A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

The Sturdy Oak

S >> Samuel Merwin >> The Sturdy Oak




They had nearly torn her clothes off before E. Eliot was among them. She
sprang up on the chair and shouted:

"Girls--here, hold on a minute."

There was a hush. Some one called out: "It's Miss E. Eliot." "Listen a
minute. Don't waste your time getting mad at this girl. She's a friend of
mine. And you may not believe me, but she means all right."

"What's she pussyfootin' in here for?"

"Don't you know the story of the man from Pittsburgh who died and went on?"
cried E. Eliot. "Some kindly spirit showed him round the place, and the
newcomer said: 'Well, I don't think heaven's got anything on Pittsburgh.'
'This isn't heaven!' said the spirit."

There was a second's pause, and then the laugh came.

"Now, this girl has just waked up to the fact that Whitewater isn't heaven,
and she thought you'd like to hear the news! I'll take the poor lamb home,
put cracked ice on her head and let her sleep it off."

They laughed again.

"Go to it," said the erstwhile spokeswoman for the working girls.

E. Eliot called them a cheery good-night. The factory girls drifted away,
in little groups, leaving Geneviève, bedraggled and hysterical, clinging to
her rescuer.

"They would have killed me if you hadn't come!" she gasped.

E. Eliot thought quickly.

"Stand here in the shadow of the fence till I come back," she said. "It
will be all right. I've got to run into the office and send a telephone
message. I have a pal there who will let me do it."

"You--you won't be long?"

It was clear that the nerve of Mrs. Remington was quite gone.

"I won't be gone five minutes."

E. Eliot was as good as her word.

When she returned she seized the stool on which her companion had made her
maiden speech--ran to the wall, placed it at the spot where she had made
her entrance and urged Geneviève to climb up and drop over; as she
obeyed, E. Eliot mounted beside her. They dropped off, almost at the same
moment--into arms upheld to catch them.

Geneviève screamed, and was promptly choked. "What'll we do with this extra
one?" asked a hoarse voice.

"Bring her. There's no time to waste now. If ye yell again, ye'll both be
strangled," the second speaker added as he led the way toward the road,
where the dimmed lights of a motor car shone.

He was carrying E. Eliot as if she were a doll. Behind him his assistant
stumbled along, bearing, less easily but no less firmly, the, wife of the
candidate for district attorney!




CHAPTER XII

BY WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE


As the two gagged women--one comfortably gagged with more or less pleasant
bandages made and provided, the other gagged by the large, smelly hand of
an entire stranger to Mrs. George Remington--whom she was trying impolitely
to bite, by way of introduction--were speeding through the night, Mr.
George Remington, ending a long and late speech before the Whitewater
Business Men's Club, was saying these things:

"I especially deplore this modern tendency to talk as though there were two
kinds of people in this country--those interested in good government, and
those interested in bad government. We are all good Americans. We are all
interested in good government. Some of us believe good government may
be achieved through a protective tariff and a proper consideration for
prosperity [cheers], and others, in their blindness, bow down to wood and
stone!"

He smiled amiably at the laughter, and continued:

"But while some of us see things differently as to means, our aims are
essentially the same. You don't divide people according to trades and
callings. I deplore this attempt to set the patriotic merchant against the
patriotic saloonkeeper; the patriotic follower of the race track against
the patriotic manufacturer.

"Here is my good friend, Benjie Doolittle. When he played the ponies in the
old days, before he went into the undertaking and furniture business, was
he less patriotic than now? Was he less patriotic then than my Uncle Martin
Jaffry is now, with all his manufacturer's interest in a stable government?
And is my Uncle Martin Jaffry more patriotic than Pat Noonan? Or is Pat
less patriotic than our substantial merchant, Wesley Norton?

"Down with this talk that would make lines of moral and patriotic cleavage
along lines of vocation or calling. I want no votes of those who pretend
that the good Americans should vote in one box and the bad Americans in
another box. I want the votes of those of all castes and cults who believe
in prosperity [loud cheers], and I want the votes of those who believe
in the glorious traditions of our party, its magnificent principles, its
martyred heroes, its deathless name in our history!"

It was, of course, an after-dinner speech. Being the last speech of the
campaign it was also a highly important one. But George Remington felt, as
he sat listening to the din of the applause, that he had answered rather
neatly those who said he was wabbling on the local economic issue and was
swaying in the wind of socialist agitation which the women had started in
Whitewater.

As he left the hotel where the dinner had been given, he met his partner on
the sidewalk.

