CHAPTER XVIIITHE FLIGHT
This summer of 1923 was a pleasant one for Bunny. To be one of the editors of a little paper, and be able to say what you thought, and print it week by week and distribute it, with no Dean Squirge to take it away from you, and no police or patriots to raid your office! To mail it to every one you knew, and flatter yourself with the idea that they were reading it, and being cured of their prejudices! Bunny had put all his former class-mates on the mailing list of “The Young Student,” and in the fall the “Ypsels” were going to sell it on the college campuses, and maybe trouble would begin then, and they would get some advertising free!
Dad was slowly picking up. He read the little paper every week, a sort of loving censorship. But it wasn’t needed, because Rachel, orthodox Socialist party member, was wasting no space on the left wingers. When these extremists got hold of Bunny and cajoled him into thinking that both sides ought to have a hearing, Rachel would say, what was the matter with their getting out a paper of their own? So here was Bunny, being “bossed” as usual—and by a woman! It was almost as bad as being married!
Another source of relief—Vee was not quarreling with him so much. She had been so shocked by his mad proposal to go off and get himself killed in heavy industry, that she was glad to compromise and take half his time, and let Rachel and “The Young Student” have the other half. Vee was working hard on her new picture, “The Golden Couch,” telling about an American darling of luxury who fell into the toils of a fake prince from some Balkan country. To play the part they had got a real Roumanian prince, who had most charming manners, and was willing to devote himself to Vee at all times when Bunny was busy with his Socialist Jewess.
Also they were getting agreeable letters from Bertie, who had been transported to heaven. Such a brilliant world, with such important things going on! She had lunched with the Prince de This, and dined with the Duchesse de That. Why wouldn’t Dad and Bunny come over and visit them—Bunny might make a really brilliant marriage. Dad chuckled; the idea of him going to Paree and trying to polly voo Francy!
The blackmailers were busy, of course; but since his illness Dad had left all that trouble to Verne. Congress was on vacation, which meant a partial respite; the senatorial reds might denounce the oil leases in their home states, but the papers no longer had to print what they said. A curious superstition, that when things were said in Congress, even the most respectable newspapers found it necessary to mention them. Such things brought politics into disrepute with business men.
The drilling of the Sunnyside tract was under way. A dozen wells were flowing, and justifying all that had been expected of them. Sometimes Dad was driven to the office, but most of the time the bright young executives would come out to his home, and sit in the den and get their orders. Such clean-cut efficient young men, with all their faculties concentrated upon getting oil out of the ground! No visions tormenting them, no strains of music haunting them, no hesitations, no uncertainties, never a doubt that to get oil out of the ground was the purpose of man’s life! So they kept their wits about them, and mastered their departments, and increased their prestige and their salaries; and when any one of them had taken his departure, there was an unuttered sadness between Dad and his son. Why couldn’t Bunny have been like young Simmons, or young Heimann, or young Bolling?
The doctor had said that Dad must not think about business more than two hours a day; so Bunny would tempt him for a stroll, a very slow one, and perhaps they would hear a sermon of Eli’s as they walked along the street, and that never failed to divert Dad’s mind and set him to chuckling. He took a kind of malicious delight in watching the glory sweep of the Third Revelation; by proving that the masses were boobs, you made it all right to take their naval reserves! Dad subscribed to a little paper issued by one of the rival religious showmen of the town, full of denunciations of Eli and exposures of his trickery.
The regular churches were jealous of this new Revelation, which had burst so rudely upon them. Eli was an upstart and a mountebank, and Tom Poober, the clerical rival, declared that he faked a lot of his alleged cures, he hired people to stand up and tell how their crippled limbs had healed and their cancers had disappeared. Also, Eli’s followers had not been willing to give up their customs of rolling and talking in tongues, and Eli had had to build for them a number of sound-proof rooms in the Tabernacle, where these rites were carried on. “Tarrying rooms,” they were called, because you went there to “tarry with Jesus”; and when things got going, you would see a hundred men and women rolling on the floor, pawing one another, tearing off their clothing; you would see a woman jerking her head back, or leaping several feet at a time, here and there, exactly like a chicken with its head cut off. The orgies would end with a mass of human creatures piled into a heap, wriggling and writhing, amid a smell of sweat that would make you ill.
The Reverend Poober would print such things, and send newsboys to sell the paper in front of the Tabernacle; the newsboys would be fallen upon and beaten, and the police would fail to arrest the assailants, or having arrested them, would turn them loose. Were the politicians of Angel City afraid of the power of this stuffed prophet? Tom Poober would ask in large capital letters, and Dad would chuckle—in the mood of that Western pioneer who came home and found his wife in a hand-to-hand conflict with a bear, and rested his gun upon the fence and took a seat and called, “Go it, woman! Go it, bear!”
There was another charge—the prophet was said to be fond of the company of handsome young women. That was a cruel thing to hint, because Eli was strenuous in denouncing fornications and adulteries, as much so as any Hebrew prophet of the First Revelation. Dad chuckled and speculated; until it happened one day that he and Bunny took a long drive, and stopped at an unfrequented beach, looking for a place for Bunny to get a swim. There was a cheap hotel on the waterfront, and coming out of the door, whom should they run into but Eli Watkins, with an indubitably handsome young woman! The young woman walked quickly on, and Eli exchanged greetings with Dad and Bunny, and then excused himself. Dad stood for a minute, looking after the couple and saying, “By golly!”
