The Sturdy Oak Part 30

"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 a.s.sistant 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 Genevieve 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 d.a.m.ned 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 s.h.i.+vered, 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 Genevieve. "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 G.o.d 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 cla.s.s 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 a.s.sess 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 eclair 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 Genevieve 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?"