Tom mounted the stairs of Potomac Hall early the next evening. During the day he had told a few friends the story of the encounter of the night before. The story had spread in versions more or less vague and distorted, and now on his entry of the hall he was beset by a crowd who demanded a true and detailed account of the affair. This he gave.

"Oh, come now, Tom! This's hot air you're handin' us out about Babe!" expostulated one of the men.

"It's the truth."

"Get out! I saw Kid Morgan chase him a block. He can't fight."

"You think not? Well, there's one way you can convince yourself."

"How's that?"

"Try it with him for about a minute," answered Tom.

There was a laugh, in which the man joined. "I tell you what, boys," he said, after it had subsided. "I hit Babe on the back o' the neck with a glove the day Kid chased him. If what Tom says is straight, I'm goin' to beg Babe's pardon in open meetin'."

"Me, too," chimed in another.

"It's so," said Tom, thinking with a smile of what was in store for Petersen.

For some reason, perhaps one having to do with their personal pride, Jake and his fellows did not appear that night, though several hundred men waited their coming with impatient greetings. But just before Tom opened the session Petersen entered the hall and slipped into an obscure seat near the door.

He was immediately recognized. "Petersen!" someone announced. Straightway men arose all over the hall and turned about to face him. "Petersen!" "Petersen!" "What's the matter with Petersen!" the cries went up, and there was a great clapping of hands.

Petersen sprang to his feet in wild consternation. Yes, they were looking at him. Yes, that was his name. He didn't know what it meant —

But the next instant he had bolted out of the hall.

When the shouting had died away Tom called the union to order. He was filled with an exultant sense of certain triumph; he had kept an estimating eye on the members as they had filed in; an easy majority of the men were with him, and as their decision would be by open vote there would be no chance for Foley to stuff a ballot-box.

Pete, the instructed spokesman for Tom's party, was the first man on his feet. "Mr. President," he said, "I move we drop the reg'lar order o' business an' proceed at once to new business."

Tom put the motion to rising vote. His confidence grew as he looked about the hall, for the rising vote on the motion showed how strong his majority really was.

"Motion carried!" he shouted, and brought down his gavel.

The next instant a dozen men were on their feet waving their right hands and crying, "Mr. Chairman." One was Pete, ten were good-intentioned but uninformed friends, and one was Foley. Tom's eyes fastened upon Foley, and his mind worked quickly.

"Mr. Foley," he said.

A murmur of surprise ran among Tom's friends. But he had his reason for this slight deviation from his set plan. He knew that Foley was opposed to a strike; if he let Foley go on record against it in a public speech, then his coming victory over the walking delegate would be all the more decisive.

Foley looked slowly about upon the men, and for a moment did not speak. Then he said suddenly, in a conversational tone: "Boys, how much youse gettin'?"

"Three seventy-five," several voices answered.

"How long youse been gettin' it?"

"Two years."

"Yes," he said, his voice rising and ringing with intensity. "Two years youse've been workin' for three seventy-five. The bosses' profits have been growin' bigger an' bigger. But not a cent's raise have youse had. Not a cent, boys! Now here's what I say."

He paused, and thrust out his right arm impressively. Tom regarded him in sickened, half-comprehending amazement.

"Here's what I say, boys! I say it's time we had more money. I say we ought to make the blood-suckin' bosses give up a part o' what's comin' to us. That's what I say!" And he swung his doubled fist before his face in a great semi-circle.

He turned to Tom, with a leer in his eyes that was for Tom alone. "Mr. President, I move we demand a ten per cent. increase o' wages, an' if the bosses won't give it, strike for it!"

Tom sank stupefied back in his chair. Foley's own men were bewildered utterly. A dead silence of a minute or more reigned in the hall, while all but the walking delegate strove to recover their bearing.

It was Connelly who broke the general trance. Connelly did not understand, but there was Foley's standing order, "Watch me, an' do the same." "I second the motion," he said.

A little later Foley's strike measure was carried without a single dissenting vote. Foley, Connelly, Brown, Pete, and Tom, with Foley as chairman, were elected the committee to negotiate with the employers for higher wages, and, if there should be a strike, to manage it.

