She drove him out of the house, and Peter went, though with many misgivings. He wandered about the streets, not knowing what to do with himself, looking back over the blunders he had made and tormenting himself with that most tormenting of all thoughts: how different my life might have been, if only I had had sense enough to do this, or not to do that! Dinner time came, and Peter blew himself to a square meal, but even that did not comfort him entirely. He pictured Sadie coming home at this hour. Was Jennie telling her or not?
There was a big mass meeting called by the Goober Defense Committee that evening, and Peter attended, and it proved to be the worst thing he could have done. His mind was in no condition to encounter the fierce passions of this crowded assemblage. Peter had the picture of himself being exposed and denounced; he wasn’t sure yet that it mightn’t happen to him. And here was this meeting—thousands of workingmen, horny handed blacksmiths, longshoremen with shoulders like barns and truckmen with fists like battering rams, long-haired radicals of a hundred dangerous varieties, women who waved red handkerchiefs and shrieked until to Peter they seemed like gorgons with snakes instead of hair.
Such were the mob-frenzies engendered by the Goober case; and Peter knew, of course, that to all these people he was a traitor, a poisonous worm, a snake in the grass. If ever they were to find out what he was doing—if for instance, someone were to rise up and expose him to this crowd—they would seize him and tear him to pieces. And maybe, right now, little Jennie was telling Sadie; and Sadie would tell Andrews, and Andrews would become suspicious, and set spies on Peter Gudge! Maybe they had spies on him already, and knew of his meetings with McGivney!
Haunted by such terrors, Peter had to listen to the tirades of Donald Gordon, of John Durand, and of Sorensen, the longshoremen’s leader. He had to listen to exposure after exposure of the tricks which Guffey had played; he had to hear the district attorney of the county denounced as a suborner of perjury, and his agents as blackmailers and forgers. Peter couldn’t understand why such things should be permitted—why these speakers were not all clapped into jail. But instead, he had to sit there and listen; he even had to applaud and pretend to approve! All the other secret operatives of the Traction Trust and of the district attorney’s office had to listen and pretend to approve! In the hall Peter had met Miriam Yankovich, and was sitting next to her. “Look,” she said, “there’s a couple of dicks over there. Look at the mugs on them!”
“Which?” said Peter.
And she answered: “That fellow that looks like a bruiser, and that one next to him, with the face of a rat.” Peter looked, and saw that it was McGivney; and McGivney looked at Peter, but gave no sign.
The meeting lasted until nearly midnight. It subscribed several thousand dollars to the Goober defense fund, and adopted ferocious resolutions which it ordered printed and sent to every local of every labor union in the country. Peter got out before it was over, because he could no longer stand the strain of his own fears and anxieties. He pushed his way thru the crowd, and in the lobby he ran into Pat McCormick, the I. W. W. leader.
There was more excitement in this boy’s grim face than Peter had ever seen there before. Peter thought it was the meeting, but the other rushed up to him, exclaiming: “Have you heard the news?”
“What news?”
“Little Jennie Todd has killed herself!”
“My God!” gasped Peter, starting back.
“Ada Ruth just told me. Sadie found a note when she got home. Jennie had left—she was going to drown herself.”
“But what—why?” cried Peter, in horror.
“She was suffering so, her health was so wretched, she begs Sadie not to look for her body, not to make a fuss—they’ll never find her.”
And horrified and stunned as Peter was, there was something inside him Peter was, safe!
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