THE AIR TRUST (Part 2)

CHAPTER XIX.

CATHERINE’S DEFIANCE.

“Hear you, best and dearest father in the world?” she cried, looking quickly up at him again. “Of course I will! Only, I beg you, don’t—don’t ask me to—”

“I will ask you nothing, Kate, my girl, save this—to consider everything well, and to act like a reasoning, thinking creature, not like an impetuous and romantic school-girl!”

Releasing her hands, he once more sat down in the easy-chair, crossed his legs and peered keenly at her, to fathom if he could the inner workings of that other brain and heart.

“Well, father,” she said, “I’ll admit, right away, that I’ve done wrong to keep this from you, or to try to. We—I—broke the engagement, that day of the accident, out at Longmeadow. I meant to tell you, tell you everything and explain it all, but somehow—”

“You needn’t explain, my dear,” said Flint, judicially. “Wally has already done so.”

“And does he blame me, father?” cried the girl, eagerly, clasping her hands on her knees.

“No, not at all. On the contrary, he claims the fault is all his own. And he’s most contrite and repentant, Kate. Absolutely so. All he asks in the world is to make amends and—well, resume the old relation, whenever you are willing.”

Kate shook her head.

“That’s noble and big of him, father,” said she, “to assume all the blame. Really, half of it is mine. But he’s acted like a true man, in taking it. However, that can’t change my decision. I want him for a friend, in every way. But for a husband, no, no, never in this world!”

The Billionaire frowned darkly. Already a stronger opposition was developing than he had expected; and opposition was the one thing in all the world that he could neither tolerate nor endure.

“Listen, Kate,” said he. “You don’t grasp the situation at all. Waldron is an extraordinary man in many ways. In refusing him, you seriously injure yourself. Of course, he has never done any spectacular, heroic thing for you, like—for instance—that young man who rescued you, and whom I shall suitably reward as soon as I find him—”

“What!” she exclaimed, peering eagerly at her father. “What do you mean? Find him? Reward him?”

“Eh? Why, naturally,” the Billionaire replied, scowling at the interruption. “His game of refusing his identity was, of course, just a clever dodge on his part. He certainly must expect something out of it. I have—er—set certain forces at work to discover him; and, as I say, when I’ve done so, I will reward him liberally, and—”

“You’d better not!” ejaculated Kate, with animation. “He isn’t the sort of man you can take liberties with!”

“Hm? What now?” said Flint, with vexation. “What do you know about him?”

“Oh, nothing, nothing, father,” the girl answered quickly. “Only, I think you’re making a mistake to try and force a reward on a man who doesn’t want it. But no matter,” she added, her face tinged by a warmer glow—which Flint was quick to see. “Forgive my interruption. Now, about Wally?”

The old man peered intently at his daughter, a full minute, then with a peculiar sinking at his heart, made shift to say:

“About Wally, yes; you simply don’t understand. That’s all. Listen now, Kate, and be reasonable.”

“I will, daddy. Only don’t ask me to marry a man I don’t and can’t love, ever, ever, so long as I live!”

“That isn’t anything, my girl. Love isn’t all.”

“It is, to me! Without it, marriage is only—” She shuddered. “No, daddy; a thousand times better for me to be an old maid, and—and all that, than give myself to him!”

Flint set his teeth hard together.

“Kate,” said he, his voice like wire, “now hear what I have to say! I want you fully to understand the character and desirability of Maxim Waldron!”

Then in a cold, analytic voice, carefully, point by point, he analyzed the suitor, told of his wealth and power, his connections and his prospects, his culture, travel, political influence and world-wide reputation.

“Furthermore,” he added, while Kate listened with an expression as cold as her father’s tone itself, “he is my partner. We are allied, in business. I hope we may be, too, in family. This man is one that any woman in the world might be proud to call her husband—proud, and glad! Love flies away, in a few brief months or years. Wealth and power and respect remain. And, with these, love too may come. Be strong, Kate! Be sensible! You are no child, but a grown woman. I shall not try to force you. All I want to do is show you your own best interest. Think this all over. Sleep on it. Tomorrow, let us talk of it again. For your own sake, and mine, do as you should, and let folly be averted. Renew the engagement. Hush the breath of gossip and scandal. Conform. Play the game! Do right—be strong!”

She only shook her head; and now he saw the glister of tear-drops in those beautiful gray eyes.

“Father,” cried she, standing up and holding out both hands to him. “Have mercy on me! I can’t—I can’t! My heart refuses and I cannot force it. All this—what is it to me?” She swept her hand at the glowing luxury around her. “Without love, what would such another home be to me? Worse than a prison-cell, I swear! A living death, to one like me! Barter and sale—cold calculation—oh, horrible prostitution, horrible, unspeakable!

“Poverty, with love—yes, I would choose it. Without love, I never, never can give myself! Never, as long as I live!”

The Billionaire, too, stood up. He was shaking, now, as in a palsy, striving to control his rage. His fingers twitched spasmodically, and his eyes burned like firecoals behind those gleaming lenses.

Then, as he peered at her, he suddenly went even paler than before. Through his heart a stab of understanding had all at once gone home. The veils were lifted, and he knew the truth.

Her manner in speaking of that unknown, wandering rescuer; the blush that had burned from breast to brow, when he had mentioned the fellow; her aversion for Waldron and her reticence in talking of the accident—all this, and more, now surged on Flint’s comprehension, flooding his mind with light—with light and with terrible anger.

And, losing all control, he took a step or two, and raised his shaking hand. His big-knuckled finger, shaken in denunciation, was raised almost in her face. Choking, stammering, he cried:

“Ah! Now I know! Now, now I understand you!”

Terrified, she retreated toward the door of the music-room.

“Father, father! What makes you look so?” she gasped. “Oh, you have never looked or spoken to me this way! What—what can it be?”

“What can it be?” he mouthed at her. “You ask me, you hypocrite, when you well know?”

Suddenly she faced him, stiffening into pride and hard rebellion.

“No more of that, father!” she exclaimed, her eyes blazing. “I am your daughter, but you can’t talk to me thus. You must not!”

“Who—who are you to say ‘must not?’” he gibed, now wholly beside himself. “You—you, who love a vagabond, a tramp, scum and off-scouring of the gutter?”

A strange, half-choking sound was his only answer. Then, with no word, she turned away from him, biting her lip lest she answer and betray herself.

“Go!” he commanded, bloodless and quivering. “Go to your room. No more of this! We shall see, soon, who’s master of this house!”

She was already gone.

Old Flint stood there a moment, listening to her retreating footfalls on the parquetry of the vast hall. Then, as these died he turned and groped his way, as though blind, back to his chair, and fell in it, and covered his eyes with both his shaking hands.

For a long time he sat there, anguished and crucified amid all that unmeaning luxury and splendor.

At last he rose and with uncertain steps sought his own suite, above-stairs.

Billionaire and world-master though he was, that night he knew his heart lay dead within him. He realized that all the fruits of life were Dead Sea fruits, withered to dust and ashes on his pale and quivering lips.

CHAPTER XX.

THE BILLIONAIRE’S PLOT.

He was aroused from this bitter revery by a rapping at the door. Opening, he admitted Slawson, his valet. The servile one handed him a letter with a special-delivery stamp on it.

“Excuse me for intruding, sir,” said Slawson, meekly smiling, “but I knew this was urgent.”

“All right. Get out!” growled Flint. When the man was gone, he fortified himself with a couple of morphine tablets, and ripped the long envelope. It was from Slade, he knew, of the Cosmos Agency.

With a rapid eye he glanced it over. Then uttering a sudden oath, he studied it carefully, under the electric bulb beside his dressing-table.

“Gods and devils!” he ejaculated. “What next?”

The letter read:

142A Park Row, New York City,

June 28, 1921.

Isaac L. Flint, Esq.,

Idle Hour, Englewood, N. J.

Dear Sir:

Reporting in the matter of the young man who rescued your daughter, in the recent accident, let me say I have discovered his identity and some important facts concerning him. I take the liberty of thinking that your intention of rewarding him, when found, will be somewhat modified by this information.

This man’s name is Gabriel Armstrong, age 24. Occupation, expert electrical and chemical worker. A Socialist and labor agitator, of the most dangerous type, because intellectual and well-read. A man of considerable power and influence in Socialist and labor circles. Has been something of a wanderer. Is well known to union men and Socialists, all over the country. A powerful speaker, and resourceful.

He was last employed at your testing-works on Staten Island. Discharged by your Mr. Herzog, about two weeks ago for having, I understand, been in possession of a certain red-covered note-book, which Mr. Herzog found in his pocket. This book is the same which you commissioned me to find, but which Mr. Herzog returned to you before I undertook the search for it. The inference is that this Armstrong is in possession of some private information about your work, which may make him even more dangerous. Herzog informs me that you and Mr. Waldron have had Armstrong blacklisted. But this seems of no importance to the man, as he is clever and can live anywhere, by casual labor and by working with the Socialists.

Armstrong is now at Syracuse. He has been tramping the roads. Have had two of my operators enter his room at the Excelsior Lodging House and search, his effects, while he was taking a bath. Can find nothing to give me any legal means of proceeding against him. He has some ready money, so a vagrancy-charge will not hold. If you wish me to resort to extreme measures to “get” him, kindly give me carte blanche, and guarantee me protection in case of trouble. The job can be done, but it may be risky, in view of his influence and backing among the Socialists and labor people. Before proceeding further I want to know how far you will support me.

Am having him shadowed. He cannot get away. As yet he suspects nothing. On receipt of your next, will take measures to put him away for a few months. I know that, once he lands behind bars, his finish can be easily arranged.

Trusting this information will prove satisfactory to you, and awaiting your further instructions, I am,

Very truly yours,

THE COSMOS AGENCY,

Dillon F. Slade, Mgr.

Old Flint read this extraordinary communication twice through, then, raising his head, growled in his shrunken throat, for all the world like a wild beast. His gold tooth, gleaming in the light, made his rictus of passion more venomous, more malevolent still.

“The—the Hell-hound!” he stammered, his eyes narrowed with hate and rage. “Oh, wait! Wait till we land him! And this—this is the devil, the scum, that Kate, my daughter—”

He could not finish; but, clutching at his sparse gray hair, fell to pacing the floor and mouthing execrations. Had he been of the sanguine manner of body, he must inevitably have suffered an apoplexy. Only his spare frame and bloodless type, due to the drug, saved his life, at that first shock of rage and hate.

Grown calmer, presently, he took quick action. Seating himself at a desk in the corner of his bed-chamber—a desk where some of his most important private matters had been put through—he chose a sheet of blank paper, with no monogram, and wrote:

Take immediate action. Will back you to the limit, and beyond. Ten thousand bonus if you land him behind bars inside a week. Stop at nothing, but get results. F.

This he folded and put in an envelope which he addressed to Slade, and was about to seal, when another idea struck him.

“By God!” he exclaimed, smiting the desk. “It won’t do to have this just some ordinary charge. The thing has got to be disgraceful, unpardonable, hideous!

“There are two things to be considered now. One is to ‘get’ him, in connection with that red book of my plans—to head him off from making any possible trouble in the development of the Air Trust.

“The other is—Kate! Nothing catches a woman, like martyrdom. If anything happens to this cur, and she suspects that I’ve done it, out of spite, all Hell can’t hold her. I know her well enough for that. No, this fellow has got to be put away on some charge that will absolutely and utterly ruin him, in her eyes, for good and all—that will blast and wreck him, forever, with her. Something that, when I tell her, will fill her with loathing and horror. Something that will cause a terrible and complete revulsion of feeling in her, and bring her back to Waldron, as to a strong refuge in time of trouble. Something that will crush and quell her, utterly cure her of those idiotic, school-girl notions of hers, and make her—as she should be—submissive to my will and my demands!”

He pondered a moment, an ugly, crafty smile on those old lips of his; then, struck by sudden inspiration, laughed a dry, harsh laugh.

“The very thing!” he exulted, with the mirth of a vulture that has just found a peculiarly revolting mass of carrion. “Fool that I was, not to have thought of it before!”

Hastily he withdrew the letter from the envelope, opened it, and with eager hand wrote three short sentences. He read these over, nodded approval, and this time sealed and addressed the letter. Then he pushed an electric button over the desk.

“Have this letter carried to this address at once,” he commanded Slawson. “Mr. Dillon Slade, 432 Highland Avenue, Rutherford, N. J. See? Special delivery won’t do. Have Sanders take it at once, in the racer. No answer required. And after you’ve seen it start on its way, come back here. I want to go to bed.”

“Yes, sir. All right, sir,” the valet bowed as he took the letter and departed.

Ten minutes later, he was back again, helping old Flint undress.

Long after the Billionaire was in bed, in the big, luxurious room, with its windows open toward the river—the room guarded all night by armed men in the house and on the lawn outside—he lay there thinking of his plot, chuckling to himself over its infernal cunning, and filled with joy at the prospects now opening out ahead of him.

“Two birds with one stone, this time, for sure,” he pondered. “Ha! They’ll try to beat old Isaac Flint at this or any other game, will they? Man or woman, I don’t care which, they’ll never get away with it—never, so long as life and breath remain in me!”

Then, soothed by these happy thoughts, and by a somewhat increased dosage of his drug, the Billionaire gradually and contentedly fell asleep, to dream of victory, and vengeance, and power.

Not in weeks had he slumbered so peacefully.

But for many hours after her father was asleep, Catherine sat at her window, in a silk kimono, and with fevered pulses and dry eyes, with throbbing heart and leaping pulses, thought long thoughts.

Sleepless she sat there, counting the hours tolled from the church-spire in the town, below.

Morning still found her at the window, her brain afire, her heart laid desolate and waste by the consuming struggle which, that night, had swept and ravaged it.

CHAPTER XXI.

GABRIEL, GOOD SAMARITAN.

On the evening of July third, a week later, Gabriel Armstrong found himself at Rochester, having tramped the hundred miles from Syracuse, by easy stages. During this week, old Flint took good care not to reopen the subject of the break with Waldron; and his daughter, too, avoided it. They two were apparently at an impasse regarding it. But Flint inwardly rejoiced, knowing full well the plot now under way. And though Waldron urged him to take some further action and force the issue, Flint bade him hold his peace, and wait, telling him all would yet be well.

Outwardly calmer, the old man was raging, within, more and ever more bitterly, against Armstrong. On July first, Slade had reported in person that his operators who were trailing the quarry had—in the night—discovered in one of his pockets a maple leaf wrapped in a fine linen handkerchief marked “C. J. F.” Flint, recognizing his daughter’s initials, well-nigh burst a blood-vessel for wrath. But he instructed Slade not to have the handkerchief abstracted from Armstrong’s possession. By no sign or hint must the victim be made aware that he was being spied upon. When the final blow should fall, then (reflected the Billionaire, with devilish satisfaction) all scores would be paid in full, and more than paid.

