By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, November 30, 1935.
“Life,” said Jimmie Frise, “is getting safer every year, anyway.”
“I disagree,” I announced.
“Not,” said Jim, “in the mere matter of accidents on highways and in factories. What I mean, in the larger sense. Every year the chances of persecution, tyranny and oppression grow slimmer.”
“I disagree,” I declared.
“Bullies,” stated Jim, “in government, in business, in the community, in the family used to be on every hand. Tyrants who made miserable the lives of all who were dependent on them. To-day the bully is all but eliminated.”
“Bosh,” said I.
“Take the family first,” said Jim. “Until just recently, within the last twenty-five years, a young man had to run away to sea in order to escape from a tyrannical father. To-day the boy can go and get a job in a brokerage house and make more money than his old man. Not only does this freedom affect young men. It applies to young women also. In former times a young girl could not run away to sea. But to-day she can run down to the department store and get a job and go live with a girl chum in an apartment.”
“Jobs are so easy to get,” I sneered.
“I am speaking in broad principles,” admonished Jim. “The detail may be a little confused. But you must admit the modern parent dare not be a bully.”
“And how does this apply,” I inquired, “to foremen and managers and so forth?”
“A great change has come over the world in the past few years,” explained Jim, “so that public opinion to-day is intolerant of tyranny. Trades unionism in the past 40 years has practically put an end to the bully in the shop. Every business executive knows that his business will be affected if the opinion goes abroad that he is a hard or brutal taskmaster. The minute a man begins to set himself up as a boss, the whole world turns against him.”
“In Germany, for example,” I scoffed, “and Italy.”
“You little know,” said Jim, “what former bullies those two men, Hitler and Mussolini, have supplanted. Until they came along, those countries had a dictator in every village, in every town, hereditary, pompous, vicious bullies. Counts and dukes and all sorts of things, and a girl dared not be pretty in any village and no young man dared walk the earth proudly, the way God intended young men to walk, for fear of those perfumed bullies riding by in barouches1 or on horseback.”
“You’ve been reading novels by lady authors,” I accused.
“Throughout the world,” sang Jim, passionately, “there is now a vast court of public opinion to safeguard us plain citizens from the tyranny of our would-be masters. Since the dawn of time, the mass of mankind have been the victims of every bully that came along. Our entire social system was based on bullies. Bullies national and bullies local. The struggle for freedom has been nothing more or less than the slow and painful elimination of bullies.”
“You are very clever,” I pointed out, “at putting things into a nutshell. But you know what eats nuts.”
“I Could Frame You”
“Less than a hundred years ago,” claimed Jim, “you and I could be framed by anybody. Do you realize the press gang could have come along and snapped us up on the street and carried us off to war?”
“There was no press gang in the last war,” I argued, “yet we were snapped up.”
“A hundred years back,” insisted Jim, “if the local squire or the neighborhood bully took a dislike to us, for any reason, they could have planted a few dead rabbits in our back shed and then deported us to Australia as poachers?”
“I can quote you cases not a year old,” I countered, “where innocent men have been railroaded.”
“You don’t follow me it all,” cried Jim. I “What I am getting is the safety, the security of the average citizen to-day as compared with only a hundred years ago. We generally think of our improved condition in terms of street cars and highways, modern plumbing and radio and that sort of thing. The greatest thing in the history of the past hundred years is the growth of a solid public opinion that safeguards us from the greed, jealousy, malice and hate of those who set themselves up as masters.”
“I could frame you,” I declared, “in five minutes. I could set you on the spot so fast you wouldn’t know what hit you. I could have you in danger of your life, by golly…”
“Heh, heh, heh,” said Jimmie.
And we drove on. We were heading for Kingston, where, in the bays of the St. Lawrence along that still romantic shore, some late fall ducks lingered in the land of their birth before perilously launching themselves across the border toward the Gulf of Mexico, and 8,000,000 American gunners en route.
And Jim and I, as guests of a newspaperman of our autumnal acquaintance, were to urge these wildfowl on their way with a few belated bangs of a shotgun.
