CHAPTER VI
CALEB WORKS AT LONG RANGE
Clive Standish opened his up-State tour the following night in the small town of Wayne. It was a farming centre, and the hall was tolerably well filled with bearded and tanned men who had an outdoor look. Some of them had brought their wives; sallow, dyspeptic, angular creatures with the patient, dull faces of women who live close to nature and are too busy to profit thereby.
The audience listened interestedly as Clive outlined the Boss-ridden condition of the Mountain State, the exorbitant cost of transporting and handling agricultural products, the unjust taxes that fell so heavily on the farmer and wage-earner, the false system of legislation and the betrayal of the people’s rights by the men they were bamboozled into electing to represent them and protect their interests. He went on to tell how New York and other States had from time to time risen and shaken off a similar yoke of Bossism, and to show how, both materially and in point of self-respect, the voters of the Mountain State could profit by following such examples. In closing he briefly described the nature, aims and purposes of the Civic League and the practical reforms to which he himself stood pledged.
It did Clive’s heart good to see how readily his audience responded in interest to his pleas. He had not spoken ten minutes before he felt he had his house with him. He finished amid a salvo of applause. His hearers flocked about him as he came down from the platform, shaking his hand, asking him questions, praising his discourse.
One big farmer slapped him on the back, crying:
“You’re all right, Mr. Standish! If you can carry out all you’ve promised, I guess Wills County’ll stand by you, solid. But why on earth didn’t you advertise you was comin’ to Wayne to-night? If it hadn’t ’a’ been for your agent that passed through here yesterday and told some of the boys at the hotel and the post office, you wouldn’t ’a’ had anyone to hear you. If we’d known what was comin’, this hall’d ’a’ been packed.”
“But surely you read my advertisements in your local papers?” exclaimed Clive, “I——”
“We sure didn’t read anything of the kind,” retorted a dairyman. “I read everything in the Wayne Clarion, from editorials to soap ads., an’ there hasn’t been a line printed about your meetin’.”
“I sent my agent ahead to place paid advertisements with every paper along my route,” said the puzzled Standish. “And you say he was in town here yesterday. So he couldn’t have skipped Wayne. I’ll drop in on the editor of the Clarion on my way to the station and ask him why the advertisement was overlooked.”
Accordingly, a half hour later, en route for the midnight train, Standish sought out the Clarion office and demanded an interview with its editor-in-chief.
“I guess that’s me,” observed a fat, shirt-sleeved man, who looked up from his task of tinkering with a linotype machine’s inner mysteries. “I’m Mr. Gerrett, editor-in-chief, managing editor, city editor, too. My repertorial staff’s out to supper, this being pay day and he being hungry. Were you wanting to subscribe or—? Take a chair, anyhow,” he broke off, sweeping a pile of proofs off a three-legged stool. “Now, what can I do for you?”
“My name is Standish,” began Clive, “and I called to find out why——”
“Oh!”
The staccato monosyllable served as clearing house for all Gerrett’s geniality, for he froze—as much as a stout and perspiring man can—into editorial super-dignity. Aware that the atmosphere had congealed, but without understanding why, Clive continued:
“My agent called here, did he not? And left an advertisement of——”
“Yes,” snapped Gerrett, “he did. I was out. He left it with my foreman with the cash for it. I mailed a check for the amount this morning to your League headquarters at Granite.”
“But why? The advert——”
“The ad.’s in my waste-basket. Now, as this is my busy night, maybe you’ll clear out and let——”
“Look here!” said Clive, sternly, and refusing to notice the opened door, “what does this mean?”
“It means we don’t want your ads. nor your money.”
“Were you too crowded for space and had to leave the advertisement out?”
“No, we weren’t. We don’t want any dealings with you or the alleged ‘League’ you’re running. That’s all. Ain’t that plain enough?”
“No,” answered Clive, trying to keep cool, “I want a reason.”
“You’ll keep on wanting it, then. I’m boss of this office, and——”
“The real boss? I doubt it. If you were, what reason would you have for turning away paid advertisements? I may do you an injustice, my friend, but I think you’re acting under orders.”
