Continuing a look at GLADIATOR in light of the theory that Hugo Danner and Clark Kent were one and the same...

Clark wrote to his family that the war had ended, that he was well, that he expected to see them in the near future. The ship that carried him back reached the end of the blue sea; he was disembarked and demobilized in New York...which he sensed had changed, blatant, rushing, prosperous.

After a few days of random inspection, of casual imbibing, he called on Tom Wayne's father.

"Well, it's over, eh? All over. And now we've got to beat the spears into plowshares."

"The grim reaper has done some harvesting on his own account--"

Mr. Wayne frowned. Then he went on, "I've made you a million, Kent. A clean, cold million. The world was mad. So I took my profit from it."

"Me? A million? I'm afraid I don't exactly understand, Mr. Wayne. How, exactly? I mean---how did you profit from the war?"

"What was in demand then, my boy? What were the stupid, traduced, misguided people raising billions to get? What? Why, shells, guns, foodstuffs. For six months I had a corner on four chemicals vitally necessary to the government. And the government got them---at my price. I owned a lot of steel. I mixed food and diplomacy in equal parts---and when the pie was opened, it was full of gold."

Clark's voice was strange. He stared at Mr. Wayne fixedly, his face livid.

"And that is the way---my money was made?"

Clark later excused himself. He asked for Mr. Wayne's secretary.

"Please tell Mr. Wayne I am very grateful. I wish to transfer my entire fortune to my parents in Smallville, Colorado. The name is Jonathan Abednego Kent. Make all arrangements."

Clark sat in Madison Square, watching the Flatiron Building, trying to answer the rhetorical query, What would you do if you were the stongest man in the world, the strongest thing in the world, mightier than the machine?

"I would---I would have won the war. But I did not. I would run the universe single-handed. Literally single-handed. I would scorn the universe and turn it to my own ends. I would be a criminal. I would rip open banks and gut them. I would kill and destroy. I would set out to stamp crime off the earth; I would be a super-detective, following and summarily punishing every criminal until no one dared to commit a felony."(Emphasis mine.) "What would I do? What will I do?"

Then he realized he was hungry. He tried to make a living with his head, but the white-collar ranks were teeming, overflowing, supersaturated. He went down the ranks of clerkships and junior clerkships.

He got a job at a steel mill. He had hoped he would be able to think while working, at something which was hard for other men but easy for him. Nevertheless he fell into the stolid vacuum of the manual laborer. The mills became familiar, less fantastic, less Vulcan's furnace. Clark worked as hard as he dared....then one day the boss, a tall lean, acid man, stopped him in the yard.

"You're one of the bastards on the furnace line. How many cars did you push up today?"

"Two hundred and three."

"What the hell do you think this is, anyhow?"

"I don't get you."

"Oh,you don't, huh? Well listen here, you Goddamned athelete, what are you trying to do? You got the men all sore--wearing themselves out. I had to lay off three---why? Because they couldn't keep up with you, that's why. Because they got their guts in a snarl trying to bust your record. What do you think you're in? A race? Somebody's got to show you your place around here and I think I'll just kick a lung out right now." Clark smiled at the furious boss.

"I wouldn't advise you to try that---even if you are a big guy."

"What was that? All right. I ain't even goin' to bother myself tryin' to break you in to this game. Get out. Beat it. I'm firing you."

"What? Firing me? For working too hard? Oh, God, that's funny. Fire me!"

Clark bent double with laughter, then moved towards the boss menacingly.

"I've a notion to twist your liver around your neck yourself." Then he laughed again and smiled, and peeled up the sleeve of his shirt. His fist clenched, his arm bent, his biceps swelled, and he took the boss's fingers and laid them on that muscle. "Squeeze."

The boss's face grew pallid. Clark turned and at the brick gate post he called out, like the crack of doom.

"So long!"

For the next four weeks, Clark knew the pangs of hunger, getting odd jobs that never lasted. Finally he called Mr. Wayne, and he regretted it almost as soon as he called. It was the weakest thing he ever did in his life.

Nevertheless he accepted the position offered by Mr. Wayne. His position with the Down Town Savings Bank lasted into the spring of 1919. He was one of the bank's young men, receiving fifty dollars weekly to learn the banking business, moving him from department to department, giving him different glimpses of financial technique. He made no real friends, but he worked diligently. Then, one day in April, he noticed a gathering in the bank.

"What's the matter?"

"Aw, some dumb vault clerk got himself locked in, an' the locks jammed an' they can't get him out."

