Brevard was the first to speak. "Gabriel," said he, "we have agreed that you must be the leader in this whole affair. The actual, personal leader. To begin with, you're younger and physically stronger than any of us men. Your executive ability is, without any question whatever, far and away ahead of ours—for we are more in the analytical, compiling, organizing, preparing line. To cap all, your personality carries more, far more, with the mass of the comrades than any of ours. Your career, in the past, your conflict with Flint and Waldron, and your long imprisonment, have given you the necessary following. You, and you alone, must issue the final call, lead the last, supreme attack, and carry the old flag, the Crimson Banner of Brotherhood, to the topmost battlement of an annihilated Capitalism!"
Gabriel demurred, but they overruled him. So, presently, he consented; and pledged his life to it; and thrilled with pride and joy at thought of what now lay written in the Book of Fate, for him to read.
Catherine's eyes shone with a strange light, as she looked upon him there, so modest yet so strong. And he, smiling a little as his gaze met hers, foresaw other things than war, and was glad. His heart sang within him, that memorable and wondrous night, up there in the hiding-place among the Great Smokies—there with Catherine and the other comrades—there planning the last great blow to strike away forever the shackles from the bleeding limbs of all the human race!
But serious and urgent things were to be thought of, and at once, for on the morrow Brevard was going down, disguised, to Louisville, in one of the two monoplanes, to attend a final secret meeting of the North-middle Section Committee. From this he would proceed to the refuge near Port Colborne, Ontario.
"Let us make that our meeting-place, one week from tonight," said Gabriel, "in case anything happens. Should we be detected, or should any accident befall, we must have some time and place to rally by. Is my suggestion taken?"
They all agreed, after some discussion.
"But," added Mrs. Grantham, "let's hope we're still secure here, for a while. It doesn't seem possible they could find ushere, in this broad mountain wilderness!"
Brevard, meanwhile, was spreading out diagrams and plans.
"The plant at Niagara," said he. "Gabriel, study this, now, as you never yet have studied anything! For on your intimate knowledge of these plans—which, by the way, have been obtained only at the cost of eight lives of our comrades, and through adventures which alone would make a wonderful book—depends everything. With all communications cut, and troops kept away, and our own people storming the works, you will yet fail, Gabriel, unless you know every building, every courtyard, wall and passage, every door and window, almost, I might say. For the place is more than a manufacturing plant.It's a fortress, a city in itself, a wonderful, gigantic center to the whole web of world-domination!
"So now, to the plans!"
For hours, while Gabriel took notes and listened keenly, asked questions and made minute memoranda, Brevard explained the situation at the great Air Trust works. The others looked on, listened, and from time to time made suggestions; but for the most part they kept silent, unwilling to disturb this most important work.
Carefully and with painstaking accuracy he showed Gabriel how the plant now embraced more than two square miles of territory around the Falls, all guarded by tremendous barricades mounting machine-guns and search-lights. On both sides of the river this huge monster had squatted, effectually shutting out all sight of the Falls and depriving the people of their birthright of beauty, at the same time that it had harnessed the vast waterpower to the task of enslaving the world.
"From the Grand Trunk steel arch bridge up to and including the former plant of the Niagara Falls Power Company," said Brevard, "you see the plant extends. And, on the Canadian side—or what was the Canadian, before 'we' absorbed Canada—it stretches from the Ontario Power Company's works to those of the Toronto-Niagara Power Company, including both. In addition to having absorbed these, it has taken over the Niagara Falls Hydraulic Power and Manufacturing Company, the Canadian Power Company and half a dozen others, and has, as you see, established its central offices and plant on Goat Island.
"Here Flint and Waldron have what may be called a citadel within a citadel—twelve acres of administrationbuildings, laboratories (in charge of your old friend Herzog, by the way!) and experimental works, including also the big steel chambers, vacuum-lined, where they are already storing their liquid oxygen to be turned into their pipe-lines and tank-cars. This Goat Island central plant will be the real kernel in the nut, Gabriel. Oncethatis gone, you'll have ripped the heart out of the beast, smashed the vital ganglia, and given the world the respite, the breathing-space it must have, to free itself!"
"And if I don't?" asked Gabriel. "If anything happens to upset our blockading tactics, or if our attacking forces are defeated or our aeroplanes shot down, what then?"