“You’re off!” shouted Gerrett, reddening. “I run this paper as I choose. And I don’t take orders from any man. I——”
“Nor passes? Nor freight rebates on paper rolls, and——”
“D’ye mean to insult me?” bellowed Gerrett, wallowing forward, threatening as a fat black thundercloud. “I’ll have you know——”
“I don’t think,” replied Clive, calmly, and receding not a step, “I don’t think you could be insulted, Mr. Gerrett. You are making rather a pitiable exhibition of yourself. Why not own up to it that you are acting under orders of the ‘Machine,’ whose tool you are? The ‘Machine’ which is so afraid of the truth that it takes pains to muzzle the press. The ‘Machine’ that is so well aware of its own rottenness, it dare not let the people whom it is defrauding hear the other side of the case. Why not admit you are bought?”
Gerrett was sputtering unintelligible wrath.
“Get out of my office!” he roared at last.
“Certainly,” assented Standish, “I’ve learned all I wanted to. You serve your masters well. I hope they pay you as adequately.”
He turned to the door. Before he reached it a thin youth with ink-smears on his fingers swung in.
“Hard luck!” exclaimed the newcomer. “That Standish meeting’s raised a lot of interest downtown. Pity we can’t run anything on it! It’d make a dandy first-page spread.”
“Shut up!” bellowed Gerrett. “You young——”
“Don’t scold him,” counselled Standish, walking out. “He didn’t make any break. We’re all three in the secret.”
The next few days witnessed practical repetitions of the foregoing experiences. In almost every town the local newspapers not only refused to report a line of Standish’s speeches, but would not accept his advertisements. Nor, in most places, could he find a job office willing to print handbills for him. His agent had nearly everywhere been able to engage a hall; but as no adequate preliminary notice of the meeting had been published, audiences were pitiably slim. In one or two towns, where the papers did not belong to the “Machine,” it was discovered that every hall, lodge-room or other available meeting-place had been engaged in advance by some mysterious competitor. Clive, at such settlements, was forced to speak in open air. Even then the police at one town dispersed the gathering under excuse of fearing a riot; at two others the mayor refused a license to hold an outdoor meeting, and at a fourth, a gang of toughs, at long range, pelted the audience with stones and elderly eggs, the police refusing to interfere.
At length Clive’s advance agent returned to the candidate in abject despair.
“I’ve been doing this sort of work eight years,” the man reported, “but this time I’m clean stumped. I can’t make any headway. The papers, the city authorities, the opera-house-and-hall-proprietors and the police are all under Conover’s thumb. It’s got so that as soon as I reach a town I can find out right away who is and who isn’t in the ‘Machine’s’ pay. Where the papers aren’t muzzled—and there are precious few such places—the halls are closed to us, and either the mayor or the police will stop the meeting. Where the papers are working for Conover, we can get all the halls we want, because the Boss knows the news of your speech can’t circulate except by word of mouth.
“Oh, they’ve got us whipsawed in grand shape! I’m wondering what’ll happen at Grafton Monday night. That’s the biggest city next to Granite, and there’s always been more or less of a kick there against Conover rule. They’ve got a square man for mayor, and one of their three newspapers is strong for you. I was able to get the opera house, too. It’s your big chance of the campaign, and your last chance on this tour. The rest of the towns on your route I can’t do anything with. I’m waiting to see what dirty game Conover will play at Grafton, now that he can’t work his usual tricks there. He’ll be sure to try something.”
Billy Shevlin, who had also acted (unsuspectedly as unofficially) as advance agent of Clive Standish’s tour, had in three respects excelled the authorized agent: In the first place, he had been as successful as the other had been a failure. In the second, he had not turned back. Third, and last, he was not in the very least discouraged. Nor had he need to be.
Yet even to him Grafton presented the first serious problem. And to it he devoted much of his time and more of his cleverness. At last he formed a plan and saw that his plan was good.
Clive reached Grafton at noon of the day he was scheduled to speak. This was the second largest city in the Mountain State. Here, next to Granite, must the chief battle of the campaign be waged. On the effect of his speech here hung a great percentage of Clive’s hopes for the coming State convention. As Grafton went, so would big Matawan County, whose centre it was. And Grafton, wavering in fealty to Conover, might yet be won to the Standish ranks by the right sort of speech. So with the glow of approaching struggle upon him Clive awaited the night. All he asked was a fair hearing. This, presumably, was for once to be accorded him.
