# McClure's Magazine/Volume 50/Number 8/Kidnapped!

from McClure's Magazine, June 1918, pp. 27–28, 45–47. Accompanying illustration may be omitted.
Kidnapped!
A War Story That Will Make You Cry—With Joy
by Harold MacGrath
Illustration by Tony Sarg
THE Senator was kidnapped. I wonder if you'll believe this yarn? I don't know as I care. It's true. Four years ago you would have shrugged and winked your eye. To-day, quite likely, you'll say: “Well, why not? This war has certainly moved us along.”
I promised to go cautiously; so I can reasonably defy anybody to identify the Senator under the attendant camouflage. (There I go! I swore I'd never use that word again.) Beyond his height and black string tie, I shall give you no description of the Senator.
Queer old gassers, our politicians. They hypnotize themselves into the belief that part of the world rests upon their shoulders, when, as a matter of fact, they are in Washington for two very simple reasons, greatness or fitness having nothing to do with it. Either they have “put up” for several mayoralty campaigns and have to be squared, or they are putting the local boss on the anxious seat and he considers them safer in Washington than back home.
For years now the Senator had worn the toga solemnly and with circumspection. He had reached that point—and a good many Senators reach it—where he considered it was a life job and that nobody back home had the slightest interest in his political shoes. It follows naturally that the shadow he cast on Pennsylvania Avenue wasn't nearly so big as he thought it was. He was on a committee of sorts because he had been in the Senate just a little while longer than somebody else, and because he was a good party man.
Now I come to a little phase in his character of which he was totally unaware. He honestly believed that he was democratic, whereas he was autocratic, both in public and private life. When the Senator got an idea in his head, it stuck; if it began to show signs of falling off, he restuck it. He believed it a mark of moral weakness to recant. Know him? Probably you do. He's a type.
Like many Americans in public life, when in doubt he twisted the tail of the British lion. It never failed to fill the gap and to bring profit in the form of encomiums. He was anti-British, and nothing less than a ton of dynamite would have succeeded in dislodging him from his archaic stand. He was eventually dislodged, however, but by an Idea. It is the Idea I'm going to tell you about.
When Germany invaded Belgium the Senator was quoted as saving that it was none of our affair. When the Lusitania went down, he recalled that the German Embassy had particularly warned the passengers. So, when we declared war upon Germany, he found himself on the wrong side of the fence. And there he stuck, on what he honestly thought to be principle when it was only force of habit. Then some editor dubbed him “The Thirteenth Senator,” and the thing was done. Bang he went, right into the middle of the national spot-light. But he was no fool; he recognized that this wasn't the old white calcium, that there was something balefully ultra-violet about it.
Heretofore the Senator had looked upon newspapers tolerantly. as necessary evils. Back home they interviewed him once a year, and in Washington the reporters for the Congressional Record never failed to report his speeches in full. In truth, he ran with the field, doing the party will obediently; innocuous. hard-working, a fairly good speaker, but outside of Washington and the home town, unknown and unsung.
Being a highbrow, I confess I don't know what “blooey”” means; but I suspect it's Reichstag for “busted dream.” Anyhow, the newspaper correspondents in Washington said that the Senator had gone “blooey”; and when any one of them called for an interview, he carried his gas-mask, his liquid-fire shield and his first-aid pack.
There is a quality of pathos in all this. The Senator was a kindly, honest man, he meant to do right; but he loved the sound of his voice not wisely but too well; and when he finally awoke, he was knee-deep in barb-wire entanglements.
YOU can't very well twist the tail of a lion that's standing between you and a few millions of howling hyenas. He saw his one reliable standby go to pot. He was as lonesome as a cactus in the desert. It takes genius to do the right thing at the right moment, and the Senator was an every-day sort of politician, whose idea of genius brought to mind some long-haired poet or fiddler. Boldness would have extricated him: but he possessed only a dogged courage. He had followed precedent so long that he had lost all initiative. He thought not in a groove but in a gully.
There were lively doings back home, too, to add to his discomfort. His constituents weren't all pro-Germans. The Senator was horrified to feel a tugging at his toga, and he looked about frantically for some way to rehitch it. To get back on solid ground without crawling,—that was the idea; something that would give him a good moral excuse to turn his coat rightside out.
