It Can't Happen Here Read online

  Macgoblin and the other guard were arrested and brought before the Commissioner of the Metropolitan District, the great Corpo viceroy, whose power was that of three or four state governors put together.

  Dr. de Verez, though he was not yet dead, was too sunken to testify. But the Commissioner thought that in a case so closely touching the federal government, it would not be seemly to postpone the trial.

  Against the terrified evidence of the Rabbi’s Russian-Polish houseman were the earnest (and by now sober) accounts of the federal Secretary of Education, and of his surviving aide, formerly Assistant Professor of Philosophy in Pelouse University. It was proven that not only de Verez but also Dr. Schmidt was a Jew—which, incidentally, he 100 per cent was not. It was almost proven that this sinister pair had been coaxing innocent Corpos into De Verez’s house and performing upon them what a scared little Jewish stool pigeon called “ritual murders.”

  Macgoblin and friend were acquitted on grounds of self-defense and handsomely complimented by the Commissioner—and later in telegrams from President Windrip and Secretary of State Sarason—for having defended the Commonwealth against human vampires and one of the most horrifying plots known in history.

  The policeman who had shot the other guard wasn’t, so scrupulous was Corpo justice, heavily punished—merely sent out to a dreary beat in the Bronx. So everybody was happy.

  * * *

  But Doremus Jessup, on receiving a letter from a New York reporter who had talked privately with the surviving guard, was not so happy. He was not in a very gracious temper, anyway. County Commissioner Shad Ledue, on grounds of humanitarianism, had made him discharge his delivery boys and employ M.M.’s to distribute (or cheerfully chuck into the river) the Informer. “Last straw—plenty last,” he raged.

  He had read about Rabbi de Verez and seen pictures of him. He had once heard Dr. Willy Schmidt speak, when the State Medical Association had met at Fort Beulah, and afterward had sat near him at dinner. If they were murderous Jews, then he was a murderous Jew too, he swore, and it was time to do something for his Own People.

  That evening—it was late in September, 1937—he did not go home to dinner at all but, with a paper container of coffee and a slab of pie untouched before him, he stooped at his desk in the Informer office, writing an editorial which, when he had finished it, he marked: “Must. 12-pt bold face—box top front p.”

  The beginning of the editorial, to appear the following morning, was:

  Believing that the inefficiency and crimes of the Corpo administration were due to the difficulties attending a new form of government, we have waited patiently for their end. We apologize to our readers for that patience.

  It is easy to see now, in the revolting crime of a drunken cabinet member against two innocent and valuable old men like Dr. Schmidt and the Rev. Dr. de Verez, that we may expect nothing but murderous extirpation of all honest opponents of the tyranny of Windrip and his Corpo gang.

  Not that all of them are as vicious as Macgoblin. Some are merely incompetent—like our friends Ledue, Reek, and Haik. But their ludicrous incapability permits the homicidal cruelty of their chieftains to go on without check.

  Buzzard Windrip, the “Chief,” and his pirate gang——

  A smallish, neat, gray-bearded man, furiously rattling an aged typewriter, typing with his two forefingers.

  * * *

  Dan Wilgus, head of the composing room, looked and barked like an old sergeant and, like an old sergeant, was only theoretically meek to his superior officer. He was shaking when he brought in this copy and, almost rubbing Doremus’s nose in it, protested, “Say, boss, you don’t honest t’ God think we’re going to set this up, do you?”

  “I certainly do!”

  “Well, I don’t! Rattlesnake poison! It’s all right your getting thrown in the hoosegow and probably shot at dawn, if you like that kind of sport, but we’ve held a meeting of the chapel, and we all say, damned if we’ll risk our necks too!”

  “All right, you yellow pup! All right, Dan, I’ll set it myself!”

  “Aw, don’t! Gosh, I don’t want to have to go to your funeral after the M.M.’s get through with you, and say, ‘Don’t he look unnatural!’ ”

  “After working for me for twenty years, Dan! Traitor!”

  “Look here! I’m no Enoch Arden or—oh, what the hell was his name?—Ethan Frome or Benedict Arnold or whatever it was!—and more ‘n once I’ve licked some galoot that was standing around a saloon telling the world you were the lousiest highbrow editor in Vermont, and at that, I guess maybe he was telling the truth, but same time——” Dan’s effort to be humorous and coaxing broke, and he wailed, “God, boss, please don’t!”