"Which vault? The big one?"

"Naw. The big one's got pipes for that kinda trouble. The little one they moved from the old building. There isn't air in there to last three hours. An' he's been there more than an hour already. What's eatin' you, Kent? Scared?"

Clark's face was tense and his hands were opening and closing convulsively.

"No. Guess I'll go down and take a look."

Specialists tried and failed to open the vault. Nitroglycerin would make a jelly of the clerk. Another hour went by. Then Clark stepped away from the wall.

"I think I can get him out."

"And who are you? The new man that Mr. Wayne recommended so highly? How do you propose to get him out, young man?"

"By methods known only to me. I am certain I can do it---but I will undertake it only if you will all leave the room."

The president considered.

"You have a nerve. How much time do you want?"

"Five minutes."

Clark didn't move until they were all gone. Then he locked the door behind them. He walked to the safe and rapped on it tentatively with his knuckles. He removed his coat and vest. He planted his feet against the steel sill under the door. He caught hold of the two handles, fidgeted with his elbows, drew a deep breath, and pulled. There was a resounding, metallic sound, and something gave. The edge of the seven-foot-door moved outward, and Clark changed his stance and took the door itself in his hands. His back bent---and with a reverberating clang and a falling of broken steel it swung out. Clark dragged the clerk out.

Putting on his coat and vest, he opened the door.

"It's all right. He's out."

The president looked at the handles of the vault, which had been bent like hairpins, and stopped to examine the shattered bolts. The clerk was sobbing.

"Who got me out?" They indicated Clark. "Thanks mister. Oh, my God, what a wonderful thing to do! I--I just passed out when I saw your fingers reaching around---"

"Come up to my office," the president said to Clark.

The president eyed Clark coldly. "How did you do that?"

"That's my secret, Mr. Mills."

"Pretty clever, I'd say."

"Not when you know how."

"Some new explosive?"

"Not exactly."

"Electricity? Magnetism? Thought-waves?"

"No. All wrong."

"Could you do it to a modern safe?"

"I don't know."

"I presume you were planning that for other purposes? Very well done. Very well acted. I will play up to you, Mr. Kent. I'll play up to this assumption of innocence. You have saved a man's life. You are, of course, blushingly modest. But you have shown your hand rather clearly. Hmmmm. I read a book about a safe-cracker who opened a safe to get a child out---at the expense of his liberty and position---or at the hazard of them, anyhow. Maybe you have read the same book. Safe-crackers---blasters, light fingers educated to the dials, and ears attuned to the tumblers---we can cope with these things.

"But this new stunt of yours. Well, until we find out what it is, we can't let you go. This is business, Mr. Kent. It involves money, millions, the security of American fiance, of the very nation. You will understand. Society cannot afford to permit a man like you to go at large until it has a thoroughly effective defence against you. Society must disregard your momentary sacrifice, momentary nobleness. Your process, unknown by us, constitutes a great social danger. I do not dare overlook it. I cannot disregard, even after the service you have done--even if I thought you never intended to put it to malicious use.

"I shan't bandy words, Kent. I propose to hang onto you until I get that secret. And I shall be absolutely without mercy. That is frank, is it not? You comprehend the significance of the third degre? You will learn about it---unless you are reasonable." Two policemen came into the room. "McClaren has my instructions."

They arrested him, although the charge was unclear. Captain McClaren received Clark in a bare room shadowed by bars. He made Clark strip nude and then gave him a suit of soiled clothes. He remained in that room alone for thirty hours, bearing that ordeal with absolute stoicism.

On the evening of the second day, a glaring automobile lamp was put on the table, and questions barked at him. By the dawn they allowed him a glass of water, and he suffered them to give him a dose of castor oil. A few hours later they began again. It was night before they gave up. They tried to beat his face with fists that shot from the blackness. They threw him on the floor and kicked him, and when his skin did not burst or bleed, they kicked more viciously.

They finally brought a blowtorch and prepared to brand him. Clark did not know he was fireproof then. (He was similarly uninformed when the Ultra-Humanite captured him and he thought he'd be swallowed by the hungry flames, decades later.)

"Wait. I'll tell you. Or I shan't tell you, McClaren; I'll show you. And may God have mercy on your filthy soul."

"Corner him, boys!"

Clark stretched. His bonds burst; the chair in which he sat splintered into kindling. Clark felt the sting of the bullets.Six chambers were emptied, and the room eddied smoke.

"Now, I will demonstrate how I opened the safe."