The telephone companies were able to pay their quarterly dividends out of the Senator's messages alone. His desk was continually buried under them. And the worst of it was, he had to read them all with out the least idea what to reply. The Senator's Via Doloroso was certainly full of shell holes And a cartoon with a British lion in it sent the blood into his cheeks.
Some way out; hourly he prayed for some way out. He didn't realize it, but what he was asking the Lord for was a miracle. And the good Lord who watches over politicians as well as fools and drunken men (when he isn't taking down the Kaiser's speeches in shorthand), generously provided one.
Somebody kidnapped the Senator!
Snatched him right off the curb in front of his club! And he vanished from the haunts of men—and particularly the haunts of Senators for the duration of one hundred and sixty-eight hours.
Before I proceed further, I've decided to tell you the truth. This is unshamefully a love story. I can see you throw up your hands and cry that I have gone “blooey” with the Senator. All right.
Washington, as doubtless you know, is a city of grooves. I don't mean that the streets have grooves. What I have in mind is the city's political cosmos. If you have come to Washington to live, you slip into one groove or another, official or clerical. The Senator rolled around in his groove without the least idea that he was a bond-slave. He lived on the three points of a triangle, as it were—the Senate, his home, and his club.
The wretches who knocked in one side of this groove knew the Senator's habits; knew, among other things, that he was an inveterate auction player. As often as he could he went to his club—a dreadfully dignified institution not far from the White House—and played penny points until two or three in the morning. On those occasions the chauffeur—the scoundrel—would drive the Senator to the club, and leave the car—a gray limousine rather well known in Washington—at the curb, and the Senator would drive it home himself. His cronies, living in hotels nearby, always walked; and this fact made it doubly easy for the wretches who hid in the big car that memorable morning.
It was all over so quickly—and monstrously—that the Senator, who was no infant, permitted himself to be hauled into the thing, bound and blindfolded without so much as a gurgle of protest. Just as it happens in nightmares. The Senator woke up when he sensed the roll and bump of a country road. The car stopped. Once more hands were laid upon his [sacred] person, but this time to haul him into the seat. A lap-robe was thrown across his knees, for it was [cold]; and then the car went on into the night.
Up to this time the Senator had been too stunned and bewildered to think of anything but the desecration of the act. His mentality—what was in thinking order revolved around one almost inconceivable facts, that it had happened at the curb in front of the hotel. Soon, however, he began to get his thoughts together, so that he could think clearly with them. That is, he began to ask questions—mutely, of course—what the dickens it all meant—Money? He was in comfortable circumstances: but his bank-accounts were not of the sort to lure auto bandits. He groped about in a thousand blind alleys, but he couldn't pick up a glimmer of light anywhere. At length he gave up trying to solve the riddle, satisfied that the scoundrels would apprise him of their intentions all in good time. But right off the curb in front of the club! The (illegible text)lence of this procedure bit deeper than the actual deed itself. They hadn't even bandaged his mouth: they had merely trussed him up and blindfolded him. He wondered now why he hadn't thought to shout for help.
SDDENLY he spoke. “Whoever you are, if it's money—blackmail—not a single penny will you get out of me. I warn you right now. I'm not that type. Moreover, you'll pay for this if it takes ten years of my life.”
Nobody replied.
Some thirty miles out of Washington—the Senator decided—it was about that distance—the car stopped again. But this time the engine stopped also. Evidently they had arrived, A hand fell upon the Senator's shoulder. “We get out here.” said a muffled voice. “We'll untie your legs if you'll promise not to struggle. Otherwise we'll use a stretcher. Which is it to be?”
“I'll walk. But I've warned you.” The villains freed his legs but they did not touch his hands or the bandages over his eyes.
There was the chill of dawn in the air as the Senator, guided by his captors, stepped upon earth. He swayed awhile, for his legs were tingling with [running] blood. Five minutes later he was standing in a room. A hand went [roving] over him. This was followed by a scurry of feet, a banging door; and the Senator understood that he was alone. He tugged at his hands, and the rope slipped off magically. The meaning of the roving hands was clear. He tore the bandage from his eyes and looked around.
