All-Wool Morrison, Holman Day [historical books to read txt] 📗

them upon the overcoat; and whirled to face his audience.
All eyes were engaged with the mayor.
Krylovensky, unobserved, let the garments slip to the floor and dropped the hat.
"Now, boys, we'll get down to business together in an understanding way! What's it all about?" Stewart invited, cheerily.
"Just a minute!" cried Lanigan, heading off all the possibilities that were threatening by a general powwow. "I've just been up against the bunch here, Mister Mayor, and they're trying to turn it into a congress-of-nations debate, and it ain't nothing of the kind. And I know you're in a hurry, and we don't expect a speech!"
"You won't get one!" retorted the mayor, tartly. "I have dropped down here merely in a business way to find out what's wanted of me as the executive head of this city."
"Your Honor, I have been preaching the notion of telling the truth to-night, and I'm going to come across with something about myself," confessed Lanigan, manfully. "I've gone off half cocked twice to-day. I've been thinking it over and I realize it. In your office I grabbed in on a word or two you said and took it for granted that you were going to lift the whole load of the people's case up at the State House and stop anything being put over on the people, whatever it is the Big Boys are planning. But you didn't promise me to do it."
"I did not, Joe!"
"And I've been telling this gang that you did promise me and that I'd get you down here to back up my word. I don't ask you to back up my lie. You're too square a proposition, Mayor Morrison!"
"After that man-talk, Joe, I've just naturally got to make a little of my own. And the boys can't help seeing that both you and I mean all right. I did give you good reasons for jumping at conclusions as you say you did, Joe! Understand that, boys! But my head isn't swelled to the extent that I believe I can settle everything.
"Now that I'm down here I'll say this. I'll do everything I can, as mayor of Marion, to straighten things out to-night so that the people won't be left guessing. Guessing starts gabble and gabble starts trouble! Don't do any more shouting about 'state steal,' and don't allow others to shout. Most of us don't know what it means, anyway, and others don't care, so long as it gives 'em a chance to stir up riots and grab off something for themselves under cover of the trouble. There are a lot of outsiders in this country, standing ready to make just such plays! Don't let your ears be scruffed by mischief-makers, boys. Let's have our city come through with a clean name! I'm going to do my part as best I can. But you've all got to do yours--understand that!" He smacked his fist down into his palm.
"Do you bromise me dot Karl Trimbach gets dot seat?" boomed Mr. Weisner.
"The same question goes as to th' Hon'rable Danyel O'Donnell," said Adherent Mulcahy.
"I cannot promise."
Then sounded that voice of the unknown troublemaker, sneeringly shrill, the senseless, passion-provoking common, human fife of the mob spirit, persistently present and consistently cowardly in concealment. "Of course you don't promise anything to the people! Dudes stand together! Go back and dance!"
Lanigan began to claw a passage for himself.
"Stand where you are, Joe!" commanded Stewart. "Don't flatter a fool by making any account of him!"
"Those kinds of fools are going to make trouble in this city before the night is over, Your Honor!"
"That's the trouble with politics," declared Mulcahy. "Ye can't get a square promise in politics fr'm th' Big Boys!"
Morrison put up a monitory forefinger.
"But you can get a square promise from me in business--and I can see that it's time to give that promise and make it specific. That's the way a business contract must be drawn. Hear me, then! It's the business of this city to see that no man abuses its good name or its hospitality, no matter whether he's a resident or comes here because it's the capital of the state. And I'll see to it that the men up at the State House end understand that they must play fair for the good of all of us. You must understand the same at this end. I'll take no sides in politics. The men who are entitled to their seats in this legislature will have those seats. I'm only one man, boys! But one man who is perfectly honest and is depending on the right will find the whole law of the land behind him--and wise men and good men have attended to the law. Will you take my word and let it stand that way between us?"
A chorused yell of assent greeted him.
"All right! It's a contract! Mind your end of it!"
He turned sharply from them and faced Krylovensky. The alien leaped up and kicked the mayor's garments to one side.
"Say! See here, my friend!" expostulated Stewart.
"Down with rulers!" screamed the man. "I'll be a martyr, but not a hat-rack!"
The mayor walked toward the frantic person. "I'm sorry! I was thoughtless!"
"You and your kind think of nothing but yourselves. You try to make slaves of free citizens of the world!" Krylovensky had been buffeted and had controlled himself. But the fires of his narrow fanaticism were now whirling in his brain; sitting there on high before the eyes of his fellows, the men to whom he had been preaching the doctrines of soviet sovereignty--the supremacy of the people--he had just suffered what his distorted views held as the enormity of ignominy; he had been used as a clothes-tree for discarded garments. Used by a ruler!
When Morrison, not realizing that the man had become little short of a maniac, stooped to pick up the garments Krylovensky dove forward and struck the mayor's face with open hand. "Now throw me to your dogs! I'll die a martyr to my cause!" he squalled.