I felt my nose running, for it was a chilly day. I drew forth my hankie. And when I removed it, the white hankie was dabbed with gleaming scarlet.
“Hang it,” I muttered. “Another nose bleed.”
“I never knew anybody,” said Jim, “with such a flimsy grip on his blood as you.”
“And shooting, too,” I complained. “Every shot, my nose will start to bleed.”
“Put something cold down the back of your neck,” advised Jim, who was driving.
So I slid a chilly bottle opener down my neck, and continued to dab, until my handkerchief was pretty well incarnadined with my vital fluid.
“Jim,” I said, “this reminds me, we forgot to telephone Tom about the rain slicker for me. That’s important. I won’t go out without a slicker. Let’s stop at the next gas station along the way and see if they have a phone. And if they have, phone Tom to be sure to get a slicker, size forty, for me and put it in his bag. For sure. I nearly died last fall.”
“O.K.,” said Jim.
I gave my nose a tweak. And was promptly rewarded with a fresh flow of blood. I reached for a fresh hankie to catch the spurt.
“Here’s a station,” said Jim.
Ahead off the highway, a lonely but brightly painted gas emporium stood on the bleak road. No signs of life showed, but by the number of pumps and the breadth of the gravel, we surmised the proprietor would be a sufficiently enterprising man to have a telephone.
As we slowed to enter, I climbed over into the back.
“It’s started again,” I explained to Jim. “I’ve got to get a fresh hankie out of my bag.”
Jim drove in and stopped in front of the pump and got out.
“Coming in?” he asked.
“No,” said I, bending low.
I knew he would send somebody out to look at the radiator and oil. That’s the kind of car he has.
The instant I heard his feet crunch away, I hastily tied the blood-stained handkerchief around my face, snatched a handful of dust and grit off the floor of the car and smeared it, with blood, all over my forehead and ears, and rumpled my hair. Quickly shifting a dunnage bag and a valise, I crawled on to the floor, drew the bags on top of me and lay still.
In a moment I heard the gas station door open and a man with a merry whistle approached the car.
I groaned.
I moaned terribly.
I heard the man’s feet halt on the gravel.
“Help, help,” I groaned, muffled. “For mercy’s sake, help.”
I could see the man’s head as he peered white-faced in the car window.
“In heaven’s name,” I groaned, “save me, save me.”
He opened the car door.
“Hello, there,” he said weakly.
“Quick,” I gasped. “They are kidnapping me. Quick, help me up.”
I struggled and got the dunnage bag off me and raised my blood-stained face from the floor. The man instantly slammed the door. I heard Jim’s voice as he came out the gas station:
“There’ll be a telephone there?”
“Oh, sure,” replied a jolly voice. “I cut my phone off at the end of the tourist season, see? But they’ll have a phone at the corners. All winter.”
“Help, help,” I shouted.
Jim ran to the car. I heard him open the door, but I also heard other footsteps crunching rapidly on the gravel, a mutter of quick voices, and then, to my joy, I heard a loud grunt from Jim, a lot of slithering on the gravel, heavy breathing, gasps and thuds.
“Hey,” yelled Jim.
The car door opened, and the pale-faced man, with a big fat man with curly hair stared in. Then they seized me and dragged me from the car.
“Thank heavens,” I cried. “Oh, thank heavens.”
Then they bounded back on Jim who was just slowly staggering to his feet.
“Don’t let him shoot,” I screamed.
The two garage men wound themselves around Jim, heaved savagely and all three went violently to the earth.
“What the…” bellowed Jim, but gravel cut off his words.
And there they struggled and sprawled, while they went all over him for a gun.
“Tie him up,” I warned.
And the pale man whipped off his belt and strapped Jim’s arms above the elbow behind his back.
“Quick,” I cried. “There will be another carload of them along any minute. Run this car around the back.”
The pale man jumped in Jim’s car and in a second, had skidded it out of sight behind the gas station. While I, with a large woollen sock I got from my bag, gagged Jim.
“So he can’t yell at them as they pass?” I explained to the fat man who held Jim in a grizzly bear embrace. “Let’s take him inside.”
We led Jimmie inside the station, where it was cosy. Jim’s eyes glared at me, over the gray sock, with an expression of utter amazement.