He was in an ordinary room in an ordinary house. Beyond this fact he could discover nothing in the mist-gray light of dawn. By degrees, however, things began to take form. But for the fact that the floor was bare, there were the comforts of home, even to a bathroom beyond. He staggered over to the cot and lay down, pulling the blankets over him. He fell asleep almost at once, this held ominous presage for the kidnappers to speculate upon. A man who could sleep under such (illegible text)tions was likely to prove a stubborn antagonist. When he awoke it was well into morning. He flung the blankets, rubbed his eyes and took inventory. Then he jumped to his feet and ran to the window—found it barred. He ran into the bathroom, to find a window barred also. His next move was toward the door. He eyed it malevolently for a moment, then (illegible text) back his foot and sent it crashing, flat, against a (illegible text). An ordinary door would have cracked. This door might have been steel, for all the impression his foot made.
“A new door made especially for the occasion,” he muttered, hopping about until the sting left his foot.
He limped back to the window. He saw a barnyard, with barns and sheds, dilapidated. There was no sign of life—domestic life. An abandoned farm; it was not a cheerful outlook. Probably, with the exception of his room, the rest of the house was empty—and far from anywhere. He returned to the bathroom (illegible text) a disturbing thought. What he saw assured him that the disturbing thought was going to be continuous. The tub was new, the pipes, the wash-bowl. All these signified that the realization of their hopes would require a considerable length of time.
On the way back to the cot a typewritten note, propped against a box of matches on the table, caught his eye. He seized upon it eagerly.
    You will be liberated when we are ready to liberate you.
    The windows are unlocked, but the bars are unbreakable. When the odor from the oil burner gets too strong, open a window.
    Be careful with the matches. You will be more or less alone during the day: and if you should accidentally start a fire, we could not help you.
    This is an abandoned farm, thirty-odd miles out of town, seven from the nearest railway and two from the nearest occupied farm.
    The door is reinforced by sheet iron.
    Open the cupboard between nine and nine-thirty in the morning, six and six-thirty at night. You will find food. Don't try to open it at any other time. It will be unlocked.”
The Senator, crushing the note in his fist, sent a furious glance at the cupboard door.
“The infernal scoundrels!”
What would they want? Not a word about ransom. He ran his fingers through his cowlick, helplessly. Not a single straw to catch hold of. It was maddening. He looked at his watch. It was a quarter after nine. He strode over to the cupboard door and violently yanked it back, hoping his captors had forgotten something. But they hadn't. The far end of the cupboard was barred and padlocked. The room beyond was the kitchen. A few new pans hung from the wall over the sink. The stove was new. There was a cot, too. It had been slept in.
On the cupboard shelf was a substantial breakfast, and after a short interval ef inspection the prisoner carried it to the table. He heard a sound. It was the cupboard door closing by some mechanical agency.
After breakfast, he lighted the oil burner, and took out his cigar case. Six cigars. Oh, well, the affair would be over before these were gone. Still, he wished he had his pipe. A clear Havana was satisfying only when you were physically and mentally comfortable. There was nothing like a brier when you were trying to figure out some abstruse problem.
At eleven o'clock he went to the window and threw it up.
“Help!” he called at the top of his lungs. He did not call a second time, however. Never had his voice sounded so ridiculous.
He swung about stormily, intending to stretch out on the cot once more. But he took no step forward.
The opposite wall! He hadn't noticed it before. He stared, literally dumfounded. Rows and rows of photographs and pen-portraits, and every infernal one of them—the Kaiser! All the pictures the Senator had ever seen of Wilhelm Hohenzollern, and many that he hadn't—here they were, rows and rows of them. He saw the Kaiser viewing a deer kill, a bird slaughter; saw him on his yacht with the white-whiskered von Tirpitz at his elbow; on horseback, in automobile, in coat of mail, in Tyrolian costume, in court regalia; as an admiral (of the Atlantic), as a colonel in a British regiment, as a Death Huzzar; with the Kaiserin, with the Crown Prince (see “Mr. Britling”), with Hindenburg and Ludendorf and Zeppelin and the Sultan, and Ferdinand of Bulgaria.
The Senator had seen many of these singly; but in battalions, in regiments—it stunned him! He also saw what he had never seen before, and it astonished him to recall the fact—the immeasurable vanity of yon military peacock. In the old days he had given the Kaiser's picture never anything more than a tolerant contempt. But this gallery! It was an illumination, a cold and terrible indictment. It was as if, with a stroke, a great moralist had laid bare the soul of the man. Not a human touch anywhere; nothing but I—I—I—me—me—me!