"Get in, Penny," he urged, jumping into his car. "Come out to the house for
the night, and we'll have Betty over to breakfast. Then she and Geneviève
and you and I will see if we can't restore the _ante-bellum modus vivendi_!
Come on! Emelene and Alys always breakfast in bed, anyway, and it will be
no trouble to get Betty over." The two men rode home in complacent silence.
It was long past midnight. They sat on the veranda to finish their cigars
before going into the house.

"Penny," asked George suddenly, "what has Pat Noonan got in this game--I
mean against the agitation by the women and this investigation of
conditions in Kentwood? Why should he agonize over it?"

"Is he fussing about it?"

"Is he? Do you think I'd tie his name up in a public speech with Martin
Jaffry if Pat wasn't off the reservation? You could see him swell up like a
pizened pup when I did it! I hope Uncle Martin will not be offended."

"He's a good sport, George. But say--what did Pat do to give you this
hunch?"

Remington smoked in meditative silence, then answered:

"Well, Penny, I had to raise the devil of a row the other day to keep Pat
from ribbing up Benjie Doolittle and the organization to a frame-up to
kidnap this Eliot person."

"Kidnap E. Eliot!" gasped the amazed Evans. "Kidnap that very pest. And I
tell you, man, if I hadn't roared like a stuck ox they would have done
it! Fancy introducing 'Prisoner of Zenda' stuff into the campaign in
Whitewater! Though I will say this, Penny, as between old army friends and
college chums," continued Mr. Remington earnestly, "if a warrior bold with
spurs of gold, who was slightly near-sighted and not particular about his
love being so damned young and fair, would swoop down and carry this E.
Eliot off to his princely donjon, and would let down the portcullis for two
days, until the election is over, it would help some! Though otherwise I
don't wish her any bad luck!"

The old army friend and college chum laughed.

"Well, that's your end of the story! I'm mighty glad you stopped it. Here's
my end. You remember two-fingered Moll, who was our first client? The one
who insisted on being referred to as a lady? The one who got converted and
quit the game and who thought she was being pursued by the racetrack gang
because she was trying to live decent?"

George smiled in remembrance. "Well, she called me up to know if there
was any penalty for renting a house to Mike the Goat and his wife and old
Salubrious the Armenian, who had a lady friend they were keeping from the
cops against her will. She said they weren't going to hurt the lady, and I
could see her every day to prove it. I advised her to keep out of it, of
course; but she was strong for it, because of what she called the big
money. I explained carefully that if anything should happen, her past
reputation would go against her. But she kept saying it was straight, until
I absolutely forbade her to do it, and she promised not to."

"Mike and his woman, and Old Salubrious!" echoed Remington. "And E. Eliot
locked up with them for two days!"

He shivered, partly at the memory of his own mealy-mouthed protest.

"Well," he said, and there was an air of finality in his tone, "I'm glad I
stopped the whole infamous business."

Mentally he decided to get Noonan on the telephone the first thing in the
morning and make certain that the plan was abandoned. He continued his
chat with Evans.

"But, Penny, why this agonizing of Noonan? What has he to lose by the
better conditions in Kentwood? Why should he----"

Outside of a neat white dwelling in the suburbs of Whitewater, four figures
were struggling in the night toward a vine-covered door--that door which
appeared so attractively in the _Welfare Bulletin_ of the Toledo Blade
Steel Company's publicity program as the "prize garden home of J. Agricola,
roller."

A woman stood in the doorway, holding the door open. Two women, who had
been carried by two men, from an automobile at the gate, were forced
through. There the men left them with their hostess.

"I was only looking for one of yez," she said, hospitably, "but you're bote
welcome. Now, ladies, I'm goin' to make you comfortable. It won't do no
good to scream, so I'm goin' to take your gags off. And I hope you, lady,
haven't been inconvenienced by a handkerchief. We could just as well
have arranged for your comfort, too."

"Madam," gasped E. Eliot, who was the first to be released to speech, "it
is unimportant who I am. But do you know that this woman with me is Mrs.
George Remington, the wife of the candidate for district attorney--Mr.
George Remington of Whitewater? There has been a mistake."

The hostess looked at Genevieve, who nodded a tearful confirmation. But the
woman only smiled.

"My man don't make mistakes," she said laconically. "And, what's more to
the point, miss, he's a friend of George Remington, and why should he be
giving his lady a vacation? You are E. Eliot, and your friends think you're
workin' too hard, so they're goin' to give you a nice rest. Nothin' will
happen to you if you are a lady, as I think you are. And when I find out
who this other lady is, we'll make her as welcome as you!"