The adoption of the strike measure meant to Foley that the income derived from Mr. Baxter, and two or three others with whom he maintained somewhat similar relations, was to be cut off. But before he reached home that night he had discovered a compensation for this loss, and he smiled with grim satisfaction. The next morning he presented himself in the office of Mr. Baxter, and this same grim smile was on his face.

"Hello, Baxter! How youse stackin' up this mornin'?" And he clapped a hand on Mr. Baxter's artistically padded shoulder.

The contractor started at this familiarity, and a slight frown showed itself on his brow. "Very well," he said shortly.

"Really, now. Why, youse look like youse slept alongside a bad dream." Foley drew forth his cigar-case and held it out. He knew Mr. Baxter did not smoke cigars and hated their smell.

"No, thank you."

The walking delegate put one in his mouth and scratched a match under the edge of the cherry table. "I don't s'pose youse know there was doin's at the union last night?"

"I understand the union decided to strike."

"Wonderful, ain't it, how quick news travels?"

Mr. Baxter disregarded Foley's look of mock surprise. "You seem to have failed utterly to keep your promise that there would be no strike," he said coldly.

"It was Keating stirred it up," Foley returned, calmly biting a bit off his cigar and blowing it out upon the deep red rug.

"You also failed to stop Mr. Keating," Mr. Baxter pursued.

"Mr. Baxter, even the best of us makes our mistakes. I bet even youse ain't cheated every man youse've counted on cheatin'."

Mr. Baxter gave another little start, as when Foley had slapped his shoulder. "Furthermore, I understand you, yourself, made the motion to strike."

"The way youse talk sometimes, Baxter, makes me think youse must 'a' been born about minute before last," Foley returned blandly. "As an amachure diplomat, youse've got Mayor Low skinned to death. Sure I made the motion. An' why did I make the motion? If I hadn't 'a' made it, but had opposed it, where'd I 'a' been? About a thousand miles outside the outskirts o' nowhere, – nobody in the union, an' consequently worth about as much to youse as a hair in a bowl o' soup. I stood to lose both. I still got the union."

"What do you propose that we do?" Mr. Baxter held himself in, for the reason that he supposed the old relation would merely give place to a new.

"Well, there's goin' to be strike. The union'll make a demand, an' I rather guess youse'll not give up without a fight."

"We shall certainly fight," Mr. Baxter assured him.

"Well," he drawled, "since I've got to lead the union in a strike an' youse're goin' to fight the strike, it seems like everything'd have to be off between us, don't it?"

Mr. Baxter did not reply at once, and then did not answer the question. "What are you going to do?"

"To tell youse, that is just what I came here for." In a flash Foley's manner changed from the playful to the vindictive, and he leaned slowly forward in his chair. "I'm goin' to fight youse, Baxter, an' fight youse like hell!" he said, between barely parted teeth. And his gray eyes, suddenly hard, gazed maliciously into Mr. Baxter's face.

"I'm goin' to fight like hell!" he went on. "For two years I've been standin' your damned manicured manners. Youse've acted like I wasn't fit to touch. Why d'youse s'pose I've stood it? Because it was money to me. Now that there's no money in it, d'youse s'pose I'm goin' to stand it any longer? Not much, by God! And d'youse think I've forgotten the past – your high-nosed, aristocratic ways? Well, youse'll remember 'em too! My chance's come, an' I'm goin' to fight youse like hell!"

At the last Foley's clenched fist was under Mr. Baxter's nose. The contractor did not stir the breadth of a hair. "Mr. Foley," he said in his cold, even voice, "I think you know the shortest way out of this office."

"I do," said Foley. "An' it's a damned sight too long!"

He gave Mr. Baxter a long look, full of defiant hate, contemptuously flipped his half-smoked cigar on Mr. Baxter's spotless desk, and strode out.

Chapter XIX
FOLEY TASTES REVENGE

Foley's threat that, under cover of the strike, he was going to make Mr. Baxter suffer, was anything save empty bluster. But twenty years of fighting had made him something of a connoisseur of vengeance. He knew, for instance, that a moment usually presented itself when revenge was most effective and when it tasted sweetest. So he now waited for time to bring him that moment; and he waited all the more patiently because a month must elapse ere the beginning of the strike would afford him his chance.