Mark me, I haven't said anywhere that the Senator was pro-German; I have merely mentioned the fact that he loved not wisely but too well the music of his own voice, and the only song he had learned to sing proficiently was the tail-twisting symphony. Outside of that he was a sound American. Only, in an evil moment, he had speciously reasoned that America was a comfortable place to live in, and that it would be folly to surrender comfort and well-being for turmoil and casualty lists. And then, having taken this stand, he didn't know how to get down. He had, you might say, kicked at a molehill to uncover a geyser—a mud-geyser. The newspapers started throwing it all the way from Maine to California.
I have said that this is a love story. Perhaps I should modify the statement and call it a story energized into being through love—two varieties, in fact, without which—for one variety reacted upon the other after the manner of fire upon powder—the Senator might still be floundering in the morass. For when he gazed about for a helping hand and saw only balled and threatening fists, his indignation at being so grossly misunderstood only drove him in deeper. Pigheaded? Well, maybe; but I sha'n't go further than to whisper it.
I don't know how long he stared at that singular gallery on the wall—perhaps a quarter of an hour. Then he exploded.
“Pah!”—long drawn out.
I wish his constituents (who were looking around for a new toga wearer about then) could have heard that simple ejaculative. It was a column of type in three letters.
Straightway he fell to pacing, an angry stride. Every now and then he would pause and pick out some picture of the Kaiser and glare at it. I might add with perfect truth that for an hour he forgot all about his own troubles, so wrought up was he by this new-found point of view. He saw the Kaiser for what he was. Conjointly, he saw the Senator, the tail-twister, the Fourth of July spouter, the standpatter for what he was.
“Pompous ass!”
The labor and patience back of this collection! Some pro-German of the most worshipful type had gathered it. A shrine; and no doubt the block had kowtowed every time he had entered this room. Kultur! Superior people! Windbags! The Senator was drawn closely to the wall at last. There were some photographs too small to see distinctly from where he stood. And then he made a thundering discovery. Away down in one corner were reproductions of the Twelve Wilfuls, and next in line was his own! Hypnotized, he stared. His! So that was what the pro-Germans thought of him and his efforts to keep the United States out of war! They looked upon him as one of them!
He went Berserker, modern style; that is, he ground his teeth, breathed hard, and rumbled mellifluously unprintable words. Taking out his penknife he slashed and ripped and gouged until that benign countenance he had so often contemplated with secret delight was obliterated. So that was what the scoundrels thought of him!
NEVER had he been pro-German. He had been passively anti-British. Why? He had never really asked himself that question before. Why had he always been twisting the lion's tail? This took some digging. Gradually the answer came to him. He had disliked the British because they had reiterated that the American husband went to dinner in his shirt-sleeves and his wife talked through her nose. The groundwork for this dislike went as far back as his young manhood. He had had the misfortune to read Dickens' “Uncommercial Traveler,” a book nobody reads to-day for two reasons, one, that it was written by a man with a grouch, and the other, that it doesn't apply to-day, and never did. But it had made a searing and lasting impression upon the mind of this embryo senator. After awhile, of course, what had originally been indignation became habit; and after habit has attached itself to you, you never give it close scrutiny unless some untoward event jars you into doing so.
Here in the east we Americans have been able to rid ourselves of a good deal of that antipathy. Contact. We understand now; it is an historical, a biological and a physiological fact that blood-relations are always rowing and quarreling and hair-pulling. But simply let some rank outsider come along and stick his oar in—G-r-r-r!
In the west, however, our vision was still obscured to this fact. The feeling up to the day we entered the war was passively anti-British. On the glorious Fourth, if you were a political spellbinder, you could always get a rousing cheer by twisting the lion's tail, Whether he felt it or not did not matter. Out there it was a part of your oath of office. How otherwise were we going to keep the fires of patriotism going? England—we couldn't jump on anybody else. We hadn't licked anybody else. Spain never counted anyhow.
The Senator, to give him his due, was a fair logician. Quite astonishingly he found himself applying logic analytically for the first time to his anti-British attitude. No doubt whatever, these wheels had been set into turning by the sight of his own photograph. Almost immediately he came forth from the accumulated fog of years and got a straight, square look at true perspectives. In parenthesis, the rapidity of this rearrangement of viewpoint may strike you as a bit incredible. But think it over; it will come to you as a perfectly logical sequence. Already he had been secretly stirred by the valor of the British. France had saved the democracies of the world, but the British had saved France. Dull indeed would be the man who could not see that. Again, that I am able to approach these cogitations of the Senator is due to the single fact that I am repeating only what I was told by the man who at that moment was watching the Senator through a peephole in the wall.
