Worn and nervous, Matthew went to the Chicago meeting of the porters. He talked as he had never talked before, in that room with barred doors. With streaming eyes he told the story of Jimmie, of the little black wife, of the baby. He went over the events of that terrible night. He offered to testify in court, if called upon. The porters listened, tense and sympathetic; but they were silent and uneasy over the strike. It was “too risky”; they would “lose their jobs”; “Filipinos would be imported”; white men “at a living wage and no tips” would replace them: the nation would not stand being “held up” by Negroes, and white labor would not back them. “Do you think the white railway unions would raise a finger? I guess not!” said one.
No—a general Pullman strike would never do. Public opinion among Negroes, however, forced them to some action. While the white newspapers had said little about the gruesome lynching, and that little dismissed and excused it because of “an atrocious attack upon a woman,” the colored world knew of it to its farthest regions. Once the matter had come up in the Klan Convention and a brazen-throated orator had declared that this was the punishment which would always be meted out to the “black wretches who dared attack Southern womanhood”!
The plan finally agreed on was the utmost Matthew could extract from the union. It confined itself to a porters’ strike on the Klan Special. The train was to arrive in Cincinnati at eight at night on the thirtieth of December and leave at eight forty-five. Before the train came in and while it was in the station, the porters were to make up all the berths they could; at eight-forty all the porters were to leave their cars and march out of the train shed to the main waiting-room; there they were to declare a strike, refusing to accompany farther a train on which one of their number, an innocent man, had been lynched, under atrocious circumstances.
Matthew hurried back to Cincinnati to perfect the plans there. Perigua had been in Chicago, but he kept out of the way. No one seemed to know him there, but in his two or three fugitive visits to Matthew he assured him that he was working underground and making sure that none of the porters should see him. He promised to meet Matthew in Cincinnati.
With great fanfare of trumpets and waving of flags, the Klan Special started south. The porters were grim and silent. One of the organizers of the union had a hurried meeting with them just as they left, and on the way down, there were frequent conferences. The train was to leave Cincinnati without a single porter. There was little porter’s work to be done at night except making the remaining berths, and this would have to be done by the conductors and the passengers themselves.
It was not, after all, a very bold scheme, or one calling for great courage. Matthew felt how small a gesture it was, and yet just now any protest was something; he knew that even this might not have been feasible, had it not been helped by the fact that none of the porters wanted to go south on this train. Fear, therefore, pushed them to strike for principle when under other circumstances many might have refused. It was extremely unlikely, too, that any porters who were laying over in Cincinnati, or who lived there, would volunteer to take the strikers’ places. As the diner was detached at Cincinnati, the waiters would not have to take a stand. They were to disappear quietly, so as not to be asked to serve as porters.
Perigua arrived in Cincinnati three hours before the Klan Special was due. He and Matthew sat again in the big gloomy room on Fourth Street.
Matthew looked strained and thin, but he was sanguine. He detailed his activities.
“Everything’s all right here,” he said. “I think it’s going to make a big sensation. Newspapers will eat it up, and the whole of colored Cincinnati is whispering.”
Perigua listened in silence and then laughed aloud.
“Well, what’s the matter?” asked Matthew, testily.
“They’ve double-crossed you, you boob,” said Perigua at last.
“Nonsense—they can’t as long as the men stick.”
“Sure—‘as long as.’ Know what I’ve been doing in Chicago?”
“No—what?”
“Working for the Klan. Private messenger and stool pigeon for Green, the Grand Dragon. Know all the big ikes—Therwald, Bates, Evans. Say, they knew of this strike from a dozen pigeons before it was planned. They passed the word to Uncle George. It’ll never come off.”
“But, say—”
“Shut up—come with me.”
Matthew was disturbed but walked silently with Perigua along Fourth and then over and west on Carlisle Avenue a couple of blocks, past old brick buildings, smoke-grimed over the tawdry decorations of a rich, dead generation.
Perigua pointed out a certain large house.
“Go in,” he said. “You’ll find forty porters lodging there. ‘Strike’ is the password. They’re new men gathered quietly from all over the South, expenses paid, ready to scab at a moment’s notice. Tell ’em you’re inspecting the bunch and flash this badge on them.”
It was as Perigua said. Matthew almost staggered out of the house, with tears in his eyes.
“I don’t care,” he cried to Perigua. “We’ll strike anyhow. The men will stick, I know. Let the scabs come—they’ll get one beating!”
