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"Fer Gawd's sake, let's have a light here, somebody!" panted the dishevelled policeman. Outside, the ringing of a gong became audible. Then came a clattering of hoofs, as the police-patrol, nicely-timed by the conspirators, and summoned by a confederate, drew up at the box on the corner.
Somebody struck another match, and a raw gas-light flared. From the hallway, two or three others crowded into the wrecked room. Disjointed exclamations, oaths and curses intermingled with harsh laughter.
The woman—Lillian Rafter, probably the finest actress and stool-pigeon in the whole detective world of graft and crookedness—lighted a cigarette at the gas-burner, and laughed with triumph.
"Some make-up, eh kid?" she demanded of the taller detective, who was now nursing a bad "shiner," as a black eye is known in the under-world, and whose face was battered to a bleeding pulp. "Believe me, as a job, this is some job! From start to finish, a pippin. He was bound to fall for it though. No help for him. Even if he hadn't butted into the 'plant' we fixed for him in the alley, there, I could have braced him in the street with my tale of woe. He was just bound to be 'it,' this time. We had him going, all ways for Sunday!"
Scornfully the woman Gabriel had befriended in her seeming misery, spat at him as he lay there stunned and scarcely breathing on the dirty floor.
"And just pipe this, will you, too?" she exulted, holding up the five-dollar bill he had given her. "And this?" She exhibited his name and address, written on a card. "In his own writing, boys. As evidence to hold him on a white slave charge, is this some evidence or isn't it?"
"Oh, we'll hold him, all right!" growled the other detective, whose right arm dangled limp, where the chair had struck him. "The —— —— of a ——! He'll go up for a finif, a five-spot, or I'm a liar! And once we get him behind bars, good-night!"
He deliberately drew back his heavy boot and kicked Gabriel full in the face.
"You —— ——!" he cursed. "Try to bean me , will you? Damn you! You've made your last soap-box spiel!"
"Come on, now, boys, out with him, an' no more rag-chewin'!" the policeman exclaimed. "Git him in the wagon, an' away, before a gang piles in here! You, Caffery, take his feet. I'll manage his head. Jesus, but he's some big guy, though, the —— —— of a ——!"
Together, the battered policeman and the detective who still had some strength left in him, raised Gabriel's limp body and carried it from the room. The woman, meanwhile, stood there inhaling cigarette-smoke and laughing viciously to herself.
"You easy mutt!" she exclaimed. "Dead baby, room-rent due, wanted to get home to sister—and you fell for that old gag with whiskers on it! You're some wise guy all right, all right, I don't think. Well, as a stall it was a beaut. And I must say I never screamed better in all my life. And that wallop I handed out, was a peach. If I don't pull down five hundred for this night's work—"
"Shut up, you ——!" snarled Caffery, as he turned into the stairway. "Keep that lip o' yours quiet, will you, or—"
The woman stared at him a moment, then laughed insolently and snapped her smoke-yellowed fingers at him in defiance.
"Mind you show up in court, in the mornin'!" panted the officer, staggering downstairs under the weight of Gabriel's huge shoulders.
"Better arrest her now," suggested Caffery, "an' hold her."
"You will, like Hell!" retorted the woman.
"Shhh! In one door an' out the other," the second detective whispered in her ear, as she stood there in the doorway. "I'll see to it you get fifty extra for that! "
"Oh, if that's the game, fine business!" she smiled. "Go to it—I'm your huckleberry!"
Thus it befell that, while a large and growing crowd observed, under the arc-light on the corner—a crowd where no fewer than six reporters, all duly tipped off in advance, were taking notes—Gabriel Armstrong, the Socialist speaker and leader, was bundled, unconscious, into a patrol wagon of the City of Rochester; and with him, a drunken-acting harlot, babbling charges of white-slave extortion and violence against him; and with them both, several witnesses, who would have sworn that Heaven was Hell, for five dollars cash in hand.
Thus was the stage set, for the next session of the honorable court. Thus were the wires pulled. Thus, the prison doors were swung wide open, and, above all, the honor and the reputation of a man swept to the garbage-heaps of life.
