Rope Part 13

He had been fully prepared to find himself singled out for publicity, and he was greatly relieved. To be sure, there was a somewhat flippant mention of his relations.h.i.+p to Mirabelle, but it wasn't over-emphasized, and altogether, he had no justification for resentment--that is, at the _Herald_. The _Herald_ had merely printed the news; what Henry resented was the fact.

He turned to the editorial page and found, as he had imagined, a solid column of opinion; but to his amazement, it made no protest of yesterday's event--on the contrary, it echoed Judge Barklay. It said half a dozen times, in half a dozen different ways, that a bad law ought to be repealed, a good law ought to be preserved, and that all laws, good or bad, as long as they were written on the books, ought to be enforced. Henry was mystified; for the _Herald_ had always professed to be in utter sympathy with the workingman.

Later in the day, however, he saw the leading exhibitor in town, who winked at him. "Clever stuff, Devereux, clever stuff. 'Course, if we put up a roar, they'll say it's because we've got an ax to grind. Sure we have. But the _Herald_ wants the _people_--the people that come to our shows--to get up and blat. Then it wouldn't be the League against the a.s.sociation--it'd be the people against the League, and the laugh'd be on the other foot."

"What's the betting?"

"Search _me_. But Mayor Rowland told me if we got up a monster pet.i.tion with a thousand or two names on it, he'll bring it up to the Council. We're puttin' up posters in the lobby."

Henry's heart jumped. "But suppose the people don't sign?"

"Well then we'd be out o' luck. But there's other ways o' goin' at that d.a.m.n League, and we're goin' to use _all_ of 'em. And that reminds me, Devereux--ain't it about time for you to join the a.s.sociation?"

"I'm afraid not. I ought to, but--you see, you're going to make things as hot as you can for the League--personalities, and all that, and when my aunt is president of it--"

"But great guns! What's she done to _you_?"

"I know, but I can't help that. You go ahead and rip things up any way you want to, but I'd better stay out. It may be foolish, but that's how I feel about it."

"It's your own affair. _I_ think you're too blamed easy, but you suit yourself.... And about the big noise, why I guess all we can do is wait and see what happens."

Miss Starkweather, who met him on the street that morning, told him the same thing. "_Some_ people," she remarked, alt.i.tudinously, "are always getting their toes stepped on, aren't they? Well, there's another way to look at it--the toes oughtn't to have been there."

"Oh, give us time," said Henry, pleasantly. "Even the worm turns, you know."

"Humph!" said Aunt Mirabelle. "Let a dozen worms do a _dozen_ turns! I never thought I'd see the day when a Devereux--almost the same thing as a Starkweather--'d figure in a disgrace such as yours. You've heaped muck on your uncle's parlour-carpet. But some day you'll see the writing on the wall, Henry."

He was tempted to remind her of another city ordinance against bill-posting, but he refrained, and saved it up for Anna.

"I'll watch for it," he said.

"Well, you better. All _I_'ve got to say is this: you just wait and see what happens."

And then, to complete the record, he got identically the same suggestion from Bob Standish.

"I suppose," said Standish, "maybe you're wis.h.i.+ng you'd taken that check."

"Not that, exactly--but I've thought about it."

"Strikes me that you're in the best position of anybody in town, Henry. You've got a following that'll see you through, if it's humanly possible."

"Sounds like pa.s.sing the hat, doesn't it?"

"Oh, no. And the side that scores first doesn't always win the game, either--I dare say you've noticed it. It'll come out all right--you just wait and see what happens."

Henry waited, and he saw. And to Henry's dismay, and to the Mayor's chagrin, and to Miss Mirabelle Starkweather's exceeding complacence, nothing happened at all.

The public pet.i.tion, which had been advertised as "monstrous," caught hardly five hundred names, and two thirds of them were Mr. A. Mutt, Mr. O. Howe Wise, Mr. O. U. Kidd, and similar patronymics, scribbled by giggling small boys. The blue-law was universally unpopular, and no doubt of it, but the citizenry hesitated to attack it; the recent landslide for prohibition showed an apparent sentiment which n.o.body wanted to oppose--Why, if a man admitted that he was in favour of Sunday tolerance, his friends (who of course were going through exactly the same mental rapids) might put him down in the same cla.s.s with those who still mourned for saloons. Each man waited for his neighbour to sign first, and the small boys giggled, and filled up the lists. Besides, there was a large amus.e.m.e.nt park just beyond the city line, and the honest workingman proceeded to pay his ten-cent fare, and double the profit of the park.

The Exhibitors a.s.sociation put up its fists to the Mayor, and the Mayor proposed a public hearing, with the Council in attendance. At this juncture the Reform League sent a questionnaire to each Councillor, and to each member of the a.s.sociation. The phraseology was Socratic (it was the product of Mr. Mix's genius) and if any one answered Yes, he was snared: if he said No, he was ambushed, and if he said nothing he was cooked. It reminded the Mayor of the man who claimed that in a debate, he would answer every question of his adversary with a simple No or Yes--and the first question was: "Have you stopped beating your wife?"