She went out of the room, locking the door behind her as the two women
struggled vainly with their bonds. In an instant she returned.

"My man says to tell the one who thinks she's Mrs. George Remington that
she's spendin' the week-end with Mrs. Napoleon Boneypart." My man says
he's a good friend of George Remington and is supportin' him for district
attorney, and that's how he can make it so pleasant here.

"And I'll tell you something else," she continued proudly. "When George got
married, it was my man that went up and down Smoky Row and seen all the
girls and got 'em to give a dollar apiece for them lovely roses labeled
'The Young Men's Republican Club.' Mr. Doolittle he seen to that. My man
really collected fifty dollars more'n he turned in, and I got a diamond-set
wrist watch with it! So, you see, we're real friendly with them Remingtons,
and we're glad to see you, Mrs. Remington!"

"Oh, how horrible!" cried Geneviève. "There were eight dozen of those roses
from the Young Men's Republican Club, and to think---Oh, to think----"

"Well, now, George," cried Mr. Penfield Evans, "just stop and think. Use
your bean, my boy! What is the one thing on earth that puts the fear of God
into Pat Noonan? It's prohibition. Look at the prohibition map out West and
at the suffrage map out West. They fit each other like the paper on the
wall. Whatever women may lack in intelligence about some things, there is
one thing woman knows--high and low, rich and poor! She knows that the
saloon is her enemy, and she hits it; and Pat Noonan, seeing this rise of
women investigating industry, makes common cause with Martin Jaffry and
the whole employing class of Whitewater against the nosey interference of
women.

"And Pat Noonan is depending on you," continued Evans. "He expects you to
rise. He expects you to go to Congress--possibly to the Senate, and he
figures that he wants to be dead sure you'll not get to truckling to
decency on the liquor question. So he ties you up--or tries you out for a
tie-up or a kidnapping; and Benjie Doolittle, who likes a sporting event,
takes a chance that you'll stand hitched in a plan to rid the community of
a political pest without seriously hurting the pest--a friendless old maid
who won't be missed for a day or two, and whose disappearance can be hushed
up one way or another after she appears too late for the election.

"Just figure things out, George. Do you think Noonan got Mike the Goat to
assess the girls on the row a dollar apiece for your flowers from the Young
Men's Republican Club, for his health! You had the grace to thank Pat, but
if you didn't know where they came from," explained Mr. Evans cynically,
"it was because you have forgotten where all Pat's floral offerings from
the Y.M.R.C. come from at weddings and funerals! And Pat feels that you're
his kind of people.

"Politics, George, is not the chocolate éclair that you might think it, if
you didn't know it! Use your bean, my boy! Use your bean! And you'll see
why Pat Noonan lines up with the rugged captains of industry who are the
bulwarks of our American liberty. Pat uses his head for something more than
a hatrack."

The two puffed for a time in silence. Finally the host said: "Well, let's
turn in." Three minutes later George called across the upper hall to
Penfield.

"The joke's on us, Penny. Here's a note saying that Geneviève is over with
Betty for the night. We'll call her up after breakfast and have them both
over to a surprise party."

Penny strolled across to his friend's door. He was disappointed, and he
showed it. He found George sitting on the side of his bed.

"Penny," mused the Young Man in Politics, in his finest mood, "you know I
sometimes think that, perhaps, way down deep, there is something wrong with
our politics. I don't like to be hooked up with Noonan and his gang. And I
don't like the way Noonan and his gang are hooked up with Wesley Norton and
the silk stockings and Uncle Martin and the big fellows. Why can't we get
rid of the Noonan influence? They aren't after the things we're after!
They only furnish the unthinking votes that make majorities that elect the
fellows the big crooks handle. Lord, man, it's a dirty mess! And why women
want to get into the dirty mess is more than I can see." "What a sweet
valedictory address you are making for a young ladies' school!" scoffed
Penny. "The hills are green far off! Aren't you the Sweet Young Thing. But
I'll tell you why the women want to get in, George. They think they want to
clean up the mess."

"But would they clean it? Wouldn't they vote about as we vote?"

"Well," answered Mr. Evans with the cynicism of the judicial mind, "let's
see. You know now, if you didn't know at the time, that Noonan got Mike
the Goat to assess the disorderly houses for the money to buy your wedding
roses from the Y.M.R.C. All right. Noonan's bartender is on the ticket with
you as assemblyman. Are you going to vote for him or not?"

"But, Penny, I've just about got to vote for him."