July third, then, found Gabriel at Rochester, now seventy-five or eighty miles from Niagara Falls, his goal, where—he had already heard—ground was being actually broken for the huge new power plant of which he alone, of all outsiders, understood the meaning. Gabriel counted on spending the Fourth at Rochester where a Socialist picnic and celebration had been arranged. Ordinarily, he would have taken part in the work and volunteered as a speaker, but now, anxious to keep out of sight, he counted merely on forming one of the crowd. There could be little danger, thought he, in such a mass. Despite the recent stringent censorship and military rule of the district by the new Mounted Police, a huge gathering was expected. The big railway and lake-traffic strikes, both recently lost, had produced keen resentment, and, as political and economic power had been narrowed here, as all over the country, in these last few months of on-sweeping capitalist domination, the Socialist movement had been growing ever more and more swiftly.

“It will be worth seeing,” thought Gabriel, as he stood outside the lodging-house where he had taken a room for the night. The workers are surely awakening, at last. The spirit I’ve been meeting, lately, is uglier and more determined than anything I ever used to find, a year or two ago. It seems to me, if conditions are like this all over the country, the safety-valve is about ready to pop, and the masters had better look out, or some of them are going to land in Hell!

“Yes, I’ll stop over here, one day, and look and listen. Sorry I can’t take part, but I mustn’t. My game, now, is to travel underground as it were. I’ve got a bigger job in view than soap-boxing, just now!”

He ate a simple supper at an “Owl” lunch-cart, totally unaware that, across the street, a couple of Cosmos men were waiting for him to come out. And, after this, buying a Socialist paper, he strolled into Evans Park to sit and read, a while, by the red light of the descending sun.

Here he remained till dark, smoking his briar, watching the dirty, ragged children of the wretched wage-slaves at play; observing the exploited men and women on the park-benches, as they sought a little fresh air and respite from toil; and pondering the problems that still lay before him. At times—often indeed—his thoughts wandered to the maple-grove and the old sugar-house, far away on the Hudson. Memories of the girl would not be banished, nor longings for her. Who she might be, he still knew not. Unwilling to learn, he had refrained from looking up the number he had copied from the plate of the wrecked machine. He had even abstained from reading the papers, a few days, lest he might see some account of the accident. A strange kind of unwillingness to know the woman’s name possessed him—a feeling that, if he positively identified her as one of some famous clan of robbers and exploiters, he could no longer cherish her memory or love the thought of how they two had, for an hour, sat together and talked and been good, honest friends.

“No,” he murmured to himself, “it’s better this way—just to recall her as a girl in need, a girl who let me help her, a girl I can always remember with kind thoughts, as long as I live!”

From his pocket he took the little handkerchief, which wrapped the leaf, once part of her bed. A faint, elusive scent still hung about it—something of her, still it seemed. He closed his eyes, there on the hard park bench, and let his fancies rove whither they would; and for a time it seemed to him a wondrous peace possessed him.

“If it could only have been,” he murmured, at last. “If only it could be!”

Then suddenly urged by a realization of the hopelessness of it all, he stood up, pocketed the souvenirs of her again, and walked away in the dusk; away, through the park; away, at random, through squalid, ugly streets, where the first electric-lights were just beginning to flare; where children swarmed in the close heat, wallowing along the gutters, dodging teams and cars, as they essayed to play, setting off a few premature firecrackers and mocking the police—all in all, leading the ugly, unnatural, destructive life of all children of the city proletariat.

“Poor little devils!” thought Gabriel, stopping to observe a dirty group clustered about an ice-cream cart, where cheap, adulterated, high-colored stuff was being sold for a penny a square—aniline poison, no doubt, and God knows what else. “Poor little kids! Not much like the children of the masters, eh? with their lawns and playgrounds, their beaches and flowery fields, their gardens and fine schools, their dogs, ponies, autos and all the rest! Some difference, all right—and it takes a thousand of these, yes, ten thousand, to keep one of those. And—and she was one of the rich and dainty children! Her beauty, health and grace were bought at the price of ten thousand other children’s health, and joy and lives! Ah, God, what a price! What a cruel, awful, barbarous price to pay!”

Saddened and pensive, he passed on, still thinking of the woman he could not banish from his mind, despite his bitterness against her class.

So he walked on and on, now through better streets and now through worse, up and down the city.

Here and there, detonations and red fire marked the impatience of some demonstrator who could not wait till midnight to show his ardent patriotism and his public spirit by risking life and property. The saloons were all doing a land-office business, with the holiday impending and the thermometer at 97. Now and then, slattern women, in foul clothes and with huge, gelatinous breasts, could be seen rushing the growler, at the “family entrance” of some low dive. Even little girls bore tin pails, for the evening’s “scuttle o’ suds” to be consumed on roof, or in back yard of stinking tenement, or on some fire-escape. The city, in fine, was relaxing from its toil; and, as the workers for the most part knew no other way, nor could afford any, they were trying to snatch some brief moment of respite from the Hell of their slavery, by recourse to rough ribaldry and alcohol.

Nine o’clock had just struck from the church-spires which mocked the slums with their appeal to an impassive Heaven, when, passing a foul and narrow alley that led down to the Genesee River, Gabriel saw a woman sitting on a doorstep, weeping bitterly.

This woman—hardly more than a girl—was holding a little bundle in one hand. The other covered her face. Her sobs were audible. Grief of the most intense, he saw at once, convulsed her. Two or three by-standers, watching with a kind of pleased curiosity, completed the scene, most sordid in its setting, there under the flicker of a gas-light on the corner.

“Hm! What now?” thought Gabriel, stopping to watch the little tragedy. “More trouble, eh? It’s trouble all up and down the line, for these poor devils! Nothing but trouble for the slave-class. Well, well, let’s see what’s wrong now!”

Gabriel turned down the alley, drew near the little group, and halted.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, in the tone of authority he knew how to use; the tone which always overbore his outward aspect, even though he might have been clad in rags; the tone which made men yield to him, and women look at him with trustful eyes, even as the Billionaire’s daughter had looked.

“Search me!” murmured one of the men, shrugging his shoulders. “I can’t git nothin’ out o’ her. She’s been sittin’ here, cryin’, a few minutes, that’s all I know; an’ she won’t say nothin’ to nobody.

“Any of you men know anything about it?” demanded Gabriel, looking at the rest.

A murmur of negation was his only answer. One or two others, scenting some excitement, even though only that of a distressed woman—common sight, indeed!—lingered near. The little group was growing.

Gabriel bent and touched the woman’s shoulder.

“What’s the matter?” asked he, in a gentle voice. “If you’re in trouble, let me help you.”

Renewed sobs were her only answer.

“If you’ll only tell me what’s the matter,” Gabriel went on, “I’m sure I can do something for you.”

“You—you can’t!” choked the woman, without raising her head from the corner of the ragged shawl that she was holding over her eyes. “Nobody can’t! Bill, he’s gone, and Eddy’s gone, and Mr. Micolo says he won’t let me in. So there ain’t nothin’ to do. Let me alone—oh dear, oh dear, dear!”

Fresh tears and grief. The little knot of spectators, still growing, nodded with approval, and figuratively licked its lips, in satisfaction. Somewhere a boy snickered.

“Come, come,” said Gabriel, bending close over the grief-stricken woman, “pull together, and let’s hear what the trouble is! Who’s Bill, and who’s Eddy—and what about Mr. Micolo? Come, tell me. I’m sure I can do something to straighten things out.”

No answer. Gabriel turned to the increasing crowd, again.

“Any of you people know what about it?” he asked.

Again no answer, save that one elderly man, standing on the steps beside the woman, remarked casually:

“I guess she’s got fired out of her room. That’s all I know.”

Gabriel took her by the arm, and drew her up.

“Come, now!” said he, a sterner note in his voice. “This won’t do! You mustn’t sit here, and draw a crowd. First thing you know an officer will be along, and you may get into trouble. Tell me what’s wrong, and I promise to see you through it, as far as I can.”

She raised her face, now, and looked at him, a moment. Tear-stained and dishevelled though she was, and soiled by marks of drink and debauchery, Gabriel saw she must once have been very beautiful and still was comely.

“Well,” he asked. “Aren’t you going to tell me?”

“Tell you?” she repeated. “I—oh, I can’t! Not in front of all them men!”

“Very well!” said he, “walk with me, and give me your story. Will you do that? At all events, you mustn’t stay here, making a disturbance on the highway. If you knew the police as well as I do, you’d understand that!”

“You’re right, friend,” said she, hoarsely. “I’m on, now. Come along then—I’ll tell you. It ain’t much to tell; but it’s a lot to me!”

She glanced at the curious faces of the watchers, then turned and followed Gabriel, who was already walking up the alley, toward the brighter lights of Stuart Street. For a moment, one or two of the men hesitated as though undecided whether or not to follow after; but one backward look by Gabriel instantly dispelled any desire to intrude. And as Gabriel and the woman turned into the street, the little knot of curiosity-seekers dissolved into its component atoms, and vanished.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE TRAP IS SPRUNG.

“It—it’s all along o’ that there Mr. Micolo!” the woman suddenly exclaimed, “Him an’ his rent-bill! If he’d ha’ let me in, there, tonight, I could ha’ got Ed’s things an’ then started to my sister’s, out to Scottsville. But he wouldn’t. He claimed they was two-seventy-five still owin’, and I didn’t have but about fifty cents, so I couldn’t pay it. So he wouldn’t let me in. Natchally, anybody’d feel bad, like that, ‘specially when a man told ‘em he’d hold their kid’s clothes an’ things till they paid—which they couldn’t!”

“Naturally, of course,” answered Gabriel, rather dazed by this sudden burst of details, with which she seemed to think he should already be quite familiar—details all sordid and commonplace, through which he seemed to perceive, dimly as in a dark glass, some mean and ugly tragedy of poverty and ignorance and sin.

“Are you hungry?” he asked, all at once. “If so, come in here, where we can talk quietly and get things straight.” He pointed at a cheap restaurant, across the street.

“Hungry? Gord, yes!” she exclaimed. Only I—I wouldn’t ask, if I fell on the sidewalk! Fifty cents—yes, I got that much, but I been tryin’ to get enough to pay Mr. Micolo, an’ get hold of Ed’s things, an’—”

“All right, forget that, now,” commanded Gabriel. He took her by the arm and piloted her across the thoroughfare, then into the dingy hash-house and to a table in a far corner. A few minutes later, pretty much everything on the bill of fare was before them on the greasy table.

“Not a word till you’re satisfied,” directed Armstrong. “I’ll just take a little bread and coffee, to keep you company.”

The woman adequately proved her statement that she was hungry. Rarely had Gabriel seen anybody eat with such ravenous appetite. He watched her with satisfaction, and when she could consume no more, smiled as he asked:

“Now, then, feel better? If so, let’s tackle the next problem. What’s your grief?”

The woman stared at him a long moment before she made reply. Then she exclaimed suddenly:

“You ain’t no kind of ‘bull,’ are you? Nor plain-clothes man?”

Gabriel shook his head.

“No,” said he, “nothing of that kind. You can trust me. Let’s have the story.”

“Hm! It ain’t much, I s’pose,” she answered still half-suspiciously. “Bill and me was livin’ together, that’s all. No, not married, nor nothin’—but—”

“All right. Go on.”

“That was last winter. When the kid happened—Ed, you know—Bill, he got sore, an’ beat it. Then I—I went on the street, to keep Ed. Nothin’ else to do, Mister, so help me, an’—”

“Never mind, I understand,” said Gabriel. “What next?”

“And after that, I gets sick. You know. Almost right away. So I has to go to St. Luke’s hospital. I leaves Ed with Mrs. McCane, at the same house. That place in the alley, you know. Well, when I gets out, the boy’s dead. An’ they never even tells me, till I goes back! An’ I can’t even get his things. Because why? Mrs. McCane’s gone, Gord knows where, an’ Mr. Micolo says I still owe two-seventy-five. I want to get down there to Scottsville, to my sister’s; but curse me if I’ll go till I pay that devil an’ get them clothes!”

A sudden savage light in her blurred eyes betrayed the passion of the mother-love, through all the filth and soilure of her degradation. Gabriel felt his heart deeply moved. He bent toward her, across the table, touched her hand and asked:

“Will you accept five dollars, to pay this man and get you down to Scottsville?”

“Huh?” she queried, gazing at him with vacant, uncomprehending eyes.

He repeated his query. Then, as he saw the slow tears start and roll down her wan cheeks, he felt a greater joy within his breast than if the world and all its treasures had been his.

“Will I take it?” she whispered. “Gord, will I? You bet I will! That is, if I can have your name, an’ pay it back some time?”

He promised, and wrote it down for her, giving as his address Socialist Headquarters in Chicago. Then, without publicity, he slipped a V into her trembling hand.

“Come on,” said he. “That’s all settled!”

He paid the check, and they went out, together. For a moment they stood together, undecided, on the sidewalk.

“Couldn’t I get them things to-night, an’ start?“ asked she, eagerly. “There’s a train at 11:08, on the B. R. & P.”

“All right,” he assented. “Can you see this Micolo, now? It’s after ten.”

“Oh, that don’t make no difference,” she answered. “He runs a pawnshop over here on Dexter Street, two blocks east. He’ll be open till midnight, easy, tomorrow bein’ the Fourth.”

“Come on, then,” said Gabriel. “I’ll see you through the whole business, and onto the train. Maybe I can help you, all along.”

Without another word she started, with Gabriel at her side. They traversed the main street, two blocks, then turned to the left down a narrower, darker one.

“Here’s Micolo’s,” said she, pausing at a doorway. Gabriel nodded. “All right,” he answered. He had not noted, nor did he dream, that, at the corner behind them, two slinking, sneaking figures were now watching his every move.

The woman turned the knob, and entered. Gabriel followed.

“It’s on the second floor,” said she. Gabriel saw a sign, on the landing: “S. L. Micolo, Pawn Broker,” and motioned her to precede him.

In a minute they had reached the upper hallway. The woman opened another door. The room, inside, was dark.

“This way,” said she. “He’s in the inside office, I guess. The light must ha’ gone out here, some way or other.”

Gabriel hesitated. Some inkling, some vague intuition all at once had come upon him, that all was not well. At his elbow some invisible force seemed plucking. “Come away! Come back, before it is too late!” some ghostly voice seemed calling in his ear.

