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A hard worker and able organizer of "extensions" of the Father's "heavens," she was long pointed to as the prime "sample and example" of his powers. Last week Faithful Mary seized upon Father Divine's disappearance as an excuse to announce what she said she had lately come to realize: that Father Divine "ain't God. He's just a damned man. He ain't no more God than you're God." Her renunciation, she said, had been expedited by his demands that she turn over to him all the property held in her name. Faithful Mary's patience cracked when Father Divine requested the building where she was living last week—the Peace Hotel at High Falls, N. Y., one of 22 properties in the Hudson River Valley acquired by Father Divine as a "Promised Land" for his people. Said Faithful Mary: "Peace, I don't want to do it." Since "God" Divine avoids many legal troubles and income taxes by registering property in the names of his followers, there was nothing he could do to retrieve Peace Hotel or any of the local businesses owned by Faithful Mary.
For nearly three days after the assault in Harlem, police hunted for Father Divine.
They sent out an eight-State alarm. At last in Milford, Conn., police appeared at a small Divine "heaven" where a Negro called "Simon Peter" attempted to bar their way. As they later remarked, they "roughed up Simon Peter a bit." One of them descended to the cellar, found Father Divine vainly seeking to "invisibilize" himself behind the furnace. "Peace!" he quavered. "I'll go with you and I'll waive extradition." The Messiah was bundled off to police headquarters in Manhattan. It was after midnight, too late for his three attorneys to arrange bail, so Father Divine spent the rest of the night in jail. In noisy Harlem, miles uptown, word of "God's" plight circulated, and soon the streets near the jail began filling with chanting Negroes (see pictures, p. 62).
So large grew the crowd that a policeman asked who was its leader. A scrawny Negro named "Happy Heart" stepped forward, said: "Father's followers have no leader. We all work by intuition. You won't have any trouble if you just let us alone." Father Divine was taken to Felony Court, released for hearing this week upon payment of $500 bail by a follower named "St. Mary Bloom." Uptown there were more crowds and the skies rained cards printed: Your Maker and Creator Is Here. In Kingdom No. 1, Father Divine ate with his shouting followers. The homecoming was climaxed beyond their hopes when someone came in with the agreeable news that. Faithful Mary had been in a motor accident in New Jersey. Said Father Divine: "If anyone sides with her, the same curse shall fall on their heads as has fallen on hers. They shall go down with her. Her sins have brought her fall. But this was just a slight sketch to let you know what can happen." Next day Father Divine was "tired." Over him hung not only the assault charge, which he and other Harlemites seemed to think would be difficult to make stick, but also charges against other members of his cult: that his coal truck drivers were dealing in bootleg coal; that a 13-year-old was being overworked in a Divine restaurant.