"All right, then. I'll tell Geneviève the truth about Noonan and the
flowers, and I'll ask her if she would feel that she had to vote for
Noonan's bartender!" retorted Mr. Evans. "Giving women the ballot will help
at least that much. If the Noonans stay in politics, they'll get no help
from the women when they vote!"

"But aren't we protecting the women?"

* * * * *

"Anyway, Mrs. Remington," said E. Eliot comfortably, "I'm glad it happened
just this way. Without you, they would hold me until after the election on
Tuesday. With you, about tomorrow at ten o'clock we shall be released. E.
Eliot alone they have made every provision for holding. They have started
a scandal, I don't doubt, necessary to explain my absence, and pulled the
political wires to keep me from making a fuss about it afterward. They know
their man in the district attorney's office, and----"

"Do you mean George Remington?" This from his wife, with flashing eyes.

"I mean," explained E. Eliot unabashed, "that for some reason they feel
safe with George Remington in the district attorney's office, or they would
not kidnap me to prevent his defeat! That is the cold-blooded situation."

"This party," E. Eliot smiled, "is given at the country home of Mike the
Goat, as nearly as I can figure it out. Mike is a right-hand man of Noonan.
Noonan is a right-hand man of Benjie Doolittle and Wesley Norton, and they
are all a part of the system that holds Martin Jaffry's industries under
the amiable beneficence of our sacred protective tariff! Hail, hail, the
gang's all here--what do we care now, my dear? And because you are here and
are part of the heaven-born combination for the public good, I am content
to go through the rigors of one night without a nightie for the sake of the
cause!"

"But they don't know who I am!" protested Mrs. Remington. "And----"

"Exactly, and for that reason they don't know who you are not. Tomorrow the
whole town will be looking for you, and Noonan will hear who you are and
where you are. Then! Say, girl--_say, girl,_ it _will_ be grist for our
mill! Fancy the headlines all over the United States:

'GANG KIDNAPS CANDIDATE'S WIFE MYSTERY SHROUDS PLOT CANDIDATE REMINGTON IS
SILENT.'"

"But he won't be silent," protested the indignant Geneviève.

"I tell you, he'll denounce it from the platform. He'll never let this
outrage----"

"Well, my dear," said the imperturbable E. Eliot, "when he denounces this
plot he'll have to denounce Doolittle and Noonan, and probably Norton, and
maybe his Uncle Martin Jaffry. Somebody is paying big money for this job! I
said the headlines will declare:

'CANDIDATE REMINGTON is SILENT But Still Maintains That Women Are Protected
from Rigors of Cruel World by Man's Chivalry.'"

"Oh, Miss Eliot, don't! How can you? Oh, I know George will not let this
outrage----"

"Of course not," hooted E. Eliot. "The sturdy oak will support the clinging
vine! But while he is doing it he will be defeated. And if he doesn't
protest he will be defeated, for I shall talk!"

"George Remington will face defeat like a gentleman, Miss Eliot; have no
fear of that. He will speak out, no matter what happens." "And when he
speaks, when he tells the truth about this whole alliance between the
greedy, ruthless rich and the brutal, vicious dregs of this community--our
cause is won!"

* * * * *

The next morning George Remington reached from his bed for his telephone
and called up the Sheridan residence. Two minutes later Penfield Evans
heard a shout. At his door stood the unclad and pallid candidate for
district attorney.

"Penny," he gasped, "Genevieve's not there! She has not been with Betty all
night. And Betty has gone out to find E. Eliot, who is missing from her
boarding-house!"

"Are you sure----"

"God--Penny--I thought I had stopped it!"

George was back in his room, flying into his clothes. The two men were
talking loudly. From down the hall a sleepy voice--unmistakably Mrs.
Brewster-Smith's--was drawling:

"George--George--are you awake? I didn't hear you come in. Dear Geneviève
went over to stay all night with Cousin Betty, and the oddest thing
happened. About midnight the telephone bell rang, and that odious Eliot
person called you up!"

George was in the hall in an instant and before Mrs. Brewster-Smith's door.

"Well, well, for God's sake, what did she say!" he cried.

"Oh, yes, I was coming to that. She said to send your chauffeur with
the car down to the--oh, I forget, some nasty factory or something, for
Genevieve. She said Genevieve was down there talking to the factory girls.
Fancy that, George! So I just put up the receiver. I knew Genevieve was
with Betty Sheridan and not with that odious person at all--it was some
ruse to get your car and compromise you. Fancy dear Genevieve talking to
the factory girls at midnight!"

Penfield Evans and George Remington, standing in the hall, listened to
these words with terror in their hearts.

