The Walking Delegate Part 48

Tom had said to himself that he had one chance in a thousand. But this was a miscalculation. His chance had been better than that, and had been made so by Mr. Baxter's shrewd arrangement for his dealings with Foley, based upon his theory that one of the surest ways of avoiding suspicion is to do naturally and openly the thing you would conceal. Mr. Baxter's theory overlooked the possibility that suspicion might already be roused and on watch.

Tom did not look at the sheet of paper in the hallway or in the street; with three thousand union men in the street, all of whom knew him, one was likely to pounce upon him at any minute and gain his secret prematurely. With elation hammering against his ribs, he hurried through a cross street toward the little park, which in the last five months had come to be his study. The sheet of paper was b.u.t.toned tightly in his coat, but all the time his brain was reading a few jerky phrases in the detail-packed report.

In the park, and on a bench having the seclusion of a corner, he drew the report from his pocket and read it eagerly, several times. Here was as much as he had hoped for--evidence that what he had suspected was true. With the few relevant facts of the report as a basis he began to reconstruct the secret proceedings of the last three weeks. At each step he tested conjectures till he found the only one that perfectly fitted all the known circ.u.mstances. Progress from the known backward to the unknown was not difficult, and by five o'clock the reconstruction was complete. He then began to lay his plans for the evening.

Tom preferred not to face Maggie, with her demands certain to be repeated, so he had his dinner in a restaurant whose only virtue was its cheapness. At half past seven he arrived at Potomac Hall, looking as much his usual self as he could. He pa.s.sed with short nods the groups of men who stood before the building--some of whom had once been his supporters, but who now nodded negligently--and entered the big bar-room. There were perhaps a hundred men here, all talking loudly; but comparatively few were drinking or smoking--money was too scarce. He paused an instant just within the door and glanced about. The men he looked for were not there, and he started rapidly across the room.

"h.e.l.lo, Keating! How's your strike?" called one of the crowd, a man whom, two months before, he himself had convinced a strike should be made.

"Eat-'Em-Up Keating, who don't know when he's had enough!" shouted another, with a jeer.

"Three cheers for Keating!" cried a third, and led off with a groan. The three groans were given heartily, and at their end the men broke into laughter.

Tom burned at these crude insults, but kept straight on his way.

There were also friends in the crowd,--a few. When the laughter died down one cried out: "What's the matter with Keating?" The set answer came, "He's all right!"--but very weak. It was followed by an outburst of groans and hisses.

As Tom was almost at the door the stub of a cigar struck smartly beneath his ear, and the warm ashes slipped down inside his collar. There was another explosion of laughter. Tom whirled about, and with one blow sent to the floor the man who had thrown the cigar. The laugh broke off, and in the sudden quiet Tom pa.s.sed out of the bar-room and joined the stream of members going up the broad stairway and entering the hall.

The hall was more than half filled with men--some sitting patiently in their chairs, some standing with one foot on chair seats, some standing in the aisles and leaning against the walls, all discussing the same subject, the abandonment of the strike. The general mood of the men was one of bitter eagerness, as it was also the mood of the men below, for all their coa.r.s.e jesting,--the bitterness of admitted defeat, the eagerness to be back at their work without more delay.

Tom glanced around, and immediately he saw Petersen coming toward him, his lean brown face glowing.

"h.e.l.lo, Petersen. I was looking for you," he said in a whisper when the Swede had gained his side. "I want you by me to-night."

"Yah."

Petersen's manner announced that he wanted to speak, and Tom now remembered, what he had forgotten in his two days' absorption, the circ.u.mstances under which he had last seen the Swede. "How are things at home?" he asked.

"Ve be goin' to move. A better house." After this bit of loquacity Petersen smiled blissfully--and said no more.

Tom told Petersen to join him later, and then hurried over to Barry and Jackson, whom he saw talking with a couple other of his friends in the front of the hall. "Boys, I want to tell you something in a minute," he whispered. "Where's Pete?"

"The committee's havin' a meetin' in Connelly's office," answered Barry.

Tom hurried to Connelly's office and knocked. "Come in," a voice called, and he opened the door. The five men were just leaving their chairs.

"h.e.l.lo, Pete. Can I see you as soon's you're through?" Tom asked.

"Sure. Right now."

Connelly improved the opportunity by offering Tom some advice, emphasized in the customary manner, and ended with the request: "Now for G.o.d's sake, keep your wind-hole plugged up to-night!"

Tom did not reply, but as he was starting away with Pete he heard Foley say to the secretary: "Youse can't blame him, Connelly. Some o' the rest of us know it ain't so easy to give up a fight."

Tom found Barry, Petersen and the three others waiting, and with them was Johnson, who having noticed Tom whispering to them had carelessly joined the group during his absence. "If you fellows'll step back here I'll finish that little thing I was telling," he said, and led the way to a rear corner, a dozen yards away from the nearest group.

When he turned to face the six, he found there were seven. Johnson had followed. Tom hesitated. He did not care to speak before Johnson; he had always held that person in light esteem because of his variable opinions. And he did not care to ask Johnson to leave; that course might beget a scene which in turn would beget suspicion. It would be better to speak before him, and then see that he remained with the group.

"Don't show the least surprise while I'm talking; act like it was nothing at all," he began in a whisper. And then he told them in a few sentences what he had discovered, and what he planned to do.

They stared at him in astonishment. "Don't look like that or you'll give away that we've got a scheme up our sleeves," he warned them. "Now I want you fellows to stand by me. There may be trouble. Come on, let's get our seats. The meeting will open pretty soon."