"Then," said Brevard, slowly, "then the world had better die than survive under the abominable slavery now impending. Already the pipe-lines have been laid to Buffalo, Cleveland, Albany and Scranton. Already they're under way to New York City itself, and to Cincinnati. Already other plants have been projected for Chicago, Denver, San Francisco and New Orleans, to say nothing of half a dozen in the Old World. At this present moment, as we all sit here in this quiet room on this remote mountain-slope, the world's air is being cornered! All the atmospheric nitrogen is planned for, by Flint and Waldron, to pass under their control—and with it, every crop that grows. All the oxygen will follow. They're already having their domestic-service apparatus manufactured—their cold-pipe radiators, meters, evaporators and respirators. I tell you, comrades, this thing is close upon us, not as a theory, now, but as a terrible, an inconceivably ghastly reality!
"Even as we talk this thing over, those devils in humanform are at work impoverishing the atmosphere, the very basis of all life. My oxymeter, today, showed a diminution of .047 per cent. in the amount of free oxygen in the air right on this mountain. And their plant is hardly running yet! Wait till they get it under full swing—wait till their pipe-lines and tanks and instruments and all their vast, infernal apparatus of exploitation and enslavement are in operation! Even in a week from now, or less, by the time you issue the call, Gabriel, you may see wretches gasping in vain for breath, in some dark alley of Niagara where the air is being drained!"
"Oh, devilish and infernal plot against the world!" said Gabriel, bitterly. "Yet in essence, after all, no different from the system of ten years ago, which kept food and shelter, light and fuel, under lock and key—and made the dollar the only key to fit the lock! Yet this seems worse, somehow; and though I die for it, my last supreme blow shall be against such unutterable, such murderous villainy! So then, comrades—"
He paused, suddenly, as Kate laid a hand on his arm.
"Hark! What's that?" she whispered.
Outside, somewhere, a sound had made itself heard. Then on the porch, a loose board creaked.
Gabriel sprang to his feet. The others stood up and faced the door.
"In heaven's name, what's that outside?" demanded Craig.
On the instant, a heavy foot crashed through the panels of their door. The door, burst open, flew back.
In the aperture, stood a man, in aviator's dress, with another dimly visible behind him. Both these men heldlong, blue-nosed, oxygen-bullet-shooting revolvers levelled at the little group around the table.
"My God! Air Trust spies!" cried Grantham, pale as death.
"Hands up, you!" shouted the man in the doorway, with a wild triumph in his voice. "You're caught, all of you! Not a move, you —— —— ——! Hands up!"
Quick as thought, at sound of the imperative summons and sight of the levelled weapons, Gabriel swept up most of the papers and crammed them into the breast of his loose flannel shirt, then dashed the lamp to the floor, extinguishing it. The room grew dark, for now the fire had burned down to hardly more than glowing coals.
There was no panic; the men did not curse, neither did the women scream. As though the tactic had already been agreed on, Craig tipped the table up, making a kind of barricade; and over it Grantham's revolver, snatched from his belt, spat viciously.
It all happened in a moment.
The foremost spy grunted, coughed and plunged forward. As he fell, he fired his terrible weapon.
The bullet—a small, thin metal shell, filled with a secret chemical and liquid oxygen—went wild. It struck the wall, some feet to the left of the fireplace, and instantly the wood burst into vivid flame. Flesh would crisp to nothing, solid stone would crumble, metal would gutter and run down, under that awful incandescence.
Again Grantham's revolver barked, while Bevard tugged at his own, which had unaccountably got stuck in its holster. But this second shot missed. And evenas Grantham's bullet snicked a long splinter from the door-jamb, the second spy fired.
Brevard's choking cry died as the gushing flame enveloped him. He staggered, flung up both arms and fell stone dead, the life seared clean out of him, as a lamp sears a moth.
Gasping, blinded, the others scattered; and for the third time—while the room now glowed with this unquenchable blossoming of flame—Grantham shot.
The spy's body burst into a sheaf of fire. Up past the lintel streamed the burning swirl. Mute and annihilated, his charred body dropped beside that of his mate.
The total time from challenge to complete victory had not exceeded ten seconds.
"I exploded some of his cartridges!" choked Grantham. shielding his wife from the glare, while Gabriel protected Catherine.
"His—his cartridge belt!" gasped Craig.
"Yes! And now, out—out of here!"
"Brevard? We must save his body!" cried Gabriel, pointing.
"Impossible!" shouted Grantham. "That hellish compound will burn for hours! And in three minutes this whole place will be a roaring furnace! Out of here—out—away! We must save the hangar, at all hazards!"
Against their will, but absolutely unable to approach the now wildly-roaring fire on the floor that marked the spot where Brevard had fallen in the Battle with Plutocracy, the comrades quickly retreated.