But still, he did not fully understand. Still he remained there, his mind obsessed by the plausibility of the woman’s story and by the pity he so keenly felt.

And now he heard her voice again:

“Mr. Micolo! Oh, Mr. Micolo! Where are you?”

Striking a match, he advanced into the room.

“Any gas here?” he asked, peering about for a burner.

Suddenly he started with violent emotion. Behind him, in some unaccountable way, the door had been closed. He heard a key turn, softly.

“What—what’s this?” he exclaimed. He heard the woman moving about, somewhere in the gloom. “See here!” he cried. “What kind of a—?”

The match burned brightly, all at once. He peered about him, wide-eyed.

“This is no office!” shouted he. “Here, you! What’s the meaning of this? This is a bed-room!”

Sudden realization of the trap stunned and sickened him.

“God! They’ve got me! Flint and Waldron—they’ve landed me, at last!” he choked. “But—but not till I’ve broken a few heads, by God!”

The match fell from his burnt fingers. Whirling toward the door, he rained powerful kicks upon it. He would get out, he must get out, at all hazards!

Suddenly the woman began to scream, with harsh and piercing cries that seemed to rip the very atmosphere.

At the third scream, or the fourth, the key was turned and the door jerked open.

In its aperture, three men stood—the two who had been so long trailing Gabriel, and a policeman, burly, red-jowled, big-paunched.

Gabriel stared at them. His mouth opened, then closed again without a word. As well for a trapped animal to make explanations to the Indian hunter, as for him to tell these men the truth. The truth? They knew the truth; and they were there to crucify him. He read it in their cruel, eager eyes.

The woman had stopped screaming now, and was weeping with abandon, pouring forth a tale of insults and abuse and robbery, with hysterical sobs.

Full in the faces of the three men Gabriel sneered.

“You’ve done a good job of it, this time, you skunks!” he gibed. “I’m on. You’ll get me, in the end; but not just yet. The first man through this door gets his head broken—and that goes, too!”

With a snarl of “You damned white slaver!” the officer raised his night-stick and hurled himself at Gabriel.

Gabriel ducked and planted a terrific left-hander on the “bull’s” ear. Roaring, the majesty of the law careened against the bed, crashed the flimsy thing to wreckage and went down.

Then, fighting back into the gloom of the trap, Gabriel engaged the two detectives. For a moment he held them. One went to the floor with an uppercut under the chin; but came back. The other landed hard on Gabriel’s jaw.

He turned to strike down, again, the first of the two. He heard the bed creaking, and saw the policeman struggling to arise. In a whirlwind of blows, the second detective flailed at him, striving to beat down his guard and floor him with a vicious rib-jolt.

“All’s fair, here!” thought Gabriel, snatching up a chair. For a moment he brandished it on high. With this weapon, he knew—though final defeat was inevitable, when reinforcements should arrive—he could sweep a clear space.

Perhaps he might even yet escape! He heard feet trampling on the stairs, and his heart died within him. Well, even though escape were impossible, he would fight to a finish and die game, if die he must!

Down swung the chair, and round, crashing to ruin as it struck the policeman who was just getting to his feet again. Oaths, cries, screams made the place hideous. Dust rose, and blood began to flow.

Armed now with one leg of the chair, Gabriel retreated; and as he went, he hurled the bitterness of all his scorn and hate upon these vile conspirators.

And as he flayed them with his tongue, he struck; and like Samson against the Philistines, he did great execution.

Like Samson, too, he lost his power through a woman’s treachery. For, even as the attackers seemed to fall back, shattered and at a loss before such fury and tremendous strength, behind Gabriel the woman rose, a laugh of malice on her lips, the policeman’s long and heavy night-stick in her hand.

A moment she poised it, crouching as he—seeing her not—swung his weapon and hurled his defiance at the baffled men in front.

Then, aiming at the base of the skull, she struck.

Sudden bright lights spangled the darkness, for Gabriel. Everything whirled about, in dizzying confusion. A strange, far roaring sounded in his ears.

Then he fell; and oblivion took him to its blessed peace and rest; and all grew still and black.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE BEAST GLOATS.

“Fer Gawd’s sake, let’s have a light here, somebody!” panted the dishevelled policeman. Outside, the ringing of a gong became audible. Then came a clattering of hoofs, as the police-patrol, nicely-timed by the conspirators, and summoned by a confederate, drew up at the box on the corner.

Somebody struck another match, and a raw gas-light flared. From the hallway, two or three others crowded into the wrecked room. Disjointed exclamations, oaths and curses intermingled with harsh laughter.

The woman—Lillian Rafter, probably the finest actress and stool-pigeon in the whole detective world of graft and crookedness—lighted a cigarette at the gas-burner, and laughed with triumph.

“Some make-up, eh kid?” she demanded of the taller detective, who was now nursing a bad “shiner,” as a black eye is known in the under-world, and whose face was battered to a bleeding pulp. “Believe me, as a job, this is some job! From start to finish, a pippin. He was bound to fall for it though. No help for him. Even if he hadn’t butted into the ‘plant’ we fixed for him in the alley, there, I could have braced him in the street with my tale of woe. He was just bound to be ‘it,’ this time. We had him going, all ways for Sunday!”

Scornfully the woman Gabriel had befriended in her seeming misery, spat at him as he lay there stunned and scarcely breathing on the dirty floor.

“And just pipe this, will you, too?” she exulted, holding up the five-dollar bill he had given her. “And this?” She exhibited his name and address, written on a card. “In his own writing, boys. As evidence to hold him on a white slave charge, is this some evidence or isn’t it?”

“Oh, we’ll hold him, all right!” growled the other detective, whose right arm dangled limp, where the chair had struck him. “The —— —— of a ——! He’ll go up for a finif, a five-spot, or I’m a liar! And once we get him behind bars, good-night!”

He deliberately drew back his heavy boot and kicked Gabriel full in the face.

“You —— ——!” he cursed. “Try to bean me, will you? Damn you! You’ve made your last soap-box spiel!”

“Come on, now, boys, out with him, an’ no more rag-chewin’!” the policeman exclaimed. “Git him in the wagon, an’ away, before a gang piles in here! You, Caffery, take his feet. I’ll manage his head. Jesus, but he’s some big guy, though, the —— —— of a ——!”

Together, the battered policeman and the detective who still had some strength left in him, raised Gabriel’s limp body and carried it from the room. The woman, meanwhile, stood there inhaling cigarette-smoke and laughing viciously to herself.

“You easy mutt!” she exclaimed. “Dead baby, room-rent due, wanted to get home to sister—and you fell for that old gag with whiskers on it! You’re some wise guy all right, all right, I don’t think. Well, as a stall it was a beaut. And I must say I never screamed better in all my life. And that wallop I handed out, was a peach. If I don’t pull down five hundred for this night’s work—”

“Shut up, you ——!” snarled Caffery, as he turned into the stairway. “Keep that lip o’ yours quiet, will you, or—”

The woman stared at him a moment, then laughed insolently and snapped her smoke-yellowed fingers at him in defiance.

“Mind you show up in court, in the mornin’!” panted the officer, staggering downstairs under the weight of Gabriel’s huge shoulders.

“Better arrest her now,” suggested Caffery, “an’ hold her.”

“You will, like Hell!” retorted the woman.

“Shhh! In one door an’ out the other,” the second detective whispered in her ear, as she stood there in the doorway. “I’ll see to it you get fifty extra for that!”

“Oh, if that’s the game, fine business!” she smiled. “Go to it—I’m your huckleberry!”

Thus it befell that, while a large and growing crowd observed, under the arc-light on the corner—a crowd where no fewer than six reporters, all duly tipped off in advance, were taking notes—Gabriel Armstrong, the Socialist speaker and leader, was bundled, unconscious, into a patrol wagon of the City of Rochester; and with him, a drunken-acting harlot, babbling charges of white-slave extortion and violence against him; and with them both, several witnesses, who would have sworn that Heaven was Hell, for five dollars cash in hand.

Thus was the stage set, for the next session of the honorable court. Thus were the wires pulled. Thus, the prison doors were swung wide open, and, above all, the honor and the reputation of a man swept to the garbage-heaps of life.

True, at the morrow’s great mass-meeting, there were destined to be protests and calls for investigation. The Socialist press was destined to take it up, defend him and demand the truth. But, swamped by a perfectly overwhelming capitalist press, not only naturally hostile but in this case already heavily subsidized; shattered by the close-knit, circumstantial evidence; hamstrung and hampered in every way by the power of unlimited money and Tammany pull, the Socialists might as well have tried to sweep back the sea with a broom as save this man from legal crucifixion. Worse still, they themselves, and the beaten strikers with whom they had been fraternizing, got a black eye in the affair; and many an editorial column, many a pulpit, unctuously discoursed thereon. Many an anti-Socialist thug and grafter, loud-mouthed and blatant, bellowed revamped platitudes of “immorality” and “breaking up the home,” and the “nation of fatherless children,” pointing at Gabriel Armstrong as a shining example of Socialist hypocrisy and filth.

Press, law, church, capitalism itself nailed this man and the movement he stood for, to the cross. And the pimps and parasites of the private detective agency chuckled in their well-paid glee. The woman, Gabriel’s betrayer, counted her “thirty pieces of silver” and laughed in the foul dark. The police cut a fine melon secretly handed them by Flint; and so, too, did the local papers and more than one local pulpit.

So, in Gabriel’s grief and woe and desolation, as he sat in his grim cell with aching head, bruised face and bleeding heart, with all his plans now broken, with the very soul within him dead—in this grief and anguish, I say, the foul harpy-brood of Capitalism revelled and rioted like maggots in carrion.

None more viciously than old Flint, himself. None with more brutal joy, more savage satisfaction. One of the culminant moments of his life, he felt, was on the evening after the dastardly plot had been carried to its putrid conclusion.

Opening the Rochester “News-Intelligencer” which Slade had sent him, his glittering eyes seemed to sparkle joy as a blue-penciled column met his gaze.

Eagerly he read it all, every word, and weighed it, and re-read it, as men do when news is dear to their souls. Already, through the New York papers he had got the essentials of the affair. Already, by long distance ‘phone he had received the outlines of the news from Slade, as well as a code telegram of more than 500 words, giving him additional details. But this paper especially pleased him. The other Rochester sheets, which Slade would send as fast as they appeared, he already was looking forward to, with keenest pleasure.

“Ah! This is what I call efficiency!” he exclaimed, settling himself in his big chair, adjusting the pince-nez on his hawk-bill and preparing to read the column for the third time. “The way this thing was planned and carried out, and the manner in which Slade has managed to get it played up in the papers, proves to me he’s a general in his line, a true Napoleon. I may safely intrust any affair of this sort to him and his agency. No fee of his shall ever be questioned; and as for bonuses—well, he shall have no reason to complain. An admirable man, in every way—a wonderful organization! With men and agencies like these at work in our interests, what have we, really, to be uneasy about?”

Smacking his mental lips, if I may be pardoned the phrase, he once more slowly read the delightful, gratifying news:

SOCIALIST WHITE-SLAVER!

Rotten Affair Unearthed by Police!

Gabriel Armstrong, Socialist Leader, Caught With the Goods!!!

Rochester, July 4.

“In one of the most sensational raids ever made in this city, by the vice squad, under the auspices of the Purity League, what is believed to be a well-organized white-slave business was unearthed last night. The leader and brains of the association, Gabriel Armstrong, a Socialist speaker and worker of national prominence, was arrested, and is now lodged in Police Headquarters, with serious charges pending.

“The arrest was made as a result of the keen work of Officer Michael P. Duffey, sergeant of the vice squad. Hearing screams in the assignation house at 42A Belding street, he made his way up stairs, accompanied by two or three citizens. The screams were coming from a room on the second floor. Duffey promptly battered the door down only to be met by a furious assault from Armstrong, who was intoxicated and extremely violent.

“A savage hand-to-hand struggle took place, in which furniture was broken, the policeman badly injured and two of the volunteers knocked out. Armstrong was finally subdued, however, by the jiu-jitsu method, in which Duffey is an expert, and was lodged in the Central Station, together with the woman.

“According to her statement, the man, Armstrong, had not only been guilty of grossly immoral practices with her, but had also been trying to force her to share with him the proceeds of her life of shame, thus making out against him a clear case under the Mann White-Slave Traffic law. She has material evidence of this fact—money which he had given her, to finance her till she could begin bringing in revenue to him, and also his name and address, written by his own hand. A significant fact is that the address given by this white slaver is Socialist headquarters, in Chicago. The police are now working on the theory that the entire Socialist organization is honeycombed with this traffic, and that the Socialist movement is only a blind to cover a wholesale distribution of women for immoral purposes. Drastic Federal action against the Socialist Party is now being considered.

“Still further and more sensational facts are expected to develop at the preliminary hearing, which will take place tomorrow morning. In case Armstrong is bound over to the Grand Jury, and convicted, he may get a heavy fine and as much as five years in a Federal penitentiary. He is described as being a surly, low type, reticent and vindictive, of vicious characteristics and mentally defective. The local Socialists have already taken up arms in his defense, as was to be expected.

“Interest is added to the case by the fact that Armstrong is known to be the man who, at the time of the recent automobile accident to Miss Catherine Flint—daughter of Isaac Flint, of Englewood, N. J.—gave the alarm. A theory is now being formed that he was, in some way, involved in a plot with Miss Flint’s chauffeur to wreck the machine and share a big reward for rescuing the girl. The plot, however, evidently miscarried, for the chauffeur was killed, and Armstrong, after giving the alarm, feared to divulge his identity but fled in disguise.

“Public interest is greatly aroused in this matter. And if, as now seems positively certain, this arrest and forthcoming conviction break up the vicious white-slave gang for some time operating in Rochester and Ontario Beach, the public will have a still greater debt of gratitude toward the Purity League, the Vice Squad and the untiring efforts and bravery of Sergeant Duffey.”

“That, ah that,” remarked old Flint, as he finished his last reading, “is what I call literature! It may not be Scott or Shelley or Dickens, but it’s got far more than they ever had—tremendous value to—er—to the rightful masters of society. I dare say that this article and also others like it that are bound to be printed during the trial and after, will do more to secure our position in society than a whole army with machine guns. Socialism, eh? After this campaign gets through, by God, we’ll sweep up the leavings in a dustpan and throw them out the window!”

Again he surveyed the article, smiling thinly.

“Literature, yes,” he repeated. “The writer of those lines, and the master-minds who engineered the whole affair, must and shall be liberally rewarded. Editors, preachers, writers, they’re all on our side. All safe and sane—that is, nearly all—enough, at any event, to assure our safety. I rejoice that I have lived to see this day!”

