Common Cause: A Novel of the War in America

by Samuel Hopkins Adams

“Good-bye the easy snap,” added another. “The old Guardian’s sold again.”

“Much you know about it,” retorted Buddy, stoutly and scornfully.

But the statement struck a chill to his ardent soul. Could it be that he was too late? Surely the deal could n’t have been fixed up overnight!

On Mr. Higman’s official desk was a heap of mail which, in size, would have done credit to a correspondence school. It was Mr. Higman’s present professional duty, interrupted by his brief leave of absence, to sift out the anonymous communications, with special reference to those of a spicy and murderous character, and deliver them to his chief. To Jeremy’s journalistic instinct, it had occurred as a sprightly idea to make up a special page for publication of these epistolary efforts. It would be interesting to his readers, and would serve further to enlighten them as to the extent and virulence of local German sentiment. Perhaps, too, it would check the flood. So Mr. Higman sorted and divided and contributed marginal marks, and finally delivered a large packet upon the editorial desk for the Boss’s professional consideration, when he should return that evening, which, his young aide felt sure he would do, even though it was Saturday. Few, indeed, were the evenings that did not see a light in the den, close up to midnight.

Doctors’ protests to the contrary, notwithstanding, Jeremy came back to the office that evening, after a hasty dinner. Overwork might be bad for that second-rate and shop-worn heart of his. Loafing on the job would be a thousand times worse. That was one thing which his temper positively refused to endure. As he ran through the pile of letters, terminating in such suggestive and enticing signatures as “Vengeance,” “Outraged justice,” “Member of the Firing Squad,” “Old Scores,” or (with appropriate and blood-curdling commitments) those old familiars, “X,” “Y,” and “Z,” he realized that the threats were getting on his nerves. He was becoming bored, with an unendurable, deadly boredom, at their repetition. Nor could he deny to himself that they were affecting his actions, though in minor respects. For a week he had gone a block out of his way at night, not to avoid but to pass a certain unlighted alley-mouth wherein, so “Well-Wisher” and “Warned-in-Time,” two (or perhaps one) depressing correspondents had informed him, in feminine handwriting, lurked his intended murderers. Silly though it was to pay any heed, he had to do it. He had to prove to himself the futility of any such intimidation. In vain had Andrew Galpin tried to prevail upon him to carry a revolver. It was the common-sense, reasonable, unromantic thing to do. Jeremy would n’t do it. He would n’t even have one in his desk. But there were times in the long solitary evenings at the office when the unexplained creaking of floor-boards, or that elfin gunnery carried on by invisible sharpshooters in the woodwork of old buildings during nights of changing temperatures, produced sudden effects upon his handwriting which the two-fingered typist, Mr. Burton Higman, subsequently found disconcerting.

On this Saturday evening, he had set aside nearly enough epistolary blood-curdlers for his make-up, and was deleting certain anatomical references unsuited to fireside consumption from a rather illiterate but highly expressive letter, when he became aware that a draft from below was driving some papers along the hallway outside. A high wind off the lakes was making clamor through the street, but it had no business inside The Guardian building, and could n’t have got there unless some one had opened the front door. He listened for footsteps on the stairs. Nothing. He returned to his editing.

“Getting your throte cut some dark nigt is too Good for you,” his correspondent had written, and suggested, in unpolished terms, disagreeable and lethal substitutes of almost surgical technicality.

Jeremy was Bowdlerizing these, when he stopped and put down his pen. The floor-boards in the hallway were creaking intermittently but progressively. Through the noise of the wind he thought that he could catch fragments of a whispered colloquy. Then, quite plainly, there was a retreating tread, which, however, left something. What? An infernal machine? Infernal machines do not linger, striving and forcing themselves to the determining action; theirs is a simple and direct method. And Jeremy could feel, through the noisy darkness, the struggle of a will, agonizingly fighting for expression, through dread. Himself, he was not conscious of fear. But every nerve was tense. He sat looking at the door.

For what seemed an interminable time nothing happened. But the Something outside drew slowly, painfully nearer. The knob of his door moved, a thing suddenly inspired to life. Jeremy gathered himself. It turned. The door was drawn open swiftly. A blur came upon Jeremy’s vision. His heart bumped once in a thick, dull way, then swelled intolerably. He half rose, sat down again heavily. His eyes cleared and the clogged blood in his temples flowed again.

She stood framed against the stirring, whispering darkness beyond. Her breath came quick and light. She was white to the lips, and more lovely even than the dreams of her, cherished through all those aching years.