Then he turned and went into the hotel, and to the man at the desk remarked, in a casual tone, “I met that gentleman, but his name has slipped my memory—the one that just went out.”
“That’s Mr. T. C. Brown, of Santa Ynez.”
“Is he staying here”?
“He just checked out.”
Dad began to glance over the hotel register, and there he read, as big as life, “T. C. Brown and wife, Santa Ynez.” And in the crude scrawly handwriting of Eli Watkins, which Dad had at home upon several business letters! It was all Dad could do to keep from bursting out laughing. By golly, if he were to tip off Tom Poober to the contents of that hotel register, he would knock the Third Revelation as high as a kite!
President Harding died; and Dan Irving wrote Bunny the gossip from Washington. The old gentleman had been reluctant to take the oil men’s money, so Barney Brockway and his “fixer” had fixed things for him—they had “carried an account” in a Wall Street brokerage, a method whereby business men make life comfortable for statesmen. Every now and then they would bring the old gentleman a bundle of liberty bonds which they had “won” for him. And now his widow had found several hundred thousand dollars of these bonds in a safe deposit box, and become convinced that he had meant them for another woman, and was in such a fury about it that she was telling all her friends, and giving great glee to Washington gossip.
And then the new president: a little man whose fame was based upon the legend that he had put down a strike of the Boston policemen, when the truth was that he had been hiding in his hotel room, with a black eye presented to him by the mayor of the city. His dream in life, as reported by himself, was to keep a store, and that was the measure of his mentality. He didn’t know what to say, and so the newspapers called him a “strong silent man.”
Bunny didn’t publish much of this, because Rachel didn’t approve of gossip. But they did publish some of the inside facts about professionalism in college athletics, and when this was offered for sale on the campuses, the athletic students mobbed the “Ypsels.” But even the mobbers read the paper, and Bunny was having the time of his life.
In December the new Congress assembled, and an alarming state of affairs was revealed; the “insurgents” had the balance of power in the Senate, and their first move was to combine with the Democrats and order an investigation of the oil leases. This news fell upon Dad and Verne like a thunderbolt—their scouts in Washington had failed to foresee such a calamity, and Verne had to jump into his private car and hurry to Washington, to see what a last-minute expenditure of cash might do. Apparently it didn’t do much, for the committee proceeded to put witnesses on the stand and “grill” them—a terrifying newspaper phrase, but really it was not so much a culinary operation as an explosion, with the debris scattered all over the front pages of the press.
The thing was too sensational to be held down any longer. It didn’t read like politics, but like some blood and thunder movie. Secretary Crisby hadn’t had the sense to put his oil money into liberty bonds and hide them in a safe deposit box—he had gone like a fool and paid off a big mortgage on his Texas ranch, and bought a lot of stuff that everybody could see; he had even told the foreman of his ranch that he had got sixty-eight thousand dollars from Vernon Roscoe, and the foreman had told one of the ranch-hands. Now the senators put the badly rattled foreman on the witness stand, and he had to explain that it was all a misunderstanding—what he had said was not “sixty-eight thousand dollars,” but “six or eight cows.” You can see how easy it was for such a mistake to happen!
But then it was shown that Secretary Crisby had deposited a hundred thousand dollars in his bank one day; and where had he got that? A great Washington newspaper publisher came forward to declare that he had loaned his dear friend the secretary that little sum for no particular reason. The great publisher then went off to Florida to spend the winter, and he was sick and couldn’t possibly be disturbed. But the perverse committee sent one of its members to Florida and put the publisher on the witness stand, and in the presence of half a hundred newspaper reporters pinned him down and made him admit that his story had been a friendly fairy-tale.
Where had the hundred thousand come from? The scandalmongers were busy, of course—fellows like Dan Irving running to the committee with tales of what Washington gossip was saying. So the committee grabbed “Young Pete” O’Reilly, and “grilled” him, and made him admit that he had carried the trifling sum of a hundred thousand dollars to Secretary Crisby in a little black bag—more stuff right out of a movie! And then they grabbed “Old Pete,” and he claimed it was just a loan—he had got a note, but he couldn’t recollect where the note was. He finally produced a signature which he said had been cut off the note, but he couldn’t tell what had become of the rest of it; he was very careless about notes, and thought he had given this one to his wife, who had misplaced all but the signature. And these scandalous details about the leaders of the most fashionable society in Washington and Angel City! The newspapers published it, even while they shivered at their own irreverence.
Every day Dad was getting long telegrams from Verne, not coming direct, of course, but addressed to Mrs. Bolling, the wife of the trusty young executive; they were signed “A. H. Dory”—a play upon Dad’s favorite formula, “All hunkydory.” They were not the sort of telegrams that a doctor would have picked out for the soothing of his patient’s nerves; no, they kept the patient in a fever of anxiety—how many, many times he wished that he had listened to the warnings of his young idealist, and kept clear of this mess of corruption! But of course Bunny couldn’t say that now; he could only read the news and wait and wonder at what hour the thunderbolt would descend upon them.
Annabelle’s new picture was done, “A Mother’s Heart,” and there was going to be an especially grand premiere, and Bunny was to take Vee, of course, and Dad was to take Aunt Emma, and everything would be all hunkydory for that one night at least. Bunny came home from reading the proofs of the next issue of the paper, and there in the entrance hall he found his aunt waiting for him, her hands shaking with excitement, and her teeth chattering. “Oh, Bunny! The most dreadful thing! They’re trying to arrest your father!”
“Arrest him?”
