The magnate of the pictures sat silent, evidently frightened.  At last he turned to me and asked, “Vot you tink he meant by dat, Billy?”

I answered:  “I think he meant that you are to play the part of Peter.”

“Peter?  Peter Pan?”

“No; St. Peter, who denied his master.”

“Veil,” said T-S, patiently, “you know, I ain’t vun o’ dese litry fellers.”

“I’ll tell it to you some time,” I continued.  “It’s kind of funny.  If he’s right, you are going to be the first pope, and sit at the golden gate, holding the keys of heaven.”

“My Gawd!” said T-S.

“And you’ve made a record in the movies.”  I added.  “You’ve played Satan and St. Peter, both on the same day!  That is ‘doubling’ with a vengeance!”

XXXI

When I got back to the Labor Temple, I learned that there was to be a mass-meeting of the strikers this Saturday evening.  It had been planned some days ago, and now was to be turned into a protest against police violence and “government by injunction.”  There was a cheap afternoon paper which professed sympathy with the workers, and this published a manifesto, signed by a number of labor leaders, summoning their followers to make clear that they would no longer submit to “Cossack rule.”

It appeared now that these leaders were considering inviting Carpenter to become one of the speakers at their meeting.  Two of them came up to me.  I had heard this stranger speak, and did I think he could hold an audience?  I gave assurance; he was a man of dignity, and would do them credit.  They were afraid the newspapers would represent him as a freak, but of course their meeting would hardly fare very well in the papers anyhow.  One of them asked, cautiously, how much of an extremist was he?  Labor leaders were having a hard time these days to hold down the “reds,” and the employers were not giving them any help.  Did I think Carpenter would support the “reds”?  I answered that I didn’t know the labor movement well enough to judge, but one thing they could be sure of, he was a man of peace, and would not preach any sort of violence.

The matter was settled a little later, when Mary Magna drove up to the Labor Temple in her big limousine.  Mary, for the first time in the memory of anyone who knew her, was without her war-paint; dressed like a Quakeress—­a most uncanny phenomenon!  She had not a single jewel on; and before long I learned why—­she had taken all she owned to a jeweler that morning, and sold them for something over six thousand dollars.  She brought the money to the fund for the babies of the strikers; nor did she ask anyone else to hand it in for her.  It was Mary’s fashion to look the world in the eye and say what she was doing.