The month passed dully. Buck had spoken from certain knowledge when he had remarked to Mr. Baxter that the contractors would not yield without a fight. During April there were no less than half a dozen meetings between the union's committee and the Executive Committee of the employers' association in a formal attempt at peaceful settlement. The public attitude of Foley and Baxter toward each other for the past two years had been openly hostile. That attitude was not changed, but it was now sincere. In these meetings the unionists presented their case; the employers gave their side; every point, pro and con, was gone over again and again. On the thirtieth of April the situation was just as it had been on the first: "We're goin' to get all we're askin' for," said Foley; "We can concede nothing," said Mr. Baxter. On the first of May not a man was at work on an iron job in New York City.

During these four weeks Foley regained popularity with an astounding rapidity. He was again the Foley of four or five years ago, the Foley that had won the enthusiastic admiration of the union, fierce-tongued in his denunciation of the employers at union meetings, grimly impudent to members of the employers' Executive Committee and matching their every argument, – at all times witty, resourceful, terribly determined, fairly hurling into others a confidence in himself. He was feeling with almost its first freshness the joy of being in, and master of, a great fight. Men that for years had spoken of him only in hate, now cheered him. And even Tom himself had to yield to this new Foley a reluctant admiration, he was so tireless, so aggressive, so equal to the occasion.

Tom had become, by the first of May, a figure of no importance. True, he was a member of the strike committee, but Foley gave him no chance to speak; and, anyhow, the walking delegate said what there was to be said so pointedly, albeit with a virulence that antagonized the employers all the more, that there was no reason for his saying aught. And as for his position as president, that had become pathetically ludicrous. As though in opposite pans of a balance, the higher Foley went in the union's estimation, the lower went he. Even his own friends, while not abandoning him, fell in behind Foley. He was that pitiable anomaly, a leader without a following and without a cause. Foley had stolen both. He tried to console himself with the knowledge that the walking delegate was managing the strike for the union's good; but only the millionth man has so little personal ambition that he is content to see the work he would do being well done by another… And yet, though fallen, he hung obstinately on and waited – blindly.

Tom was now in little danger from the entertainment committee, for Foley's disquiet over his influence had been dissipated by his rapid decline. And after the first of May Tom gave Foley even less concern, for he had finally secured work in the shipping department of a wholesale grocer, so could no longer show himself by day among the union men.

During April the contractors had prepared for the coming fight by locating non-union ironworkers, and during the first part of May they rushed these into the city and set them to work, guarded by Pinkerton detectives, upon the most pressing jobs. The union, in its turn, picketed every building on which there was an attempt to continue work, and against the scabs the pickets waged a more or less pacific warfare. Foley was of himself as much as all the pickets. He talked to the non-union men as they came up to their work, as they left their work, as they rode away on street cars, as they sat in saloons. Some he reached by his preachment of the principles of trade unionism. And some he reached by such brief speech as this: "This strike'll be settled soon. Our men'll all go back to work. What'll happen to youse about then? The bosses'll kick youse out. If youse're wise youse'll join the union and help us in the strike." This argument was made more effective by the temporary lifting of the initiation fee of twenty-five dollars, by which act scabs were made union men without price. There was also a third method, which Foley called "transmittin' unionism to the brain by the fist," and he reached many this way, for his fist was heavy and had a strong arm behind it.

The contractors, in order to retain the non-union men, raised their wages to fifty cents a day more than the union demanded, but even then they were able to hold only enough workers to keep a few jobs going in half-hearted fashion. There were many accidents and delays on these buildings, for the workers were boilermakers, and men who but half knew the trade, and men who did not know the trade at all. As Pete remarked, after watching, from a neighboring roof, the gang finishing up the work on the St. Etienne Hotel, "The shadder of an ironworker would do more'n three o' them snakes." The contractors themselves realized perfectly what poor work they were getting for so extravagant a price, and would have discharged their non-union gangs had this not been a tacit admission of partial defeat.

