_The Thunders of Silence_ BY IRVIN S. COBB FICTION THOSE TIMES AND THESE LOCAL COLOR OLD JUDGE PRIEST FIBBLE, D. D. BACK HOME THE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMM WIT AND HUMOR "SPEAKING OF OPERATIONS----" EUROPE REVISED ROUGHING IT DE LUXE COBB'S BILL OF FARE COBB'S ANATOMY MISCELLANY THE THUNDERS OF SILENCE "SPEAKING OF PRUSSIANS----" PATHS OF GLORY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANYNEW YORK [Illustration: THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ARE A MIGHTY PATIENT LOT. ] _The Thundersof Silence_ By_Irvin S. Cobb_ Author of "Paths of Glory, " "Speakingof Prussians----, " etc. ILLUSTRATED [Illustration] New YorkGeorge H. Doran Company COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANYPRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA _ILLUSTRATIONS_ The American people are a mighty patient lot. _Frontispiece_ PAGE The lone wolf wasn't a lone wolf any longer. He had a pack to rally about him 16 That's the thing he feeds on--Vanity 32 He may or may not keep faith but you can bet he always keeps a scrap-book 48 _The Thunders of Silence_ Some people said Congressman Mallard had gone mad. These were hisfriends, striving out of the goodness of their hearts to put the bestface on what at best was a lamentable situation. Some said he was atraitor to his country. These were his enemies, personal, politicaland journalistic. Some called him a patriot who put humanity abovenationality, a new John the Baptist come out of the wilderness topreach a sobering doctrine of world-peace to a world made drunk onwar. And these were his followers. Of the first--his friends--therewere not many left. Of the second group there were millions thatmultiplied themselves. Of the third there had been at the outset but atimorous and furtive few, and they mostly men and women who spokeEnglish, if they spoke it at all, with the halting speech and thetwisted idiom that betrayed their foreign birth; being persons whofound it entirely consistent to applaud the preachment of planeticdisarmament out of one side of their mouths, and out of the other sideof their mouths to pray for the success at arms of the War Lord whosehand had shoved the universe over the rim of the chasm. But eachpassing day now saw them increasing in number and in audacity. Takingcourage to themselves from the courage of their apostle, these, hisdisciples, were beginning to shout from the housetops what once theyhad only dared whisper beneath the eaves. Disloyalty no longersmouldered; it was blazing up. It crackled, and threw off firebrands. Of all those who sat in judgment upon the acts and the utterances ofthe man--and this classification would include every articulatecreature in the United States who was old enough to be reasonable--orunreasonable--only a handful had the right diagnosis for the case. Here and there were to be found men who knew he was neither crazed norinspired; and quite rightly they put no credence in the charge that hehad sold himself for pieces of silver to the enemy of his own nation. They knew what ailed the Honourable Jason Mallard--that he was avictim of a strangulated ambition, of an egotistic hernia. He washopelessly ruptured in his vanity. All his life he had lived on loveof notoriety, and by that same perverted passion he was being eatenup. Once he had diligently besought the confidence and the affectionsof a majority of his fellow citizens; now he seemed bent uponconsolidating their hate for him into a common flood and lavinghimself in it. Well, if such was his wish he was having it; there wasno denying that. In the prime of his life, before he was fifty, it had seemed thatalmost for the asking the presidency might have been his. He had beenborn right, as the saying goes, and bred right, to make suitablepresidential timber. He came of fine clean blends of blood. His fatherhad been a descendant of Norman-English folk who settled in Marylandbefore the Revolution; the family name had originally been Maillard, afterward corrupted into Mallard. His mother's people wereScotch-Irish immigrants of the types that carved out their homesteadswith axes on the spiny haunches of the Cumberlands. In the Civil Warhis father had fought for the Union, in a regiment of borderers; twoof his uncles had been partisan rangers on the side of theConfederacy. If he was a trifle young to be of that generation ofpublic men who were born in unchinked log cabins of the wilderness orprairie-sod shanties, at least he was to enjoy the subsequentpolitical advantage of having come into the world in a two-room houseof unpainted pine slabs on the sloped withers of a mountain in EastTennessee. As a child he had been taken by his parents to one of thestates which are called pivotal states. There he had grown up--farmboy first, teacher of a district school, self-taught lawyer, countyattorney, state legislator, governor, congressman for five terms, afloor leader of his party--so that by ancestry and environment, by theethics of political expediency and political geography, by his ownrecord and by the traditions of the time, he was formed to make anacceptable presidential aspirant. In person he was most admirably adapted for the rôle of statesman. Hehad a figure fit to set off a toga, a brow that might have worn a crownwith dignity. As an orator he had no equal in Congress or, for thatmatter, out of it. He was a burning mountain of eloquence, a veritablehuman Vesuvius from whom, at will, flowed rhetoric or invective, satireor sentiment, as lava might flow from a living volcano. His mindspawned sonorous phrases as a roe shad spawns eggs. He was in alloutward regards a shape of a man to catch the eye, with a voice tocajole the senses as with music of bugles, and an oratory to inspire. Moreover, the destiny which shaped his ends had mercifully denied himthat which is a boon to common men but a curse to public men. JasonMallard was without a sense of humour. He never laughed at others; henever laughed at himself. Certain of our public leaders have before nowfallen into the woful error of doing one or both of these things. Wherefore they were forever after called humourists--and ruined. Whenthey said anything serious their friends took it humorously, and whenthey said anything humorously their enemies took it seriously. ButCongressman Mallard was safe enough there. Being what he was--a handsome bundle of selfishness, coated over witha fine gloss of seeming humility, a creature whose every instinct wasrichly mulched in self-conceit and yet one who simulated a deepdevotion for mankind at large--he couldn't make either of thesemistakes. Upon a time the presidential nomination of his party--the dominantparty, too--had been almost within his grasp. That made his losing itall the more bitter. Thereafter he became an obstructionist, a fighteroutside of the lines of his own party and not