The Sturdy Oak by Samuel Merwin

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He came to the low stoop and crept up to the closed front door. Hovering
between fear and courage, he knocked. But there was no response. With
growing boldness he tried the door. It was locked.

The rear door also was bolted; but, creeping on, he found a high side
window that the keepers of this prison in their hasty flight had forgotten
to close. With the aid of an empty rain barrel, which he overturned and
rolled into position, Pudge scrambled with much hard breathing through
the window and dropped into the kitchen. Here he listened; his ears could
discern no sound. On tiptoe he crept through the rooms of the first
floor--but came upon neither furtive enemy nor imprisoned friend. Up the
narrow stairway he crept--peeped into three bedrooms--and finally opening
the door of what was evidently a storeroom, he found the object of his
search.

E. Eliot sat in an old splint-bottomed chair--gagged, arms tied behind her
and to the chair's back, and her ankles tied to the chair's legs. In a
moment Pudge had the knotted towel out of her mouth, and had cut her bonds.
But quick though Pudge was, to her he seemed intolerably slow; just then E.
Eliot was thinking of only one thing.

This was the final afternoon of the campaign and she was away out here, far
from all the great things that might be going on.

She gave a single stretch of her cramped muscles as she rose. "I know
you--you're Betty Sheridan's brother--thanks," she said briskly. "What time
is it?"

Pudge drew out his most esteemed possession, a watch which kept perfect
time--except when it refused to keep any time at all.

"Three o'clock," he announced.

"Then our last demonstration is under way, and when I tell my story--" E.
Eliot interrupted herself. "Come on--let's catch the trolley!"

With Pudge panting after her, she hurried downstairs, unbolted the door,
and, running lightly on the balls of her feet, sped in the direction of the
street car line.

CHAPTER XIV

BY LEROY SCOTT

In the meantime, concern and suspense and irruptive wrath had their chief
abode in the inner room of Remington and Evans. George had received a
request, through Penny Evans, from the chief of police to remain in his
office, where he could be reached instantly if information concerning
Genevieve were received, and where his help could instantly be secured were
it required; and Penny had enlarged that request to the magnitude of a
command and had stood by to see that it was obeyed, and himself to give
assistance.

George had recognized the sense of the order, but he rebelled at the
enforced inactivity. Where was Genevieve?--why wasn't he out doing
something for her? He strode about the office, fuming, sick with the
suspense and inaction of his role.

But Genevieve was not his unbroken concern. He was still afire with the
high resentment which a few hours earlier had made him go striding into the
office of the _Sentinel_. Fragments of his statement to the editor leaped
into his mind; and as he strode up and down he repeated phrases silently,
but with fierce emphasis of the soul.

Now and again he paused at his window and looked down into Main Street.
Below him was a crowd that was growing in size and disorder: the last
afternoon of any campaign in Whitewater was exciting enough; much more so
were the final hours of this campaign that marked the first entrance of
women into politics in Whitewater on a scale and with an organized energy
that might affect the outcome of the morrow's voting.

Across the way, Mrs. Herrington, the fighting blood of five generations
of patriots roused in her, had reinstated the Voiceless Speech within the
plate-glass window broken by the stones of that morning and was herself
operating it; and, armed with banners, groups of women from the Woman's
Club, the Municipal League and the Suffrage Society were marching up and
down the street sidewalks. It was their final demonstration, their last
chance to assert the demands of good citizenship--and it had attracted
hundreds of curious men, vote-owners, belonging to what, in such periods of
political struggle, are referred to on platforms as "our better element."

Also drifting into Main Street were groups of voters of less prepossessing
aspect--Noonan's men, George recognized them to be. These jeered and
jostled the marching women and hooted the remarks of the Voiceless
Speech--but the women, disregarding insults and attacks, went on with their
silent campaigning. The feeling was high--and George could see, as Noonan's
men kept drifting into Main Street, that feeling was growing higher.

Looking down, George felt an angered exultation. Well, his statement in the
_Sentinel_, due upon the street almost any moment, would answer all these
and give them something to think about!--a statement which would make an
even greater stir than the declaration which he had issued those many weeks
ago, when, fresh from his honeymoon, he had begun his campaign for the
district attorneyship.--[Illustration: Across the way, Mrs. Herrington,
the fighting blood of five generations of patriots roused in her, had
reinstated the Voiceless Speech.] These people below certainly had a
jolt coming to them!