"Christ save us," said one of the men, crossing himself.

McClaren was frozen still. Clark walked to the wall of the jail and stabbed his fist through it. Bricks and mortar burst out on the other side and fell into the cinder yard. Clark kicked and lashed with his fists. A large hole opened. He caught the men, who had broke toward the door---one by one, he rendered them unconscious. Only McClaren was left. He carried McClaren and wrenched open the iron gate, holding McClaren by the arm. McClaren fainted twice, and Clark had to keep him upright by his collar. He hailed a cab and lifted the man in.

"Just drive out of town."

McClaren came to. "Who are you?"

"I'm just a man, McClaren---a man who is going to teach you a lesson."

McClaren thought he was going to die, as they stopped in a deserted stretch outside of town, but he did not plead. Clark asked for, and got, five collars from the twenty dollars in McClaren's pocket.

"McClaren, here's your lesson. I just happen to be the strongest man in the world. Never tell anyone that. And don't tell anyone where I took you tonight--wherever it is. I shan't be here, anyway. If you tell either of those two things, I'll eat you. Actually. There was a poor devil smothering in that safe and I yanked it open and dragged him out. As a reward you and your dirty scavengers were put to work on me. If I weren't as merciful as God Himself, you'd all be dead. Now, that's your lesson. Keep your mouth shut. here is the final parable."

Still holding the policeman's hand, he walked to the taxi, and to the driver's astonishment, gripped the axle in one hand, lifted up the front end like a derrick, and turned the entire car around. He put McClaren in the back seat.

"Back to where you picked us up. The bird in the back will pay."

Clark began to run in great leaps in the opposite direction, and stopping at an all-night restaurant, ordered five steaks.

In Connecticut, he got a job working for Ralph and Roseanne Bishop Cane. Ralph was a miser, an ex-English chemist, whose personality had been warped by a shell explosion during the war. Ralph saw Clark pausing to look at his peaceful home.

"Looking for work, my man? Know anything about cattle?"

"Why---yes. I was reared in a farming country."

Ralph Cane introducd Clark to his wife Roseanne, a very tall and slender woman with eyes which were slaty blue and just a delicate suggestion of gray in her hair.

Clark was allowed to sleep in the barn. He cleaned stables, took care of two dozen Guernsey cows and one lordly bull. Cane asked him,

"Can you plough?"

"It's been a long time---but I think so."

Obviously Clark would have had more opportunties to plough if his father was a farmer, not a college professor. Again and again, Clark showed himself more at home at a farm than in a lab.

May, June and July elapsed. Then one day Ralph Cane drove off in the hopes of selling three of his cows. His wife said to Clark,

"Mr. Kent, could you spare an hour or two this morning to help me get some flowers from the woods?"

Later:

"Sit closer to me, Clark."

Later:

"Button me. Am I a sight?"

When Cane returned, the barns were as clean as a park, and Roseanne was singing as she prepared supper.

Then one hot night in August, he heard her quietly coming up the stairs.

"Ralph had a headache and took a triple bromide."

In autumn, the week of the cattle show in New York arrived. She had a bad cold and begged off going with him. When Ralph Cane was gone, she came out to the barn.

"You've been waiting for me. You've made me an awful hypocrite."

Later, they heard the rhythmic thunder which rode down on them like the wind, the big bull charging on them like an avalanche. Roseanne lifted herself in time to see Clark take two quick steps, draw back his fist, and hit the bull between the horns, a diabolical thing where the bull was thrown back on itself, its neck snapping loudly. Clark took it by a hoof and dragged the carcass to the base of the wall, making an indenture with his fist and splashing the bull's blood on it. It all had occupied less than a minute, and then he approached Roseanne, who had hunched her shoulders together, her face pale.

"The bull--broke in here---and you hit him."

"Just in time, Roseanne."

"You killed him. Then---why did you drag him over there?"

"Because I thought it would be better to make it seem as if he charged the wall and broke his neck that way."

"It isn't natural to be able to do things like that. It isn't human."

"I know it. I'm very strong."

"Wipe your hand, will you?"

"You mustn't be frightened."

"No? What must I be, then? I'm alive, I'm crawling with terror. Don't touch me!"

"I can explain it."

"You can explain everything! But not that."

"It was an idiotic, unfair thing to have happen at this time. My life's like that. I began wanting to do tremendous things. The more I tried, the more discouraged I became. You see, I was strong. There have been other things figuratively like the bull. But the things themselves get littler and more preposterous, because my ambition and my nerve grows smaller. Some day--I shan't want to do anything at all any more. Continious and unwonted defeat might infuriate some men to a great effort. It's tiring me. Roseanne---"

She ran, and Clark made no attempt to follow her. Cane, when he returned, called Clark from the back porch.