At the hotel on his arrival he found Karl Ansel waiting. The big, lean New Englander was in a state of white-hot wrath.
“You got my telegram and the notice of the caucuses, I suppose!” he growled as Clive met him.
“No. I ordered all mail forwarded here, and telegrams, too. I broke away from my route Saturday, when I found I couldn’t get a hall at Smithfield. I cancelled my date there and went over to Deene, leaving word for everything to be sent on to Grafton. Then, yesterday——”
“Never mind that. We’re done! Beat! Tricked!”
“What do you mean?”
“The county conventions—the caucuses! In every—nearly every one of the eight counties Conover worked some blackguardism. To some he sent telegrams that you backed out. In others his chairmen tried the ‘back door’ act. And I wrote you how they’d ‘snapped’ the dates and caught us unready. Then——”
Clive recalled the anonymous letter which later events had driven from his memory. If only he had been able to lower himself to his opponent’s level and take advantage of it—of the treachery in the Conover ranks! If——
But Ansel was still pouring out the flood of his ill-temper.
“Whipsawed us, right and left,” he declared. “Beat us at every point as easy as taking candy from a baby. What are we doing in politics? We’re a lot of silly amateurs against——”
“We’re a lot of honest men against a gang of crooks. And in the long run we’ll win. We——”
“The long run, eh? Well, the run has begun, and they’ve got us on it. We’re beat!”
“Poor old Ansel,” laughed Clive, “how many times during the past fortnight have I heard you say that? And every time you pick yourself up again and go on with the fight. Just as you’ll do now.”
“Not on your life! I—oh, well, I suppose I will, if it comes to that! But it’s a burning, blazing shame.”
“If it wasn’t for just such ‘burning, blazing shames,’ there’d be no need for our campaign. It’s to crush such ‘shames’ that we’re working. Cheer up! I’ve great hopes for to-night’s meeting.”
Tersely he described his trip, the drawbacks he had encountered, and the better chances that seemed to attend the Grafton rally, Ansel interspersing the tale with a volley of queries and expletives.
“I’d heard of this press-muzzling,” said he as Standish ended, “and I have one way of blocking it. I’ve arranged for your speeches and ‘ads.’ and advance notices to be printed in the biggest paper in the next State, and scattered all through the Mountain State as campaign documents. I don’t think even Conover can block that move.”
“Splendid!” cried Standish. “Old man, you’re a genius!”
“No, I’m not,” contradicted Ansel, rather ruefully, “but someone else is. I don’t know who.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Why, the idea was sent to me three days ago, anonymously. Typewritten on foolscap. No signature. What d’you think of that?”
“Anonymously?”
“Yes. I wonder why. The idea’s so good, one would think the originator’d claim it. Unless——”
“Unless it came from the Conover camp?”
“Just what occurred to me. Anyhow, I’ve adopted the suggestion. I suppose you’d have refused to accept anonymous help, eh?”
“Every man to his own folly. It’s done now.”
“It sure is. And with a few more such tips, Conover would be ‘done,’ too. He’s carried matters high-handedly for years, but now maybe someone he’s ridden rough-shod over has turned on him.”
The great night had come. Clive and Ansel, arriving at the Opera House, found that gaudy, gayly-lighted auditorium full to the doors. On the stage sat the mayor, the proprietor of one of the papers, a half-dozen clergymen and a score of civic dignitaries. The boxes were filled with well-dressed women. Evening suits blended with the less conspicuous costumes of the spectators who stretched from stage to entrance, from orchestra to roof. A band below the stage played popular and national airs.
The news of Clive’s eccentric pre-convention tour, of his eloquence, his clean manliness and the obstacles he had overcome, had drawn hundreds through sheer curiosity. More had come because they were weary of Conover’s rule and eagerly desired to learn what his young antagonist had to offer them in place of bossism.
Skilled, by experience, in reading the sentiment of crowds, Clive, as he stepped onto the stage, felt instinctively that the main body of the house was kindly disposed toward him. Not only was this proven by the spontaneous applause that heralded his appearance, but by a ripple—a rustle—of interest that rose on every hand. The sound nerved him. He considered once more how much hung on to-night’s success or failure, and the advance augury was as music to his ears.