  “I know, Dan. Prob’ly our friend Shad Ledue will be annoyed. But I can’t go on standing things like slaughtering old de Verez any more and—— Here! Gimme that copy!”

  * * *

  While compositors, pressmen, and the young devil stood alternately fretting and snickering at his clumsiness, Doremus ranged up before a type case, in his left hand the first composing-stick he had held in ten years, and looked doubtfully at the case. It was like a labyrinth to him. “Forgot how it’s arranged. Can’t find anything except the e-box!” he complained.

  “Hell! I’ll do it! All you pussyfooters get the hell out of this! You don’t know one doggone thing about who set this up!” Dan Wilgus roared, and the other printers vanished!—as far as the toilet door.

  * * *

  In the editorial office, Doremus showed proofs of his indiscretion to Doc Itchitt, that enterprising though awkward reporter, and to Julian Falck, who was off now to Amherst but who had been working for the Informer all summer, combining unprintable articles on Adam Smith with extremely printable accounts of golf and dances at the country club.

  “Gee, I hope you will have the nerve to go on and print it—and same time, I hope you don’t! They’ll get you!” worried Julian.

  “Naw! Gwan and print it! They won’t dare to do a thing! They may get funny in New York and Washington, but you’re too strong in the Beulah Valley for Ledue and Staubmeyer to dare lift a hand!” brayed Doc Itchitt, while Doremus considered, “I wonder if this smart young journalistic Judas wouldn’t like to see me in trouble and get hold of the Informer and turn it Corpo?”

  He did not stay at the office till the paper with his editorial had gone to press. He went home early, and showed the proof to Emma and Sissy. While they were reading it, with yelps of disapproval, Julian Falck slipped in.

  Emma protested, “Oh, you can’t—you mustn’t do it! What will become of us all? Honestly, Dormouse, I’m not scared for myself, but what would I do if they beat you or put in prison or something? It would just break my heart to think of you in a cell! And without any clean underclothes! It isn’t too late to stop it, is it?”

  “No. As a matter of fact the paper doesn’t go to bed till eleven. . .. Sissy, what do you think?”

  “I don’t know what to think! Oh damn!”

  “Why Sis-sy,” from Emma, quite mechanically.

  “It used to be, you did what was right and got a nice stick of candy for it,” said Sissy. “Now, it seems as if whatever’s right is wrong. Julian—funny-face—what do you think of Pop’s kicking Shad in his sweet hairy ears?”

  “Why, Sis——”

  Julian blurted, “I think it’d be fierce if somebody didn’t try to stop these fellows. I wish I could do it. But how could I?”

  “You’ve probably answered the whole business,” said Doremus. “If a man is going to assume the right to tell several thousand readers what’s what—most agreeable, hitherto—he’s got a kind of what you might say priestly obligation to tell the truth. ‘O cursed spite.’ Well! I think I’ll drop into the office again. Home about midnight. Don’t sit up, anybody—and Sissy, and you, Julian, that particularly goes for you two night prowlers! As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord—and in Vermont, that means going to bed.”

  “And alone!” murmured Si
ssy.

  “Why—Cecilia—Jes-sup!”

  As Doremus trotted out, Foolish, who had sat adoring him, jumped up, hoping for a run.

  Somehow, more than all of Emma’s imploring, the dog’s familiar devotion made Doremus feel what it might be to go to prison.

  * * *

  He had lied. He did not return to the office. He drove up the valley to the Tavern and to Lorinda Pike.

  But on the way he stopped in at the home of his son-in-law, bustling young Dr. Fowler Greenhill; not to show him the proof but to have—perhaps in prison? another memory of the domestic life in which he had been rich. He stepped quietly into the front hall of the Greenhill house—a jaunty imitation of Mount Vernon; very prosperous and secure, gay with the brass-knobbed walnut furniture and painted Russian boxes which Mary Greenhill affected. Doremus could hear David (but surely it was past his bedtime?—what time did nine-year-old kids go to bed these degenerate days?) excitedly chattering with his father, and his father’s partner, old Dr. Marcus Olmsted, who was almost retired but who kept up the obstetrics and eye-and-ear work for the firm.