“Men are after him—right in front of the house! You’ve got to get away without being seen—they’ll follow you—oh, I’m so frightened—oh, please, please, be careful! Don’t let them catch your father!”
He managed to get the story, and it was really almost as melodramatic as her wild words conveyed. Young Bolling, the trusty executive, had been to the house a few minutes ago, looking for Bunny with a message from Dad of the utmost urgency; he had written it out, and Bunny read it: he was to drive in his car, and make absolutely certain that he was not being followed—there would be men trying to follow him, in order to trail Dad. As soon as he had shaken off these men, he must leave his car, which of course had his name on the license; he must go to some automobile place where he was not known, and buy a closed car under an assumed name; it must not be a new car, because they might have to do very fast driving. Still making sure that he was not being followed, Bunny must proceed to the suburban town of San Pasqual, and at a certain corner Dad would join him. Mr. Bolling had given Aunt Emma five thousand dollars in bills, and then had gone away, hoping that the men who were watching the house would follow him.
Bunny said a few words to comfort the poor old lady. Nobody wanted to put Dad into jail, they just wanted to get him on the witness stand, the way they had done the “Petes,” young and old. Bunny threw a few clothes into an old suit-case, that had no name or initials on it, and hurried out to his car. Sure enough, there was another car just down the street, and when Bunny started, this other started also. Bunny swung round half a dozen corners, but the other car kept on his trail. He bethought himself of the traffic jam in the heart of the city, which was at its worst right now, between five and six in the evening. The traffic was controlled by signals, with two or three officers at the crowded corners, and it would be possible by dodging here and there to get several cars between you and a pursuing car, and sooner or later to get across just as the bell rang and compelled your pursuer to wait.
Bunny worked the trick, and shook off the other car; then he left his own in a public garage for storage, and made the purchase of a two-passenger closed car under the name of “Alex H. Jones.” The dealers’ receipt would serve for a license temporarily, and Bunny counted out eighteen of his hundred dollar bills, and drove away. Half an hour later he was in the town of San Pasqual, driving past the corner specified. He passed it twice, and the second time Dad stepped out of a hotel, and Bunny slowed up, and then away they went! “Anybody following you?” were Dad’s first words, and Bunny said, “I don’t think so, but we’ll make sure.” They swung round several corners, and Dad kept watch through the rear window. “All hunkydory,” he said, at last, and Bunny asked, “Where are we going?” The answer was, “To Canada”; and Bunny, who had been prepared for anything, took the boulevard that led North out of San Pasqual.
While he drove, Dad told him the news. The first thing, Verne had skipped to Europe; at least, his steamer was sailing today, and it was hoped he had not been caught. “A. H. Dory” had telegraphed to Mrs. Bolling, advising her that it was absolutely necessary for Mr. Paradise—that was Dad’s code name—to meet his friends in Vancouver immediately, and he must start tonight, otherwise he would be too late for the appointment. Dad hadn’t needed any further hint; he had learned yesterday—though he had kept the painful news from Bunny—that the Senate investigators had got wind of that Canadian corporation, and were planning to subpoena all its organizers. Undoubtedly the subpoenas had been issued that day, and telegraphed to Angel City, with instructions to the United States marshal to serve them at once. Dad and young Bolling had made their get-away from the office by means of a fire-escape—more movie stuff, you see! And here they were, Alex H. Jones and Paul K. Jones, driving all night on a rain-battered highway, not daring to stop at any hotel, because a United States marshal might be lurking in the lobby; not daring even to pass through the big cities, for fear the all-seeing eye of their irate Uncle Sam might be spying from a window!
They got to Vancouver in a heavy snow-storm; and immediately dropped their uncomfortable aliases, and put up at the best hotel. Straightway, of course, the newspaper reporters came running; and Dad said with his quiet dignity that it was all rubbish about their being fugitives from the Senate investigation, they were American business men who had come to British Columbia to consider investments. That scandal in Washington was nothing but cheap and silly politics, the leases had been most advantageous to the government, and as for the Canadian corporation, it had been an enterprise of great benefit to Canada. Did Mr. Ross and his son plan to explore for oil in British Columbia? asked the reporters, eagerly; and Dad said that he had nothing to communicate as yet.
Here they were: comfortable in the physical sense, but mentally not at all so, in a city which to them was a frontier place, with cold weather and nothing of interest. Yet Dad was likely to be in exile for a long time; the new Congress would be in session half a year, and the trouble-makers would certainly keep the oil scandal going, so as to have something to use in next fall’s presidential election. Dad sent telegrams to his office, and wireless messages to Verne on board ship; and presently came a reply from Verne requesting Dad to meet him in London immediately.
Dad had to go; and then, what about Bunny? He had his sweetheart at home, and also his paper, so perhaps he should return to Angel City. But Bunny said nonsense, it was out of the question for Dad to cross a continent and an ocean in winter-time alone. His son would go with him, and after they had talked things out with Verne, they could go over to Paris, and spend a while with Bertie, and meet those swell diplomatic friends of hers. Then, if necessary, Bunny might come back alone—they would see about that later.
The old man was pitifully glad of this decision. Bunny was all he had to care about now. In his secret heart he must have been humiliated before his son, but he had to go on with the pretense that he was a dignified business man, persecuted by unscrupulous political enemies. He talked about the matter very little with Bunny, but to other people he would discourse for hours; this sudden talkativeness about his affairs was the most pitiful of all signs of his weakening.
