Gladiator (29 page)

Hugo
walked into the hall. “You're all done for—you cheap swindlers. And I am doom.” The door banged.

Melcher swayed on his feet, swallowed hard, and ran upstairs. “Pack,” he said to his valet.

He had gone; Hugo had removed the first of the public enemies. Yet Hugo was not satisfied. His approach to Melcher had been dramatic, terrifying, effective. There were rumours of that violent morning. The rumours said that Melcher had been attacked, that he had been bought out for bigger money, that something peculiar was occurring in Washington. If ten, twenty men left and those rumours multiplied by geometrical progression, sheer intimidation would work a vast good.

But other facts disconcerted Hugo. In the first place, his mind kept reverting to Melcher's words: “Do you have the conceit to think that one person can buck the will of millions?” No matter how powerful that person, his logic added. Millions of dollars or people? the same logic questioned. After all, did it matter? People could be perjured by subtler influences than gold. Secondly, the parley over arms continued to be an impasse despite the absence of Melcher. Perhaps, he argued, he had not removed Melcher soon enough. A more carefully focused consideration showed that, in spite of what Hatten had said, it was not individuals against whom the struggle was made, but mass stupidity, gigantic bulwarks of human incertitude. And a new man came in Melcher's place—a man who employed different tactics. Hugo could not exorcise the world.

A few days later Hugo learned that two radicals had been thrown into jail on a charge of murder. The event had taken place in Newark, New Jersey. A federal officer had attempted to break up a meeting. He had been shot. The men arrested were blamed, although it was evident that they were chance seizures, that their proved guilt could be at most only a social resentfulness. At first no one gave the story much attention. The slow wheels of Jersey justice—printed always in quotation marks by the dailies—began to turn. The men were summarily tried and convicted of murder in the first degree. A mob
assaulted
the jail where they were confined—without success. Two of the mob were wounded by riot guns.

A meeting was held in Berlin, one in London, another in Paris. Moscow was silent, but Moscow was reported to be in an uproar. The trial assumed international proportions overnight. Embassies were stormed; legations from America were forced to board cruisers. Strikes were ordered; long queues of sullen men and women formed at camp kitchens. The President delivered a message to Congress on the subject. Prominent personages debated it in public halls, only to be acclaimed and booed concomitantly. The sentence imposed on two Russian immigrants rocked the world. In some cities it was not safe for American tourists to go abroad in the streets. And all the time the two men drew nearer to the electric chair.

It was then that Hugo met Skorvsky. Many people knew him; he was a radical, a writer; he lived in Washington, he styled himself an unofficial ambassador of the world. A small, dark man with a black moustache who attended one of Hugo's informal afternoon discussions on a vicarious invitation. “Come over and see Hugo Danner. He's something new in Washington.”

“Something new in Washington? I shall omit the obvious sarcasm. I shall go.” Skorvsky went.

Hugo listened to him talk about the two prisoners. He was lucid; he made allowances for the American democracy, which in themselves were burning criticism. Hugo asked him to dinner. They dined at Hugo's house.

“You have the French taste in wines,” Skorvsky said, “but, as it is to my mind the finest taste in the world, I can say only that.”

Hugo tried to lead him back to the topic that interested both of them so acutely. Skorvsky shrugged. “You are polite—or else you are curious. I know you—an American business man in Washington with a purpose. Not an apparent purpose—just now. No, no. Just now you are a host, cultivated and genial, and
retiring.
But at the proper time—ah! A dam somewhere in Arizona. A forest that you covet in Alaska. Is it not so?”

“What if it is not?”

Skorvsky stared at the ceiling. “What then? A secret? Yes, I thought that about you while we were talking to the others today. There is something deep about you, my new friend. You are a power. Possibly you are not even really an American.”

“That is wrong.”

“You assure me that I am right. But I will agree with you. You are, let us say, the very epitome of the man Mr. Mencken and Mr. Lewis tell us about so charmingly. I am Russian and I cannot know all of America. You might divulge your errand, perhaps?”

“Suppose I said it was to set the world aright?”