The Senator saw clearly that he hadn't hated the British; he only resented their purblind ignorance regarding the true greatness of America, resented their air of superiority which, however, they never attempted to ram down the American throat—a German mistake which is eventually going to cost Mr. Hohenzollern his throne and his court photographer. The Britisher, all said and done, had an elder brother's right to his superior airs; and the row was all in the family. If, verbally, and typographically, we Americans jumped on him, it was in the effort to convince him that his young brother was quite as big and lusty as he was.
With his chin in his collar and his hands behind his back, the Senator fell to pacing again, mulling over these facts and the event which had provoked them. In essence, it was the German interpretation of his conduct. They believed he was for the Germans as against the British. That the newspapers should bellow and thunder at him, dub him pacifist and traitor, that was politics; the newspapers had to have someone or something to thunder at, confound em! But that the Germans should believe him to be a Shadow Hun—the moral shock was tremendous. He did not realize it then, but he did later, that here was the solid ground he had been praying for. All he had to do now was to take the step.
“The infernal scoundrels!”
Then he chanced to see once more the cold iron bars in the windows; and he came down out of the clouds of retrospective psychoanalysis (Whew!).
Kidnapped, right off the curb in front of the club! Very well; they'd soon learn that they had caught a bear by the tail. His absence would be noted, and no doubt by now the whole police force and the secret service were on the hunt for him. A man so well known as himself could not vanish like this without causing a hubbub of large dimensions. Let the fools put a price on his liberty! He would laugh in their faces.
And suddenly he did laugh; yes, sir; but not in irony or malice; a real laugh, for something struck him just then as exceedingly funny. He wasn't nearly so mad at his abductors as he was at the sauerkrauter who had had the audacity to paste that photograph on the wall, under the one of the Kaiser hobnobbing with his blood-brother, the Sultan.
Oddly enough, that laugh brought a kind of peace to his tormented soul. He dropped back to normal, and wandered about his prison in the hope of finding some way out. At length he curled up his six feet two inches on the cot and fell asleep.
The odor of frying bacon eventually percolated through his dreams, and he awoke. It was dark. He struck a match and looked at his watch. It was ten minutes after six. He had slept for hours. He lit a candle and went over to the cupboard. Besides the evening meal, there was a corn-cob pipe and a cannister of tobacco. When the meal was over, he filled the pipe and began smoking. He was ready; let the rogues come forward with their proposition.
But nobody came that night. Nobody came the next day, nor the day following that. In fact, for one hundred and sixty-eight hours the Senator never laid eyes on a human being. But he did hear at times human sounds in the kitchen, and these gave him a grip on his dignity. He never shouted for help, though occasionally he fell to haranguing out loud, because he was able to find comfort in the sound of his voice. He began to understand—or he thought he did. They intended to break his spirit before they approached him. Very well; they'd see.
Sometimes he stared out of the window at the deserted barnyard, but sparrows were the only living things he ever saw. A cow or a chicken would have been balm to his strained eyesight. He had never noticed sparrows before—these Bolsheviki of the birds. Now he found himself interested in the study of them, and he acquired a good deal of knowledge in this pastime.
He wouldn't have minded it so much if there had been something to read or if he could have shut out that diabolical gallery on the wall. At night it seemed that the room was filled with Kaisers, rattling their sabres and posing and shaking their bloody hands. And they thought he was one of them!
But what in the world had happened to the police and the secret service! Were these rogues super-rogues, too clever for the police?
On the morning of the seventh day he found a bundle of newspapers on the cupboard shelf. He was so glad to see them that he knew, from now on, he would never again speak of editors and tar and feathers in the same breath. Furiously he spread them out, scanned the first page, the second, and so on to the last. He was astounded. Not a line about his disappearance! He had vanished, and the newspapers hadn't found it out!
He sat down on the edge of the cot, a newspaper dangling from his hand. Not a line! Gone for a week, and nobody had noticed or remarked it! Where was Kitty, the brave and valiant Kitty, who would have dug up earth and pulled down heaven to find him! Real terror laid hold of him. He had it; she, too, Was a prisoner somewhere, The absence of any news relative to his disappearance convinced him of this conclusively. Things grew pretty black for a moment. He didn't care about himself; he might be old, but he was tough. But Kitty, the apple of his eye! For the rest of that day he moved about automatically; little he did was actuated by mental process.
