A Poor Wise Man, Mary Roberts Rinehart [classic book list TXT] 📗
- Author: Mary Roberts Rinehart
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“A lady - a woman - calling on Miss Cardew.”
Lily rose, but Anthony motioned her back. “Did she give any name?”
“She said to say it was Jennie, sir.”
“Jennie! It must be Aunt Elinor’s Jennie!”
“Send her in,” said Anthony, and stood waiting Lily noticed his face twitching; it occurred to her then that this strange old man might still love his daughter, after all the years, and all his cruelty.
It was the elderly servant from the Doyle house who came in, a tall gaunt woman, looking oddly unfamiliar to Lily in a hat.
“Why, Jennie!” she said. And then: “Is anything wrong?”
“There is and there isn’t,” Jennie said, somberly. “I just wanted to tell you, and I don’t care if he kills me for it. It was him that threw her downstairs. I heard him hit her.”
Old Anthony stiffened.
“He threw Aunt Elinor downstairs?”
“That’s how she broke her leg.”
Sheer amazement made Lily inarticulate.
“But they said - we didn’t know - do you mean that she has been there all this time, hurt?”
“I mean just that,” said Jennie, stolidly. “I helped set it, with him pretending to be all worked up, for the doctor to see. He got rid of me all right. He’s got one of his spies there now, a Bolshevik like himself. You can ask the neighbors.”
Howard was out, and when the woman had gone Anthony ordered his car. Lily, frightened by the look on his face, made only one protest.
“You mustn’t go alone,” she said. “Let me go, too. Or take Grayson - anybody.”
But he went alone; in the hall he picked up his hat and stick, and drew on his gloves.
“What is the house number?”
Lily told him and he went out, moving deliberately, like a man who has made up his mind to follow a certain course, but to keep himself well in hand.
Acting on Willy Cameron’s suggestion, Dan Boyd retained his membership in the union and frequented the meetings. He learned various things, that the strike vote had been padded, for instance, and that the Radicals had taken advantage of the absence of some of the conservative leaders to secure such support as they had received. He found the better class of workmen dissatisfied and unhappy. Some of them, men who loved their tools, had resented the order to put them down where they were and walk out, and this resentment, childish as it seemed, was an expression of their general dissatisfaction with the autocracy they had themselves built up.
Finally Dan’s persistent attendance and meek acquiescence, added to his war record, brought him reward. He was elected member of a conference to take to the Central Labor Council the suggestion for a general strike. It was arranged that the delegates take the floor one after the other, and hold it for as long as possible. Then they were to ask the President of the Council to put the question.
The arguments were carefully prepared. The general strike was to be urged as the one salvation of the labor movement. It would prove the solidarity of labor. And, at the Council meeting a few days later, the rank and file were impressed by the arguments. Dan, gnawing his nails and listening, watched anxiously. The idea was favorably received, and the delegates went back to their local unions, to urge, coerce and threaten.
Not once, during the meeting, had there been any suggestion of violence, but violence was in the air, nevertheless. The quantity of revolutionary literature increased greatly during the following ten days, and now it was no longer furtively distributed. It was sold or given away at all meetings; it flooded the various headquarters with its skillful compound of lies and truth. The leaders notified of the situation, pretended that it was harmless raving, a natural and safe outlet for suppressed discontents.
Dan gathered up an armful of it and took it home. On a Sunday following, there was a mass meeting at the Colosseum, and a business agent of one of the unions made an impassioned speech. He recited old and new grievances, said that the government had failed to live up to its promises, that the government boards were always unjust to the workers, and ended with a statement of the steel makers’ profits. Dan turned impatiently to a man beside him.
“Why doesn’t he say how much of that profit the government gets?” he demanded.
But the man only eyed him suspiciously.
Dan fell silent. He knew it was wrong, but he had no gift of tongue. It was at that meeting that for the first time he heard used the word “revolution.”
Old Anthony’s excursion to his daughter’s house had not prospered. During the drive to Cardew Way he sat forward on the edge of the seat of his limousine, his mouth twitching with impatience and anger, his stick tightly clutched in his hand. Almost before the machine stopped he was out on the pavement, scanning the house with hostile eyes.
The building was dark. Paul, the chauffeur, watching curiously, for the household knew that Anthony Cardew had sworn never to darken his daughter’s door, saw his erect, militant figure enter the gate and lose itself in the shadow of the house. There followed a short interval of nothing in particular, and then a tall man appeared in the rectangle of light which was the open door.
Jim Doyle was astounded when he saw his visitor. Astounded and alarmed. But he recovered himself quickly, and smiled.
“This is something I never expected to see,” he said, “Mr. Anthony Cardew on my doorstep.”