within the lines of theopposing party, a leader of the elements of national discontent andnational discord, a mouthpiece for all those who would tear down thepillars of the temple because they dislike its present tenants. Oncehe had courted popularity; presently--this coming after hisre-election to a sixth term--he went out of his way to winunpopularity. His invectives ate in like corrosives, his metaphors bitlike adders. Always he had been like a sponge to sop up adulation; nowhe was to prove that when it came to withstanding denunciation hishide was the hide of a rhino. This war came along, and after more than two years of it came ourentry into it. For the most part, in the national capital and out ofit, artificial lines of partisan division were wiped out under a tidalwave of patriotism. So far as the generality of Americans wereconcerned, they for the time being were neither Democrats norRepublicans; neither were they Socialists nor Independents norProhibitionists. For the duration of the war they were Americans, actuated by a common purpose and stirred by a common danger. Afterwardthey might be, politically speaking, whatever they chose to be, butfor the time being they were just Americans. Into this uniquecondition Jason Mallard projected himself, an upstanding reef ofopposition to break the fine continuity of a mighty ground swell ofnational unity and national harmony. Brilliant, formidable, resourceful, seemingly invulnerable, armouredin apparent disdain for the contempt and the indignation of the massesof the citizenship, he fought against and voted against the breakingoff of diplomatic relations with Germany; fought against the draft, fought against the war appropriations, fought against the plans for abigger navy, the plans for a great army; fought the first Liberty Loanand the second; he fought, in December last, against a declaration ofwar with Austro-Hungary. And, so far as the members of Congress wereconcerned, he fought practically single-handed. His vote cast in opposition to the will of the majority meant nothing;his voice raised in opposition meant much. For very soon the avowedpacifists and the secret protagonists of Kultur, the blood-eyedanarchists and the lily-livered dissenters, the conscientiousobjectors and the conscienceless I. W. W. Group, saw in him a buttressupon which to stay their cause. The lone wolf wasn't a lone wolfany longer--he had a pack to rally about him, yelping approval of hisevery word. Day by day he grew stronger and day by day the sinisterelements behind him grew bolder, echoing his challenges against theGovernment and against the war. With practically every newspaper inAmerica, big and little, fighting him; with every influential magazinefighting him; with the leaders of the Administration fighting him--henevertheless loomed on the national sky line as a great sinisterfigure of defiance and rebellion. [Illustration: THE LONE WOLF WASN'T A LONE WOLF ANY LONGER. HE HAD A PACK TO RALLY ABOUT HIM. ] Deft word chandlers of the magazines and the daily press coined termsof opprobrium for him. He was the King of Copperheads, the JuniorBenedict Arnold, the Modern Judas, the Second Aaron Burr; these thingsand a hundred others they called him; and he laughed at hard names andin reply coined singularly apt and cruel synonyms for the moreconspicuous of his critics. The oldest active editor in thecountry--and the most famous--called upon the body of which he was amember to impeach him for acts of disloyalty, tending to give aid andcomfort to the common enemy. The great president of a great universitysuggested as a proper remedy for what seemed to ail this man Mallardthat he be shot against a brick wall some fine morning at sunrise. Ata monstrous mass meeting held in the chief city of Mallard's homestate, a mass meeting presided over by the governor of that state, resolutions were unanimously adopted calling upon him to resign hiscommission as a representative. His answer to all three was a speechwhich, as translated, was shortly thereafter printed in pamphlet formby the Berlin Lokal-Anzeiger and circulated among the German soldiersat the Front. For you see Congressman Mallard felt safe, and Congressman Mallard wassafe. His buckler was the right of free speech; his sword, theargument that he stood for peace through all the world, forarbitration and disarmament among all the peoples of the world. * * * * * It was on the evening of a day in January of this present year thatyoung Drayton, Washington correspondent for the New York Epoch, satin the office of his bureau on the second floor of the HibbettBuilding, revising his account of a scene he had witnessed thatafternoon from the press gallery of the House. He had instructionsfrom his managing editor to cover the story at length. At ten o'clockhe had finished what would make two columns in type and was polishingoff his opening paragraphs before putting the manuscript on the wirewhen the door of his room opened and a man came in--a shabby, tremulous figure. The comer was Quinlan. Quinlan was forty years old and looked fifty. Before whisky got himQuinlan had been a great newspaper man. Now that his habits made itimpossible for him to hold a steady job he was become a sort of newstipster. Occasionally also he did small lobbying of a sort; hisacquaintance with public men and his intimate knowledge of Washingtonofficialdom served him in both these precarious fields of endeavour. The liquor he drank--whenever and wherever he could get it--hadbloated his face out of all wholesome contour and had given to hisstomach, a chronic distention, but had depleted his frame and shrunkenhis limbs so that physically he was that common enough type of thehopeless alcoholic--a meagre rack of a man burdened amidships by anunhealthy and dropsical plumpness. At times--when he was not completely sodden--when he had in him justenough whisky, to stimulate his soaked brain, and yet not enough of itto make him maudlin--he displayed flashes of a one-time brilliancywhich by contrast with his usual state made the ruinous thing he haddone to himself seem all the more pitiable. Drayton of the Epoch was one of the newspaper men upon whom hesponged. Always preserving the fiction, that he was borrowing becauseof temporary necessity, he got small sums of money out of Drayton fromtime to time, and, in exchange, gave the younger man bits of helpfulinformation. It was not so much news that he furnished Drayton as itwas insight into causes working behind political and diplomaticevents. He came in now without knocking and stood looking at Draytonwith an ingratiating flicker in his dulled eyes. "Hello, Quinlan!" said Drayton. "What's on your mind to-night?" "Nothing, until you get done there, " said Quinlan, letting himselfflop down into a chair across the desk from Drayton. "Go ahead and getthrough. I've got nowhere to come but in, and nowhere