That night two men in masks and bandanas entered and informed the Senator that he was to be conveyed elsewhere. Would he be sensible and permit them to bind his hands and bandage his eyes, or would they have to muss him up a bit?
In short, at two o'clock in the morning the Senator found himself in front of his residence, staring blankly after the vanishing taxicab, probably the most utterly bewildered man in all this wide world.
THE day we declared war on Austria, there was no mentionable excitement in Washington. Nobody threw up hats; and the newsboys yelled no louder than usual. Nothing will ever excite us again—except sudden peace. We have shuddered all our shudders.
I wonder if it will be seditious for me to say that there is a touch of the Gilbertian in the way we declare war? I hope not. But we are so dreadfully cautious; we wouldn't hurt anybody's feelings for the world. Of course we are angry at Turkey and Bulgaria—in just the same way we'd be angry at someone who jostled us in the subway when we're trying to read the Curb report. But we shan't go any further for fear swart Bulgars might put muriatic acid in the shoe-blacking and the Turks asafetida in the pistachios.
I went to a famous restaurant for dinner that night, and in a cosy corner I saw Johnny Conroy and Kitty, about to give their orders. They insisted that I make the duo a trio, I was agreeable enough. To sit at a table with Kitty was an honor widely sought in Washington. I sha'n't try to describe her. I'll leave it to your imagination. Take down those jolly and tender old love poets—Prior, Suckling, Lovelace and Herrick—and pick out all the beautiful things they said to their Phyllises and Chloes, and you'll have a fair idea how lovely Kitty is.
I might call Johnny Conroy—that is, if you don't object to the hyphen in its milder form—I might call Johnny an Irish-Yankee. By so doing I draw his portrait with a single stroke. Irish in wit, humor, romance and courage; Yankee in shrewdness, invention and understanding: that's Johnny.
I've known him since the days he sold newspapers after school hours. When he was seven he started out to make himself what he is to-day. I don't know how he did it. I don't think anybody knows. His former teachers still shake their heads. High up in his studies and low down in his conduct; that's the way his teachers labeled him as they passed him on. Of course his low-down conduct was only youthful devilment, such as putting pepper in teacher's bouquet, onions in her desk and snowballs on her chair. That he did not go directly from high school to the gallows was a terrible blow to the prophets.
He and Kitty fell in love with each other in high school. It was perfectly logical that he should fall in love with Kitty; we all did; and most of us are still under the spell, not to mention the new reserves that are coming up daily from the army and the navy and the diplomatic corps. But that Kitty should fall in love with Johnny—that was quite as puzzling as Johnny's escape from the gallows. Kitty could have married a duke, a handsome duke, with barrels of money all his own; but she had set her heart on Johnny, and that was all there was to it.
I wonder if you have ever noticed how many beautiful women marry ugly men? I mean ugly in physiognomy. Personal magnetism, that's the word; and your handsome man rarely has that. It flowed from Johnny like ozone from a wireless operator's den. There was only one human being it did not seem able to reach—the Senator. I don't say the Senator wanted Kitty to marry the duke; I merely deduce that he did not want her to marry one of those infernal, impudent and improvident newspaper men.
I'm an Easterner now by adoption; but the Senator, Kitty, Johnny and I, we all hail from the same home town, and are tolerably well acquainted. But Johnny knew the Senator better than that individual knew himself, and I shall proceed to prove it.
It's clever of you to think of the Blue Book, but you will not find therein any key to the Senator's identity. Certainly—for obvious reasons—I'm not going to commit myself. Kitty might be his daughter, or his niece, or his ward. I warned you in the beginning that I was a camoufleur.
When Johnny came back to Washington, early last summer, he was a famous young man. He had seen all the fronts, he had interviewed nearly all the great generals, he had witnessed the fall of Warsaw, the defense of Verdun, and the Somme push. But in the early days of the war you did not see his name at the head of his despatches; he was simply an accurate chronicler of the war, day by day. What Johnny delivered were facts—the facts that historians are going to refer to when they advance their opinions. But he had a way of delivering these facts that was quite as interesting as the facts themselves—a gripping, compelling style. You saw the fact as he saw it; and that's genius.