Raging fire now hemmed them on three sides. Their only avenue of escape was through the eastern windows, eight or ten feet above the ground. Hastily snatching upsuch of the plans and papers as he had not already secured—and some of these already were beginning to smoke and turn brown, in the infernal heat—Gabriel shielded Catherine's retreat. The others followed.
Craig and Grantham first jumped from the windows, then caught Mrs. Grantham and Catherine as Gabriel helped them to escape. He himself was the last to leave the room, now a raging furnace. Together they all ran from the building, and none too soon; for suddenly the roof collapsed, a tremendous burst of crackling flames and sheaved sparks leaped high above the tree-tops, and the walls came crashing in.
In the welter of incandescence, where now only the stone chimney stood—and this, too, was already cracking and swaying—Brevard had found his tomb, together with the two Air Trust spies. All that pleasant, necessary place was now a mass of white-hot ruin; all those books and pictures now had turned to ash.
The five remaining comrades paused by the hangar, and looked mournfully back at the still-leaping volcano of destruction.
"Poor Brevard! Poor old chap!" said Craig. He peered at the women. Neither one was crying—they were not that type—but both were pale.
"I don't feel that way," said Gabriel. "Brevard is not to be pitied. He's to be envied! He died in the noblest war we can conceive—the war for the human race! And his last act was to take part in a battle that stamped out two vipers, Air Trust spies, who would have joyed to burn us all alive!"
The spy's body burst into a sheaf of fire.
The spy's body burst into a sheaf of fire.
The spy's body burst into a sheaf of fire.
The spy's body burst into a sheaf of fire.
"Thank God, I got the Hell-hounds!" muttered Craig. "Two less of Slade's infamous army, anyhow." ThoughGabriel knew it not, the first one to fall was the same who had battled with him in the trap at Rochester, the same who had trailed him when he, Gabriel, had left the Federal pen. So one score, at least, was settled.
"They're gone, anyhow," said Gabriel, "and five of us still live—and I've still got the plans and all. Moreover, the monoplanes are safe. The quicker we get away from here, now, the better. Away, and to our last remaining refuge near Port Colborne, on the shores of Lake Erie. Other Air Trust forces may be here, before morning. We must get away!"
A frightful shock awaited them when, entering the hangar—eager now to escape at once from the scene of the tragedy—they beheld their aeroplanes.
By the ruddy light which shone in through the wide doors, from the fire, they saw long strips and tatters of canvas hanging from the 'planes.
"Smashed! Broken! Wrecked!" cried Gabriel, starting back aghast.
The others stared. Only too true; the monoplanes were practically destroyed. Not only had the spies, before attacking the refuge, slashed the 'planes to rags, but they had also partly dismantled the motors. Bits of machinery lay scattered on the floor of the hangar.
Stunned and unable to gather speech or coherent thought, the five Socialists stood staring. Then, after a moment, Craig made shift to exclaim bitterly:
"A good job, all right! The curs must have got in at the window, and spent an hour in this work. Whatever happened, they didn't intend we should have any means of retreat—for of course it's out of the question for anybody to get away from here through the forest over the ridges and down the cliffs!"
"They meant to trap us, this way, that's certain," added Gabriel. "There surely will be others of the same breed, here before morning. They must not find us here!"
"But Gabriel, how shall we escape?" asked Catherine, her face illumined by the leaping flames of the bungalow.
"How! In their own machine! The machine that Slade and the Air Trust secret-service gave them, to come here and catch or murder us!"
"By the Almighty! So we will!" cried Grantham. "Come on, let's find it!"
The little party hurried off toward the landing-ground, a cleared and levelled space further up the mountainside. The light of the burning bungalow helped show them their path; and Craig had also taken an electric flash-lamp from the hangar. With this he led the way.
"Right! There it is!" suddenly exclaimed Gabriel, pointing. Craig painted a brush of electric light over the vague outlines of the Air Trust machine, a steel racer of the latest kind.
"A Floriot biplane," said he. "Will hold two and a passenger. Familiar type. I guess all of us, here, can operate it."
They all—even the women—could. For you must understand that after the Great Massacres had foreshown the only possible trend the Movement could take, practically all the leaders in the work had studied aeronautics, also chemistry, as most essential branches of knowledge in the inevitable war.
"Two, and a passenger," repeated Gabriel, as though echoing Craig's words. "Who goes first?"