“Sit down, you,” I snarled.
“What is this,” gasped the fat man, running his hand through his curly hair.
“It’s a kidnapping, that’s what it is,” I said. “This man is part of a gang of desperate American crooks. I fell foul of them in a little matter that doesn’t interest you, see? So they just took me for a ride.”
“But… but…” spluttered the fat man, “this has nothing to do with me? What if they find out I…?”
His eyes bulged with horror.
“We’ll Bump Him Off”
“Say,” he said, “the less I get mixed up in this the better? Let me go and get the police.”
The pale man had entered.
“Eddie,” said the fat man, “we’re mixed up in some damn thing or other. Gangsters.”
And his shaking hand indicated both Jim and me.
“Listen, buddy.” I said in a tough voice. “There is only one way you can handle this. Any minute, another car is coming by here. They may or may not stop. The toughest gang in America is in that car, see?”
“Oh, oh, ohh,” said the fat man looking angrily at his pale assistant who had been the means of bringing this disaster upon an innocent gas station on a lonely Ontario highway.
“Listen, buddy, just listen,” I snarled “Only one way. If you let this guy go, see, you’re finished. Even if you hand him over to the cops, you’re finished, see? There is only one way out of this mess for you?”
“Wha…wha…wha…?” asked the fat man.
I indicated Jim and drew my finger across my neck.
“We’ll take him out into the bushes back here,” I said slowly, “bump him off and bury him where nobody will ever find him. I beat it, see? Over the border. It’s the last you ever hear of it.”
“Oh, no, no, no,” wailed the fat man.
The pale man just slipped lower and lower down the wall he was leaning against, and after looking with horror at me, slowly closed his eyes.
“You can’t take it, huh?” I sneered. “Well, if you leave this guy loose, you’re as good as dead right now, both of you. You interfered in a snatch, see?”
The fat man began to shake.
“Then, here’s the next best thing,” I snarled. “Help me get this guy back into his car. Tie him up, tight, see? We’ll bury him under the baggage. Then when the other car passes, I’ll drive off and attend to the job myself down the road apiece. But if either of you ever opens your mouth about this, it’ll be just too bad. Just tooooo bad, see?”
I stood up and watched, guardedly out of the window. A car came rushing along whizzed by with three innocent citizens sitting in it.
“There they go,” I hissed, leaping back from the window.
Jim was sitting, exhausted and gagged, but his eyes burned with a baleful light at me.
“Now, boys,” I said, briskly, “let’s get this guy into the car. Stand up, you!”
And then I felt a hard bump in the middle of my back.
“Hands up,” said a sharp voice.
“Hey,” I exclaimed, but raising my arms. It was the pale man. He had a shotgun against my back.
“Let’s,” he cried in a quavering voice “let’s take them both back in the bushes, Bill. We don’t want to get mixed up with gangs, either side.”
“Well,” said the fat man, eyeing us eagerly.
“Just a couple of dirty crooks,” cried the pale one, “it won’t make any difference. And nobody will know but us two. Come on.”
“Just a minute, please,” I stated.
“Shut up,” yelped the pale man, giving me a dig in the back with the shotgun.
“Now, listen, Eddie,” said the fat man, “we’ve got to have an understanding about this. You’re pretty darn gabby. Remember that incident about Norah? How do I know I can trust you if we bump these two guys off? I admit it is the safest thing to do. But how do I know you won’t get drunk and blab?”
“I’ll do the shooting myself,” quavered Eddie. “Then I won’t dare, see? But let’s get out of this jam, and get out of it fast.”
So you see I had to tell them.
I had to explain it was all a little joke, and begged them to unmuffle Jimmie, so he could explain, too.
At first, Jimmie was inclined to borrow Eddie’s shotgun, but when he got quiet, and I was allowed to make a speech explaining about how Jimmie had said the world was safe for democracy, we all had a nice laugh together, and we bought eight gallons of gas and a quart of oil, and everything was hunky dooley.
“But,” said Jim, as we drove away, “I see your point.”
“So do I,” I admitted.
Editor’s Note:
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