I.  
Jimmie went to supper in the mess-hall; but the piles of steaming hot food choked him—he was thinking of the half-starved little Jew. The thirty pieces of silver in the pocket of his army jacket burned each a separate hole. Like the Judas of old, he wanted to hang himself, and he took a quick method of doing it.
Next to him at the table sat a motor-cyclist who had been a union plumber before the war, and had agreed with Jimmie that working-men were going to get their jobs back or would make the politicians sweat for it. On the way out from the meal, Jimmie edged this fellow off and remarked, “Say, I've got somethin' interestin'.”
Now interesting things were rare here under the Arctic Circle. “What's that?” asked the plumber.
“I was walkin' on the street,” said Jimmie, “an' I seen a printed paper in the gutter. It's a copy of the proclamation the Bolsheviki have made to the German soldiers, an' that they're givin' out in the German trenches.”
“By heck!” said the plumber. “What's in it?”
“Why, it calls on them to rise against the Kaiser—to do what the Russians have done.”
“Can you read German?” asked the other.
“Naw,” said Jimmie. “This is in English.”
“But what's it doin' in English?”
“I'm sure I dunno.”
“What's it doin' in Archangel?”
“Dunno that either.”
“Holy Christ!” cried the plumber. “I bet them fellers are trying their stunts on us!”
“I hadn't thought of that,” said Jimmie, subtly. “Maybe it's so.”
“They won't get very far with the Yanks, I bet,” predicted the other.
“No, I suppose not. But, anyhow, it's interesting, what they say.”
“Lemme see it,” said the plumber.
“But say,” said Jimmie, “don't you tell nobody. I don't want to get into trouble.”
“Mum's the word, old man.” And the plumber took the dirty scrap of paper and read. “By God!” said he. “That's kind o' funny.”
“How do you mean?”
“Why, that don't sound like them fellers were backing the Kaiser, does it?” And the plumber scratched his head. “Say, that sounds all right to me!”
“Me too!” said Jimmie. “Didn't know they had that much sense.”
“It's just what the German people ought to have, by God,” said the plumber. “Seems to me we ought to hire fellows to give out things like that.”
“I think so, too,” said Jimmie, enraptured.
The plumber reflected again. “I suppose,” said he, “the trouble is they wouldn't give it to the Germans only; they'd want to give it to both sides.”
“Exactly!” said Jimmie, enraptured still more.
“And, of course, that wouldn't do,” said the plumber; “that would interfere with discipline.” So Jimmie's hopes were dashed.
But the upshot of the interview was that the plumber said he would like to keep the paper and show it to a couple of other fellows. He promised again that he wouldn't mention Jimmie, so Jimmie said all right, and went his way, feeling one seed was lodged in good soil.
II.
 
The “Y” had come to Archangel along with the rest of the expedition, and had set up a hut, in which the men played checkers and read, and bought chocolate and cigarettes at prices which they considered too high. Jimmie strolled in, and there was a doughboy with whom he had had some chat on the transport. This doughboy had been a printer at home, and he had agreed with Jimmie that maybe a whole lot of politicians and newspaper editors didn't really understand President Wilson's radical thought, and so far as they did understand it, hated and feared it. This printer was reading one of the popular magazines, full of the intellectual pap which a syndicate of big bankers considered safe for the common people. He looked bored, so Jimmie strolled up and lured him away, and repeated his play-acting as with the plumber—and with the same result.
Then he strolled in to see one of the picture-shows which had been brought along to beguile the long Arctic nights for the expedition. The picture showed a million-dollar-a-year girl doll-baby in her habitual role, a poor little child-waif dressed in the newest fashion and with a row of ringlets just out of a band-box, sharing those terrible fates which the poor take as an everyday affair, and being rewarded at the end by the love of a rich and noble and devoted youth who solves the social problem by setting her up in a palace. This also had met with the approval of a syndicate of bankers before it reached the common people; and in the very midst of it, while the child-waif with the ringlets was being shown in a “close-up” with large drops of water running down her cheeks, the doughboy in the seat next to Jimmie remarked, “Aw, hell! Why do they keep on giving us this bunk?”
