. All right. He closed the window and stood looking down at her. Are you sure you want me to hear it? He asked gravely. Yes, it is not about myself. I've been reading the newspapers while I've been shut away up there, Willie. It kept me from thinking. And if things are as bad as they say I'd better tell you, even if I get into trouble doing it. I will, probably. Murder's nothing to them. Who are them? You get the police to search the Meyers house cleaning company in the searing building. Don't you think you'd better tell me more than that? The police will want something definite to go on. She hesitated. I don't know very much. I met somebody there once or twice, at night. And I know there's a telephone hidden in the drawer of the desk in the back room. I swore not to tell, but that doesn't matter now. Tell them to examine the safe, too. I don't know what's in it. Dynamite, maybe. What makes you think the company is wrong? A hidden telephone isn't much to go on. When a fellow's had a drink or two he's likely to talk, she said briefly. And before that sordid picture Willie Cameron was silent. After a time he said, You won't tell me the name of the man you met there. No, don't ask me, Willie. That's between him and me. He got up and took a restless turn or two about the little rooms. Edith's problem had begun to obsess him. Not for long would it be possible to keep her condition from Mrs. Boyd. He was desperately at a loss for some course to pursue. Have you ever thought, he said at last, that this man, whoever he is, ought to marry you? Edith's face set like a flint. I don't want to marry him, she said. I wouldn't marry him if he was the last man on earth. He knew very little of Edith's past. In his own mind he had fixed on Louis Acres, but he could not be sure. I won't tell you his name, either, Edith added shrewishly. Then her voice softened. I will tell you this, Willie, she said wistfully. I was a good girl until I knew him. I'm not saying that to let myself out. It's the truth. You're a good girl now, he said gravely. Some time after he got his hat and came in to tell her he was going out. I'll tell what you've told me to Mr. Hendricks, he said, and we may go on and have a talk with the chief of police. If you are right it may be important. After that for an hour or two Edith sat alone, save when Alan now and then looked in to see if she was comfortable. Edith's mind was chaotic. She had spoken on impulse, a good impulse of that. But suppose they trapped Louis Acres in the searing building. Alan went now and then to the Cardew house and brought back with her the news of the family. At first she had sternly refused to talk about the Cardews to Edith but the days in the sick room had been long and monotonous and Edith's jealousy of Lily had taken the form when she could talk of incessant questions. So Edith knew that Louis Acres had been the cause of Lily's leaving home and called her a poor thing in her heart. Quite lately she had heard that if Lily was not already engaged she probably would be soon. Now her motives were mixed and her emotions confused. She had wanted to tell Lily Cameron what she knew but she wanted Lily to marry Louis Acres. She wanted that terribly. Then Lily would be out of the way and Lily was not like Dan. He did not seem to think her forever lost. He had always been thoughtful but lately he had been very tender with her. Men did strange things sometimes. He might be willing to forget after a long time. She could board the child out somewhere if it lived. Sometimes they didn't live. But if they arrested Louis Lily Cardew would fling him aside like an old shoe. She closed her eyes. That opened a vista of possibilities she could not face. She stopped in her mother's room on her slow progress upstairs, moved to sudden pity for the frail life now wearing to its clothes. If that were life she did not want it with its drab days and butyl effort, its incessant deprivations, its hands gnarled with work that got nowhere, its greatest blessings sleep and forgetfulness. She wondered why her mother did not want to die, to get away. I'll soon be able to look after you a bit, mother, she said from the doorway. How's the pain down your arm? Bring me the mucilla, G.D., requested Mrs. Boyd. She was propped up in bed and surrounded by newspapers. I found Lily's name again. I've got fourteen now. Where's the scissors? Eternity was such a long time. Did she know? Could she know and still sit among her pillows, snipping? I wonder, said Mrs. Boyd, did anybody feed jinx? That Ellen is so saving that she grudges him a bone. He looks all right, said Edith, and went on up to bed. Maybe the Lord did that for people when they reached a certain point. Maybe he took away the fear of death by showing after years of it that life was not so valuable after all. She remembered her own facing of eternity and her dread of what lay beyond. She had prayed first because she wanted to have some place on the other side. She had prayed to be received young and whole and without child. And her mother? Then she had a flash of intuition. There was something greater than life, and that was love. Her mother was up held by love. That was what the eternal cutting and pasting meant. She was lavishing all the love of her starved days on Willie Cameron. She was facing death because his hand was close by to hold to. For just a moment, sitting on the edge of her bed, Edith Boyd saw what love might be and might do. She held out both hands in the darkness, but no strong and friendly class caught them close. If she could only have him to cling to, to steady her wavering feet along the gray path that stretched ahead, years and years of it, youth, middle age, old age. I'd only drag him down, she muttered bitterly. Willie Cameron, meanwhile, had gone to Mr. Hendricks with Edith's story, and, together, late that evening, they saw the Chief of Police at his house. Both Willie Cameron and Mr. Hendricks advocated putting a watch on the offices of the Myers House Cleaning Company, and thus ultimately getting the heads of the organization. But the Chief was unwilling to delay. Every day means more of their infernal propaganda, he said. And if this girl's telling a straight story, the thing to do is to get the outfit now. Those clerks, for instance, will get some information out of them. That sort always squeals. They're a cheap lot. Going to ball it up, of course, Mr. Hendricks said disgustedly on the way home. Won't wait because if Acres gets in, he's out and he wants to make a big strike first. I'll drop in tomorrow evening and tell you what's happened. He came into the pharmacy the next evening with a bundle of red-bound pamphlets under his arm and a look of disgust on his face. What did I tell you, Cameron? He demanded breathing heavily. Yes, they got them all right. Got a safe full of stuff so inflammable that since I've read some of it I'm ready to blow up myself. It's worse than that first lot I showed you. They got the two clerks and a half dozen foreigners, too. And that's all they got. They won't talk. Talk? Sure they'll talk. They say they're employed by the Myers Housecleaning Company, that they never saw the inside of the vault and they're squealing louder than two pigs under a gate about false arrest. They'll have to let them go, son. Here, you can do most everything. Can you eat Croatian? No? Well, here's something in English to cut your wisdom teeth on. Overthrowing the government is where these fellows start. It was intelligent that propaganda. Willie Cameron thought he saw behind at Jim Doyle and other men like Doyle, men who knew the discontents of the world and would fatten by them, men who secretly envious of the upper classes and unable to attain to them would pull all men to their own level or lower, men who cloaked their own jealousies with the garb of idealism. Intelligent it was, dangerous and imminent. The pamphlet spoke of the day. It was a Prussian phrase. The revolution was Prussian. And like the Germans they offered loot as a reward. They appealed to the ugliest passions in the world, to lust and greed and idleness. At a signal, the mass was to arise, overthrow its masters and rule itself. Mr. Hendricks stood in the doorway of the pharmacy and stared out at the city he loved. Just how far does that sort of stuff go, Cameron? He asked. Will our people take it up? Is the American nation going crazy? Not a bit of it, said Willie Cameron stoutly. They're about as able to overthrow the government as you are to shove over the St. Elmo Hotel. I could do that with a bomb. No, you couldn't. But you could make a fairly sizable hole in it. It's the hole we don't want. Mr. Hendricks went away, vaguely comforted. Chapter 23 To old Anthony, the early summer had been full of humiliations which he carried with an increased arrogance of bearing that alienated even his own special group at his club. Conn found the man, said Judge Peterson holding forth on the golf links one Sunday morning while Anthony Cardew hectic with rage, searched for a lost ball and refused to drop another. He'll hold us up all morning for that ball just as he tries to hold up all progress. He lowered his voice. What's happened to the granddaughter anyhow? Senator Lovell lighted a cigarette. Turned Bolshevist, he said briefly. The judge gazed at him. That's a pretty serious indictment, isn't it? Well, that's what I hear. She's living in Jim Doyle's house. I guess that's the answer. Hey, Cardew, do you want these young cubs behind us to play through or are you going to show some sense and come on? Howard, fighting his father, tooth and nail, was compelled to a reluctant admiration of his courage. But there was no cordiality between them. They were in accord again as to the strike, although from different angles. Both of them knew that they were fighting for very life. Both of them felt that the striker's demands meant the end of industry, meant that the man who risked money in a business would eventually cease to control that business, although if losses came it would be he and not the workmen who bore them. Howard had gone as far as he could in concessions and the result was only the demand for more. The Cardew's father and son stood now together, their backs against a wall and fought doggedly. But only anxiety held them together. His father was now backing Howard's campaign for the mayoralty, but he was rather late with his support and in private he retained his cynical attitude. He had not come over at all until he learned that Louis Akers was an opposition candidate. At that his wrath knew no bounds and the next day he presented a large check to the campaign committee. Mr. Hendrick's hearing of it was moved to a dry chuckle. Can't you hear him? he demanded. He'd stuck into headquarters as important as an office boy who's been sent to the bank for money and he'd slam down his check and say just two words. Which would be? inquired Willie Cameron. By, um, quoted Mr. Hendrick's, the old boy doesn't know that things have changed since the 80s. This city has changed, my lad. It's voting now the way it thinks, right or wrong. That's why these foreign language papers can play the devil with us. The only knowledge the poor wretches have got of us is what they're given to read. And most of it stinks of sedition. Queer a thing, this thinking. A fellow can think himself into murder. This track was going along quietly