"You!" said Grantham. "You and Catherine, with Craig to bring the machine back. You're needed, now, at the front—imperatively needed. Freda and I," gesturing at his wife, "will hold the fort, here—will keep watch over our dead, over poor old Brevard, the first to fall in this great, final battle!"
A spirited argument followed. Gabriel insisted on being left for the second trip. A compromise was made by having him get the two women out of danger, at once, leaving Craig and Grantham on the mountain.
"I'll send Hazen or Keyes back with the 'plane, for you," said he, as he climbed into the driving seat, after the passengers had been stowed. "That will be tomorrow night. Of course, we daren't fly by day. And mind," he added, adjusting his spark and throttle, "mind you meet me with this very same machine, safe and sound, at the Lake Erie refuge!"
"Why this same machine?" inquired Craig.
"Why? Because I intend to use this, and no other, in the final attack. Could poetic justice be finer than that the Air Trust works be destroyed with the help of one of their own 'planes?"
No more was said, save brief good-byes. Those were times when demonstrativeness, whether in life or death, was at a discount. A hand-clasp and a few last instructions as to the time and place of meeting, sufficed. Then Gabriel pressed the button of the self-starter and opened the throttle.
With a sudden gusty chatter, the engine caught. A great wind sprang up, from the roaring, whirling blades. The Floriot rolled easily forward, speeded up, and gathered headway.
Gabriel suddenly rotated the rising-plane. The great gull soared, careened and took the air with majestic power. The watchers on the mountain-side saw its hooded lights, that glowed upon its compass and barometric-gauge, slowly spiralling upward, ever upward, as Gabriel climbed with his two passengers.
Then the lights sped forward, northward, in a long tangent, and, as they swiftly diminished to mere specks, the echo of a farewell hail drifted downward from the black and star-dusted emptiness above.
Craig turned to Grantham, when the last gleam of light had faded in a swift trajectory.
"God grant they reach the last remaining refuge safely!" said he, with deep emotion. "And may their flight be quick and sure! For the fate of the world, its hope and its salvation from infinite enslavement, are whirling through the trackless wastes of air, to-night!"
The first intimation that Flint and Waldron had of any opposition to their plans, of any revolt, of any danger, was at quarter past three on the afternoon of October 8th, 1925. All that afternoon, busy with their final plans for the immediate extension of their system, they had been going over certain data with Herzog, receiving reports from branch managers and conferring with the Congressional committee that—together with Dillon Slade, their secret-service tool, now also President Supple's private secretary—they had peremptorily summoned from Washington to receive instructions.
In the more than four years that had passed since they had put Gabriel behind bars—years fruitful in strikes and lockouts, in prostitutions of justice, in sluggings and crude massacres—both men had altered notably.
Though the National Censorship now no longer permitted any cartooning of a "seditious" nature, i.e., representing any of the Air Trust notables, old Flint's features tempted the artist's pencil more than ever. Save for a little white fringe of hair at the back of his head, he had become almost bald, thus adding greatly to his strong suggestion of a vulture. His face was now more yellow and shrunken than ever, due to a rather heavier consumption of his favorite drug, morphine; his nose had hooked more strongly, and his one gold tooth of otherdays now had two more to bear it company. His eyes, too, behind his thick pince-nez, had grown more shifty, cold and cruelly calculating. If it be possible to conceive a fox, a buzzard and a jackal merged in one, old Isaac Flint today represented that unnatural and hideous hybrid.
Now, as he stood facing "Tiger" Waldron, in the inner and sancrosanct office of the Air Trust plant at Niagara—the office that even the President of these United States approached with deference and due humility—the snarl on his face revealed the beast-soul of the man.
"Damnation!" he was saying, as he shook a newly-received aerogram at his partner. "What's this, I'd like to know? What does this mean? All telegraphic communication west of Chicago has suddenly stopped, and from half a dozen points in the Southern States news is coming in that railway service is being interrupted! See here, Waldron, this won't do! Your part of the business has always been to carry on the publicity end, the newspaper end, the moulding of public opinion and political thought,andthe maintenance of free, clear rail and aero communication everywhere, all over the world. But now, all at once, see here?"
Waldron raised red, bleared eyes at his irate partner. He, too, was more the beast than four years ago. No less the tiger, now, but more the pig. High, evil living had done its work on him. An unhealthy purple suffused his heavily-jowled face. Beneath his eyes, sodden bags of flesh hung pendant. His lips, loose and lascivious, now sucked indolently at the costly cigar he was smoking as he sat leaning far back in his desk-chair. And so those two, angry accuser and indifferent accused, faced each other for a moment; while, incessant, dull, mighty, thethunders of the giant cataract mingled with the trembling diapason of the stupendous turbines in the rock-hewn caverns where old Niagara now toiled in fetters, to swell their power and fling gold into their bottomless coffers.
