Also the labor press service was coming, with Dan Irving’s Washington letter and other news from the oil scandal. And very soon Bunny saw what Verne had meant by predicting the collapse of the investigation. The whole power of the attorney-general’s office had been turned against the insurgent senators. Barney Brockway, backed against the wall, was fighting for the life of himself and his “Ohio gang.” Secret service agents had raided the offices of the senators conducting the investigation and rifled their papers; they were raking up scandals against these men, sending women to try to “get” them, preparing a series of “frame-ups” in their home states—every trick they had rehearsed on the Communists and the I.W.W. now applied to the exposers of the oil steal. Presently they had one of the senators under indictment; and just as Verne had predicted, the big newspapers came to their senses, and took the crimes of the oil men off the front page, and put the crimes of the reds in their place.
There was quite a bunch of “magnates” now in exile; Fred Orpan, and John Groby, and all those who had formed the Canadian corporation, and distributed two million dollars of bribes in Washington. Dad and Bunny would lunch with them, and they would have confidential telegrams, and it was curious to watch their reactions. They all made a joke of it—“Hello, old jailbird!” would be their greeting; but underneath they were eaten with worry. Among other developments, the new President was preparing to throw them overboard, in anticipation of next fall’s elections. He, Cautious Cal, had never had any oil stains on him—oh, no! oh, no! The oil men would jeer—the little man had sat in the cabinet all the time the leases were being put through, he had been the bosom friend of all of them. The first time any of Verne’s crowd enjoyed the exposures was when the Senate committee began digging into a file of telegrams which showed the immaculate one as heavily smeared as the other politicians; he had been sending secret messages, trying to stave off the exposure, trying to save this one and that. But now he was getting ready to kick their agents out of the cabinet, and how they did despise him! “The little hop-toad,” was Verne’s regular description of the Chief Magistrate of his country!
VIII
Dad didn’t get well as quickly as they had hoped. Apparently the cold damp darkness of London was not good for him, so Bunny took him to Paris. Bertie relented, and met them at the station; even her husband risked his diplomatic career, and everything was polite and friendly for a few hours. But then the brother and sister got to arguing; Bertie wanted Bunny not to investigate the Socialist movement of France, at least, and Bunny said he had already promised Rachel an article about it. There was a “youth” paper here that was on their exchange list, and there was to be a Socialist meeting that very week which Bunny was going to attend. Bertie said that settled it, he would never meet the Prince de This and the Duchesse de That, and Bunny was so ignorant, he didn’t know what he was missing.
Paris was wet and cold also, and Dad had a cough, and sat around in a hotel lobby and was so forlorn it made your heart ache. He would let you drive him around, and would look at public buildings—yes, it was very fine, a beautiful city; people had been working on it a long while, we hadn’t had time to get anything so good at home. But all the while you could see that Dad didn’t really care about it; he didn’t like this strange people with their jabber, the men looked like popinjays and the women immoral, and people were always trying to pass off lead money on you, and the food had fancy fixings so you couldn’t tell what it tasted like, and why in the world Americans wanted to come chasing over here was beyond Dad’s power to imagine.
It was decided to take him to the Riviera till spring. And here they were settled in a villa looking over the Mediterranean, and there was sunshine at last, a pale copy of California. Bertie came for a visit, and then Aunt Emma to keep house for them, and it was a sort of a home. Aunt Emma and Bertie got along beautifully, because the elder lady never failed to admire the right things—oh, how perfectly lovely, how refined and elegant, the most magnificent buildings, the most lifelike paintings, the most fashionable costumes! Aunt Emma would meet the Prince de This and the Duchesse de That, and never injure the diplomatic career of her nephew-in-law!
Bunny got himself a tutor, and rapidly unlearned the French he had acquired at Southern Pacific. Of course he had to pick out a Socialist tutor, a weird-looking, moth-eaten young man who did not seem to have had a square meal in many years—a poet, he was reported to be. Other Socialists came round, and a few Communists and Anarchists and Syndicalists and hybrids of these; they wore loose ties, or none at all, and hair hanging into their eyes, and looked to Dad and Aunt Emma as if they were spying out the premises with intentions of burglary. Even here there were radical meetings, on this Coast of Gold, where the rich of Europe gambled and played; and poor devils dangling always on the verge of starvation roused the pity of a young American millionaire, who lived in luxury and had a guilty conscience. When it was ascertained that he would lend money, there were some to ask, and most of them were frauds—but how was a young American millionaire to know?
Aunt Emma had been escorted from Angel City by Dad’s private secretary, bringing two big briefcases full of reports and