He turned the sheets of the paper, to see if any other notice of the affair was printed; and as he looked, he pondered.

“Imagine the effect of this, on Kate!” thought he. “It will be just as I planned it. Nothing will be left in her mind now, but loathing, hate and rage against this man. In two days, she and Waldron will have patched up their little difference, and all will be well. A master-stroke on my part, eh? Yes, yes indeed, a master-stroke!”

His eye caught another blue-pencilling.

“Editorial, eh?” said he, adjusting his glasses. “Better and better! This affair will sweep those troublemakers off the map, or I’m a beggar!”

Then, with the keenest of satisfaction, he focussed his attention on the sapient editorial:

SOCIALISM UNVEILED.

The arrest and impending conviction of Gabriel Armstrong, the noted Socialist leader, on a white-slave traffic charge, will do much to set all sane thinkers right in regard to this whole matter of Socialist ethics. Socialists, as we have all heard, contend that their system of thought teaches a high and pure form of morality. How will they square this assertion with the hard, cold facts, as brought to light in this most revolting case?

Much more seems to lie beneath the surface than at first sight appears. Though we desire to suspend judgment until all the data are known, it appears conclusively proved that Armstrong is but one of a band of white-slavers operating through the organization of, and with the consent of the Socialist party, or at least of its responsible officials.

If this prove to be the case, it will substantiate the suspicion long felt in many quarters that this whole movement, ostensibly political, is really a menace to the moral and social welfare of the nation. A foreign importation, openly standing against the home, the family and religion, may well be expected to foster such crimes and to be a “culture-medium” for the growth of such vile microbes as this man Armstrong, and others of his kind.

Turn on the light! Bring the social antiseptics! Let all the facts be established; and when known, if—as we anticipate—they prove this nasty conspiracy, let us make an end, now and forever, to this un-American, immoral and filthy thing, Socialism! To this object this paper now and henceforth pledges its policy; and all decent publications, all citizens who love their country, their God, their homes, their flag, will join with it in a nation-wide crusade to choke this slimy monster of Anarchy and Free-love, and fling it back into the Pit where it belongs.

Long live religion, purity and the flag! Down with Socialism!

Flint regarded this masterpiece with an approving eye. Then, chuckling to himself, he arose and with slow steps advanced toward the dining-room where already Catherine was awaiting him.

“Now,” he murmured to himself, and smiled thinly, “now for a little scene with Kate!”

CHAPTER XXIV.

CATHERINE’S SUPREME DECISION.

The meal was almost at an end—silently, like all their hours spent together, now—before the old man sprang his coup. It was characteristic of him to wait thus, to hold his fire till what he conceived to be the opportune moment; never to act prematurely, under any circumstances whatever.

“By the way, Kate,” he remarked, casually, when coffee had been served and he had motioned the butlers out of the room, “by the way, I’ve been rather badly disappointed, today. Did you know that?”

“No, father,” she answered. She never called him “daddy,” now. “No, I’m sorry to hear it. What’s gone wrong?”

He looked at her a moment before replying, as though to gauge her mind and the effect his announcement might have. Very charming she looked, that evening, in a crêpe de Chine gown with three-quarter lace sleeves and an Oriental girdle—a wonderful Nile-green creation, very simple (she had told herself) yet of staggering cost. A single white rose graced her hair. The low-cut neck of the gown revealed a full, strong bosom. Around her throat she wore a fine gold chain, with a French 20-franc piece and her Vassar Phi Beta Kappa key attached—the only pendants she cared for. The gold coin spoke to her of the land of her far ancestry, a land oft visited by her and greatly loved; the gold key reminded her of college, and high rank taken in studies there.

Old Flint noted some of these details as he sat looking at her across the white and gleaming table, where silver and gold plate, cut glass and flowers and fine Sèvres china all combined to make a picture of splendor such as the average workingman or his wife has never even dreamed of or imagined; a picture the merest commonplace, however, to Flint and Catherine.

“A devilish fine-looking girl!” thought he, eyeing his daughter with approval. “She’d grace any board in the world, whether billionaire’s or prince’s! Waldron, old man, you’ll never be able to thank me sufficiently for what I’m going to do for you tonight—never, that is, unless you help me make the Air Trust the staggering success I think you can, and give me the boost I need to land the whole damned world as my own private property!”

He chuckled dryly to himself, then drew the paper from his pocket.

“Well, father, what’s gone wrong?” asked Kale, again. “Your disappointment—what was it?”

She spoke without animation, tonelessly, in a flat, even voice. Since that night when her father had tried to force Waldron upon her, and had taunted her with loving the vagabond (as he said) who had rescued her, something seemed to have been broken, in her manner; some spring of action had snapped; some force was lacking now.

“What’s wrong with me?” asked Flint, trying to veil the secret malice and keen satisfaction that underlay his speech. “Oh, just this. You remember about a week ago, when we—ah—had that little talk in the music room—?”

“Don’t, father, please!” she begged, raising one strong, brown hand. “Don’t bring that up again. It’s all over and done with, that matter is. I beg you, don’t re-open it!”

“I—you misunderstand me, my dear child,” said Flint, trying to smile, but only flashing his gold tooth. “At that time I told you I was looking for, and would reward, if found, the—er—man who had been so brave and quick-witted as to rescue you. You remember?”

“Really, father, I beg you not to—”

“Why not, pray?” requested Flint, gazing at her through his pince-nez. “My intentions, I assure you, were most honest and philanthropic. If I had found him—then—I’d have given him—”

“Oh, but he wouldn’t have taken anything, you see!” the girl interrupted, with some spirit. “I told you that, at the time. It’s just as true, now. So please, father, let’s drop the question altogether.”

“I’m sorry not to be able to grant your request, my dear,” said the old man, with hidden malice. “But really, this time, you must hear me. My disappointment arises from the fact that I’ve just discovered the young man’s identity, and—”

“You—you have?” Kate exclaimed, grasping the edge of the table with a nervous hand. Her father smiled again, bitterly.

“Yes, I have,” said he, with slow emphasis, “and I regret to say, my dear child, that my diagnosis of his character is precisely what I first thought. Any interest you may feel in that quarter is being applied to a very unworthy object. The man is one of my discharged employees, a thorough rascal and hard ticket in every way—one of the lowest-bred and most villainous persons yet unhung, I grieve to state. The fact that he carried you in his arms, and that I owe your preservation to him, is one of the bitterest facts in my life. Had it been any other man, no matter of what humble birth—”

“Father!” she cried, bending forward and gazing at him with strange eyes. “Father! By what right and on what authority do you make these accusations? That man, I know, was all that innate gentleness and upright manhood could make any man. His nobility was not of wealth or title, but of—”

“Nonsense!” Flint interrupted. “Nobility, eh? Read that, will you?”

Leering, despite himself, he handed the paper across the table to his daughter.

“Those marked passages,” said he. “And remember, this is only the beginning. Wait till all the facts are known, the whole conspiracy laid bare and everything exposed to public view! Then tell me, if you can, that he is poor but noble! Bah! Sunday-school dope, that! Noble, yes!”

Catherine sat there staring at the paper, a minute, as though quite unable to decipher a word. Through a kind of wavering mist that seemed to swim before her eyes, she vaguely saw the words: “Socialist White Slaver!” but that these bore any relation to the man she remembered, back there at the sugar-house, had not yet occurred to her mind. She simply could not grasp the significance of the glaring headlines. And, turning a blank gaze on her father’s face, she stammered:

“Why—why do you give me this? What has this got to do with—me? With him?”

“Everything!” snarled the Billionaire, violently irritated by his daughter’s seeming obtuseness. “Everything, I tell you! That man, that strong and noble hero of yours, is this man! This white slaver! This wild beast—this Socialist—this Anarchist! Do you understand now, or don’t you? Do you grasp the truth at last, or is your mind incapable of apprehending it?”

He had risen, and now was standing there at his side of the table, shaking with violent emotion, his glasses awry, face wrinkled and drawn, hands twitching. His daughter, making no answer to his taunts, sat with the paper spread before her on the table. A wine glass, overset, had spilled a red stain—for all the world like the workers’ blood, spilled in war and industry for the greater wealth and glory of the masters—out across the costly damask, but neither she nor Flint paid any heed.

For he was staring only at her; and she, now having mastered herself a little, though her full breast still rose and fell too quickly, was struggling to read the slanderous lies and foul libels of the blue-penciled article.

Silently she read, paling a little but otherwise giving no sign to show her father how the tide of her thought was setting. Twice over she read the article; then, pushing the paper back, looked at old Flint with eyes that seemed to question his very soul—eyes that saw the living truth, below.

“It is a lie!” said she, at last, in a grave, quiet voice.

“What?” blurted the old man. “A—a lie?”

She nodded.

“Yes,” said she. “A lie.”

Furious, he ripped open the paper, and once more shoved it at her.

“Fool!” cried he. “Read that!” And his shaking, big-knuckled finger tapped the editorial on “Socialism Unveiled.”

“No,” she answered, “I need read no more. I know; I understand!”

“You—you know what?” choked Flint. “This is an editorial, I tell you! It represents the best thought and the most careful opinion of the paper. And it condemns this man, absolutely, as a criminal and a menace to society. It denounces him and his whole gang of Socialists or Anarchists or White-slavers—they’re all the same thing—as a plague to the world. That’s the editor’s opinion; and remember, he’s on the ground, there. He has all the facts. You—you are at a distance, and have none! Yet you set up your futile, childish opinion—”

“No more, father! No more!” cried Catherine, also standing up. She faced him calmly, coldly, magnificently. “You can’t talk to me this way, any more. Cannot, and must not! As I see this thing—and my woman’s intuition tells me more in a minute than you can explain away in an hour—this fabrication here has all, or nearly all, been invented and carried out by you. For what reason? This—to discredit this man! To make me hate and loathe him! To force me back to Waldron. To—”

“Stop!” shouted the old man, in a well-assumed passion. “No daughter of mine shall talk to me this way! Silence! It is monstrous and unthinkable. It—it is horrible beyond belief! Silence, I tell you—and—”

“No, father, not silence,” she replied, with perfect poise. “Not silence now, but speech. Either this thing is true or it is false. In either case, I must know the facts. The papers? No truth in those! The finding of the courts? today, they are a by-word and a mockery! All I can trust is the evidence of my own senses; what I hear, and feel, and see. So then—”

“Then?” gulped the Billionaire, holding the back of his chair in a trembling grasp.

“Just this, father. I’m going to Rochester, myself, to investigate this thing, to see this man, to hear his side of the story, to know—”

“Do that,” cried Flint in a terrible voice, “and you never enter these doors again! From the minute you leave Idle Hour on that fool’s errand, my daughter is dead to me, forever!”

Swept clean off his feet by rage, as well as by the deadly fear of what might happen if his daughter really were to learn the truth, he had lost his head completely.

With quiet attention, the girl regarded him, then smiled inscrutably.

“So it be,” she replied. “Even though you disinherit me or turn me off with a penny, my mind is made up, and my duty’s clear.

“While things like these are going on in the world, outside, I have no right to linger and to idle here. I am no child, now; I have been thinking of late, reading, learning. Though I can’t see it all clearly, yet, I know that every bite we eat, means deprivation to some other people, somewhere. This light and luxury mean poverty and darkness elsewhere. This fruit, this wine, this very bread is ours because some obscure and unknown men have toiled and sweat and given them to us. Even this cut glass on our table—see! What tragedies it could reveal, could it but speak! What tales of coughing, consumptive glass-cutters, bending over wheels, their lungs cut to pieces by the myriad spicules of sharp glass, so that we, we of our class, may enjoy beauty of design and coloring! And the silken gown I wear—that too has cost—”

“No more! No more of this!” gurgled old Flint, now nearly in apoplexy. “I deny you! I repudiate you, Anarchist that you are! Go! Never come back—never, never—!”

Stumbling blindly, he turned and staggered out of the room. She watched him go, nor tried to steady his uncertain steps. In the hallway, outside, she heard him ring for Slawson, heard the valet come, and both of them ascend the stairs.

“Father,” she whispered to herself, a look of great and pure spiritual beauty on her noble face, “father, this had to come. Sooner or later, it was inevitable. Whatever you have done, I forgive you, for you are my father, and have surely acted for what you think my interest.

“But none the less, the end is here and now. Between you and me, a great gulf is fixed. And from tonight I face the world, to battle with it, learn from it, and know the truth in every way. Enough of this false, easy, unnatural life. I cannot live it any longer; it would crush and stifle me! Enough! I must be free, I shall be free, to know, and dare, and do!”

That night, having had no further speech with old Flint, Kate left Idle Hour, taking just a few necessities in a suit-case, and a few dollars for her immediate needs.

Giving no explanation to maid, valet or anyone, she let herself out, walked through the great estate and down Englewood Avenue, to the station, where she caught a train for Jersey City.

The midnight special for Chicago bore her swiftly westward. No sleeping car she took, but passed the night in a seat of an ordinary coach. Her ticket read “Rochester.”

The old page of her Book of Life was closed forever. A new and better page was open wide.

CHAPTER XXV.

THROUGH STEEL BARS.

True to her plan, Catherine ended her journey at Rochester. She engaged a room at a second-rate hotel—marvelling greatly at the meanness of the accommodations, the like of which she had never seen—and, at ten o’clock of the morning, appeared at the Central Police Station. The bundle of papers in her hand indicated that she had read the latest lies and venom poured out on Gabriel’s defenseless head.

The haughty, full-fed sergeant in charge of the station made some objections, at first, to letting her see Gabriel; but the tone of her voice and the level look of her gray eye presently convinced him he was playing with fire, and he gave in. Summoning an officer, he bade the man conduct her. Iron doors opened and closed for her. She was conscious of long, ill-smelling, concrete-floored corridors, with little steel cages at either side—cages where hopeless, sodden wrecks of men were standing, or sitting in attitudes of brutal despair, or lying on foul bunks, motionless and inert as logs.

For a moment her heart failed her.

“Good Lord! Can such things be?” she whispered to herself. “So this—this is a police station? And real jails and penitentiaries are worse? Oh, horrible! I never dreamed of anything like this, or any men like these!”

The officer, stopping at a cell-door and banging thereon with some keys, startled her.

“Here, youse,” he addressed the man within, “lady to see youse!”

Catherine was conscious that her heart was pounding hard and her breath coming fast, as she peered in through those cold, harsh metal bars. For a minute she could find no thought, no word. Within, her eyes—still unaccustomed to the gloom—vaguely perceived a man’s figure, big and powerful, and different in its bearing from those other cringing wretches she had glimpsed.

