“They’re not our responsibility,” gritted the mayor. “Whatever happens to them is their own hard luck. We didn’t ask them here. We don’t want them here. They contribute nothing to the community. You’re going to tell me they’re misfits. Well, can I help that? You’re going to say they can’t find jobs. And I’ll tell you they could find jobs if they tried to find them. There’s work to be done, there’s always work to be done. They’ve been filled up with this new world talk and they figure it’s up to someone to find the place that suits them and the job that suits them.”
“You sound like a rugged individualist,” said Webster.
“You say that like you think it’s funny,” yapped the mayor.
“I do think it’s funny,” said Webster. “Funny, and tragic, that anyone should think that way today.”
“The world would be a lot better off with some rugged individualism,” snapped the mayor. “Look at the men who have gone places –”
“Meaning yourself?” asked Webster.
“You might take me, for example,” Carter agreed. “I worked hard. I took advantage of opportunity. I had some foresight. I did –”
“You mean you licked the correct boots and stepped in the proper faces,” said Webster. “You’re the shining example of the kind of people the world doesn’t want today. You positively smell musty, your ideas are so old. You’re the last of the politicians, Carter, just as I was the last of the Chamber of Commerce secretaries. Only you don’t know it yet. I did. I got out. Even when it cost me something, I got out, because I had to save my self-respect. Your kind of politics is dead. They are dead because any tinhorn with a loud mouth and a brassy front could gain power by appeal to mob psychology. And you haven’t got mob psychology any more. You can’t have mob psychology when people don’t give a care what happens to a thing that’s dead already—a political system that broke down under its own weight.”
“Get out of here,” screamed Carter. “Get out before I have the cops come and throw you out.”
“You forget,” said Webster, “that I came in to talk about the houses.”
“It won’t do you any good,” snarled Carter. “You can stand and talk until doomsday for all the good it does. Those houses burn. That’s final.”
“How would you like to see the loop a mass of rubble?” asked Webster.
“Your comparison,” said Carter, “is grotesque.”
“I wasn’t talking about comparisons,” said Webster.
“You weren’t –” The mayor stared at him. “What were you talking about then?”
“Only this,” said Webster. “The second the first torch touches the houses, the first shell will land on the city hall. And the second one will hit the First National. They’ll go on down the line, the biggest targets first.”
Carter gaped. Then a flush of anger crawled from his throat up into his face.
“It won’t work, Webster,” he snapped. “You can’t bluff me. Any cock-and-bull story like that –”
“It’s no cock-and-bull story,” declared Webster. “Those men have cannons out there. Pieces from in front of Legion halls, from the museums. And they have men who know how to work them. They wouldn’t need them, really. It’s practically point-blank range. Like shooting the broad side of a barn.”
Carter reached for the radio, but Webster stopped him with an upraised hand.
“Better think a minute, Carter, before you go flying off the handle. You’re on a spot. Go ahead with your plan and you have a battle on your hands. The houses may burn but the loop is wrecked. The businessmen will have your scalp for that.”
Carter’s hand retreated from the radio.
From far away came the sharp crack of a rifle.
“Better call them off,” warned Webster.
Carter’s face twisted with indecision.
Another rifle shot, another and another.
“Pretty soon,” said Webster, “it will have gone too far. So far that you can’t stop it.”
A thudding blast rattled the windows of the room. Carter leaped from his chair.
Webster felt the blood drain from his head, felt suddenly cold and weak. But he fought to keep his face straight and his voice calm.
Carter was staring out the window, like a man of stone.
“I’m afraid,” said Webster, “that it’s gone too far already.”
The radio on the desk chirped insistently, red light flashing.
Carter reached out a trembling hand and snapped it on.
“Carter,” a voice was saying. “Carter. Carter.”
Webster recognized that voice—the bull-throated tone of Police Chief Jim Maxwell.
“What is it?” asked Carter.
“They had a big gun,” said Maxwell. “It exploded when they tried to fire it. Ammunition no good, I guess.”
“One gun?” asked Carter. “Only one gun?”
“I don’t see any others.”
“I heard rifle fire,” said Carter.
“Yeah, they did some shooting at us. Wounded a couple of the boys. But they’ve pulled back now. Deeper into the brush. No shooting now.”
“O.K.,” said Carter, “go ahead and start the fires.”
Webster started forward. “Ask him, ask him –”
But Carter clicked the switch and the radio went dead.
“What was it you wanted to ask?”
“Nothing,” said Webster. “Nothing that amounted to anything.”
He couldn’t tell Carter that Gramp had been the one who knew about firing big guns. Couldn’t tell him that when the gun exploded Gramp had been there.
He’d have to get out of here, get over to the gun as quickly as possible.
“It was a good bluff, Webster,” Carter was saying. “A good bluff, but it petered out.”
The mayor turned to the window that faced towards the houses.
“No more firing,” he said. “They gave up quick.”
“You’ll be lucky,” snapped Webster, “if six of your policemen come back alive. Those men with the rifles are out in the brush and they can pick the eye out of a squirrel at a hundred yards.”
Feet pounded in the corridor outside, two pairs of feet racing toward the door.
The mayor whirled from his window and Webster pivoted around.
“Gramp!” he yelled.
“Hi, Johnny,” puffed Gramp, skidding to a stop.
The man behind Gramp was a young man and he was waving something in his hand—a sheaf of papers that rustled as he waved them.
“What do you want?” asked the mayor.
“Plenty,” said Gramp.
He stood for a moment, catching back his breath, said between puffs:
“Meet my friend, Henry Adams.”
“Adams?” asked the mayor.
“Sure,” said Gramp. “His granddaddy used to live here. Out on Twenty-seventh Street.”
“Oh,” said the mayor and it was as if someone had smacked him with a brick. “Oh, you mean F. J. Adams.”
“Bet your boots,” said Gramp. “Him and me, we marched into Berlin together. Used to keep me awake nights telling me about his boy back home.”
Carter nodded to Henry Adams. “As mayor of the city,” he said, trying to regain some of his dignity, “I welcome you to –”
“It’s not a particularly fitting welcome,” Adams said. “I understand you are burning my property.”
“Your property!” The mayor choked and his eyes stared in disbelief at the sheaf of papers Adams waved at him.