Bunny wrote long letters to Vee, telling her the situation and pledging his love; and to Rachel, turning over the paper to her, and arranging for the thousand dollars a month to be paid to her. Dad wrote long letters to his efficient young executives—thank God for their efficiency right now! They would keep in touch with him and Verne by cable; and Verne’s agents in Washington would send the “low down” on the investigation. Bunny arranged to get Dan Irving’s weekly letter, and the various radical papers he was reading; so father and son would be in position to carry on their controversy in Europe!
They spent four days on a train crossing the snowy plains of Canada. It was bitter cold outside, but snug and warm within, and on the rear of the train was an observation car, made use of by a score or two of business men, American and Canadian. In an hour or two they had learned that the great J. Arnold Ross was among them, and after that Dad held court, and told his troubles to all and sundry. It was curious to Bunny to see the class-consciousness of these men, an instant, automatic reaction; every one of them was with Dad, every one knew that the exposure was the work of malicious political disturbers, and that the leases had been a good bargain for the public. The savings that intelligent business men effected always made up many times over for what profits the business men took.
When they got to Montreal, there was a palatial steamer waiting, with several hundred wage-slaves of various sorts prepared to serve them in return for a few hundred barrels of the stolen oil. They went on board, and the steamer proceeded down the St. Lawrence river; it stopped at Quebec, and there were newspapers, and Bunny read that Federal agents had raided a secret convention of the Workers’ party, and arrested all the delegates. It was a highly sensational event, and the Canadian papers gave full particulars—they too had this problem! Their account gave the names of the criminals who had been trapped, and one of them was Paul Watkins!
Not all the oil money in the world could make the winter passage to England other than cold and stormy. Dad proved to be a poor sailor, and so he was a forlorn object when he got to Vernon Roscoe’s hotel in London. But Verne cheered him up; yes, truly, Dad began to revive with the first thump upon the back and the first boom of Verne’s voice in the hotel lobby. “By Jees, the old skeezicks! I believe the reds have got his nerve!”
Nobody had got Verne’s nerve, you bet; he was sitting on the top of the world! That investigation—shucks, that was a circus stunt to entertain the yokels. It would blow over and be forgotten in a few months—Verne quoted a chieftain of Tammany Hall who had been up against the same kind of racket, and said, “Dis is a nine day town. If yez kin stand de gaff fer nine days, ye’re all right.” No, by Jees—and Verne gave his partner another thump—they were getting the oil out of Sunnyside, and the money was going into their bank accounts, and not into anybody’s else, and they were going to have one hell of a lark spending it. What was more, they were going to turn the tables on those blankety-blank red senators—just let Dad wait a few days, and he’d see some stuff that would get on the front pages of the papers, even here in England!
Jim Junior got his due share of back-slapping. The boy Bolsheviki must take his old man around and show him some of the sights of London; hadn’t he learned about ’em in the history books—the places where men had had their heads chopped off five hundred years ago, and such cheerful spectacles? After the old man had got rested up, then Verne would show him some oil propositions that would make his eyes pop open. Verne hadn’t been losing any time—not he! He had put five million into a project that was to reopen a great oil field in Roumania that had been burned during the German invasion, and it was a deal that would beat Sunnyside, and Verne had got fifty-one percent and full control, and was going to bring over a complete American outfit, and show those gypsies or whatever they were what a real oil job looked like. And now he was fighting with some of the British oil men over the Persian situation, and Verne and the state department between them were waking old John Bull from a long sweet dream.
It was a curious situation that was unveiled to Bunny here. Vernon Roscoe was a fugitive from the oil investigating committee of the Senate, but at the same time he was master of the foreign policy of the United States government concerning oil, and the ambassadors abroad and the secretary of state at home behaved as his office boys. Of course there were other oil men; Excelsior Pete and Victor and the rest of the Big Five all had their agents, hundreds of them, abroad; but Verne was so active, and had so much the best word in Washington, that the rest had come to follow his lead. President Harding might be dead, but his spirit lived on, and Verne and his crowd had bought and paid for it.
The American magnate came among these Britishers with as much tact and grace as one of his long-horned steers from the southwestern plains. He wasn’t going to put on any society flummery, he was an old cattle-puncher from Oklahoma, and if “Old Spats and Monocle,” as he called Great Britain’s leading oil magnate, didn’t like him, by Jees he could lump him! Bunny attended a banquet at which a group of the rivals sat down together, and it seemed to Bunny that Verne was more noisy and more slangy than even at his own dinner-table at the Monastery. There was method in it, the younger man suspected; Verne frightened these strangers with his wild western airs, and that was the proper mood for negotiations! They had needed our navy damn bad a few years ago, and had got it free of charge, but they weren’t going to get it that way again, and Verne was the feller to tell them so. The next time, it would be the oil crowd’s say about the battleships—and the same with the dollars, by Jees.
There was a new deal in American diplomacy since the war. The state department had taken charge of foreign investments made by our bankers, and told them where to go and where to stay away from. The bankers had to obey, because they never knew when they might need the help of the marines to collect their interest. What it meant in practice was that a few fighting men like Vernon Roscoe could go to foreign business men and say, let me in on this and give me a share of that, or you can whistle for the next loan from Wall Street. The procedure is known to all cattle men, they call it “horning in”; and after a few of the Britishers had been “horned in on,” they learned what the little fellows had learned back home—who were the real masters of America!
