The Milk Bath and the Card Catalogue

by George Kibbe Turner

 

THE MILK BATH AND THE CARD
CATALOGUE By George Kibbe Turner

ILLUSTRATED BY ARTHUR WILLIAM BROWN

THIS is the story of the milk bath and the card catalogue, which is told to one another privately toward dawn by the night wardens of the great city prison of Chibosh, that marvelous modern metropolis that was governed by a press agent; of Michael F. Melody, that press agent, and the mysterious warning, so like a telephone number, which he received from an unknown woman over his secret and guarded private wire; and the singular and unprecedented manner in which he and his press agency were taken captive by a strange new type of politician—by women politicians armed with a strange new political weapon that was not previously familiar in politics in Chibosh.

He was conferring now—in the second week in March—with a much greater and much more secret power than he—with Chinese Meeghan, so called, that supreme and secret power, who ruled the politicians, the press agents and the office-holders of the great city through an old and very common weapon, the simple ancient political weapon of systematized blackmail.

The use of this weapon by Mr. Meeghan—as all the wardens, convicts and politicians in Chibosh knew—had for twenty years been very thorough and direct. For never, unless greatly forced, would he allow the nomination or election of any considerable officeholder in that city's government whom he did not have something on. And this being the case, an organization of government had been secured by him of a devotion and loyalty not to be surpassed in the world.

This was called party government in Chibosh. At its head was Chinese, or Silent, Meeghan, the great unseen party ruler, who heard everything and said nothing. The price of his silence had been the greater city contracts, through which he had become so fabulously rich. And day after day he sat in his secret place, gathering in the intimate information which was to qualify or disqualify new candidates for the future government of Chibosh, to hold close his friends and crush his enemies.

It was to secure much-wanted information along this line that he was now questioning Mr. Melody, the mayor's press agent, in the secret shabby room up that old private set of stairs of which so many whispered and so few really knew, from which were directed the great main policies of the city of Chibosh.

“Haven't you got anything on him yet?” asked Mr. Meeghan of Mr. Melody, his slits of eyes narrowing in his still, fat-jowled face.

He was asking, somewhat angrily, about a dangerous enemy of them both, a youngish red-headed attorney named John Henry Peters. This man was unusually antagonistic to Mr. Meeghan. He had first brought suit against the administration of Mayor Herman J. True to prevent his exceeding the debt limit of the city and so awarding any considerable contracts to Mr. Meeghan. Following that, he had been appointed special Federal district attorney in the recent grand-jury investigations of the Central Bridge collapse graft, the real purpose of which—an attempt not made in twenty years before—was said to be to fasten something criminal directly upon Mr. Meeghan himself.

“Only just what we had before,” Mr. Melody admitted.

“You Done a Bum Job,” Pronounced the Great Boss of Chibosh in a Voice as Cold as a Sentence of Death

His face was still and his round, blue shallow eyes unreadable. But he was afraid always, as all men were, before the great sinister weapon by which this man controlled everyone whom he dealt with.

“Just that he collected an account ten years ago for the milk trust?” asked the master of all the politicians of Chibosh harshly.

“That's all,” said Mr. Melody, striving hard to keep his emotionless face as emotionless as the other's.

“You done a bum job,” pronounced the great boss of Chibosh in a voice as cold as a sentence of death.

For, although his own investigating force of old-line politicians had found nothing on this man Peters—and he had a wonderful information system—yet it seemed to him as if, with all the resources they had, and all the agents they had in that publicity factory of Mayor True, and all the reputation hounds they had in those great friendly newspapers, whose business it was to find the savory sins of men, they could certainly have dug out something more than that.

“What we've got will be enough,” said Mr. Melody, “the way we'll use it.”

The silent secret ruler of Chibosh regarded him with Chinese calm, considering. He had ruled the city for many years by the old politics, the old standard formula of having something on everybody all the way down the line; and though he well knew that he must now use it, he watched with question and concern the growth of the new politics since the moral awakening of the Great War—the government by press agent for God and the good, and the striking way in which it could accomplish so much with so little, even along his own line.

“You watch us! Play it up!” said Mr. Melody, the manager of that last word in the new-style politics—the frame-up shop, or Phantom Factory, of Mayor True.

“Well, get busy!” said the old-time ruler of Chibosh, still in a hard and dissatisfied voice.

His interview closed, Mr. Michael F. Melody went back in his florid green plush hat and his seal-collared overcoat, passed again with emotionless face through the blind entrance of Room 913 and, sitting down once more in his inner office beneath the grave identical Roman-nosed portraits of Mayor True, started in at once the new and critical campaign which faced his publicity factory.

Taking up a desk telephone, he spoke to his operator.

“Get me Goldfish & Goldfish,” he directed.

“Over here?”

“Yes.”

“Must they both come?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Melody, for this was an important job.

II

MESSRS. Goldfish & Goldfish, two short, stout figures, sat regarding Mr. Melody on either side of his desk in the Phantom Factory, from under the two great identical campaign portraits of Mayor Herman J. True.

Mr. Abraham Goldfish, the father, who sat beneath the portrait which “took no man's bidding,” was president of the Herman J. True Merchants and Manufacturers' Association, without merchants or manufacturers.

Mr. Isadore Goldfish, the younger man, with the redder necktie, who sat toward the portrait “when on guard for the people,” was president of the True Property Owners and Taxpayers' Association, without property. Together they formed the well-known legal firm of Goldfish & Goldfish, which had made such a specialty of creating legal issues and campaign organizations without members for Mayor True.

“Did you get to the servant girl?” asked Mr. Melody.

“We did,” said Mr. I. Goldfish.

“Sure, long ago!” said Mr. A. Goldfish.

