Scott Leroy
The Walking Delegate

Chapter XXVII
THE THOUSANDTH CHANCE

Mr. Driscoll was the chairman of the building committee of a little independent church whose membership was inclined to regard him somewhat dubiously, notwithstanding the open liking of the pastor. The church was planning a new home, and of late the committee had been holding frequent meetings. In the afternoon of this same Monday there had been a session of the committee; and on leaving the pastor's study Mr. Driscoll had hurried to his office, but Ruth, whom he had pressed into service as the committee's secretary, had stopped to perform a number of errands. When she reached the office she walked through the open hall door – the weather was warm, so it had been wide all day – over the noiseless rug to her desk, and began to remove her hat. Voices came to her from Mr. Driscoll's room, Mr. Driscoll's voice and Mr. Berman's; but their first few sentences, on business matters, passed her ears unheeded, like the thousand noises of the street. But presently, after a little pause, Mr. Berman remarked upon a new topic: "Well, it's the same as settled that the strike will be over in two days."

Almost unconsciously Ruth's ears began to take in the words, though she continued tearing the sheets of stamps, one of her purchases, into strips, preparatory to putting them away.

"Another case in which right prevails," said Mr. Driscoll, a touch of sarcasm in his voice.

"Why, yes. We are altogether in the right."

"And so we win." Silence. Then, abruptly, and with more sarcasm: "But how much are we paying Foley?"

Ruth started, as when amid the street's thousand noises one's own name is called out. She gazed intently at the door, which was slightly ajar.

Silence. "What? You know that?"

"Why do you suppose I left the committee?"

"I believed what you said, that you were tired of it."

"Um! So they never told you. Since you're a member of the committee I'm breaking no pledge in telling you where I stand. I left when they proposed buying Foley – "

Mr. Berman made a hushing sound.

"Nobody'll hear. Miss Arnold's out. Besides, I wouldn't mind much if somebody did hear, and give the whole scheme away. How you men can stand for it is more than I know."

"Oh, it's all right," Mr. Berman returned easily.

The talk went on, but Ruth listened for no more. She hastily pinned on her hat, passed quietly into the hall, and caught a descending elevator. After a walk about the block she came back to the office and moved around with all the legitimate noise she could make. Mr. Driscoll's door softly closed.

In a few minutes Mr. Berman came out and, door knob in hand, regarded her a moment as she sat at her desk making a pretense of being at work. Then he crossed the room with a rare masculine grace and bent above her.

"Miss Arnold," he said.

Ruth rarely took dictation from Mr. Berman, but she now reached for her note-book in instinctive defense against conversation. "Some work for me?" She did not look up.

"Something for you to make a note of, but no work," he returned in his low, well-modulated voice that had seemed to her the very vocalization of gentlemanliness. "I remember the promise you made me give – during business hours, only business. But I have been looking for a chance all day to break it. I want to remind you again that the six months are up to-morrow night."

"Yes. My answer will be ready."

He waited for her to say something more, but she did not; and he passed on to his own room.

Ruth had two revelations to ponder; but it was to the sudden insight she had been given into the real cause of the contractors' approaching victory that she gave her first thought, and not to the sudden insight into the character of Mr. Berman. From the first minute there was no doubt as to what she should do, and yet there was a long debate in her mind. If she were to give Tom the bare fact that had been revealed to her, and, using it as a clue, he were to uncover the whole plan, there would come a disgraceful exposure involving her uncle, her employers, and, to a degree, all the steel contractors. And another sentiment threw its influence against disclosing her information: her natural shrinking from opening communication with Tom; and mixed with this was a remnant of her resentment that he had treated her so. She had instinctively placed him beside Mr. Berman, and had been compelled to admit with pain: "Mr. Berman would never have done it."

But her sense of right was of itself enough to have forced her to make the one proper use of the information chance had given her; and besides this sense of right there was her love, ready for any sacrifice. So she covertly scribbled the following note to Tom:

MY DEAR MR. KEATING:

Are you sure Mr. Foley is not playing the union false?

RUTH ARNOLD.

He is.

With curious femininity she had, at the last moment, tried to compromise, suggesting enough by her question to furnish a clue to Tom, and yet saying so little that she could tell herself she had really not betrayed her friends; and then, in two words, she had impulsively flung him all her knowledge.

The note written, she thought of the second revelation; of the Mr. Berman she had really liked so well for his æsthetic taste, for his irreproachable gentlemanliness, for all the things Tom was not. "Oh, it's all right," he had said easily. And she placed him beside Tom, and admitted with pain-adulterated happiness: "Mr. Keating would never have done that."

When her work for the day was over she hurried to the postoffice in Park Row and dropped the letter into the slot marked "Special Delivery." And when Tom came back from his second call at the Petersen home Maggie was awaiting him with it. At sight of the handwriting on the envelope the color left his face. He tore open the envelope with an eagerness he tried to conceal in an assumed carelessness, and read the score of words.