to go but out. " "I'm just putting the final touches on my story of CongressmanMallard's speech, " said Drayton. "Want to read my introduction?" Privately Drayton was rather pleased with the job and craved approvalfor his craftsmanship from a man who still knew good writing when hesaw it, even though he cold no longer write it. "No, thank you, " said Quinlan. "All I ever want to read about that manis his obituary. " "You said it!" agreed Drayton. "It's what most of the decent people inthis country are thinking, I guess, even if they haven't begun sayingit out loud yet. It strikes me the American people are a mightypatient lot--putting up with that demagogue. That was a rotten thingthat happened up on the hill to-day, Quinlan--a damnable thing. Herewas Mallard making the best speech in the worst cause that ever Iheard, and getting away with it too. And there was Richland trying toanswer him and in comparison making a spectacle of himself--Richlandwith all the right and all the decency on his side and yet showing uplike a perfect dub alongside Mallard, because he hasn't got one-tenthof Mallard's ability as a speaker or one-tenth of Mallard's personalfire or stage presence or magnetism or whatever it is that makesMallard so plausible--and so dangerous. " "That's all true enough, no doubt, " said Quinlan; "and since it istrue why don't the newspapers put Mallard out of business?" "Why don't the newspapers put him out of business!" echoed Drayton. "Why, good Lord, man, isn't that what they've all been trying to dofor the last six months? They call him every name in the calendar, andit all rolls off him like water off a duck's back. He seems to getnourishment out of abuse that would kill any other man. He thrives onit, if I'm any judge. I believe a hiss is music to his ears and acurse is a hushaby, lullaby song. Put him out of business? Why say, doesn't nearly every editorial writer in the country jump on him everyday, and don't all the paragraphers gibe at him, and don't all thecartoonists lampoon him, and don't all of us who write news from downhere in Washington give him the worst of it in our despatches?. .. Andwhat's the result? Mallard takes on flesh and every red-mouthedagitator in the country and every mushy-brained peace fanatic andevery secret German sympathiser trails at his heels, repeating what hesays. I'd like to know what the press of America hasn't done to puthim out of business! "There never was a time, I guess, when the reputable press of thiscountry was so united in its campaign to kill off a man as it is nowin its campaign to kill off Mallard. No paper gives him countenance, except some of these foreign-language rags and these dirty littledisloyal sheets; and until here just lately even they didn't dare tocome out in the open and applaud him. Anyway, who reads them ascompared with those who read the real newspapers and the realmagazines? Nobody! And yet he gets stronger every day. He's a nationalmenace--that's what he is. " "You said it again, son, " said Quinlan. "Six months ago he was anational nuisance and now he's a national menace; and who'sresponsible--or, rather, what's responsible--for him being a nationalmenace? Well, I'm going to tell you; but first I'm going to tell yousomething about Mallard. I've known him for twelve years, more orless--ever since he came here to Washington in his long frock coatthat didn't fit him and his big black slouch hat and his white stringtie and in all the rest of the regalia of the counterfeit who's tryingto fool people into believing he's part tribune and part peasant. " "You wouldn't call Mallard a counterfeit, would you?--a man with thegifts he's got, " broke in Drayton. "I've heard him called everythingelse nearly in the English language, but you're the first man thatever called him a counterfeit, to my knowledge!" "Counterfeit? why, he's as bogus as a pewter dime, " said Quinlan. "Itell you I know the man. Because you don't know him he's got youfooled the same as he's got so many other people fooled. Because helooks like a steel engraving of Henry Clay you think he is a HenryClay, I suppose--anyhow, a lot of other people do; but I'm telling youhis resemblance to Henry Clay is all on the outside--it doesn't strikein any farther than the hair roots. He calls himself a self-made man. Well, he's not; he's self-assembled, that's all. He's made up ofstandardised and interchangeable parts. He's compounded of somethingborrowed from every political mountebank who's pulled that old bunkabout being a friend of the great common people and gotten away withit during the last fifty years. He's not a real genius. He's asynthetic genius. " "There are just two things about Mallard that are not spurious--twothings that make up the real essence and tissue of him: One is hisgenius as a speaker and the other is his vanity; and the bigger ofthese, you take it from me, is his vanity. That's the thing he feedson--vanity. It's the breath in his nostrils, it's the savour and thesalt on his daily bread. He lives on publicity, on notoriety. And yetyou, a newspaper man, sit here wondering how the newspapers could killhim, and never guessing the real answer. " "Well, what is the answer then?" demanded Drayton. "Wait, I'm coming to that. The press is always prating about the powerof the press, always nagging about pitiless publicity being potent todestroy an evil thing or a bad man, and all that sort of rot. And yetevery day the newspapers give the lie to their own boastings. It'strue, Drayton, that up to a certain point the newspapers can make aman by printing favourable things about him. By that same token theyimagine they can tear him down by printing unfavourable things abouthim. They think they can, but they can't. Let them get together in acampaign of vituperation against a man, and at once they set everybodyto talking about him. Then let them carry their campaign just over apsychological dividing line, and right away they begin, against theirwills, to manufacture sentiment for him. The reactions of printer'sink are stronger somehow than its original actions--its chemicalprocesses acquire added strength in the back kick. What has saved manya rotten criminal in this country from getting his just deserts? Itwasn't the fact that the newspapers were all for him. It was the factthat all the newspapers were against him. The under dog may be ever sobad a dog, but only let enough of us start kicking him all together, and what's the result? Sympathy for him--that's what. Calling'Unclean, unclean!' after a leper never yet made people shun him. Itonly makes them crowd up closer to see his sores. I'll bet if thefacts were known that was true two thousand years ago. Certainly it'strue to-day, and human nature doesn't change. "But the newspapers have one weapon they've never yet used; at leastas a unit they've never used it. It's the strongest weapon