Skorvsky laughed lightly. “Then I should throw myself at your feet.”

Both men were in deadly earnest, Hugo not quite willing to adopt the Russian's almost effeminate delicacy, yet eager to talk to him, or to someone like him—someone who was more than a great self-centred wheel in the progress of the nation. Hugo yielded a little further. “Yet that is my purpose. And I am not altogether impotent. There are things I can do—” He got up from the table and stretched himself with a feline grace.

“Such as?”

“I was thinking of your two compatriots who were recently given such wretched justice. Suppose they were liberated by force. What then?”

“Ah! You are an independent communist?”

“Not even that. Just a friend of progress.”

“So. A dreamer. One of the few who have wealth. And you have a plan to free these men?”

Hugo shrugged. “I merely speculated on the possible outcome of such a thing; assume that they were snatched from prison and hidden beyond the law.”

Skorvsky meditated. “It would be a great victory for the cause, of course. A splendid lift to its morale.”

“
The cause of Bolshevism?”

“A higher and a different cause. I cannot explain it briefly. Perhaps I cannot explain it at all. But the old world of empires is crumbled. Democracy is at its farcical height. The new world is not yet manifest. I shall be direct. What is your plan, Mr. Danner?”

“I couldn't tell you. Anyway, you would not believe it. But I could guarantee to deliver those two men anywhere in the country within a few days without leaving a trace of how it was done. What do you think of that, Skorvsky?”

“I think you are a dangerous and a valuable man.”

“Not many people do.” Hugo's eyes were moody. “I have been thinking about it for a long time. Nothing that I can remember has happened during my life that gives me a greater feeling of understanding than the imprisonment and sentencing of those men. I know poignantly the glances that are given them, the stupidity of the police and the courts, the horror-stricken attitude of those who condemn them without knowledge of the truth or a desire for such knowledge.” He buried his face in his hands and then looked up quickly. “I know all that passionately and intensely. I know the blind fury to which it all gives birth. I hate it. I detest it. Selfishness, stupidity, malice. I know the fear it engenders—a dreadful and a justified fear. I've felt it. Very little in this world avails against it. You'll forgive so much sentiment, Skorvsky?”

“It makes us brothers.” The Russian spoke with force and simplicity. “You, too—”

Hugo crossed the room restlessly. “I don't know. I am always losing my grip. I came to Washington with a purpose and I cannot screw myself to it unremittingly. These men seem—”

Skorvsky was thinking. “Your plan for them. What assistance would you need?”

“None.”

“None!”

“Why should I need help? I—never mind. I need none.”

“You have your own organization?”

“
There is no one but me.”

Skorvsky shook his head. “I cannot—and yet—looking at you—I believe you can. I shall tell you. You will come with me to-night and meet my friends—those who are working earnestly for a new America, an America ruled by intelligence alone. Few outsiders enter our councils. We are all—nearly all—foreigners. Yet we are more American than the Maine fisherman, the Minnesota farmer. Behind us is a party that grows apace. This incident in New Jersey has added to it, as does every dense mumble of Congress, every scandalous metropolitan investigation. I shall telephone.”

Hugo allowed himself to be conducted half-dubiously. But what he found was superficially, at least, what he had dreamed for himself. The house to which he was taken was pretentious; the people in its salon were amiable and educated; there was no sign of the red flag, the ragged reformer, the anarchist. The women were gracious; the men witty. As he talked to them, one by one, he began to believe that here was the nucleus around which he could construct his imaginary empire. He became interested; he expanded.

It was late in the night when Skorvsky raised his voice slightly, so that everyone would listen, and made an announcement: “Friends, I have had the honour to introduce Mr. Danner to you. Now I have the greater honour of telling you his purpose and pledge. To-morrow night he will go to New Jersey—” the silence became absolute—“and two nights later he will bring to us in person from their cells Davidoff and Pletzky.”

A quick, pregnant pause was followed by excitement. They took Hugo by the hand, some of them applauded, one or two cheered, they shouldered near him, they asked questions and expressed doubts. It was broad daylight before they dispersed. Hugo walked to his house, listening to a long rhapsody from Skorvsky.

