Rex Stout (2 page)

The Senator was looking down at her, his lips pushed together and out, his big old shapely head moving perceptibly from side to side. He grunted. “So. My dear child. Blue-eyed jingo.”

“Nonsense.” She was scornful. “We shouldn’t call names, should we?”

“No.” He dragged the word out, gave it length. Suddenly he said “No!” again, shorter and louder, and then muttering something about being late, backed away freeing the lapel from her hand, and turned and started for the door. But halfway to it he turned again. His voice was low but explosive. “Listen, Mrs. Voorman. This is a dirty business, let it alone. For God’s sake keep out of it. Here’s a message for
your husband, I suppose he’s still upstairs playing bridge. Playing bridge! Tell him this is my opinion of him for dragging you into this, tell him of all the filthy—”

The Senator sputtered to a stop. He stood looking at Sally, his lips working without words. After a moment he muttered, “God bless me, what am I saying?” He moved to get his hand on the doorknob, paused and said loudly and oratorically, “My dear child!” and opened the door and left.

Around nine o’clock, at about the time Sally Voorman’s guests were choosing weapons for the roast guinea hen, a man stood in an automobile, a small roadster, somewhat battered, with the top down, and yelled at the top of his voice. This was at the corner of Tenth and C Streets, Southeast, not more than a mile from the Capitol itself. Another man sat behind the steering wheel, his foot poised in readiness over the starter button and his head twisting ceaselessly about as his eyes searched the half-darkness of the sidewalks and pavements under the street lights. The crowd that had collected to listen was not large, and it stood at a distance, shifting uneasily, taking and losing shape as this one and that one pushed their way out and newcomers floated to the edge. The orator was screaming:

“Its the workers’ blood they’re after! It’s you and me will have to bleed! So! It’s the Congress we voted for. It’s the guys we elected to sit there in the Capitol that are going to put it over on us. And the President. Yes, the President! Oh, you can mutter, the whole damn country can mutter and then go out and get shot! Sure, I know the President would like to be a nice guy, and he would be a nice guy at a tea party, but this is not a tea party! This is war—do you understand that, you saps, war! Tomorrow noon, in fifteen hours now, the President goes to Congress. He says it’s a damn shame, but we’ve got to fight. Or maybe he don’t. Say he don’t. I think he will, but say he don’t! What then?”

The orator stopped and coughed, hard. At a tug on his coat he stooped to his companion at the steering wheel, listened
to words in his ear, nodded, straightened up, and screamed again:

“What then? I’ll tell you what then! Congress will tell him to go to hell and they’ll go on and protect our honor. My honor and your honor. Hell! My blood and your blood. They’re mixing up a new cocktail in Europe. They’ve been at it for over a year.
Crème de sang
, they call it. That’s French. Cream of blood. Creamy blood! German blood, and English blood, Italian, French, Russian, Jap, Polish, the whole damn works. They’re filling the rivers and oceans with it! Now they want ours to go with it, and Congress meets at noon tomorrow, and no matter what the President says, in spite of all hell, they’re going to vote us in. Do you realize that? Us, the workers. You and me! Creamy blood! Red cream, that’s us!

“But maybe not if we make hell hot enough. Maybe not, comrades! All right, sneer, you! Sure I’m a Communist! I’m from Boston, Massachusetts, and I guess that’s America. There’s nearly a thousand of us come to this town, and we’re all Communists, and we’re all workers, and we’ve got rights and we’ve got blood! And we don’t want to lose them. Do you? That’s a fair question, do you? If you don’t, come with us! Come tomorrow noon, to the Capitol, that’s where we’re bound for, and let those babies know we’re alive and we’d just as soon stay that way. But don’t wait till noon. Come early! No rough stuff. Come and let them take a look at us. They’re yellow. If there’s enough of us it’ll turn their stomachs just to look at us. Comrades! Come with us, start—”

A sharp tug at the orator’s sleeve yanked him down; the starter groaned at its task, and the engine roared. The driver called a sharp warning to a couple of loiterers in front and blew the horn. A low growl went through the crowd, “Cop, beat it, cop,” and it began to break up and move.