they'vegot, and the cheapest, and the most terrible, and yet they let it liein its scabbard and rust. With that weapon they could destroy anyhuman being of the type of Jason Mallard in one-twentieth of the timeit takes them to build up public opinion for or against him. And yetthey can't see it--or won't see that it's there, all forged and readyto their hands. " "And that weapon is what?" asked Drayton. "Silence. Absolute, utter silence. Silence is the loudest thing in theworld. It thunders louder than the thunder. And it's the deadliest. What drives men mad who are put in solitary confinement? The darkness?The solitude? Well, they help. But it's silence that does thetrick--silence that roars in their ears until it cracks their eardrumsand addles their brains. " "Mallard is a national peril, we'll concede. Very well then, he shouldbe destroyed. And the surest, quickest, best way for the newspapers todestroy him is to wall him up in silence, to put a vacuum bell ofsilence down over him, to lock him up in silence, to bury him alive insilence. And that's a simpler thing than it sounds. They have all ofthem, only to do one little thing--just quit printing his name. " "But they can't quit printing his name, Quinlan!" exclaimed Drayton. "Mallard's news; he's the biggest figure in the news that there isto-day in this country. " "That's the same foolish argument that the average newspaper man wouldmake, " said Quinlan scornfully. "Mallard is news because thenewspapers make news of him--and for no other reason. Let them quit, and he isn't news any more--he's a nonentity, he's nothing at all, he's null and he's void. So far as public opinion goes he will ceaseto exist, and a thing that has ceased to exist is no longer news--onceyou've printed the funeral notice. Every popular thing, everyconspicuous thing in the world is born of notoriety and fed onnotoriety--newspaper notoriety. Notoriety is as essential to theobject of notoriety itself as it is in fashioning the sentiments ofthose who read about it. And there's just one place where you can getwholesale, nation-wide notoriety to-day--out of the jaws of a printingpress. "We call baseball our national pastime--granted! But let thenewspapers, all of them, during one month of this coming spring, quitprinting a word about baseball, and you'd see the parks closed up andthe weeds growing on the base lines and the turnstiles rusting solid. You remember those deluded ladies who almost did the cause of suffragesome damage last year by picketing the White House and bothering thePresident when he was busy with the biggest job that any man hadtackled in this country since Abe Lincoln? Remember how they raisedsuch a hullabaloo when they were sent to the workhouse? Well, supposethe newspapers, instead of giving them front-page headlines andcolumns of space every day, had refused to print a line about them oreven so much as to mention their names. Do you believe they would havestuck to the job week after week as they did stick to it? I tell youthey'd have quit cold inside of forty-eight hours. "Son, your average latter-day martyr endures his captivity withfortitude because he knows the world, through the papers, is going tohear the pleasant clanking of his chains. Otherwise he'd burst fromhis cell with a disappointed yell and go out of the martyr businessinstanter. He may not fear the gallows or the stake or the pillory, but he certainly does love his press notices. He may or may not keepthe faith, but you can bet he always keeps a scrapbook. Silence--that's the thing he fears more than hangman's nooses orfiring squads. "And that's the cure for your friend, Jason Mallard, Esquire. Let thepress of this country put the curse of silence on him and he's donefor. Silence will kill off his cause and kill off his following andkill him off. It will kill him politically and figuratively. I'm notsure, knowing the man as I do, but what it will kill him actually. Entomb him in silence and he'll be a body of death and corruption intwo weeks. Just let the newspapers and the magazines provide thegrave, and the corpse will provide itself. " Drayton felt himself catching the fever of Quinlan's fire. He broke ineagerly. "But, Quinlan, how could it be done?" he asked. "How could you getconcerted action for a thing that's so revolutionary, sounprecedented, so----" "This happens to be one time in the history of the United States whenyou could get it, " said the inebriate. "You could get it because thepress is practically united to-day in favour of real Americanism. Letsome man like your editor-in-chief, Fred Core, or like Carlos Seers ofthe Era, or Manuel Oxus of the Period, or Malcolm Flint of the A. P. Call a private meeting in New York of the biggest individualpublishers of daily papers and the leading magazine publishers and theheads of all the press associations and news syndicates, from the bigfellows clear down to the shops that sell boiler plate to the countryweeklies with patent insides. Through their concerted influence thatcrowd could put the thing over in twenty-four hours. They could lineup the Authors' League, line up the defence societies, line up thenational advertisers, line up organised labour in the printingtrades--line up everybody and everything worth while. Oh, it could bedone--make no mistake about that. Call it a boycott; call it coercion, mob law, lynch law, anything you please--it's justifiable. And there'dbe no way out for Mallard. He couldn't bring an injunction suit tomake a newspaper publisher print his name. He couldn't buy advertisingspace to tell about himself if nobody would sell it to him. There'sonly one thing he could do--and if I'm any judge he'd do it, sooner orlater. " [Illustration: THAT'S THE THING HE FEEDS ON--VANITY. ] Young Drayton stood up. His eyes were blazing. "Do you know what I'm going to do, Quinlan?" he asked. "I'm going torun up to New York on the midnight train. If I can't get a berth on asleeper I'll sit up in a day coach. I'm going to rout Fred Core out ofbed before breakfast time in the morning and put this thing up to himjust as you've put it up to me here to-night. If I can make him see itas you've made me see it, he'll get busy. If he doesn't see it, there's no harm done. But in any event it's your idea, and I'll seeto it that you're not cheated out of the credit for it. " The dipsomaniac shook his head. The flame of inspiration had died outin Quinlan; he was a dead crater again--a drunkard quivering for thelack of stimulant. "Never mind the credit, son. What was it wise old Omar said--'Take thecash and let the credit go'?