Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Aug 1916)

108 Pickles and Pearls CHAPTER XXXVIII. NOT WISELY, BUT TOO WELL. The situation at the entrance to the workroom will be recalled. Handsomely gowned ladies, and gentlemen in. frock coats and high hats, were barred from the interior of the works by a crowd of determined strikers. Mr. McTodd, his authority set at defiance, was facing Big Bill Hankins, foreman of the shipping room, and spokesman for his discontented fellow workers. Bill Hankins, it was known, had fanned the smoldering grievances of the employees into a flame of out-andout rebellion. In fact, it was due to his generalship that advantage had been taken of that hour in pressing home the demands of the strikers. Perhaps it will also be recalled that Blivens, the bookkeeper, had started for the nearest telephone to send in a call for the police. It was not the intention of Big Bill to let a riot call be sent in. "Stop, Blivens!' he roared. Blivens stopped. There was a compelling note in that bellowing command that filled him with dismay and brought him up short. , "Go on, I tell you !" cried Silas McTodd frantically. "Send the police here at the double-quick, Blivens ! I will see, by George, if a respectable manufacturer is not to have protection against his ruffianly workers !" Blivens moved onward again, only to be halted by an even more emphatic shout from Bill Hankins. "Try to call the police," threatened Hankins, "and we will destroy all the decorations in the tank room ! W e will tear to pieces the banks of flowers that cover the vats, rend to fragments the great bell of cucumber blossoms, smash the chairs, and damage and disarrange the velvet carpet! Then," and he leaned toward the white-faced and gasping proprietor to breathe the final unnerving threat, "we will set fire to the works ! Sir, call Blivens back, or all this will happen !" A murmur ran through the ranks of gathering guests. The power of the lawless strikers was beginning to be understood. Silas McTodd fell silent, and his trembling hand brushed his brows. It must have been as a dream to him, a terrible nightmare. He swayed as he stood, and the faithful Blivens sprang to support him. There was a lull in proceedings. Hankins had played his biggest card,— and a pall of silence hung over the scene. At that juncture, a voice was heard, ripping through the stillness like an explosion of musketry : "Wait for me !" Dazed, wondering eyes turned in the direction from which the voice had come. A young man, waving a bag with one hand and a cane with the other, was tearing around the corner of the factory. "Charlie!" whispered Silas McTodd, in hopeless tones, and dropped his face on the shoulder of Blivens. "It is Charlie!' yelled Bill Hankins, in an abandon of joy. "He'll be with us, friends, and he is a host in himself. According to our revised schedule of wages, the night watchman is to receive ten a week. There is a four-dollar raise in this strike for Cheerful Charlie !" Hankins did not know that Charlie had been persuaded to go to Samoa. The whereabouts of Charlie, during the preceding ten or twelve days, had been more or less of a mystery to the employees of the works. "Charlie ! Charlie ! Charlie !" shouted the workers, waving caps and handkerchiefs. "Charlie is with us ! He is a striker, like all the rest !" Charlie, entirely in the dark regarding recent events at the factory, was exceedingly bewildered. "What's the trouble here, Bill?" he demanded. "We're demanding our rights, Char