They came to the chief corner of the town. A little way down the street, beside the red brick wall of the Congress Hotel, someone was talking from the elevation of a box, surrounded by a jeering gang.
“What they picking on that fella that’s talking for? They better let him alone!” rejoiced Elmer, throwing off Jim’s restraining hand, dashing down the side street and into the crowd. He was in that most blissful condition to which a powerful young man can attain—unrighteous violence in a righteous cause. He pushed through the audience, jabbed his elbow into the belly of a small weak man, and guffawed at the cluck of distress. Then he came to a halt, unhappy and doubting.
The heckled speaker was his chief detestation, Eddie Fislinger, president of the Terwillinger College Y.M.C.A., that rusty-haired gopher who had obscenely opposed his election as president.
With two other seniors who were also in training for the Baptist ministry, Eddie had come over to Cato to save a few souls. At least, if they saved no souls (and they never had saved any, in seventeen street meetings) they would have handy training for their future jobs.
Eddie was a rasping and insistent speaker who got results by hanging to a subject and worrying it, but he had no great boldness, and now he was obviously afraid of his chief heckler, a large, blond, pompadoured young baker, who bulked in front of Eddie’s rostrum and asked questions. While Elmer stood listening, the baker demanded:
“What makes you think you know all about religion?”
“I don’t pretend to know all about religion, my friend, but I do know what a powerful influence it is for clean and noble living, and if you’ll only be fair now, my friend, and give me a chance to tell these other gentlemen what my experience of answers to prayer has been—”
“Yuh, swell lot of experience you’ve had, by your looks!”
“See here, there are others who may want to hear—”
Though Elmer detested Eddie’s sappiness, though he might have liked to share drinks with the lively young baker-heckler, there was no really good unctuous violence to be had except by turning champion of religion. The packed crowd excited him, and the pressure of rough bodies, the smell of wet overcoats, the rumble of mob voices. It was like a football lineup.
“Here, you!” he roared at the baker. “Let the fellow speak! Give him a chance. Whyn’t you pick on somebody your own size, you big stiff!”
At his elbow, Jim Lefferts begged, “Let’s get out of this, Hellcat. Good Lord! You ain’t going to help a gospel-peddler!”
Elmer pushed him away and thrust his chest out toward the baker, who was cackling, “Heh! I suppose you’re a Christer, too!”
“I would be, if I was worthy!” Elmer fully believed it, for that delightful moment. “These boys are classmates of mine, and they’re going to have a chance to speak!”
Eddie Fislinger bleated to his mates, “Oh, fellows, Elm Gantry! Saved!”
Even this alarming interpretation of his motives could not keep Elmer now from the holy zeal of fighting. He thrust aside the one aged man who stood between him and the baker—bashing in the aged one’s derby and making him telescope like a turtle’s neck—and stood with his fist working like a connecting-rod by his side.
“If you’re looking for trouble—” the baker suggested, clumsily wobbling his huge bleached fists.
“Not me,” observed Elmer and struck, once, very judiciously, just at the point of the jaw.
The baker shook like a skyscraper in an earthquake and caved to the earth.
One of the baker’s pals roared, “Come on, we’ll kill them guys and—”
Elmer caught him on the left ear. It was a very cold ear, and the pal staggered, extremely sick. Elmer looked pleased. But he did not feel pleased. He was almost sober, and he realized that half a dozen rejoicing young workmen were about to rush him. Though he had an excellent opinion of himself, he had seen too much football, as played by denominational colleges with the Christian accompaniments of kneeing and gouging, to imagine that he could beat half a dozen workmen at once.
It is doubtful whether he would ever have been led to further association with the Lord and Eddie Fislinger had not Providence intervened in its characteristically mysterious way. The foremost of the attackers was just reaching for Elmer when the mob shouted, “Look out! The cops!”
The police force of Cato, all three of them, were wedging into the crowd. They were lanky, mustached men with cold eyes.
“What’s all this row about?” demanded the chief.
He was looking at Elmer, who was three inches taller than anyone else in the assembly.
“Some of these fellows tried to stop a peaceable religious assembly—why, they tried to roughhouse the Reverend here—and I was protecting him,” Elmer said.
“That’s right, Chief. Reg’lar outrage,” complained Jim.
“That’s true, Chief,” whistled Eddie Fislinger from his box.
“Well, you fellows cut it out now. What the hell! Ought to be ashamed yourselves, bullyragging a Reverend! Go ahead, Reverend!”
The baker had come to, and had been lifted to his feet. His expression indicated that he had been wronged and that he wanted to do something about it, if he could only find out what had happened. His eyes were wild, his hair was a muddy chaos, and his flat floury cheek was cut. He was too dizzy to realize that the chief of police was before him, and his fumbling mind stuck to the belief that he was destroying all religion.
“Yah, so you’re one of them wishy-washy preachers, too!” he screamed at Elmer—just as one of the lanky policemen reached out an arm of incredible length and nipped him.
The attention of the crowd warmed Elmer, and he expanded in it, rubbed his mental hands in