--something like that anyhow. You runalong up to New York and kindle the fires. But before you start I wishyou'd loan me about two dollars. Some of these days when my luckchanges I'll pay it all back. I'm keeping track of what I owe you. Orsay, Drayton--make it five dollars, won't you, if you can spare it?" * * * * * Beforehand there was no announcement of the purpose to beaccomplished. The men in charge of the plan and the men directly underthem, whom they privily commissioned to carry out their intent, wereall of them sworn to secrecy. And all of them kept the pledge. On aMonday Congressman Mallard's name appeared in practically every dailypaper in America, for it was on that evening that he was to address amass meeting at a hall on the Lower West Side of New York--a meetingostensibly to be held under the auspices of a so-called society forworld peace. But sometime during Monday every publisher of everynewspaper and periodical, of every trade paper, every religious paper, every farm paper in America, received a telegram from a certainaddress in New York. This telegram was marked Confidential. It wassigned by a formidable list of names. It was signed by three of themost distinguished editors in America; by the heads of all theimportant news-gathering and news-distributing agencies; by theresponsible heads of the leading feature syndicates; by the presidentsof the two principal telegraph companies; by the presidents of thebiggest advertising agencies; by a former President of the UnitedStates; by a great Catholic dignitary; by a great Protestantevangelist, and by the most eloquent rabbi in America; by the head ofthe largest banking house on this continent; by a retired militaryofficer of the highest rank; by a national leader of organisedlabour; by the presidents of four of the leading universities; andfinally by a man who, though a private citizen, was popularly esteemedto be the mouthpiece of the National Administration. While this blanket telegram was travelling over the wires a certainmagazine publisher was stopping his presses to throw out a specialarticle for the writing of which he had paid fifteen hundred dollarsto the best satirical essayist in the country; and another publisherwas countermanding the order he had given to a distinguishedcaricaturist for a series of cartoons all dealing with the samesubject, and was tearing up two of the cartoons which had already beendelivered and for which he already had paid. He offered to pay for thecartoons not yet drawn, but the artist declined to accept furtherpayment when he was told in confidence the reason for the cancellationof the commission. On a Monday morning Congressman Jason Mallard's name was in everypaper; his picture was in many of them. On the day following---- But Iam getting ahead of my story. Monday evening comes before Tuesdaymorning, and first I should tell what befell on Monday evening down onthe Lower West Side. That Monday afternoon Mallard came up from Washington; only hissecretary came with him. Three men--the owner of a publication latelysuppressed by the Post Office Department for seditious utterances, aformer clergyman whose attitude in the present crisis had cost him hispulpit, and a former college professor of avowedly anarchistictendencies--met him at the Pennsylvania Station. Of the three only theclergyman had a name which bespoke Anglo-Saxon ancestry. These threemen accompanied him to the home of the editor, where they dinedtogether; and when the dinner was ended an automobile bore the partythrough a heavy snowstorm to the hall where Mallard was to speak. That is to say, it bore the party to within a block and a half of thehall. It could get no nearer than that by reason of the fact that thenarrow street from house line on one side to house line on the otherwas jammed with men and women, thousands of them, who, coming toolate to secure admission to the hall--the hall was crowded as early asseven o'clock--had stayed on, outside, content to see their championand to cheer him since they might not hear him. They were half frozen. The snow in which they stood had soaked their shoes and chilled theirfeet; there were holes in the shoes which some of them wore. The snowstuck to their hats and clung on their shoulders, making streaks therelike fleecy epaulets done in the colour of peace, which also is thecolour of cowardice and surrender. There was a cold wind which madethem all shiver and set the teeth of many of them to chattering; butthey had waited. A squad of twenty-odd policemen, aligned in a triangular formationabout Mallard and his sponsors and, with Captain Bull Hargis of theTraffic Squad as its massive apex, this human ploughshare literallyslugged a path through the mob to the side entrance of the hall. Bysheer force the living wedge made a furrow in the multitude--a furrowthat instantly closed in behind it as it pressed forward. Undoubtedlythe policemen saved Congressman Mallard from being crushed andbuffeted down under the caressing hands of those who strove with hisbodyguard to touch him, to embrace him, to clasp his hand. Foreign-born women, whose sons were in the draft, sought to kiss thehem of his garments when he passed them by, and as they stooped theywere bowled over by the uniformed burlies and some of them weretrampled. Disregarding the buffeting blows of the policemen's glovedfists, men, old, young and middle-aged, flung themselves against theescorts, crying out greetings. Above the hysterical yelling roseshrill cries of pain, curses, shrieks. Guttural sounds of cheering insnatchy fragments were mingled with terms of approval and ofendearment and of affection uttered in English, in German, in Russian, in Yiddish and in Finnish. Afterward Captain Bull Hargis said that never in his recollection ofNew York crowds had there been a crowd so hard to contend against orone so difficult to penetrate; he said this between gasps for breathwhile nursing a badly sprained thumb. The men under him agreed withhim. The thing overpassed anything in their professional experiences. Several of them were veterans of the force too. It was a dramatic entrance which Congressman Mallard made before hisaudience within the hall, packed as the hall was, with its air all hotand sticky with the animal heat of thousands of closely bestowed humanbodies. Hardly could it have been a more dramatic entrance. Fromsomewhere in the back he suddenly came out upon the stage. He wasbareheaded and bare-throated. Outside in that living whirlpool hissoft black hat had been plucked from his head and was gone. Hiscollar, tie and all, had been torn from about his neck, and the samerudely affectionate hand that wrested the collar away had ripped hislinen shirt open so that the white flesh of his chest showed throughthe gap of the tear. His great disorderly mop of bright red hair stooderect on his scalp like an oriflamme. His overcoat was half on andhalf off his back. At sight of him the place rose at him, howling out its devotion. Heflung off his overcoat, letting it fall upon the floor, and he strodeforward almost to the trough of the footlights; and then for a spacehe stood there on the rounded apron of the