"Get Noonan first," said George. "I'll talk to him."

In five seconds Evans had Noonan's residence. Remington listened to Penny's
voice. "Gone," he was saying. "Gone where?" And then: "Why, he was at the
dinner last---What's Doolittle's number?" ("Noonan went to New York on the
midnight train," he threw at George.) A moment later Remington heard his
partner cry, "Doolittle's gone to New York? On the midnight train?"

"Try Norton," snapped George. Soon he heard Penny exclaim. "Albany?" said
Penny. "Mr. Norton is in Albany? Thank you!"

"Their alibis!" said Evans calmly, as he hung up the receiver and stared at
his partner.

"Well, it--it----Why, Penny, they've stolen Geneviève! That damned Mike
and the Armenian! They've got Geneviève with that Eliot woman! God----Why,
Penny, for God's sake, what----"

"Slowly, George--slowly. Let's move carefully."

The voice of Penfield Evans was cool and steady,

"First of all, we need not worry about any harm coming to Geneviève. She
is with Miss Eliot, and that woman has more sense than a man. She may be
depended upon. Now, then," Evans waved his partner to silence and went
on: "the next thing to consider is how much publicity we shall give this
episode." He paused.

"It's not a matter of publicity; it's a matter of getting Geneviève
immediately."

"An hour or so of publicity of the screaming, hysterical kind will not help
us to find Geneviève. But when we do find her, our publicity will have
defeated you!"

The two men stared at each other. Remington said: "You mean I must shield
the organization!"

"If you are to be elected--yes!"

"Do you think Geneviève and Miss Eliot would consent to shield the
organization when we find them? Why, Penny, you're mad! We must call up the
chief of police! We must scour the country! I propose to go right to the
newspapers! The more people who know of this dastardly thing the sooner we
shall recover the victims!"

"And the sooner Noonan, when he comes home tonight, will denounce you as
an accessory before the fact, with Norton and Doolittle as corroborating
witnesses for him! Oh, you're learning politics fast, George!"

The thought of what Genevieve would say when she knew, through Noonan and
Doolittle, that he had heard of the plot to kidnap Miss Eliot, and within
an hour had talked to his wife casually at luncheon without saying anything
about it, made George's heart stop. He realized that he was learning
something more than politics. He walked the floor of the room.

"Well," he said at last, "let's call in Uncle Martin Jaffry. He----"

"Yes; he is probably paying for the job. He might know something! I'll get
him."

"Paying for the job! Do you think he knew of this plot?" cried George as
Evans stood at the telephone.

"Oh, no. He just knew, in a leer from Doolittle, that they had
extraordinary need for Eve thousand dollars or so in your behalf--that they
had consulted you. And then Doolittle winked and Noonan cocked his head
rakishly, and Uncle Martin put--Hello, Mr. Jaffry. This is Penny. Dress
and come down to the office quickly. We are in serious trouble."

Twenty minutes later Uncle Martin was sitting with the two young men in the
office of Remington and Evans. When they explained the situation to him his
dry little face screwed up.

"Well, at least Geneviève will be all right," he muttered. "E. Eliot will
take care of her. But, boys--boys," he squeezed his hands and rocked in
misery, "the devil of it is that I gave Doolittle the money in a check and
then went and got another check from the Owners' Protective Association and
took the peak load off myself, and Doolittle was with me when I got the P.
A. check. We've simply got to protect him. And, of course, what he knows,
Noonan knows. We can't go tearing up Jack here, calling police and raising
the town!"

George Remington rose.

"Then I've got to let my wife lie in some dive with that unspeakable Turk
and that Mike the Goat while you men dicker with the scoundrels who
committed this crime!" he said. "My God, every minute is precious! We must
act. Let me call the chief of police and the sheriff----"

"All dear friends of Noonan's," Penny quietly reminded him. "They probably
have the same tip about what is on as you and Uncle Martin have! Calm down,
George! First, let me go out and learn when Noonan and Doolittle are coming
home! When we know that, we can----"

"Penny, I can't wait. I must act now. I must denounce the whole damnable
plot to the people of this country. I must not rest one second longer in
silence as an accessory. I shall denounce----"

"Yes, George, you shall denounce," exclaimed his partner. "But just
whom--yourself, that you did not warn Miss Eliot all day yesterday!"

"Yes," cried Remington, "first of all, myself as a coward!"

"All right. Next, then, your Uncle Martin Jaffry, who was earnestly trying
to help you in the only way he knew how to help! Why, George, that would
be----" "That would be the least I could do to let the people see----"

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.