enough. There had been rioting through the country, but not of any great significance. It was in reality a sort of trench warfare with each side dug in and waiting for the other to show himself in the open. The representatives of the press gathered in the various steel cities with automobiles arranged to take them quickly to any disturbance that might develop found themselves with little news for the telegraph, and time hung heavy on their hands. On an evening in July, Howard found Grace dressing for dinner and realized with a shock that she was looking thin and much older. He kissed her and then held her off and looked at her. You've got to keep up your courage, dear, he said. I don't think it will be long now. Have you seen her? No, but something has happened. Don't look like that, Grace. It's not. She hasn't married that man. No, not that. It only touches her indirectly. But she can't stay there. Even Eleanor. He checked himself. I'll tell you after dinner. Dinner was very silent, although Anthony delivered himself of one speech rather at length. So far as I can make out, Howard, he said, this man Hendricks is getting pretty strong. He has a young fellow talking for him who gets over pretty well. It's my judgment that Hendricks had better be bought off. He goes around shouting that he's a plain man after the support of the plain people. Although I'm damned if I know what he means by that. Anthony Cardew was no longer comfortable in his own house. He placed the blame for it on Lily and spent as many evenings away from home as possible. He considered that life was using him rather badly. Tied to the city in summer by a strike, his granddaughter openly gone over to his enemy, his own son, so long his tool and his creature merely staying in his house to handle him, an income tax law that sent him to his lawyers with new protests almost daily. A man was no longer master even in his own home. His employees would not work for him. His family disobeyed him. His government held him up and shook him. In the good old days. I'm going out, he said as he rose from the table. Grace, that chef is worse than the last. You'd better send him off. I can't get anyone else. I've tried for weeks. There are no servants anywhere. Try New York. I have tried. It is useless. No cooks either. No servants. Even Anthony recognized that with the exception of Grayson, the servants in his house were vaguely hostile to the family. They gave grudging service, worked short hours, and the only class of labor to which the high cost of food was a negligible matter demanded wages he considered immoral. I don't know what the world's coming to, he snarled. Well, I'm off. Thank God there are still clubs for a man to go to. I want to have a talk with you, father. I don't want a talk. You needn't. I want you to listen, and I want Grace to hear too. In the end he went unwillingly into the library, and when Grayson had brought liqueurs and coffee and had gone, Howard drew the card from his pocket. I met young Denslow today, he said. He came in to see me. As a matter of fact I signed a card he had brought along and I brought one for you, sir. Shall I read it? You evidently intend to. Howard read the card slowly. Its very simplicity was impressive, as impressive as it had been when Willie Cameron scrawled the words on the back of an old envelope. Anthony listened. Just what does that mean? That the men behind this movement believe that there is going to be a general strike with an endeavor to turn it into a revolution. Perhaps only local, but these things have a tendency to spread. Denslow had some literature which referred to an attempt to take over the city. They have other information too, all pointing the same way. Strikers? Foreign strikers, with the worst of the native born? Their plans are fairly comprehensive. They mean to dynamite the waterworks, shut down the gas and electric plants and cut off all food supplies. Then when they have starved and terrorized us into submission, we'll accept their terms. What terms? Well, the rule of the mob, I suppose. They intend to take over the banks for one thing. I don't believe it. It's incredible. They meant to do it in Seattle. And didn't. Don't forget that. They may have learned some things from Seattle, Howard said quietly. We have the state troops. What about a half dozen similar movements in the state at the same time? Or rioting in other places carefully planned to draw the troops and constabulary away? In the end, old Anthony was impressed, if not entirely convinced. But he had no faith in the plain people and said so. They'll see property destroyed and never lift a hand, he said. Didn't I stand by in Pittsburgh during the railroad riots and watch them smile while the yards burned? Because the railroads meant capital to them and they hate capital. Precisely, said Howard. But after 24 hours they were fighting like demons to restore law and order. It is, he fingered the card, to save that 24 hours that this organization is being formed. It is secret. Did I tell you that? And the idea originated with the young man you spoke about as supporting Hendricks. You met him here once, a friend of Lily's. His name is Cameron, William Wallace Cameron. Old Anthony remained silent, but the small jagged vein on his forehead swelled with anger. After a time, I suppose Doyle is behind this, he asked. It sounds like him. That is the supposition. But they have nothing on him yet, he is too shrewd for that. And that leads to something else. Lily cannot continue to stay there. I didn't send her there. Actually, no. In effect, but we needn't go into that now. The situation is very serious. I can imagine that nothing could fit better into his plans than to have her there. She gives him a cachet of respectability. Do you want that? She is probably one of them now. God knows how much of his rotten doctrine she has absorbed. Howard flushed, but he kept his temper. His theories, possibly, his practice, no. She certainly has no idea. It has come to this, father. She must have a home somewhere, and if it cannot be here, Grace and I must make one for her elsewhere. Probably Anthony Cardew had never respected Howard more than at that moment, or liked him less. Both you and Grace are free to make a home where you please. We prefer it here, but you must see yourself that things cannot go on as they are. We have waited for you to see that, all three of us. And now this new situation makes it imperative to take some action. I won't have that fellowacres coming here. He would hardly come under the circumstances. Besides, her friendship with him is only a part of her revolt. If she comes home, it will be with the understanding that she does not see him again. Revolt, said old Anthony, raising his eyebrows. That is what it actually was. She found her liberty interfered with, and she staged her own small rebellion. It was very human, I think. It was very Cardew, said old Anthony, and smiled faintly. He had, to tell the truth, developed a grudging admiration for his granddaughter in the past two months. He saw in her many of his own qualities good and bad. And more than he cared to own, he had missed her and the young life she had brought into the quiet house. Most important of all, she was the last of the Cardews. Although his capitulation when it came was curt, he was happier than he had been for weeks. Bring her home, he said. But tell her about Acres. If she says that is off, I'll forget the rest. On her way to her room that night, Grace Cardew encountered Mademoiselle, a pale unhappy Mademoiselle who seemed to spend her time mostly in Lily's empty rooms or wandering about corridors. Whenever the three members of the family were together, she would retire to her own quarters, and there feverishly with her rosary would pray for a softening of hearts. She did not comprehend these Americans who were so kind to those beneath them and so hard to each other. I wanted to see you, Mademoiselle, Grace said, not very steadily. I have good news for you. Mademoiselle began to tremble. She is coming. Lily is coming. Yes, will you have some fresh flowers put in her rooms in the morning? Suddenly Mademoiselle forgot her years of repression and flinging her arms around Grace's neck. She kissed her. Grace held her for a moment patting her shoulder gently. We must try to make her very happy, Mademoiselle. I think things will be different now. Mademoiselle stood back and wiped her eyes. But she must be different too, she said. She is sweet and good, but she is strong of will too. The will to do, to achieve, that is one thing and very good. But the will to go one's own way, that is another. The young are always headstrong, Mademoiselle. But alone later on her rosary on her knee, Mademoiselle wondered, if youth were the indictment against Lily, was she not still young? It took years or suffering or sometimes both to break the will of youth and chase in its spirit. God grant Lily might not have suffering. It was Grace's plan to say nothing to Lily, but to go for her herself and thus save her the humiliation of coming back alone. All morning housemates were busy in Lily's rooms. Rugs were shaken, floors waxed and rubbed, the silver frames and vases in her sitting room polished to refulgence. And all morning Mademoiselle scolded and ran suspicious fingers into corners and arranged and rearranged great boxes of flowers. Long before the time she had ordered the car, Grace was downstairs dressed for the street and clad in cool shining silk was pacing the shaded hall. There was a vague air of expectation about the old house. In a room off the pantry the second man was polishing the buttons of his livery using a pasteboard card with a hole in it to save the fabric beneath. Grayson potted about in the drawing room alert for the part of maid's sins of remission. The telephone in the library rang and Grayson answered it while Grace stood in the doorway. A message from Miss Lily, he said. Mrs. Doyle has telephoned that Miss Lily is on her way here. Grace was vaguely disappointed. She had wanted to go to Lily with her good news to bring her home bag into baggage to lead her into the house and to say in effect that this was home, her home. She had felt that they and not Lily should take the first step. She went upstairs and, taking off her hat, smoothed her soft dark hair. She did not want Lily to see how she had worried. She eyed herself carefully for lines. Then she went down to more waiting and for the first time to a little doubt. Yet when Lily came all was as it should have been. There was no doubt about her close embrace of her mother, her happiness at seeing her. She did not remove her gloves, however, and after she had put Grace in a chair and perched herself on the arm of it there was a little pause. Each was preparing to tell something, each hesitated. Because Grace's task was the easier it was she who spoke first. I was about to start over when you telephoned, dear, she said. I, we want you to come home to us again. There was a queer, strained silence. Who wants me? Lily asked unsteadily. All of us, your grandfather too. He expects to find you here tonight. I can explain to your aunt Eleanor over the telephone and we can send for your clothes. Suddenly Lily got up and walked the length of the room. When she came back her eyes were filled with tears and her left hand was bare. It nearly kills me to hurt you, she