“And she's coming through?”

“Sure,” said Mr. I. Goldfish, who, being younger, always spoke first.

“Sure,” said Mr. A. Goldfish. “She's already come.”

“All the way?”

“Yes,” they told him. “Yes.”

“Has she put in the orders for the milk?”

“Sure, long ago,” said Mr. I. Goldfish.

“Every day, for seven days now already,” stated Mr. A. Goldfish, the older.

“The weekly bills are already in,” said Mr. I. Goldfish.

Being younger and more experienced, he was much calmer and more unemotional than his father.

“Sure, sure, with all the bills for the baths in it!” said the father, smiling always more readily and happily than his son.

“And will she swear to the milk baths?” asked Mr. Melody.

“She sure will,” replied Mr. I. Goldfish.

“Sure, sure; she'll swear to anything we tell her to—to get the money,” said Mr. Goldfish, Sr.

“And have you coached her up so she'll act up so he'll get mad and kick her out?”

“He's already kicked her out,” said the younger, harder-faced, more fatalistic I. Goldfish.

“Now, already, yes—by violence,” said the more excitable older Goldfish. “And she brings with her likewise already, too, the bills for the milk, so we shall have them all as evidence.”

“She got his goat,” said Mr. I. Goldfish.

“The way we showed her how,” said Mr. A. Goldfish. “He used her rough.”

“He did at that,” said Mr. I. Goldfish.

“Then you're ready any time to file the suit?” said Mr. Melody, interrupting.

“Any time—from now on,” replied the younger Goldfish.

“For fifty thousand,” said the older.

“How about this afternoon?” asked Mr. Melody.

“The sooner the quicker,” said Mr. I. Goldfish casually.

“Sure, sure; and the quicker money,” said his more humorous father.

“The papers are all ready now,” said Mr. I. Goldfish.

“For the fifty thousand,” his father added.

“File them this afternoon, then,” directed Mr. Melody, “and I'll get out the publicity, the interviews, right now.”

“Sure, sure,” said the older and more amiable Mr. Goldfish. “And make it good and snappy for all the papers.”

Waving good-by, they left Mr. Melody sitting alone between the two sincere judicial likenesses of Mayor True.

Thus was begun the case of Svenson versus Peters, the great milk-bath personal-injury suit which, through the earlier part of March, was to stir the great reading public of Chibosh to its depths.

The press on the succeeding morning rose as one body to this great new legal issue. The Morning Truth, the adviser of the administration and the plain honest common people, carried across its opening page the deep black question:

DID MILK BATH CAUSE VIOLENCE?

Following, in smaller caption, came the explanatory head:

Hilda Svenson's Serious Charges Against John Henry Peters, The One-Time Attorney of the Milk Trust

“Forbidden by her doctors to be seen,” said the opening paragraph, “because of alleged personal injuries caused her by John Henry Peters, a former attorney of the milk trust, in connection with a misunderstanding over a milk bath, Miss Hilda Svenson, a domestic formerly employed by Peters, through her attorneys, Goldfish & Goldfish, filed a suit yesterday in the superior court for fifty thousand dollars damages, claiming extreme and abusive cruelty. The defendant refuses to discuss the matter.”

Peoples Pictures, in its headlines, gave a slightly different interpretation of the case. It asked in this connection:

WAS MRS. PETERS BATHED IN MILK?

Moot Point in Fifty-Thousand-Dollar Damage Suit Brought by Hilda Svenson Former Maid of John Henry Peters, a One-Time Attorney of the Milk Trust

Below this were photographs of Mrs. Peters, who was an exceptionally pretty woman; of the outside of the Peters house, with a cross marking the exact location of the bathroom window; photographs of large milk cans such as are used to carry milk to milk baths; also an earlier portrait, soon after her arrival in this country, of Miss Hilda Svenson, the plaintiff, who asked fifty thousand dollars for alleged injuries which her attorneys, Goldfish & Goldfish, stated prevented her from being seen; also a photograph of John Henry Peters, the attorney, special Federal district attorney and former counsel for the milk trust, who had, Miss Svenson claimed, seriously bumped her with a large rolling milk can.

“Politics!” She Exclaimed. “That's What Politics Does for You?”

Quoting verbatim on an interior page from the legal charges as filed by the plaintiff's attorneys, Peoples Pictures explained that the plaintiff:

——does state, aver and allege that on or about 8:30 o'clock on the morning of Friday, March eighth, being in pursuit of her duties, she did ask Mrs. Peters and afterward Mr. Peters, her employers, what to do with certain and divers milk cans, secured, she believes and avers, for conveying large quantities of milk intended for milk baths in the Peters home and domicile; whereupon the defendant Peters exclaimed loudly, “What's this?” and then and there suddenly and without warning to your plaintiff began kicking and rolling said large, heavy and unwieldy milk cans from the back porch; and one of which, rolling and bumping in an unforeseen and unexpected course, did strike your plaintiff in the lower extremity of the left leg, causing grievous and painful injuries to the tibia and fibula of the said leg, to her great hurt and detriment, from which she is still suffering.

There was no editorial comment in any paper on that morning. The damage suit of the milk bath was a matter of important first-page news, but it was not yet the great public issue it was about to become in the metropolis of Chibosh. Indeed, it was after reading over the papers with the attorneys for the plaintiff, in the Phantom Factory of Mayor True, that Mr. Melody, its manager, was now preparing the documents which were to make it such.

Upon the departure of Messrs. Goldfish & Goldfish, he pressed the button on his desk for Miss Spielberg, his stenographer, who promptly appeared, notebook in hand, in an entirely new toilet, and hairdressing to match

“Take a letter,” said Mr. Melody in crisp, snappy tones, “to the mayor from Doctor Beagle.”

