Gladiator - Philip Wylie (readnow .TXT) 📗

we are more American than the Maine fisherman, the Minnesota farmer. Behind us is a party that grows apace. This incident in New Jersey has added to it, as does every dense mumble of Congress, every scandalous metropolitan investigation. I shall telephone.”

Hugo allowed himself to be conducted half-dubiously. But what he found was superficially, at least, what he had dreamed for himself. The house to which he was taken was pretentious; the people in its salon were amiable and educated; there was no sign of the red flag, the ragged reformer, the anarchist. The women were gracious; the men witty. As he talked to them, one by one, he began to believe that here was the nucleus around which he could construct his imaginary empire. He became interested; he expanded.

It was late in the night when Skorvsky raised his voice slightly, so that everyone would listen, and made an announcement: “Friends, I have had the honour to introduce Mr. Danner to you. Now I have the greater honour of telling you his purpose and pledge. Tomorrow night he will go to New Jersey”⁠—the silence became absolute⁠—“and two nights later he will bring to us in person from their cells Davidoff and Pletzky.”

A quick, pregnant pause was followed by excitement. They took Hugo by the hand, some of them applauded, one or two cheered, they shouldered near him, they asked questions and expressed doubts. It was broad daylight before they dispersed. Hugo walked to his house, listening to a long rhapsody from Skorvsky.

“We will make you a great man if you succeed,” Skorvsky said. “Good night, comrade.”

“Good night.” Hugo went into the hall and up to his bedroom. He sat on his bed. A dullness overcame him. He had never been patronized quite in the same way as he had that night; it exerted at once a corrosive and a lethargic influence. He undressed slowly, dropping his shoes on the floor. Splendid people they were, he thought. A smaller voice suggested to him that he did not really care to go to New Jersey for the prisoners. They would be hard to locate. There would be a sensation and a mystery again. Still, he had found a purpose.

His telephone rang. He reached automatically from the bed. The room was bright with sunshine, which meant that it was late in the day. His brain took reluctant hold on consciousness. “Hello?”

“Hello? Danner, my friend⁠—”

“Oh, hello, Skorvsky⁠—”

“May I come up? It is important.”

“Sure. I’m still in bed. But come on.”

Hugo was under the shower bath when his visitor arrived. He invited Skorvsky to share his breakfast, but was impatiently refused. “Things have happened since last night, Comrade Danner. For one, I saw the chief.”

“Chief?”

“You have not met him as yet. We conferred about your scheme. He⁠—I regret to say⁠—opposed it.”

Hugo nodded. “I’m not surprised. I’ll tell you what to do. You take me to him⁠—and I’ll prove conclusively that it will be successful. Then, perhaps, he will agree to sanction it. Every time I think of those two poor devils⁠—snatched from a mob⁠—waiting there in the dark for the electric chair⁠—it makes my blood boil.”

“Quite,” Skorvsky agreed. “But you do not understand. It is not that he doubts your ability⁠—if you failed it would not be important. He fears you might accomplish it. I assured him you would. I have faith in you.”

“He’s afraid I would do it? That doesn’t make sense, Skorvsky.”

“It does, I regret to say.” His expressive face stirred with discomfort. “We were too hasty, too precipitate. I see his reason now. We cannot afford as a group to be branded as jail-breakers.”

“That’s⁠—weak,” Hugo said.

Skorvsky cleared his throat. “There are other matters. Since Davidoff and Pletzky were jailed, the party has grown by leaps and bounds. Money has poured in⁠—”

“Ah,” Hugo said softly, “money.”

Skorvsky raged. “Go ahead. Be sarcastic. To free those men would cost us a million dollars, perhaps.”

“Too bad.”

“With a million⁠—the million their electrocution will bring from the outraged⁠—we can accomplish more than saving two paltry lives. We must be hard, we must think ahead.”

“In thinking ahead, Skorvsky, do you not think of the closing of a switch and the burning of human flesh?”

“For every cause there must be martyrs. Their names will live eternally.”

“And they themselves⁠—?”

“Bah! You are impractical.”

“Perhaps.” Hugo ate a slice of toast with outward calm. “I was hoping for a government that⁠—did not weigh people against dollars⁠—”

“Nor do we!”

“No?”

Skorvsky leaped to his feet. “Fool! Dreamer! Preposterous idealist! I must be going.”

Hugo sighed. “Suppose I went ahead?”

“One thing!” The Russian turned with a livid face. “One thing the chief bade me tell you. If those men escape⁠—you die.”

“Oh,” Hugo said. He stared through the window. “And supposing I were to offer your chief a million⁠—or nearly a million⁠—for the privilege of freeing them?”

Skorvsky’s face returned to its look of transfiguration, the look that had accompanied his noblest words of the night before. “You would do that, comrade?” he whispered. “You would give us⁠—give the cause⁠—a million? Never since the days of our Saviour has a man like you walked on this⁠—”

Hugo stood up suddenly. “Get out of here!” His voice was a cosmic menace. “Get out of here, you dirty swine. Get out of here before I break you to matchwood, before I rip out your guts and stuff them back through your filthy, lying throat. Get out, oh, God, get out!”

XXII

Hugo realized at last that there was no place in his world for him. Tides and tempest, volcanoes and lightning, all other majestic vehemences of the universe had a purpose, but he had none. Either because he was all those forces unnaturally locked in the body of a man, or because he was a giant compelled to stoop and pander to live at all among his feeble fellows, his anachronism was complete.

That much he perceived calmly. His tragedy lay in the lie he had told to his father: great deeds were always imminent and none of them could be accomplished