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!”
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.