The Exhibitors held a meeting behind closed doors, and gave out the statement that nothing was to be gained by a public hearing. But they launched a flank attack on the Council only to discover that the Council was wide awake, and knew that its bread was b.u.t.tered on one side only.

"We are listening," said the Chairman, with statesmanlike dignity, "for the voice of the people, and so far we haven't heard a peep. It looks as if they don't _want_ you fellows to run Sunday's, don't it?"

The spokesman of the Exhibitors cleared his throat. "Statistics prove that every Sunday, an average of six thousand people--"

"That's all right. We've seen your pet.i.tion. And Mr. Mutt and Mr. Kid and most of the rest of your patrons don't seem to be registered voters. How about it?"

The Council burst into a loud laugh, and the spokesman retreated in discomfiture.

For several days, Henry was fairly besieged by his friends, who joked him about his arrest, and then, out of genuine concern, wanted to know if his prospects were seriously damaged. To each interrogatory, Henry waved his hand with absolute nonchalance. As far as he knew, only six people were in the secret--himself, his wife, Judge Barklay, Standish, Mr. Archer and Aunt Mirabelle--and he wasn't anxious to increase the number. His aunt might not have believed it, but this was more on her account than on his own.

"Lord, no," said Henry, casually. "Don't worry about _me_. I'm only glad there's some news for the _Herald_. It was getting so dry you had to put cold cream on it or it'd crack."

By the time that Judge Barklay returned from his vacation, the subject had even slipped away from the front page of the newspapers. The flurry was over. And out of a population of fifty thousand, ninety-nine per cent of whom were normal-minded citizens, neither ultra-conservative nor ultra-revolutionary, that tiny fraction which composed the Ethical Reform League had stowed its propaganda down the throats of the overwhelming majority.

The Judge shrugged his shoulders. "Organization," he said. "They've got a leader, and speakers, and a publicity bureau. That's all. I hear they're going to use it to boom Mix for a political job. But you wait--wait, and keep on paying out the rope."

"That's all I've got left to pay out," said Henry, amiably.

"Aren't you doing pretty well, considering?"

Henry nodded. "We're doing great business--I mean, anybody else would think so. About a hundred and fifty a week net, for the first three weeks. And Anna's salting away a hundred and ten of it. Every morning I draw a clean handkerchief, and a dime for dissipation, and she keeps a clutch on the rest."

"Hm! A hundred and fifty. That's good money, Henry."

"Well, that's the only kind we take. But you can see for yourself what this thing's done to us. We ought to be averaging two twenty-five. And we'd have done it, too."

The Judge appeared contrite. "I'm afraid you're blaming me for bad advice, Henry."

"No, sir. If I blamed anybody, I'd just blame myself for taking it.

But I don't. You see, even if I fall down on the first prize, I've got a pretty good business under way. Eight thousand a year."

"Would you keep on with it?"

"I'd think it over. It isn't particularly joyous, but it sure does pay the rent. Oh, I suppose I'd try to sell it, if I could get a price for it, but Bob says I couldn't expect a big one, because so much of the trade sort of belongs to _us_--and wouldn't necessarily patronize the chap that bought me out. He tells me it was worth twenty when I took it, and thirty now, and if it weren't for this law, it would be worth fifty. That's all due to the improvements, and you advised me to put 'em in, and you engineered the mortgage. So I'm not huffy at you.

Hardly."

"Still, you want the big prize if you can get it.... Notice what Mix is giving out to the papers? He'll hang himself yet, and if he does, you won't be too far behind to catch up. That's a prophecy. But by George, I can't help feeling that Mix isn't in that outfit for his health. It just don't smell right, somehow."

The Reform League had jubilantly explained to Mr. Mix that he was a liberator and a saviour of humanity from itself, and Mr. Mix had deftly caught whatever bouquets were batted up to him. He had allowed the fragrance of them to waft even as far as the _Herald_ office, to which he sent a bulletin every forty-eight hours. Mr. Mix's salary was comforting, his expense accounts were paid as soon as vouchers were submitted, he was steadily advancing in Miss Starkweather's good books, and he considered himself to be a very clever man indeed.

At the very least, he was clever enough to realize that his position was now strategically favourable, and that as long as he moved neither forward nor backward, he was in no danger from any source. He had a living salary, and he was saving enough out of it to reduce his indebtedness; in a year he could snap his fingers at the world.

Furthermore, he could see no possibility of legislating himself out of his job before that time--certainly not if he played his cards craftily, and didn't push his success too far. And by the end of the year, he could select a future to fit the circ.u.mstances.

For the time being, however, it seemed advisable to Mr. Mix to make haste slowly; he had turned an impending personal catastrophe into a personal triumph, but the triumph could be spoiled unless he kept it carefully on ice. The failure of the public to rise up and flay the League had lifted Mr. Mix into a position of much prominence, and conveyed the very reasonable supposition that he was individually powerful. When a man is supposed to possess power, he can travel a long distance on the effect of a flas.h.i.+ng eye, and an expanded chest; also, it is a foolhardy man who, regardless of his reputation, engages to meet all-comers in their own bailiwick.