“Extreme measures, yes,” said Gabriel, while Brevard spread the papers out and sorted them, and Craig drew contemplatively at his pipe. “The masters would have it so. Our one-time academic discussion about ways and means has become absurd, in the face of plutocratic savagery. We’re up against facts, now, not theories. God knows it’s against the dictates of my heart to do what must be done; but it’s that or stand back and see the world be murdered, together with our own selves! And in a case of self-defense, no measures are unjustifiable.
“Whatever happens our hands are clean. The plutocrats are the attacking force. They have chosen, and must take the consequences; they have sown, and must reap. One by one, they have limited and withdrawn every political right. They have taken away free speech and free assemblage, free press and universal suffrage. They have limited the right to vote, by property qualifications that have deprived the proletariat of every chance to make their will felt. They have put through this National Censorship outrage and—still worse—the National Mounted Police Bill, making Cossack rule supreme in the United States of America, as they have made it in the United States of Europe.
“Before they elected that tool of tools, President Supple, in 1920, on the Anti-Socialist ticket, we still had some constitutional rights left—a few. But now, all are gone. With the absorption and annexation of Canada, Mexico and Central America, slavery full and absolute settled down upon us. The unions simply crumbled to dust as you know, in face of all those millions of Mexican peons swamping the labor-market with starvation-wage labor. Then, as we all remember, came the terrible series of strikes in 1921 and 1922, and the massacres at Hopedale and Boulder, at Los Angeles and Pittsburg, and, worst of all, Gary. That finished what few rights were left, that killing did. And then came the army of spies, and the proscriptions, and the electrocution of those hundred and eleven editors, speakers and organizers—why bring up all these things that we all know so well? We were willing to play the game fair and square, and they refused. Say that, and you say all.
“No need to dwell on details, comrades. The Air Trust has had its will with the world, so far. It has crushed all opposition as relentlessly as the car of Juggernaut used to crush its blind, fanatical devotees. True, our Party still exists and has some standing and some representatives; but we all know what power it has—in the open! Not that much!” And he snapped his fingers in the air.
“In the open, none!” said Craig, blowing a cloud of smoke. “I admit that, Gabriel. But, underground—ah!”
“Underground,” Gabriel took up the word, “forces are now at work that can shatter the whole infernal slavery to dust! This way of working is not our choice; it is theirs. They would have it so—now let them take their medicine!”
“Yes, yes,” eagerly exclaimed Catherine, her face flushed and intense. “I’m with you, Gabriel. To work!”
“To work, yes,” put in Craig, “but with system, order and method. My experience in Congress has taught me some valuable lessons. The universal, all-embracing Trust made marionettes of us, every one. Our strength was, to them, no more than that of a mouse to a lion. Their system is perfect, their lines of supply and communication are without a flaw. The Prussian army machine of other days was but a bungling experiment by comparison with the efficiency of this new mechanism. I tell you, Gabriel, we’ve got to give these tyrants credit for being infernally efficient tyrants! All that science has been able to devise, or press and church and university teach, or political subservience make possible, is theirs. And back of that, military power, and the courts and the prisons and the electric chair! And back of all those, the power to choke the whole world to submission, in a week!”
Gabriel thought, a moment, before replying. Then said he:
“I know it, Craig. All the more reason why we must hit them at once, and hit hard! These reports here,” and he gestured at the papers that Brevard had spread out under the lamp-light, “prove that, at the proper signal, every chance indicates that we can paralyze transportation—the keynote of the whole situation.
“True, the government—that is to say, the Air Trust, and that is to say, Flint and Waldron—can keep men in every engine-cab in the country. They can keep them at every switch and junction. But this isn’t France, remember, nor is it any small, compact European country. Conditions are wholly different here. Everywhere, vast stretches of track exist. No power on earth—not even Flint and Waldron’s—can guard all those hundreds of thousands of miles. And so I tell you, taking our data simply from these reports and not counting on any more organized strength than they show, we have today got the means of cutting and crippling, for a week at least, the movements of troops to Niagara. And that, just that, is all we need!”
A little silence. Then said Catherine:
“You mean, Gabriel, that if we can keep the troops back for a little while, and annihilate the Air Trust plant itself, the great revolution will follow?”
He nodded, with a smouldering fire in his eyes.
“Yes,” said he. “If we can loosen the grip of this monster for only forty-eight hours, and flash the news to this bleeding, sweating, choking land that the grip is loosened—after that we need do no more. Après nous, le déluge; only not now in the sense of wreck and ruin, but meaning that this deluge shall forever wash away the tyranny and crime of Capitalism! Forever and a day, to leave us free once more, free men and women, standing erect and facing God’s own sunlight, our heritage and birthplace in this world!”
Catherine made no answer, but her hand clasped his. The light on her magnificent masses of copper-golden hair, braided about her head, enhanced her beauty. And so for a moment, the little group sat there about the table—the group on which now so infinitely much depended; and the lamp-glow shone upon their precious plans, reports and diagrams.
Into each others’ eyes they looked, and knew the moment of final conflict was drawn very near, at last. The moment which, in failure or success, should for long years, for decades, for centuries perhaps, determine whether the world and all its teeming millions were to be slave or free.
They spoke no word and took no oath of life-and-death fidelity, those men and women who now had been entrusted with the fate of the world. But in their eyes one read unshakable devotion to the Cause of Man, unswerving loyalty to the Great Ideal, and a calm, holy faith that would make light of death itself, could death but pave the way to victory!
CHAPTER XXX.
TRAPPED!
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, t
o 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 us here, 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 administration buildings, 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. Once that is 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 human form 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 held long, 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!”
CHAPTER XXXI.
ESCAPE!
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 even as 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 up such 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 treetops, 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.
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