George's impatient and glowering meditations--the hour was then near
four--were broken in upon by several interruptions, which came on him in
quick succession, as though detonated by brief-interval time-fuses. The
first was the entrance of that straw-haired misspeller of his letters who
had succeeded Betty Sheridan as guardian of the outer office.

"Mr. Doolittle is here," she announced. "He says he wants to see you."

"You tell Mr. Doolittle _I_ don't want to see _him_!" commanded the
irritated George.

But Mr. Benjamin Doolittle was already seeing his candidate. As political
boss of his party, he had little regard for such a formality as being
announced to any person on whom he might call--so he had walked through the
open door.

"Well, what d'you want, Doolittle?" George demanded aggressively.

Mr. Doolittle's face wore that look of bland solicitude, that unobtrusive
partnership in the misfortune of others, which had made him such an
admirable and prosperous officiant at the last rites of residents of
Whitewater.

"I just wanted to ask you, George--" he was beginning in his soft,
lily-of-the-valley voice, when the telephone on George's desk started
ringing. George turned and reached for it, to find that Penny had already
picked up the instrument.

"I'll answer it, George.... Hello... Mr. Remington is here, but is busy;
I'll speak for him--I'm Mr. Evans.... What--it's you! Where are you?...
Stay where you are; I'll come right over for you in my car."

"Who was that?" demanded George.

"Genevieve," Penny said rapidly, seizing his hat, "and I'm going----"

"So am I!" exclaimed George.

"Not till we've had a little understanding," sharply put in Doolittle,
blocking his way.

"Stay here, George," his partner snapped out--"she's perfectly safe--just
a little out of breath--telephoned from a drug store over in the Red-field
district. I'll have her back here in fifteen minutes." And out Penny
dashed, slamming the door.

But perhaps it was the straw-haired successor of Betty Sheridan who really
prevented George from plunging after his partner.

"You ordered the _Sentinel_ sent up as soon as it was out," she said. "Here
are six copies."

George seized the ink-damp papers, and as the straw-haired one walked out
in rubber-heeled silence he turned savagely upon his campaign manager.

"Well, Doolittle?" he demanded.

"I just want to ask you, George----"

George exploded. "Oh, you just want to ask me! Well, everything you want to
ask me is answered in that paper. Read it!"

Doolittle took the copy of the _Sentinel_ which was thrust into his hands.
George watched him with triumphant grimness, awaiting the effect of the
bomb about to explode in the other's face. Mr. Doolittle unfolded the
_Sentinel_--looked it slowly through--then raised his eyes to George. His
face seemed somewhat puzzled, but otherwise it was overspread with that
sympathetic concern which, as much as his hearse and his folding-chairs,
was a part of his professional equipment.

"Why, George. I don't just get what you're driving at."

Forgetting that he was holding several copies of the Sentinel, George
dropped them all upon the floor and seized the paper from Mr. Doolittle. He
glanced swiftly over the first page--and experienced the highest voltage
shock of his young public career. Feverishly he skimmed the remaining
pages. But of all that he had poured out in the office of the _Sentinel_,
not one word was in print.

Automatically clutching the paper in a hand that fell to his side, he
stared blankly at his campaign manager. Mr. Doolittle gazed back with his
air of sympathetic concern, bewildered questioning in his eyes. And for a
space, despite the increasing uproar down in the street, there was a most
perfect silence in the inner office of Remington and Evans.

Before either of the two men could speak, the door was violently flung open
and Martin Jaffry appeared. His clothing was disarranged, his manner
agitated--in striking contrast to the dapper and composed appearance usual
to that middle-aged little gentleman.

"George," he panted, "heard anything about Genevieve?"

"She's safe. Penny's got charge of her by this time."

His answer was almost mechanical.

"Thank God!" Uncle Martin collapsed in one of the office chairs. "Mind--if
sit here minute--get my breath."

George did not reply, for he had not heard. He was gazing steadily at Mr.
Doolittle; some great, but as yet shapeless, force was surging up dazingly
within him. But he somehow held himself in control.

"Well, Doolittle," he demanded, "you said you came to ask something."

Mr. Doolittle's manner was still propitiatingly bland. "I'll mention
something else first, George, if you don't mind. You just remarked I'd find
your answer in the _Sentinel_. There must 'a' been some little slip-up
somewhere. So I guess I better mention first that the _Sentinel_ has
arranged to stand ready to get out an extra."