Then the man came toward her, stopped, peered and for a second drew back. And then—then she heard his voice, in a kind of startled joy:

“Oh—is it—is it you?”

“Yes,” she answered. “I must see you! I must talk with you, again, and know the truth!”

The officer edged nearer.

“Youse can talk all y’ want to,” he dictated, hoarsely, “but don’t you pass nothin’ in. No dope, nor nothin’, see? I’ll stick around an’ watch, anyhow; but don’t try to slip him no dream powders or no ‘snow.’ ‘Cause if you do—”

“What—what on earth are you talking about?” the girl demanded, turning on the officer with absolute astonishment. But he, only winking wisely, repeated:

“You heard me, didn’t you? No dope. I’m wise to this whole game.”

At a loss for his meaning, yet without any real desire to fathom it, Kate turned back toward Gabriel.

A moment they two looked at each other, each noting any change that might have taken place since that wonderful hour in the sugar-house, each hungering and thirsting for a sight of the other’s face. In her heart, already Kate knew as well as she knew she was alive, that this man was totally innocent of the foul charges heaped upon him. And so she looked at him with eyes wherein lay no reproach, no doubt and no suspicion. And, as she looked, tears started, and her heart swelled hotly in her breast; for he was bruised and battered and a helpless captive.

“He, caged like a trapped animal!” her thought was. “He, so strong, and free, and brave! Oh, horrible, horrible!”

He must have read something of this feeling, in her face; for now, coming close to the bars, he said in a low tone:

“Girl—your name I don’t know, even yet—girl, you mustn’t pity me! That’s one thing I can’t have. I’m here because the master class is stronger than my class, the working class. Here, because I’m dangerous to that master class. This isn’t said to make myself out a martyr. It’s only to make you see things right. I’m not complaining at this plight. I’ve richly earned it—under Capitalism. So, then, that’s settled.

“And now, what’s more important, tell me how you are! And did your wound cause you much trouble? I confess I’ve passed many an anxious hour, thinking of your narrow escape and of your injury. It wasn’t too bad, was it? Tell me!”

“No,” she answered, still holding to the bars, for she somehow felt quite unaccountably weak. “It wasn’t very bad. There’s hardly any scar at all—or won’t be, when it’s fully healed. But all this is trifling, compared to what you’ve suffered and are suffering. Oh, what a horrible affair! What frightful accusations! Tell me the truth, Boy—how, why could—?”

He looked at her a moment, in silence, noting her splendid hair and eyes and mouth, the firm, well-moulded chin, the confident and self-reliant poise of the shapely head; and as he looked, he knew he loved this woman. He understood, at last, how dear she was to him—dearer than anything else in all the world save just his principles and stern life work. He comprehended the meaning of all, his dreams and visions and long thoughts. And, caring nothing for consequences, unskilled in the finesse of dealing with women, acting wholly on the irresistible impulses of a heart that overflowed, he looked deep into those gray eyes and said in a tone that set her heart-strings vibrating:

“Listen! The truth? How could I tell you anything else? I know not who you are, and care not. That you are rich and powerful and free, while I am poor and in captivity, means nothing. Love cares not for such trifles. It dares all, hopes all, trusts all, believes all—and is patient in adversity.”

“Love?” she whispered, her face paling. “How do you dare to—?”

“Dare? Because my heart bids me. And where it bids, I care not for conventions or consequences!” He flung his hand out with a splendid gesture, his head high, his eyes lustrous in the half-light of the cell. “Where it leads, I have to follow. That is why I am a Socialist! That is why I am here, today, outcast and execrated, a prisoner, in danger of long years of living death in the pestilential tomb of some foul penitentiary!”

“You’re here because—because you are a Socialist?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Yes,” said he. “I tried to help a suffering, outcast woman—or one who posed as such. And she betrayed me to my enemies. And so—”

“There was a woman in this affair, then?” Catherine queried with sudden pain. “The newspapers haven’t made the story all up out of whole cloth?”

“No. There was a woman. A Delilah, who delivered me into the hands of the Philistines, when I tried to help her in what she lied in telling me was her need. Will you hear the story?”

Still very pale, she formed a half-inarticulate “Yes!” with her full lips. Then, seeming to brace herself by a tighter clasp on the hard steel grating, she listened while he spoke.

Earnestly, honestly and with perfect straightforwardness, omitting nothing, adding nothing, he gave her the narrative of that fatal night’s events, from the first moment he had laid eyes on the wonderfully-disguised woman, till her cudgel-blow had laid him senseless on the floor.

He told her the part that every actor therein had played; how the whole drama had been staged, to dishonor and convict him, to railroad him to the Pen for a long term, perhaps to kill him. He spoke in a low voice, to prevent the watching officer from overhearing; and as he talked, he thanked his stars that in all this network of conspiracy and crime against the Party and against himself, his captors had not yet placed him incommunicado. For some reason—perhaps because they thought their case against him absolutely secure and wanted to avoid any appearance of unfairness or of martyrizing him—this restriction had not yet been laid upon him. So now his message of the truth could reach the ears of her who, more than all the world beside, had grown dear to him and precious beyond words.

He told her, then, not only the story of that night, but also all that had since happened—the newspaper attacks on him and on the Party; the deliberate attempt to poison the community and the nation against him; the struggle to fix a foul and lasting blot upon his name, and ruin him beyond redemption.

“And why, all this?” he added, while she—listening so intently that she hardly breathed—knew that he spoke the living, vital truth. “Why this persecution, this plotting, this labor and expense to ‘get’ me. Do you want to know?”

“Yes, tell me!” she whispered. “I don’t understand. I can’t! It—it all seems so horrible, so unreal, so—so different from what I’ve always believed about the majesty and purity of the law! Can these things be, indeed?”

He laughed bitterly.

“Can they?” he repeated. “When you see that they are, isn’t that answer enough? And the reason of it all is that I’m a Socialist and know certain secrets of certain men, which—if I should tell the world—might, nay, surely would precipitate a revolution. So, these men, and the System behind them, have tried to discredit me by this foul charge. After this, if the charge sticks, I may shout my head off, exposing what I know; and who will listen? You know the answer as well as I! Do I complain? No, not once! What I must suffer, for this wondrous Cause, is not a tenth what thousands suffer every day, in silence and high courage. What has happened to me, personally, is but the merest trifle beside what has already happened to thousands, fighting for life and liberty, for wife and home and children; for the right to work and live like men, not beasts!”

“You mean the—the working class?” she ventured, wonderingly. “Is this outrage really a minor one, compared with what they, who feed and warm and carry the whole world, have to suffer? Tell me, for I—God help me, I am ignorant! I am beginning to see, to half-see, awful, dim, ghostly shapes of huge, unspeakable wrongs. Tell me the truth about all this, as you have told it about yourself—and let me know!”

Then Gabriel talked as never he had talked before. To this, his audience of one, there in the dirty and ill-smelling police station, he unfolded the sad tale of the disinherited, the enslaved, the wretched, as never to a huge, and spell-bound audience in hall or park or city street. His eloquence, always convincing, now became sublime.

With master strokes he painted vast outlines of the whole sad picture—the System based on robbery and fraud and exploitation; its natural results in millionaire and tramp and harlot and degenerate; the crime of armies of unemployed and starving men, of millions of women forced into the factories and shops, there to compete with men and lower wages and lose their finest feminine attributes in the sordid and heartless drudging for a pittance.

He told her of child slavery, and brought before her eyes the pictures he himself had seen, of the pale, stunted little victims of Mammon’s greed, toiling by day and night in stifling, dangerous mines; in the Hell-glare of the glass-factories; in the hand-bruising, soul-obliterating Inferno of the coal-breakers; in the hot, linty, sickening atmosphere of the southern cotton-mills. And as he talked, she saw for the first time the figures of these bowed and bloodless little boys and girls, giving their lives drop by drop, and cough by cough, that she might have purple and fine linen and the rich, soft, easy paths of life.

Then, pausing not, he spoke to her of white slavery, of girls and women by the uncounted thousand forced to barter their own bodies for a mockery of life; and, stinging as a nagaika, he laid the lash of blame on Capitalism, evil cause of an evil and rotten fruit, of disease and crime, and misery, and death. He told her of political corruption beyond belief; of cheating, lying, trickery and greed, for power. Of war, he told her, and made all its inner, hideous motives clear. She seemed verily to see the trenches, the “red rampart’s slippery edge,” the spattered blood and brains and all the horror of Hell’s nethermost infamy—and then the blasted, wrecked and wasted homes, the long trail of mourning and of hopeless ruin—the horror of this crime of crimes, all for profit, all for gold and markets, all for Capitalism!

And then, while the girl stood there listening, spell-bound by her first insight, her first understanding of the true character of this, our striving, slaving world, held by a few for their own inordinate pride and power, the man’s voice changed.

With new intonations and a deeper tone, he launched into some outlines of the great hope, the splendid vision, the Wondrous Ideal—Socialism, the world-salvation.

Sentence by sentence, imagery of this vast, noble thought flowed from his inspired lips. Clearly he showed this woman all the causes of the world’s travail and pain; and clearly made her see that only in one way, only through the ownership of the world by the world’s children as a whole, could peace and justice, life and joy and plenty and the New Time come to pass, dreamed of and yearned for by many sages and prophets, and now close at hand on the very threshold of reality!

Socialism! It leaped from his spirit like a living flame, consuming dross and waste and evil, lighting up the future with its shining beacon, its message of hope to the hopeless, of rest and cheer and peace to all who labored and were heavy laden.

Socialism! The glory of the vision seemed to blind and dazzle Catherine. In its supernal light, things grievous to be understood and borne were now made clear. For the first time in all her life, the woman saw, and knew, and grasped the truths of this strange nexus of conflict, pain and sorrow, that we know as our existence.

“Socialism! The Hope of the World!” Gabriel finished. “And for this, and for what I know about its enemies, I stand here in this cell and may yet go to a living death. This is my crime, and nothing else—this battle for the freedom and the joy of the world—this struggle against the powers of ignorance and darkness, priestcraft and greed, lust, treachery and foulness, cruelty and hate and war! This, and this only. You have heard me. I have spoken!”

He fell silent, crossed his arms upon the bars of the cage that pent him, and laid his head upon them with a motion of weariness.

Something strangely stirred the heart of the woman. Her hand went out and touched his thick, black hair.

“Be of good cheer,” she whispered. “Though I am ignorant and do not fully understand, as yet, some glimmer of the light has reached my eyes. I can learn, and I will learn, and dare, and do! All my life I have eaten the bread of this bitter slavery, taken the thing I had no right to take, unknowingly wielded the lash on bleeding backs of men and women and children.

“All my life have I, in ignorance and idleness, done these things. But never shall I do them again. That is all past and gone, an evil dream that is no more. From now, if you will be patient and forgive and teach me, I will stand with you and yours, and glory in the new-found strength and majesty of this supreme ideal!”

He made no answer, save to reach one hand to her, through the bars. Their hands met in a long, clinging tension. The policeman, somewhat down the corridor, moved officiously in their direction.

“Here, now, none o’ that!” he blurted. “Break away! An’ say, time’s up. Yuh stayed too long, miss, as it is!”

Their hands parted. Still Gabriel did not look up.

“Are—are you coming back again?” he asked.

“Yes, Gabriel. Tomorrow.”

“And will you tell me then who you are?”

“I’ll tell you now, if you want to know.”

“I do,” he answered, and raised his head. Their eyes met, steadily. “I do, now that you too have seen the light, and that you understand. Tell me, who are you?”

A moment’s pause.

Then, facing him, she answered:

“I am Catherine Flint, only daughter of Isaac Flint, the Billionaire!”

CHAPTER XXVI.

“GUILTY.”

Speechless and dazed, Gabriel stared at her as though at some strange apparition.

“Daughter of—of Isaac Flint?” he stammered, clinging to the bars.

“Come, come, lady, yuh can’t stay no longer!” the officer again insisted, tapping her on the shoulder. “Yuh’d oughta been out o’ here ten minutes ago! No, nuthin’ doin’!” he concluded, as she turned to him appealingly. “Not today! Time’s up an’ more than up!”

Catherine stretched out her hand to Gabriel, in farewell. He took it, silently.

“Good-bye!” said she. “Until I come again, good-bye. Keep up a stout heart, for I am with you. We—we can’t lose. We shall win—we must win! Don’t condemn me for being what I am and who I am, Gabriel. Only think what—with your help—I may yet be! And now again, good-bye!”

Their hands parted. Gabriel, still silent, stood there in his cell, watching her till she vanished from his sight down the long corridor of grief and tears. The officer, winking wisely to himself, thrust his tongue into his cheek.

“Daughter of Isaac Flint, th’ Billionaire!” he was thinking, with derision. “Oh, yes, billionaires’ daughters would be visitin’ Socialists an’ bums an’ red-light con-workers like this geezer. Oh yes, sure, sure they would—I should worry!”

Which mental attitude was fortunate, indeed; for it, and it alone, preserved the girl from a wild blare of newspaper notoriety. Had the truth been known, who could have imagined the results?

For a long time after the girl had departed, Gabriel sat there in his cell, motionless and sunk in deepest thought. His emotions passed recording. That this woman, his ideal, his best-beloved, the cherished, inmost treasure of his heart and soul—she whom he had rescued, she who had lain in his arms and shared with him that unforgettable hour in the old sugar-house—should now prove to be the daughter of his bitterest enemy, surpassed belief and stunned all clear understanding.

Flint! The very name connoted, for Gabriel, all that was cruel and rapacious, hateful, vicious and greedy; all that meant pain and woe and death to him and his class. Visions of West Virginia and Colorado rose before his mind. He heard again the whistle of the “Bull Moose Death Special” as it sped on its swift errand of barbarism up Cabin Creek, hurling its sprays of leaden death among the slaves of this man and his vulturine associates.

Flint! He whispered the name; and now he seemed to see the burning tents at Ludlow; the fleeing women and children, shot down by barbarous thugs and gunmen, ghouls in human form! He saw the pits of death, where the charred bodies of innocent victims of greed and heartless rapacity lay in mute protest under the far Colorado sky. And more he saw, east and west, north and south, of this man’s inhuman work; and his thoughts, projected into the future, dwelt bitterly on the Air Trust now already under way—the terrible, coming slavery which he, Gabriel, had struggled to checkmate, only to find himself locked like a rat in a steel trap!

“And this woman,” he groaned in agony of soul, “this woman, all in all to me, is—is his daughter!”

