The Savage Gentleman (20 page)

jealous piddling of little men. It's sickening.

"Once there was in this country a standard of morals and manners. That's gone.

Vulgarity is everywhere. In the theaters and the radio and the newspapers. Nobody cares.

Vicious men run through the streets with machine guns and shoot down children.

Demagogues and morons and even criminals are elected political leaders. The bodies of government have become a shambles of cheap wit and expensive graft. My father warned me against women--and the women have sunk beneath the men. They're painted prostitutes--even the old ones. Decency has deserted the best homes. Everyone fights for money. Money! There's madness for it. Greed and exploitation. War and corruption.

Stupidity and hatred."

Henry had pronounced his anathema in a steady, low voice. He drew a breath and continued: "You--Whitney--ask me to do something about it. You expect that I shall be able to change it--able and willing--just because I was brought up in a tradition that once was American--a tradition that is averse to countenancing murder, to admiring public assassinations, to abetting corruption, to breaking the law, to being cynical about rotten banks, to gambling with hard-won savings, to rampant and gaudy publicity for sex and fornication, to adultery and infidelity, to the practice of sending the impotent and the malicious to Congress, to subjugation to political trickery, to bribery, public theft, half-baked campaigns in the name of modernity and for the purpose of pornographic profit, to lies and cheating, to a vast, cosmic hypocrisy which should make the body of even a tenth-rate nation turn crimson from shame and fight for its internal freedom until decency had been restored or suicide had been committed."

Henry stopped.

For once, Collins was not superficial. He seemed, even, to be stirred by a form of anger. He stood and began to talk.

"That's not true and that's not fair. Or--rather--it's only partly true. It's one side.

You haven't looked at the other and you don't seem to care to see it. I don't give a red-hot God-damn what you think--but I can't help speaking about what you've said.

"You're in a country that's full of a hundred kinds of people--and that's responsible for part of the confusion and crime. But you're in a country where the world is being changed every day. You're in a country where men for the first time since the dawn have the courage to question everything. Where religion isn't being handed from father to son as an immutable set of laws but is being sifted for what's worth while. To do that takes nerve. You're in a country where the people have grown sick of the pretense of the fashionable morals you're praising, and maybe not all their experiments are successes, but at least they aren't afraid to try."

Collins's words fell like rolls on a drum.

"There's contest here. And look at science. You're in a world where men have given their lives by the hundred in rotten little laboratories and foul clinics to do away with disease and make humanity healthy. The stars are being weighed and the atoms pulled apart. You talk about the war. Maybe it didn't make the world safe for democracy-

-but there are a million men and more who believed that it would and plenty who went out there and got their hearts torn out because they hoped it would. Of course, there's confusion. Of course, there's crime and vice. When hasn't there been? But there never were so many people who wanted to end it and who were ready to help end it and who get down on their intellectual hands and knees every night and pray to whatever gods they have for someone to come along and help them end it. This is daybreak. The Middle Ages didn't end with the Renaissance. They didn't end with the Industrial Revolution.

They're ending now, and only now. Man's turned honest and admitted his sins and his motives. That made hell to pay, and that was the only way back over the long track of human error--to a little human happiness and decency and peace and development. You--

"

Collins did not finish. The bell on the door of the suite rang and Jack answered it.

Henry stared at Collins in astonishment. Collins sat down, exhausted.

In the next room, Jack opened the door and saw three men outside. They had guns in their hands. Jack had had experience with the world, and with men, and he knew death when he saw it in human eyes.

He knew it was intended for Henry.

He interposed his huge body.

"What you all want?" he said steadily.

"Mr. Stone here?"

"He's--"

"One side."

A revolver was poked into Jack's ribs. But Jack did not bulge. His right hand had reached under his coat. He brought out an enormous butcher knife.

"You go away," he said.

"Get back, nigger. You'll get hurt."

Tense, hoarse words.

"Go away--"

The first man--a little man with a black mustache--tried to get around Jack.

Jack side-stepped to confront him.

The man paled and fired.