said, but what about this? She held out her hand. Grace seemed frozen in her chair. At the sight of her mother's face Lily flung herself on her knees beside the chair. Mother, mother, she said, you must know how I love you. Love you both. Don't look like that. I can't bear it. Grace turned away her face. You don't love us, you can't. Not if you are going to marry that man. Mother, Lily begged desperately. Let me come home. Let me bring him here. I'll wait if you'll only do that. He is different. I know all that you want to say about his past. He has never had a real chance in all his life. He won't belong at first, but he's a man, mother, a strong man. And it's awfully important. He can do so much if he only will. And he says he will if I marry him. I don't understand you, Grace said coldly. What can a man like that do but wreck all our lives? Resentment was rising fast in Lily, but she kept it down. I'll tell you about that later, she said, and slowly got to her feet. Is that all, mother? You won't see him. I can't bring him here. Isn't there any compromise? Won't you meet me halfway? When you say halfway, you mean all the way, Lily. I wanted you so, Lily said drearily. I need you so just now. I am going to be married and I have no one to go to. Aunt Elinor doesn't understand either. Every way I look I find I suppose I can't come back at all then. Your grandfather's condition was that you never see this, Louis Acres again. Lily's resentment left her. Anger was a thing for small matters, trivial affairs. This that was happening, an irrevocable break with her family, was as far beyond anger as it was beyond tears. She wondered, Dully, if any man were worth all this. Perhaps she knew subconsciously that Louis Acres was not. All her exaltation was gone and in its stead was a sort of dogged determination to see the thing through now at any cost, to remake Louis into the man he could be, to build her own house of life and having built it, to live in it as best she could. That is a condition I cannot fulfill, mother. I am engaged to him. Then you love him more than you do any of us, or all of us. I don't know. It is different, she said vaguely. She kissed her mother very tenderly when she went away, but there was a feeling of finality in them both. Mademoiselle, waiting at the top of the stairs, heard the door close and could not believe her ears. Grace went upstairs, her face a blank before the servants, and shut herself in her room. And in Lily's Boudoir, the roses spread a heavy funereal sweetness over the empty room. End of chapters 22 and 23. Chapters 24, 25, and 26 of A Poor Wise Man by Mary Roberts-Reinhardt. This Lieberbach's recording is in the public domain. Chapter 24 The strike had been carried on with comparatively little disorder. In some cities there had been rioting, but half-hearted and easily controlled. Almost without exception, it was the foreign and unassimilated element that broke the peace. Alien women spat on the state police and flung stones at them. Here and there property was destroyed. A few bomb outrageous filled the newspapers with great scareheads and sent troops and a small army of secret servicemen here and there. In the American Federation of Labor, a stocky little man grimly fought to oppose the radical element, which was slowly gaining ground and at the same time to retain his leadership. The great steel companies, united at last by a common danger and a common fate if they yielded, stood doggedly and courageously together, waiting for a return of sanity to the world. The world seemed to have gone mad. Everywhere in the country production was reduced by the cessation of labor, and as a result the cost of living was mounting. And every strike lost in the end. Labor had yet to learn that to cease to labor may express agreements, but that in itself it righted no wrongs. Rather it turned that great weapon public opinion without which no movement may succeed against it. And that to stand behind the country in war was not enough. It must stand behind the country in peace. It had to learn, too, that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. The weak link in the labor chain was its radical element. Riots were arrested with union cards in their pockets. In vain, the unions protested their lack of sympathy with the unruly element. The vast respectable family of union labor found itself accused of the sins of the minority and a law standing thereby. At friendship the unruly element was very strong. For a time it held its meetings in a hall. When that was closed it resorted to the open air. On the 15th of July it held an incendiary meeting on the unused polo field and the next day awakened to the sound of hammers and to find a high wooden fence reinforced with barbed wire being built around the field with the state police on guard over the carpenters. In a few days the fence was finished only to be partly demolished the next night secretly and noiselessly. But no further attempts were made to hold meetings there. It was rumored that meetings were being secretly held in the woods near the town but the rendezvous was not located. On the restored fence around the polo grounds a red flag was found one morning and two nights later the guard at the padlocked gate was shot through the heart from ambush. Then about the first of August out of a clear sky sporadic riotings began to occur. They seemed to originate without cause and to end as suddenly as they began. Usually they were in the outlying districts but one or two took place in the city itself. The rioters were not all foreign strikers from the males. They were garment workers, hotel waiters, a rabble of the discontented from all trades. The riots were to no end apparently. They began with a chance word, fought their furious way for an hour or so and ended leaving a trail of broken heads and torn clothing behind them. On toward the end of July one such disturbance grew to considerable size. The police were badly outnumbered and a surprising majority of the rioters were armed with revolvers with wooden bledgins, lengths of pipe and short wicked iron bars. Things were rather desperate until the police found themselves suddenly and mysteriously reinforced by a cool headed number of citizens led by a tall, thin man who limped slightly and who disposed his heterogeneous support with few words and considerable skill. The same thin young man stopping later in an alleyway to investigate an arm badly bruised by an iron bar overheard a conversation between two roundsmen met under a lamp post after the battle for comfort and a little conversation. Can you beat that, Henry? said one. Where the hell they come from? Search me, said Henry. Do you see the skinny fellow? Limped, too. Do you notice that? Probably hurt in France. But he hasn't forgotten how to fight, I'll tell the world. The outbreaks puzzled the leaders of the vigilance committee. Willie Cameron was inclined to regard them as without direction or intention purely as manifestations of hate and as such contrary to the plans of their leaders. And Mr. Hendricks, nursing a black eye at home after the recent outburst, sized up the situation shudderly. You can boil a kettle too hard, he said, and then the lid pops off. Doyle and that outfit of his have been burning the fire a little high, that's all. They'll quit now because they want to get us off guard later. You and your committee can take a vacation unless you can set them to electioneering for me. They've had enough for a while, the devils. They'll wait now for acres to get in and make things easy for them. Mind my words, boy. That's the game. And the game it seemed to be. Small violations of orders still occurred, but no big ones. To the headquarters in the Denzelow Bank came an increasing volume of information to be duly docketed and filed. Some of it was valueless. Now and then there came in something worth following up. Thus one night Pink and a picked band following a vague clue went in automobiles to the state borderline and held up and captured two trucks loaded with whiskey and destined for friendship and baxter. He reported to Willie Cameron late that night. Smashed it all up and spilled it in the road, he said. Hurt like sin to do it, though. Felt like the fellow who shot the last passenger pigeon. But if the situation in the city was that of armed neutrality in the Boyd House things were rapidly approaching a climax, and that threw Dan. He was on edge, constantly to be placated and watched. The strike was on his nerves. He felt his position keenly, resented Willie Cameron supporting the family, and had developed a curious jealousy of his mother's affection for him. Toward Edith his suspicions had now become certainty and an open break came on an evening when she said that she felt able to go to work again. They were at the table and Ellen was moving to and from the kitchen, carrying in the meal. Her utmost thrift could not make it other than scanty and finally Dan pushed his plate away. Going back to work, are you? He sneered. In how long do you think you'll be able to work? You keep quiet. Edith flared at him. I'm going to work. That's all you need to know. I can't sit here and let a man who doesn't belong to us provide every bite we eat, if you can. Willie Cameron got up and closed the door for Mrs. Boyd had an uncanny ability to hear much that went on below. Now, he said when he came back, we might as well have this out. Dan has a right to be told, Edith, and he can help us plan something. He turned to Dan. It must be kept from your mother, Dan. Plan something? Dan snarled. I know what to plan, all right. I'll find the— He broke into foul, furious language, but suddenly Willie Cameron rose and there was something threatening in his eyes. I know who it is, Dan said more quietly, and he's got to marry her or I'll kill him. You know, do you? Well, you don't, Edith said, and I won't marry him anyhow. You will marry him. Do you think I'm going to see Mother disgraced, sick as she is, and that you get away with it? Where does Acres live? You know, don't you? You've been there, haven't you? All Edith's caution was forgotten in her shame and anger. Yes, I know, she said hysterically, but I won't tell you, and I won't marry him. I hate him. If you go to him, he'll beat you to death. Suddenly the horrible picture of Dan in Acres' brutal hands overwhelmed her. Dan, you won't go, she begged. He'll kill you. A lot you'd care, he said coldly, as if we didn't have enough already, as if you couldn't have married Joe Wilkinson next door and been a decent woman, and instead you're a— Be quiet, Dan, Willie Cameron interrupted him. That sort of talk doesn't help any. Edith is right. If you go to Acres there will be a fight, and that's no way to protect her. God, Dan muttered, with all the men in the world to choose that rotten anarchist. It was sordid, terribly tragic, the three of them sitting there in the badly lighted little room around the disordered table, with Ellen grimly listening in the doorway and the odours of cooking still heavy in the air. Edith sat there, her hands on the table staring ahead, and recounted her wrongs. She hadn't never had a chance. Home had always been a place to get away from. Nobody had cared what became of her, and hadn't she tried to get out of the way? Only they all did their best to make her live. She wished she had died. Dan huddled low in his