"Telegram for you."

Jonathan Abednego Kent was sick and failing rapidly. Clark asked for his wages and took a train back to Colorado. Clark's mother met him at the station.

"You've changed a little, son."

"I'm older."

Martha Matilda Kent said she had used the money he had sent to them to send four medical missionaries--along the lines of Albert Schweitzer---who help the body and the soul--- into the field, and put a new addition to the church, and a bathroom into the house. (Still a rarity in rural areas.)

They drove by the house where the former Lana Lang, now married, lived.

Jonathan Abednego Kent was lying on the bed, illness having made his eyes rheumy, but they lightened up when Clark entered.

"Hello, Pa."

"Clark! You've come back. Sit down here on the bed. Move me over a little. Now close the door. You aren't a very big man, son. Somehow I always remembered you as big. I'm not as easy in your presence as I was when you were a little shaver."

Clark flinched from giving the account of his years, that he could never tell his father the truth; pity, kindness, moved him.

"I know what you wanted to ask, Pa. Am I still strong? I am. I grew constantly stronger when I left you. In college I was strong. At sea I was strong. In the war. First I wanted to be mighty in game and I was. Then I wanted to services. And I did, because I could."

"You found things to do? I--I hoped you would. But I always worried about you. Every day, son, every day for all these years, I picked up these papers with misgivings. 'Suppose', I said to myself,'suppose my boy lost his temper last night. Suppose someone wronged him and he undertook to avenge himself.' I trusted you, Clark. I could not quite trust---the other thing. What have you done?"

"I save a man pinned under a wagon. I saved a man from a shark. I pulled open a safe in which a man was smothering. Many things like that. Then---there was the war."

"I know, know. When you wrote that you had gone to war, I was frightened---and happy. I thought---I hoped that you could hasten peace. Even you could do little enough."

"Perhaps not so little, Pa." Clark lied with a steady gaze. "I stopped the war."

"You!"

"After four years I perceived the truth. War is a mistake. The object of war is to make peace. Ona dark night, Pa, I went alone into the enemy lines. For one hundred miles I upset every gun, I wrecked every ammunition train. I blew up every arsenal. Alone I did. The next day they asked for peace. Remember the false armistice? Somehow it leaked out that there would be victory and surrender the next night---because of me. Only the truth about me was never known. And a day later---it came."

"I could ask no more, son. And yet we are petulant, insatiable creatures. What is doing now? The world is wicked. Yet it tries halfheartedly to rebuild itself. One great deed is not enough---"

"My work goes on. Now it is with America. I expect to go to Washington soon to right the wrongs of politics and government. Vicious and selfish men I will force from their high places. I shall secure the idealistic and the couragous." The idea just now occurred to him, and appealed to him. "The pressure I shall bring against them will be both physical and mental. Here a man will be driven from his house mysteriously. There a man will slip into limbo. Yonder an inconspicious person will be braced by a new courage; his enemies will be gone and his work will progress unhindered. I shall be an invisible agent of right--right as best I can see it. You understand, Pa?"

In Wylie's book, Abednego Danner intrusted his son Hugo with the secret of how to make men like him. In real life, Jonathan Abednego Kent gave Clark the location of the buried rocket that had brought him to Earth, which had as many far-reaching consequences for civilization and technology.

"You have not avoided responsibility. You will not avoid this, the greatest of your responsibilities."

"I will do it, Pa."

"Now I can die in peace---in joy."

Two tears scaled Clark's cheeks later. He had failed his father, failed his trust, failed the world; and in the abyss of that grief he could catch no sight of promise or hope. Having done his best, he had still done nothing, and it was necessary for him to lie to put the thought of a dying man at rest. The pity of that lie! The folly of the picture he had painted of himself---Clark Kent the scourge of God, Clark Kent the destroying angel.

"I must do it!" In answer to his fierce whisper, the stones echoed with a demonic jeer. Do what? What, strong man? What?

Jonathan Abednego Kent was carried to his last resting-place, the earth he loved so passionately. The bulk of Clark's sorry gains, dipped in the blood of the war dead, was thrust back in his keeping. He kissed his mother goodbye at the train station, to travel to Washington. The great crusade was to begin, and he had no plans---only ideals. He had told his father he was making the world a better place, and the idea had taken hold of him. He would be the agent of uplift.