III

IT WAS on Wednesday, the next morning, that the great reading public of Chibosh really first awoke to the great moral and economic significance hidden in this matter of the Svenson-Peters damage suit, involving the use of milk baths in the household of John Henry Peters, at one time attorney for the milk trust. The Morning Truth printed as its leading headlines:

SCANDAL IN MILK-BATH CASE

Dr. George Barclay Beagle's Charges

Should Former Milk-Trust Attorney Bathe in Milk While Many Children Famish? Peters, the Defendant, Makes General Denial That He Ever Took Milk Baths

Below, after an introduction, it carried in full the letter of Dr. George Barclay Beagle to Mayor Herman J. True, and its charges. Although not directly a member of the city administration, being at the head of a large private institution for the cure of cancer without the use of knife or drugs, Doctor Beagle was a great admirer and defender of its work, having for years been a personal friend of Mayor Herman J. True. He was a large man, an impressive speaker and a trenchant letter writer, and greatly interested in the welfare of the children and mothers of the city. His letter to Mayor True said briefly:

Your Honor: I arise this morning to see staring me in the face in all the public press, “Milk-Trust Attorney Takes Milk Bath!”

I ask you, sir, can any man with any iron in his blood read these words without seeing red—especially a man of my profession, who nows that today in this great city of Chibosh, as a matter of easily ascertainable fact, there are thousands of children of six months or under who are daily deprived of their full proper modicum of milk?

Mister Mayor, this is a public scandal of proportions that no one can ignore. What can the long-suffering public do to defend itself? What does the city of Chibosh propose to do about this? What will you yourself do? Something, I hope and believe, worthy of your previous record as a friend and guardian of the common people. And that soon!

Yours for the Mothers and Children,

George Barclay Beagle, M.D., F.R.S.S.

“Say, What is This Thing,” Demanded Mr. Melody Harshly and Hoarsely, “That You Think You've Got on Me?”

Supplementing this, on the back page, the Morning Truth carried a quarter-page sketch by its famous cartoonist, Snoggs, entitled Johnny, the Milkman's Boy, and showing Mr. Peters being called from a farmhouse door by a ferocious-looking fat man in a checked suit and labeled Milk Trust, from whose mouth were emanating the words, “Johnny, Johnny, time to take your bath.”

The Peoples Pictures, on the other hand, took a different and less political view, saying in its various headlines:

Denies Milk-Bathing Practice, Which Hilda Svenson, Through Her Attorneys, Goldfish & Goldfish, States That She Will Legally Establish

On the opening page was a new picture of Mrs. Peters, who was physically a very attractive woman, in evening dress; a picture of the Peters bathroom, taken from the original architect's sketch of the house, with the sketched likeness of Hilda Svenson in a neat maid's dress emptying a large milk can into a bathtub; also a photograph of Reva Tanga, the well-known member of the Midnight Foibles, taking her daily siesta in a tubful of the opaque fluid.

It was while holding a copy of this publication carefully rolled up in her hand that a physically very attractive young matron arrived at the two-room apartment, in an old-fashioned but highly respectable quarter of the city, which was occupied by two women who had some six weeks previously enlisted her as a member of a political organization called the Women Home Defenders of Chibosh. Both fortunately were at home when she arrived there.

“You've got to do something. You've got to!” exclaimed the attractive visitor to the younger and more curly headed of the two others, thrusting the rolled copy of Peoples Pictures toward her and sinking down on the most accessible chair, located not far from a large oak card-catalogue cabinet on one wall that seemed so incongruous with the other furnishings of the room.

“Politics!” she exclaimed. “That's what politics does for you!” And now suddenly she burst into tears.

The younger woman with the bright adventurous eyes and the older in the square-cut blue-gray tailor-made suit stood before her speechless as she cried on.

“I feel just as if I hadn't had any clothes on—ever since,” said the pretty woman before them, whom they had not yet recognized, suddenly ceasing her weeping to speak.

The two others gazed at each other and then at the paper with the striking but elusive words.

“I told him—I told him from the first that's what would happen to us if he kept on getting into politics.”

The two others, looking once more at the first page of Peoples Pictures and then at each other, seemed to agree in their conclusions.

“You are Mrs. Peters, aren't you?” asked the younger.

“The wife of John Henry Peters?” said the older.

“Yes,” she said, nodding her head violently, as plump, attractive young women do when they are about to cry. “And he won't—he won't do anything. He refuses to stop. He's as obstinate as a red-headed pig. He refuses to compromise.”

“Mr. Peters you mean?” asked the younger lady.

“Yes; when all they want him to do is to say he'll withdraw the taxpayers' suit to prevent the city from spending more money and let that old Central Bridge Federal investigation rest—as it will have to, anyhow. And then they'll withdraw this suit—this lie by this servant girl—and it will all drop out of the papers.”

Hearing these facts, the two before her looked again at each other with keen interest.

“Who'll do all this?” the older asked, as if anxious to be precisely sure

“Those lawyers—those Goldfish & Goldfish—that made this all up.”

“Made it all up you say?”

“Certainly. You don't suppose I take milk baths, do you? Or John?” she asked a little shrilly.

The two others exchanged glances again with obviously growing interest.

“It was a lie, every word of it,” exclaimed their visitor, “that dreadful girl's story! It must have been a regular conspiracy. She must have ordered the milk herself and poured it away herself for a week or so; and I know she wasn't hurt a bit; that she was only just barely touched by those rolling milk cans, after she infuriated John so that he kicked them over. She must have been coached on the whole thing.”

The two others looked at each other with growing conviction in their faces.