The mayor snapped upright and laid restraining hands on the man who was threatening him with doubled fists.
A roaring mob came milling toward the platform.
"I'll be a martyr!" insisted the alien.
"I can't humor you to that extent," replied Morrison, in the tone of a father denying indulgence in the case of a wilful child.
He got between the man and the mob. He held Krylovensky from him with one hand and put up the other protestingly, authoritatively.
"No man that's a real man lets another man bang him in the face," declared Lanigan with fury.
"That's a nice point, to be argued later by us when things are quieter, Joe. Stand back!"
"I'm going to kill him even if you haven't got the grit to do it." Lanigan was showing the bitter disappointment of a worshiper kicking among the fragments of a shattered idol.
"I won't allow you to do that, Joe! A dead man can't answer questions. Stand back, all of you, I say!" He twisted the grip of his hand in the man's collar until Krylovensky ceased his struggles.
"Do you work in this city?" asked the mayor.
"He works in the Conawin," shouted Lanigan. "And I shook him down this evening for a gun, a knob-knocker, and a lot of red flags."
Blanchard was backed against the big Stars and Stripes, apprehensively seeking refuge from the crowd massing on the platform. Morrison caught his eye. "Seems to be one of your patriots, Blanchard! Shall I hand him over to you?"
"I never saw the renegade before."
"I'm sorry you don't get into your mill the way I do into mine. I'd like to know something about this gentleman who doesn't show any inclination to speak for himself."
"I'm not afraid to speak," declared the captive, all cautiousness burned out of him by the fires of his martyr zeal. "I'm an ambassador of the grand and good Soviet Government of Russia."
The mayor preserved his serenity.
"Ah, I think I understand! One of the estimable gentlemen who have been coming to us by the way of the Mexican border of late! When you picked up such a good command of our language, my friend, it's too bad you didn't pick up a better understanding of our country. I haven't any time just now to give you an idea of it, sir. I'll have a talk with you to-morrow."
The mayor had seen Officer Rellihan at the door of the hall. As a satellite, Rellihan was constant in his attendance on his controlling luminary in public places, even though the luminary issued no special orders to that effect; Morrison's intended visit to the hall had been quickly advertised down-town.
Stewart glanced about him and found Rellihan at his elbow.
"Here's the honorable ambassador of Soviet Russia, Rellihan," said his chief. "Take him along with you, keep harm from him on the way, and see that he is well lodged for the night in a place where enemies can't get at him."
"I know just the right place, Your Honor," stated the policeman, pulling his club from his belt and waving it to part the throng.
Morrison broke in upon Lanigan's mumbled threats. "Mind your manners, Joe!"
"But he hit you!"
The mayor picked up his garments, one by one, inspected them, and dusted them with his palm; then he pulled them on. The crowd gazed at him.
"He hit you!" Lanigan insisted, bellicosely. "When a man hits me, I lick him!"
"You're a good fighter, Joe," agreed His Honor, running his forearm about his silk hat to smooth the nap. "But let me tell you something! Unless you put yourself in better shape there'll be a fellow some day that you'll want to lick, and you won't be able to lick him, and you'll be almighty sorry because you can't turn the trick."
"Show me the feller, Mister Mayor!"
"Go look in the glass, Joe."
"Lick myself--is that what you mean, sir?"
"Sure! If you can do it when it ought to be done, you'll have the right to feel rather proud of yourself."
He invited Blanchard with a side wag of his head and led the way from the hall.
"Morrison, let me say this," blurted the mill magnate, when they were on their way in the limousine. "By reason of this people-side-partner notion of yours, you have gone to work and got yourself into an infernal fix. How do you expect to make good that promise?"
"I suppose I did sound rather boastful, but I had to put it strong. A mealy-mouthed promise wouldn't hold them in line!"
"But that promise only encourages such muckers in the belief that they have a right to demand, to boss their betters, to call for accountings and concessions. You have put the devil into 'em!"
"I hope not! Faith in a contract--that's what I tried to put into 'em. They'll wait and let me operate!"
"Operate! You're one man against the whole state government and you're defying single-handed the political powers! You can't deliver the goods! That gang down-town will wait about so long and then 'twill be hell to pay to-night!"
Morrison had found his pipe in his overcoat pocket. He was soothing himself with a smoke on the way toward the Corson mansion.
"But why worry so much when the night is still young?" he queried, placidly.


VII
THE THIN CRUST OVER BOILING LAVA
Senator Corson, at the head of the receiving-line, attended strictly to the task in hand as an urbane and assiduous host.
Wonted by long political usage to estimate everything on the basis of votes for and against, he was entirely convinced, by the face of the returns that evening, that the reception he was tendering was a grand success, unanimously indorsed; he would have