platform, staring out intothe troubled, tossing pool of contorted faces and tossing arms belowhim and about him. Demagogue he may have been; demigod he looked inthat, his moment of supreme triumph, biding his time to play upon thepassions and the prejudices of this multitude as a master organistwould play upon the pipes of an organ. Here was clay, plastic to hissupple fingers--here in this seething conglomerate of half-bakedintellectuals, of emotional rebels against constituted authority, ofalien enemies of malcontents and malingerers, of parlour anarchistsfrom the studios of Bohemianism and authentic anarchists from theslums. Ten blaring, exultant minutes passed before the ex-clergyman, whoacted as chairman, could secure a measure of comparative quiet. Atlength there came a lull in the panting tumult. Then the chair madean announcement which brought forth in fuller volume than ever aresponsive roar of approval. He announced that on the following nightand on the night after, Congressman Mallard would speak at MadisonSquare Garden, under the largest roof on Manhattan Island. Thecommittee in charge had been emboldened by the size of this presentoutpouring to engage the garden; the money to pay the rent for thosetwo nights had already been subscribed; admission would be free; allwould be welcome to come and--quoting the chairman--"to hear the truthabout the war into which the Government, at the bidding of thecapitalistic classes, had plunged the people of the nation. " Then inten words he introduced the speaker, and as the speaker raised hisarms above his head invoking quiet, there fell, magically, a quick, deep, breathless hush upon the palpitant gathering. "And this"--he began without preamble in that great resonant voice ofhis, that was like a blast of a trumpet--"and this, my countrymen, isthe answer which the plain people of this great city make to thecorrupted and misguided press that would crucify any man who daresdefy it. " He spoke for more than an hour, and when he was done his hearers wereas madmen and madwomen. And yet so skilfully had he phrased hisutterances, so craftily had he injected the hot poison, so deftly hadhe avoided counselling outright disobedience to the law, that sundrysecret-service men who had been detailed to attend the meeting and toarrest the speaker, United States representative though he be, in casehe preached a single sentence of what might be interpreted as opentreason, were completely circumvented. It is said that on this night Congressman Mallard made the best speechhe ever made in his whole life. But as to that we cannot be sure, andfor this reason: On Monday morning, as has twice been stated in this account, Congressman Mallard's name was in every paper, nearly, in America. OnTuesday morning not a line concerning him or concerning his speech orthe remarkable demonstration of the night before--not a line of news, not a line of editorial comment, not a paragraph--appeared in anynewspaper printed in the English language on this continent. Thesilent war had started. Tuesday evening at eight-fifteen Congressman Mallard came to MadisonSquare Garden, accompanied by the honour guard of his sponsors. Thepolice department, taking warning by what had happened on Monday nightdown on the West Side, had sent the police reserves of fourprecincts--six hundred uniformed men, under an inspector and threecaptains--to handle the expected congestion inside and outside thebuilding. These six hundred men had little to do after they formedtheir lines and lanes except to twiddle their night sticks and tostamp their chilled feet. For a strange thing befell. Thousands had participated in the affairof the night before. By word of mouth these thousands most surely musthave spread the word among many times their own number of sympatheticindividuals. And yet--this was the strange part--by actual count lessthan fifteen hundred persons, exclusive of the policemen, who werethere because their duty sent them there, attended Tuesday night'smeeting. To be exact there were fourteen hundred and seventy-five ofthem. In the vast oval of the interior they made a ridiculously smallclump set midway of the area, directly in front of the platform thathad been put up. All about them were wide reaches of seatingspace--empty. The place was a huge vaulted cavern, cheerless as acave, full of cold drafts and strange echoes. Congressman Mallardspoke less than an hour, and this time he did not make the speech ofhis life. Wednesday night thirty policemen were on duty at Madison SquareGarden, Acting Captain O'Hara of the West Thirtieth Street Stationbeing in command. Over the telephone to headquarters O'Hara, ateight-thirty, reported that his tally accounted for two hundred andeighty-one persons present. Congressman Mallard, he stated, had notarrived yet, but was momentarily expected. At eight-forty-five O'Hara telephoned again. Congressman Mallard hadjust sent word that he was ill and would not be able to speak. Thismessage had been brought by Professor Rascovertus, the former collegeprofessor, who had come in a cab and had made the bare announcement tothose on hand and then had driven away. The assembled two hundred andeighty-one had heard the statement in silence and forthwith haddeparted in a quiet and orderly manner. O'Hara asked permission tosend his men back to the station house. Congressman Mallard returned to Washington on the midnight train, hissecretary accompanying him. Outwardly he did not bear himself like asick man, but on his handsome face was a look which the secretary hadnever before seen on his employer's face. It was the look of a man whoasks himself a question over and over again. On Thursday, in conspicuous type, black faced and double-leaded, thereappeared on the front page and again at the top of the editorialcolumn of every daily paper, morning and evening, in the UnitedStates, and in every weekly and every monthly paper whose date ofpublication chanced to be Thursday, the following paragraph: "There is a name which the press of America no longer prints. Let every true American, in public or in private, cease hereafter from uttering that name. " Invariably the caption over this paragraph was the one word: SILENCE! One week later, to the day, the wife of one of the richest men inAmerica died of acute pneumonia at her home in Chicago. Practicallyall the daily papers in America carried notices of this lady's death;the wealth of her husband and her own prominence in social andphilanthropic affairs justified this. At greater or at less length itwas variously set forth that she was the niece of a former ambassadorto the Court of St. James; that she was the national head of a greatpatriotic organisation; that she was said to have dispensed upward offifty thousand dollars a year in charities; that she was born in suchand such a year at such and such a place; that she left, besides