“Oh, by the way, Rook,” said Mr. Gowler, “couldn’t you take dinner with us next Thursday? The governor of the State, two United States senators, a few congressmen, and a professor will be there. They’d like to know you.”
Saunders Rook riffled through his date-book and said he might be late, as he had two teas and a talk before a Brooklyn club scheduled for that day, but that he would try to get to the dinner in time for the dessert. Mr. Gowler was greatly obliged to him.
At the dinner at Keable Gowler’s Fifth Avenue house the attention paid to Saunders Rook by the governor, the senators, the assorted congressmen, the professor, and their wives would have flattered a person even less susceptible than he. In trumpet tones Mr. Gowler announced him:
“This is Mr. Saunders Rook, one of my most valued associates. On the Fourth of July, as a protest against our civilization, he will commit suicide in Washington Square.”
“Central Park,” said Saunders Rook, bowing modestly.
“Not really?” they all said in breathless chorus.
“Yes, really,” said Saunders Rook.
He talked, and they listened. He had been expanding the idea, and had worked up an indictment or two against civilization.
Over his after-dinner liqueur the governor declared that, if necessary, he would do the only thing he could think of to prevent Saunders Rook from robbing the State of so valued a citizen, and that was call out the militia. He was not prepared to say, he remarked darkly, how he should employ it, for he was fresh in the gubernatorial chair. However, he knew that a governor has the power to call out the militia, and he was interested to learn what would happen if he did call it out. Surely the case of Saunders Rook, he maintained, warranted the step.
The senator from Alabama promised that he would see the President at once, and volunteered to get the cooperation of Federal troops to help the governor’s militia. Saunders Rook listened, sphinx-like, outwardly impassive, inwardly agog. The senator from North Dakota said that it had not before been called to his attention that the state of civilization in these United States was sufficiently rotten to cause a man of his good friend Rook’s high type to plan so violent a protest, but now that it had been called to his attention, something should be done about it by the Senate. Political considerations, he said, prevented him from committing himself to any definite program, but this he would do: he would rush back to Washington on the morrow and start a senatorial investigation into civilization at which Saunders Rook would be the chief witness.