He never thought of himself as pathetic or quixotic.

His first few weeks were dull, when he bought a comfortable house and hired two servants. He hoped the use of these funds would compensate for their origin. It was war profiteers like Wayne who would suffer from his mission. He naturally gravitated on the side of disarmament. Clark hated war. Others saw him as a lobbyist, not an idealist.

He found from a friend, Congressman Hatten, about another lobbyist called Wilfred Melcher.

"I think I could put across a decent arms-limitation bill right now, for example, if I could get Willard Melcher out of town for a month. You know him, of course---at least, who he is. He spends the steel money here in Washington---to keep the building program going on. Simple thing to do. The Navy helps him. Tell the public about the Japanese menace, the English menace, all the other menaces, and the public coughs up for bigger guns and better ships. Run'em till they rust and nobody ever really knows what good they do. His payroll would make y our eyes bulge. But you can't touch him."

Clark went to see Melcher, only to be told he wasn't in.

"Please tell him that I saw him come in."

"I'm sorry, sir, but he's going right out."

"Tell him---that he will see me."

"Harry!" A big bouncer came to toss Clark out.

"Mr. Melcher needs a bouncer?"

"I'm a tough guy, so beat it."

"Not so tough that your ears and nose aren't a sight. You go to the devil. I came here to see Melcher and I'm going to see him."

The tough bouncer drew back his fist....and woke up in the kitchen an hour later.

Melcher turned up, larger than his own bouncer, from the mines himself.

"I came to see you, Melcher. I came here, Melcher, to talk about your part in the arms conferences. It happens I disagree with you and your propaganda. It happens that I have a method of enforcing my opinion. Disarmament is a great thing for the world, and putting the idea across is the next step toward even bigger things. I know the relative truths of what you say about America's peril and what you get from saying it. Am I clear?"

"Perfectly."

"I have nothing to add. Get out of town."

"Do you really believe that sending me out of town would do any good? Do you have the conceit to think that one nutty shrimp like you can buk the will and ideas of millions of people?"

"There happen to be extenuating circumstances, Melcher."

"Really? You surprise me. And do you honestly think you can chase me--me--out of here?"

"I am sure of it. I happen to be more than a man. I am---let us say, a devil, or an angel, or a scourge. I detest you and what you stand for. If you do not leave---I can ruin your hourse and destroy you. And I will."

"All right. I'll go. Immediately. This afternoon."

"You will go?"

"I promise. Good afternoon, Mr. Kent."

Clark got up and walked towards the door, seething with surprise and suspicion. As his hand touched the knob, Melcher hit him on the head with a chair that broke to pieces. Turning around slowly, Clark said,

"I understand. You mistook me for a dangerous lunatic. I was puzzled for a moment. Now---", imprisoning Melcher's wrists and lifting Melcher and shaking him,"I meant it, Melcher. And I will give you a sign. Rotten politics, graft, bad government, are doomed."

With his free hand, he rapidly demolished the room. He picked up the great desk and smashed, and tore the stone mantlepiece from its roots. He kicked the fireplace apart, he burst a hole in the brick wall, dragging Melcher behind him.

"Remember that, Melcher. No one else on earth is like me---and I will get you if you fail to stop. I'll come for you if you squeal about this---and I leave it to you to imagine what will happen. You're all done for---you cheap swindlers. And I am doom."

Melcher immediately told his valet to pack. Like Alex Greer, "the slickest lobbyist in Washington" in 1932, he had been effectively terrorized by Clark.

Yet the parley over arms continued to be an impasse despite the absence of Melcher. A new man came in Melcher's place, who employed different methods.

This would have been in April 1920. Clark evidently stayed in Washington, a little longer than implied by Wylie, because the next phase we can date rather exactly.

A few days later "two radicals had been thrown into jail on a charge of murder". Wylie changed the nationalities of the two men from Italian to Russian, and the location from Massachusetts to Jersey. He called them Davidoff and Pletzky. Yet from the excitement they created, the division of the nation, and the world, of their guilt, Wylie's comment, "the men arrested were blamed, although it was evident that they were chance seizures, that their proved guilt could be at most only a social resentfulness" proved it to be one of the cases that has a claim to "trial of the century" and only, perhaps, O.J. Simpson's divided the country more.

Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested for a murder that occurred in April 15, 1920. The evidence is clear that they were linked to various radical groups---the year of 1919 and 1920 were known as the Red Scare, due to a series of strikes, riots and bombings that took place, and authorities were beginning to crack down on radical groups. The evidence was confused, the witnesses contradictory, when the trial began on May 31, 1921 and lasted six weeks. On July 14 1921, the jury found Sacco and Vanzetti guilty of murder in the first degree.

Despite what Wylie wrote, there were appeals and new evidence lasting until they were actually executed on August 23, 1927. I do not propose that Clark stayed in Washington that long. One wonders what he did do in 1920-21 besides chase Melcher out of town. He wouldn't have backed the prohibition bill, passed in 1921, but he may have thrown his resources behind the amendment to the U.S. Constitution that gave women the vote. Yet it was not long after their initial conviction, on July 14, that Clark met Skorvsky...a radical writer who was a small dark man. Clark heard him speak about the two prisoners, and then invited Skorvsky to dinner at Clark's house.

"You have the French taste in wines," Skorvsky said---hardly surprising, considering his years in the French Foreign Legion, "but, as it is to my mind the finest taste in the world, I can say only that."

When Clark tried to bring the topic back to the two prisoners, SKorvsky shrugged.

"I know you---an American business man in Washington with a purpose."

"What if it is not?"

"What then? A secret? Yes, I thought that about you while we were talking to the others today. There is something deep about you, my new friend. You are a power. You might divulge your errand, perhaps?"

"Suppose I said it was to set the world aright?"

"Then I should throw myself at your feet."

"Yet that is my purpose. And I am not altogether impotent. There are things I can do--"

"Such as?"

"I was thinking of your two compatriots who were recently given such wretched justice. Suppose they were liberated by force. Assume that they were snatched from pirson and hidden beyond the law. What then?"

"Ah! You are an independent communist?"

"Not even that. A friend of progress."

"So. A dreamer. One of the few who have wealth. And you have a plan to free these men? It would be a great victory for the cause, of course. A splendid lift to its morale. I think you are a dangerous and valuable man."

Skorvsky took Kent to a meeting of his "organization" and introduced him as,

"Friends, I have had the honour to introduce MR. Kent to you. Now I have the greater honour of telling you his purpose and pledge. Tomorrow night he will to to Massachusetts and two nights later he will bring us in person from their cells, Sacco and Venzetti."

Some took Clark by the hand, some applauded, some cheered. Skorvsky promised to make him a great man if he succeeded. Clark had doubts, but he liked having a purpose.

Then his telephone rang in the night. It was Skorvsky. He had to see him, so Clark invited him to share his breakfast.

"Things have happened since last night, Comrade Kent. For one, I saw the chief. You have not met him as yet. We conferred about your scheme. He---I regret to say--opposed it."

"I'm not surprised. I'll tell you what to do. You ake me to him---and I'll prove conclusively that it will be successful. Then, perhaps, he will agree to sanction it. Every time I think of those two poor devils---snatched from a mob---waiting there in the dark for the electric chair---it makes my blood boil."

"Quite. But you do not understand. It is not that he doubts your ability---if you failed it would not be important. He fears you might accomplish it. I assured him you would. I have faith in you. We were too hasty, too precipitate. I see his reason now. We cannot afford as a group to be branded as jail-breakers."

"That's---weak."

"There are other matters. Since Sacco and Venzetti were jailed, our party has grown by leaps and bounds. Money has poured in..."

"Ah. Money."

"Go ahead. Be sarcastic. To free those men would cost us a million dollars, perhaps."

"Too bad."

"With a million---the million their electrocution will bring from the outraged---we can accomplishmore than saving two paltry lives. We must be hard, we must think ahead."

"In thinking ahead, Skorvsky, do you not think of the closing of a switch, and the burning of human flesh?"

"For every cause there must be martyrs. Their names will live eternally."

"And they themselves---?"

"Bah! You are impractical."

"Perhaps. I was hoping for a government that---did not weigh people against dollars."

"Not do we!"

"No?"

"Fool! Dreamer! Preposterous idealist! I must be going."

"Suppose I went ahead?"

"One thing! One thing the chief bade me tell you. If those men escape--you die."

"Oh. And supposing I were to offer your chief a million--or nearly a million---for the privilege of freeing them?"

"You would do that, comrade? You would give us---give the cause---a million? Never since the days of our Savior has a man like you walked on this--"

"Get out of here! Get out of here, you dirty swine. Get out of here before I break you to matchwood, before I rip out your guts and stuff them back through your filthy, lying throat. Get out, oh, God, get out!"