chair, his legs sprawling, stared at nothing with hopeless eyes. Afterwards Willie Cameron could remember nothing of the scene in detail. He remembered its setting, but of all the argument and quarreling, only one thing stood out distinctly, and that was Edith's acceptance of Dan's accusation. It was Acres then. And Lily Cardew was going to marry him. Was in love with him. Does he know how things are? He asked. She nodded. Yes. Does he offer to do anything? Him? He does not. And don't you go to him and try to get him to marry me? I tell you I'd die first. He left them there, sitting in the half-light and going out into the hall, picked up his hat. Mrs. Boyd heard him and called to him, and before he went out he ran upstairs to her room. It seemed to him, as he bent over her, that her lips were bluer than ever, her breath a little shallower and more difficult. Her untouched separate tray was beside her. I wasn't hungry, she explained. Seems to me, Willie, if you'd let me go downstairs so I could get some of my own cooking I'd eat better. Ellen's all right, but I kind of crave sweet stuff, and she don't like making desserts. You'll be down before long, he assured her, and making me pies. Remember those pies you used to bake? You always were a great one for my pies, she said complacently. He kissed her when he left. He had always marbled at the strange lack of demonstrativeness in the household, and he knew that she valued his small tendernesses. Now remember, he said, light out at ten o'clock, and no going downstairs in the middle of the night because you smell smoke. When you do, it's my pipe. I don't think you hardly ever go to bed, Willie. Me? Get too much sleep. I'm getting fat with it. The stale little joke was never stale with her. He left her smiling and went down the stairs and out into the street. He had no plan in his mind except to see Louis Acres and to find out from him if he could what truth there was in Edith Boyd's accusation. He believed Edith, but he must have absolute certainty before he did anything. Girls in trouble sometimes shielded men. If he could get the facts from Louis Acres, but he had no idea of what he would do then. He couldn't very well tell Lily, but her people might do something. Or Mrs. Doyle. He knew Lily well enough to know that she would far rather die than Mary Acres under the circumstances. That her failure to marry Louis Acres would mean anything as to his own relationship with her he never even considered. All that had been settled long ago when she said she did not love him. At the Benedict he found that his man had not come home and for an hour or two he walked the streets. The city seemed less majestic to him than usual. Its quiet by-streets were lined with homes, it is true, but those very streets had also vice and degradation and dougly passions. They sheltered, but also they concealed. At eleven o'clock he went back to the Benedict and was told that Mr. Acres had come in. It was Acres himself who opened the door. Because the night was hot he had shed his coat and shirt and his fine torso, bare to the shoulders and at the neck, gleamed in the electric light. Willie Cameron had not seen him since those spring days when he had made his casual bold-eyed visits to Edith at the pharmacy and he had a swift insight into the power this man must have over women. He himself was tall, but Acres was taller, fully muscled, his head strongly set on a neck like a column, but he surmised that the man was soft, out of condition, and he had lost the first elasticity of youth. Acres' expression had changed from one of annoyance to watchfulness when he opened the door. Well, he said, making a late call, aren't you? What I had to say wouldn't wait. Acres had rather unwillingly thrown the door wide and he went in. The room was very hot, for a small fire littered as to its edges with papers burned in the grate. Although he knew that Acres had guessed the meaning of his visit at once and was on guard, there was a moment or two when each sparred for an opening. Sit down, have a cigarette. No thanks. He remained standing. Or a highball. I still have some fairly good whiskey. No, I came to ask you a question, Mr. Acres. Well, answering questions is one of the best little things I do. You know about Edith Boyd's condition. She says you are responsible. Is that true? Louis Acres was not unprepared. Sooner or later he had known that Edith would tell. But what he had not counted on was that she would tell anyone who knew Lily. He had felt that her leaving the pharmacy had eliminated that chance. What do you mean her condition? You know, she says she has told you. You're pretty thick with her yourself, aren't you? I happen to live at the Boyd House. He was keeping himself well under control, but Acres saw his hand clench and resorted to other tactics. He was not angry himself, but he was wary now. He considered that life was unnecessarily complicated and that he had a distinct grievance. I have asked you a question, Mr. Acres. You don't expect me to answer it, do you? I do. If you have come here to talk to me about marrying her. She won't marry you, Willie Cameron said steadily. That's not the point. I want your own acknowledgement of responsibility, that's all. Acres was puzzled, suspicious, and yet relieved. He lighted a cigarette and over the match stared at the other man's quiet face. No, he said suddenly. I'm damned if I'll take the responsibility. She knew her way around long before I ever saw her. Ask her. She can't lie about it. I can produce other men to prove what I say. I played around with her, but I don't know whose child that is, and I don't believe she does. I think you are lying. All right, but I can produce the goods. Willie Cameron went very pale. His hands were clenched again, and Acres eyed him wearily. None of that, he cautioned. I don't know what interest you've got in this, and I don't give a goddamn. But you'd better not try any funny business with me. Willie Cameron smiled. Much the sort of smile he had worn during the rioting. I don't like to soil my hands on you, he said, but I don't mind telling you that any man who ruins a girl's life and then tries to get out of it by defaming her is a skunk. Acres lunged at him. Some time later, Mr. William Wallace Cameron descended to the street. He wore his coat collar turned up to conceal the absence of certain articles of wearing apparel which he had mysteriously lost. And he wore, too, a somewhat distorted grim and entirely complacent smile. The city had taken the rioting with a weary philosophy. It was tired of fighting. For two years it had labored at high tension for the European war. It had paid taxes and bought bonds for the war. It had saved and skimped and denied itself for the war. And for the war it had made steel, steel for cannon and for tanks, for ships and for railroads. It had labored hard and well, and now all it wanted was to be allowed to get back to normal things. It wanted peace. It said in effect, I have both bought and labored, sacrificed and endured. Give me now my rest of nights after a day's work. Give me marriage and children. Give me contentment. Give me the things I have loved long since and lost awhile. And because the city craved peace, it was hard to rouse it to its danger. It was war weary and its weariness was not of apathy but of exhaustion. It was not yet ready for new activity. Then, the same night that had seen Willie Cameron's encounter with Acres, it was roused from its lethargy. A series of bomb outrageous shook the downtown district. The Denslo Bank was the first to go. Willie Cameron, inspecting a cut lip in his mirror, heard a dull explosion and ran down to the street. There he was joined by Joe Wilkinson in trousers over his night-shirt, and as they looked, a dull red glare showed against the sky. Joe went back for more clothing, but Willie Cameron ran down the street. At the first corner he heard a second explosion, further away and to the east, but apparently no fire followed it. That, he learned later, was the city club, founded by Anthony Cardew years before. The Denslo Bank was burning. The facade had been shattered and from the interior already poured a steady flow of flame and smoke. He stood among the crowd while the engines throbbed and the great fire hose lay along the streets and watched the little upper room where the precious records of the committee were burning brightly. The front while gone, the small office stood open to the world, a bright and shameless thing, flaunting its nakedness to the crowd below. He wondered why Providence should so play into the hands of the enemy. After a time he happened on Pink Denslo wandering alone on the outskirts of the crowd. Just about kill the governor this, said Pink heavily. Don't suppose the watchman got out either. Not that they'd care, he added savagely. How about the vaults? I suppose they are fireproof. Yes. Do you realize that every record we've got has gone? Do you suppose those fellows knew about them? Willie Cameron had been asking himself the same question. Trouble is, Pink went on. You don't know who to trust. They're not all foreigners. Let's get away from here. It makes me sick. They wandered through the night together almost unconsciously in the direction of the City Club, but within a block of it they realized that something was wrong. A hospital ambulance dashed by its gong ringing wildly and a fire engine not pumping stood at the curb. Come on, Pink said suddenly. There were two explosions. It's just possible. The club was more sinister than the burning bank. It was a mass of grim wreckage, black, and gaping, with now and then the sound of settling masonry and already dotted with the moving flashlights of men who searched. To Pink, this catastrophe was infinitely greater than that of the bank. Men he knew had lived there. There were old club servants who were like family retainers. One or two employees were ex-servicemen for whom he had found employment. He stood there with Willie Cameron's hand on his arm with the new maturity and a vast suffering in his face. Before God, he said solemnly, I swear never to rest until the fellows behind this are tried, condemned, and hanged. You've heard it, Cameron. The death list for that night numbered 13, the two watchmen at the bank and eleven men at the club, two of them members. Willie Cameron going home at dawn exhausted and covered with plaster dust, bought an extra and learned that a third bomb less powerful had wrecked the mayor's house. It had been placed under the sleeping porch and but for the accident of a sick baby the entire family would have been wiped out. Even his high courage began to waver. His records were gone. That was all to do over again. But what seemed to him the impasse was this fighting in the dark, an unseen enemy always, and an enemy which combined with skill a total lack of any rules of warfare which killed here, there, and everywhere, as though for the sheer joy of killing. It struck at the high, but killed the low. And it had only begun. Chapter 26 Dominant family traits have a way of skipping one generation and appearing in the next. Lily Cardew at that stage of her life had a considerable amount of old Anthony's obstinacy and determination, although it was softened by a long line of Cardew women behind her, women who had loved and suffered dominance because they loved. Her very infatuation