Gladiator by Philip Wylie (i read a book .txt) 📗

thought to be lobbying for some impending legislation.

He picked out an individual readily enough. Some of the men he had come to know were in the Senate, others in the House of Representatives, others were diplomats, newspaper reporters, attach�s. Each alliance had been cemented with care and purpose. His knowledge of an enemy came by whisperings, by hints, by plain statements.

Congressman Hatten, who argued so eloquently for laying down arms and picking up the cause of humanity, was a guest of Hugo's.

"Danner," he said, after a third highball, "you're a sensible chap. But you don't quite get us. I'm fighting for disarmament—"

"And making a grand fight—"

The Congressman waved his hand. "Sure. That's what I mean. You really want this thing for itself. But, between you and me, I don't give a rap about ships and guns. My district is a farm district. We aren't interested in paying millions in taxes to the bosses and owners in a coal and iron community. So I'm against it. Dead against it—with my constituency behind me. Nobody really wants to spend the money except the shipbuilders and steel men. Maybe they don't, theoretically. But the money in it is too big. That's why I fight."

"And your speeches?"

"Pap, Danner, pure pap. Even the yokels in my home towns realize that."

"It doesn't seem like pap to me."

"That's politics. In a way it isn't. Two boys I was fond of are lying over there in France. I don't want to make any more shells. But I have to think of something else first. If I came from some other district, the case would be reversed. I'd like to change the tariff. But the industrials oppose me in that. So we compromise. Or we don't. I think I could put across a decent arms-limitation bill right now, for example, if I could get Willard Melcher out of town for a month."

"Melcher?"

"You know him, of course—at least, who he is. He spends the steel money here in Washington—to keep the building program going on. Simple thing to do. The Navy helps him. Tell the public about the Japanese menace, the English menace, all the other menaces, and the public coughs up for bigger guns and better ships. Run 'em till they rust and nobody ever really knows what good they could do."

"And Melcher does that?"

The Congressman chuckled. "His pay-roll would make your eyes bulge. But you can't touch him."

Hugo nodded thoughtfully. "Don't you think anyone around here works purely for an idea?"

"How's that? Oh—I understand. Sure. The cranks!" And his laughter ended the discussion.

Hugo began. He walked up the brick steps of Melcher's residence and pulled the glittering brass knob. A servant came to the door.

"Mr. Danner to see Mr. Melcher. Just a moment."

A wait in the hall. The servant returned. "Sorry, but he's not in."

Hugo's mouth was firm. "Please tell him that I saw him come in."

"I'm sorry, sir, but he is going right out."

"Tell him—that he will see me."

The servant raised his voice. "Harry!" A heavy person with a flattened nose and cauliflower ears stepped into the hall. "This gentleman wishes to see Mr. Melcher, and Mr. Melcher is not in—to him. Take care of him, Harry." The servant withdrew.

"Run along, fellow."

Hugo smiled. "Mr. Melcher keeps a bouncer?"

An evil light flickered in the other's eyes. "Yeah, fellow. And I came up from the Pennsy mines. I'm a tough guy, so beat it."

"Not so tough your ears and nose aren't a sight," Hugo said lightly.

The man advanced. His voice was throaty. "Git!"

"You go to the devil. I came here to see Melcher and I'm going to see him."

"Yeah?"

The tough one drew back his fist, but he never understood afterwards what had taken place. He came to in the kitchen an hour later. Mr. Melcher heard him rumble to the floor and emerged from the library. He was a huge man, bigger than his bouncer; his face was hard and sinister and it lighted with an unpleasant smile when he saw the unconscious thug and measured the size of Hugo. "Pulled a fast one on Harry, eh?"

"I came to see you, Melcher."

"Well, might as well come in now. I worked up from the mines myself, and I'm a hard egg. If you got funny with me, you'd get killed. Wha' daya want?"

Hugo sat down in a leather chair and lit a cigarette. He was comparatively without emotion. This was his appointed task and he would make short shrift of it. "I came here, Melcher," he began, "to talk about your part in the arms conferences. It happens that I disagree with you and your propaganda. It happens that I have a method of enforcing my opinion. Disarmament is a great thing for the world, and putting the idea across is the first step toward even bigger things. I know the relative truths of what you say about America's peril and what you get from saying it. Am I clear?"

Melcher had reddened. He nodded. "Perfectly."

"I have nothing to add. Get out of town."

Melcher's eyes narrowed. "Do you really believe that sending me out of town would do any good? Do you have the conceit to think that one nutty shrimp like you can buck the will and ideas of millions of people?"

Hugo did not permit his convictions to be shaken. "There happen to be extenuating circumstances, Melcher."

"Really? You surprise me." The broad sarcasm was shaken like a weapon. "And do you honestly think you could chase me—me—out of here?"

"I am sure of it."

"How?"

Hugo extinguished his cigarette. "I happen to be more than a man. I am—" he hesitated, seeking words—"let us say, a devil, or an angel, or a scourge. I detest you and what you stand for. If you do not leave—I can ruin your house and destroy you. And I will." He finished his words almost gently.

Melcher appeared to hesitate. "All right. I'll go. Immediately. This afternoon."

Hugo was astonished. "You will go?"

"I promise. Good afternoon, Mr. Danner."

Hugo rose and walked toward the door. He was seething with surprise and suspicion. Had he actually intimidated Melcher so easily? His hand touched the knob. At that instant Melcher hit him on the head with a chair. It broke in pieces. Hugo turned around slowly.

