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!”
“Thank God, I got the Hell-hounds!” muttered Craig. “Two less of Slade’s infamous army, anyhow.” Though Gabriel 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 mountainside 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, tonight!”
CHAPTER XXXII.
OMINOUS DEVELOPMENTS.
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 other days 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, and the 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, the thunders 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 will not drop from the tree! When will he drop? When will Father 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.”
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’t it? It can’t be a series of coincidences! There must be something back of it, all. But—but what? 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, and that!” 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 in my mind, 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’t you keep things quiet? Can’t you?”
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 he did do 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, this is 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 to recognize 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? You know! 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! And their machine is gone—and with it, the bird
s 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 be some shake-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!”
CHAPTER XXXIII.
“NOW COMES THE HOUR SUPREME.”
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.”
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