The mayor, a little, nervous man with a monstrous mustache and a cast in one eye, opened the meeting with a brief speech, defining the purpose of the evening, and ended by introducing the candidate. Clive came forward. A volley of applause such as he had never before known hailed him. He bowed and bowed again, waiting for it to subside. But it did not. It continued from every quarter of the house.
From pleasure Clive felt a growing uneasiness. The majority of the audience seemed to have relapsed into silence, and were staring about them in wonder at the unduly continued ovation. The thumping of feet and canes and the shouts of welcome increased rather than diminished. It settled down into a steady volume of sound, regular and rhythmic, shaking the whole auditorium, losing any hint at spontaneity and degenerating into a deafening, organized babel.
The men on the platform glanced at each other in angry bewilderment. For fully ten minutes the tumult endured, rendering intelligible words out of the question. The mayor, as chairman, rapped for silence. But his efforts were vain. The sound was drowned in the vaster, reëchoing volume of rhythmic sound. Clive held up his hand with a gesture of authority. The applause doubled.
This was growing absurd. The quiet majority of the audience waxed restive, and half-rose in its seats to locate the disturbance. To end the embarrassing delay Standish began to speak, hoping the clamor would die down. But his words did not reach the second row of seats.
Ansel slipped forward to his side.
“This is a put-up job!” he exclaimed, shouting to make himself heard above the uproar. “They are pretending to applaud because they think you dare not call them down for that. They’ll keep it up all evening if they get a chance, and you won’t be able to speak ten words.”
In a front orchestra seat a man stood up waving a flag and bawling:
“Standish! Standish! We want STANDISH!”
The rest of Billy Shevlin’s carefully drilled cohorts took up the cry, and it was chanted a hundred times to the accompaniment of resounding sticks and boot heels.
The mayor beckoned a deputy sheriff from the wings. Pointing to the front-seat ringleader he commanded:
“Put that fellow out.”
The deputy descended the steps to the orchestra, grabbed the vociferating enthusiast by the collar and started to propel him up the aisle. In an instant, as though the action were a signal, every sound ceased. The house was as still as death. And through the silence soared the shrill, penetrating protest of the man who had just been collared.
“You leave me be!” he yelled. “I’ve got as much right here as you have. An’ I’m earnin’ my money.”
“What money!” shouted a trained querist in the gallery.
“The cash Mr. Standish promised me for leadin’ the applause, of course. He’s payin’ me an’ the rest of the boys good, an’ we’re goin’ to earn our dough. Standish! Standish! We want——”
Then pandemonium broke loose. Hundreds of voices caught up the rhythmic refrain, while hundreds more shrieked “Fake!” and a counter rhythm arose of
“Fake! Fake! Fake! Fake! FAKE!”
Standish, abandoning all present hope of making the audience understand that the shrill-voiced man was a hireling of Conover’s, and that the whole affair was a gigantic, well-rehearsed trick, turned to face the group on the platform. But there, at a glance, he read in a dozen pairs of eyes suspicion, contempt, disgust.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Standish,” sneered the little mayor, “that your friends are over-zealous in earning their——”
“Do you mean that you—that anybody—can believe such an absurdity?” cried Standish. “Can’t you see——?”
“I can only see,” said the mayor, rising, “that I have evidently misunderstood the purpose and nature of this meeting. Good night.”
To Clive’s horror the little dignitary walked off the stage, followed by two-thirds of those who had sat there with him. The majority of the boxes’ occupants followed suit. The few who remained on the platform did so, to judge from their expression, more from interest in the outcome of the riotous audience’s antics than through any faith in Clive. For by this time the erstwhile orderly place was in full riot. Individual fights and tussles were waging here and there. Men were shouting aimlessly. Women were screaming. People were hurrying in a jostling, confused mass up the aisles toward the exits, while others bellowed to them to sit still or move faster. And through all (both factions of shouters having united in a common slogan) rang to an accompaniment of smashing chairs and pounding feet that endless metrical refrain of
“Fake! Fake! Fake! Fake! FAKE!”