"See here!" Flint repeated angrily, once more shaking the dispatches at his mate. "Even our wireless system, all over the west and southwest, has quit working! And you sit there staring at me like—like—"
"That'll do, Flint!" the younger man retorted in a rough, hoarse voice. "If there's any trouble, I'll find it and repair it. Very well. But I'll not be talked to in any such way. Damn it, you can't speak to me Flint, as if I were one of the people! If you own half the earth, I'll have you understand I own the other half. So go easy, Flint—go damned easy!"
Malevolently he eyed the old man's beast-like face. The scorn and dislike he had conceived for Flint, years ago, when Flint had failed to win back Catherine to him, had long grown keener and more bitter. Waldron took it as a personal affront that Flint, apparently so worn and feeble, could still hang on to life and brains enough to dominate the enterprise. A thousand times, if once, he had wished Flint well dead and buried and out of the way, so that he, Waldron, could grasp the whole circle of the stupendous Air Trust. This, his supreme ambition, had been constantly curbed by Flint's survival; and as the months and years had passed, his hate had grown more deep, more ugly, more venomous.
"Why, curse it," Waldron often thought, "the old dope has taken enough morphine in his lifetime to have killed a hundred ordinary men! And yet he still clings on, and withers, and grows yellow like an old dead leaf that willnot drop from the tree! Whenwillhe drop? WhenwillFather Time pick the despicable antique? My God, is the man immortal?"
Such being the usual tenor of his thoughts, concerning Flint, small wonder that he took the old man's chiding with an ill grace, and warned him pointedly not to continue it. Now, facing the Billionaire, he fairly stared him out of countenance. An awkward silence followed. Both heard, with relief, a rapping at the office door.
"Come!" snapped Flint.
A clerk appeared, with a yellow envelope in hand.
"Another wireless, sir," said he.
Flint snatched it from him.
"Send Herzog and Slade, at once," he commanded, as he ripped the envelope.
"Well, more trouble?" insolently drawled "Tiger" happy in the paling of the old man's face and the sudden look of apprehension there.
For all answer, Flint handed him the message. Waldron read:
Southern and Gulf States all seemingly cut off from every kind of communication this P.M. Can get no news. Is this according to your orders? If not, can you inform me probable cause? I ask instructions. "K."
Southern and Gulf States all seemingly cut off from every kind of communication this P.M. Can get no news. Is this according to your orders? If not, can you inform me probable cause? I ask instructions. "K."
Silence, a minute, then Waldron whistled, and began pulling at his thick lower lip, a sure sign of perturbation.
"By the Almighty, Flint" said he. "I—maybe I was wrong just now, to be so confoundedly touchy about—about what you said. This—certainly looks odd, doesn'tit? Itcan'tbe a series of coincidences! There must be something back of it, all. But—butwhat?Rebellion is out of the question, now, and has been for a long time. Revolution? The way we're organized, the very idea's an absurdity! But, if not these, what?"
Flint stared at him with drug-contracted eyes.
"Yes, that's the question," he rapped out. "What can it mean? Ah, perhaps Slade can tell us," he added, as the secret-service man quietly entered through a private door at the rear of the office.
"Tell you what, gentlemen?" asked Slade, smirking and rubbing his hands.
"The meaning of that, and that, andthat!" snapped old Flint, thrusting the telegrams at the newcomer.
"Hm!" grunted the secret-service man, as he glanced them over. "That's damned odd! But it's of no real moment. If—if there's really any trouble, any outbreak or what not, of course it can't amount to anything. All you have to do is order the President to call out the troops, and—"
"Yes, I can order him, all right," snarled Flint, "but in case all our wires are down and all our wireless plants put out of commission, to say nothing of our transport service interrupted, what then? There's no doubt inmymind, Slade, that another upheaval is upon us. The fact that we stamped out the 1918 and 1922 uprisings, and that rivers ran red and city streets were flushed with blood, apparently hasn't made any impression on the cattle! Damn it all, I say,can'tyou keep things quiet?Can'tyou?"
In a very frenzy he paced the office, his face twitching,his bony fingers snapping with the extremity of his agitation. Suddenly he faced Slade.