One day he wrote an article on the ambulance units back of Verdun—the American contingent. A great magazine gave him a thousand dollars for it, turned their schedule upside down and printed it three months after acceptance. Johnny's boss—the head of a great association of newspapers—read that article, and straightway the order went forth to top all of Johnny's future despatches with Johnny Conroy's name. A wave of the hand, and Johnny became a household word up and down the land.
Two months after our declaration of war, Johnny turned up in Washington, full of pep and patriotism and ozone—only to be turned down in all directions because he was near-sighted and twenty-six pounds under weight. It nearly broke his heart. He had seen so much, and actually knew so much, he had been under fire so many times, that it was perfectly natural for him to believe that they would snap him up at once. Instead they snapped their fingers, they snapped in all directions but up.
Johnny was about five feet eight inches, lathy, tough of fiber and sandy-haired. He and his hair were symbolical: you couldn't keep either of them down. His eyes were so alertly and brilliantly blue that the Mandarin spectacles seemed to be riding his bridged nose merely to give a scholarly send-off to a facial ensemble the Lord had originally intended for merry-andrews only. But you always looked at him twice. The second look urged you to get close up, to hear that laugh which was always threatening; and if you were lucky enough to hear it, you then wanted to throw your arm across his shoulders and hobnob. Ask the Tommies and the Poilus; they'll tell you.
Not being able to get into the war with a musket, Johnny had to fall back upon his pen. Shortly he would be going to Italy, to cheer up Pietro, Giuseppe and Dominico. Meantime, it occurred to him that in the interval he might turn his attention to his love affair, and get it straightened out, once and for all. Aside from Kitty's patent love, the affair wasn't at all prosperous. One of Kitty's stipulations was that he must win over the Senator wholly.
It looked easy enough to Johnny. He was a famous war correspondent, something of a literary lion, and one of the best paid writing men of the day. But if Johnny's memory was so short on some things, the Senator's was not. You see, Johnny had formerly been among other things the Washington correspondent for a home-town paper not particularly in love with the Senator's ideas of draping the toga. Johnny had never been malicious, but his quiet irony had often considerably ruffled the Senator, who believed that the dignity of his office should have put him beyond newspaper attacks. (The autocratic idea I told you about.) The Senator's recent experiences—vituperation from Maine to California—had not served to soften him toward Johnny, not to any appreciable extent.
Nearly every afternoon Johnny dropped in to tea. Then one day he and the Senator came to words, sharp and biting, on both sides a bit unjust. Johnny was definitely informed that his room was preferable to his company—as they say out west. That was the Senator's mistake. An ironical Johnny was a tough enough customer, but a thoroughly angry one—watch out! He stormed down the steps. Then he saw the gray limousine. He eyed it speculatively for a space—and laughed. He turned and waved his hand gaily at the window where Kitty stood (with tears in her eyes, no doubt), and went on up the street whistling—“Oh, boy, where do we go from here?”
“By the way, Johnny,” I said, as we touched off our cigars, “what's struck the old boy? They tell me the way he jumped on Austria to-day was scandalous. Wanted to lug in Turkey and Bulgaria. Why, he's actually bulling the war!”
Johnny laughed; but Kitty's eyes filled.
“Seven days,” she said, “without seeing a human being! And nothing to look at but those dreadful pictures on the wall!”
“You laid down the proposition, and it was my move. Besides, you ought to be singing pæns of joy.”
“I am, Johnny; but it seemed cruel.”
“Nonsense! Why, he's the happiest old rooster in Washington to-day. He's wading in all on his own for the first time in his life. He's swimming without a life-preserver.”
“What the dickens are you two talking about?” I demanded.
“The limousine gave me the idea.”
“The limousine!”
“But it took days to bring Kitty around to my point of view. Of course without Kitty and the chauffeur—a tophole chap—I couldn't have put it over. I kidnapped the old boy.”
“Good heavens!”
“Yes, sir. I bet my last dollar on a blind horse with good legs. I've always had a pretty good idea what the old boy was like, inside, sown under the political moss and chickweed and wild mustard. For years he's been meandering about in a fog of his own creation—vocal.”
“Johnny!”—from Kitty.