Flinging himself upon his hard and narrow bunk, he buried his head in his powerful arms, and tried to blot out thought from his fevered brain; but still the current ran on and on and on, endlessly, maddeningly. And to the problem, no answer seemed to come.

“She must know who I am,” he pondered. “Even if her father has not told her, the papers have. True, she doesn’t believe the infamous charge against me; but what then? Can she, on the other hand, believe the truth, that her father has conspired with Slade and those Cosmos thugs, and with the press and courts and the whole damnable prostituted system, to suppress and kill me?

“Can she believe her father guilty of all that? And of all the horrors of this capitalist Hell, that I have told her about? No! Human nature is incapable of such vast turnings from all the habits and environments of a lifetime. In her veins flows the blood of that arch-criminal, Flint. Her thoughts must be, to some extent, his thoughts. She must share his viewpoint, and be loyal to him. After this first flush of reaction against her father, she will go back to him. It is inevitable. Betwixt her and me is fixed a boundless space, wider than Heaven and earth. She is one pole, and I the other. If I have any strength or resolution or philosophy, now is the hour for its trial.

“This woman must be, shall be put away from every thought and wish and hope. And the word FINIS must be written at the end of the one brief chapter where our life-stories seem to have run along together in a false harmony and a fictitious peace!”

Thus pondered Gabriel, in the gloom of his harsh cell, branded with crime and writhing in the agony of soul that only those who love hopelessly can ever know.

And Catherine, what of her? What were her thoughts, emotions, inspirations as—seeming to live in a dream, with Gabriel’s eloquence and the new vision of a better, saner, kindlier world shining through her soul—she made her way back to the dingy hotel where now, shabby as it was, she felt she had no right to stay, while others, homeless, walked the brutal streets?

Who shall know them? Who shall tell? A blind man, suddenly made to see, can find no words to express the wonder and bright glory of that sudden sight. A deaf man, regaining his lost sense, cannot describe the sudden burst of sound that fills the new, strange world wherein he finds himself. So, now, this cultured, gently bred woman, for the first time in her life understanding the facts, glimpsing the tragedy and grasping the answer to it all, felt that no words could compass her strange exultation and enlargement.

“It—it’s like a chrysalis emerging into the form of a light, swift butterfly!” she pondered, as, back in her room once more, she prepared to write two letters. “Just for the present, I can’t understand it all. I don’t know, yet, whether I’m worthy to be a Socialist, to be one of that company of earnest, noble men and women striving for life and liberty and joy for all the world. But with the help of the man I trust and honor and believe in, and—and love—perhaps I may yet be. God grant it may be so!”

She thought, a few minutes more, her face lighted by an inner radiance that made its beauty spiritual and pure and calm. Then, having somewhat composed her thoughts, she wrote this letter to Maxim Waldron:

My Dear Wally:

I am writing you without date or place, just as I shall write my father, because whatever happens, I insist that you two let me go my way in peace, without trying to find, or hamper, or importune me. My mind is fully made up. Nothing can change it. We have come to the parting of the ways, forever.

Though I may feel bitterly toward you for what I now understand as your harsh and cruel attitude toward the world, and the rôle you play as an exploiter of human labor, I shall not reproach you. You simply cannot see these things as I have come to see them since my feet have been set upon the road toward Socialism. Don’t start, Wally—that’s the truth. Perhaps I’m not much of a Socialist yet, because I don’t know much about it. But I am learning, and shall learn. My teacher is the best one in the world, I’m sure; and added to this, all my natural energy and innate radicalism have flamed into activity with this new thought. So, you see, the past is even more effectively buried than ever. How could anything ever be possible, now, between you and me?

Cease to think of me, Wally. I am gone out of your life, for all time, as out of that whole circle of false, insincere, wicked and parasitic existence that we call “society.” That other world, where you still are, shall see me no more. I have found a better and a nobler kind of life; and to this, and to all it implies, I mean to be forever faithful. I beg you, never try to find me or to answer this.

Good-bye, then, forever.

Catherine.

After having read this over and sealed it, she wrote still another:

Dear Father:

It is hard to write these words to you. I owe you a debt of gratitude and love, in many ways; yet, after all, your will and mine conflict. You have tried to force me to a union abhorrent and impossible to me. My only course is this—independence to think, and act, and live as I, no longer a child but a grown woman, now see fit.

I shall never return to you, father. Life means one thing to you, another to me. You cannot change; I would not, now, for all the world. I must go my way, thinking my own thoughts, doing my own work, living up to my own ideals, whatever these may be. Your money cannot lure me back to you, back to that old, false, sheltered, horrible life of ease and idleness and veiled robbery! The skill you have given me as a musician will open out a way for me to earn my own living and be free. For this I thank you, and for much else, even as I say good-bye to you for all time.

I have written Wally. He will tell you more about me, and about the change in my views and ambitions, which has taken place. Do not think harshly of me, father, and I will try to forgive you for the burden I now know you have laid upon the aching shoulders of this sad, old world.

And now, good-bye. Though you have lost a daughter, you may still rejoice to know that that daughter has found peace and joy and vast outlets for the energies of her whole heart and soul and being, in working for Socialism, the noblest ideal ever conceived by the mind of man.

Farewell, father; and think sometimes, not too unkindly, of

Your

Kate.

One week after these letters were mailed, “Tiger” Waldron, fanning the fires of the old man’s terrible rage, had decided Flint to disinherit Catherine and to name him, Waldron, as his executor. Gabriel’s fervent wish that she might be penniless, was granted.

On the very day this business was put through, practically delivering the Flint interests into Waldron’s hands in the case of the old man’s death, a verdict was reached in Gabriel’s case, at Rochester.

This case, crammed through the calendar, ahead of a large jam of other business, proved how well unlimited funds can grease the wheels of Law. It proved, also, that in the face of infinitely-subsidized witnesses, lawyers, judge and jurymen, black becomes white, and a good deed is written down a crime.

Catherine, working incognito, co-operated with the Socialist defense, and did all that could be humanely done to have the truth made known, to overset the mass of perjury and fraud enmeshing Gabriel, and to force his acquittal.

As easily might she have bidden the sea rise from its bed and flood the dry and arid wastes of old Sahara. Her voice and that of the Socialists, their lawyers and their press, sounded in vain. A solid battery of capitalist papers, legal lights, private detectives and other means—particularly including the majority of the priests and clergy—swamped the man and damned him and doomed him from the first word of the trial.

Money flowed in floods. Perjury overran the banks of the River of Corruption. Herzog branded the man a thief and fire-eater. Dope-fiends and harlots from the Red-Light district, “madames” and pimps and hangers-on, swore to the white-slave activities of this man, who never yet in all his four and twenty years had so much as entered a brothel.

Forged papers fixed past crimes and sentences on him. By innuendo and direct statement, dynamitings, arsons, violence and rioting in many strikes were laid at his door. His Socialist activities were dragged in the slime of every gutter; and his Party made to suffer for evil deeds existing only in the foul imagination of the prosecuting attorneys. The finest “kept” brains in the legal profession conducted the case from start to finish; and not a juryman was drawn on the panel who was not, from the first, sworn to convict, and bought and paid for in hard cash.

After three days—days in which Gabriel plumbed the bitterest depths of Hell and drank full draughts of gall and wormwood—the verdict came. Came, and was flashed from sea to sea by an exulting press; and preached on, and editorialized on, and gloated over by Flint and Waldron and many, many others of that ilk—while Catherine wept tears that seemed to drain her very heart of its last drops of blood.

At last she knew the meaning of the Class Struggle and her terrible father’s part in it all. At last she understood what Gabriel had so long understood and now was paying for—the fact that Hell hath no fury like Capitalism when endangered or opposed.

The Price! Gabriel now must pay it, to the full. For that foul verdict, bought with gold wrung from the very blood and marrow of countless toilers, opened the way to the sentence which Judge Harpies regretted only that he could not make more severe—the sentence which the detectives and the prison authorities, well “fixed,” counted on making a death-sentence, too.

“Gabriel Armstrong, stand up!”

He arose and faced the court. A deathlike stillness hushed the room, crowded with Socialists, reporters, emissaries of Flint, private detectives and hangers-on of the System. Heavily veiled, lest some of her father’s people recognize her, Catherine herself sat in a back seat, very pale yet calm.

“Prisoner at the bar, have you anything to say, why sentence should not be pronounced upon you?”

Gabriel, also a little pale, but with a steadfast and fearless gaze, looked at the legal prostitute upon the bench, and shook his head in negation. He deigned not, even, to answer this kept puppet of the ruling class.

Judge Harpies frowned a trifle, cleared his throat, glanced about him with pompous dignity; and then, in a sonorous and impressive tone—his best asset on the bench, for legal knowledge and probity were not his—announced:

“It is the judgment of this court that you do stand committed to pay a fine of three thousand dollars into the treasury of the United States, and to serve five years at hard labor in the Federal Penitentiary at Atlanta!”

CHAPTER XXVII.

BACK IN THE SUNLIGHT.

Four years and two months from the day when this iniquitous verdict fell from the lips of the “bought and paid for” judge, a sturdily built and square jawed man stood on the steps of the Atlanta Penitentiary and, for the first time in all these weary months and years, faced the sun.

Pale with the prison-pallor that never fails to set its seal on the victims of a diseased society, which that society retaliates upon by shutting away from God’s own light and air, this man stood there on the steps, a moment, then advanced to meet a woman who was coming toward him in the August glare. As he removed his cheap, convict-made cap, one saw his finely shaped head, close cropped with the infamous prison badge of servitude. Despite the shoddy miserable prison-suit that the prostituted government had given him—a suit that would have made Apollo grotesque and would have marked any man as an ex-convict, thus heavily handicapping him from the start—Gabriel Armstrong’s poise and strength still made themselves manifest.

And the smile as they two, the woman and he, came together and their hands clasped, lighted his pale features with a ray brighter than that of the blistering Southern sunshine flooding down upon them both.

“I knew you’d come, Catherine,” said he, simply, his voice still the same deep, vibrant, earnest voice which, all that time ago, had thrilled and inspired her at the hour of her great conversion. Still were his eyes clear, level and commanding; and through his splendid body, despite all his jailers had been able to do, coursed an abundant life and strong vitality.

Gabriel had served his time with consummate skill, courage and intelligence. Like all wise men, he had recognized force majeure, and had submitted. He had made practically no infractions of the prison rules, during his whole “bit.” He had been quiet, obedient and industrious. His work, in the brush factory, had always been well done; and though he had consistently refused to bear tales, to spy, to inform or be a stool-pigeon—the quickest means of winning favor in any prison—yet he had given no opportunity for savagery and violence to be applied to him. Not even Flint’s eager wish to have his jailers force him into rebellion had succeeded. Realizing to the full the sort of tactics that would be used to break, and if possible to kill him, Gabriel had met them all with calm self-reliance and with a generalship that showed his brain and nerves were still unshaken. On their own ground he had met these brutes, and he had beaten them at their own game.

Their attempt to make a “dope” out of him had ignominiously failed. He had detected the morphine they had cleverly mixed with his water; and, after his drowsiness and weird dreams had convinced him of the plot, had turned the trick on it by secretly emptying this water out and by drinking only while in the shop, where he could draw water from the faucet. The cell guards’ intelligence had been too limited to make them inquire of the brush shop guards about his habits. Also, Gabriel, had feigned stupefaction while in the cell. Thus he had simulated the effects of the drug, and had really thrown his tormentors off the track. For months and months they were convinced that they were weakening his will and destroying his mentality, while as a matter of fact his reasoning powers and determination never had been more keen.

By bathing as often as possible, by taking regular and carefully planned calisthenics, by reading the best books in the prison library, by attention to every rule of health within his means, and by allowing himself no vices, not even his pipe, Gabriel now was emerging from the Bastile of Capitalism in a condition of mind and body so little impaired that he knew a few weeks would entirely restore him. The good conduct allowance, or “copper,” which they had been forced to allow him for exemplary conduct, had cut ten months off his sentence. And now in mid-August of 1925, there he stood, a free man again, with purpose still unshaken and with a woman by his side who shared his high ambition and asked no better lot than to work with him toward the one great aim—Socialism!

Now, as these two walked side by side along the sunbaked street of the sweltering Southern town, Gabriel was saying:

“So I haven’t changed as much as you expected? I’m glad of that, Kate. Only superficial changes, at most. Just give me a little time to pull together and get my legs under me again, and—forward march! Charge the forts! Eh, Catherine?”

She nodded, smiling. Smiles were rare with her, now. She had grown sober and serious, in these years of work and battle and stern endeavor. The Catherine Flint of the old times had vanished—the Catherine of country club days, and golf and tennis, and the opera—the Catherine of Newport, of the horse show, of Paris, of “society.” In her place now lived another and a nobler woman, a woman known and loved the length and breadth of the land, a woman exalted and strengthened by new, high and splendid race-aspirations; by a vision of supernal beauty—the vision of the world for the workers, each for all and all for each!

She had grown more mature and beautiful, with the passing years. No mark of time had yet laid its hand upon her face or figure. Young, still—she was now but five-and-twenty, and Gabriel only twenty-eight—she walked like a goddess, lithe, strong and filled with overflowing vigor. Her eyes glowed with noble enthusiasms; and every thought, every impulse and endeavor now was upward, onward, filled with stimulus and hope and courage.

Thus, a braver, broader and more splendid woman than Gabriel had known in the other days of his first love for her—the days when he had wished her penniless, the days when her prospective millions stood between them—she walked beside him now. And they two, comrades, understood each other; spoke the same language, shared the same aspirations, dreamed the same wondrous dreams. Their smile, as their eyes met, was in itself a benediction and a warm caress.

“Charge the forts!” Gabriel repeated. “Yes, Kate, the battle still goes on, no matter what happens. Here and there, soldiers fall and die. Even battalions perish; but the war continues. When I think of all the fights you’ve been in, since I was put away, I’m unspeakably envious. You’ve been through the Tawana Valley strike, the big Consolidated Western lockout and the Imperial Mills massacre. You were a delegate to the 1923 Revolution Congress, in Berlin, and saw the slaughter in Unter den Linden—helped nurse the wounded comrades, inside the Treptow Park barricades. Then, out in California—”

She checked him, with a hand on his arm.

“Please don’t, Gabriel,” she entreated. “What I have done has been so little, so terribly, pitiably little, compared to what needs to be done! And then remember, too, that in and through all, this thought has run, like the red thread through every cable of the British navy—the thought that in my every activity, I am working against my own father, combatting him, being as it were a traitor and—”

“Traitor?” exclaimed the man. “Never! The bond between you two is forever broken. You recognize in him, now, an enemy of all mankind. Waldron is another. So is every one of the Air Trust group—that is to say, the small handful of men who today own the whole world and everything in it.