After his encounter with Skorvsky, he thought about humbling the Capital in a Samsonlike smash, and watched a locomotive go by. He had an urge to smash it, and all the small people in it, afflicted with his off-and-on hatred of humankind---and took two giant leaps towards it before he could control himself, shuddering.

He refused to kill himself. He would go away from the civilization that tortured him. He knew from past experience that occasional bouts of solitude were good for him and helped kept him sane. (An impulse that would explain his Secret Citadel decades later, and still later, his taking over and improving Doc Savage's "Fotress of Solitude".)

He came back home, and sold his house and dismissed his servants. ("Davidoff and Plotzky"---Sacco and Venzetti--- were not being electrocuted that night, a detail Wylie added in a bit of ironic dramatic license. Indeed, they would appeal until 1927, when they would be executed.) He boarded a train for New York. After being in New York city a few days, one Sunday he saw pictures of a Yucatan expedition, being led by "Professor Daniel Hardin".

Others have speculated---with justice, I believe---that "Daniel Hardin" was James Clarke Wildman Sr., whom Lester Dent called "Clark Savage Jr." and Watson called "James Wilder". He has the blue eyes of James Wilder, the interest in South American expeditions we know the senior Savage had, and had the distinguished face and well-tanned skin you would expect of Doc's father. (However, by this stage in his life, he was white-haired.)

Clark got a position on the Yucatan expedition with a combination of briberty and pleading, and Hardin/Savage never regretted it. They finally stopped at a port with a rickety wharf. The ship would make two voyages back to the homeland for supplies in the next year, but the explorers would not emerge from the jungle in that time. An antiquated, wood-burning locomotive carried them inland. When the train reached the end of the line, they spent three weeks hacking and hewing their way through the jungle. Clark lent himself to this hot, difficult work with an energy that astounded even Savage Sr., who judged him valuable.

No one regretted Clark. He made his men---the Indians they had hired to do the non-scientific work--work magically; his example was a challenge. He could do more than any of them, and his hair and eyes, black as their own, his granite face, stern and indefatigable, gave him a natural dominion over them. As they uncovered and catalogued the Secret City, each of them little by little stripped his past for the others. Only Clark remained silent about himself until he was conspicuous because of it. Then an accident happened...

Clark and two Indians were at work on a small temple at the city's fringe, and Savage Sr. was there to see. The great stone in the roof, crumbled by age, slipped and teetered, and Savage Sr. stood underneath, unheeding. Clark saw, and caught the mass of rock and lifted it to one side. And Dan Hardin/Clark Savage Sr. turned in time to see the full miracle.

When Clark lifted his head, he knew. Yet, to his astonishment, there was no look of fear in Savage's eyes...just moderate surprise and vast interest.

"Thanks, Kent. I believe you saved my life. Should you mind picking up that rock again?"

Clark dismissed the Indians with a few words. He glanced again at Savage Sr. to make sure of his composure. Then he lifted the square stone back to its position.

"That stone must weigh four tons. No man alive can handle four tons like that. How do you do it, Clark?"

Clark's answer was different from the fictional origin Wylie gave him. "My parents---found me---in a rocket ship. From---out there."

"Good Lord! And---and that's why you've kept your past dark, Clark?"

"Of course. Not many people---"

"Survive the shock? You forget that we--here--are all scientists. I won't press you."

"Perhaps, I'd like to tell you."

"In that case---in my room--tonight. I'd like to hear."

Clark poured out the story of his life to Savage Sr. that night, who never interrupted, never commented, until the end, where he said,

"You poor devil. Oh, you poor bastard."

"It isn't as bad as that--"

"This is--the most important thing on earth! What a story! What a man you are! I know. I feel. I understand." He may have been thinking of his own son, molded by a board of scientists to be a "superman".

"Perhaps not. You can see--I have tried everything. In itself, it is great. It is, objectively, the most important thing on Earth. But the other way---what can I do? I defy you with all my strength, to think of what I can do to justify myself!"

"All your emotions, your reflections, your yearnings and passions, come---to that. And yet---"

"Look at me in another light. I've tried to give you an inkling of it. You were the first who saw what I could do---glimpsed a fraction of it, rather---and into whose face did not come fear, loathing, even hate. Try to live with some sense of that. I can remember almost back to the cradle that same thing. First it was envy and jealousy. Then, as I grew stronger, it was fear, alarm, and the thing that comes from fear---hatred. That is another and perhaps a greater obstacle. If I found something to do, the whole universe would be against me. These little people! Can you imagine what it is to be me and to look at people? A crowd at a ball game? A parade? Can you?"