Jack's eyes blinked once. His knife fell upon a little man, cleaving down through his shoulder to the heart. Then Jack pitched on his face. The other two men exchanged a terrified glance and one said:

"We better scram."

Henry leaped into the room.

"Jack! My God! Jack's been shot!"

The door shut at Jack's feet.

Collins leaped upon it and turned the lock.

Henry bent over Jack.

"Jack! Jack!"

Blood ran from the black coat. The aged eyes opened and seemed to recognize Henry. Then light dwindled in them.

Henry looked up.

Collins was standing stiff at the side of the wall.

"Get over here," he said. "They may shoot through the door."

"But--"

The reporter grabbed Henry by the lapels and pulled him away.

"It's Voorhees! Voorhees and his gang. They knew you could change the policy of all the Stone papers. They believed you would. They sent someone for you. Jack must have refused to let them in."

"Voorhees?" he repeated, still not understanding.

"Voorhees. It was the only way. Get you and get you quick. I should have been looking out for it. It's my fault—"

"They killed Jack!"

Collins shook him.

"You're God-damned right. And they would have killed you instead if he had let them in."

"Voorhees did that?"

"Yes. Yes. Yes! It was the last straw-- What in hell are you doing?"

"I'm going to see Voorhees."

"Don't be a fool. Don't open that door. Don't you see? You haven't got anything on Voorhees!" Henry stepped away from the wall. His eyes were lowered to the body of Jack. He whispered the name.

"Jack--Jack--Jack. They killed you. These human lice who run this city. They shot you--because you chose to be shot instead of me. They--"

"Take it easy, Stone," Collins said in a gentle voice.

The man from the island knelt beside the Negro and folded his two hands. His throat had contracted so that he could scarcely speak. He stared up at Collins.

"I loved him--almost as I loved my father."

Slowly a change came over Henry. His sorrow was submerged in a different and hideous emotion. His face locked. His eyes became a conflagration.

His body grew tense--the great shoulders lifting and the mighty head thrusting itself forward. He shook; his fists clenched.

"That's right," he whispered again. "I haven't got anything on Voorhees. That's the way with everything these days. He'd go to trial and get off. I haven't proof. But I'm going to see Voorhees just the same!"

The last words were ended with a roar. He whirled and yanked the door open without turning the lock. The hall was empty except, for a body. He rushed down it, Collins behind him. He stamped and swayed until an elevator came.

He hurled himself through the lobby and started down the street. He did not even think of taking a cab.

Chapter Sixteen:
THE HOLOCAUST

HENRY stalked to the newspaper building. Hatless. Not panting.

He got into an elevator and stepped out on the floor where Voorhees' office was.

A girl at a desk rose when he entered the outer room. He ignored her and crossed through the maze of desks. Collins was still on his heels.

He opened another door.

Voorhees was at his desk, talking over a telephone. Two large, lantern-lawed men sat in chairs at his side. When Henry entered, Voorhees hung up, and stood.

"Mr. Stone!" He seemed to be frightened.

Henry smiled and sat down. "Mr. Voorhees."

"You weren't announced—"

"No. I dropped in to speak about the matter of the O'Donnell campaign."

"Oh--yes. I wanted to tell you. I didn't change the morning run. I thought I could convince you that O'Donnell was our man."

Henry shook his head. "No; I prefer Yates."

Voorhees swelled and purpled. "I think I can convince you."

"No."

"These two gentlemen--"

Henry lifted his hand.

"Sorry. You're through. And I'm having you tried for murder. Three of your men shot my Jack."

"The lousy nigger pulled a knife--"

Voorhees clapped his hand to his mouth in terror at having given himself away.

Something happened to Henry. He came up to his feet, slowly. The motion was like the setting of a bow a long even pull that generated tension.

Voorhees' eyes stuck on his.

"That's what I wanted to know," Henry said in a childlike voice.

He got one of the lantern-jawed men as he dove over the table. Fist on jaw. His hands went around Voorhees' throat.

