Meantime she had gone home and
renewed her Irish roses with French rouge, and restored her energy
with coffee and cigarettes, and now she was waiting for him, smiling
serenely, as fresh as any bird or flower in the park that summer
morning. She asked him in even tones how things had gone, and when
Peter began to stammer that he didn't think he could face McGivney,
she proceeded to build up his courage once more. She let him put his
arms about her, even there in broad daylight; she whispered to him
to get himself together, to be a man, and worthy of her.
What had he to be afraid of, anyway? They hadn't a single thing on
him, and there was no possible way they could get anything. His
hands were clean all the way thru, and all he had to do was to stick
it out; he must make up his mind in advance, that no matter what
happened, he would never break down, he would never vary from the
story he had rehearsed with her. She made him go over the story
again; how on the previous evening, at the gathering in the I. W. W.
headquarters, they had talked about killing Nelse Ackerman as a
means of bringing the war to an end. And after the talk he had heard
Joe Angell whisper to Jerry Rudd that he had the makings of a bomb
already; he had a suit-case full of dynamite stored there in the
closet, and he and Pat McCormick had been planning to pull off
something that very night.
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