“I don't know how it is. I can't see how it happened. It's just politics, I suppose, as John says. But for weeks, ever since that dreadful Central Bridge horror investigation began, with John as special attorney, something somehow seems to have been following us—something devilish, fixing up things like this awful thing,” said young Mrs. John Henry Peters, becoming again very flushed in the face and bursting suddenly into tears.

The two others, glancing at each other, nodded slightly but conclusively. They felt again an influence that they knew; they recognized once more the strong, sticky grip of the great, invisible world government of today—the sweet, subtle, irresistible power of the great, silent, unobtrusive moral power behind the great power of the public press—the wonder-working power of the press agent, which since the Great War has led us for our own good to make the world ever safer for democracy by its appeal through the printed word to all that is finer and higher and nobler in the great plain, honest common people. They saw and recognized again the subtle hand of the most unknown press agent in Chibosh and the publicity factory of Mayor True.

“It's a terrible mystery,” the pretty Mrs. Peters was continuing, now again temporarily drying her tears. “An awful thing to think how they can do this—whoever does—and put it all in the papers all the time. And all because we are in politics. But John won't do a thing. He says he won't be forced out—not this way. He says he'll fight them till his last red hair falls out—as he will. I know him. He won't even think of taking back his suit to keep the city from going bankrupt; nor drop out of the Federal investigation of the Central Bridge collapse horror.”

As she said this the two others, looking at each other, nodded with apparently simultaneous approval, while their visitor was going on in a voice of rising pathos.

“But I can't—I can't go on, taking a milk bath in the papers every morning,” she cried. “Can I?”she asked, clutching the arm of the nearer and younger of the others, with an appealing lock of terror in the large childlike blue eyes which made so much of her charm.

“You certainly cannot,” replied the other sympathetically.

“Will you help me stop it some way?” their visitor continued, tightening her convulsive grip still! more. “Can't you do something—use some influence like that Women's Home Protective Society you got us all into six weeks ago, for some reason I never knew what?”

“We'll try our best,” promised the younger women. “Won't we?”

“We will,” replied the older woman to whom she appealed, speaking, as she evidently always did, quite precisely.

These two, Miss Dorothy Jones and Miss Adelaide Winthrop, had, indeed, as Mrs. Peters said, brought large numbers of women of the various existing women's organizations of Chibosh into new organization of Mayor Herman J. True for the defense of the good name of the city of Chibosh; but so far, beyond enrolling them, they had not yet taken any overt act through their control of that new body. Now, it seemed, when their visitor had gone, that both were ripe for action.

“The time has come,” said the older, squarer-spoken one.

“I think so too,” the younger substantiated her.

“To show them what the real women can do; to elect this man Peters mayor next fall.”

“He's certainly good,” said Miss Dorothy Jones.

“We'll show the men what the women's vote is like,” continued her associate.

“Let's start now, and get after him!” exclaimed Miss Jones. “Put him through his tricks.”

The other gazed questioningly at her. There was a sharp, clear note of personal resentment and even pugnacity in that voice, usually so ceremoniously polite.

“That worm! That pet dog! That cheap criminal! That Melody!” it continued explaining with bitterness and expectant cruelty.

IV

IT WAS too late, however, to prevent the continuance on Thursday morning of the great current news interest on the front pages of Chibosh—the mystery of the milk bath in the Peters household. The people of Chibosh were now being rapidly divided into two schools of thought—according to the journal which they read—as to who it was that took the bath, Mr. or Mrs. Peters.

The readers of Peoples Pictures held the latter view, which was set forth in its leading headlines:

MRS. PETERS' MILK BATH DESCRIBED

Hilda Svenson at Last Speaks Through Her Attorneys, Goldfish & Goldfish. Mrs. Peters Makes Sweeping Denial

This was illustrated by an authentic picture, secured exclusively by the Peoples Pictures, of Mrs. Peters, who was an exceedingly attractive woman physically, in an ultra-modern bathing suit; of the costly fixtures of the Peters bathroom, photographed from duplicates properly set up by the plumbing firm which manufactured them; a diagram of the second story of the Peters home, showing the exact location of all bedrooms and bathrooms. Also a photograph of Miss Reina La Reve, of the Midnight Foibles, whose collection of bath negligees was said to be the largest in the city, taken in one of the sheerest and most ravishing of these.

The readers of the Morning Truth, on the other hand, proceeded on the opposing theory that it was John Henry Peters, the one-time attorney of the milk trust, who was the bather. Its opening headlines said:

GEORGE BARCLAY BEAGLE BARES TRUTH CONCERNING LAWYER PETERS' MILK BATH

Asks, “Shall Children Starve to Provide Mere Skin Food for Plutocratic Trust Agent? The Defendant Peters Comes Out With Another Denial

The chief development to which this alluded was the second letter of Dr. George Barclay Beagle, friend of Mayor True and defender of the mothers and children of Chibosh, written to Mayor True himself:

Your Honor: Your letter pointing out the difficulty of dealing with this scandal of the milk baths, showing the impossibility of reaching such malpractice by legal means, is at hand. I can see this, and I agree with you that the matter can probably best be tried before the great bar of public opinion, and before that bar I now arraign it.

As a physician I know that there are cases in which milk baths are beneficial to the human skin, even furnishing food and nourishment to some degree. But as a student of the milk supply of the great city of Chibosh I am also aware that there is a shortage in the milk supply in this city needed to nourish properly its children—a shortage, sir, artificially produced in a great majority of cases by the milk trust, for which this milk-bathing attorney, this man Peters, has been the paid employe. And as a man with red blood in my veins it makes me boil to think that in these days such perversion of food supplies can go on, when all about us we physicians note child malnutrition.