True, at the morrow's great mass-meeting, there were destined to be protests and calls for investigation. The Socialist press was destined to take it up, defend him and demand the truth. But, swamped by a perfectly overwhelming capitalist press, not only naturally hostile but in this case already heavily subsidized; shattered by the close-knit, circumstantial evidence; hamstrung and hampered in every way by the power of unlimited money and Tammany pull, the Socialists might as well have tried to sweep back the sea with a broom as save this man from legal crucifixion. Worse still, they themselves, and the beaten strikers with whom they had been fraternizing, got a black eye in the affair; and many an editorial column, many a pulpit, unctuously discoursed thereon. Many an anti-Socialist thug and grafter, loud-mouthed and blatant, bellowed revamped platitudes of "immorality" and "breaking up the home," and the "nation of fatherless children," pointing at Gabriel Armstrong as a shining example of Socialist hypocrisy and filth.
Press, law, church, capitalism itself nailed this man and the movement he stood for, to the cross. And the pimps and parasites of the private detective agency chuckled in their well-paid glee. The woman, Gabriel's betrayer, counted her "thirty pieces of silver" and laughed in the foul dark. The police cut a fine melon secretly handed them by Flint; and so, too, did the local papers and more than one local pulpit.
So, in Gabriel's grief and woe and desolation, as he sat in his grim cell with aching head, bruised face and bleeding heart, with all his plans now broken, with the very soul within him dead—in this grief and anguish, I say, the foul harpy-brood of Capitalism revelled and rioted like maggots in carrion.
None more viciously than old Flint, himself. None with more brutal joy, more savage satisfaction. One of the culminant moments of his life, he felt, was on the evening after the dastardly plot had been carried to its putrid conclusion.
Opening the Rochester "News-Intelligencer" which Slade had sent him, his glittering eyes seemed to sparkle joy as a blue-penciled column met his gaze.
Eagerly he read it all, every word, and weighed it, and re-read it, as men do when news is dear to their souls. Already, through the New York papers he had got the essentials of the affair. Already, by long distance 'phone he had received the outlines of the news from Slade, as well as a code telegram of more than 500 words, giving him additional details. But this paper especially pleased him. The other Rochester sheets, which Slade would send as fast as they appeared, he already was looking forward to, with keenest pleasure.
"Ah! This is what I call efficiency!" he exclaimed, settling himself in his big chair, adjusting the pince-nez on his hawk-bill and preparing to read the column for the third time. "The way this thing was planned and carried out, and the manner in which Slade has managed to get it played up in the papers, proves to me he's a general in his line, a true Napoleon. I may safely intrust any affair of this sort to him and his agency. No fee of his shall ever be questioned; and as for bonuses—well, he shall have no reason to complain. An admirable man, in every way—a wonderful organization! With men and agencies like these at work in our interests, what have we, really, to be uneasy about?"
Smacking his mental lips, if I may be pardoned the phrase, he once more slowly read the delightful, gratifying news:
SOCIALIST WHITE-SLAVER!
Rotten Affair Unearthed by Police!
Gabriel Armstrong, Socialist Leader, Caught With the Goods!!!
Rochester, July 4.
"In one of the most sensational raids ever made in this city, by the vice squad, under the auspices of the Purity League, what is believed to be a well-organized white-slave business was unearthed last night. The leader and brains of the association, Gabriel Armstrong, a Socialist speaker and worker of national prominence, was arrested, and is now lodged in Police Headquarters, with serious charges pending.
"The arrest was made as a result of the keen work of Officer Michael P. Duffey, sergeant of the vice squad. Hearing screams in the assignation house at 42A Belding street, he made his way up stairs, accompanied by two or three citizens. The screams were coming from a room on the second floor. Duffey promptly battered the door down only to be met by a furious assault from Armstrong, who was intoxicated and extremely violent.
"A savage hand-to-hand struggle took place, in which furniture was broken, the policeman badly injured and two of the volunteers knocked out. Armstrong was finally subdued, however, by the jiu-jitsu method, in which Duffey is an expert, and was lodged in the Central Station, together with the woman.
"According to her statement, the man, Armstrong, had not only been guilty of grossly immoral practices with her, but had also been trying to force her to share with him the proceeds of her life of shame, thus making out against him a clear case under the Mann White-Slave Traffic law. She has material evidence of this fact—money which he had given her, to finance her till she could begin bringing in revenue to him, and also his name and address, written by his own hand. A significant fact is that the address given by this white slaver is Socialist headquarters, in Chicago. The police are now working on the theory that the entire Socialist organization is honeycombed with this traffic, and that the Socialist movement is only a blind to cover a wholesale distribution of women for immoral purposes. Drastic Federal action against the Socialist Party is now being considered.
