Mountain Part 54

Cries of "Shame!" "Shame!" "Throw him out!"

He kept his place. As he waved the mysterious doc.u.ment before their faces, the cries weakened; curiosity hushed them.

"One member of that committee, a man who had no right on it, for he had no union card----"

"As Paul Judson has!" Jensen cut in sharply, amid indignant demands to keep quiet.

"One member of that committee has been--a scab! As he may be a scab again, when he pleases to. I have here," he opened the paper, so that the large red seals were displayed to all, "--affidavits from Connecticut, proving that 'Mister' Pelham Judson, 'Comrade' Judson if brother Jensen wants to call him that, in October, 1913, in New Haven, acted as a scab during a strike of conductors and motormen on the New Haven Electric Company, and helped to break that strike. He's kept quiet about it; I can't. And I say that such a man should be kicked out of all affiliation with the labor movement, here or elsewhere!"

"It's not true," shrieked Jensen and a score of fervid socialists. One brawny Norwegian started for the platform. "I'll tear out dat dam'

liar's tongue." The sergeant-at-arms pulled him back.

Pelham rose, pale and trembling.

The chair picked him out. "Does brother Judson desire the floor?"

There was an intent silence, as he stood, alone, surrounded by the hostile hundreds of the men and women he had fought for. He tried to begin.

Bowden walked across the platform, toward him. "Is it true, or not?"

Pelham's swollen tongue licked his lips. At length he spoke, quietly, yet so penetratingly that every syllable reached his audience. "I can explain----" he began.

"Is it true?" Bowden led the demand of hundreds of angered throats.

He faced them unflinchingly. "It is true. I can explain----"

The hooting and jeering broke with savage, almost b.e.s.t.i.a.l fury. Doggedly Pelham kept to his feet, in spite of the efforts of Serrano and others to drag him down. "This is terrible, comrade," whispered Serrano. "You'd better leave----"

At length Bowden got the eye of the chair again. "I move that we give five minutes to Mr. Judson to 'explain', as he calls it, his scabbing."

In simple language Pelham told of his training in a home dedicated to the fight against labor; of his acts at New Haven, while a college student; of his conversion to socialism and the cause of labor. He did not mention what it had cost him; a few remembered this. When he came to his New Haven experiences, the hissing began, swelled in volume. All of the chair's entreaties could not stop it.

"If you think, comrades, that my usefulness on this committee is over, I hereby resign. But I can a.s.sure you that nothing will shake my efforts in the cause for which I have fought, am fighting, and will continue to fight."

No eloquence could have moved them. The ma.s.s psychology of the meeting demanded a victim; here was one before them. The shrivelling strike months of turmoil and undernourishment had thrown them back into a lower, more barbarous state; their sense of justice was perverted from ultimate social equality and order into a primitive condemnation of the accursed thing that had brought them into this predicament. They were only too ready to throw a Jonah to the deep, as an expiatory sacrifice to the omnipotent G.o.d who doled out bi-weekly pay-envelopes. They were in a starving panic to get back to the skimpy flesh-pots of a darker Egypt.

It was moved and seconded that the resignation be accepted. An earburst of "ayes" were for the proposition; one or two scattering voices registered weak negatives.

"The motion is carried."

The sudden blow had crushed all opposition. The resolutions to end the strike were accepted without debate.

Jack Bowden, highly satisfied with the night's work, went over to the state office with Bob Bivens and John Pooley. "Reckon I better destroy that?" he grinned, handing a letter out to the big State president.

It was from Henry Tuttle, on the company's legal stationery, enclosing the affidavits relating to Pelham's activities in the New Haven strike.

The letter was burned, the ashes scattered.

The next afternoon's _Register_ informed Pelham of the company's terms, which were to take back all except the ringleaders, some twenty in number--he noticed the names of Jensen and the committeemen heading it--at the old rate, with an agreement from each man binding him not to join the union. The strikers under arrest, continued the account, would be discharged in all probability, except in cases of serious nature.

The same paper contained the spa.r.s.e outline of another story, which Pelham read with a growing horror.

At three-thirty the previous afternoon, an old man had entered the mining company's office, and asked for Paul Judson.

"What name?"

His watery blue eyes danced peculiarly beneath stringy white hair. "He doesn't know me. It's important."

"We must have your name."

Fumbling first on one foot, then the other, he eyed the uninterested clerk closely. At length he made up his mind. "My name is Duckworth--Christopher Duckworth, tell him. I've come about the settlement of the strike."

She marked down the name, snapping to the drawer. "He's out of town to-day."

"When does he return?"

"Maybe late this evening ... maybe not until to-morrow."

Suspicious old eyes searched her face. "Sure he isn't in?"

"I told you once, didn't I?"

"He may return to-day?"

"Maybe."

"I'll wait."

Pa.s.sers in and out of the offices remembered his shoving a paper hurriedly into his pocket as they neared.

About an hour later, when the information clerk left for a few minutes, he rose, and started to open the door marked "Paul Judson: Private."

"Where you going?" an accounting clerk demanded, watching his unusual movements.

"Mr. Judson wants to see me."

"He isn't there."

He caught the old man roughly by the arm, as he tried to push past.

The enfeebled socialist retreated to the center of the room.

"Give him this," his quavering tones insisted, pus.h.i.+ng a piece of paper into surprised hands.

The clerk looked up hurriedly, some warning of the unexpected, the dangerous, reaching him. His eyes caught the rusty glint of metal.

He jumped. At the same moment, the roar of the shot rattled the windows, acrid smoke swirled throughout the room, the old man's legs buckled up.

He fell quietly to the floor; his shoes sc.r.a.ped the flooring once. He lay still.