Jimmie Higgins Part 40

"Why, no sir--not exactly. I sympathize with part of them."

"And you found these leaflets in the gutter, and you didn't take the trouble to count whether there were three or four?"

"No, sir."

"There couldn't have been five?"

"I don't know, sir--I don't think so."

"Certainly not six?"

"No, sir," said Jimmie, feeling quite safe now. "I'm sure there weren't six."

So the lieutenant opened a drawer in the table before him, and took out a bunch of the leaflets, folded, wrinkled and dirt-stained, and spread them before Jimmie's eyes, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. "You lie!" said the lieutenant.

"I was mistaken, sir," said Jimmie.

"Have you searched this man?" the officer demanded of the other soldiers.

"Not yet, sir."

"Do it now."

They made certain that Jimmie had no weapons, and then they made him strip to the skin. They searched everything, even prying loose the soles of his boots; and, of course, one of the first things they found was the red card in the inside jacket-pocket. "Aha!" cried the lieutenant.

"That's a card of the Socialist party," said Jimmie.

"Don't you know that back home men who carry that card are being sent to jail for twenty years?"

"It ain't fer carryin' the card," said Jimmie, st.u.r.dily.

There was a pause, while Jimmie got his clothes on again. "Now, Higgins," said the lieutenant, "you have been caught red-handed in treason against your country and its flag. The penalty is death.

There is just one way you can escape--by making a clean breast of everything. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then tell me who gave you those leaflets?"

"I'm sorry, sir, I found them in the gutter."

"You intend to stick to that silly tale?"

"It's the truth, sir."

"You will protect your fellow-conspirators with your life?"

"I have told you all I know, sir."

"All right," said the lieutenant. He took a pair of handcuffs from the drawer and saw them put on Jimmie. He picked up his sword and his automatic--and Jimmie, who did not understand military procedure, stared with fright. But the lieutenant was merely intending to strap the weapons on to his belt; then he got into his overcoat and his big fur gloves and his fur hat that covered everything but his eyes and nose, and ordered Jimmie brought along.

Outside an automobile was waiting, and the officer and the prisoner and two guards rode to the military jail.

IV

There was terror in the soul of the prisoner, but he did not let anyone see it. And in the same way Lieutenant Gannet did not let anyone see the perplexity that was in his soul. He was a military officer, he had his stern military duty to do, and he was doing it; but he had never put anybody in handcuffs before, and had never taken anybody to jail before, and he was almost as much upset about it as the prisoner.

The lieutenant had seen the terrible spectacle of Russia collapsing, falling into ruin and humiliation, because of what seemed to him a propaganda of treason which had been carried on in her armies; he realized that these "mad dogs" of Bolsheviki were deliberately conspiring to poison the other armies, to bring the rest of the world into their condition. It seemed to him monstrous that such efforts should be under way in the American army. How far had the thing gone? The lieutenant did not know, and he was terrified, as men always are in the presence of the unknown. It was his plain duty, to which he had sworn himself, to stamp his heel upon the head of this snake; but still he was deeply troubled. This Sergeant Higgins had been promoted for valour in France, and had been, in spite of his reckless tongue, a pretty decent subordinate. And behold, here he was, an active conspirator, a propagandist of sedition, a defiant and insolent traitor!

They came to the jail, which had been constructed by the Tsar for the purpose of holding down the people of the region. It loomed, a gigantic stone bulk in the darkness; and Jimmie, who had preached in Local Leesville that America was worse than Russia, now learned that he had been mistaken--Russia was exactly the same.

They entered through a stone gateway, and a steel door opened before them and clanged behind them. At a desk sat a sergeant, and except that he was British, and that his uniform was brown instead of blue, it might have been Leesville, U.S.A. They took down Jimmie's name and address, and then Lieutenant Gannet asked: "Has Perkins come yet?"

"Not yet, sir," was the reply; but at that moment the front door was opened, and there entered a big man, bundled in an overcoat which made him even bigger. From the first moment, Jimmie watched this man as a fascinated rabbit watches a snake. The little Socialist had had so much to do with policemen and detectives in his hunted life that he knew in a flash what he was "up against".

This Perkins before the war had been an "operative" for a private detective agency--what the workers contemptuously referred to as a "sleuth". The government, having found itself in sudden need of much "sleuthing", had been forced to take what help it could get, without too close scrutiny. So now Perkins was a sergeant in the secret service; and just as the carpenters were hammering nails as at home, and the surgeons were cutting flesh as at home, so Perkins was "sleuthing" as at home.

"Well, sergeant?" said the lieutenant. "What have you got?"

"I think I've got the story, sir."

You could see the relief in Gannet's face; and Jimmie's heart went down into his boots.

"There's just one or two details I want to make sure about,"

continued Perkins. "I suppose you won't mind if I question this prisoner?"

"Oh, not at all," said the other. He was relieved to be able to turn this difficult matter over to a man of decision, a professional man, who was used to such cases and knew how to handle them.

"I'll report to you at once," said Perkins.

"I'll wait," said the lieutenant.

And Perkins took Jimmie's trembling arm in a grip like a vice, and marched him down a long stone corridor and down a flight of steps.

On the way he picked up two other men, also in khaki, who followed him; the four pa.s.sed through a series of underground pa.s.sages, and entered a stone cell with a solid steel door, which they clanged behind them--a sound that was like the knell of doom to poor Jimmie's terrified soul. And instantly Sergeant Perkins seized him by the shoulder and whirled him about, and glared into his eyes.

"Now, you little son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h!" said he.

Having been a detective in an American city, this man was familiar with the "third degree", whereby prisoners are led to tell what they know, and many things which they don't know, but which they know the police want them to tell. Of the other two men, one Private Connor, had had this inquisition applied to him on more than one occasion.

He was a burglar with a prison-record; but his last arrest had been in a middle Western town for taking part in a bar-room fight, and the judge didn't happen to know his record, and accepted his tearful plea, agreeing to suspend sentence provided the prisoner would enlist to fight for his country.

The other man was named Grady, and had left a wife and three children in a tenement in "h.e.l.l's Kitchen", New York, to come to fight the Kaiser. He was a kind-hearted and decent Irishman, who had earned a hard living carrying bricks and mortar up a ladder ten hours a day; but he was absolutely convinced that there existed, somewhere under his feet, a h.e.l.l of brimstone and sulphur in which he would roast for ever if he disobeyed the orders of those who were set in authority over him. Grady knew that there were certain wicked men, hating and slandering religion, and luring millions of souls into h.e.l.l; they were called Socialists, or Anarchists, and must obviously be emissaries of Satan, so it was G.o.d's work to root them out and destroy them. Thus the Gradys have reasoned for a thousand years; and thus in black dungeons underground they have turned the thumb-screws and pulled the levers of the rack. They do it still in many of the large cities of America, where superst.i.tion runs the police-force, in combination with liquor interests and public service corporations.

VI