Dad of course had no trace of interest in seeing the place where men had had their heads chopped off five hundred years ago; and Bunny tried it, and found that he didn’t have much either. What Bunny wanted was to meet the men who were in danger of having their heads chopped off now. There was a great labor movement in England, with a well developed system of workers’ education, supported by the old line leaders; also a bunch of young rebels making war on it because of its lack of clear revolutionary purpose. “The Young Student” had been exchanging with the “Plebs,” and now Bunny went to see these rebels, and soon was up to his ears in the British struggle—a wonderful meeting at Albert Hall, and labor members of Parliament and other interesting people to meet.
A couple of papers published interviews with the young oil prince who had gone in for “radicalism,” as the Americans called it. And this brought an agonized letter from Bertie. She had been begging them to come over to Paris and meet the best people; but now, here was Bunny, six thousand miles away from home, still making his stinks! Couldn’t he for God’s sake stop to think what he was doing to his relatives? Eldon just about to get a promotion, and here his brother-in-law coming in and queering it all! You could see Bertie making a strong moral effort on paper, controlling herself and patiently explaining to her brother the difference between Europe and California. People really took the red peril seriously over here, and Bunny would find himself a complete social outcast. How could Eldon’s superiors trust him in delicate matters of state policy, if they knew that members of his family were in sympathy with the murderous ruffians of Moscow?
Bunny replied that it was very sad indeed, but Bertie and her husband had better repudiate him and not see him, for he had no intention of failing to make acquaintance with the labor and Socialist movements of the countries he visited. Having got that off his chest, Bunny sat down to write for “The Young Student” an account of all the red things he had seen and the red people he had met so far.
The little paper was coming, and Bunny was reading it from the upper left hand corner of page one to the lower right hand corner of page four, and finding it all good. Yes, Rachel Menzies was going to make a real editor—a lot better one than Bunny himself, he humbly decided. She had started a series of papers called “Justice and the Student,” discussing the problems of the younger generation. She saw it all so clearly, and was so dignified and persuasive in manner—not angry, as the young reds so easily got! Even Dad was impressed, yes, that was a clever girl; you wouldn’t think it to look at her—but those Jews were always smart.
Also the labor press service was coming, with Dan Irving’s Washington letter and other news from the oil scandal. And very soon Bunny saw what Verne had meant by predicting the collapse of the investigation. The whole power of the attorney-general’s office had been turned against the insurgent senators. Barney Brockway, backed against the wall, was fighting for the life of himself and his “Ohio gang.” Secret service agents had raided the offices of the senators conducting the investigation and rifled their papers; they were raking up scandals against these men, sending women to try to “get” them, preparing a series of “frame-ups” in their home states—every trick they had rehearsed on the Communists and the I. W. W. now applied to the exposers of the oil steal. Presently they had one of the senators under indictment; and just as Verne had predicted, the big newspapers came to their senses, and took the crimes of the oil men off the front page, and put the crimes of the reds in their place.
There was quite a bunch of “magnates” now in exile; Fred Orpan, and John Groby, and all those who had formed the Canadian corporation, and distributed two million dollars of bribes in Washington. Dad and Bunny would lunch with them, and they would have confidential telegrams, and it was curious to watch their reactions. They all made a joke of it—“Hello, old jailbird!” would be their greeting; but underneath they were eaten with worry. Among other developments, the new President was preparing to throw them overboard, in anticipation of next fall’s elections. He, Cautious Cal, had never had any oil stains on him—oh, no! oh, no! The oil men would jeer—the little man had sat in the cabinet all the time the leases were being put through, he had been the bosom friend of all of them. The first time any of Verne’s crowd enjoyed the exposures was when the Senate committee began digging into a file of telegrams which showed the immaculate one as heavily smeared as the other politicians; he had been sending secret messages, trying to stave off the exposure, trying to save this one and that. But now he was getting ready to kick their agents out of the cabinet, and how they did despise him! “The little hop-toad,” was Verne’s regular description of the Chief Magistrate of his country!
Dad didn’t get well as quickly as they had hoped. Apparently the cold damp darkness of London was not good for him, so Bunny took him to Paris. Bertie relented, and met them at the station; even her husband risked his diplomatic career, and everything was polite and friendly for a few hours. But then the brother and sister got to arguing; Bertie wanted Bunny not to investigate the Socialist movement of France, at least, and Bunny said he had already promised Rachel an article about it. There was a “youth” paper here that was on their exchange list, and there was to be a Socialist meeting that very week which Bunny was going to attend. Bertie said that settled it, he would never meet the Prince de This and the Duchesse de That, and Bunny was so ignorant, he didn’t know what he was missing.
Paris was wet and cold also, and Dad had a cough, and sat around in a hotel lobby and was so forlorn it made your heart ache. He would let you drive him around, and would look at public buildings—yes, it was very fine, a beautiful city; people had been working on it a long while, we hadn’t had time to get anything so good at home. But all the while you could see that Dad didn’t really care about it; he didn’t like this strange people with their jabber, the men looked like popinjays and the women immoral, and people were always trying to pass off lead money on you, and the food had fancy fixings so you couldn’t tell what it tasted like, and why in the world Americans wanted to come chasing over here was beyond Dad’s power to imagine.
It was decided to take him to the Riviera till spring. And here they were settled in a villa looking over the Mediterranean, and there was sunshine at last, a pale copy of California. Bertie came for a visit, and then Aunt Emma to keep house for them, and it was a sort of a home. Aunt Emma and Bertie got along beautifully, because the elder lady never failed to admire the right things—oh, how perfectly lovely, how refined and elegant, the most magnificent buildings, the most life-like paintings, the most fashionable costumes! Aunt Emma would meet the Prince de This and the Duchesse de That, and never injure the diplomatic career of her nephew-in-law!