Something must be done about outrages like this, and that right speedily. Fortunately the question is very simple: Which will it be—the milk bather or the children of the plain people? The citizens of Chibosh, I believe, will answer this promptly, sharply and violently. And the milk-fed trusts and their milk-bathed agents will do well to prepare themselves for the crisis which they are about to meet, unless by chance they note the handwriting on the wall. Yours for the mothers and children of Chibosh,

George Barclay Beagle, M.D., F.R.S.S.

On the back page of the Morning Truth, carrying out this thought, the daily sketch by the great cartoonist, Snoggs, showed the various trusts of the city in the guise of liveried servants, lined up in a bathroom in which Mr. Peters, clothed only in a bath towel and with most unusual legs, was about to take a bath. Emanating from various mouths were apparently confidential whispers, from one trust to another.

“A fine figure.”

“The boy is good.”

“Yes. Johnny's all right.”

Its main caption of the previous day, Johnny, the Milkman's Boy, was repeated.

It was after reading this and other matter along this line that Mr. Melody received a call upon his telephone wire—that guarded secret wire of the Phantom Factory, whose number appears in no telephone book and receiving it, gave a sudden start. It was a voice which he knew and could not well forget, though having heard it but once in his whole life before—the sweet, cultivated, excessively polite voice that a month or so before had given him his mysterious and fearful warning, the hidden threat so much like a telephone number.

“Is this Atlanta 179?” it said, repeating it again in almost identical tones. Mr. Melody, again ashen, did not find time to answer before the polite voice went on “It is, I feel sure,” it said cordially, and held him spellbound, listening, as it continued once again. “You may remember,” it said, “Mister 179, my calling you before on the matter of the True Women Home Defenders—the drive for members?”

Mr. Melody did not yet answer, although wetting his lips.

“I want to thank you,” the excessively polite voice was going on, “Mr. Mel—Mister 179—for doing just what we hoped you would do in that matter—for letting us complete our drive so successfully. But now the time has come when we shall want more active help.”

“From me?” asked Mr. Melody hoarsely,

“Yes, indeed,” said the bright, ceremoniously polite voice. “Or we hope so.”

“Say, who are you?” asked Mr. Melody hoarsely.

His face was flushed, his round blue eyes stared steadily forward as if looking beyond to penetrate this mystery.

“Won't you come and see?” invited the ultra-polite voice in the telephone.

And now, to his surprise, a second woman's voice chimed in on the wire, curt, short and businesslike.

“I advise you to say yes,” said this second woman's voice abruptly.

“We do so hope you'll come,” said the younger, more ceremonial voice.

And the older and more direct voice gave him the address and the number of their residence.

“When may we look for you?” asked the younger and more polite.

“The sooner the better for you,” said the older and more severe voice.

“Not today,” said Mr. Melody, for he felt he must go over the thing—have time to consider.

“What time then?” asked the older and abrupter voice.

“How would tomorrow afternoon do—at three o'clock?” suggested the younger.

“All right,” accepted Mr. Melody. “That'll do me.”

“That'll be all right,” they said abruptly and politely. “Splendid!”

“Tomorrow afternoon then.”

“At three.”

“We shall expect you.”

“Say, who ——” said Mr. Melody hoarsely, and stopped, for the unknown voice, the two mysterious voices, had gone.

He sat in his florid and ornate clothes, no longer himself florid and self-confident; ashen pale, weak, shaken by this new, unusual threat which had again confronted him.

He had in fact been waiting for days and weeks, wondering if he would hear it again—that fatal warning so like a telephone number. After receiving it the first time, he had done exactly what had been asked—he had kept his hands off the drive, the continuing drive for membership in the organization he had founded for pure publicity purposes—the True Women Home Defenders, that last phantom organization of his Phantom Factory. He had merely watched and waited.

That that paper organization had been backed against him with real members—real women, he knew. But that was all. He had not interfered, neither had he called any meeting of it through its officers for organization.

He had watched and waited—for nearly six weeks now—for another move by those who were evidently trying to capture it: the women who had called him up and addressed him as Atlanta 179.

Should he go? See what they wanted? Find out who they were? Who it was that had such a sinister hold upon him personally—a hold possessed in all Chibosh by but one other person, Chinese Meeghan? Or should he flee—now—at once? He would see. It was a matter of too great consequence to be decided easily, offhand

Releasing it from his mind for the moment, turning to his immediate work, Mr. Melody was dictating to Miss Spielberg, his stenographer, the next letter of Dr. George Barclay Beagle to Mayor True on the current issue in Chibosh for the next morning's press.

V

UPON Friday morning there was a still wider gap in the great controversy which had by now torn the immense reading public of Chibosh into halves, over the leading question of the hour, as to who had been the bather in milk in the household of John Henry Peters, at one time the attorney for the milk trust.

Readers of Peoples Pictures still held to the belief that it was Mrs. Peters, definitely led to that conclusion by the headlines of the day:

HILDA SVENSON GIVES HER RECIPE FOR GIVING MILK BATHS TO MISTRESSES

Through Her Attorneys, Goldfish & Goldfish, Showing Scientifically How Pores of Skin Are Aided. Mrs. Peters Bars Doors To Interviewers

Photographs of the injured Hilda Svenson, taken, it must have been, before her injury, showed her receiving the milk; others showed its preparation, proper warming, placing in the tub and proper application, as posed for by Janys Joro, the model, who had won the popularity voting contest in the recent Carnival of Undergarment Manufacturers. An illustration of the human skin, showing the beneficial effects of milk baths, followed. Pictures of Mrs Peters as an infant, at boarding school and on her honeymoon with the former attorney of the milk trust were also shown.