“Well, it's the truth. Ever see a fence-post in a fog? Looks as big as a barn until you get close up and have a good look. That was how the old boy saw Great Britain. If you talk long enough on any subject, you'll end in believing it. Fact is, the old boy woke up recently and discovered that he had interned himself in Holland. Or if you want it in plain States—in Dutch. He was like the Irishman in the story. 'Lave me at 'im—but plaze hang ont' me coat tails!” In the Senator's case, nobody offered to hold his coat tails. He wanted to be set straight, but he was too pig-headed to call for help.”
“You should not call him that!” flashed out Kitty.
“All right,” Johnny agreed. “Slip of the tongue. I should have said indisposition to reason—incompatibility of eyesight.”
“But why the kidnapping?”
“When I went over to France I had about as much faith in psychology as I had in the fake trance mediums I used to expose. I thought psychology highbrow stuff for college professors to play with. But, Lord love you, I learned some things over there. Man, it's the greatest thing in the world. You win battles with it; you jack up the knees of nations with it when they begin to get panicky. It's miracle with a new name, Psychology—'the science of the phenomena of the mind,' says the dictionary; but there's a lot more to it. That appeared to me the only dope to apply. Smother him with the Kaiser idea. Give him a glimmer of what the Germans thought of his stand. Make him roarin', fightin' mad. I might have talked and argued with him until I was deaf, dumb and blind, and never got anywhere.
“On the day he told me never to darken his doors again, what do you suppose the row was about? British gold! He accused every newspaper in the country; they were all being bought. I lost my temper and barked that the only British gold we could lay our hands on came through the advertising agencies of some English brands of soap and pills. He told the butler that I wanted my hat.”
“And what did you do?” I asked Kitty.
“I cried. What else could I do?”
“Took me about two weeks to rig up the scenery,” went on Johnny. “He thought we were ordinary crooks, out to separate him from his bank-book. It was the sight of his own photograph that turned the trick.”
“But his absence—how did you account for that?”
“He had a slight cold and had gone into the country to cure it,” Johnny grinned.
“What happened when he got home?”
“He came into my room on tiptoe,” said Kitty. “Turned on the light and stared at me. I didn't dare move, though I did peep from the corner of my eye. He rubbed his chin and rumpled his cowlick—as he always does when he's bewildered. Presently he turned out the light and stole away. When I came down to breakfast, he was already at the table, reading the morning paper. I was so frightened that I could hardly stand; but I went around and kissed him. He stood up and held me off at arms' length. And then——”
“Well, and then?” I cried excitedly.
“He let out a roar of laughter, and I fell on his shoulder and cried all the tears I'd been holding back for all week.”
“But he never opened his head about the affair; not a single word; and Kitty and I didn't know whether we'd won out or not. Two nights later I bucked up and presented myself. The butler let me in, and by the sour look of him I saw that to his mind I was still a personæ au gratin. I marched straight into the study and stopped before the desk, I didn't say a word; just laid down the mask and the bandana. I had to show him I was a sportsman.”
“Johnny,” said I, “that was a stroke. To give the old boy a chance to be magnanimous!”
“I had that in mind. More psychology. I was ready to pay the penalty. Either I had won or lost; and if I had lost, the name of the jail wouldn't matter. Well, the old boy picked up his pipe, filled it, lighted it deliberately, and stared dreamily through the smoke—apparently at nothing. My shoes kept getting larger and larger and my clothes lost shape. By and by he rose, took the mask and the bandana over to the fireplace and dropped them into the flames. He came back to the desk and touched the button. Not a word from either of us, mind you, during all this time. The butler came in joyous. He had my hat. I saw Johnny Conroy going through life all alone. 'Tell Miss Kitty I wish to see her.' Honestly, I could hear my clothes rustling as they readjusted themselves to my handsome form! Kitty came in on the run.”
“I didn't either! I was too scared to run.”
“Says the old boy to Kitty: 'Do you really want to marry this man?'”
“I told him,” interpolated Kitty, “that I would never marry any other. 'Well, marry him, then. He's not such a fool as he looks.'”
“And that was the only revenge he took,” said Johnny. “Psychology is great stuff.
I raised Kitty's beautiful hand and inspected the brilliant white which adorned one of her fingers.
“How about the science of the phenomenons of the heart?” I asked
“Well,” said Johnny, with his engaging smile, “perhaps that did have something to do with it!”
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1930.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1932, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 92 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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