From the first of May there of course had been several hot-heads who favored violent handling of the scabs. Tom opposed these with the remnant of his influence, for he knew the sympathy of the public has its part in the settlement of strikes, and public sympathy goes not to the side guilty of outrage. The most rabid of all these advocates of violence was Johnson, who, after being summoned to Mr. Baxter's office, began diligently to preach this substance: "If we put a dozen or two o' them snakes out o' business, an' fix a job or two, the bosses'll come right to time."

"It strikes me, Johnson, that you change your ideas about as often as you ought to change your shirt," Pete remarked one day, after listening to Johnson's inflammatory words. "Not long ago you were all against a strike."

For a moment Johnson was disconcerted. Then he said: "But since there is a strike I'm for measures that'll settle it quick. What you got against smashin' a few scabs?"

"Oh, it's always right to smash a scab," Pete agreed. "But you ought to know that just now there's nothin' the bosses'd rather have us do. They'd pay good money to get us to give the hospitals a chance to practice up on a few snakes."

Johnson looked at Pete searchingly, fearing that Pete suspected. But Pete guessed nothing, and Johnson went about his duty.

There were a number of encounters between the strikers and the strike-breakers, and several of these set-tos had an oral repetition in the police courts; but nothing occurred so serious as to estrange public sympathy till the explosion in the Avon, a small apartment house Mr. Baxter was erecting as a private investment. And with this neither Johnson nor the rank and file, on whose excitable feelings he tried to play, had anything to do.

Foley's patience mastered his desire for vengeance easily enough during April, but when May had reached its middle without offering the chance he wanted, his patience weakened and desire demanded its rights. At an utterly futile meeting between the committees of the union and the employers, toward the end of the month, arranged for by the Civic Federation, the desire for vengeance suddenly became the master. This was the first meeting since the strike began, and was the first time Foley had seen Mr. Baxter since then. The contractor did not once look at Foley, and did not once address speech to him; he sat with his back to the walking delegate, and put all his remarks to Brown, the least important member of the strikers' committee. Foley gave as good as he received, for he selected Isaacs, who was nothing more than a fifth man, and addressed him as head of the employers' committee; and rather better, for he made Mr. Baxter the object of a condescending affability that must have been as grateful as salt to raw and living flesh.

But Foley was not appeased. When he and Connelly were clear of the meeting he swore fiercely. "He won't be so cool to-morrow!" he said, and swore again. "An' the same trick'll help bring 'em all to time," he added.

Foley had already had vengeful eyes upon the Avon, which stood on a corner with a vacant lot on one side and an open space between its rear and the next building. Jake had carefully reconnoitered its premises, with the discovery that one of the two Pinkerton guards was an acquaintance belonging to the days when he himself had been in the service of the Pinkerton agency. That night Jake sauntered by the Avon, chatted awhile with the two guards, and suggested a visit to a nearby saloon. As soon as the three were safely around the corner Kaffir Bill and Arkansas Number Two slipped into the doorway of the Avon, leaving Smoky on watch without. Bill and Arkansas had their trouble: to find their way about in the darkness, to light the fuse – and then they had to cut off an unignitable portion of the fuse; and then in their nervous eagerness to get away their legs met a barrel of cement and they went sprawling behind a partition. Several moments passed ere they found the doorway, the while they could hear the sputtering of the shortened fuse, and during which they heard Smoky cry out, "Come on!" When they did come into the street it was to see the two Pinkertons not twenty paces away. Before their haste could take them to the opposite sidewalk the pavement jumped under their feet, and the building at their backs roared heavily. The guards, guessing the whole trick, began shooting at the two. A policeman appeared from around the corner with drawn pistol – and that night Jake, Bill, and Arkansas slept in a cell.

The next morning, after getting on the car that carried him to his work, Tom took up his paper with a leisure that straightway left him, for his eyes were instantly caught by the big headlines sketching the explosion in the Avon. He raced through the three columns. He could see Foley behind the whole outrage, and he thrilled with satisfaction as he foresaw the beginning of Foley's undoing in the police court. There was no work for him that morning. He leaped off the car and took another that brought him near the court where the three men were to have their preliminary hearing.

