The Cold Millions: A Novel, стр. 25
Fred Moore stopped on the sidewalk and turned to him. “So,” he said, “if you’re amenable to it, this woman would like to speak with you this afternoon.”
Rye looked up. “Ursula the Great?”
“Who?” The lawyer looked dumbfounded. “No. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, the woman I was just telling you about, Mrs. Jack Jones by her married name.” He put a hand on Rye’s arm. “But I should warn you. She can be—” He cleared his throat. “What I mean is, she has a certain way of . . . well, her nature is—” Then Rye’s lawyer, who seemed never at a loss for words, laughed at his own inability to find the right one. “Let’s just say she is redoubtable.”
Rye stared.
“Estimable?”
Rye shifted his feet on the frosty gravel.
“Formidable?”
Rye liked having a lawyer, but the man could be as hard to understand as Old Jules on a French bender. He wondered how many words he’d have to hear before he recognized one, so he gave up and said, “Oh,” thinking he would figure out what formidable meant once he met the woman.
Rye walked with Fred Moore across the river, which steamed like a bath in the cool air. They passed Stevens Street and the job agencies, guarded by men with downturned rifles. Down Front Street, past cafés, hotels, service halls, laundries, and bars—the street nearly empty of tramps and day workers, so many now behind bars or run out of town. A cop standing across from the IWW building took note of Rye and his lawyer as they entered. Inside, the foyer was empty, cantina closed, the cops having seized back issues of the Industrial Worker from the newsstand and arrested the editors for conspiracy to incite a riot.
In the meeting hall, they could hear raised voices from the back office, and that was when Fred Moore put a hand on Rye’s arm. “I’m sorry for taking you into the fray without a bath or a change of clothing. Miss Flynn—er, Mrs. Jones requested that you arrive bearing the evidence of your mistreatment.” Then Fred Moore gently reached over and opened Rye’s coat to reveal the bloodstain on his shirt. “Her idea . . .”
Rye looked down. Seeing his own dried blood made him think of Gig. “Mr. Moore, I don’t suppose you’d see about getting my brother out, too.”
“Of course,” he said. “I will look into it immediately.”
“Gregory Dolan,” Rye said. “And there was another man with us, an Indian named Jules.”
Fred Moore pulled out a pad and wrote the names down. “I’ll see what I can find out. And I’ll get you some proper clothing. You look to be about my size.” He reached for the door of the union office.
“I don’t suppose you got a bowler hat,” Rye said. “I always thought I would look smart in a bowler.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Mr. Moore said, and he opened the door and Rye got his first look at the redoubtable, estimable, formidable Elizabeth Gurley Flynn.
12
She was just a kid, more girl than rebel, small and sprightly and not a line or seam in her open face. She seemed to change from different angles—a bit of the schoolgirl, a bit of the nun, a bit of the Irish saloon girl—long black hair loose to the waist, held thick by a black ribbon. She wore a long-sleeved black satin blouse with a high collar revealing a narrow black necktie, above a plain black bustled skirt—black on black on pure Irish pale. Her slate blue eyes were big and dipped at the corners so she seemed to be alternately pleading and sympathizing.
Rye wondered then if redoubtable meant a thing so pretty and unexpected that it actually hurt to look at. She glanced up and saw Rye and his lawyer at the doorway, but she did not announce them, instead turning her attention back to the five men standing around her, their backs to Rye.
The men shuffled and shifted their weight, hats in hand. Gurley Flynn was the only one sitting, perched sidesaddle on a small sofa, as if choosing between unworthy suitors.
The only man Rye recognized in the room was the IWW secretary, nervous Charlie Filigno. He was standing nearest Mrs. Jones, trying to explain in heavily accented English that they were planning a second free speech action for November 29, exactly four weeks after the first. Word was going out for more soapbox speakers and floaters willing to clog the jails. They planned to keep up the pressure with news stories while they battled in the courts. “Elizabeth has offer to give speeches to raise money—”
“A thousand dollars,” interrupted Gurley. “That’s how much I intend to raise. In three weeks, the great Clarence Darrow will be back in Boise delivering a lecture on the Haywood case, and I plan be there, to hire him to come to Spokane and challenge this outrageous anti-speech law once and for all.”
Filigno cleared his throat. “Elizabeth hopes—”
“I hope to use my notoriety to raise this money, as I did in Missoula,” she said, “until the cops there overplayed their hand by arresting me.”
The men shifted, made wary eye contact, and a chinless man cleared his throat. “Mrs. Jones, we all admired what you done in Missoula, but you had thirty men in jail there. There’s three hundred here. And frankly, we got concerns about allowing a nineteen-year-old girl in your current condition—”
“Allowing?” She laughed. “Mr. Davis, with all due respect, I have given speeches from Maine to Montana, and I have never once been allowed to speak.”
Standing next to her, Charlie Filigno put his hand out to calm her just as one of the men, whom Rye couldn’t see from the doorway, grew agitated. “Mrs. Jones, you will refrain from such outbursts—”
And that was the moment when Mrs. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Jones thought it best to see Rye.