Dangerous Days

By the end of the week, however, there was no news of Anna. She had not

returned to the mill. Rudolph's friend on the detective force had found

no clew, and old Herman had advanced from brooding by the fire to long

and furious wanderings about the city streets.

He felt no remorse, only a growing and alarming fury. He returned at

night, to his cold and unkempt house, to cook himself a frugal and

wretched meal. His money had run very low, and with true German

stubbornness he refused to draw any from the savings bank.

Rudolph was very busy. There were meetings always, and to the little

inner circle that met behind Gus's barroom one night later in March, he

divulged the plan for the destruction of the new Spencer munition plant.

"But--will they take him back?" one of the men asked. He was of better

class than the rest, with a military bearing and a heavy German accent,

for all his careful English.

"Will a dog snatch at a bone?" countered Rudolph. "Take him back!

They'll be crazy about it."

"He has been there a long time. He may, at the last, weaken."

But Rudolph only laughed, and drank more whisky of the German agent's

providing.

"He won't weaken," he said. "Give me a few days more to find the girl,

and all hell won't hold him."

On the Sunday morning after the President had been before Congress, he

found Herman dressed for church, but sitting by the fire. All around

him lay the Sunday paper, and he barely raised his head when Rudolph

entered.

"Well, it's here!" said Rudolph.

"It has come. Yes."

"Wall Street will be opening champagne to-day."

Herman said nothing. But later on he opened up the fountain of rage in

his heart. It was wrong, all wrong. We had no quarrel with Germany.

It was the capitalists and politicians who had done it. And above all,

England.

He went far. He blamed America and Americans for his loss of work, for

Anna's disappearance. He searched his mind for grievances and found

them in the ore dust on the hill, which killed his garden; in the

inefficiency of the police, who could not find Anna; in the very

attitude of Clayton Spencer toward his resignation.

And on this smoldering fire Rudolph piled fuel Not that he said a great

deal. He worked around the cottage, washed dishes, threw pails of water

on the dirty porches, swept the floor, carried in coal and wood. And

gradually he began to play on the older man's vanity. He had had great

influence with the millworkers. No one man had ever had so much.