But at that instant, before the car’s wheels started to roll and while the cop, approaching in his stride, was still thirty paces off, a speedier and more violent interference took command. From across the street, from nowhere apparently by its swiftness, there was a rush of forms, men running, half a dozen or more, straight at the roadster, shouting as they ran one word for a battlecry, “Union!” They kept on shouting it as they pulled the driver from the car, knocked him down and kicked him around. The cop came trotting, blowing his whistle. The orator stood up grasping a two-foot piece of iron pipe, but his first blow went wild and before he could manage
a second one he was pulled down from behind and he stopped scratching and trying to bite when a kick in the groin doubled him up and he dropped. By that time the cop was down too, asleep by his own nightstick. One of the men had climbed into the roadster and was pulling at the gear lever, but another called to him, “Out ofthat, you damn fool! Come on! Union!” The man leaped from the car and they sped away, running low, together. Even in the dim light they looked alike, for they were all coatless and their shirts were of one color, gray. They disappeared into an alley as approaching whistles were heard from two directions. On the pavement, the orator was twisting and groaning, but the cop and the driver were silent and did not move.

The crowd, which had begun to move with surly slowness at the approach of the cop, had vanished as if on wings at the first sound of the battlecry from across the street. Two of its members, old friends in adversity, seated with doughnuts at the counter of a lunchwagon many blocks away, showed no particular desire to discuss the affair, though one of them did mutter a little above a whisper:

“Anyhow, the Gray Shirts really did that guy a favor, now maybe he won’t have to go to war.”

“Absolutely no sense in it at all,” the gray-haired man declared. “I might as well have stayed in New York and slept in my own bed.”

The younger man, standing, looked embarrassed and crestfallen. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I had no idea he would refuse to see you.”

There were four men in the room, and though they were all in their several ways sufficiently striking in appearance, the room itself had its own position to maintain and it triumphantly succeeded. It was large, heavy with elegance, and solidly assured. Books behind glass, in modern sliding panels, were in recesses, the walls were dark with old wood, bronzes were tastefully on the mantel and the brown leather chairs satisfactorily continued the tone. Two of the men, one middle-aged with a pointed nose and a bald head, the other
old and white, were seated at an end of the large Maura table looking at the title-page of an old quarto; the gray-haired one, comfortable in a chair near a window with a tall drink at hand on a taboret, was massive but not untidy; the younger one, not really young, soft and handsome, stood before him deferentially.

“I’m sorry,” the younger man repeated. “But, if I may have an opinion, it was worth your making the trip. I thought you could see the President and swing him over, and I’m astonished he wouldn’t see you. Rollins told me on the phone at noon it could positively be arranged. But maybe it couldn’t have been done; I don’t know; perhaps the President is hopeless; for two months I’ve kept my editorial writers busy branding him a straddler. You’ve seen that, I suppose?”

The gray-haired man grunted, “I don’t read newspapers.”

“Oh. Quite right. I don’t blame you. I have to, since I publish one. But the point is this, Stanley must be ignored. Our dependence, God help us, must be upon that herd of subnormals we call our Congress. Whatever Stanley says tomorrow, they must say war. That’s why I say it was worth your making the trip. Corcoran’s coming here to see you, I bullied him into it, he’s due in an hour. And just the word getting around that you’re in Washington will do a lot of good.” He grinned; his grin was also soft. “I’m glad you don’t read newspapers. My leader in the morning is a repudiation of the influence of international bankers. I should hate to have you read it in my own house.”

An old thin malignant voice came from the end of the table. “So you bullied Corcoran, did you? Is he, then, senile like me?”

The gray-haired massive man, who had been sipping his drink, put down his glass to chuckle. ‘Ha! You senile, Geroge? You will skip that. I wouldn’t be surprised if you should skip death itself.—But see here, Grinnell. What’s this about Corcoran?”

“He’s coming here to see you, that’s all. At ten o’clock. He balked, but I insisted.”

“Would you mind telling me what for?”

“What for? What for, sir?” The publisher, Grinnell, was flustered.

The massive man sighed with disgust. “Damn it, what for, yes. There must be one or two things you’re aware of, I don’t see how you could help it. You’re dragging Corcoran here. Of
the nine men that run the Senate, there are three that can’t be touched. I respect them for it and wish them no worse than a decent burial. Tilney is a sentimental ass but dangerous. The other five men are definitely committed, tied up. You didn’t know that? I suppose not. Corcoran’s job tonight is with Tilney, not with me, and you drag him off. If you know what for, tell me.”