ahusband, three children and one grandchild; and so forth and so on. But not a single paper in the United States stated that she was theonly sister of Congressman Jason Mallard. The remainder of this account must necessarily be in the nature of adescription of episodes occurring at intervals during a period ofabout six weeks; these episodes, though separated by lapses of time, are nevertheless related. Three days after the burial of his sister Congressman Mallard tookpart in a debate on a matter of war-tax legislation upon the floor ofthe House. As usual he voiced the sentiments of a minority of one, hisvote being the only vote cast in the negative on the passage of themeasure. His speech was quite brief. To his colleagues, listening indead silence without sign of dissent or approval, it seemedexceedingly brief, seeing that nearly always before Mallard, when hespoke at all upon any question, spoke at length. While he spoke themen in the press gallery took no notes, and when he had finished andwas leaving the chamber it was noted that the venerable CongressmanBoulder, a man of nearly eighty, drew himself well into his seat, asthough he feared Mallard in passing along the aisle might brushagainst him. [Illustration: HE MAY OR MAY NOT KEEP FAITH, BUT YOU CAN BET HE ALWAYS KEEPS A SCRAP-BOOK. ] The only publication in America that carried a transcript ofCongressman Mallard's remarks on this occasion was the CongressionalRecord. At the next day's session Congressman Mallard's seat was vacant; thenext day likewise, and the next it was vacant. It was rumoured that hehad left Washington, his exact whereabouts being unknown. However, noone in Washington, so far as was known, in speaking of hisdisappearance, mentioned him by name. One man addressing another wouldmerely say that he understood a certain person had left town or thathe understood a certain person was still missing from town; the secondman in all likelihood would merely nod understandingly and then bytacit agreement the subject would be changed. Just outside one of the lunch rooms in the Union Station at St. Louislate one night in the latter part of January an altercation occurredbetween two men. One was a tall, distinguished-looking man of middleage. The other was a railroad employé--a sweeper and cleaner. It seemed that the tall man, coming out of the lunch room, andcarrying a travelling bag and a cane, stumbled over the broom whichthe sweeper was using on the floor just beyond the doorway. Thetraveller, who appeared to have but poor control over his temper, orrather no control at all over it, accused the station hand ofcarelessness and cursed him. The station hand made an indignant andimpertinent denial. At that the other flung down his bag, swung alofthis heavy walking stick and struck the sweeper across the head withforce sufficient to lay open the victim's scalp in a two-inch gash, which bled freely. For once a policeman was on the spot when trouble occurred. Thisparticular policeman was passing through the train shed and he sawthe blow delivered. He ran up and, to be on the safe side, put bothmen under technical arrest. The sweeper, who had been bowled over bythe clout he had got, made a charge of unprovoked assault against thestranger; the latter expressed a blasphemous regret that he had notsucceeded in cracking the sweeper's skull. He appeared to be in ahighly nervous, highly irritable state. At any rate such was theinterpretation which the patrolman put upon his aggressive prisoner'sbehaviour. Walking between the pair to prevent further hostilities the policemantook both men into the station master's office, his intention being totelephone from there for a patrol wagon. The night station masteraccompanied them. Inside the room, while the station master wasbinding up the wound in the sweeper's forehead with a pockethandkerchief, it occurred to the policeman that in the flurry ofexcitement he had not found out the name of the tall and still excitedbelligerent. The sweeper he already knew. He asked the tall man forhis name and business. "My name, " said the prisoner, "is Jason C. Mallard. I am a member ofCongress. " The station master forgot to make the knot in the bandage he was tyingabout the sweeper's head. The sweeper forgot the pain of his newheadache and the blood which trickled down his face and fell upon thefront of his overalls. As though governed by the same set of wiresthese two swung about, and with the officer they stared at thestranger. And as they stared, recognition came into the eyes of allthree, and they marvelled that before now none of them had discernedthe identity of the owner of that splendid tousled head of hair andthose clean-cut features, now swollen and red with an unreasonablecholer. The policeman was the first to get his shocked and jostledsenses back, and the first to speak. He proved himself a quick-wittedperson that night, this policeman did; and perhaps this helps toexplain why his superior, the head of the St. Louis policedepartment, on the very next day promoted him to be a sergeant. But when he spoke it was not to Mallard but to the sweeper. "Look here, Mel Harris, " he said; "you call yourself a purty goodAmurican, don't you?" "You bet your life I do!" was the answer. "Ain't I got a boy in campsoldierin'?" "Well, I got two there myself, " said the policeman; "but that ain'tthe question now. I see you've got a kind of a little bruised placethere on your head. Now then, as a good Amurican tryin' to do yourduty to your country at all times, I want you to tell me how you comeby that there bruise. Did somebody mebbe hit you, or as a matter offact ain't it the truth that you jest slipped on a piece of bananapeelin' or something of that nature, and fell up against the door jambof that lunch room out yonder?" For a moment the sweeper stared at his interrogator, dazed. Then agrin of appreciation bisected his homely red-streaked face. "Why, it was an accident, officer, " he answered. "I slipped down andhit my own self a wallop, jest like you said. Anyway, it don't amountto nothin'. " "You seen what happened, didn't you?" went on the policeman, addressing the station master. "It was a pure accident, wasn't it?" "That's what it was--a pure accident, " stated the station master. "Then, to your knowledge, there wasn't no row of any sort occurringround here to-night?" went on the policeman. "Not that I heard of. " "Well, if there had a-been you'd a-heard of it, wouldn't you?" "Sure I would!" "That's good, " said the policeman. He jabbed a gloved thumb towardthe two witnesses. "Then, see here, Harris! Bein' as it was anaccident pure and simple and your own fault besides, nobody--nooutsider--couldn't a-had nothin' to do with your gettin' hurt, couldhe?" "Not a thing in the world, " replied Harris. "Not a thing in the world, " echoed the station master. "And you ain't got any charge to make