Then a painful thing happened. There was a newspaper publisher in a western city, one of those old pirates of the frontier type, who had begun life as a bartender, and delighted to tell how he would toss a silver dollar up to the ceiling, and if it stuck it belonged to the boss and if it came down it belonged to him. By this means he had got rich, and now he owned a paper, and he got onto this scandal of the oil leases. There came to him a man who had some old claim to part of the Sunnyside lease, and the publisher made a deal with this man to go halves, and then he served notice on Verne that they had to have a million dollars. Verne told him to go to hell, and the result was, this newspaper opened up with front page exposures of the greatest public steal in history. And this was no obscure Socialist sheet, this was one of the most widely read newspapers in the country, and copies were being mailed to all members of Congress, and to other newspapers—gee, it was awful! Dad and Verne and the rest held anxious conferences, and suffered agonies of soul; in the end they had to give up to the old pirate, and paid him his million in cold cash—and the great newspaper lost all its interest in the public welfare!
When Bunny was a youngster, he had read the stories of Captain Mayne Reid, and he remembered one scene—a fish-hawk capturing a fish, and then a swift eagle swooping down from the sky and taking the prize away. Just so it was in the oil-game—a world of human hawks and eagles!
VII
Bunny no longer felt comfortable about going to the Monastery. But Vee would not let him quit, she argued and pleaded; Annabelle was so kind and good, and would be so hurt if he let horrid political quarrels break up their friendship! Bunny answered—he knew Verne must be sore as the dickens; and imagine Verne being tactful or considerate of a guest!
When you went out into society and refused to take a drink, you caused everybody to begin talking about prohibition. In the same way, when you did not join in denunciation of the “insurgent” senators in Washington, you caused someone to comment on your sympathy for bomb-throwers. The little bunch of “reds” in Congress were interfering with legislation much desired by the rich, and they were denounced at every dinner-table, including Vernon Roscoe’s. The great Schmolsky said, what the hell were they after, anyhow? And Verne replied “Ask Jim Junior—he’s chummy with them,” Annabelle had to jump in and cry, “No politics! I won’t have you picking on my Bunny!”
Then, later in the evening, when Harvey Manning got drunk, he sat on Bunny’s knee, very affectionate, as he always was, and shook one finger in front of Bunny’s nose and remarked, “You gonna tell’m ’bout me?” And when Bunny inquired, “Tell who, Harve?” the other replied, “Those muckrakin friends o yours. I aint gonna have ’em tellin on me! My ole uncle fines out I get drunk he’ll cut me out o his will.” So Bunny knew that his intimacy with the enemy had been a subject of discussion at the Monastery!
There had been a series of violent outbreaks in Angel City. The members of the American Legion, roused by the “red revolutionary raving,” had invaded the headquarters of the I.W.W. and thrown the members down the stairs, and thrown their typewriters and desks after them. Since the courts wouldn’t enforce law and order, these young men were going to attend to it. They had raided bookstores which sold books with red bindings, and dumped the books into the street and burned them. They had beaten up newsdealers who were selling radical magazines. Also they were taking charge of the speakers the public heard—if they didn’t like one, they notified the owner of the hall, and he hastened to break his contract.
John Groby, one of Verne’s oil associates from Oklahoma, was at the dinner-table, and he said, that was the way to handle the rattlesnakes. Groby may not have known that one of the snakes was sitting across the way from him, so Bunny took no offense, but listened quietly. “That’s the way we did the job at home, we turned the Legion loose on ’em and cracked their heads, and they moved on to some other field. You’re too polite out here, Verne.”
Annabelle had put Bunny beside her, so that she might protect him from assaults. Now she started telling him about her new picture, A Mother’s Heart. Such a sweet, old-fashioned story! Bunny would call it sentimental, perhaps, but the women would just love it, and it gave her a fine part. Also Vee had a clever scenario for her new picture, The Golden Couch. Quite a fetching title, didn’t Bunny think? And all the time, above the soft murmur of Annabelle’s voice, Bunny heard the loud noise of John Groby blessing the Legion. Bunny longed to ask him what the veterans would say to the “Ohio gang,” stealing the funds from their disabled buddies.
Someone mentioned another stunt of the returned soldiers—their setting up a censorship of moving pictures. One Angel City theatre had started to show a German film, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and this Hun invasion had so outraged the Legion men, they had put on their uniforms and blockaded the theatre, and beaten up the people who tried to get in. Tommy Paley laughed—the courage of each of those veterans had been fortified by a five-dollar bill, contributed by the association of motion picture producers! They didn’t want foreign films that set them too high a standard!
Then Schmolsky.