So Jimmie suggested that they “cut it”, and they went out, and Jimmie played his little game a third time, and again was asked to leave the leaflet he had picked out of the gutter.
So on for two days until Jimmie had got rid of the last of the manifestoes which Kalenkin had entrusted to him. And on the evening of the last day, as the subtle propagandist was about to turn into his bunk for the night, there suddenly appeared a sergeant with a file of half a dozen men and announced, “Higgins, you are under arrest.”
Jimmie stared at him. “What for?”
“Orders—that's all I know.”
“Well, wait—” began Jimmie; but the other said there was no wait about it, and he took Jimmie by the arm, and one of the other men took him by the other arm, and marched him away. A third man slung Jimmie's kit-bag on to his shoulder, while the rest began to search the place, ripping open the mattress and looking for loose boards in the floor.
III.
 
It didn't take Jimmie very long to figure out the situation. By that time he had come into the presence of Lieutenant Gannet, he had made up his mind what had happened, and what he would do about it.
The lieutenant sat at a table, erect and stiff, with a terrible frown behind his glasses. He had his sword on the table and also his automatic—as if he intended to execute Jimmie, and had only to decide which method to use.
“Higgins,” he thundered, “where did you get that leaflet?”
“I found it in the gutter.”
“You lie!” said the lieutenant.
“No, sir,” said Jimmie.
“How many did you find.”
Jimmie had imagined this emergency, and decided to play safe. “Three, sir,” said he; and added, “I think.”
“You lie!” thundered the lieutenant again.
“No, sir,” said Jimmie, meekly.
“Whom did you give them to?”
Jimmie hadn't thought of that question. It stumped him. “I—I'd rather not say,” said he.
“I command you to say,” said the lieutenant.
“I'm sorry, sir, but I couldn't.”
“You'll have to say before you get through,” said the other. “You might as well understand that now. You say you found three?”
“It might have been four,” said Jimmie, playing still safer. “I didn't pay any particular attention to them.”
“You sympathize with these doctrines,” said the lieutenant. “Do you deny it?”
“Why, no sir—not exactly. I sympathize with part of them.”
“And you found these leaflets in the gutter, and you didn't take the trouble to count whether there were three or four?”
“No, sir.”
“There couldn't have been five?”
“I don't know, sir—I don't think so.”
“Certainly not six?”
“No, sir,” said Jimmie, feeling quite safe now. “I'm sure there weren't six.”
So the lieutenant opened a drawer in the table before him, and took out a bunch of the leaflets, folded, wrinkled and dirt-stained, and spread them before Jimmie's eyes, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. “You lie!” said the lieutenant.
“I was mistaken, sir,” said Jimmie.
“Have you searched this man?” the officer demanded of the other soldiers.
“Not yet, sir.”
“Do it now.”
They made certain that Jimmie had no weapons, and then they made him strip to the skin. They searched everything, even prying loose the soles of his boots; and, of course, one of the first things they found was the red card in the inside jacket-pocket. “Aha!” cried the lieutenant.
“That's a card of the Socialist party,” said Jimmie.
“Don't you know that back home men who carry that card are being sent to jail for twenty years?”
“It ain't fer carryin' the card,” said Jimmie, sturdily.
There was a pause, while Jimmie got his clothes on again. “Now, Higgins,” said the lieutenant, “you have been caught red-handed in treason against your country and its flag. The penalty is death. There is just one way you can escape—by making a clean breast of everything. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then tell me who gave you those leaflets?”
“I'm sorry, sir, I found them in the gutter.”
“You intend to stick to that silly tale?”
“It's the truth, sir.”
“You will protect your fellow-conspirators with your life?”
“I have told you all I know, sir.”
“All right,” said the lieutenant. He took a pair of handcuffs from the drawer and saw them put on Jimmie. He picked up his sword and his automatic—and Jimmie, who did not understand military procedure, stared with fright. But the lieutenant was merely intending to strap the weapons on to his belt; then he got into his overcoat and his big fur gloves and his fur hat that covered everything but his eyes and nose, and ordered Jimmie brought along. Outside an automobile was waiting, and the officer and the prisoner and two guards rode to the military jail.
IV.