When he looked up from the note, Maggie's eyes were fastened on his face. A special delivery letter had never come to their home before. "What is it?" she asked.

"Just a note about the strike," he answered, and put the letter into his pocket.

The explanation did not satisfy Maggie, but, as it was far past their bedtime, she turned slowly and went into the bedroom.

"I'm not coming to bed for a little while," he called to her.

The next minute he was lost in the excitement begotten by the letter. It was true, then, what he had suspected. Ruth, he knew, would never have written the note unless she had been certain. His head filled with a turmoil of thoughts – every third one about Ruth; but these he tried to force aside, for he was face to face with a crisis and needed all his brain. And some of his thoughts were appalling ones that the union was so perilously near its betrayal; and some were exultant, that he was right after all. But amid this mental turmoil one thought, larger than any of the others, with wild steadfastness held the central place of his brain: there was a chance that, even yet, he could circumvent Foley and save the union – that, fallen as low as he was, he might yet triumph.

But by what plan? He was more certain than ever of Foley's guilt, but he could not base a denunciation of Foley upon mere certitude, unsupported by a single fact. He had to have facts. And how to get them? One wild plan after another acted itself out as a play in his excited brain, in which he had such theatric parts as descending accusingly upon Mr. Baxter and demanding a confession, or cunningly trapping Foley into an admission of the truth, or gaining it at point of pistol. As the hours passed his brain quieted somewhat, and he more quickly saw the absurdity of schemes of this sort. But he could find no practicable plan, and a frantic fear began to possess him: the meeting was less than two days off, and as yet he saw no effective way of balking the sale of the strike.

He sat with head on the table, he lay on the couch, he softly paced the floor; and when the coming day sent its first dingy light into the back yards and into the little sitting-room he was still without a feasible scheme. A little later he turned down the gas and went into the street. He came back after two hours, still lacking a plan, but quieter and with better control of his mind.

"I suppose you settled the strike last night?" said Maggie, who was preparing breakfast.

"I can hardly say I did," he returned abstractedly.

She did not immediately follow up her query, but in a few minutes she came into the sitting-room where Tom sat. Determination had marked her face with hard lines. "You're planning something," she began. "And it's about the strike. It was that letter that kept you up all night. Now you're scheming to put off settling the strike, ain't you?"

"Well, – suppose I am?" he asked quietly. He avoided her eyes, and looked across at the opposite windows that framed instant-long pictures of hurrying women.

"I know you are. I've been doing some thinking, too, while you were out this morning, and it was an easy guess for me to know that when you thought all night you weren't thinking about anything else except how you could put off ending up the strike."

One thing that his love for Ruth had shown Tom was that mental companionship could, and should, exist between man and wife; and one phase of his gentleness with Maggie was that latterly he had striven to talk to her of such matters as formerly he had spoken of only out of his own home.

"Yes, you're right; I am thinking what you say," he began, knowing he could trust her with his precious information. "But you don't understand, Maggie. I am thinking how I can defeat settling the strike because I know Foley is selling the union out."

Incredulity smoothed out a few of Maggie's hard lines. "You can prove it?"

"I am going to try to get the facts."

"How?"

"I don't know," he had to admit, after a pause.

She gave a little laugh, and the hard lines came back. "Another crazy plan. You lose the best job you ever had. You try to beat Foley out as walking delegate, and get beat. You start a strike; it's the same as lost. You push yourself into that Avon business – and you're only out on bail, and we'll never live down the disgrace. You've ruined us, and disgraced us, and yet you ain't satisfied. Here you are with another scheme. And what are you going on? Just a guess, nothing else, that Foley's selling out!"

Tom took it all in silence.

"Now you listen to me!" Her voice was fiercely mandatory, yet it lacked something of its old-time harshness; Tom's gentleness had begun to rouse its like in her. "Everything you've tried lately has been a failure. You know that. Now don't make us any worse off than we are – and you will if you try another fool scheme. For God's sake, let the strike be settled and get back to work!"

"I suppose you think you're right, Maggie. But – you don't understand," he returned helplessly.

"Yes, I do understand," she said grimly. "And I not only think I'm right, but I know I'm right. Who's been right every time?"

Tom did not answer her question, and after looking down on him a minute longer, she said, "You remember what I've just told you," and returned to the preparation of breakfast.

As soon as he had eaten Tom escaped into the street and made for the little park that had once been a burying-ground. Here his mind set to work again. It was more orderly now, and soon he was proceeding systematically in his search for a plan by the method of elimination. Plan after plan was discarded as the morning hurried by, till he at length had this left as the only possibility, to follow Baxter and Foley every minute during this day and the next. But straightway he saw the impossibility of this only possible plan: he and any of his friends were too well known by Foley to be able to shadow him, even had they the experience to fit them for such work. A few minutes later, however, this impossibility was gone. He could hire detectives.