against anybody for what was dueto your own personal awkwardness, have you?" suggested the blue-coatedprompter. "Certainly I ain't!" disclaimed Harris almost indignantly. Mallard broke in: "You can't do this--you men, " he declared hoarsely. "I struck that man and I'm glad I did strike him--damn him! I wish I'dkilled him. I'm willing to take the consequences. I demand that youmake a report of this case to your superior officer. " As though he had not heard him--as though he did not know a fourthperson was present--the policeman, looking right past Mallard with alevelled, steady, contemptuous gaze, addressed the other two. His tonewas quite casual, and yet somehow he managed to freight his words witha scorn too heavy to be expressed in mere words: "Boys, " he said, "it seems-like to me the air in this room is so kindof foul that it ain't fitten for good Amuricans to be breathin' it. So I'm goin' to open up this here door and see if it don't purifyitself--of its own accord. " He stepped back and swung the door wide open; then stepped over andjoined the station master and the sweeper. And there together they allthree stood without a word from any one of them as the fourth man, with his face deadly white now where before it had been a passionatered, and his head lolling on his breast, though he strove to hold itrigidly erect, passed silently out of the little office. Through theopened door the trio with their eyes followed him while he crossed theconcrete floor of the concourse and passed through a gate. Theycontinued to watch until he had disappeared in the murk, going towardwhere a row of parked sleepers stood at the far end of the train shed. * * * * * Yet another policeman is to figure in this recital of events. Thispoliceman's name is Caleb Waggoner and this Caleb Waggoner was andstill is the night marshal in a small town in Iowa on the MissouriRiver. He is one-half the police force of the town, the other halfbeing a constable who does duty in the daytime. Waggoner suffers froman affection which in a large community might prevent him from holdingsuch a job as the one he does hold. He has an impediment of the speechwhich at all times causes him to stammer badly. When he is excited itis only by a tremendous mental and physical effort and after repeatedendeavours that he can form the words at all. In other regards he is afirst-rate officer, sober, trustworthy and kindly. On the night of the eighteenth of February, at about half past eleveno'clock, Marshal Waggoner was completing his regular before-midnightround of the business district. The weather was nasty, with a raw wetwind blowing and half-melted slush underfoot. In his tour he hadencountered not a single person. That dead dumb quiet which falls upona sleeping town on a winter's night was all about him. But as heturned out of Main Street, which is the principal thoroughfare, intoSycamore Street, a short byway running down between scatteredbuildings and vacant lots to the river bank a short block away, he sawa man standing at the side door of the Eagle House, the town'ssecond-best hotel. A gas lamp flaring raggedly above the doorwaybrought out the figure with distinctness. The man was not moving--hewas just standing there, with the collar of a heavy overcoat turned upabout his throat and a soft black hat with a wide brim drawn well downupon his head. Drawing nearer, Waggoner, who by name or by sight knew every residentof the town, made up his mind that the loiterer was a stranger. Now astranger abroad at such an hour and apparently with no business tomind would at once be mentally catalogued by the vigilant nightmarshal as a suspicious person. So when he had come close up to theother, padding noiselessly in his heavy rubber boots, the officerhalted and from a distance of six feet or so stared steadfastly at thesuspect. The suspect returned the look. What Waggoner saw was a thin, haggard face covered to the upper bulgeof the jaw-bones with a disfiguring growth of reddish whiskers andinclosed at the temples by shaggy, unkempt strands of red hair whichprotruded from beneath the black hat. Evidently the man had not beenshaved for weeks; certainly his hair needed trimming and combing. Butwhat at the moment impressed Waggoner more even than the generalunkemptness of the stranger's aspect was the look out of his eyes. They were widespread eyes and bloodshot as though from lack of sleep, and they glared into Waggoner's with a peculiar, strained, hearkeningexpression. There was agony in them--misery unutterable. Thrusting his head forward then, the stranger cried out, and hisvoice, which in his first words was deep and musical, suddenly, beforehe had uttered a full sentence, turned to a sharp, half-hystericalfalsetto: "Why don't you say something to me, man?" he cried at the startledWaggoner. "For God's sake, why don't you speak to me? Even if you doknow me, why don't you speak? Why don't you call me by my name? Ican't stand it--I can't stand it any longer, I tell you. You've got tospeak. " Astounded, Waggoner strove to answer. But, because he was startled anda bit apprehensive as well, his throat locked down on his faulty vocalcords. His face moved and his lips twisted convulsively, but no soundissued from his mouth. The stranger, glaring into Waggoner's face with those two gogglingeyes of his, which were all eyeballs, threw up both arms at fulllength and gave a great gagging outcry. "It's come!" he shrieked; "it's come! The silence has done it at last. It deafens me--I'm deaf! I can't hear you! I can't hear you!" He turned and ran south--toward the river--and Waggoner, recoveringhimself, ran after him full bent. It was a strangely silent race thesetwo ran through the empty little street, for in the half-melted snowtheir feet made no sounds at all. Waggoner, for obvious reasons, couldutter no words; the other man did not. A scant ten feet in the lead the fugitive reached the high clay bankof the river. Without a backward glance at his pursuer, withoutchecking his speed, he went off and over the edge and down out ofsight into the darkness. Even at the end of the twenty-foot plunge thebody in striking made almost no sound at all, for, as Waggonerafterward figured, it must have struck against a mass of shore ice, then instantly to slide off, with scarcely a splash, into the roiledyellow waters beyond. The policeman checked his own speed barely in time to save himselffrom following over the brink. He crouched on the verge of the frozenclay bluff, peering downward into the blackness and the quiet. He sawnothing and he heard nothing except his own laboured breathing. The body was never recovered. But at daylight a black soft hat wasfound on a half-rotted ice floe, where it had lodged close up againstthe bank. A name was stamped in the sweatband, and by this theidentity of the suicide was established as that of Congressman JasonMallard.