 
There was terror in the soul of the prisoner, but he did not let anyone see it. And in the same way Lieutenant Gannet did not let anyone see the perplexity that was in his soul. He was a military officer, he had his stern military duty to do, and he was doing it; but he had never put anybody in handcuffs before, and had never taken anybody to jail before, and he was almost as much upset about it as the prisoner.
The lieutenant had seen the terrible spectacle of Russia collapsing, falling into ruin and humiliation, because of what seemed to him a propaganda of treason which had been carried on in her armies; he realized that these “mad dogs” of Bolsheviki were deliberately conspiring to poison the other armies, to bring the rest of the world into their condition. It seemed to him monstrous that such efforts should be under way in the American army. How far had the thing gone? The lieutenant did not know, and he was terrified, as men always are in the presence of the unknown. It was his plain duty, to which he had sworn himself, to stamp his heel upon the head of this snake; but still he was deeply troubled. This Sergeant Higgins had been promoted for valour in France, and had been, in spite of his reckless tongue, a pretty decent subordinate. And behold, here he was, an active conspirator, a propagandist of sedition, a defiant and insolent traitor!
They came to the jail, which had been constructed by the Tsar for the purpose of holding down the people of the region. It loomed, a gigantic stone bulk in the darkness; and Jimmie, who had preached in Local Leesville that America was worse than Russia, now learned that he had been mistaken—Russia was exactly the same.
They entered through a stone gateway, and a steel door opened before them and clanged behind them. At a desk sat a sergeant, and except that he was British, and that his uniform was brown instead of blue, it might have been Leesville, U.S.A. They took down Jimmie's name and address, and then Lieutenant Gannet asked: “Has Perkins come yet?”
“Not yet, sir,” was the reply; but at that moment the front door was opened, and there entered a big man, bundled in an overcoat which made him even bigger. From the first moment, Jimmie watched this man as a fascinated rabbit watches a snake. The little Socialist had had so much to do with policemen and detectives in his hunted life that he knew in a flash what he was “up against”.
This Perkins before the war had been an “operative” for a private detective agency—what the workers contemptuously referred to as a “sleuth”. The government, having found itself in sudden need of much “sleuthing”, had been forced to take what help it could get, without too close scrutiny. So now Perkins was a sergeant in the secret service; and just as the carpenters were hammering nails as at home, and the surgeons were cutting flesh as at home, so Perkins was “sleuthing” as at home.
“Well, sergeant?” said the lieutenant. “What have you got?”
“I think I've got the story, sir.”
You could see the relief in Gannet's face; and Jimmie's heart went down into his boots.
“There's just one or two details I want to make sure about,” continued Perkins. “I suppose you won't mind if I question this prisoner?”
“Oh, not at all,” said the other. He was relieved to be able to turn this difficult matter over to a man of decision, a professional man, who was used to such cases and knew how to handle them.
“I'll report to you at once,” said Perkins.
“I'll wait,” said the lieutenant.
And Perkins took Jimmie's trembling arm in a grip like a vice, and marched him down a long stone corridor and down a flight of steps. On the way he picked up two other men, also in khaki, who followed him; the four passed through a series of underground passages, and entered a stone cell with a solid steel door, which they clanged behind them—a sound that was like the knell of doom to poor Jimmie's terrified soul. And instantly Sergeant Perkins seized him by the shoulder and whirled him about, and glared into his eyes. “Now, you little son-of-a-bitch!” said he.
Having been a detective in an American city, this man was familiar with the “third degree”, whereby prisoners are led to tell what they know, and many things which they don't know, but which they know the police want them to tell. Of the other two men, one Private Connor, had had this inquisition applied to him on more than one occasion. He was a burglar with a prison-record; but his last arrest had been in a middle Western town for taking part in a bar-room fight, and the judge didn't happen to know his record, and accepted his tearful plea, agreeing to suspend sentence provided the prisoner would enlist to fight for his country.
The other man was named Grady, and had left a wife and three children in a tenement in “Hell's Kitchen”, New York, to come to fight the Kaiser. He was a kind-hearted and decent Irishman, who had earned a hard living carrying bricks and mortar up a ladder ten hours a day; but he was absolutely convinced that there existed, somewhere under his feet, a hell of brimstone and sulphur in which he would roast for ever if he disobeye............