"I understand. You mistook me for a dangerous lunatic. I was puzzled for a moment. Now—"

Melcher's jaw sagged in amazement when Hugo did not fall. An instant later he threw himself forward, arms out, head drawn between his shoulders. With one hand Hugo imprisoned his wrists. He lifted Melcher from the floor and shook him. "I meant it, Melcher. And I will give you a sign. Rotten politics, graft, bad government, are doomed." Melcher watched with staring eyes while Hugo, with his free hand, rapidly demolished the room. He picked up the great desk and smashed it, he tore the stone mantelpiece from its roots; he kicked the fireplace apart; he burst a hole in the brick wall—dragging the bulk of a man behind him as he moved. "Remember that, Melcher. No one else on earth is like me—and I will get you if you fail to stop. I'll come for you if you squeal about this—and I leave it to you to imagine what will happen."

Hugo walked into the hall. "You're all done for—you cheap swindlers. And I am doom." The door banged.

Melcher swayed on his feet, swallowed hard, and ran upstairs. "Pack," he said to his valet.

He had gone; Hugo had removed the first of the public enemies. Yet Hugo was not satisfied. His approach to Melcher had been dramatic, terrifying, effective. There were rumours of that violent morning. The rumours said that Melcher had been attacked, that he had been bought out for bigger money, that something peculiar was occurring in Washington. If ten, twenty men left and those rumours multiplied by geometrical progression, sheer intimidation would work a vast good.

But other facts disconcerted Hugo. In the first place, his mind kept reverting to Melcher's words: "Do you have the conceit to think that one person can buck the will of millions?" No matter how powerful that person, his logic added. Millions of dollars or people? the same logic questioned. After all, did it matter? People could be perjured by subtler influences than gold. Secondly, the parley over arms continued to be an impasse despite the absence of Melcher. Perhaps, he argued, he had not removed Melcher soon enough. A more carefully focused consideration showed that, in spite of what Hatten had said. It was not individuals against whom the struggle was made, but mass stupidity, gigantic bulwarks of human incertitude. And a new man came in Melcher's place—a man who employed different tactics. Hugo could not exorcise the world.

A few days later Hugo learned that two radicals had been thrown into jail on a charge of murder. The event had taken place in Newark, New Jersey. A federal officer had attempted to break up a meeting. He had been shot. The men arrested were blamed, although it was evident that they were chance seizures, that their proved guilt could be at most only a social resentfulness. At first no one gave the story much attention. The slow wheels of Jersey justice—printed always in quotation marks by the dailies—began to turn. The men were summarily tried and convicted of murder in the first degree. A mob assaulted the jail where they were confined—without success. Two of the mob were wounded by riot guns.

A meeting was held in Berlin, one in London, another in Paris. Moscow was silent, but Moscow was reported to be in an uproar. The trial assumed international proportions overnight. Embassies were stormed; legations from America were forced to board cruisers. Strikes were ordered; long queues of sullen men and women formed at camp kitchens. The President delivered a message to Congress on the subject. Prominent personages debated it in public halls, only to be acclaimed and booed concomitantly. The sentence imposed on two Russian immigrants rocked the world. In some cities it was not safe for American tourists to go abroad in the streets. And all the time the two men drew nearer to the electric chair.

It was then that Hugo met Skorvsky. Many people knew him; he was a radical, a writer; he lived in Washington, he styled himself an unofficial ambassador of the world. A small, dark man with a black moustache who attended one of Hugo's informal afternoon discussions on a vicarious invitation. "Come over and see Hugo Danner. He's something new in Washington."

"Something new in Washington? I shall omit the obvious sarcasm. I shall go." Skorvsky went.

Hugo listened to him talk about the two prisoners. He was lucid; he made allowances for the American democracy, which in themselves were burning criticism. Hugo asked him to dinner. They dined at Hugo's house.

"You have the French taste in wines," Skorvsky said, "but, as it is to my mind the finest taste in the world, I can say only that."

Hugo tried to lead him back to the topic that interested both of them so acutely. Skorvsky shrugged. "You are polite—or else you are curious. I know you—an American business man in Washington with a purpose. Not an apparent purpose—just now. No, no. Just now you are a host, cultivated and genial, and retiring. But at the proper time—ah! A dam somewhere in Arizona. A forest that you covet in Alaska. Is it not so?"

"What if it is not?"

Skorvsky stared at the ceiling. "What then? A secret? Yes, I thought that about you while we were talking to the others to-day. There is something deep about you, my new friend. You are a power. Possibly you are not even really an American."

"That is wrong."

"You assure me that I am right. But I will agree with you. You are, let us say, the very epitome of the man Mr. Mencken and Mr. Lewis tell us about so charmingly. I am Russian and I cannot know all of America. You might divulge your errand, perhaps?"

"Suppose I said it was to set the world aright?"

Skorvsky laughed lightly. "Then I should throw myself at your feet."

Both men were in deadly earnest, Hugo not quite willing to adopt the Russian's almost effeminate delicacy, yet eager to talk to him, or to someone like him—someone who was more than a great self-centred wheel in the progress of the nation. Hugo yielded a little further. "Yet that is my purpose. And I am not altogether impotent. There are things I can do—" He got up from the table and stretched himself with a feline grace.

"Such as?"

"I was thinking of your two compatriots who were recently given such wretched justice. Suppose they were liberated by force. What then?"

"Ah! You are an independent communist?"

"Not even that. Just a friend of progress."

"So. A dreamer. One of the few who have wealth. And you have a plan to free these men?"

Hugo