for Dewey Acres, like Eleanor's Ferdoyle, was possibly an inheritance from her foremothers who had been want to overlook the evil in a man for their strength in him. Only Lily mistook physical strength for moral fiber, insolence and effrontery for courage. In both her virtues and her faults however, irrespective of her entity, Lily represented very fully the girl of her position and period. With no traditions to follow, setting her course by no compass, taught to think but not how to think, resentful of tyranny but unused to freedom, she moved ahead along the path she had elected to follow, blindly and obstinately, yet unhappy and suffering. Her infatuation for Dewey Acres had come to a new phase of its rapid development. She had reached that point where a woman realizes that the man she loves is not a god of strength and wisdom but a great child who needs her. It is at that point that one of two things happens. The weak woman abandons him and follows her dream elsewhere. The woman of character, her maternal instinct roused, marries him, bears him children, is both wife and mother to him, and finds in their united weaknesses such strength as she can. In her youth and self-sufficiency, Lily stood ready to give rather than to receive. She felt now that he needed her more than she needed him. There was something unconsciously patronizing those days in her attitude toward him, and if he recognized it he did not resent it. Women had always been easy for him. Her very aloofness, her faint condescension, her air of a young grand dam were a part of her attraction for him. Love sees clearly and seeing loves on. But infatuation is blind. When it gains sight it dies. Already Lily was seeing him with the critical eyes of youth, his loud voice, his over fastidious dress, his occasional grossnesses. To offset these she placed vast importance on his promise to leave his old associates when she married him. The time was very close now. She could not hold him off much longer and she began to feel too that she must soon leave the house on Gardeau Way. Doyle's attitude to her was increasingly suspicious and ungracious. She knew that he had no knowledge of Louis' promise, but he began to feel that she was working against him and showed it. And in Louis' acres too she began to discern an inclination not to pull out until after the election. He was ambitious and again and again he urged that he would be more useful for the purpose in her mind if he were elected first. The issue came to a climax the day she had seen her mother and learned the terms on which she might return home. She was alarmed by his noisy anger at the situation. Do sit down, Louis, and be quiet, she said. You have known their attitude all along, haven't you? I'll show them, he said thickly. Damned snobs! He glanced at her then uneasily and her expression put him on his guard. I didn't mean that, little girl. Honestly, I didn't. I don't care for myself. It's you. You must understand that they think they are acting for my good. And I am not sure, she added her clear eyes on him, that they are not right. You frighten me sometimes, Louis. But a little later he broke out again. If he wasn't good enough to enter their house he'd show them something. The election would show them something. They couldn't refuse to receive the mayor of the city. She saw then that he was meant on remaining with joy until after the election. Lily sat back, listening and thinking. Sometimes she thought that he did not love her at all. He always said he wanted her, but that was different. I think you love yourself more than you love me, Louis, she said, when he had exhausted himself. I don't believe you know what love is. That brought him to his knees, his arms around her, kissing her hands, begging her not to give him up, and once again her curious sense of responsibility for him triumphed. He will marry me soon, dear, won't you? He implored her. But she thought of Willie Cameron oddly enough, even while his arms were around her, of the difference in the two men. Louis, big, crouching, suppliant and insistent, Willie Cameron, grave, reserved and steady, taking what she now knew was the blow of her engagement like a gentleman and a soldier. They represented, although she did not know it, the two divisions of men in love, the men who offer much and give little, the others who, out of deep humility, offer little and give everything they have. In the end, nothing was settled. After he had gone, Lily went up to Eleanor's room. She had found in Eleanor lately a sort of nervous tension that puzzled her, and that tension almost snapped when Lily told her of her visit home and of her determination to marry Louis within the next few days. Eleanor had dropped her sewing and clenched her hands in her lap. Not soon, Lily, she said. Oh, not soon. Wait a little. Wait two months. Two months, Lily said, wonderingly. Why two months? Because at the end of two months nothing would make you marry him, Eleanor said almost violently. I have sat by and waited because I thought you would surely see your mistake. But now, Lily, do you envy me my life? No, Lily said truthfully, but you love him. Eleanor sat, her eyes downcast and brooding. You are different, she said finally. You will break where I have only bent. But she said no more about a delay. She had been passive too long to be able to take any strong initiative now. And all her moral and physical courage she was saving for a great emergency. Cardu Way was far from the center of town, and Lily knew nothing of the bomb outrageous of that night. When she went down to breakfast the next morning, she found Jim Doyle pacing the floor of the dining-room in a frenzy of rage, a newspaper clenched in his hand. By the window stood Eleanor, very pale, and with slightly reddened eyes. They had not heard her, and Doyle continued a furious harangue. The fools, he said. Damn such material as I have to work with. This isn't the time and they know it. I've warned them over and over. The fools. Eleanor saw her then, amid a gesture of warning. But it was too late. Lily had a certain quality of directness and it did not occur to her to dissemble. Is anything wrong? she asked, and went at once to Eleanor. She had once or twice before this stood between them for Eleanor's protection. Everything is as happy as a main morning, Doyle sneered. Your aunt Eleanor has an unpleasant habit of weeping for joy. Lily stiffened, but Eleanor touched her arm. Sit down and eat your breakfast, Lily, she said, and left the room. Doyle stood staring at Lily angrily. He did not know how much she had heard, how much she knew. At the moment he did not care. He had a reckless impulse to tell her the truth but his habitual caution prevailed. He forced a cold smile. Don't bother your pretty head about politics, he said. Lily was equally cold. Her dislike of him had been growing for weeks coupled to a new and strange distrust. Politics? You seem to take your politics very hard. I do, he said her vainly, particularly when I'm fighting my wife's family. May I pour you some coffee? And pour it, he did, eyeing her furtively the while and brought it to her. May I give you a word of advice, Lily? He said, don't treat your husband to tears at breakfast unless you want to see him romping off to some other woman. If he cared to do that I shouldn't want him anyhow. You're a self-sufficient child, aren't you? Well, the best of us do it sometimes. He had successfully changed the trend of her thoughts and he went out carrying the newspaper with him. Nevertheless, he began to feel that her presence in the house was a menace. With all her theories he knew that a word of the truth would send her flying breathless with outrage out of his door. He could quite plainly visualize that homecoming of hers. The instant steps that would be taken against him, old Anthony on the wire appealing to the governor, Howard closeted with the chief of police, an instant closing of the net. And he was not ready for the clash. No. She must stay. If only Eleanor would play the game instead of pulling and mouthing. In the room across the hall where his desk stood he paced the floor, first angrily, then thoughtfully, his head bent. He saw, and not far away now, himself seated in the city hall holding the city in the hollow of his hand. From that his dreams ranged far. He saw himself the head, not of the nation. There would be no nation as such, but of the country. The very incidents of the night before, blundering as they were, showed him the ease with which the new force could be applied. He was drunk with power. End of CHAPTERS 24, 25, and 26. CHAPTERS 27, 28, and 29 of A Poor Wise Man by Mary Robert's Reinhardt. This Lieberbach's recording is in the public domain. CHAPTERS 27 Lily had an unexpected visitor that afternoon in the person of Pink Denslow. She had assumed some of Eleanor's cares for the day for Eleanor herself had not been visible since breakfast. It soothed the girl to attend to small duties, and she was washing and wiping Eleanor's small stalk of fine china when the bell rang. Mr. Denslow is calling, said Jenny. I didn't know if you'd see him, so I said I didn't know if you were in. Lily's surprise at Pink's visit was increased when she saw him. He was covered with plaster dust even to the brim of his hat and his hands were scratched and rough. Pink! she said. Why, what is the matter? For the first time he was conscious of his appearance, and for the first time in his life perhaps entirely indifferent to it. I've been digging in the ruins, he said. Is that man Doyle in the house? Her colour faded. Finally she noticed a certain wildness about Pink's eyes and the hard-strained look of his mouth. What ruins, Pink? She managed to ask. All the ruins, he said. You know, don't you? The bank, our bank, and the club. It seemed to her afterwards that she knew before he told her, saw it all, a dreadful picture which had somehow superimposed upon it a vision of Jim Doyle with the morning paper and the thing that this was not the time for. That's all, he finished. Eleven at the club, two of them my own fellows. In France, you know. I found one of them myself this morning. He stared past her over her head. Killed for nothing, the way the Germans terrorised Belgium. Haven't you seen the papers? No, they wouldn't let you see them, of course, Lily. I want you to leave here. If you don't, if you stay now, you're one of them, whether you believe what they preach or not. Don't you see that? She was not listening. Her faith was dying hard and the mental shock had brought her dizziness and a faint nausea. He stood watching her and when she glanced up at him it seemed to her that pink was hard, hard and suspicious and the suspicion was for her. It was incredible. Do you believe what they preach? He demanded. I've got to know Lily. I've suffered the torches of the damned all night. I didn't know it meant this. Do you?" he repeated. No. You ought to know me better than that. But I don't believe that it started here, Pink. He was very angry this morning and he wouldn't let me see the paper. He's behind it all right, Pink said grimly. Maybe he didn't plant the bombs, but his infernal influence did it just the same. Do you mean to say you've lived here all this time and don't know he is plotting a revolution? What if he didn't authorize these things last night? He is only waiting to place a hundred