Bunny got himself a tutor, and rapidly unlearned the French he had acquired at Southern Pacific. Of course he had to pick out a Socialist tutor, a weird-looking, moth-eaten young man who did not seem to have had a square meal in many years—a poet, he was reported to be. Other Socialists came round, and a few Communists and Anarchists and Syndicalists and hybrids of these; they wore loose ties, or none at all, and hair hanging into their eyes, and looked to Dad and Aunt Emma as if they were spying out the premises with intentions of burglary. Even here there were radical meetings, on this Coast of Gold, where the rich of Europe gambled and played; and poor devils dangling always on the verge of starvation roused the pity of a young American millionaire, who lived in luxury and had a guilty conscience. When it was ascertained that he would lend money, there were some to ask, and most of them were frauds—but how was a young American millionaire to know?
Aunt Emma had been escorted from Angel City by Dad’s private secretary, bringing two big brief cases full of reports and letters. And so Dad was busy and happy for a while, he studied these papers, and wrote long instructions, and sent cablegrams in code, and fretted because some of the replies were not clear. Yes, it was a hard matter to carry on an oil business six thousand miles away. They were putting down test wells in the north half of Sunnyside, and you wanted to be there to examine the cores. Why, the damn fools had even failed to send the full text of the geologists’ reports!
Dad wasn’t well enough to go into the big new deals with Verne; he must rest first. But the rest didn’t help him, because he fretted for something to do, and for his secretary to do. To go driving up and down the same coast was monotonous; while to sit at tea-parties and chatter with fashionable idlers—Dad had unutterable contempt for these people, they weren’t even crude and healthy, like the rich in California, no, they were rotten to the core, vicious and terrible people. The ex-mule-driver took one look into their gilded gambling palace, that was famed all over the world, and he went outside and spit on the steps—faugh! He was even willing to consider Bunny’s argument, that such people were made by generations of hereditary privilege; let things go as they were going in California, and Dad’s grand-children would be giving this crowd lessons in depravity. For that matter, some of them were giving it now right here on the Riviera—rich Americans setting the pace in frivolity and ostentation.
Anyhow, said Dad, give him Americans! He wandered out and found a retired department-store proprietor from Des Moines, just as desperately bored as himself, and the two would sit for hours on the esplanade and tell about their business and their troubles. Presently there was added a banker from South Dakota, and then a farmer who had struck oil in Texas. The women folks insisted on these fool European tours, and all the fathers could do was to get off by themselves and grumble at the bills. But here were four of them, and they gave one another courage, and fixed up a little place to pitch horseshoes—and in their shirtsleeves, by heck, just as if they had never made the mistake of making too much money and ruining their family-life!
The weather grew hot, and they went back to Paris. Dad liked it better now, he could stroll on the boulevards, and sit in those outdoor cafes, where you sipped things to drink; there was always a waiter who understood English, and maybe he had been in God’s country and would chat about it. There were numbers of Americans to meet; Dad found the express company office where they got their mail, and he even ran into people from Angel City there! The newspapers from home came twice a week, and lasted a long time.
Also, friends turned up—Annabelle Ames, for example, to attend the London premiere of “A Mother’s Heart,” and to visit Roumania with Verne, and also Constantinople. It appeared that Verne was backing the Turkish government, as a means of squeezing a bigger share of the Mosul oil out of the British. A funny thing—Excelsior Pete, Verne’s bitterest rival at home, had offered to take him in on these concessions. Yes, you were getting something when you bought the leading cabinet members of the United States government! Excelsior Pete’s action showed how much real importance they attributed to the oil scandals, and to the new President’s public attitude.
Annabelle was a business woman, and understood these matters, which made her a comfort to Dad. She pleaded with Bunny, in her gentle, loving way—it was all right for him to set up new standards in business, but was it fair to judge his father by them? Certainly no big business men followed such standards. And surely America was entitled to its share of the world’s oil; but there was no way to take it from these greedy foreign rivals, except to mass the power of the government against them.
Annabelle had lots of news from home. Not gossip, she didn’t tell mean things; but there was one story she couldn’t help telling, it was so funny, and it caused Dad many a chuckle. A sudden fit of modesty had struck the O’Reilly family; they had taken down all those bronze and brass signs that had announced their progress about the world! No name on their front gates, none on the “Conqueror,” their yacht, none on the private car with its Circassian walnut and blue satin upholstery! No longer was it a glorious thing to be an oil magnate’s wife—some fanatic might throw a bomb at you!
Congress had adjourned for the summer, and Verne was going back. But he wanted Dad to stay for a while, because that Canadian corporation was the most vulnerable of all the oil men’s actions; it had never done anything except to distribute that two million dollars of bribes. It was more than ever important to keep the story down, because the government was proceeding to bring suits for the return of all the naval reserves. That would tie up the profits in the courts—all that good money, by Jees, it was terrible!
Dad would stay, of course; and Bunny would have to stay with him. To make matters easier, the great Schmolsky came along, fresh from the job of buying most of the great German moving picture stars—another step in the process of taking over the industry. Annabelle appealed to him, and he was a good sport, he said yes, it was a damn shame the way old Jim had been treated, and it was fine of the kid to stick by him—the Jews are strong for the family; so Schmolsky would arrange several premieres for “The Golden Couch” in Europe, and Vee might spend a long holiday with her Bunny-rabbit. Lest Schmolsky should forget about the matter, Annabelle made him dictate a cablegram right then; so Bunny saw a demonstration of what it means to have influential friends! It was good business as well as good nature, of course; because, when the world’s darlings have these glory-progresses, a publicity man precedes them from one great capital to the next, and the news of the crowds and the clamor is cabled back to the United States, and takes the front page every time.