Grinnell, flushing, said, “Tilney is at a dinner at Sally Voorman’s.”

“Sally who?”

“D. L. Voorman’s wife. The Allentown man with the Steel League. Tilney likes her.”

“Is Corcoran there?”

“No. He was at the White House at six, for half an hour. He’ll see Tilney, of course, at the meeting at Allen’s office, around eleven.”

The massive man picked up his glass and shook it to the tinkle of ice on crystal. He sipped at its contents, grimaced, and then slowly drank it empty and replaced it on the taboret. Instead of reaching for a handkerchief, he let his upper lip slide over the lower, and then reversed the process.

He said, “Drivel. Not you, Grinnell, good God, no, just all the talk. Drivel. The President is out of it, has been for a week. I knew it then, you know it now, he will know it tomorrow. Whatever he may say, in spite of his Y. M. C. A. popularity, the House will go for war five to one. They can’t wiggle out of it. The Senate is just as sure, by a smaller margin. Sure, so far as one permits sureness to enter into practical calculations. At any rate, there is nothing I can do or care to do. My persuasions have been administered. Don’t think, Grinnell, don’t think that I came to Washington to coax your damned Congressmen.”

He got up from his chair, breathed, and shook himself. “But I did come. Eh? Yes, I came.” He crossed, big steps with his big feet, to the end of the Maura table where the other two men were turning leaves of the quartos. He said in a new tone, quieter and more even but with more vibration beneath it, “I came to Washington to see you, George. I’m glad Grinnell told me you were here, since but for that I wouldn’t have come. Are you having a pleasant visit with your son-in-law?”

The old white man looked up from the quarto. His old eyes
were nearly lost in the wrinkled folds of the lids. “Thank you, Martin. Quite pleasant. Now you can go back.”

The massive man chuckled. “I’m invited for the night. Is that a good book you’ve got there?”

“Moderately good.” The old man closed the quarto, carefully, and carefully laid it on the table and slid it back from the edge. “You want to talk, Martin? It’s a moderately good book. Somewhat better—” He swallowed. “Somewhat better than the conversation I’ve been listening to.”

“You didn’t like it?”

“My remark was not based on my preferences. Rather on an objective analysis. We need not discuss it. You do not need to be told how stupid you are; you know it and you successfully ignore it. That is your only strength.”

Martin Drew seemed about to chuckle again at that, but something stopped it; he stared a moment and said, “Not as stupid as you are, George. So I understand. Maybe you are senile.” He wheeled around. “Grinnell. There’s a room I suppose where your father-in-law and I could have a little talk?”

“Of course.” The publisher was eager. “We’ll leave you here. By all means.” He turned to the bald-headed man with the pointed nose. “You won’t mind, Tom.”

“Sure.” The bald-headed man rose from his chair. He hesitated. “However, there is a thing I wanted to ask Mr. Drew … tell him would be better …”

Martin Drew said, “Well? If it’s brief.”

The bald-headed man looked at him. Suddenly, for no apparent reason whatever, he smiled as if really amused at something, shook his head, and turned to go. “Never mind,” he said. “Useless.”

When the door had closed behind the two departing, Martin Drew took the chair one had left vacant, wheeled it around, and sat down. He took out a cigar.

The other spoke. “That man with a nose like an ant is an idealist, and yet he knows more about eighteenth century quartos than I do.” Whatever the old white man said, his voice was the same: precise, thin, and shockingly malignant. “Another of nature’s asinine tricks.”

Martin Drew, having lit his cigar, said, “George. Whose money besides yours is behind the Gray Shirts?”

The wrinkled folded lids buried any gleam. The thin voice said, “Yours, perhaps?”

“Hell. Senator Corcoran will be here in twenty minutes. Subtlety can wait. Whose?”

“You do not appear to be wearing one.”

“Are you?”

“Bah. Gray Shirts? A ferment in the dregs, a snatch at recovery in the garment trades.”

“Yes?” Martin Drew blew out smoke. “There were riots today in Atlanta, Boston, and Cleveland. Peace demonstrations were broken up in a dozen cities. Four women were killed in Dayton. In all cases, Gray Shirts; in some just a scattering, in others considerable numbers. Their leader, the man who calls himself Lincoln Lee, is in Washington. The Communists approaching Washington today were attacked on the outskirts; all the police got was the wounded ones.”