On the other hand, the Morning Truth devoted its first page more to the greater economic and social issues arising out of the case in its larger meanings. Its leading headlines were:

DOCTOR BEAGLE CRUSHES PETERS

“Milk-Trust Lawyer Avoids Issue,” Says the Great Milk Expert in Ringing Challenge for Citizens. Real Question He Says, “Shall Children Die For Rich Men's Whims?”

This letter was addressed directly to John Henry Peters. It said:

Dear Sir: I have read, with interest and genuine amusement, your printed statements, in which you claim that neither you nor an member of your family has, does or ever will take a milk bath. That is a very natural thing for you to say in the situation. The facts will be decided, sir, by a court of law. Let us drop this, for the present, as a matter in controversy.

But in the meanwhile do not let us be deflected from the real issue in this case—by anything so trivial as the mere matter as to whether you or your family have or have not taken a milk bath.

I am not, sir, a lawyer, skilled in niceties of technicality or avoidance—or drawing a herring craftily across the big main trail. I am a plain physician, caring for suffering humanity in its need, pain and illness. But I refuse to be deflected from the great main issue which you

This fortunately is very simple and can be answered very simply through three questions, which I will ask you to deny if you can.

First question: Are or are not babies by the showman securing insufficient milk every day in the city of Chibosh?

Second question: Has or has not the milk trust raised the price of milk twice to the mothers and children of Chibosh in the past six months?

Third question: Have you or have you not been an attorney of this milk trust?

A simple answer—yes or no—to these questions, my dear sir, will clear up the whole situation perfectly, and your relation to it. They are all that the citizens of Chibosh are interested to hear. But they are greatly interested to hear these—and they will hear them!

Hoping you will see fit to reply to this at your early convenience, I am, sir,

Yours expectantly,

George Barclay Beagle, M.D., F.R.S.S.

On the rear page of the Morning Truth, the daily sketch by Snoggs, the great cartoonist, still captioned Johnny, the Milkman's Boy, showed the back porch of the Peters home, so labeled, filled with large milk cans and a fat, heavy, scowling man labeled Milk Trust. He was addressing a great company of hollow-eyed women and little girls, holding apparently dying babies in one hand and reaching out receptacles for milk in another, saying to them, “No! No! Go away! Johnny must have his bath!”

The reading of this and other matter indicating a markedly successful progress of another great moral public issue in Chibosh did not on this particular day really satisfy its author, Mr. Melody. Distraught, anxious, his mind fixed upon another and more personal matter, he transacted the business of his Phantom Factory with only half-hearted energy, waiting for three o'clock in the afternoon, the hour when he should learn the truth concerning the matter which so tormented him—the mysterious warning so much like a telephone number delivered to him over the wire—and meet face to face the mysterious woman—the two mysterious women—who had given it.

Passing in his florid and ornamental street costume, so much like an actor's—his green velours hat, spats, patent-leather shoes, yellow gloves and seal-collared overcoat—he came before long to the plain, brown-fronted building in the once fashionable and still highly respectable section of the city where the best rooming and boarding houses were.

Pressing the second button to the left, he passed up and was admitted into the larger of a suite of rooms on the second floor, furnished with substantial but quiet furniture, and showing on the wall sketches of human figures, apparently and presumably unclothed, which looked like no figures Mr. Melody had seen either clothed or unclothed in his life before—in Nature or in art. A broad and practical desk occupied the center of the room, equipped, like his own, with two desk telephones. And a large and commanding card-catalogue cabinet stood at one side of the room.

He was greeted by two women—one younger, curly haired, more pliable and very ceremoniously polite, whose name it seemed was Miss Dorothy Jones; the other, an older, squarer-clothed woman, beside her—smoking a cigarette in an uncompromising and almost menacing manner—met him more formally, with a brief downward yank when she shook his hand.

“Now what can I do for you, ladies?” asked Mr. Melody with his stillest face and his best manner—the urbane, almost buttery manner which he used with women.

It was the crisper, more businesslike older woman who answered him.

“It is our purpose to elect the next mayor of of Chibosh,” she said slowly and coolly.

“With the women's vote,” explained the younger, darker, shorter-haired, brighter-eyed one.

“To show what the women can do,” continued the older.

“Yes, indeed,” said Mr. Melody, feeling that he should say something.

“We have chosen as our candidate Mr. John Henry Peters,” said the older and squarer-motioned.

“To be the next mayor of Chibosh, you know,” explained the lither, younger; more considerate-voiced one.

Mr. Melody looked from one to the other with rather more than surprise. Never, in a considerable career in practical politics, had he seen anything in any way resembling them.

“And we want you to act as our publicity agent.”

“Our press agent,” explained the more agreeable and politer younger one, “for doing this.”

Mr. Melody looked again at first one and then the other. It was time, he saw—as a practical politician and man of the world—to put up a bluff.

“Who do you think I am?” asked Mr. Melody gruffly.

“You're Mayor True's press agent, aren't you?” asked the younger and softer-voiced, still more softly. “Mr. Murphy—alias Mr. Melody.”

“Alias Atlanta 179,” said the older in a harsh, square, hostile voice.

He stood staring at them, silent, gray-faced. Never in his wildest dreams had he thought he would be stuck up by an outfit like this—the younger, pretty one, smiling that cool, polite kind of sarcastic smile; the other one standing looking him over.

“Say, what is this thing,” demanded Mr. Melody harshly and hoarsely, “that you think you've got on me?”

“We have this!” returned the older, briefer woman.

They were standing on either side of a large oak cabinet, apparently a large card-catalogue cabinet. As she spoke, the older woman placed her firm, long, square-finger-tipped hand upon it.