Bunny could salve his conscience, because nobody needed him at home. The magazine was getting along all right. Fifty-two issues had been published, more than half of them of Rachel’s own editing; it was something to count upon, the same as the sunrise—and it was the most interesting paper in the world!
Also Paul was out of immediate trouble. One of the nineteen men arrested at the Communist convention had been convicted and had appealed; the cases of the rest were held up until that one was decided, and meantime Paul and the others were out on bail. Ruth wrote Bunny the news; it was a torment to have a twenty year jail sentence hanging over you, but they were getting used to it. Ruth was going on with her nurse’s work, and getting along fine. Paul had gone on a long journey—she was not at liberty to say where.
But the capitalist press was at liberty, and did so. From time to time you would read in the French papers items of news about Russia, made, of course, to sound as hateful as possible. Soon after getting Ruth’s letter, the papers reported that there had been a dispute among the American Communists as to tactics, and the two factions had carried their case to the chiefs of the Third International. There were half a dozen leaders of the American party now in Moscow, and one of those named was Paul Watkins, under indictment at home for participation in an illegal convention.
Several interesting events came along, to keep them busy in their exile. First, Aunt Emma fell in love; yes, by golly, when it comes to such things, you jist never can tell what will happen to either ladies or gentlemen! It was a respectable elderly hardware merchant from Nebraska, who was occupying his leisure collecting cameos. Maybe Aunt Emma reminded him of one; anyhow, after beauing her around for several months, he suddenly popped the question, and they had a quiet family wedding, and went off on a honeymoon—to Nebraska!
It left Dad quite lonesome; but presently he hunted up an adventure for himself, and that was stranger still—you couldn’t have guessed it in a million years. SPOOKS!! It happened that Bunny went off one evening to a meeting at which the Socialists and the Communists engaged in violent warfare, as appeared to be their custom in Paris; and when he got back, he found that Dad was not in his room. Next morning the old man told about it—hesitatingly, with not a little embarrassment. Just what did Bunny think about Spiritualism? Bunny said he didn’t think at all, he didn’t know; and Dad revealed that he had had an amazing experience—a long talk last night with grandma!
Holy smoke! said Bunny; and Dad said yes, he might well be surprised, but there was jist no getting away from it. She had told him all about his childhood, described the ranch where they had lived, and asked all about her paintings, what had he done with that one of the Germans drinking out of steins, and did he still have the one of the mansion with the fountain in front and the carriage with the two horses and the lady and gentleman sitting in it? She had called him “Little Jim,” and it was all so real, it had made tears come into Dad’s eyes.
Bunny wanted to know, where had this happened, and Dad told him, there was a lady living in this hotel, Mrs. Olivier—she was a lady from Boston who had been married to a Frenchman, and her husband had died a year or two ago. Dad had got to talking with her, and she had told him about being a Spiritualist, and how she had a famous medium who gave seances in her rooms here in the hotel, and she had invited Dad to attend, and that was the way of it. Most amazing things had happened, there had been horns floating in the air, and voices coming out of them, and lights flickering about; then the ghosts had appeared, and finally this old lady ghost, who had asked for “Little Jim,” and started right off to tell these things that had taken Dad’s breath away. How could a medium possibly have known such things?
Well, here was Dad with something to occupy his time! Of course he went to the next seance, and the next; very soon he was learning all the patter of the Spiritualists, taking it as seriously as a religion. You could see how it was—he had got along without any religion, so long as he was well and busy, but now that he was old and tired and sick, he craved something to lean on. He was shame-faced about it, afraid his son would ridicule him. But after all, did Bunny know any reason why the soul might not survive after death? Bunny didn’t, and thereupon Dad invited him to go to a seance. Obviously, this was something more important than Socialism. If it was really true that we lived forever, why then it would be easy to endure any temporary discomfort, it was hardly worth arguing about such things as money. This from J. Arnold Ross!
Bunny, who always tried to oblige, went to a seance, and witnessed the strange phenomena. He knew that such things can be done by sleight of hand, and that he had no way of telling the difference; no chance was given in this company, made up of believers in a state of emotional exaltation. So one session was enough, and he went back to the Socialists. But let Dad be a Spiritualist if it made him happy!
Not so Bertie, who found out about it, and went into a regular tantrum. What did Bunny mean by letting his father fall into such hands? It was the worst kind of swindling in the world! And that woman, Mrs. Olivier, it was perfectly obvious what her scheme was—she wanted to marry Dad! Here Bertie and Bunny had worked all their lives to help him accumulate a fortune and save it—and a designing adventuress would jump in and grab the money, and Bunny hadn’t even sense enough to know what was happening! Never had he seen his sister so mad in her whole life—she called him a fool seven times running—when he said that the Spiritualist widow might have her share, if only she could help the poor old man to find happiness.
Then another strange affair for them to discuss: one you would have found still harder to guess! The American newspapers in Paris published a despatch from Angel City, setting forth that Eli Watkins, self-styled prophet of religion, was believed to be drowned. He had gone swimming at the beach, leaving his clothing in a hotel room, and had never been seen since; a search was being made for the body. That was all the news for a time; and Dad shook his head, and said, golly, what a strange thing—a man whose God had saved so many others, but couldn’t save His own prophet! What would become of that big Tabernacle, that had been Eli’s personal property?