“Your father, as President of that world-corporation which potentially controls two thousand millions of human beings—and which will, tomorrow, absolutely control them, is no longer any father of yours.

“He is a world-emperor, and his few associates are princes of the royal house. Your life and thought have forever broken with him. No more can bonds and ties of blood hold you. Your larger duty calls to battle against this man. Treachery? A thousand times, no! Treason to tyrants is obedience to God! Or, if not God, then to mankind!”

He paused and looked at her. They had now reached a little park, some half mile from the grim and dour old walls of the Federal Pen. Trees and grass and playing children seemed to invite them to stop and rest. Though strong, moreover, Gabriel had for so long been unused to walking, that even this short distance had tired him a little. And the oppressive heat had them both by the throat.

“Shall we sit down here and wait a little?” asked he. “Plan a little, see where we are and what’s to be done next?”

She nodded assent.

“Of course,” she said, “even if I could have got word in to you, I wouldn’t have given you our real plans.”

“Hardly!” he exclaimed. Then, coming to a fountain, they sat down on a bench close by. Nobody, they made sure, was within ear-shot.

“Thank God,” he breathed, “that you, Kate, and only you, met me as I came out! It was a grand good idea, wasn’t it, to keep my time of liberation a secret from the comrades? Otherwise there might have been a crowd on hand, and various kinds of foolishness; and time and energy would have been used that might have been better spent in working for the Revolution!”

She looked at him a trifle curiously.

“You forget,” said she, “that all public meetings have been prohibited, ever since last April. Federal statute—the new Penfield Bill—’The Muzzler’ as we call it.”

“That’s so!” he murmured. “I forgot. Fact is, Kate, I am out of touch with things. While you’ve been fighting, I’ve been buried alive. Now, I must learn much, before I can jump back into the war again. And above all, I must lose my identity. That’s the first and most essential thing of all!”

“Of course,” she assented. “They—the Air Trust World-corporation—will trail you, everywhere you go. All this, as you know, has been provided for. You must vanish a while.”

“Indeed I must. If they ‘jobbed’ me like that, in 1921, what won’t they do now in 1925?”

“They won’t ever get you, again, Gabriel,” she answered, “if your wits and ours combined, can beat them. True, the Movement has been badly shot to pieces. That is, its visible organization has suffered, and it’s outlawed. But under the surface, Gabriel, you haven’t an idea of its spread and power. It’s tremendous—it’s a volcano waiting to burst! Let the moment come, the leader rise, the fire burst forth, and God knows what may not happen!”

“Splendid!” exclaimed Gabriel. “The battle calls me, like a clarion-call! But we must act with circumspection. The Plutes, powerful as they now are, won’t need even the shadow of an excuse to plant me for life, or slug or shoot me. Things were rotten enough, then; but today they’re worse. The hand of this Air Trust monopoly, grasping every line of work and product in the world, has got the lid nailed fast. We’re all slaves, every man and woman of us. Even our Socialists in Congress can do nothing, with all these muzzling and sedition and treason bills, and with this conscription law just through. Now that the government—the Air Trust, that is to say—is running the railways and telegraphs and telephones, a strike is treason—and treason is death! Kate, this year of grace, 1925, is worse than ever I dreamed it would be. Oh, infinitely worse! No wonder our movement has been driven largely underground. No wonder that the war of mass and class is drawing near—the actual, physical war between the Air Trust few and the vast, toiling, suffering, stifling world!”

She nodded.

“Yes,” said she, “it’s coming, and soon. Things are as you say, and even worse than you say, Gabriel. I know more of them, now, than you can know. Remember London’s ‘Iron Heel?’ When I first read it I thought it fanciful and wild. God knows I was mistaken! London didn’t put it half strongly enough. The beginning was made when the National Mounted Police came in. All the rest has swiftly followed. If you and I live five years longer, Gabriel, we’ll see a harsher, sterner and more murderous trampling of that Heel than ever Comrade Jack imagined!”

“Right!” said he. “And for that very reason, Kate, I’ve got to go into hiding till my beard and hair grow and I can reappear as a different man. Don’t look, just now, but in a minute take a peek. Over on that third bench, on the other side of the park, see that man? Well, he’s a ‘shadow.’ There were three waiting for me, at the prison gates. You couldn’t spot them, but I could. One was that Italian banana-seller that stood at the curb, on the first corner. Another was a taxi driver. And this one, over there, is the third. From now till they ‘get’ me again, they’ll follow me like bloodhounds. I can’t go free, to do my work and take part in the impending war, till I shake them. Look, now, do you see the one I mean?”

Cautiously the girl looked round, with casual glance as though to see a little boy playing by the fountain.

“Yes,” she murmured. “Who is he? Do you know his name?”

“No,” answered Gabriel. “His name, no. But I remember him, well enough. He’s the larger of the two detectives I knocked out, in that room in Rochester. Beside his pay, he’s got a personal motive in landing me back in ‘stir,’ or sending me ‘up the escape,’ as prison slang names a penitentiary and a death. So then,” he added, “what’s the first thing? Where shall I go, and how, to hide and metamorphose? I’m in your hands, now, Kate. More than four years out of the world, remember, makes a fellow want a little lift when he comes back!”

She smiled and nodded comprehension.

“Don’t explain, Gabriel,” said she. “I understand. And I’ve got just the place in mind for you. Also, the way to get there. You see, comrade, we’ve been planning on this release. When can you go?”

“When? Right now!” exclaimed Gabriel, standing up. “The quicker, the better. Every minute I lose in getting myself ready to jump back into the fight, is a precious treasure that can never be regained!”

“Go, then,” said she, with pride in her eyes. “I will wait here. Don’t think of me; leave me here; I am self-reliant in every way. Go to the Cuthbert House, on Desplaines Street. Everything has been arranged for your escape. Every link in the chain is complete. Remember, we are working more underground, now, than when you were sentenced. And our machinery is almost perfect. Register at the hotel and take a room for a week. Then—”

“Register, under my own name?” asked he.

“Under your own name. Stay there two days. You won’t be molested so soon, and things won’t be ready for you till the third day. On that day—”

“Well, what then?”

“A message will come for you, that’s all. Obey it. You have nothing more to do.”

He nodded.

“I understand,” said he. “But, Kate—who’s paying for all this? Not you? I—I can’t have you paying, now that every dollar you have must be earned by your own labor!”

She smiled a smile of wonderful beauty.

“Foolish, rebellious boy!” said she. “Have no fear! All expense will be borne by the Party, just as the Party paid your fine. It needs you and must have you; and were the cost ten times as great, would bear it to get you back! Remember, Gabriel, the Party is far larger than when you were buried alive in a cell. Even though in some ways outlawed and suppressed, its potential power is tremendous. All it needs is the electric spark to cause the world-shaking explosion. All that keeps us from power now is the Iron Heel—that, and the clutch of the Air Trust already crushing and mangling us!

“Go, now,” she concluded. “Go, and rest a while, and wait. All shall be well. But first, you must get back your strength completely, and find yourself, and take your place again in the ranks of the great, subterranean army!”

“And shall I see you soon, again?” he asked, his voice trembling just a little as their hands clasped once more, and once more parted.

“You will see me soon,” she answered.

“Where?”

“In a safe place, where we can plan, and work, and organize for the final blow! Now, you shall know no more. Good-bye!”

One last look each gave the other. Their eyes met, more caressingly than many a kiss; and, turning, Gabriel took his way, alone, toward Desplaines Street.

At the exit of the park, he looked around.

There Catherine sat, on the bench. But, seemingly quite oblivious to everything, she was now reading a little book. Though he lingered a moment, hoping to get some signal from her, she never stirred or looked up from the page.

Sighing, with a strange feeling of sudden loneliness and a vast, empty yearning in his heart, Gabriel continued on his way, toward what? He knew not.

The detective on the other side of the park, no longer sat there. Somehow, somewhere, he had disappeared.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

IN THE REFUGE.

Far on the western slopes of Clingman Dome in the great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina, a broad, low-built bungalow stood facing the setting sun. Vast stretches of pine forest shut it off from civilization and the prying activities of Plutocracy. The nearest settlement was Ravens, twenty miles away to eastward, across inaccessible ridges and ravines. Running far to southward, the railway left this wilderness untouched. High overhead, an eagle soared among the “thunder-heads” that presaged a storm up Sevier Pass. And, red through the haze to westward, the great huge sunball slid down the heavens toward the tumbled, jagged mass of peaks that rimmed the far horizon.

Within the bungalow, a murmur of voices sounded; and from the huge stone chimney a curl of smoke, arising, told of the evening meal, within, now being made ready. On the wide piazza sat a man, writing at a table of plain boards roughly pegged together. Still a trifle pale, yet with a look of health and vigor, he sat there hard at work, writing as fast as pen could travel. Hardly a word he changed. Sheet by sheet he wrote, and pushed them aside and still worked on. Some of the pages slid to the porch-floor, but he gave no heed. His brow was wrinkled with the intensity of his thought; and over his face, where now a disguising beard was beginning to be visible, the light of the sinking sun cast as it were a kind of glowing radiance.

At last the man looked up, and smiled, and eyed the golden mountain-tops far off across the valley.

“Wonderful aerie in the hills!” he murmured. “Wonderful retreat and hiding-place—wonderful care and forethought to have made this possible for me! How shall I ever repay all this? How, save by giving my last drop of blood, if need be, for the final victory?”

He pondered a moment, still half-thinking of the poem he had just finished, half-reflecting on the strange events of the past week—the secret ways, by swift auto, by boat, by monoplane which had brought him hither to this still undiscovered refuge. How had it all been arranged, he wondered; and who had made it possible? He could not tell, as yet. No information was forthcoming. But in his heart he understood, and his lips, murmuring the name of Catherine, blessed that name and tenderly revered it.

At last Gabriel bent, picked up the pages that had fallen, and arranged them all in order.

“Tomorrow this shall go out to the world,” said he, “and to our press—such of it as still remains. It may inspire some fainting heart and thrill some lagging mind. Now, that the final struggle is at hand, more than guns we need inspiration. More than force, to meet the force that has ravished our every right and crushed Constitution and Law, alike, we need spiritual insight and integrity. Only through these, and by these, come what may, can a true, lasting victory be attained!”

In the doorway of the bungalow a woman appeared, her smile illumined by the sunset warmth.

“Come, Gabriel,” said she. “We’re waiting—the Granthams, Craig, and Brevard. Supper’s ready. Not one of them will sit down, till you come.”

“Have I been delaying you?” asked Gabriel, turning toward the woman, with a smile that matched her own.

“I’m afraid so, just a little,” she answered. “But no matter; I’m glad. When you get to writing, you know, nothing else matters. One line of your verse is worth all the suppers in the world.”

“Nonsense!” he retorted. “I’m a mere scribbler!”

“We won’t argue that point,” she answered. “But at any rate, you’re done, now. So come along, boy—or the comrades will begin ‘dividing up’ without us; for this mountain air won’t brook delay.”

Gabriel took a long breath, stretched his powerful arms out toward the mountains, and raised his face to the last light of day.

“Nature!” he whispered. “Ever beautiful and ever young! Ah, could man but learn thy lessons and live close to thy great heart!”

Then, turning, he followed Catherine into the bungalow.

Beautiful and restful though the outside was, the interior was more restful and more charming still.

In the vast fireplace, to left, a fire of pine roots was crackling. The room was filled with their pitchy, wholesome perfume, with the dancing light of their blaze and with the warmth made grateful by that mountain height.

Simple and comfortable all the furnishings were, hand-wrought for use and pleasure. Big chairs invited. Broad couches offered rest. No hunting-trophies, no heads of slaughtered wild things disfigured the walls, as in most bungalows; but the flickering firelight showed pictures that inspired thought and carried lessons home—pictures of toil and of repose, pictures of life, and love, and simple joy—pictures of tragedy, of reality and deep significance. Here one saw Millet’s “Sower,” and “Gleaners” and “The Man with the Hoe.” There, Fritel’s “The Conquerors,” and Stuck’s “War.” A large copy of Bernard’s “Labor,”—the sensation of the 1922 Paris Salon—hung above the mantelpiece, on which stood Rodin’s “Miner” in bronze. Portraits of Marx, Engels, LaSalle and Debs, with others loved and honored in the Movement, showed between original sketches by Walter Crane, Balfour Kerr, Art Young and Ryan Walker. And in the well-filled bookshelves at the right, Socialist books in abundance all told the same tale to the observer—that this was a Socialist nest high up there among the mountains, and that every thought and word and deed was inspired by one great ideal and one alone—the Revolution!

At a plain but well-covered table near the western windows, where fading sunlight helped firelight to illumine the little company, sat three men—two of them armed with heavy automatics—and a woman. Another woman, Catherine, was standing by her chair and beckoning Gabriel to his.

“Come, Comrade!” she exclaimed. “If you delay much longer, everything will be stone cold, and then beg forgiveness if you dare!”

Gabriel laughed.

“Your own fault, if you wait for me,” he answered, seating himself. “You know how it is when you get to scribbling—you never know when to stop. And the scenery, up here, won’t let you go. Positively fascinating, that view is! If the Plutes knew of it, they’d put a summer resort here, and coin millions!”

“Yes,” answered Craig, once Congressman Craig, but now hiding from the Air Trust spies. “And what’s more, they’d mighty soon confiscate this resting-up place of the Comrades, and have us back behind bars, or worse. But they don’t know about it, and aren’t likely to. Thank Heaven for at least one place the Party can maintain as an asylum for our people when too hard-pressed! Not a road within ten miles of here. No way to reach this place, masked here in the cliffs and mountains, except by aeroplane. Not one chance in a thousand, fellows, that they’ll ever find it. Confusion take them all!”

The meal progressed, with plenty of serious and earnest discussion of the pressing problems now close at hand. Brevard, a short, spare man, editor of the recently-suppressed “San Francisco Revolutionist” and now in hiding, made a few trenchant remarks, from time to time. Grantham and his wife, both active speakers on the “Underground Circuit” and both under sentence of long imprisonment, said little. Most of the conversation was between Catherine, Craig and Gabriel. Long before the supper was done, lamps had to be brought and curtains lowered. At last the meal was over.

“Dessert, now, Gabriel!” exclaimed Grantham. “Your turn!”

“Eh? What?” asked Armstrong. “My turn for what?”

“Your turn to do your part! Don’t think that you’re going to write a poem and then put it in your pocket, that way. Come, out with it!”

