Gene’s typewriter began firing, shooting out flames, the platen turning red hot, the gunner’s face grim.

Sara suggested almost civilly, ‘You wanted to look over our accounts, Father?’

He indicated that such had been his presumptuous longing.

She led him to a third kitchen table, which the Coheeze office had extravagantly added to its equipment; she pointed to a mess of letters, bills and ten-cent notebooks, and said casually: ‘There’s our books.’

After half an hour of rustling through papers like a discouraged sparrow scratching up gravel, Fred decided that he was not going to be able to ‘straighten up their accounts’. For there were no accounts. Except for transactions during their first week, they had noted down nothing whatever. Uncashed donation cheques were mixed with unpaid bills. On torn slips of paper were such helpful notes as ‘Recd cash from J.K., ten.’ In one envelope he found a cheque for one hundred dollars from the Southside Marxian and Literary Club and a bill for sixty-five from a stationery firm, and the envelope was from neither party but from the Maplehurst Labour College.

Fred was opening his mouth in wrath at such sacrilege against bookkeeping when the tramp of a dozen heavy feet came from the rickety stairs below them.

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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!’