It was half-past eight when he reached the court. As he entered the almost empty court-room he saw Foley and a black-maned man of lego-theatric appearance standing before a police sergeant, and he heard Foley say: "This is their lawyer; we want to see 'em straight off." Tom preferred to avoid meeting Foley, so he turned quickly back and walked about for half an hour. When he returned the small court-room was crowded, the clerks were in place, the policemen and their prisoners stood in a long queue having its head at the judge's desk and its tail without the iron railing that fenced off the spectators.

Tom had been in the court-room but a few minutes when an officer motioned him within the railing. The court attorney stepped to his side. "You were pointed out to me as the president of the Iron Workers' Union," said the attorney.

"Yes."

"And I was told you didn't care particularly for the prisoners in this explosion case."

"Well?"

"Would you be willing to testify against them – not upon the explosion, which you didn't see, but upon their character?"

Tom looked at Jake, Arkansas, and Bill, standing at the head of the queue in charge of the two Pinkertons and a couple of policemen, and struggled a moment with his thoughts. Ordinarily it was a point of honor with a union man not to aid the law against a fellow member; but this was not an ordinary case. The papers had thrown the whole blame for the outrage upon the union. The union's innocence could be proved only by fastening the blame upon Foley and the three prisoners.

"I will," he consented.

There was a tiresome wait for the judge. About ten o'clock he emerged from his chambers and took his place upon his platform. He was a cold-looking man, with an aristocratic face, deeply marked with lines of hard justice, and with a time-tonsured pate. His enemies, and they were many, declared his judgments ignored the law; his answer was that he administered the law according to common sense, and not according to its sometimes stupid letter.

The bailiff opened the court, and the case of Jake, Arkansas, and Bill was called. The two Pinkertons recited the details of the explosion and the two policemen added details of the arrest. Then Mr. Baxter, looking pale, but as much the self-controlled gentleman as ever, testified to the damage done by the dynamite. The Avon still stood, but its steel frame was so wrenched at the base that it was liable to fall at any moment. The building would have to be reconstructed entirely. Though much of the material could be used again, the loss, at a conservative estimate, would be seventy-five thousand dollars.

Tom came next before the judge's desk. Exclamations of surprise ran among the union men in the room when it was seen Tom was to be a witness, and the bailiff had to pound with his gavel and shout for order. Tom testified that the three were known in the union as men ready for any villainy; and he managed to introduce in his answers to the questions enough to make it plain that the union was in no degree responsible for the outrage, that it abhorred such acts, that responsibility rested upon the three – "And someone else," he added meaningly.

"Who's that?" quickly demanded the court attorney.

"Buck Foley."

"I object!" shouted the prisoners' attorney. Foley, who sat back in the crowd with crossed legs, did not alter his half-interested expression by a wrinkle.

"Objection over-ruled," said the judge.

"Will you please tell what you know about Mr. Foley's connection with the case," continued the court attorney.

"I object, your Honor! Mr. Foley is not on trial."

"It's the duty of this court to get at all the facts," returned the judge. "Does the witness speak from his own knowledge, or what he surmises?"

"I'm absolutely certain he's at the bottom of this."

"But is your evidence first-hand information?"

"It is not," Tom had to confess. "But I couldn't be more certain if I had seen him – "

"Guess-work isn't evidence," cut in the judge.

Tom, however, had attached Foley to the case – he had seen the reporters start at his words as at a fresh sensation – and he gave a look of satisfaction at Foley as he stepped away from the judge's desk. Foley gave back a half-covered sneer, as if to say, "Just youse wait!"

Arkansas was the first of the prisoners to be called – the reason for which priority, as Tom afterwards guessed, being his anomalous face that would not have ill-suited a vest that buttoned to the chin and a collar that buttoned at the back. Arkansas, replying to the questions of his long-haired attorney, corroborated the testimony of the policemen and the Pinkertons in every detail. When Arkansas had answered the last query the lawyer allowed several seconds to pass, his figure drawn up impressively, his right hand in the breast of his frock coat.