"An extra! What for?"

"Principally, George, I reckon to print those answers you just spoke of."

George still kept that mounting something under his control. "Answers to
what?"

"Why, George," the other replied softly, persuasively. "I guess we'd better
have a little chat--as man to man--about politics. Meaning no offense,
George, stalling is all right in politics--but this time you've carried
this stalling act a little too far. As the result of your tactics, George,
why here's all this disorder in our streets--and the afternoon before
election. If you'd only really tried to stop these messing women----"

"I didn't try to stop them by kidnapping them!" burst from George--and
Uncle Martin, his breath recovered, now sat up, clutching his homespun cap.

"Kidnapping women?" queried the bland, bewildered voice of the party boss.
"I say, George, I don't know what you're talking about." "Why, you--" But
George caught himself. "Speak it out, Doolittle--what do you want?"

"Since you ask it so frankly, George, I'll try to put it plain: You been
going along handing out high-sounding generalities. There's nothing better
and safer than generalities--usually. But this ain't no usual case, George.
These women, stirring everything up, have got the solid interests so
unsettled that they don't know where they're at--or where you're at. And a
lot of boys in the organization feel the same way. What the crisis needs,
George, is a plain statement of your intentions as district attorney,
which we can get into that _Sentinel_ extra and which will reassure the
public--and the organization."

"A plain statement?" There was a grim set to George's jaw.

"Oh, it needn't go into too many details. Just what you might call a
ringing declaration about this being the greatest era of prosperity
Whitewater has ever known, and that you conceive it to be the duty of your
administration to protect and stimulate this prosperity. The people will
understand, and the organization will understand. I guess you get what I
mean, George."

"Yes, I get what you mean!" exploded George, his fist crashing upon the
table. "You mean you want me to be a complacent accessory to all the legal
evasions that you and your political gang and the rich bunch behind you
may want to get away with! You want me to be a crook in office! By God,
Doolittle----"

"Shut up, Remington," snapped the political boss, his soft manner now
vanished, his whole aspect now grimly menacing. "I know the rest of what
you're going to say. I was pretty certain what it 'ud be before I came
here, but I had to know for sure. Well, I know now, all right!"

His lank jaws snapped again.

"Since you are not going to represent the people that put you up, I demand
your written withdrawal as candidate for the district attorney's office."

"And I refuse to give it!" cried George. "I was nominated by a convention,
not by you. And I don't believe the party is as crooked as you--anyhow I'm
going to give the decent members of the party a chance to vote decently!
And you can't remove me from the ballot, either, for the ballot is already
printed and----"

"That'll do you no----"

"I thought some time ago I was through with this political mess," George
drove on. "But, Doolittle, damn you, I've just begun to get in it! And I'm
going to see it through to the finish!"

Suddenly a thin little figure thrust itself between the bellicose pair and
began shaking George's hand. It was Martin Jaffry.

"George--I guess I'm my share of an old scoundrel--and a trimmer--but
hearing some one stand up and talk man's talk--" He broke off to shake
George's hand again. "I thought you were the king of boobs--but, boy, I'm
with you to wherever you want to go--if my money will last that far!"

"Keep out of this, Jaffry," roughly growled Doolittle. "It's too late for
your dough to help this young pup. Remington, we may not take you off the
ballot, but the organization kin send out word to the boys----"

"To knife me! Of course, I expect that! All right--go to it! But I'm on
the ballot--you can't deprive people of the chance of voting for me. And I
shall announce myself an independent and shall run as one!"

"We may not be able to elect our own nominee," harshly continued Doolittle,
"but we kin send out word to back the Democratic candidate. Miller ain't
much, but, at least, he's a soft man. And that _Sentinel_ extra is going
to say that a feeling has spread among the respectable element that it has
lost confidence in you, and is going to say that prominent party members
feel the party has made a mistake in ever putting you up. So run, damn
you--run as a Democrat, a Republican, an Independent--but how are you going
to git it across to the public in a way to do yourself any good--without
backing? How are you going to git it across to the public?"