bombs instead of three, a thousand perhaps. Oh, no! We've got their own statements. Department of Justice found them. The fools, they think they can overthrow the government. Can you imagine men planning to capture this city and hold it? It wouldn't be possible, Pink. It isn't possible now, but they'll make a try at it. There was a short pause with Lily struggling to understand. Pink's set face relaxed somewhat. All that night he had been fighting for his belief in her. I've never dreamed of it, Pink. I suppose all the talk I've heard meant that, but I never... Are you sure? About Jim Doyle, I mean. We know he is behind it. We haven't got the goods on him yet, but we know. Cameron knows. You ask him and he'll tell you. Willie Cameron? Yes. He's had some vision while the rest of us. He's got a lot of us working now, Lily. We are on the right trail, too, although we lost some records last night that put us back a couple of months. We'll get them all right. We'll smash their little revolution into a cocked hat. It occurred to him then that this house was a poor place with such a confidence. I'll tell you about it later. Get your things now, and let me take you home. But a Lily's problem was too complex for Pink's simple remedy. She was stricken with sudden conviction. The very mention of Willie Cameron gave Pink's statements authority. But to go like that, to leave Eleanor in that house, with all that it implied, was impossible. And there was her own private problem to dispose of. I'll go this afternoon, Pink. I'll promise you that. But I can't go with you now. I can't. You'll have to take my word, that's all. And you must believe I didn't know. Of course you didn't know, he said sturdily. But I hate like thunder to go and leave you here. He picked up his hat, reluctantly. If I can do anything—Lily's mind was working more clearly now. This was the thing Louis Akeris had been concerned with then—a revolution against his country. But it was the thing, too, that he had promised to abandon. He was not a killer. She knew him well, and he was not a killer. He had got to a certain point, and then the thing had sickened him. Even without her he would never have gone through with it. But it would be necessary now to get his information quickly—very quickly. Suppose—she said hesitatingly—suppose I tell you that I think I am going to be able to help you before long. Help? I want you safe. This is not work for women. But suppose I can bring you a very valuable ally, she persisted. Someone who knows all about certain plans and has changed his views about them. One of them? He has been. Is he selling his information? In a way, yes, said Lily slowly. Where the fellow who sells information, Pink said, but we'll be glad to have it. We need it, God knows, and you'll leave. I couldn't stay, could I? She kissed her hand when he went away, doing it awkwardly and self-consciously, but withal reverently. She wondered, rather dully, why she could not love Pink. A woman would be so safe with him, so sure. She had not even then gathered the full force of what he had told her. But little by little things came back to her, the man on guard in the garden, the incident of the locked kitchen door. Jim Doyle once talking angrily over a telephone in his study, no telephone so far as she knew was installed in the room, his recent mysterious absences, and the increasing visits of the hateful Waslowski. She went back to Louis. This was what he had meant. He had known all along and plotted with them, even if his stomach had turned now he had been a party to this infamy. Even then she did not hate him. She saw him, misled as she had been by Doyle's high-sounding phrases, lured on by one of those wild dreams of empire to which men were sometimes given. She did not love him any more. She was sorry for him. She saw her position with the utmost clearness. To go home was to abandon him, to lose him for those who needed what he could give to send him back to the enemy. She had told Pink she could secure an ally for a price, and she was the price. There was not an ounce of melodrama in her as she stood facing the situation. She considered, quite simply, that she had assumed an obligation which she must carry out. Perhaps her pride was dictating to her also. To go crawling home, bowed to the dust, to admit that life had beaten her, to face old Anthony's sneers in her mother's pity. That was hard for any cardo. She remembered Eleanor's homecomings of years ago, the strained air of the household, the whispering servants, and Eleanor herself shut away or making her rare, almost furtive visits downstairs when her father was out of the house. No, she could not face that. Her own willfulness had brought her to this pass. She faced that uncompromisingly. She would marry Louie, and hold him to his promise, and so perhaps out of all this misery some good would come. But at the thought of marriage she found herself trembling violently. With no love and no real respect to build on, with an intuitive knowledge of the man's primitive violences, the reluctance toward marriage with him which she had always felt crystallized into something very close to dread. But a few minutes later she went upstairs, quite steady again, and fully determined. At Eleanor's door she tapped lightly, and she heard movements within. Then Eleanor opened the door wide. She had been lying on her bed, and automatically after closing the door she began to smooth it. She felt a wave of intense pity for her. I wish you would go away from here, Aunt Eleanor, she said. Eleanor glanced up without surprise. Where could I go? If you left him definitely you could go home. Eleanor shook her head, dumbly, and her passivity drove Lily suddenly to desperation. You know what is going on, she said, her voice strained. You don't believe it is right, you know it is wicked. Know that in all the fine language in the world, Aunt Eleanor, and it is still wicked. If you stay here you can don't it. I won't. I am going away. I wish you had never come, Lily. It's too late for that, Lily said stonely. But it is not too late for you to get away. I shall stay, Eleanor said, with an air of finality. But Lily made one more effort. He is killing you. No, he is killing himself. Suddenly Eleanor flared into a passionate outburst. Don't you think I know where all this is leading? Do you believe, for a moment, that I think all this can lead to anything but death? It is madness, Lily. They are all mad, these men. Don't you know that I have talked and argued and prayed against it? Then come away. You have done all you could, and you have failed, haven't you? It's not time for me to go, Eleanor said. And Lily, puzzled and baffled, found herself again looking into Eleanor's quiet, inscrutable eyes. Eleanor had taken it for granted that the girl was going home and together they packed almost in silence. Once Eleanor looked up from folding a garment and said, You said you had not understood before, but that now you do. What did you mean? Pink Denslo was here. What does he know? Do you think I ought to tell you, Aunt Eleanor? It isn't that I don't trust you. You must believe that. But don't you see that so long as you stay here, he said that to me. You are one of them. Eleanor resumed her folding. Yes, I suppose I am one of them, she said quietly. And you are right. You must not tell me anything. Pink is Henry Denslo's son, I suppose. Yes. Do they... live in the old house? Yes. Eleanor continued her methodical work. CHAPTER XXVIII Willie Cameron was free that evening. Although he had not slept at all the night before, he felt singularly awake and active. The committee had made temporary quarters of his small back room at the pharmacy, and there had sat in rather depressed conclave during a part of the afternoon. Denslo had come in late and had remained silent and haggard through the debate. There was nothing to do but to start again in an attempt to get files and card indexes. Greater secrecy was to be preserved and enjoined, the location of the office to be known only to a small inner circle, and careful policing of it and of the building which housed it to be established. As a further safeguard, two duplicate files would be kept in other places. The committee groaned over its own underestimate of the knowledge of the radicals. The two buildings chosen for destruction were, respectively, the bank building where their file was kept and the club where nine-tenths of the officers of the committee were members. The significance of the double outrage was unquestionable. When the meeting broke up, Pink remained behind. He found it rather difficult to broach the matter in his mind. It was always hard for him to talk about Lily Cardew, and lately he had a growing conviction that Willie Cameron found it equally difficult. He wondered if Cameron, too, was in love with Lily. There had been a queer look in his face on those rare occasions when Pink had mentioned her, a sort of exaltation and a nought difficulty afterwards in getting back to the subject in hand. Pink had developed an enormous affection and admiration for Willie Cameron, a strange, loyal, half-wistful, totally unselfish devotion. It had steadied him when the loss of Lily might have made him reckless and had taken the form in recent weeks of finding innumerable business opportunities which Willie Cameron cheerfully refused to take. I'll stay here until this other thing is settled, was Willie's invariable answer. I have a certain amount of time here, and the fellows can drop in to see me without causing suspicion. In an office it would be different. And besides, I can't throw Mr. Davis down. His wife is in bad shape. So that afternoon Pink waited until the committee had dispersed and then said, with some difficulty. I saw her, Cameron. She has promised to leave. Today, this afternoon, I wanted to take her away but she had some things to do. Then she hadn't known before. No, she thought it was just talk, and they'd kept the papers from her. She hadn't heard about last night. Well, that's all. I thought you'd want to know. Pink started out, but Willie Cameron called him back. Have any of your people any influence with the Cardoos? No one has any influence with the Cardoos if you mean the Cardoos men, why? Because Cardoos has got to get out of the mayoralty campaign, that's all. That's a plenty, said Pink grinning. Why don't you go and tell him so? I'm thinking of it. He hasn't a chance in the world, but he'll defeat Hendricks by splitting the vote and let the other side in. And you know what that means? I know it, Pink observed, but Mr. Cardoos doesn't, and he won't after you've told him. They've put a lot of money in, and once a Cardoos has invested in a thing, he holds on like death. Especially the old man. Wouldn't wonder he was the fellow who pounded the daylights out of Acres last night, he added. Willie Cameron, having carefully filled his pipe, closed the door into the shop and opened a window. Acres, he inquired. Soon addition has it, Pink said. Claims to have been attacked in his rooms by two masked men. Probably wouldn't have told it, but the doctor talked. Looks as though he could wallop six masked men, doesn't he? Yes, said Willie Cameron reflectively. Yes, he does, rather. He felt more hopeful than he had for days. Lily, on her way home, clear once more of the poisonous atmosphere of Doyle and his associates. Acres temporarily