Then the New York papers came; and later on, the papers from Angel City, with the story spread all over the front page day after day. The body of Eli could not be found. The people of the temple employed divers—they had searchlights sweeping the water at night, and thousands of the faithful patrolling the sands, holding revival services there, weeping and praying to God to give them back their beloved leader in his green bathing suit. This went on for a week, for two weeks; and it was puzzling, because the longest time a body could stay in the sea without floating was nine days, and never before had it happened that a drowned body had failed to be washed ashore.
Then, more and more amazing, there began to be rumors in the papers—they were afraid to say anything direct, but they hinted, and quoted others who hinted—Eli was possibly not drowned; Eli had been seen here, he had been seen there—and always in the company of a certain young woman, whom rumor declared to have been the keeper of the sacred robes in the Tabernacle. Of course, the first time Dad saw one of those hints, he remembered what he and Bunny had seen that day at the beach hotel, and he went up into the air. “By God, that fellow’s playing a trick! He’s gone off on a spree with a woman!”
There was a thrill for you! Dad talked about it for hours—it almost drove the spooks out of his mind! It was no joking matter, because in the course of the search for Eli’s body two men had lost their lives—one diver had been taken with pneumonia, and a member of the Tabernacle, seeing what he thought was a body, had swam out too far and gone down. And here was Dad with the key to the mystery! Was it his duty to cable the facts to the Reverend Poober?
More sensations yet—the people at the Tabernacle began getting letters from kidnappers, who alleged that they had taken Eli in his green bathing suit, and had him in hiding, and demanded half a million dollars ransom for him! What was that? Nobody in Angel City could be sure. Had the prophet really been kidnapped? Or was it true that he was driving over the state, in company with Miss X, as the newspapers referred to the former keeper of the sacred robes? One of the funniest aspects of the scandal was that various young couples who had gone off on love-expeditions in motor-cars—a favorite diversion of the well-to-do—now found themselves in an embarrassing situation; all over the state newspaper reporters and police officials were looking for Eli and Miss X, and woe to any tall blond man who happened to register at a hotel with a girl and no marriage certificate!
The denouement, when it finally came, was so sensational that it got itself cabled, and thus spared Dad a tedious wait. Thirty-five days after Eli’s disappearance, some fishermen, rowing in a harbor several hundred miles from Angel City, encountered a man swimming to shore, and picked him up; and behold, it was a tall blond man in a green bathing suit—in short, it was the prophet! The story he told was that, finding himself being carried out to sea, he had prayed to the Lord, and the Lord had heard his prayer, and had sent three angels to hold him up in the water. The name of one of these angels was Steve, and the second was a lady angel, whose name was Rosie, and the third was a Mexican angel, and his name was Felipe. These angels had taken turns holding onto the shoulder-straps of Eli’s green bathing suit; and when he grew faint, one of them would fly away and bring him food. They had upheld him, even while he slept, quite peacefully in the water. For the entire period of thirty-five days Eli had been thus alternately swimming and sleeping. The devil had come, with wings of flame, and driven the good angels away, and bound Eli’s hands behind him so that he had nearly drowned. But he had prayed to the Lord, and the angels had floated him to a rusty old can, and held it while he rubbed his bonds against the sharp edges, and severed the bonds and was able to swim again.
So here was the prophet, none the worse for his adventure; and when he had landed on the shore, and got some clothing, here came the reporters hot-foot—for there have not been so many miracles in these skeptical recent days, and this was an indubitable one. Crowds of people swarmed about the prophet, they sang hosannas, and strewed his path with flowers, and when he got back to Angel City, you just couldn’t imagine the excitement—fifty thousand people at the railroad station, it beat anything that even the greatest movie stars had achieved. And when he got to the Tabernacle, there were his followers falling on their knees and weeping for joy, because the Lord had answered their prayers and given them back their prophet; six times a day the vast auditorium was packed, and outside a park was filled with people, and Eli’s mighty bellow was conveyed by a dozen loud-speakers, and men and women fell down at the sound and shouted “Praise the Lord!”
Of course there were skeptics, people with the devil in their hearts who refused to believe Eli’s story, and persisted in talking about a blue-colored automobile driven by a good-looking girl, having a heavily veiled man wearing goggles in the seat beside her. They talked about signatures on hotel-registers, and handwriting experts, and other such obscenities; but all that made no difference to the glory-shouters at the Tabernacle, which was packed all day and all night, as never before in the history of religions. Over and over Eli would tell his story, full of the most convincing details—why, he even told how the angels’ wings had swished, and sometimes splashed water into his face; he told the very words the angels had spoken to him. Said the prophet, if God in His Omnipotence could keep Jonah three days in the belly of a whale, and Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the burning fiery furnace, why could he not keep Eli Watkins afloat on the sea? It is obvious that no one could answer that.
And then came an incident which settled the matter, completing the glory of the Third Revelation. Eli happened to look inside his green bathing suit, and what should he find but a snow-white feather! He recognized it, of course—a proof of his story, left there by the mercy of the Lord! When this fresh miracle was announced, the hosannas of the faithful shook the roof; and presently the angel’s feather was mounted in a glass case, and set up behind the place where Eli preached, and, such was the Lord’s mercy, whoever even looked upon this relic, was instantly cured of all his ailments and had his sins forgiven—yes, even the most deadly sin of fornication!