The third man reached for his gun and Collins hit him on the temple with an inkwell.

Voorhees had just time to scream.

A door opened.

Henry saw a group of men sitting in the smoke-filled directors' room--the politicians who had come to confer with Voorhees over Henry's interference with their plans. He dropped Voorhees and went into that room.

Collins, behind him, turned out the lights.

Awful sound carne from the dark. Someone shouted:

"Don't anybody shoot!"

No one shot.

Presently a man ran from the room and out the door. Then two more men. Then one crawled out.

The hubbub diminished.

Henry was last to come. Collins, at the clear, switched on the light again. Henry had the arm of a chair in his hand and' it was bloody. There were five men on the floor in the room where Henry had been.

People ran toward the office. Two more of Voorhees' gorillas came with guns.

Henry plunged at them. A bullet tore through the flesh on his back.

For a minute he stood in the center of the room--a frightful spectacle. His chest rose and fell. His eyes were beserk. His coat had been ripped off. His trousers were torn.

His shirt was crimson. There was a great welt on his head.

Collins shouted shrilly in the ear of a man beside him.

"Get the reporters, Billy. Tell them Voorhees' mob is coming after Stone. This is Stone. Tell 'em to bring clubs."

"We'll go down," Henry bawled.

On the way, Collins grabbed a hysterical clerk and slapped him into sense.

"Call Elihu Whitney. Tell him to come here at once. Tell him hell is loose. Get the police!"

Henry tore for the stairway. He bolted the five flights down to the presses. He howled at a man in overalls to turn off the lumbering giants.

An immense silence filled the place.

"I'm Henry Stone!" The voice rolled through the vast chamber. ''I'm looking for anybody who's Voorhees' man. Any of you baboons--"

Someone fired at him through one of the street doors and shouted:

"Get him, McCorsk!"

There was a rush toward Henry. No one could hold him. No one could hit him hard enough even to attract his special attention.

Collins went in with a machine wrench.

Then the reporters Collins had summoned from the city room came down. They stood at the door--a dammed-up avalanche--for just an instant. They understood what was happening.

"Come on!" someone shouted. "Somebody get the cops. Stone's taking on the mob. Get in there and fight!"

The holocaust raged around the stilled presses. Individuals separated from the main mass and slipped back and forth on the bloody cement. The feud between the reporters and the
Record
gang now had a leader.

Men reached for tools and hurled them. Men stole through alleys in the machinery with bulging eyes, and fists clenching wrenches.

In the thick of the tumult Henry roared and swung his fists. He was the equal of ten.

Into every blow went all the superb strength he had gained on the island--all the hatred he had for the rottenness of the city--all the heartbreak he had found there and the misery that was pent in his soul.

He was a Titan.

By and by the din diminished.

Henry and McCorsk fought together in the center of the chamber. Some men ran away. Some men lay still and looked through bruised eyes. Some of them could not look, in those gory moments.

Collins went round the edge of the fight, weak and gasping, his wrench in a hand he could no longer lift.

McCorsk was a huge man. He had a waist like a hogshead and fists like hammers.

He fought silently. But Henry fought back bellowing defiance.

It was upon that scene that Elihu Whitney and Marian made their entrance.

The pressroom was a charnel place. The men in it were ghouls.

And in their center, McCorsk and Henry plunged remorselessly and unhindered against each other.

Henry spit blood.

McCorsk hit his head.

Then Henry saw Marian. He felt the other man's arms around him. He pushed him away. The brutal, red face dangled in front of him. Henry leered at it. He remembered his fury dimly.

McCorsk hit again.

Marian screamed.

Henry felt stupidly weary of the fight. His antagonist picked up a hammer.

"Hit him!" Marian screamed. "Henry!"

He shook his head. McCorsk crouched and circled. Henry saw him plainly, then.

His magnificent and almost naked body shot into the last blow. It turned McCorsk's face to jelly.

Henry slipped to the floor, gasped, quivered, stood up, thought painfully, and then raised his voice. He tried twice before he commanded his former bellow.