His last words, flung out with overmastering fury, brought George up short,
and he saw this. Doolittle's wrath had mounted to that pitch which should
never be reached by the resentment of a practical politician; it had
attained such force that it drove him on to taunt his man. "How are you
going to git it before the public?" he again demanded, eyes agleam with
triumphant rancor--"with us shutting you off and hammering you on one
side?--and them damned messy women across the street hammering you from the
other side? Oh, it's a grand chance you have--one little old grand chance!
Especially with those dear damned females loving you like they do! Jest
take a look at what the bunch over there are doing to you!"

Doolittle followed his own taunting suggestion; and George, too, glanced
through his window across the crowded street into the shattered window
whence issued the Voiceless Speech. In that jagged frame in the raw
November air still stood Mrs. Harvey Herrington, turning the giant leaves
of her soundless oratory. The heckling request which then struck George's
eyes began: "_Will Candidate Remington answer_----"

George Remington read no more. His already tense figure suddenly stiffened;
he caught a sharp breath. Then, without a word to the two men with him,
he seized his hat and dashed from his office. The street was even more a
turbulent human sea, with violently twisting eddies, than had appeared from
George's windows. It seemed that every member of the organizations whom
Mrs. Herrington (and also Betty Sheridan, and later E. Eliot, and, at the
last, Genevieve) had brought into this fight, were now downtown for the
supreme effort. And it seemed that there were now more of the so-called
"better citizens." Certainly there were more of Noonan's men, and these
were still elbowing and jostling, and making little mass rushes--yet
otherwise holding themselves ominously in control.

Into this milling assemblage George flung himself, so dominated by the
fiery urge within him that he did not hear Genevieve call to him from
Penny's car, which just then swung around the corner and came to a sharp
stop on the skirts of the crowd. George shouldered his way irresistibly
through this mass; the methods of his football days when he had been famed
as a line-plunging back instinctively returned--and, all the fine chivalry
forgotten which had given to his initial statement to the voters of
Whitewater so noble a sound, he battered aside many of those "fairest
flowers of our civilization, to protect whom it is man's duty and
inspiration."

His lunging progress followed by curses and startled cries of feminine
indignation, he at length emerged upon the opposite sidewalk, and,
breathless and disheveled, he burst into the headquarters of the Voiceless
Speech.

Some half-dozen of Mrs. Herrington's assistants cried out at his abrupt
entrance. Mrs. Herrington, forward beside the speech, turned quickly about.

"Mr. Remington, you here!" she cried in amazement as he strode toward her.
"What--what do you want?"

"I want--I want--" gasped George. But instead of finishing his sentence he
elbowed Mrs. Herrington out of the way, shoved past her, and stepped forth
in front of the Voiceless Speech. There, standing in the frame of jagged
plate-glass, upon what was equivalent to a platform raised above the crowd,
he sent forth a speech which had a voice. "Ladies and gentlemen!" he
called, raising an imperative hand. The uproar subsided to numerous
exclamations, then to surprised silence; even Noonan's men checked their
disorder at this appearance of their party's candidate.

"Ladies and gentlemen," and this Voiceful Speech was loud,--"I'm here to
answer the questions of this contrivance behind me. But first let me tell
you that though I'm on the ballot as the candidate of the Republican party,
I do not want the backing of the Republican machine. I'm running as an
Independent, and I shall act as an Independent.

"Here are my answers:

"I want to tell you that I shall enforce all the factory laws.

"I want to tell you that I shall enforce the laws governing housing
conditions--particularly housing conditions in the factory district.

"I want to tell you that I shall enforce the laws governing child labor and
the laws governing the labor of women.

"And I want to tell you that I shall enforce every other law, and shall try
to secure the passage of further laws, which will make Whitewater a clean,
forward-looking city, whose first consideration shall be the welfare of
all.

"And, ladies and gentlemen--" he shouted, for the hushed voices had begun
to rise--"I wish I could address you all as fellow-voters!--I want to tell
you that I take back that foolish statement I made at the opening of the
campaign.

"I want to tell you that I stand for, and shall fight for, equal suffrage!

"And I want to tell you that what has brought this change is what some of
the women of White-water have shown me--and also some of the things our men
politicians have done--our Doolittles, our Noonans----"

But George's speech terminated right there. Noise there had been before;
now there burst out an uproar, and there came an artillery attack of eggs,
vegetables, stones and bricks. One of the bricks struck George on the
shoulder and drove him staggering back against the Voiceless Speech,
sending that instrument of silent argument crashing to the floor. Regaining
his balance, George started furiously back for the window; but Mrs.
Herrington caught his arm.