“Piffle! They’ll never strike. Not a man will budge when they hear of that bunch waiting for their jobs, and they’ll hear of it before they are well out of Chicago. Uncle George will see to that.”
“But what can we do, Perigua? We must do something—God! We must”!
“Sure. Listen. Two can play at double-crossing. I brought Green news of the strike—”
“You?”
“Yes—he heard it from a dozen others. And then, for full measure, I lied about how Chicago Negroes planned a riot as the Klan left. He swallowed both tales and gave me a thousand dollars to push both schemes along; then he tipped off the Pullman Company and the police.”
“But it wasn’t true about the riot?”
“Of course it wasn’t.”
“What did you do?”
“Hung around, filled him with tips and fairy tales, and finally beat it here!”
“What for?”
Perigua quickly straightened up. “Goodbye,” he said, holding out his hand.
“Where are you going?” Matthew asked.
Perigua glared. “I will tell you. I’m taking the next train south,” he said with blazing eyes. Matthew stared.
“But—” he expostulated. “The Klan train will not arrive for two hours yet!”
“I shall need those hours,” said Perigua.
“And you will not see the strike?”
“No—because there won’t be no strike.”
Matthew gripped Perigua’s arm with his own nervous, shaking fingers.
“What’s your plan, Perigua?”
Perigua faced him, speaking slowly and distinctly: “I used to run on this route from Chicago to Florida through Cumberland Gap. Did you see the Gap when you came up?”
Matthew shook his head.
“Well, you come down the valley from Winchester and Richmond and rush into the hills; suddenly you meet the mountains, and diving through one great crag, the tunnel emerges as from a rock wall on to a high trestle which spans the Powell River! Hm! Great sight! All right. Now for the great Pullman strike!”
“But Perigua—what have we to do with—with scenery? And suppose the cowards don’t strike?”
Matthew knew the answer before he asked. He saw the heavy black bag which Perigua carried so carefully. He knew the answer. Perigua’s mind was made up. He was mad—a desperate fanatic. What—
“Scenery!” laughed Perigua. “Listen, fool: we’re mocked, betrayed and double-crossed, your race are born idiots and cowards! Well, I’m going this alone. Get me? Alone! When the Klan Special sees that scenery—when it reaches that trestle, the trestle ain’t going to be there!”
“What is going to become of it?” Matthew asked slowly, talking against time and trying to think.
“I am going to blow it up,” said Perigua.
“But how can you do it? Where can you stand? How can you fire any charge without elaborate wiring to get yourself far enough away?”
“I am not going to get away,” said Perigua. “I am going to sit right on that trestle, and I am going to hell with it.”
They looked each other straight in the eye.
“What are you going to do about it?” whispered Perigua.
Matthew hesitated. “Nothing—” he answered slowly.
Perigua approached Matthew, and there was danger in his eyes.
“You’ll peach?” he whispered.
“I’ll never betray you, Perigua.”
“Well, what will you do?”
Matthew was silent.
“Well, speak, man,” growled Perigua.
“I’ll keep still,” said Matthew.
“All right, keep still. But listen, man. It’s going to be done, and if you can’t be a man, don’t be a damned talebearing dog!”
He started away. Matthew’s thoughts raced. Here was the answer to that sneer of the Japanese. The world would awaken tomorrow to the revolt of black America. His head swam.
He ran after Perigua and gripped his arm. He was all a-tremble. He whispered in Perigua’s ear.
“I don’t believe what you have said. I don’t believe the porters will back down before the scabs, but if they do—”
“Well, if they do, what?” asked Perigua.
“Wait,” said Matthew. “How will the world know that this wasn’t an accident rather than—revenge?”
“I’ve got posters that I printed myself.”
“Give them to me.”
“What for?”
“If the porters strike, I’ll destroy them. But if they don’t strike, I’ll scab with them on the Klan Special—and I’ll go to hell with you.”
“By the living Christ,” said Perigua, “you’ve got guts!”
“No,” said Matthew, “I am a coward. I dare not live.”
Perigua gripped his hand.
“I’ve searched through ten millions,” he said, “and found only one who dared. Now I am going. Here! I’ll give you half the handbills.”
He thrust a bundle into Matthew’s hand.
“Placard the cars with these after midnight. And, say—oh, here it is—here’s a letter.”