"See here, you!" he exclaimed. "This certainly means another uprising. It can't mean anything else! And you've allowed it, you hear? No, no, don't deny the fact!" he cried, as the detective tried to oppose a word of self-defense. "It's your fault, at last analysis; and if anything happens, you and the President, Supple, have got to answer to me, personally, do you hear? You've got to pay!"
"Pay, and with devilish big interest, too!" growled "Tiger," fixing his bleared, savage eyes on Slade.
"What did I make that man President for, anyhow?" snarled Flint, "if not to do my bidding and keep things still? Why did I put you in as his private secretary, if not to have you watch him and see that hediddo my bidding? Why did I have Congress pass all those bills and things, except to give you the weapons and tools to hold the lid on?
"You've had a huge army and a conscripted militia given you; and hundreds of wireless plants, and military roads and war-equipment beyond all calculating. You've had thousands of spies organized and put under your control. At your suggestion I've had all political power taken away from the dogs—and everything done that you've asked for—and this,thisis the kind of work you do!"
Livid with rage, the old Billionaire stood there shaking by his desk, his face a fearful mask of passions and evil lusts for vengeance and power. Slade, recognizing his master, even as President Supple on more than one occasion had been forced in terrible personal interviews torecognize him, said no word; but in the secret-service man's eyes a brutal gleam flashed its message of hate and loathing. Foul as Slade was, he balked at times, in face of this man's cruel and naked savagery.
"I tell you," continued Flint, now having recovered his breath, "I tell you, you're worse than useless, you and your President, ha! ha!—President Puppet, indeed! Take that great Smoky Mountain clue, for instance! On the rumor that the ring-leaders of the swine were up there, somewhere, in the North Carolina mountains, you sent your two best men. And what's the latest news? What have you to tell me?Youknow! Other airmen of yours have just reported that nothing can be found but ruins of the Socialist refuge, there—nothing but those, and the half-melted vanadium steel identification-tags of your best scouts!Andtheir machine is gone—and with it, the birds we wanted! Then, close on the heels of this, all wires go flat, all wireless breaks down, all rails are interrupted, and—and Hell's to pay!" Fair in Slade's face he shook his trembling first.
"Urrh! You devilish, impotent faker! You four-flusher! You toy detective! You and your President, too, aren't worth the liquid oxygen to blow you to Hades! See here, Slade, you get out on this job, now, and do it damned quick, you understand, or there'll besomeshake-up in your office and in the White House, too. When I buy and pay for tools, I insist that the tools work. If they don't—!"
He snatched up a pencil from the desk, broke it in half and threw the pieces on the floor.
"Like that!" said he, and stamped on them.
Waldron nodded approval.
"Just like that," he echoed, "and then some!"
"Go, now!" Flint commanded, pointing at the door. "Inside an hour, I want some reports, and I want them to be satisfactory. If you and Supple can't get things open again, and start the troops and machine-guns before then, look out! That's all I've got to say. Now,go!"
Hardly had the secret-service man taken his leave, slinking away like a whipped cur, yet with an ugly snarl that presaged evil, when Herzog appeared.
"Come here," said Flint, curtly, heated with his burst of passion.
"Yes, sir," the scientist replied, approaching. "What is it, sir?"
Still shifty and cringing was he, in presence of the masters; though with the men beneath him, at the vast plant—and now his importance had grown till he controlled more than eight thousand—rumor declared him an intolerable tyrant.
"Tell me, Herzog, what's the condition of the plant, at this present moment?"
"Just how do you mean, sir?"
"Suppose there were to be trouble, of any kind, how are we fixed for it? How's the oxygen supply, and—and everything? Good God, man, unlimber! You're paid to know things and tell 'em. Now, talk."
Thus adjured, Herzog washed his hands with imaginary soap and in a deprecating voice began:
"Trouble, sir? What trouble could there be? There's not the faintest sign of any organization among the men. They're submissive as so many rabbits, sir, and—"
"Damn you, shut up!" roared Flint. "I didn't summon you to come up here and give me a lecture on labor conditions at the works! The trouble I refer to is possible outside interference. Maybe some kind of wild-eyed Socialist upheaval, or attack, or what not. In case it comes, what's our condition? Tell me, in a few words, and for God's sake keep to the point! The way you wander, and always have, gives me the creeps!"
Herzog ventured nothing in reply to this outburst, save a conciliatory leer. Then, collecting his thoughts, he began:
"Well, sir, in a general way, our condition is perfect. We've got two regiments of rifle and machine gunmen, half of them equipped with the oxygen bullets. I guarantee that I could have them away from their benches and machines, and on the fortifications, inside of fifteen minutes. Slade's armed guards, 2,500 or so, are all ready, too.