Standish, Ansel at his side, was once more at the platform’s edge, striving in vain to send his mighty voice through the cataract of noise. One tough, in the pure joy of living and rioting, had climbed over the rail of a proscenium box—the only one still occupied—and, throwing an arm about the neck of a young girl, sitting there with an elderly man and woman, tried to kiss her. The girl screamed. Her elderly escort thrust the rowdy backward, and the latter, his insecure balance on the box rail destroyed, tumbled down among the orchestra chairs. The scene was greeted with a howl of delight from kindred spirits.
The youth scrambled to his feet and, joined by a half dozen intimates, once more swarmed up the side of the box. The girl shrank back, and futilely tugged at the closed box door, which had become jammed. The old man, quivering with senile fury, leaned over the box-front and grappled the foremost assailant. He was brushed aside and, amid a hurricane of laughter from the paid phalanx in the gallery, the group of half-drunk, wholly-inspired young brutes clustered across the box rail. The whole incident had not occupied five seconds. Yet it had served to draw the multi-divided attention of the mob and the rest of the escaping audience to that particular and new point of interest And now, dozens of the tougher element, seeing a prospect of better sport than a mere campaign row, elbowed their way to the spot.
The girl’s cry and that of the woman with her had barely reached the stage when Clive Standish, with one tremendous spring, had cleared the six-foot distance between footlights and box. There was a confused, whirling, cursing mass of bodies and arms. Then the whole group rolled outward over the rail.
Before they had fairly touched ground Clive was on his feet, the centre of a surprised but bellicose swirl of opponents who were nothing loath to change their plan of baiting a well-dressed girl into the more thrilling pastime of beating a well-dressed candidate.
As the score of toughs rushed him, Clive had barely time to get his back into the shallow angle between the bulging outer bases of the two proscenium boxes. Then the rush was upon him.
Hitting clean and straight, and with the speed and unerring deadliness of the trained heavyweight boxer, Clive for the moment held his own. There was no question of guarding. He relied rather for protection on the unusual length of his arms.
Nor could a blow be planned beforehand. It was hit, hit, and keep on hitting. Fully twenty youths and men surged forward at him, and at nearly every blow one went down among the pushing throng. But for each who fell there were always two more to take his place. The impact and crash of blows sounded above the yells and shuffle of feet. This was not boxing. It was butchery.
Only his semi-sheltered position and the self-confusing hurry and numbers of his assailants kept Clive on his feet and allowed him to hold his own.
Yet, as he dimly realized even through the wild lust of battle that gripped and intoxicated him, the fight was but a question of moments. Soon someone, running in, must grapple or trip him, or a kick would reach and disable him. And once down, in that bedlam of stamping, kicking feet, his life would not be worth a scrap of paper.
While it lasted, though, it was glorious. The veneered shell of civilization had been battered away. He was primitive man, gigantic, furious, terrible; battling against hopeless odds. Yet battling (as had those ancestors from whom his yellow hair, great shoulders and bulldog jaw were inherited) all the more gladly and doughtily because of those very odds.
He was aware of a man who, running along the box rail from the stage, had dropped to his side and stood swinging a gilded, blue-cushioned box-chair about his head. This apparition and the whizzing sweep of his odd weapon caused the toughs to give back for an instant.
“Good old Ansel!” panted Clive.
“Save your breath!” grunted Karl. “You’ll need it.”
Then a yell from twenty throats and the rush was on again. At first, anticipating the easy triumph which their type so love, the toughs had turned from the milder fun of frightening a girl of the better class to the momentary work of thrashing the solitary man who had interfered with that simple amusement. Now, bleeding faces, swollen eyes and more than one fractured jaw and nose had transformed the earlier phase of rough spirits into one of murderous rage.
The man who had so mercilessly punished them must not be allowed to escape alive. The tough never fights fair. When fists fail, a gouge, bite or kick is considered quite allowable. When, as in the present instance, the intended victim is so protected as to render these tactics difficult of success, pockets are usually ransacked for more formidable weapons.
Ansel’s arrival on the scene had but checked the onrush. No two men, big and powerful as both were, could subdue nor hold out against that assault.
Clive struck, right, left, with the swiftness of thought. And each blow crashed into yielding, reeling flesh.