The judge bent over his docket and began to write. "This seems a perfectly plain case. I hold the three prisoners for the grand jury, each in ten thousand – "

The attorney's right hand raised itself theatrically. "Hold!" he cried.

The judge looked up with a start. Tom's eyes, wandering to Foley's face, met there a malign grin.

"The case is not ended, your Honor. The case is just begun." The attorney brushed back his mane with a stagy movement of his hand, and turned upon Arkansas. "You and the other prisoners did this. You do not deny it. But now tell his Honor why you did it."

Arkansas, with honesty fairly obtruding from his every feature, looked nervously at Tom, and then said hesitantly: "Because we had to."

"And why did you have to?"

Again Arkansas showed hesitation.

"Speak out," encouraged the attorney. "You're in no danger. The court will protect you."

"We was ordered to. If we hadn't done it we'd been thrown out o' the union, an' been done up."

"Explain to the court what you mean by 'done up'."

"Slugged an' kicked – half killed."

"In other words, what you did was done in fear of your life. Now who ordered you to blow up the Avon, and threatened to have you 'done up' if you didn't?"

"Mr. Keating, the president o' the union."

The judge, who had been leaning forward with kindling eyes, breathed a prolonged "A-a-ah!"

For a moment Tom was astounded. Then he sprang to Arkansas's side. "You infernal liar!" he shouted, his eyes blazing.

The judge's hammer thundered down. "Silence!" he roared.

"But, your Honor, he's lying!"

"Five dollars for contempt of court! Another word and I'll give you the full penalty."

Two officers jerked Tom back, and surging with indignant wrath he had to listen in silence to the romance that had been spun for Arkansas's lips and which he was now respinning for the court's ears; and he quickly became aware that newspaper artists had set their pencils busy over his face. Once, glancing at Jake, he was treated with a leer of triumph.

Arkansas plausibly related what had passed between Tom and himself and his two companions; and then Bill took the stand, and then Jake. Each repeated the story Arkansas, with the help of his face, had made so convincing.

"And now, your Honor," the prisoners' attorney began when his evidence was all in, "I think I have made plain my clients' part in this most nefarious outrage. They are guilty – yes. But they were but the all too weak instruments of another's will, who galvanized them by mortal fear to do his dastardly bidding. He, he alone – "

"Save your eloquence, councilor," the judge broke in. "The case speaks best for itself. You here." He crooked his forefinger at Tom.

Tom was pushed by policemen up before the judge.

"Now what have you to say for yourself?" the judge demanded.

"It's one string of infernal lies!" Tom exploded. And he launched into a hot denial, strong in phrasing but weak in comparison with the inter-corroborative stones of the three, which had the further verisimilitude gained by tallying in every detail with the officers' account of the explosion.

"What you say is merely denial, the denial we hear from every criminal," his Honor began when Tom had finished. "I do not say I believe every word of the testimony of the three prisoners. But it is more credible than your statements.

"What has been brought out here to-day – the supreme officer of a union compelling members to commit an act of violence by threat of economic disablement and of physical injury, perhaps death – is in perfect accord with the many diabolical practices that have recently been revealed as existing among trade unions. It is such things as this that force all right-minded men to regard trade unionism as the most menacing danger which our nation now confronts." And for five minutes he continued in his arraignment of trade unions.

"In the present circumstances," he ended, "it is my duty to order the arrest of this man who appears to be the chief conspirator – this president of a union who has had the supreme hardihood to appear as a witness against his own tools, doubtless hoping thereby to gain the end of the thief who cried 'stop thief.' I hold him in fifteen thousand dollars bond to await the action of the grand jury. The three prisoners are held in five thousand dollars bail each."

Jake, Bill, and Arkansas were led away by their captors, and Tom, utterly dazed by this new disaster that had overtaken him when he had thought there was nothing more that could befall, was shoved over to the warrant clerk. And again he caught Foley's eyes; they were full of malicious satisfaction.

As he waited before the warrant clerk's desk he saw Mr. Baxter, on his way to the door, brush by Foley, and in the moment of passing he saw Foley's lips move. He did not hear Foley's words. They were two, and were: "First round!"

A few minutes later Tom was led down a stairway, through a corridor and locked in a cell.