out of the way, perhaps for long enough to let the normal influences of her home light show him to her in a real perspective, and a rather unholy but very human joy that he had given Acres a part of what was coming to him. All united to cheer him. He saw Lily going home and a great wave of tenderness flooded him. If only they would be tactful and careful, if only they would be understanding and kind. If they would only be normal and every day and accept her as though she had never been away. These people were so hedged about with conventions and restrictions, they put so much emphasis on the letter and so little on the spirit. If only—God, if only they wouldn't patronize her. His mother would have known how to receive her. He felt that afternoon a real homesickness for his mother. He saw her ample and comfortable and sane, so busy with the comforts of the body that she seemed to ignore the soul, and yet bringing healing with her every matter-of-fact movement. If only Lily could have gone back to her instead of to that great house full of curious eyes and whispering voices. He saw Mr. Hendricks that evening on his way home to supper. Mr. Hendricks had lost flesh and some of his buoyancy, but he was persistently optimistic. Up till last night I'd have said we were done, son, he observed. But this bomb business has settled them. The labor-votals split on it, sure as hooping-cop. They've bought a half-page in all the morning papers, disclaiming all responsibility and calling on all citizens to help them in protecting private property. Have they now? said Hendricks with grudging admiration. Can you beat that? Where do they get the money anyhow? If I lost my watch these days I'd have to do some high-finance before I'd be able to advertise for it. All right, C. Cardew, were his parting words. But he doesn't want this election any more than I want my right leg. He'll stick. You can talk, Cameron, I'll say it. But you can't pry him off with kind words any more than you can a porous plaster. Behind Mr. Hendricks colloquialisms there was something sturdy and fine. His very vernacular made him popular. His honesty was beyond suspicion. If he belonged to the old school in politics he had most of its virtues and few of its vices. He would take care of his friends undoubtedly, but he was careful in his choice of friends. He would make the city a good place to live in. Like Willie Cameron he saw it, not a center of trade so much as a vast settlement of homes. Business supported the city in his mind, not the city business. Nevertheless, the situation was serious, and it was with a sense of a desperate remedy for a desperate disease that Willie Cameron after a careful toilet rang the bell of the Cardew house that night. He had no hope of seeing Lily, but the mere thought that they were under one roof gave him a sense of nearness and of comfort in her safety. Dinner was recently over and he found both the Cardew's father and son in the library smoking. He had arrived at a bad moment, for the bomb outrage coming on top of Lily's refusal to come home under the given conditions had roused Anthony to a cold rage and left Howard with a feeling of helplessness. Anthony Cardew nodded to him grimly, but Howard shook hands and offered him a chair. I heard you speak some time ago, Mr. Cameron, he said. You made me wish I could have had your support. I came to talk about that. I am sorry to have to come in the evening but I am not free at any other time. When we go into politics, said old Anthony in his jiving voice, the ordinary amenities have to go. When you are elected, Howard, I shall live somewhere else. Willie Cameron smiled. I don't think you will be put to that inconvenience, Mr. Cardew. What's that? Old Anthony's voice was incredulous. Here, in his own house, this whipper snapper. I am sure Mr. Howard Cardew realizes he cannot be elected. The small, ragged vein on Anthony's forehead was the storm signal for the family. Howard glanced at him and said urbanely, Will you have a cigar, Mr. Cameron, or a liqueur? Nothing, thank you. If I can have a few minutes' talk with you. If you mean that as a request for me to go out, I will remind you that I am heavily interested in this matter myself, said old Anthony. I have put in a great deal of money. If you people are going to drop out, I want to hear it. You've played the devil with us already with your independent candidate who can't talk English. Willie Cameron kept his temper. No, he said slowly. It wasn't a question of Mr. Hendricks withdrawing. It was a question of Mr. Cardew getting out. Sheer astonishment held old Anthony speechless. It's like this, Willie Cameron said. Your son knows it. Even if we drop out, he won't get it. Justly or unjustly. Didn't I mean that? Nobody with the name of Cardew can be elected to any high office in this city. There is no reflection on anybody in my saying that. I am telling you a fact. Howard had listened attentively and without anger. For a long time, Mr. Cameron, he said, I have been urging men of of position in the city to go into politics. We have needed to get away from the professional politician. I went in without much hope of election, too. Well, you can say to blaze a trail. It is not being elected that counts with me so much as to show my willingness to serve. Old Anthony recovered his voice. The Cardew's made this town, sir. He barked, willingness to serve, piffle. We need a businessman to run the city and by God, we'll get it. You'll get an anarchist, said Willie Cameron slightly flushed. If you want my opinion, young man, this is a trick, a political trick. And how do we know that your vigilance committee isn't a trick, too? You try to tell us that there is an organized movement here to do heaven knows what, and by sheer terror you build up a machine which appeals to the public imagination. You don't say anything about votes, but you see they vote for your man. Isn't that true? Yes. If they can keep an anarchist out of office. Acres is an anarchist. He calls himself something else, but that's what it amounts to. And those bombs last night were not imaginary. The introduction of Louie Acre's name had a sobering effect on Anthony Cardew. After all, more than anything else, he wanted Acre's defeated. The discussion slowly lost its acrimony and ended oddly enough in Willie Cameron and Anthony Cardew virtually uniting against Howard. What Willie Cameron told him about Jim Doyle fed the old man's hatred of his daughter's husband, and there was something very convincing about Cameron himself. Something of fearlessness and honesty that began slowly to dispose Anthony in his favor. It was Howard who held out. If I quit now it will look as though I didn't want to take a licking, he said quietly obstinate, grant your point that I'm defeated. All right, I'll be defeated, but I won't quit. And Anthony Cardew confronted by that very quality of obstinacy which had been his own weapon for so many years retired in high dudgeon to his upper rooms. He was living in a strange new world, a reasonable soul on an unreasonable earth, and earth where a man's last sanctuary, his club was blown up about him and a man's family apparently lived only to thwart him. With Anthony gone Howard dropped the discussion with the air of a man who has made a final stand. What you have said about Mr. Doyle interests me greatly, he observed, because you probably do not know this. My sister married him some years ago. It was a most unhappy affair. I do know it. For that reason I am glad that Miss Lily has come home. Has come home? She has not come home, Mr. Cameron. There was a condition we felt forced to make and she refused to agree to it. Perhaps we were wrong. I... Willie Cameron got up. Was that today? He asked. No, but she was coming home today. She was to leave there this afternoon. How do you know that? Denzlo saw her there this afternoon. She agreed to leave at once. He had told her of the bombs and of other things. She hadn't understood before and she was horrified. It is just possible Doyle wouldn't let her go. But that's ridiculous. She can't be a prisoner in my sister's house. Will you telephone and find out if she is there? Howard went to the telephone at once. It seemed to Willie Cameron that he stood there for uncounted years and as though through all that eternity of waiting he knew what the answer would be. And that he knew too what that answer meant, where she had gone, what she had done. If only she had come to him. If only she had come to him. He would have saved her from herself. He... She is not there, Howard Cardew said in a voice from which all life had gone. She left this afternoon at four o'clock. Of course she has friends. Or she may have gone to a hotel. We have managed to make it practically impossible for her to come home. Willie Cameron glanced at his watch. He had discounted the worst before it came and unlike the older man was ready for action. It was he who took hold of the situation. Order a car, Mr. Cardew, and go to the hotels, he said. And if you will drop me downtown, I'll tell you where, I'll follow up something that has just occurred to me. Chapter 29 In one way Howard had been correct in his surmise. It had been Lily's idea to go to a hotel until she had made some definite plan. She would telephone Louis then and the rest. She did not think beyond that. She called a taxi and took a small bag with her, but in the taxi cab she suddenly realized that she could not go to any of the hotels she knew. She would be recognized at once. She wanted a little time to herself, time to think. And before it was discovered that she had left Cardew away she must see Louis and judge again if he intended to act in good faith. While he was with her, reiterating his promises, she believed him, but when he was gone she always felt a curious doubt. She thought then of finding a quiet room somewhere and stopping the cab, bought a newspaper. It was when she was searching for the rooms for rent column that she saw he had been attacked and slightly injured. They had got him. He had said that if they ever suspected him of playing them fast they would get him, and now they had done so. That removed the last doubt of his good faith from her mind. She felt indignation and dismay and a sort of aching consciousness that always she brought only trouble to the people who cared for her. She felt that she was going through her life leaving only unhappiness behind her. He had suffered and for her. She told the chauffeur to go to the Benedict apartments and sitting back read the notice again. He had been attacked by two masked men and badly bruised after putting up a terrific resistance. They would wear masks of course. They loved the theatrical. Their very flag was theatrical. And he had made a hard fight. That was like him too. He was a fighter. She was a Cardo and she loved strength. There were other men, men like Willie Cameron for instance, who were lovable in many ways but they were not fighters. They sat back and let life beat them and they took the hurt bravely and stoically. But they never got life by the throat and shook it until they gave up what they wanted. She had never been in a bachelor's apartment house before and she was both frightened and self-conscious. The girl at the desk eyed her curiously while she telephoned her message and watched her as she moved toward the elevator. Have you ever seen her