battered, and a smell that beat the monkey cage at the zoological gardens.

T he

prisoners were kept penned up in this place for several weeks, and all the time
more were being brought in; there were so many that the women had to be
stored in the toilets. Many of the prisoners fell ill, or pretended to fall ill, and
several of them went insane, or pretended to go insane, and several of the died,
or pretended to die. And of course the parlor Reds and sympathizers were busy
outside making a terrible fuss about it. They had no more papers, and could not
hold any more meetings, and when they tried to circulate literature the postoffice authorities tied them up; but still somehow they managed to get publicity,
and Peters under cover men would report to him who was doing this work, and
Peter would arrange to have more raids and more batches of prisoner brought in.
In one of the bomb-plots which had been unveiled in the East they had
discovered some pink paper, used either for printing leaflets, or for wrapping
explosives, one could not be sure. Anyhow, the secret agencies with which
Guffey was connected had distributed samples of this paper over the country,
and any time the police wanted to finish some poor devil; they would find this
deadly pink paper in his possession, and the newspapers would brand him as
one of the group of conspirators who were sending infernal machines thru the
mails. Peter was so busy these days that he missed several nights sleep, and
hardly even stopped to eat. He had his own private room, where the prisoners
were brought for examination, and he had half a dozen men under his orders to
do the strong arm work. It was his task to extract from these prisoners
admissions which would justify their being sent to prison if they were citizens, or
being deported if they were aliens. There was of course seldom any way to
distinguish between citizens and aliens; you just had to take a chance on it,
proceeding on the certainty that all were dangerous. Many years ago, when Peter
had been working for Pericles Priam, they had spent several months in a
boarding house, and you could tell when there was going to be beef-steak for
dinner, because you heard the cook pounding it with the potato-masher to
tender it up; and Peter learned this phrase, and now used the process upon his
alien Reds. When they came into the room, Peters men would fall upon them
and beat them and cuff them, knocking them about from one fist to another. If
they were stubborn and would not come across, Peter would take them in hand
himself, remembering how successful Guffey had been in getting things out of
him by the twisting of wrists and the bending back of fingers. It was amazing
how clever and subtle some of these fellows were. They were just lousy foreign
laborers, but they spent all their spare time reading; you would find large
collections of books in their rooms when you made your raids, and they knew
exactly what you wanted, and would parry your questions. Peter would say:
Youre an Anarchist, arent you? And the answer would be: Im not an
Anarchist in the sense of the word you mean as if there could be two meanings
of the wordAnarchist! Peter would say, You believe in violence, do you not?
And then the fellow would become impertinent: It is you who believe in
violence, look at my face that you have smashed. Or Peter would say, You
dont like this government, do you? And the answer would be, I always liked it
until it treated me so badly:all kinds of evasions like that, and there would be a
stenographer taking it down, and unless Peter could get something into the

record that was a confession, it would not be possible to deport that Red. So
Peter would fall upon him and tender him up until he would answer what he
was told to answer; or maybe Peter would prepare an interview as he wanted it
to be, and the detectives would grab the mans hand and make him sign it; or
maybe Peter would just sign it himself. These were harsh methods, but there was
no way to help it, the Reds were so cunning. They were secretly undermining the
government, and was the government to lie down and admit its helplessness?
The answer of 100% Americanism was thundered from every wood and templed
hill in the country; also from every newspaper office. The answer