"Let me go!" he called, trying to shake her off.

But she held on. "Don't--you've said enough!" she cried, and pulled him
toward the rear of the room. "Look!"

Through the window was coming a heavier fire of impromptu grenades that
rolled, spent, at their feet. But what they saw without was far more
stirring and important. Noonan's men in the crowd, their hoodlumism now
unleashed, were bowling over the people about them; but these really
constituted Noonan's outposts and advance guards.

From out of two side streets, though George and Mrs. Herrington could not
see their first appearance upon the scene, Noonan's real army now came
charging into Main Street, as per that gentleman's grim instructions to
"show them messin' women what it means to mess in politics." Hundreds of
Whitewater's women were flung about, many sent sprawling to the pavement,
and some hundreds of the city's most respectable voters, caught unawares,
were hustled about and knocked down by the same ruthless drive.

"My God!" cried George, impulsively starting forward. "The damned brutes!"

But Mrs. Herrington still held his arm. "Come on--they're making a drive
for this office!" breathlessly cried the quick-minded lady. "You can do no
good here. Out the rear way--my car's waiting in the back street."

Still clutching his sleeve, Mrs. Herrington opened a door and ran across
the back yard of McMonigal's building in a manner which indicated that that
lady had not spent her college years (and similarly spent the years since
then propped among embroidered cushions consuming marshmallows and fudge.)

The lot crossed, she hurried through a little grocery and thence into the
street. Here they ran into a party that, seeing the riot on Main Street
and the drive upon the window from which George had spoken, had rushed up
reinforcements from the rear--a party consisting of Penny, E. Eliot, Betty
Sheridan and Genevieve. "Genevieve!" cried George, and caught her into his
arms.

"Oh, George," she choked. "I--I heard it all--and it--it was simply
wonderful!"

"George," cried Betty Sheridan, "I always knew, if you got the right kind
of a jolt, you'd be--you'd be what you are!"

E. Eliot gripped his hand in a clasp almost as strong as George's arm. "Mr.
Remington, if I were a man, I'd like to have the same sort of stuff in me."

"George, you old roughneck--" began Penny.

"George," interrupted Genevieve, still chokingly, her protective, wifely
instinct now at the fore, "I saw you hit, and we're going to take you
straight home----"

"Cut it all out," interrupted the cultured Mrs. Herrington. "This isn't Mr.
Remington's honeymoon--nor his college reunion--nor the annual convention
of his maiden aunts. This is Mr. Remington's campaign, and I'm his new
campaign manager. And his campaign manager says he's not going away out to
his home on Sheridan Road. His campaign headquarters are going to be in
the center of town, at the Commercial Hotel, where he can be reached--for
there's quick work ahead of us. Come on."

Five minutes later they were all in the Commercial Hotel's best suite.

"Now, to business, Mr. Remington," briskly began Mrs. Herrington. "Of
course, that was a good speech. But why, in heaven's name, didn't you come
out with it before?"

"I guess I really didn't know where I stood until today," confessed George,
"and today I tried to come out with it."

And George went on to recount his experience with the _Sentinel_--his scene
with Doolittle--and Doolittle's plan for an extra of the Sentinel, which
was doubtless then in preparation.

"So they've got the _Sentinel_ muzzled, have they--and are going to get out
an extra repudiating you," Mrs. Herrington repeated. There came a flash
into her quick, dark eyes. "I want our candidate to stay right here--rest
up--get his thoughts in order. There are a lot of things to be done. I'll
be back in an hour, Mr. Remington. The rest of you come along--you, too,
Mrs. Remington."

Mrs. Herrington did not altogether keep her word in the matter of time. It
was two hours before she was back. To George she handed a bundle of papers,
remarking: "Thought you'd like to see that _Sentinel_ extra."

"I suppose Doolittle has done his worst," he remarked grimly. He glanced at
the paper. His face went loose with bewilderment at what he saw--headlines,
big black headlines, bigger and blacker than he had ever before seen in the
politically and typographically conservative _Sentinel_. He read through a
few lines of print, then looked up.

"Why, it's all here!" he gasped. "The kidnapping of Miss Eliot and
Genevieve by Noonan's men--my break with Doolittle, my denunciation of the
party's methods, my coming out as an independent candidate--that riot on
Main Street! How on earth did that ever get into the _Sentinel_?"

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