before? She said to the hallboy. No, she's a new one. Face is kind of familiar to me, said the telephoned girl reflectively. Looks worried, doesn't she? Two masked men. Ha! While Sam took up there last night was a thin fellow with a limp. The hallboy grinned. Then his limp didn't bother him any. Sam says you oughta seen that place. In the meantime outside the door of Acre's apartment, Lily's fine courage almost left her. Had it not been for the eyes of the elevator man fixed on her while he lounged in his gateway, she might have gone away even then. But she stood there, committed to a course of action and rang. Lily himself admitted her and oddly battered Louis in a dressing gown and slippers, and oddly watched for Louis too, waiting after the manner of men of his kind the world over, to see which way the cat would jump. He had had a bad day, and his nerves were on edge. All day he had sat there unable to go out, and had wondered just when Cameron would see her and tell her about Edith Boyd. For just as Willie Cameron rushed him for the first time, there had been something from between clenched teeth about marrying another girl under the given circumstances. Only that had not been the sort of language in which it was delivered. I just saw about it in the newspaper, Lily said. How dreadful, Louis! He straightened himself and drew a deep breath. The game was still his if he played it right. Bad enough, dear, he said, but I gave them some trouble too. He pushed a chair toward her. It was like you to come. But I don't like your seeing me all must up, little girl. He made a move then to kiss her, but she drew back. Please, she said, not here, and I can't sit down. I can't stay. I only came because I wanted to tell you something and I didn't want to telephone it. Louis, Jim Doyle knew about those bombs last night. He didn't want it to happen before the election, but... That doesn't alter the fact, does it? How do you know he knew? I do know, that's all. And I have left Aunt Eleanor's. No. I couldn't stay, could I? She looked up at him, the little wistful glance that Willie always found so infinitely touching, like the appeal of a willful but lovable child that has somehow got into trouble. And I can't go home, Louis, unless I... Unless you give me up, he finished for her. Well... She hesitated. She hated making terms with him and yet somehow she must make terms. Well... He repeated. Are you going to throw me over? Apparently merely putting the thought into words crystallized all his fears of the past hours. Seeing her there, too, had intensified his want of her. She stood there, where he had often dreamed of seeing her, but still holding him up with the aloofness that both chilled unenflamed him and with a question in her eyes. He held out his arms, but she drew back. Do you mean what you have said, Louis, about leaving them if I marry you and doing all you can to stop them? You know I mean it. Then I'll not go home. You are going to marry me, now? Whenever you say. Suddenly she was trembling violently and her lips felt dry and stiff. He pushed her into a chair and knelt down beside her. You poor little kid. He said softly. Through his brain were racing a hundred thoughts. Lily his, in his arms, in spite of that white-faced drug clerk with the cold eyes, himself in the Cardu house, one of them, beating old Anthony Cardu at his own cynical game, and persistently held back and often rising again to the surface, Woslowski and Doyle and the others, killers that they were, pursuing him with their vengeance over the world. They would have to be counted in. They were his price, as he had he known it, was Lily's. My wife, he said, my wife. She stiffened in his arms. I must go, Louis, she said. I can't stay here. I felt very queer downstairs. They all stared so. There was a clock on the mantel shelf and he looked at it. It was a quarter before five. One thing is sure, Lily, he said. You can't wonder about alone and you are right. You can't stay here. They probably recognize you downstairs. You are pretty well known. For the first time it occurred to her that she had compromised herself and that the net of her own making was closing fast about her. I wish I hadn't come. Why? We can fix that all right in a jiffy. But when he suggested an immediate marriage she made a final struggle. In a few days, even to-morrow, but not just then. He listened impatiently his eyes on the clock. Beside it in the mirror he saw his own marred face and it added to his anger. In the end he took control of the situation, went into his bedroom, changed into a coat and came out again ready for the street. He telephoned down for a taxi cab and then confronted her, his face grim. I've let you run things pretty much to suit yourself, Lily, he said. Now I'm in charge. It won't be to-morrow or next week or next month. It will be now. You're here. You've given them a chance to talk downstairs. You've nowhere to go and you're going to marry me at once." In the cab he explained more fully. They would get a license and then go to one of the hotels. There they could be married in their own suite. All regularly and in order, honey, he said and kissed her hand. She had hardly heard. She was staring ahead, not thinking, not listening, not seeing, fighting down a growing fear of the man before her, of his sheer physical proximity, of his increasing exuberance. I'm mad about you, girl, he said, mad, and now you are going to be mine until death do us part. She shivered and drew away and he laughed a little. Girls were like that at such times. He always took a step back for every two steps forward. He let her hand go and took a careful survey of his face in the mirror of the cab. The swelling had gone down, but that bruise below his eye would last for days. He cursed under his breath. It was after nine o'clock when one of the car-do-cars stopped not far from the Benedict apartments and Willie Cameron got out. He was quite certain that Louis Acres would know where Lily was and he anticipated the interview with a sort of grim humor. There might be another fight. Certainly Acres would try to get back at him for the night before. But he set his jaw. He would learn where Lily was if he had to choke the knowledge out of that leering devil's thick white throat. His arrival in the foyer of the Benedict apartments caused more than a ripple of excitement. Well, look who's here, muttered the telephone girl and watched his approach with its faint limp over the top of her desk. Behind from his cage the elevator man was staring with avid interest. I suppose Mr. Acres is in, said Willie Cameron politely. The girl smiled up at him. I'll say he ought to be after last night. What are you going to do now, kill him? In spite of his anxiety there was a faint twinkle in Willie Cameron's eyes. No, he said slowly. No, I think not. I want to talk to him. Sam called the telephone girl. Take this gentleman up to forty-three. Forty-three's out. Sam partly shut the elevator door. He had seen forty-three's rooms the night before and he had the discretion of his race. Went out with the lady at quarter to five. Willie Cameron took a step or two toward the cage. You don't happen to be lying, I suppose. No, sir, said Sam. I'll take you up to look if you like. And about an hour ago he sent a boy here with a note to get some of his clothes. The young lady at the desk was out at the movies at the time. I was getting my supper, Sam. Willie Cameron had gone very white. Did the boy say where he was taking the things? To the St. Elmo hotel, sir. On the street again Willie Cameron took himself fiercely in hand. There were half a dozen reasons why acres might go to the St. Elmo. He might, for one thing, have thought that he, Cameron, would go back to the Benedict. He might be hiding from Dan or from reporters. But there had been, apparently, no attempt to keep his new quarters secret. If Lily was at the St. Elmo, he found a taxi cab. And as it drew up at the curb before the hotel, he saw the car-do-car moving away. It gave him his first real breath for 20 minutes. Lily was not there. But Louis Acres was. He got his room number from a clerk and went up still determinately holding on to himself. Afterwards he had no clear recollection of any interval between the Benedict and the moment he found himself standing outside a door on an upper floor of the St. Elmo. From that time on it was clear as crystal, his own sudden calm, the overturning of a chair inside, a man's voice slightly raised, which he recognized, and then the thin crash of a wine-glass dropped or thrown to the floor. He opened the door and went in. In the center of the sitting room a table was set, and on it the remains of a dinner for two. Acres was standing by the table, his chair overturned behind him, a splintered glass at his feet, staring angrily at the window. Even then Willie Cameron saw that he had too much to drink and that he was in a nuggly mood. He was in dinner clothes, but with his bruised face and scowling brows he looked like a sinister imitation of a gentleman. By the window her back to the room was Lily. Neither of them glanced at the door. Evidently the waiter had been moving in and out and Acres considered him as little as he would a dog. Come and sit down, he said angrily. I've quit drinking, I tell you. Good God, just because I've had a little wine and I had the hell of a time getting it. You won't eat and you won't talk. Come here. I'm not hungry. Come here. Stay where you are, Lily, said Willie Cameron from inside the closed door. Or perhaps you'd better get your wraps. I came to take you home. Acres had wheeled at the voice and now stood staring incredulously. First anger and then a grin of triumph showed in his face. Drink had made him not so much drunk as reckless. He had lost last night, but today he had won. Hello, Cameron, he said. Willie Cameron ignored him. Will you come, he said to Lily. I can't, Willie. Listen, Lily dear, he said gravely. Your father is searching the city for you. Do you know what that means? Don't you see that you must go home at once? You can't done here in a private suite like this and not expose yourself to all sorts of talk. Go on, said Acres, leering. I like to hear you. Especially, continued Willie Cameron, with a man like this. Acres took a step toward him, but he was not too sure of himself and he knew now that the other man had a swing to his right arm like the driving rod of a locomotive. He retreated again to the table and his hand closed over a knife there. Louie, Lily said sharply. He picked up the knife and smiled at her, his eyes cunning. Not going to kill him, my dear, he said, merely to give him a hint that I'm not as easy as I was last night. That was a slip and he knew it. Lily had left the window and come forward, a stricken slip of a girl and he turned to her angrily. Go into the other room and close the door, he ordered. When I've thrown this fellow out, you can come back. But Lily's eyes were fixed on Willie Cameron's face. It was you last night? Yes, why? Because, Willie Cameron said steadily, he had got a girl into trouble and then insulted her. I wouldn't tell you what you've got to know the truth before it's too late. Lily threw out both hands dizzily as though catching for support, but she steadied herself. Neither man moved. It is too late, Willie, she said. I have just married him. End of chapters 27, 28 and 29.