“We will make you a great man if you succeed,” Skorvsky said. “Good-night, comrade.”

“
Good-night.” Hugo went into the hall and up to his bedroom. He sat on his bed. A dullness overcame him. He had never been patronized quite in the same way as he had that night; it exerted at once a corrosive and a lethargic influence. He undressed slowly, dropping his shoes on the floor. Splendid people they were, he thought. A smaller voice suggested to him that he did not really care to go to New Jersey for the prisoners. They would be hard to locate. There would be a sensation and a mystery again. Still, he had found a purpose.

His telephone rang. He reached automatically from the bed. The room was bright with sunshine, which meant that it was late in the day. His brain took reluctant hold on consciousness. “Hello?”

“Hello? Danner, my friend—”

“Oh, hello, Skorvsky—”

“May I come up? It is important.”

“Sure. I'm still in bed. But come on.”

Hugo was under the shower bath when his visitor arrived. He invited Skorvsky to share his breakfast, but was impatiently refused. “Things have happened since last night, Comrade Danner. For one, I saw the chief.”

“Chief?”

“You have not met him as yet. We conferred about your scheme. He—I regret to say—opposed it.”

Hugo nodded. “I'm not surprised. I'll tell you what to do. You take me to him—and I'll prove conclusively that it will be successful. Then, perhaps, he will agree to sanction it. Every time I think of those two poor devils—snatched from a mob— waiting there in the dark for the electric chair—it makes my blood boil.”

“Quite,” Skorvsky agreed. “But you do not understand. It is not that he doubts your ability—if you failed it would not be important. He fears you might accomplish it. I assured him you would. I have faith in you.”

“He's afraid I would do it? That doesn't make sense, Skorvsky.”

“
It does, I regret to say.” His expressive face stirred with discomfort. “We were too hasty, too precipitate. I see his reason now. We cannot afford as a group to be branded as jail-breakers.”

“That's—weak,” Hugo said.

Skorvsky cleared his throat. “There are other matters. Since Davidoff and Pletzky were jailed, the party has grown by leaps and bounds. Money has poured in—”

“Ah,” Hugo said softly, “money.”

Skorvsky raged. “Go ahead. Be sarcastic. To free those men would cost us a million dollars, perhaps.”

“Too bad.”

“With a million—the million their electrocution will bring from the outraged—we can accomplish more than saving two paltry lives. We must be hard, we must think ahead.”

“In thinking ahead, Skorvsky, do you not think of the closing of a switch and the burning of human flesh?”

“For every cause there must be martyrs. Their names will live eternally.”

“And they themselves—?”

“Bah! You are impractical.”

“Perhaps.” Hugo ate a slice of toast with outward calm. “I was hoping for a government that—did not weigh people against dollars—”

“Nor do we!”

“No?”

Skorvsky leaped to his feet. “Fool! Dreamer! Preposterous idealist! I must be going.”

Hugo sighed. “Suppose I went ahead?”

“One thing!” The Russian turned with a livid face. “One thing the chief bade me tell you. If those men escape—you die.”

“Oh,” Hugo said. He stared through the window. “And supposing I were to offer your chief a million—or nearly a million—for the privilege of freeing them?”

Skorvsky's face returned to its look of transfiguration, the look that had accompanied his noblest words of the night
before.
“You would do that, comrade?” he whispered. “You would give us—give the cause—a million? Never since the days of our Saviour has a man like you walked on this—”

Hugo stood up suddenly. “Get out of here!” His voice was a cosmic menace. “Get out of here, you dirty swine. Get out of here before I break you to matchwood, before I rip out your guts and stuff them back through your filthy, lying throat. Get out, oh, God, get out!”

Chapter
XXII

H
UGO
realized at last that there was no place in his world for him. Tides and tempest, volcanoes and lightning, all other majestic vehemences of the universe had a purpose, but he had none. Either because he was all those forces unnaturally locked in the body of a man, or because he was a giant compelled to stoop and pander to live at all among his feeble fellows, his anachronism was complete.