Peter could see it all very clearly when he came to
figure over the thing; he could see what a whooping
jackass he had been. He might have known that
it was up to him to be careful, at this time of all
times, when he was suspected of having rubbed out Donald
Gordon’s pencil marks. They had picked
out a girl whom Peter had never seen before, and she
had come and posed as Miriam’s friend, and had
proceeded to take Peter by the nose and lead him to
the edge of the precipice and shove him over.
And now she would be laughing at him, telling all
her friends about her triumph, and about Peter’s
thirty dollars a week that he would never see again.
Peter spent a good part of the night getting up the
story that he was to tell McGivney next morning.
He wouldn’t mention Rosie Stern, of course;
he would say that the Reds had trailed him to Room
427, and it must be they had a spy in Guffey’s
office. Peter repeated this story quite solemnly,
and again realized too late that he had made a fool
of himself. It wasn’t twenty-four hours
before every Red in American City knew the true, inside
history of the unveiling of Peter Gudge as a spy of
the Traction Trust. The story occupied a couple
of pages in that week’s issue of the “Clarion,”
and included Peter’s picture, and an account
of the part that Peter had played in various frame-ups.
It was nearly all true, and the fact that it was guess-work
on Donald Gordon’s part did not make it any the
better for Peter. Of course McGivney and Guffey
and all his men read the story, and knew Peter for
the whooping jackass that Peter knew himself.
“You go and get yourself a job with a pick and
shovel,” said McGivney, and Peter sorrowfully
took his departure. He had only a few dollars
in his pocket, and these did not last very long, and
he had got down to his last nickel, and was confronting
the wolf of starvation again, when McGivney came to
his lodging house room with a new proposition.
There was one job left, and Peter might take it if
he thought he could stand the gaff.
It was the job of state’s witness. Peter
had been all thru the Red movement, he knew all these
pacifists and Socialists and Syndicalists and I. W.
Ws. who were now in jail. In some cases the evidence
of the government was far from satisfactory; so Peter
might have his salary back again, if he were willing
to take the witness stand and tell what he was told
to tell, and if he could manage to sit in a courtroom
without falling in love with some of the lady jurors,
or some of the lady spies of the defense. These
deadly shafts of sarcasm Peter did not even feel,
because he was so frightened by the proposition which
McGivney put up to him. To come out into the
open and face the blinding glare of the Red hate!
To place himself, the ant, between the smashing fists
of the battling giants!
Yes, it might seem dangerous, said McGivney, for a
cowardly little whelp like himself; but then a good
many men had had the nerve to do it, and none of them
had died yet. McGivney himself did not pretend
to care very much whether Peter did it or not; he put
the matter up to him on Guffey’s orders.
The job was worth forty dollars a week, and he might
take it or leave it.