  Doremus peeped into the living room, with its bright curtains of yellow linen. David’s mother was writing letters, a crisp, fashionable figure at a maple desk complete with yellow quill pen, engraved notepaper, and silver-backed blotter. Fowler and David were lounging on the two wide arms of Dr. Olmsted’s chair.

  “So you don’t think you’ll be a doctor, like your dad and me?” Dr. Olmsted was quizzing.

  David’s soft hair fluttered as he bobbed his head in the agitation of being taken seriously by grown-ups.

  “Oh—oh—oh yes, I would like to. Oh, I think it’d be slick to be a doctor. But I want to be a newspaper, like Granddad. That’d be a wow! You said it!”

  (“Da-vid! Where you ever pick up such language!”)

  “You see, Uncle-Doctor, a doctor, oh gee, he has to stay up all night, but an editor, he just sits in his office and takes it easy and never has to worry about nothing!”

  That moment, Fowler Greenhill saw his father-in-law making monkey faces at him from the door and admonished David, “Now, not always! Editors have to work pretty hard sometimes—just think of when there’s train wrecks and floods and everything! I’ll tell you. Did you know I have magic power?”

  “What’s ‘magic power,’ Daddy?”

  “I’ll show you. I’ll summon your granddad here from misty deeps——”

  (“But will he come?” grunted Dr. Olmsted.)

  “—and have him tell you all the troubles an editor has. Just make him come flying through the air!”

  “Aw, gee, you couldn’t do that, Dad!”

  “Oh, can’t I!” Fowler stood solemnly, the overhead lights making soft his harsh red hair, and he windmilled his arms, hooting, “Presto—vesto—adsit—Granddad Jessup—voilà!”

  And there, coming through the doorway, sure enough was Granddad Jessup!

  * * *

  Doremus remained only ten minutes, saying to himself, “Anyway, nothing bad can happen, here, in this solid household.” When Fowler saw him to the door, Doremus sighed to him, “Wish Davy were right—just had to sit in the office and not worry. But I suppose some day I’ll have a run-in with the Corpos.”

  “I hope not. Nasty bunch. What do you think, Dad? That swine Shad Ledue told me yesterday they wanted me to join the M.M.’s as medical officer. Fat chance! I told him so.”

  “Watch out for Shad, Fowler. He’s vindictive. Made us rewire our whole building.”

  “I’m not scared of Captain General Ledue or fifty like him! Hope he calls me in for a bellyache some day! I’ll give him a good sedative—potassium of cyanide. Maybe I’ll some day have the pleasure of seeing that gent in his coffin. That’s the advantage the doctor has, you know! G’-night, Dad! Sleep tight!”

  * * *

  A good many tourists were still coming up from New York to view the colored autumn of Vermont, and when Doremus arrived at the Beulah Valley Tavern he had irritably to wait while Lorinda dug out extra towels and looked up train schedules and was polite to old ladies who complained that there was too much—or not enough—sound from the Beulah River Falls at night. He could not talk to her apart until after ten. There was, meanwhile, a curious exalted luxury in watching each lost minute threaten him with the approach of the final press time, as he sat in the tea room, imperturbably scratching through the leaves of the latest Fortune.

  Lorinda led him, at ten-fifteen, into her little office—just a roll-top desk, a desk chair, one straight chair, and a table piled with heaps of defunct hotel-magazines. It was spinsterishly neat yet smelled still of the cigar smoke and old letter files of proprietors long since gone.

  “Let’s hurry, Dor. I’m having a little dust-up with that snipe Nipper.” She plumped down at the desk.

  “Linda, read this proof. For tomorrow’s paper. . .. No. Wait. Stand up.”

  “Eh?”

  He himself took the desk chair and pulled her down on his knees. “Oh, you!“ she snorted, but she nuzzled her cheek against his shoulder and murmured contentedly.

  “Read this, Linda. For tomorrow’s paper. I think I’m going to publish it, all right—got to decide finally before eleven—but ought I to? I was sure when I left the office, but Emma was scared——”

  “Oh, Emma! Sit still. Let me see it.” She read quickly. She always did. At the end she said emotionlessly, “Yes. You must run it. Doremus! They’ve actually come to us here—the Corpos—it’s like reading about typhus in China and suddenly finding it in your own house!”

