“It’s absolutely right, Dan.”
“You’ve never discussed your father’s business with me at all—except the strike; and you haven’t discussed Roscoe’s or O’Reilly’s, either.”
“That is true, Dan. There’ll never be any question about that.”
“There will be, Bunny, rest assured—if I should bust loose in Washington, nothing would ever convince Roscoe and O’Reilly that I hadn’t wormed it out of you. I’m afraid nothing would convince your father, either. But I want to be sure that your own mind is clear, I haven’t been dishonorable.”
Bunny gave him his hand on it; and not one of the veteran poker-players who sat all night in the smoke-filled living-room of the “ranch-house” at Paradise could have acted more perfectly the part of impassivity. Bunny even made himself finish lunch, and he wrote a check to cover part of the debt of the labor college, and gave his friend a hearty farewell and best wishes for his new job. Then he drove off in his car, and was free to look as he felt, which was quite unhappy!
He decided that it was his duty to tell his father about this conversation. It couldn’t make any difference to Dan Irving’s work, and it might yet be possible to keep Dad out of the mess. But when the elder Ross got home that evening, Bunny had no time to get in a word. “Well, son, we got those leases!”
“You don’t say, Dad!”
“They’ve been approved, and Verne left for Washington today. They’ll be signed next week, and you and me are going to take a trip and have some fun!”
IX
Joe and Ikey Menzies had been out of jail for a couple of months, their comrades of the Workers’ party having scraped together the bail. Now came their trial, with several other members of the party. The state was undertaking to show that this organization was nothing but the Communist party under a camouflage; it was the “legal” part of the organization, but the real direction was in the hands of an “underground” group, which received funds and took orders from Moscow. It advocated the forcible overthrow of the “capitalist state,” and the setting up of a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” after the Russian pattern. On the other hand, the indicted men claimed that they had organized a legitimate working-class political party, and their attitude to violence was purely defensive. They believed the capitalists would never permit the power to be taken from them peaceably; it was the capitalists who would overthrow the constitution, and the workers would have to defend themselves.