"Still further and more sensational facts are expected to develop at the preliminary hearing, which will take place tomorrow morning. In case Armstrong is bound over to the Grand Jury, and convicted, he may get a heavy fine and as much as five years in a Federal penitentiary. He is described as being a surly, low type, reticent and vindictive, of vicious characteristics and mentally defective. The local Socialists have already taken up arms in his defense, as was to be expected.
"Interest is added to the case by the fact that Armstrong is known to be the man who, at the time of the recent automobile accident to Miss Catherine Flint—daughter of Isaac Flint, of Englewood, N. J.—gave the alarm. A theory is now being formed that he was, in some way, involved in a plot with Miss Flint's chauffeur to wreck the machine and share a big reward for rescuing the girl. The plot, however, evidently miscarried, for the chauffeur was killed, and Armstrong, after giving the alarm, feared to divulge his identity but fled in disguise.
"Public interest is greatly aroused in this matter. And if, as now seems positively certain, this arrest and forthcoming conviction break up the vicious white-slave gang for some time operating in Rochester and Ontario Beach, the public will have a still greater debt of gratitude toward the Purity League, the Vice Squad and the untiring efforts and bravery of Sergeant Duffey."
"That, ah that," remarked old Flint, as he finished his last reading, "is what I call literature! It may not be Scott or Shelley or Dickens, but it's got far more than they ever had—tremendous value to—er—to the rightful masters of society. I dare say that this article and also others like it that are bound to be printed during the trial and after, will do more to secure our position in society than a whole army with machine guns. Socialism, eh? After this campaign gets through, by God, we'll sweep up the leavings in a dustpan and throw them out the window!"
Again he surveyed the article, smiling thinly.
"Literature, yes," he repeated. "The writer of those lines, and the master-minds who engineered the whole affair, must and shall be liberally rewarded. Editors, preachers, writers, they're all on our side. All safe and sane—that is, nearly all—enough, at any event, to assure our safety. I rejoice that I have lived to see this day!"
He turned the sheets of the paper, to see if any other notice of the affair was printed; and as he looked, he pondered.
"Imagine the effect of this, on Kate!" thought he. "It will be just as I planned it. Nothing will be left in her mind now, but loathing, hate and rage against this man. In two days, she and Waldron will have patched up their little difference, and all will be well. A master-stroke on my part, eh? Yes, yes indeed, a master-stroke!"
His eye caught another blue-pencilling.
"Editorial, eh?" said he, adjusting his glasses. "Better and better! This affair will sweep those troublemakers off the map, or I'm a beggar!"
Then, with the keenest of satisfaction, he focussed his attention on the sapient editorial:
SOCIALISM UNVEILED .
The arrest and impending conviction of Gabriel Armstrong, the noted Socialist leader, on a white-slave traffic charge, will do much to set all sane thinkers right in regard to this whole matter of Socialist ethics. Socialists, as we have all heard, contend that their system of thought teaches a high and pure form of morality. How will they square this assertion with the hard, cold facts, as brought to light in this most revolting case?
Much more seems to lie beneath the surface than at first sight appears. Though we desire to suspend judgment until all the data are known, it appears conclusively proved that Armstrong is but one of a band of white-slavers operating through the organization of, and with the consent of the Socialist party, or at least of its responsible officials.
If this prove to be the case, it will substantiate the suspicion long felt in many quarters that this whole movement, ostensibly political, is really a menace to the moral and social welfare of the nation. A foreign importation, openly standing against the home, the family and religion, may well be expected to foster such crimes and to be a "culture-medium" for the growth of such vile microbes as this man Armstrong, and others of his kind.
Turn on the light! Bring the social antiseptics! Let all the facts be established; and when known, if—as we anticipate—they prove this nasty conspiracy, let us make an end, now and forever, to this un-American, immoral and filthy thing, Socialism! To this object this paper now and henceforth pledges its policy; and all decent publications, all citizens who love their country, their God, their homes, their flag, will join with it in a nation-wide crusade to choke this slimy monster of Anarchy and Free-love, and fling it back into the Pit where it belongs.
Long live religion, purity and the flag! Down with Socialism!
Flint regarded this masterpiece with an approving eye. Then, chuckling to himself, he arose and with slow steps advanced toward the dining-room where already Catherine was awaiting him.
"Now," he murmured to himself, and smiled thinly, "now for a little scene with Kate!"