He turned the plan over in his mind. There was, perhaps, but one chance in a thousand the detectives would discover anything – perhaps hardly that. But this fight was his fight for life, and this one chance was his last chance.

At noon a private detective agency had in its safe Petersen's thirty dollars and a check for the greater part of Tom's balance at the bank.

Chapter XXVIII
THE EXPOSURE

Tom's arrangement with the detective agency was that Baxter and Foley were to be watched day and night, and that he was to have as frequent reports as it was possible to give. Just before six o'clock that same afternoon he called at the office for his first report. It was ready – a minute account of the movements of the two men between one and five. There was absolutely nothing in it of value to him, except that its apparent completeness was a guarantee that if anything was to be found the men on the case would find it.

Never before in Tom's life had there been as many hours between an evening and a morning. He dared not lessen his suspense and the hours by discussing his present move with friends; they could not help him, and, if he told them, there was the possibility that some word might slip to Foley which would rouse suspicion and destroy the thousandth chance. But at length morning came, and at ten o'clock Tom was at the detective agency. Again there was a minute report, the sum of whose worth to him was – nothing.

He went into the street and walked, fear and suspense mounting higher and higher. In ten hours the union would meet to decide, and as yet he had no bit of evidence. At twelve o'clock he was at the office again. There was nothing for him. Eight more hours. At two o'clock, dizzy and shaking from suspense, he came into the office for the third time that day. A report was waiting.

He glanced it through, then trying to speak calmly, said to the manager: "Send anything else to my house."

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 buttoned 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 circumstances. 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 passed 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.

"Hello, 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 passed 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 coarse 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.

"Hello, 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 circumstances 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.

"Hello, 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 God'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 circumstance 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 leadership that had involved them in this disastrous strike. Finally one man, spurred to abandon by applause, ended his hoarse 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.

"Now the question, as I see it, is: Do we want to keep the other fellow on our chests, we all fagged out, with him mebbe punchin' our faces whenever he feels like it? – keep us there till we're done up forever? Or do we want to give in an' say we've had enough? He'll let us up, we'll take a rest, we'll get back our wind an' strength, an' when we're good an' ready, why, another fight, an' better luck! I know which is my style, an' from what youse boys've said here to-night, I can make a pretty good guess as to what's your style."

He paused for a moment, and when he began again his voice was lower and there was a deep sadness in it that he could not hide. "Boys, this is the hardest hour o' my life. I ain't very used to losin' fights. I think youse can count in a couple o' days all the fights I lost for youse. [A cry, "Never a one, Buck!"] An' it comes mighty hard for me to begin to lose now. If I was to do what I want to do, I'd say, 'Let's never give in.' But I know what's best for the union, boys … an' so I lose my first strike."

He sank back into his seat, and his head fell forward upon his breast. There was a moment of sympathetic silence, then an outburst of shouts: "It ain't your fault!" "You've done your best!" "You take your lickin' like a man!" But these individual shouts were straightway lost in cries of "Foley!" "Foley!" and in a mighty cheer that thundered through the hall. Next to a game fighter men admire a game loser.

This was Tom's moment. He had been waiting till Foley should place himself on record before the entire union. He now stood up and raised his right hand to gain Connelly's attention. "Mr. Chairman!" he called.

"Question!" "Question!" shouted the crowd, few even noticing that Tom was claiming right of speech.

"Mr. Chairman!" Tom cried again.

Connelly's attention was caught, and for an instant he looked irresolutely at Tom. The crowd, following their president's eyes, saw Tom and broke into a great hiss.

"D'you want any more speeches?" Connelly put to the union.

"No!" "No!" "Question!" "Question!"

"All in favor of the motion – "

The desperate strait demanded an eminence to speak from, but the way to the platform was blocked. Tom vaulted to the top of the grand piano, and his eyes blazed down upon the crowd.

"You shall listen to me!" he shouted, breaking in on Connelly. His right arm pointed across the hall to where Foley was bowed in humiliation. "Buck Foley has sold you out!"

In the great din his voice did not carry more than a dozen rows, but upon those rows silence fell suddenly. "What was that?" men just behind asked excitedly, their eyes on Tom standing on the piano, his arm stretched toward Foley. A tide of explanation moved backward, and the din sank before it.

Tom shouted again: "Buck Foley has sold you out!"

This time his words reached the farthest man in the hall. There was an instant of stupefied quiet. Then Foley himself stood up. He seemed to have paled a shade, but there was not a quaver in his voice when he spoke.

"This's a nice little stage play our friend's made up for the last minute. He's been fightin' a settlement right along, an' this is his last trick to get youse to put it off. He's sorter like a blind friend o' mine who went fishin' one day. He got turned with his back to the river, an' he fished all day in the grass. I think Keating's got turned in the wrong direction, too."