“What's that?” asked Mr. Melody sharply.

“Don't you know what that is?” said the woman, holding him off apparently for dramatic effect.

“No.”

“That is the key to the future politics of the United States,” she now told him. Mr. Melody merely looked at her. “It contains,” she was now proceeding, after a somewhat impressive pause, “the information the women have collected about the men politicians, and the so-called political machines of the men of the United States. You will be surprised,' she added, now looking directly at Mr. Melody, “to know how detailed and extensive that information is.”

Mr. Melody, flinching slightly, looked directly back at her, speechless, as if fascinated.

“Why not explain it to him—from the beginning?” suggested the younger one, coming in to help him.

“Precisely; I will,” said the older one.

“Logically, in order, so he'll understand.”

“You are quite right. It is only fair,” the older confirmed her, looking thoughtfully at and then away from Mr. Melody.

VI

“YOU know, perhaps,” said the older woman, that Miss Winthrop, “to what the women's political movement in the United States owed its start and its really remarkable growth.”

Mr. Melody's fixed stare indicated that he did not.

“It was the flippancy of the men,” she said quite indifferently, yet with a touch of acid in her voice.

Mr. Melody, at first watching rigidly, at last spoke, seeing that, waiting, she perhaps expected him to.

“The which?” asked Mr. Melody.

“The flippancy of the men,” repeated his new instructress in politics. “The usual attitude of all men to all women, from the grammar grades up; never to take them seriously. And there's where they made their first fatal mistake.”

“In politics, she means,” explained the younger one.

“How?” asked Mr. Melody, genuinely anxious in every way to have her go on.

“How? I will tell you how—in two words,” continued his informant. “Because when they refused to take them seriously; when they laughed at everything they did—their demand for the vote, their questions, their requests for information—the women naturally realizing their own ignorance went off and informed themselves on politics, the theory of polities, the current political questions of the day, by papers, lectures, textbooks. And very soon they found they had learned, incidentally, something else.”

Mr. Melody's question glance was now sufficient to keep her talking.

“We learned it was our turn to laugh—at the men; at their abject, amusing ignorance on all branches of politics! For example, what, may I ask you now, was the Seventh Amendment to the Constitution of the United States?” she now broke off unexpectedly to ask Mr. Melody, “Do you know?”

“No,” Mr. Melody admitted; “no.”

Never since in the lower grammar grades which she had just mentioned had he experienced precisely the same sensation as now, looking across into her glasses.

“And who is the secretary of state who was elected by the voters of this state last fall?” she asked with continuing directness.

Mr. Melody, although engaged immediately in the political game, was forced to admit that for the moment that name had escaped him.

“I'm not sure,” said Mr. Melody, “that I know.”

“No,” she said, “men don't. They know nothing about the theory or the principles of politics; as we women used fondly to imagine that they did. Nor,” she now continued earnestly, “about the details either; as we now, going on from there, discovered,”

She stopped, She seemed now to Mr. Melody—unsteadied and agitated as he was by his continued waiting for the information he personally so much desired—like a school-teacher of high principles and immense will power, determined while in Rome to do what the Romans do, only much better.

“We could, of course, in our turn have been very flippant,” she was going on, “as the men were with us over their ignorance. But we were not. We had something else to do. We had to go on from there—from the men in general—to the next step; to those to whom the men had handed over the care of their politics.”

“The officeholders, she means,” explained the other.

“And the professional politicians,” continued the older in a matter-of-fact voice. “That set of second-class men—largely discards from other professions—to whom the political control of the United States is handed over by the men; and whom, naturally, we had to look up-especially as they were now opposing us in our desire for the vote, for proper legislation, for everything!”

“The officeholders and politicians, she means,” explained the younger.

“To look up, to study them and their methods,” the other continued her thought. “We began, you might say, in the state and national legislatures, through the attempt of women to get suffrage and the other legislation we desired, through the special women representatives they sent to the legislature—to get the officeholders and politicians to give them legislation.”

“I see,” said Mr. Melody anxiously, continually urging her on to the thing he was ultimately concerned to learn how much she knew about.

“It was there that our representatives studied and found out about these men—their origin, their qualities and their methods. It was there that we found out the real force back of so much of the legislation of the United States.”

“What force was that?” asked Mr. Melody, still urging her on.

“It was blackmail,” she stated.

“Petty blackmail quite often,” explained the other, somewhat softening her statement.

“But blackmail, nevertheless,” continued the older and severer woman, “Instead of their enacting legislation on right and principle—as we had always been told—we found that the legislators and office-holders were pulled, hauled, and threatened by every possible influence that could be used—financial, antifinancial, capital, labor, race, religion and personal obligation—and compelled to do what others wished them to. That the whole thing was controlled, so far as these professional politicians—that the men handed the government of the country to—were concerned, by a great network founded upon the personal records and necessities of a candidate.”

She stopped, looking off, as if considering judicially the shortcomings of men.

“And that brought us to this,” she said. And now, coming toward the question which Mr. Melody wished her to discuss, she placed her left hand again firmly and almost affectionately upon the card-catalogue cabinet, which she had previously said was the key of the future politics of the country.

“Just what is that, anyhow?” asked Mr. Melody sharply, his nervousness and suspense affecting his usual urbanity of his manner.

“It is a part of the information on the politicians and officeholders of this country collected by the six million organized women of the United States!”

“Six million!” exclaimed Mr. Melody involuntarily. “Organized!”

“Exactly,” said Miss Winthrop curtly. “For it is the women, not the men of the United States, who are really organized. The best of the women, you understand, of the country.”

“Not politically, altogether,” cautioned the younger woman.