"Then, beside that, there are eight 'planes in the hangars, and plenty of men to take them up. If you wish, sir, I can have others brought in. The aerial-bomb guns are ready. As for the oxygen supply, Tanks F and L are full, K is half filled, and N and Q each have about 6,000 gallons, making a total of—let's see, sir—a total of just about 755,000 gallons."
"How protected? Have you got those bomb-proof overhead nets on, yet?"
"Not yet, sir. That is, not over all the lines of tanks. We ran short of steel wire, last week, and have only got eight of the tanks under netting. But the work is going on fast, sir, and—"
"Rush it! At all hazards, get nets over the rest of the tanks. If anything happens, through this delay, remember, Herzog, I shall hold you personally responsible, and it will go hard with you!"
"Yes, sir; thank you, sir," murmured the servile wretch. "Anything else, sir?"
Flint thought a moment, glaring at Herzog with angry eyes, then shook his head in negation.
"Very well, sir," said Herzog, withdrawing. "I'll go to work at once. By tomorrow, everything will be safe, I guarantee."
He closed the door softly—as softly as he had spoken—as softly as he always did everything.
Flint glared at the door.
"The sneaking whelp!" he murmured. "He makes my very flesh crawl. I wish to heaven he weren't so essential to us; we'd let him go, damned quick!"
"You forget," put in Tiger, "that he knows too much to be let go, ever. No, he's a fixture. And now, dismiss him from your mind, and let's go over those telegrams and radiograms again. If thereisa new Socialist revolt under way—and I admit it certainly begins to look like it—we've got to understand the situation. Slade will have some more reports for us, in an hour or so. Till then, these must suffice."
Flint, curbing his agitation, sat down at the big table and turned on the vacuum-glow light, for the October afternoon was foggy—a fog that mingled with the spray of the vast Falls and hung heavy over the world—and already daylight was beginning to fail.
"Fools!" he muttered to himself. "Fools, to think they can rebel againstus!Ants would have just as much show of success, charging elephants, astheyhave against the Air Trust! By tomorrow they'll be wiped out, smearedout, shattered and annihilated, whoever and wherever they are. By tomorrow, at the latest. Again I say, blind, suicidal fools!"
"Right you are," assented Waldron, drawing up his chair. "They don't seem to realize, even yet, that we own the whole round earth and all that is in it. They don't understand that their rebelling is like a tribe of naked savages going against a modern army with explosive bullets. Ah, well, let them learn, let them learn! It takes a whip to teach a cur. Let them feel the lash, and learn!..."
At this same hour, in the last retreat, near Port Colborne, in the State of Ontario—once a province of Canada—half a dozen grim and determined men were gathered together. We already recognize Craig, Grantham and Gabriel. The other three, like them, all wore the Socialist button and the little tab of red ribbon that marked them as members of the Fighting Sections.
"Tonight," Gabriel was saying, as he stood there in the gathering dusk—they dared not show a light, even behind the drawn curtains of their refuge—"tonight, comrades, the final die is cast. Everything is ready, or as nearly ready as we shall ever be able to make it. Our reports already show that every line of communication has been broken by one swift, sharp blow. True, in a few hours all these avenues can be opened up again. By morning, the Niagara works will be in receipt of messages; trains will be running; the troop-planes will be carrying their hordes at the command of Flint. By morning, yes. But in the meantime—"
He spread his fingers, upward, with an expressive gesture.
"By morning," Craig mumbled, "what will there be left to protect?"
A little silence followed. Each was busy with his own thoughts.
All at once, one of the three newcomers spoke—a tall, light-haired fellow, he seemed, in that dim light, with a strong Southern accent.
"Pardon me for asking, Gabriel," said he, removing a pipe from his mouth, "or for discussing details familiar to you all. But, coming as Ihavecome direct from the New Orleans refuge—they blew it up, last week, you know—of course I haven't got things as clearly in mind yet, as you-all have. Now, as I understand it, while we manoeuvre over the plant, blow up the barricades and, if possible, 'get' the oxygen-tanks, our men on the ground will pour in through the gaps and storm the place, under the command of Edward Hargreaves. Is that the idea?"
"Exactly, Comrade Marion," answered Gabriel. "You've hit it to a T."
Craig laughed grimly, as he drew at his pipe.