  She rubbed his shoulder with her cheek again, and raged, “Think of it! That Shad Ledue—and I taught him for a year in district school, though I was only two years older than he was—and what a nasty bully he was, too! He came to me a few days ago, and he had the nerve to propose that if I would give lower rates to the M.M.’s—he sort of hinted it would be nice of me to serve M.M. officers free—they would close their eyes to my selling liquor here, without a license or anything! Why, he had the inconceivable nerve to tell me, and condescendingly! my dear—that he and his fine friends would be willing to hang out here a lot! Even Staubmeyer—oh, our ‘professor’ is blossoming out as quite a sporting character! And when I chased Ledue out, with a flea in his ear—— Well, just this morning I got a notice that I have to appear in the county court tomorrow—some complaint from my endearing partner, Mr. Nipper—seems he isn’t satisfied with the division of our work here—and honestly, my darling, he never does one blame thing but sit around and bore my best customers to death by telling what a swell hotel he used to have in Florida. And Nipper has taken his things out of here and moved into town. I’m afraid I’ll have an unpleasant time, trying to keep from telling him what I think of him, in court.”

  “Good Lord! Look, sweet, have you got a lawyer for it?”

  “Lawyer? Heavens no! Just a misunderstanding—on little Nipper’s part.”

  “You’d better. The Corpos are using the courts for all sorts of graft and for accusations of sedition. Get Mungo Kitterick, my lawyer.”

  “He’s dumb. Ice water in his veins.”

  “I know, but he’s a tidier-up, like so many lawyers. Likes to see everything all neat in pigeonholes. He may not care a damn for justice, but he’ll be awfully pained by any irregularities. Please get him, Lindy, because they’ve got Effingham Swan presiding at court tomorrow.”

  “Who?”

  “Swan—the Military Judge for District Three—that’s a new Corpo office. Kind of circuit judge with court-martial powers. This Effingham Swan—I had Doc Itchitt interview him today, when he arrived—he’s the perfect gentleman-Fascist—Oswald Mosley style. Good family—whatever that means. Harvard graduate. Columbia Law School, year at Oxford. But went into finance in Boston. Investment banker. Major or something during the war. Plays polo and sailed in a yacht race to Bermuda. Itchitt says he’s a big brute, with manners smoother than a butterscotch sundae and more language than a bishop.”

>   “But I’ll be glad to have a gentleman to explain things to, instead of Shad.”

  “A gentleman’s blackjack hurts just as much as a mucker’s!”

  “Oh, you!“ with irritated tenderness, running her forefinger along the line of his jaw.

  Outside, a footstep.

  She sprang up, sat down primly in the straight chair. The footsteps went by. She mused:

  “All this trouble and the Corpos—— They’re going to do something to you and me. We’ll become so roused up that—either we’ll be desperate and really cling to each other and everybody else in the world can go to the devil or, what I’m afraid is more likely, we’ll get so deep into rebellion against Windrip, we’ll feel so terribly that we’re standing for something, that we’ll want to give up everything else for it, even give up you and me. So that no one can ever find out and criticize. We’ll have to be beyond criticism.”

  “No! I won’t listen. We will fight, but how can we ever get so involved—detached people like us——”

  “You are going to publish that editorial tomorrow?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s not too late to kill it?”

  He looked at the clock over her desk—so ludicrously like a grade-school clock that it ought to have been flanked with portraits of George and Martha. “Well, yes, it is too late—almost eleven. Couldn’t get to the office till ‘way past.”

  “You’re sure you won’t worry about it when you go to bed tonight? Dear, I so don’t want you to worry! You’re sure you don’t want to telephone and kill the editorial?”

  “Sure. Absolute!”

  “I’m glad! Me, I’d rather be shot than go sneaking around, crippled with fear. Bless you!”

  She kissed him and hurried off to another hour or two of work, while he drove home whistling vaingloriously.

  But he did not sleep well, in his big black-walnut bed. He startled to the night noises of an old frame house—the easing walls, the step of bodiless assassins creeping across the wooden floors all night long.