“No; much better than that—culturally,” said the other, “Not by politics—by principles, In the various women's clubs of the country—where the men force the women themselves independently in politics, to make their own judgments, to make their own investigations, to make their own efforts for legislation through their own representatives. To secure the knowledge which is contained in this,” she said, again striking the card-catalogue cabinet with her left hand, “and the others just like it all through the United States. Working largely, under the direction of the women leaders who were employed to look after legislation for women in the state and national legislatures.”

Mr. Melody said nothing, but gazed earnestly at the cabinet.

“You can imagine,” the speaker was saying, 'the information that six million earnest, active, intelligent women were able to gather together on men, concerning not only the public but the personal lives of all the men, officeholders and politicians, from their preference on breakfast foods down to their prison sentences; the really remarkable fund of information which has been laid away for possible use in case of need in the political card catalogues of the United States. You can imagine,” she said, spatting the large card-catalogue cabinet with a firm and almost affectionate hand again, what a power for the future the women of the United States hold, stored up in these!”

“You see,” said the younger, prettier and more humorous faced one, not unkindly, “now what we want!”

Mr. Melody, not answering, stared now fixedly at the older woman and her card catalogue.

“Now, to get down to business,” she was saying to him, with a gesture of cool decision and finality. “The fact is, as we said in the beginning, we want to know whether you will be willing to come with us as our political press agent—to elect Mr. Peters the next mayor of Chibosh.”

“We know, of course,” came in the younger and more polite one, “what splendid success you have had already—in your present work.”

“In making the semblance of a human being out of that exaggerated wooden clothes pin—that True!”

“And we thought with our advantages—the detailed information we have here,” said the younger and softer-spoken at the further side of the cabinet from the other, “that with your skill and our systemized information we would make almost ideal partners in electing Mr. Peters.”

The older, on the other side of the cabinet, Mr. Melody observed, was again about to speak.

“Information, yes,” she was saying crisply. “As for instance!” now, opening one of the cabinet drawers, she brought out, after a long minute's search, a large, well-filled card and started reading it:

“'Melody—Michael Francis,'” she read precisely, but with an accent of great unconcern, “'press agent and Federal criminal. Alias Flash Murphy. Real name, Michael Francis Murphy. Convict 179 in Atlanta Federal Prison years 1916-1917. Escaped.

“*Born Weewinish, Indiana, 1877. Newspaper reporter Indianapolis and Chicago. Publicity agent for Ruffo's Circus; Sam Jackson's Big Burlesquers; for Cash & Gouch's bucket shop and Slide & Slithem's weekly financial letters.

“Sentenced to Atlanta prison for fraudulent use of the United States mails in the so-called Great Ascalon Oil Frauds. Escaped from guards, after serving portion of his term, while in Chicago to testify in trials of others accused of same frauds. Protected from capture and used by Chibosh politicians—Chinese Meeghan and others—as under-cover head of so-called frame-up, or Phantom Factory, the secret publicity bureau of Mayor True, under the alias of Michael F. Melody, as above. Still wanted by Federal authorities.'”

She stopped in a sharp and cruel silence.

“Shall I go on?” she asked, peering at Mr. Melody through her glasses. She seemed now to him a terrible dream, a return in sleep to childhood, to the terrible mistress of the seventh-grade grammar school.

“It's a lie—a frame-up!” cried Mr. Melody hoarsely, struggling to his feet.

“Don't! Please, don't!” the younger, curly-headed one was saying in a voice of polite pain.

“Don't waste your breath,” said the square-cut one, his instructress in politics, standing before him with his terrible report card in her fingers.

Mr. Melody sat down again, his lips loose, his face flabby.

“Of course,” she was saying, “we understand that technically we are doing wrong; that by not turning you over to the authorities we are committing an offense ourselves. But we are willing to take that chance—for the purpose of freeing Chibosh.”

“From the nasty sticky mess that it's in now,” said the younger one, now with a slight sharpness in her usually polite voice.

“Will you accept?” asked the older.

“How can I?” asked Mr. Melody hoarsely.

“How can't you?” asked the younger one.

“What? Come out in the open?” cried Mr. Melody, now slightly losing control of his speech. “And have Meeghan put me back in prison tomorrow?”

“That's the last thing we want you to do,” said the older.

“Come out in the open!” exclaimed the younger.

“We don't want to come out into the open ourselves.”

“We want to keep on—in the background of the Women Home Defenders until everything's all done and ready to elect Mr. Peters.”

“Boring from within, as the radicals would say.”

“Under our direction.”

“Inside the Phantom Factory, that notorious publicity bureau of Mayor True.”

“That's what we want of you,” the young one explained, concluding. “To blow them up from the inside, with their own tricks.”

He looked from one to the other and from them to that card catalogue—that terrible new political instrument, that key to the future political history of the country; that repository of that new and unheard-of political power, of the knowledge that the six million organized women have secured concerning the politicians and officeholders of the United States and filed away for future use.

“I'll come along,” said Mr. Melody huskily.

What else could he do but come along with them—pretend to, anyhow, until he found a loophole to crawl out of? He had been in several tight holes before in his life, both political and legal. it wasn't likely he would be held up indefinitely by a couple of women,

“I'll go along with you,” said Mr. Melody, his voice already stronger and oilier, his round-eyed self-assurance coming back again. Already various possible plans for slipping them were flashing through his subtle mind.

Which plan he was destined to adopt, how he was forced to do so, and the outcome of his efforts cannot, for lack of space, be told here. All this will, however, be related later without fail in the story of The Lone Lady in Black and the Roman-Nosed Baby.

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Editor's Note—This is the second of a series of five stories by Mr. Turner. The next will appear in an early issue.