"Just as we're going to hit those big tanks!" said he. "It's tonight or never, comrades. They're putting steel nets over them, already. By tomorrow the whole place will be protected by huge grill-work fully a hundred feet above the tops of the tanks. Oh, they seem to have thought of everything, those plutes! But they'll be just a shade too late, this time; just a shade too late!"
Another silence, broken again by the tall Southerner.
"Just let me get this thing quite clear," said he. "We're to start at 5:30, you say, walk past the Welland CanalFeeder out to the Monck Aviation Grounds, and find everything ready there?"
"Correct," said Gabriel. "All six of us. That's our part of the program. Comrades you don't know, out there—comrades in the employ of the Air Trust itself—will have six machines ready. One of them will be the very machine that they tried to get us with, in the Great Smokies! So you see, we're going to use the Air Trust equipment, their field and even their own telenite, to put them out of business forever and to free the world!"
"Poetic justice, all right enough!" laughed Marion. "At the same time that we're attacking from an elevation of perhaps three thousand feet, the lateral attack will be delivered. About how many men do you count, on, for that?"
"Well," judged Gabriel, "within a ten-mile radius of the plant, at least a hundred thousand men are waiting, this very instant, with every nerve keyed up to fighting tension. Scattered in a vast variety of ingenious and cleverly-devised hiding places, with their chlorine grenades and their revolvers shooting little hydrocyanic acid gas bullets, they're waiting the signal—a rocket in mid-heaven."
"Hydrocyanic acid gas!" exclaimed Marion, forgetting to smoke. "Why, one whiff of that is death!"
"It is," agreed Gabriel. "Remember, this is a war of extermination. It's a case ofthemorus!And if we're worsted, the whole world loses; while if they are, then liberty is born! That's why this gas is justifiable. They'll try to use oxygen-bullets on us, never fear. But where they can kill ten, with those, we can annihilate a hundred with our kind. Swine, they have called us, and fools and apes. Well, we shall see, we shall see, when it comes to an out-and-out fight between Plutocrat and Proletarian, who is the better man!"
Again came silence. And this time it was Grantham who broke it.
"Comrades," said he, "after you've seen as many Socialists shot down asIhave—shot down and burned, as Brevard was—you'll lose any lingering ideas of civilized warfare you may still retain. They hunt us like beasts, prison us in foul traps, ride us down, crush us, break and tear us, and burn us alive, because we struggle to be free men and women, not slaves. Now that our hour has struck, now that their lines of communication and defense are breached, and they—though they still don't fully understand it—are penned there in their heaven-offending, monstrous, horrible plant at the Falls, no true man can hesitate to smash them down with no more compunction than as though they were so many rattlesnakes or scorpions!
"This isn't 1915, when political and civil rights still existed, and we weren't hunted outlaws. This is 1925, and conditions are all different. It's war, war, war to the death, now; and if war is Hell, thentheyare going to get Hell this time, not we."
Nobody spoke, for a little while; but Marion and Craig smoked contemplatively, and the others sat there in the dusk, sunk in thought.
All at once a door opened, and the vague form of a woman became visible.
"Comrades, you must go," said she. "It's nearly half past five. By the time you've got everything in readiness, you'll have no time to lose."
"Right, Catherine," answered Gabriel. "Come, comrades! Up and at it!"
Ten minutes later they all issued forth into the soft gloom. All were in aviator's dress, and each carried a parcel by a handle held with stout straps. Had you seen them, you would have noticed they took particular pains not to jar or shake these parcels, or approach unduly near each other.
At the door of the refuge, Catherine said good-bye to each, and added some brave word of cheer. Her farewell to Gabriel was longer than to the others; and for a moment their hands met and clung.
"Go," she whispered, "go, and God bless you! Go even though it be to death! Their airmen will take toll of some of the attackers, Gabriel. Not all the Comrades will return. Oh, mayyou—mayyou!"
"What is written on the Book of Fate, will be," he answered. "Our petty hopes and fears are nothing, Catherine. If death awaits me, it will be sweet; for it will come, tonight, in the supreme service of the human race! Good-bye!"
With a sudden motion, the girl took his face between her hands, and kissed his forehead. For all her courage and strength, he sensed her heart wildly beating and he felt her tears.
"Good-bye, Gabriel," she breathed. "Would I might go with you! Would that my duty did not hold me here! Good-bye!"
Then he was gone, gone with the others, into the thickening obscurity of the fog-shrouded evening. Now Catherine stood there alone, head bowed and wet face hidden in both hands.
As the little fighting band disappeared, back to the girl drifted a few words of song, soft-hummed through the dusk—the deathless chorus of the International: