Free Rex Stout by The President Vanishes Page A

savagely criticizing the President for months, appeared that morning with its entire front page a placard:
    CITIZENS OF WASHINGTON, VIRGINIA, WEST VIRGINIA, MARYLAND, DELAWARE, PENNSYLVANIA, NEW JERSEY
    FIND THE PRESIDENT!
    HE MAY BE IN THE CITY, HE CANNOT BE FAR AWAY. FIND HIM! YOU CAN! IF EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU WILL MAKE SURE OF THE BUILDING YOU LIVE IN AND THE ONE YOU WORK IN, AND ADJACENT BUILDINGS, AND ALL POSSIBLE SPOTS OF CONCEALMENT NEAR YOU, HE WILL BE FOUND. TAKE NOTHING FOR GRANTED! IN THIS NATIONAL EMERGENCY, CREATED BY THIS DASTARDLY CRIME, NO ONE HAS A RIGHT TO REFUSE YOU COMPLETE SATISFACTION AS TO HIS PREMISES. GET IT!
    FIND OUR PRESIDENT!
and, if necessary,
RESCUE HIM!
    The idea caught on. Papers in other towns and cities copied it in special editions; posters conveying it were printed in a dozen states and displayed on walls, fences, and billboards. Any inhabitant might expect at any moment to find his home or office or factory or warehouse invaded by an individual or a delegation demanding “satisfaction” and the right to search. None might refuse, even in those cases where it was evident that a private grudge was taking advantage of an opportunity to make a nuisance of itself. But though there were such cases, and though there was displayed in the aggregate an incalculable quantity of stupidity, intolerance, and plain nonsense, it was yet an impressive demonstration of the temper and spirit of the American people reacting to an unprecedented outrage. They wanted their President back, and they intended to find him. They made incredible fools of themselves, but that may always be expected to happen, anywhere, when any individual or any group, large or small, loses simultaneously its self-consciousness and its sense of humor. They were crusaders, even the druggists and garage-owners in Delaware villages who put revolvers in their pockets when they left their homes for their places of business, and the plumbers in New Jersey cities who, called to fix a leaky pipe, greeted the housewives with suspicious glances and kept their ears open for strange or unexpected noises.
    Destruction and violence, pointless but not unnatural, occurred here and there. In Altoona, Pennsylvania, the local leader of the Gray Shirts was left dangling on a tree and his home was burned to the ground. Similar, though usually less fatal, incidents took place in a hundred communities scattered over the nation. In twelve hours a gray shirt had become the most unfashionable garment in the history of the Republic and it was no longer being publicly worn, nor indeed privately either. Reds were hunted and disciplined too, but with less fury and certainly with less reason. In California Japanese were caught and beaten, arrested, chased through the towns and over the hills; it was reported that more than a dozen were killed.
    In the section within a few hundred miles of Washington, motorists found it difficult to get to their destinations. Theymight be, and were, stopped almost anywhere by almost anyone, questioned, and their cars searched. If at the twentieth such delay they exhibited a little natural resentment, they often regretted it. On the main highway north from Atlantic City a man in a big sedan with another man on the seat beside him—the president of a Philadelphia bank and one of the bank’s directors—stopped at a filling station. After he had pumped in the gas and been paid, the attendant observed, “You won’t mind if I glance inside,” and grasped the handle of the rear door. The banker said that the door was locked and he was in a hurry and a dozen people had already looked inside, and stepped on the starter. The attendant said, “Wait a minute, you’d better unlock it.” The car started forward and away. Four or five shots rang out and both rear wheels banged on flats. From a group of men standing there two, one with a rifle and the other with a shotgun, detached themselves and trotted over to where the car had