“I don’t give a damn what you expected to see,” said Mr. Anthony Cardew. “I want to see my daughter.”
“Your daughter? You have said for a good many years that you have no daughter.”
“Stand aside, sir. I didn’t come here to quibble.”
“But I love to quibble,” sneered Doyle. “However, if you insist - I might as well tell you, I haven’t the remotest intention of letting you in.”
“I’ll ask you a question,” said old Anthony. “Is it true that my daughter has been hurt?”
“My wife is indisposed. I presume we are speaking of the same person.”
“You infernal scoundrel,” shouted Anthony, and raising his cane, brought it down with a crack on Doyle’s head. The chauffeur was half-way up the walk by that time, and broke into a run. He saw Doyle, against the light, reel, recover and raise his fist, but he did not bring it down.
“Stop that!” yelled the chauffeur, and came on like a charging steer. When he reached the steps old Anthony was hanging his stick over his left forearm, and Doyle was inside the door, trying to close it. This was difficult, however, because Anthony had quietly put his foot over the sill.
“I am going to see my daughter, Paul,” said Anthony Cardew. “Can you open the door?”
“Open it!” Paul observed truculently. “Watch me!”
He threw himself against the door, but it gave suddenly, and sent him sprawling inside at Doyle’s feet. He was up in an instant, squared to fight, but he only met Jim Doyle’s mocking smile. Doyle stood, arms folded, and watched Anthony Cardew enter his house. Whatever he feared he covered with the cynical mask that was his face.
He made no move, offered no speech.
“Is she upstairs?”
“She is asleep. Do you intend to disturb her?”
“I do,” said old Anthony grimly. “I’ll go first, Paul. You follow me, but I’d advise you to come up backwards.”
Suddenly Doyle laughed.
“What!” he said, “Mr. Anthony Cardew paying his first visit to my humble home, and anticipating violence! You underestimate the honor you are doing me.”
He stood like a mocking devil at the foot of the staircase until the two men had reached the top. Then he followed them. The mask had dropped from his face, and anger and watchfulness showed in it. If she talked, he would kill her. But she knew that. She was not a fool.
Elinor lay in the bed, listening. She had recognized her father’s voice, and her first impulse was one of almost unbearable relief. They had found her. They had come to take her away. For she knew now that she was a prisoner; even without the broken leg she would have been a prisoner. The girl downstairs was one of them, and her jailer. A jailer who fed her, and gave her grudgingly the attention she required, but that was all.
Just when Doyle had begun to suspect her she did not know, but on the night after her injury he had taken pains to verify his suspicions. He had found first her little store of money, and that had angered him. In the end he had broken open a locked trinket box and found a notebook in which for months she had kept her careful records. Here and there, scattered among house accounts, were the names of the radical members of The Central Labor Council, and other names, spoken before her and carefully remembered. He had read them out to her as he came to them, suffering as she was, and she had expected death then. But he had not killed her. He had sent Jennie away and brought in this Russian girl, a mad-eyed fanatic named Olga, and from that time on he visited her once daily. In his anger and triumph over her he devised the most cunning of all punishments; he told her of the movement’s progress, of its ingeniously contrived devilments in store, of its inevitable success. What buildings and homes were to be bombed, the Cardew house first among them; what leading citizens were to be held as hostages, with all that that implied; and again the Cardews headed the list.
When Doctor Smalley came he or the Russian were always present, solicitous and attentive. She got out of her bed one day, and dragging her splinted leg got to her desk, in the hope of writing a note and finding some opportunity of giving it to the doctor. Only to discover that they had taken away her pen, pencils and paper.
She had been found there by Olga, but the girl had made no comment. Olga had helped her back into bed without a word, but from that time on had spent most of her day on the upper floor. Not until Doyle came in would she go downstairs to prepare his food. Elinor lay in her bed and listened to her father coming up the stairs. She knew, before he reached the top, that Doyle would never let her be taken away. He would kill her first. He might kill Anthony Cardew. She had a sickening sense of tragedy coming up the staircase, tragedy which took the form of her father’s familiar deliberate step. Perhaps had she known of the chauffeur’s presence she might have chanced it, for every fiber of her tired body was crying for release. But she saw only her father, alone in that house with Doyle and the smoldering Russian.
The key turned in the lock.
Anthony Cardew stood in the doorway, looking at her. With her long hair in braids, she seemed young, almost girlish. She looked like the little girl who had gone to dancing school in short white frocks and long black silk stockings, so many years ago.
“I’ve just learned about it, Elinor,” he said. He moved to the bed and stood beside it, looking down, but he did not touch her. “Are you able to be taken away from here?”
She knew that Doyle was outside, listening, and she hardened her heart for the part she had to play. It was difficult; she was so infinitely moved by
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