Down whirled Ansel’s chair on the bullet head of one man, and down went the man beneath the impact.
Up whirled the chair and again it descended on another head—descended and shivered into kindling wood.
Dropping the fragments, Karl ranged close to Clive and together the two struck out, the one with the wild force and fury of a kicking horse, the other with the colder but no less terrific accuracy of the trained athlete.
A tough, ducking one of Ansel’s wild swings, ran in and caught him about the waist. Doubling his left leg under him, Karl caught the man’s stomach with the point of his knee. The assailant collapsed, gasping. But the momentary lapse of the tall New Englander’s fistic attack had opened a breach through which two more men rushed and flung themselves bodily on him.
Clive, unaware of his ally’s plight, yet felt the increased impetus of the onslaught on himself, and had to rally his every faculty to withstand it. His breath was coming hard from his heaving chest, and his head swam with fatigue and excitement. More than one heavy blow had reached his face and body. Then——
“Clear the way there, youse!” howled an insane, mumbling voice “Lemme at ’im! I’ll pay ’im for this smashed jaw!”
The press immediately in front of Clive Standish slackened and the crowd opened. In its centre reeled a horrible figure—bloodstained, torn of clothing, raging and distorted of face, one hand nursing an unshaven jaw, while the other flourished a revolver.
“Lemme at ’im!” mumbled the pain-maddened tough through a hedge of splintered teeth. “Clear the way or I’ll shoot to clear!”
Then, finding himself directly in front of Standish, the maniac halted and levelled his weapon.
Something swished through the air from behind Clive’s head. A big shapeless object hurtled forward and smote the broken-jawed tough full across the eyes on the very instant he fired at point-blank range.
The ball went wild, and surprise at the odd blow he had received (apparently from nowhere), caused the man’s pistol to clatter to the ground.
The girl in the box—innocent cause of the whole battle—had paid her debt to the man who had imperilled his life in her defence. She had crouched, trembling, in the background watching the progress of the fray. But as the intended murderer’s trigger-finger had tightened, she had hurled at his face, with all her frail force, the huge bouquet she carried. For once a woman’s aim was unerring, and thereby a man’s life was saved.
Her act—melodramatic, amazing, unlooked-for, eccentric in its poetic justice and theatric effects—sent a roar of applause from the onlookers, even as the pistol-shot momentarily startled the group of ruffians into sanity. Clive, without awaiting the result of the shot, had flung himself upon the little knot of toughs who were locked in death-grip about Ansel.
But even as he did so, a cry of warning rang from a dozen parts of the big building:
“The cops! Lights out! The cops!”
The hastily-summoned cohort of blue-coated reserves, pistols and nightsticks drawn, charged down the centre aisle. And before their onset the rabble melted like snow in April.
The historic Grafton Opera House riot was a thing of the past.
An hour later Clive Standish sat alone in his hotel room. Ansel had just said good night to him and left him to his own miserable reflections.
Now that the excitement was over, he had time to realize what a ghastly failure, from a campaign standpoint, his Grafton meeting had been. It was the climax of his long, unbroken series of failures. He was beaten, and he could no longer force himself to think otherwise.
Heart and mind and pride were as sore as the aching, bruised face and body from which he had so recently washed the stains of battle.
At other towns he had scored nothing worse than failure. Here at Grafton Conover had gained yet another point. The Railroader had made the people look on his young opponent as a cheap trickster. The very class Clive was working to rescue from Boss misrule would brand him as a charlatan.
Yes, he was beaten. How could a man hope by clean methods to stand against such powers as Caleb Conover possessed, and did not scruple to use? The fight had been hard. And now it was over. He had done his best. No one could have done more. And he had failed.
The reaction from the violent physical and mental strain of the riot was upon Standish. Hope, vitality, even self-trust were at their very ebb.
A knock sounded at the door.
“Come in,” he called wearily, supposing Ansel was coming back for something he had left.
“Thanks, I will,” replied Billy Shevlin, sidling into the room and closing the door behind him.
Clive stared in blank astonishment at his unexpected visitor. The latter grinned pleasantly and sat himself down, unasked, in a chair near the door, tucking his derby hat between his feet.