100%: the Story of a Patriot

Section 5

Section 5The police hadgot the crowds driven back by now, and had ropesacross the street to hold them, and inside the roped space wereseveral ambulances and a couple of patrol-wagons. Peter was shovedinto one of these latter, and a policeman sat by his side, and thebell clanged, and the patrol-wagon forced its way slowly thru thestruggling crowd. Half an hour later they arrived at the huge stonejail, and Peter was marched inside. There were no formalities, theydid not enter Peter on the books, or take his name or his fingerprints; some higher power had spoken, and Peter’s fate wasalready determined. He was taken into an elevator, and down into abasement, and then down a flight of stone steps into a deeperbasement, and there was an iron door with a tiny slit an inch wideand six inches long near the top. This was the “hole,”and the door was opened and Peter shoved inside into utterdarkness. The door banged, and the bolts rattled; and then silence.Peter sank upon a cold stone floor, a bundle of abject and hideousmisery.

These events had happened with such terrifying rapidity thatPeter Gudge had hardly time to keep track of them. But now he hadplenty of time, he had nothing but time. He could think the wholething out, and realize the ghastly trick which fate had played uponhim. He lay there, and time passed; he had no way of measuring it,no idea whether it was hours or days. It was cold and clammy in thestone cell; they called it the “cooler,” and used it toreduce the temperature of the violent and intractable. Itwas atrouble-saving device; they just left the man there and forgot him,and his own tormented mind did the rest.

And surely no more tormented mind than the mind of Peter Gudgehad ever been put in that black hole. It was the more terrible,because so utterly undeserved, so preposterous. For such a thing tohappen to him, Peter Gudge, of all people—who took such painsto avoid discomfort in life, who was always ready to obligeanybody, to do anything he was told to do, so as to have’aneasy time, a sufficiency of food, and a warm corner to crawl into!What could have persuaded fate to pick him for the victim of thiscruel prank; to put him into this position, where he could notavoid suffering, no matter what he did? They wanted him to tellsomething, andPeter would have been perfectly willing to tellanything—but how could he tell it when he did not knowit?

The more Peter thought about it, the more outraged he became. Itwas monstrous! He sat up and glared into the black darkness. Hetalked to himself, he talked to the world outside, to the universewhich had forgotten his existence. He stormed, he wept. He got onhis feet and flung himself about the cell, which was six feetsquare, and barely tall enough for him to stand erect. He poundedon the door with his one hand which Guffey had not lamed, hekicked, and he shouted. But there was no answer, and so far as hecould tell, there was no one to hear.

When he had exhausted himself, he sank down, and fell into ahaunted sleep; and then he wakened again, toa reality worse thanany nightmare. That awful man was coming after him again! He wasgoing to torture him, to make him tell what he did not know! Allthe ogres and all the demons that had ever been invented tofrighten the imagination ofchildren were asnothing compared to theimage of the man called Guffey, as Peter thought of him.

Several ages after Peter had been locked up, he heard soundsoutside, and the door was opened. Peter was cowering in the corner,thinking that Guffey had come. There was a scraping on the floor,and then the door was banged again, and silence fell. Peterinvestigated and discovered that they had put in a chunk of breadand a pan of water.

Then more ages passed, and Peter’s impotent ragings wererepeated; then once more they brought bread and water, and Peterwondered, was it twice a day they brought it, or was this a newday? And how long did they mean to keep him here? Did they mean todrive him mad? He asked these questions of the man who brought thebread and water, but the man made no answer, he never at any timespoke a word. Peter had no company in that “hole” buthis God; and Peter was not well acquainted with his God, and didnot enjoy a tete-a-tete with Him.

What troubled Peter most was the cold; it got into his bones,and his teeth were chattering all the time. Despite all his movingabout, he could not keep warm. When the man opened the door, hecried out to him, begging for a blanket; each time the man came,Peter begged more frantically than ever. He was ill, he had beeninjured in the explosion, he needed a doctor, he was going to die!But there was never any answer. Peter would lie there and shiverand weep, and writhe, and babble, and lose consciousness for awhile, and not know whether he was awake or asleep, whether he wasliving or dead. He was becoming delirious, and the things that werehappening to him, the people who were tormenting him, becamemonsters and fiends who carried him away upon far journeys, andplunged him thru abysses of terror and torment.

And yet, many and strange as were the phantoms whichPeter’s sick imagination conjured up, there was no one ofthem as terrible as the reality which prevailed just then in thelife of American City, and was determining the destiny of a poorlittle man by the name of Peter Gudge. There lived in American Citya group of men who had taken possession of its industries anddominated the lives of its population. This group, intrenched inpower in the city’s business and also in its government, werefacing the opposition of a new and rapidly rising power, that oforganized labor, determined to break the oligarchy of business andtake over its powers. The struggle of these two groups was comingto its culmination. They were like two mighty wrestlers, locked ina grip ofdeath; two giants in combat, who tear up trees by theroots and break off fragments of cliffs from the mountains to smashin each other’s skulls. And poor Peter—what was he? Anant which happened to come blundering across the ground where thesecombatantsmet. The earth was shaken with their trampling, the dirtwas kicked this way and that, and the unhappy ant was knockedabout, tumbled head over heels, buried in the debris; andsuddenly—Smash!—a giant foot came down upon the placewhere he was struggling and gasping!