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Updated: June 23, 2025
Guffey's office had got its German spy story ready, and next morning, here was the entire front page of the American City "Times" given up to the amazing revelation that Karl von Stroeme, agent of the German government, and reputed to be a nephew of the German Vice-chancellor, had been arrested in American City, posing as a Swedish sewing-machine agent, but in reality having been occupied in financing the planting of dynamite bombs in the buildings of the Pioneer Foundry Company, now being equipped for the manufacture of machine-guns.
"You damned fool!" were Guffey's first words. Peter's knees went weak and his teeth began to chatter again. "Wh-wh-what?" he cried. "Didn't I tell you to hold your mouth?" And Guffey looked as if he were going to twist Peter's wrist again. "Mr. Guffey, I ain't told a soul! I ain't said one word about the Goober case, not one word!" Peter rushed on, pouring out protests. But Guffey cut him short.
Ostensibly the action was taken by the Federal agents, or by the District Attorney's office, or by the city police and detectives; but Peter knew that it was always himself and the rest of Guffey's agents, pulling the wires behind the scenes. Guffey had the money, he was working for the men who really counted in American City; Guffey was the real boss.
At the same time another of Guffey's men, an ex-army officer still wearing his, uniform, caused a meeting of the American Legion to be summoned; he made a furious address to the boys, and at nine o'clock that night some two-score of them set out, armed with big monkey-wrenches from their automobiles, and raided the I. W. W. headquarters, and battered the members over the head with the monkey-wrenches, causing several to leap from the window and break their legs.
Guffey's men had been trying for a long time to get Germans to contribute to the Goober Defense fund, but here was an even better opportunity. Peter thought of Comrade Apfel, who was one of the extreme Socialists, and a temporary Pacifist like most Germans.
Then another man, the editor of a labor journal, revealed the fact that he was composing an editorial; he knew Guffey, and was going to publish Guffey's picture, and brand him as an "Inquisitionist." He asked for Peter's picture, and Peter agreed to have one taken, and to be headlined as "The Inquisitionist's Victim."
A dozen of Guffey's men, with another dozen from the District Attorney's office, raided the office of Ashton's paper, the "Clarion," kicked the editorial staff downstairs or threw them out of the windows, and proceeded to smash the typewriters and the printing presses, and to carry off the subscription lists and burn a ton or two of "literature" in the back yard.
And the same thing was true of the Constitution, even tho the part called the Bill of Rights declared that everybody in America might do all the things that Guffey's office was sending them to jail for doing! This seemed a plain crazy proposition; but Guffey explained it as a matter of politics.
Nevertheless Sydney went right ahead with his program of denouncing the Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association, and denouncing the government for its failure to provide farms and jobs for the veterans. One of Guffey's "under cover operatives" that was the technical term for the Peter Gudges and Joe Angells was a man by the name of Jonas.
He and McGivney and the rest of Guffey's men had a contempt for the public officials, whom they regarded as "pikers"; the officials had very little money to spend, and very little power. If you really wanted to get anything done in America, you didn't go to any public official, you went to the big men of affairs, the ones who had the "stuff," and were used to doing things quickly and efficiently.
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