The Prodigal Parents by Sinclair Lewis

Author:Sinclair Lewis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University of Adelaide Library

https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/l/lewis/sinclair/prodigal/chapter20.html

Last updated Sunday, March 27, 2016 at 11:57

The Prodigal Parents, by Sinclair Lewis

Chapter 21

At the tramping on the stairs, the three sprang up, Gene with quivering hand at his lips.

‘You scared?’ demanded Sara.

‘You bet I am! Sounds like the cops. I’ve been beaten by cops before!’

‘They’ve got no reason to arrest us.’

‘They don’t arrest you for reason — just for fun!’

Fred took command — not these many years had he dared to command Sara. ‘You two get out of this! Hustle up on the roof and hide. I know lots of the cops.’ They hesitated, and his voice became military. ‘Hear me? Get out! Beat it!’

The two revolutionaries beat it.

He made much of looking as though he had proper business here. He sat squarely at the table, pencil in hand, note-book and bills before him, but he was trembling, and afterward he found that the only entry he had made in the note-book was: ‘Scared myself.’ He was gravely drawing ballet girls on a blotter when, like pigs bursting out of an opened pen, into the room sprang a police sergeant and five patrolmen, all with clubs in their fists, a couple with hands on pistol holsters.

‘What the!’ grunted the sergeant.

‘Well I’ll be!’ intelligently commented the others.

‘Hello, Sergeant. Afraid you’re too late. Your birds have flown the coop,’ Fred carolled.

He remained seated; he knew that to be the safest position against a thug not too drunk.

‘Who are you? Oh. It’s Mr. Cornplow. What you doing here? Where’s this anarchist guy?’

‘Skipped town, I’m afraid. I’m here representing the creditors. This fellow Silga owes me for a light truck, damn him!’

‘What makes you think he’s gone?’

‘My daughter saw him off at the train.’

‘Oh, that’s so! She was mixed up in this.’

‘She just worked here — she talked it over with my friend, the mayor, before she took the job. She has no responsibility.’

‘Well, I don’t want her, anyway. Get busy, boys!’

It was appalling to the placid Fred, the gloating frenzy with which the boys ‘got busy’. From somewhere out in the hall axes were brought, and they gleefully went to work. There is no greater bliss than to be destructive as hell while being moral as heaven. The guardians of the law smashed tables, threw a typewriter through a closed window, with hysterical laughter. Reporters and news photographers were somehow suddenly there, very cheerful, and it was the glare of a flashlight bulb that startled Fred into action. He rose; he faced the sergeant as he would have faced a chronic dead beat.

‘Stop this business or I’ll have the whole bunch of you kicked off the force! I represent the creditors, and you have no court order . . .’

‘Don’t need none.’

‘I’ll sue you, personally, for every cent of damage! Look, Sergeant — chase all these roughnecks out of here, and I’ll explain.’

‘Outside youse,’ said the sergeant, wiping his hand on the seat of his trousers, that it might be clean to receive the dirty money.

Fred’s argument was brief: it consisted entirely

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