He had already picked out a spot, at the front end on the right side, the corner formed by the wall and the grand piano. He now led the way toward this. Half-way up the aisle he chanced to look behind him. There were only six men. Johnson was gone.

"Take the seats up there," he whispered, and hurried out of the hall, with a fear that Johnson at that minute might be revealing what he had heard to Foley. But when he reached the head of the stairway he saw at its foot Foley, Hogan, and Brown starting slowly up. With sudden relief he turned back and joined his party. A little later Connelly mounted the platform and gave a few preliminary raps on his table, and Johnson was forgotten.

The men standing about the hall found seats. Word was sent to the members loitering below that the meeting was beginning, and they came up in a straggling body, two hundred strong. Every chair was filled; men had to stand in the aisles, and along the walls, and in the rear where there were no seats. It was the largest gathering of the union there had been in three years. Tom noted this, and was glad.

All the windows were open, but yet the hall was suffocatingly close.

Hundreds of cigars were momently making it closer, and giving the upper stratum of the room's atmosphere more and more the appearance of a solid. Few coats were on; they hung over the arms of those standing, and lay in the laps of those who sat. Connelly, putting down his gavel, took off his collar and tie and laid them on his table, an example that was given the approval of general imitation. Everywhere faces were being mopped.

Connelly rapped again, and stood waiting till quiet had spread among the fifteen hundred men. "I guess you all know what we're here for," he began. "If there's no objection I guess we can drop the regular order o'

business and get right to the strike."

There was a general cry of "consent."

"Very well. Then first we'll hear from the strike committee."

Foley, as chairman of the strike committee, should have spoken for it; but the committee, being aware of the severe humiliation he was suffering, and to save him what public pain it could, had sympathetically decided that some other member should deliver its report. And Foley, with his cunning that extended even to the smallest details, had suggested Pete, and Pete had been selected.

Pete now rose, and with hands on Tom's shoulders, calmly spoke what the committee had ordered. The committee's report was that it had nothing new to report. After carefully considering every circ.u.mstance it saw no possible way of winning the strike. It strongly advised the union to yield at once, as further fighting meant only further loss of wages.

Pete was hardly back in his seat when it was moved and seconded that the union give up the strike. A great stamping and cries of "That's right!"

"Give it up!" "Let's get back to work!" joined to give the motion a tremendous uproar of approval.

"You have heard the motion," said Connelly. "Any remarks?"

Men sprang up in all parts of the crowd, and for over an hour there were brief speeches, every one in favor of yielding. In substance they were the same: "Since the strike's lost, let's get back to work and not lose any more wages." Every speaker was applauded with hand-clapping, stamps, and shouts; an enthusiasm for retreat had seized the crowd. Foley was called for, but did not respond. Other speakers did, however, and the enthusiasm developed to the spirit of a panic. Through speeches, shouts, and stamping Tom sat quietly, biding his time.

Several of the speakers made bitter flings at the leaders.h.i.+p that had involved them in this disastrous strike. Finally one man, spurred to abandon by applause, ended his hoa.r.s.e invective by moving the expulsion of the members who had led the union into the present predicament. So far Foley had sat with face down, without a word, in obvious dejection.

But when this last speaker was through he rose slowly to his feet. At sight of him an eager quiet possessed the meeting.

"I can't say's I blame youse very much for what youse've said," he began, in a voice that was almost humble, looking toward the man who had just sat down. "I helped get the union into the strike, yes, an' I want youse boys"--his eyes moved over the crowd--"to give me all the blame that's comin' to me."

A pause. "But I ain't the only one. I didn't do as much to bring on the strike as some others." His glance rested on Tom. "The fact is, I really didn't go in for the strike till I saw all o' youse seemed to be in for it. Then o' course I did, for I'm always with youse. An' I fought hard, so long's there was a chance. Mebbe there's a few"--another glance at Tom--"that'd like to have us keep on fightin'--an' starve. Blame me all youse want to, boys--but Buck Foley don't want none o' youse to starve."

He sank slowly back into his chair. "You did your best, Buck!" a voice shouted, and a roar of cheers went up. To those near him he seemed to brighten somewhat at this encouragement.

"Three cheers for Keating!" cried the man who had raised this shout in the bar-room, springing to his feet. And again he led off with three groans, which the crowd swelled to a volume matching the cheers for Foley. Connelly, in deference to his office, pounded with his gavel and called for silence--but weakly.

Tom flushed and his jaw tightened, but he kept his seat.

The crowd began once more to demand Foley's views on the question before the house. He shook his head at Connelly, as he had repeatedly done before. But the meeting would not accept his negative. They added the clapping of hands and the stamping of feet to their cries. Foley came up a second time, with most obvious reluctance.

"I feel sorter like the man that was run over by a train an' had his tongue cut out," he began, making what the union saw was a hard effort to smile. "I don't feel like sayin' much.

"It seems to me that everything worth sayin' has been said already," he went on in his previous humble, almost apologetic, tone. "What I've got to say I'll say in the shadow of a minute. I size up the whole thing like this: We went into this strike thinkin' we'd win, an' because we needed more money. An' boys, we ought to have it! But we made a mistake somewhere. I guess youse've found out that in a fight it ain't always the man that's right that wins. It's the strongest man. The same in a strike. We're right, and we've fought our best, but the other fellows are settin' on our chests. I guess our mistake was, we wasn't as strong when we went into the fight as we thought we was.