"Great God."

"When I see them for what they are, and when they exert the tremendous bulk of their united detestation and denial against me, when I feel rage rising inside myself---can you conceive--?"

Jack Kirby's depiction of him in the first issue of the FOREVER PEOPLE, nearly five decades later, shows that he still occacionally gets these moods where he both fears and hates the millions who surround him.

"Shall I walk to my grave afraid that I shall let go of myself, searching everywhere for something to absorb my energy? Shall I?"

"No."

Here Savage Sr. gave him different advice from what Wylie put in his mouth. Clark had no formulae to make other men like himself. Savage Sr. did council him to put himself in the hands of trustworthy scientists, so they might discover what makes Clark so special, so to make "other men like you". He did tell him that, "You are not just the reformer of the old world. You are the beginning of the new. The Man of Tomorrow."

Yet he noted that Clark had been happiest when saving lives. That he had been happiest when he had a cause he thought he could use for the potential benefit of mankind. It is no surprise that the man who had devoted his own son to the task of fighting evil and bettering mankind, would have the same advice to Clark Kent. And Clark listened---perhaps sensing, subconsciously, that the scientific and famous Clark Savage Sr. was more like his real father, Jor-El, than even his beloved foster-father Jonathan Abednego Kent could have been.

In a sense, both Clark Savage Jr. and Clark Kent were "sons" of this fanatical, yet focused savant--Clark Savage Sr.

Clark lay on his bed, more ecstatic than he had ever been in his life, his life's purpose crystallizing before him. Yet he could not think with people around him, not on so great a matter. During the siesta hour he went out, broke through the jungle. When he was beyond sight and sound, he dropped his machete and made his way as none but he could do, cutting a swath with his body toward the mountains and emerged from the green veil to the bare rocks, panting and hot. Upward he climbed, until he reached the summit...

Unaware that one of the largest of the Indians who had been working for him had followed him out of curiosity, and then been astounded at Clark's way of making a path through the jungle. Following the path, he watched Clark climb...and started to emulate him.

Clark was not insane enough to scream at God in the middle of a sudden thunderstorm that came out. It was a melodramatic and too-obvious ending. Instead, like a sensible man, he took shelter. The Indian following him, though, was not so lucky, and was struck by lightning before he could find cover. Clark found the dead body still smoking.

He hated what had happened, but realized it was a chance to make a fresh break. As much as he liked Savage Sr., he didn't want him directing his every move, the way Savage Sr. had put his own son through such rigorous training. So he put his watch on the Indian's corpse,and one or two pieces of clothing that would identify the charred body as Clark's...

Then he leaped off...to emerge a decade later as Superman.

Savage Sr.,after three days of searching, found the incredible passage through the jungle and followed it to the mountain top. He found the blackened body there, but had his own suspicions that it was not Clark.

"We'll carry him yonder to Uctotol and bury him; then---the work will go on."

When he returned to civilization, he didn't know what to do. He was fairly sure that Clark was still alive, and knew that Clark could become a terrible menace if he became unhinged. He had trained his son to become a mighty battler against evil, yet against the awesome strength of Clark Kent, even Clark Savage Jr. would be relatively helpless...

He finally contacted Phillip Wylie in the late twenties and outlined the story, and they arranged to have it printed as fiction, to prepare the world in case he did appear as a menace, not a savior. Wylie, to preserve his own safety, made up a different origin, but used the fate of Krypton to inspire the books WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE and AFTER WORLDS COLLIDE, where Earthmen flee a doomed world.

Savage Sr. died before he knew of Clark's reappearance in the world, in 1931, and it was his own son who avenged him.

Between Savage Sr.'s advice and the advice Clark would get from an adoptive cousin of his concerning double-identities, he showed Clark the path that he would tread.

It is fitting that both Doc Savage's father, and Clark's "cousin",the Shadow, would help determine what path Clark Kent would take in his later life.

PARTIAL LIST OF SOURCES:

Of course, TARZAN ALIVE and DOC SAVAGE: HIS APOCALYPTIC LIFE by Philip Jose Farmer.

GLADIATOR, Philip Wylie.

Those interested with comments, suggestions, things I have forgotten, things I messed up, contact me at...
E-Mail:al.schroeder@nashville.com

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Speculations Copyright © Al Schroeder. Superman is owned by DC Comics, Warner Communications, and the Siegels. All other characters copyrighted by their respective owners.