Gabriel’s protests availed nothing. The others overbore him. And at last, unwillingly, he drew out the manuscript and spread it open on his knee.

“You really want to hear this?” he demanded. “If you can possibly spare me, I wish you would!”

For all answer, Craig pushed a lamp over toward him. The warm light on Gabriel’s face, now slightly bearded, and on his strong, corded throat, made a striking picture as he cast his eyes on the manuscript and in vibrant and harmonious voice, read:

I SAW THE SOCIALIST

I saw the Socialist sitting at a great Banquet of Men,

Sitting with honored leaders of the blind, unwitting Multitude;

I saw him there with the writers, editors, painters, men of letters,

Legislators and judges, the Leaders of the People,

Leaders flushed with the wines of price, eating costly and rare foods,

Making loud talk, and boastful, of that marvel, American Liberty!

Thinking were they no thought of hunger and pinching cold;

Of the blue-lipped, skinny children, the thin-chested, coughing men,

The dry-breasted mothers, the dirt, disease and ignorance,

The mangled workmen, the tramps, drunkards, pickpockets, prostitutes, thieves,

The mad-houses, jails, asylums and hospitals, the sores, the blood of war,

And all the other wondrous blessings that attend our civilization—

That civilization through which the wines and foods were given them.

I saw the Socialist there, calm, unmoved, unsmiling, thoughtful,

Sober, serious, full of dispassionate and prophetic vision,

Not like the other men, the all-wise Leaders of the People.

The political economists, the professors, the militarists, heroes and statisticians;

Not like the kings and presidents and emperors, the nobles and gold-crammed bankers,

But mindful, more than they, of the cellars under the House of Life

Where blind things crawl in the dark, things men and yet not human,

Things whose toil makes possible the Banquets of the Leaders of Men,

Things that live and yet are not alive; things that never taste of Life;

Things that make the rich foods, themselves snatching filthy crumbs;

Things that produce the wines of price, and must be content with lees;

Things that shiver and cringe and whine, that snarl sometimes,

That are men and women and children, and yet that know not Life!

I saw the Socialist there; I sat at the banquet; beside him,

Listened to the surging music, saw all the lights and flowers,

Flowers and lights and crystal cups, whereof the price for each

Might have brought back from Potter’s Field some bloodless, starving baby.

I heard the Leaders’ speeches, the turgid oratory,

The well-turned phrases of the Captains, the rotund babble of prosperity,

(Prosperity for whom? Nay, ask not troublesome questions!)

The Captains’ vaunting I heard, their boasts of glory and victory,

While red, red, red their hands dripped red with the blood of the butchered workers.

I heard the Judges’ self-glorification, Quixotic fighting of windmills,

Heard also the unclean jests that those respected Leaders told.

And as I looked and listened, I still observed the Socialist,

Unmoved and patient and serious, calm, full of sober reflections.

Then there spake (among many others) an honored and full-paunched Bishop.

Rubicund he was, and of portly habit of body,

Shepherd of a well-pastured flock, mightily content with God,

Out of whose omnipotent Hand (no doubt) the blessings of his life descended.

I heard this exponent of Christ the Crucified, Christ the Carpenter,

Christ the Leader of Workingmen, the Agitator, the Disturber,

Christ the Labor-organizer, Christ the Archetypal Socialist,

Friend of the dwellers in the pits of Life, Consoler of earth’s exploited,

Who once with the lash scourged from the Temple the unclean graft-brood of usurers.

And the rotund Bishop’s words were as the crackling of dry thorns

Under a pot, bubbling without use in the desert of dreary platitudes.

The story he told was spiced and garnished with profane words,

Whereat the Leaders laughed in their cups, making great show of merriment,

So that the banquet-hall rang, and wine was spilt on the linen.

Wine as red as blood—the blood of the shattered miner,

Blood of the boy in the rifle-pits, blood of the coughing child-slave,

Blood of the mangled trainman, blood that the Carpenter shed.

And still I watched the Socialist. Sober, judicial, observant

And full of greater wisdom he was than to laugh with the tipsy Leaders.

His eyes were fixed on the Bishop, vice-regent of God upon earth.

And as I watched the Socialist, the unmoved, the contemplative one,

He thoughtfully took his pencil, he took the fine and large card

Whereon the names of the rich foods and all the costly wines were printed,

And made a few notes of the feast, notes of the Bishop’s speech,

Notes to remind him to search the slums for the great, God-given prosperity,

Which all the Judges, Lawmakers, Captains and Leaders knew to be “our” portion;

Notes of the flowers, the wine, the lights, the music, the splendor,

Notes of the Leaders’ oratory, notes of the Bishop’s deep-voiced unctiousness,

Notes he made; and as I looked at the notes he was carefully writing,

The words ran red like wine and blood, they blazed like the blazing lights!

Words they were of blood and fire, that spread, that filled the banquet-hall.

Words of old, I read them—”MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSHIN!—

Weighed in the Balance you are, ye Leaders respected of men,

You Statesmen, Lawmakers, Judges, Captains, Bishops, vice-regents of God!

Weighed and tried and found wanting. Give way, now, to what shall come after!

Make ye way for the Men who shall do what ye have but neglected and shirked!

Make ye way for a Time which hath more than Power and Greed for its watchwords!

Soon your day shall decline forever, your sun shall sink and shall vanish.

Then from the Cellars of Life the darkness-dwellers shall issue,

Greeting another daunt which shall have more than pain for its portion.

Then no more shall the humble, the lowly, the friends of the Nazarene Carpenter

Be starved, be mangled for gold, be crucified, slaughtered, bled.

Make ye way!...Make ye way!...”

Such was the message I read, the words of that fire-writ warning.

Then peace came back to my spirit, calm peace, and hope and patience:

Then, through my anger and heat, I thought of the Retribution.

But even more clearly I saw the New Birth of this weary world,

This world now groaning in chains, with the bloody sweat of oppression.

These things and many more, such as were hard to write of,

I read in the words of the Socialist, patient, peaceful and sober,

Full of prophetic vision, above all things hopeful and patient,

Written in living flame at the Feast of the Leaders of Men....

CHAPTER XXIX.

“APRÈS NOUS LE DÉLUGE!”

As Gabriel’s voice fell to silence, after the last words, a stillness came upon the lamp-lit room, a hush broken only by the snapping of the pine-root fire on the hearth and by the busy ticking of the clock upon the chimneypiece. Then, after a minute’s pause, Craig reached over and took Gabriel by the hand.

“I salute you, O poet of the Revolution now impending!” he cried, while Catherine’s eyes gleamed bright with tears. “Would God that I could write like that, old man!”

“And would God that my paper was still being issued!” Brevard added, making a gesture with the pipe that, in his eagerness to hear, he had allowed to die. “If it were I’d give that poem my front page, and fling its message full in the faces of Plutocracy!”

Gabriel smiled a bit nervously.

“Don’t, please don’t,” he begged. “If you really do like it help me spread it. Don’t waste words on praise, but plan with me, tonight, how we can get this to the people—how we can perfect our final arrangements—what we must do, now, at once, to meet the Air Trust and defeat it before its terrible and unrelenting grip closes on the throat of the world!”

“Right!” said Craig. “We must act at once, while there’s yet time. today, all seems safe. The Air Trust spies haven’t ferreted this place out. A week from now, they may have, and one of the most secure and useful Socialist refuges in the country may be only a heap of ashes—like the ones at Kenwyck, Hampden, Mount Desert and Loftiss. Every day is precious. Every one helps to perfect Gabriel’s disguise and adds materially to his strength.”

“True,” assented Gabriel. “We mustn’t wait too long, now. That last report we got yesterday, by our wireless, ought to stimulate us. Brainard says, in it, that the Air Trust people are now putting the finishing touches on the Niagara plant. That will give them condensing machinery for over 90,000,000 horsepower, all told. As I see the thing, it looks absolutely as though, when that is done, the whole Capitalist system of the world will center right there—focus there, as at a point. Let kings and emperors continue to strut and mouth vain phrases; let our own President and Congress make the motions of governing; even let Wall Street play at finance and power. All, all are empty and meaningless!

“Power has been sucked dry, out of them all, comrades. You know as well as I know—better, perhaps—that all real power in the world, today, whether economic or political—nay, even the power of life and death, the power of breath or strangulation, has clotted at Niagara, in the central offices of the Air Trust; nay, right in Flint and Waldron’s own inner office!”

Gabriel had stood up, while speaking; and now, pacing the floor of the big living-room, glanced first at one eager and familiar face, then at another.

“Comrades,” said he, “we should not sleep, tonight. We should get out all our plans and data, all the dispatches that have come to us here, all the information at hand about our organization, whether open or subterranean. We should make this room and this time, in fact, the place and the hour for the planning of the last great blow on which hangs the fate of the world. If it succeed, the human race goes free again. If it fail—and God forbid!—then the whole world will lie in the grip of Flint and Waldron! With our other centers broken up and under espionage, our press forced into impotence—save our underground press—and political action now rendered farcical as ever it was in Mexico, when Diaz ruled, we have but one recourse!”

“And that is?” asked Catherine. “The general strike?”

“A final, general, paralyzing strike; and with it, the actual, physical destruction of the colossal crime of crimes, the Air Trust works at Niagara!”

A little silence followed. They all drew round the reading-table, now, near the fireplace. Mrs. Grantham brought a lamp; and Brevard, opening a chest near the book-case, fetched a portfolio of papers, dispatches, plans, reports and data of all kinds.

“Gabriel’s right,” said he. “The time is ripe, now, or will be in a week or so. Nothing can be gained by delaying any longer. Every day adds to their power and may weaken ours. Our organization, for the strike and the attack on the works, is as complete as we can make it. We must come to extreme measures, at once, or world-strangulation will set in, and we shall be eternally too late!”

“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, 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 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 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!”

“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 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!”

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 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 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.”

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 there is a 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 against us! Ants would have just as much show of success, charging elephants, as they have against the Air Trust! By tomorrow they’ll be wiped out, smeared out, 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 I have come 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 Canal Feeder 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 of them or us! 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 as I have—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, then they are 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, may you—may you!”

“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:

“Now comes the hour supreme!

To arms, each in his place!

The new dawn’s International

Shall be the human race!...”

CHAPTER XXXIV.

THE ATTACK.

“Halt! Who goes there?”

The challenge rang sharply on the night air, outside a small gate in the barricade of the Monck Aviation Grounds.

“Liberty!” answered Gabriel, pausing as he gave the password.

“All right, come on,” said a vague figure at the gate. The little group approached. The gate opened. Silently they entered the enclosure.

Another man stepped from a hangar. In his hand he held an electric flash, which he threw upon the newcomers, one by one.

“Right!” he commented, and took Gabriel by the hand. “This way!”

Ten minutes later, all of them were in the air, save only Gabriel, who insisted on staying till his entire squad had made a clean getaway. Then he too rose; and now in a long, swift line, the fighting squadron straightened away to north-eastward, on the twenty-mile run to Niagara.

The night was foggy, chill and dark. All the aviators had instructions to fly not less than 2,500 feet high, to keep a careful lookout lest they collide, and to steer by the lights of the great Air Trust plant. For, misty though the heavens were, still Gabriel could see the dim glow of the tremendous aerial search-lights dominating Goat Island—lights of 5,000,000 candle-power, maintained by current from the Falls, incessantly sweeping the sky on the lookout for just such perils as now, indeed, were drawing near.

Momently, as he flew, Gabriel perceived these huge lights growing brighter, through the mist, and apprehension won upon him.

“Incredibly strong!” he muttered to himself, as he glanced from his barometer to the shining fog ahead. “Even though the mist will be thicker over the Falls than anywhere else, there’s a good possibility they may pierce it and pick us up—and then, look out for their ‘planes and swift, fighting dirigibles!”

He rotated the rising-plane, and now soared to 2,800 feet. Below and on either side of him, nothing but tenuous fog. Ahead, the swiftly-approaching fan of radiance, white, dazzling, beautiful, that seemed to gush from earth so far below and to the eastward. Already the thunders of the Falls were audible.

“Where are the others?” Gabriel wondered, his thoughts seeming to hum and roar in his head, in harmony with the shuddering diapason of the muffler-deadened exhaust. “No way of telling, now. Each man for himself—and each to do his best!”

And then his thoughts reverted to Catherine; and round his heart a sudden yearning seemed to strengthen his stern, indomitable resolve—”Victory or death!”

But now there was scant time for thought. The moment of action was already close at hand. Far below there, hidden by night and dark and mist, Gabriel knew a hundred thousand comrades, of the Fighting Sections, were lying hidden, waiting for the signal to advance.

“And it’s time, now!” he said aloud, thrilled by a wondrous sense of vast responsibility—a sense that on this moment hung the fate of the world. “It’s time for the signal. Now then, up and at them!”

Taking the rocket—a powerful affair, capable of casting an intense, calcium light—he touched the fuse to a bit of smouldering punk fastened in a metal cup at his right hand. Then, as it flared, he launched the rocket far into the void.

Below, came a quick spurt of radiance, in a long, vivid streak that shot away with incredible rapidity. Gabriel followed it a moment, with his gaze, then smiled.

“The Rubicon is crossed,” said he. “The gates of the Temple of Janus are open wide—and now comes War!”

He rose again, skimming to a still higher altitude as the glare of the great Works drew closer and closer underneath. The wind roared in his ears, louder than the whirling propellers. The whole fabric of the aeroplane quivered as it climbed, up, up above the rushing, bellowing cataract.

“Where are the others?” thought he, and reached for a thanatos projectile, in the rack near the metal cup where the punk still glowered.

All at once, a glare of light burst upward through the white-glowing mist; and the ‘plane reeled with the air-wave, as now a thunderous concussion boomed across the empty spaces of the sky.

At the same moment, a faint, ripping noise mounted to Gabriel—a sound for all the world like the tearing of stout canvas. Then followed a chattering racket, something like distant mowing-machines at work; and now all blent to a steady, determined uproar. Gabriel almost thought to hear, as he launched his own projectile, far sounds as of the shouts and cries of men; but of this he could not make sure.

“They’re at it, anyhow!” he exulted. “At it, at last! By the way our men have launched the attack, the first explosion must have breached a wall! God! What wouldn’t I give to be down there, in the thick of it, rather than here! I—”

Crash!

Again a spouting geyser of light and uproar burst into mid-air.

“That was my thanatos speaking!” cried Gabriel. “Now for another!”

Before he could drop it, as he circled round and round, directly over the great, flailing beams of the Air Trust search-lights, a third detonation shattered the heavens, nearly unseating him. Up sprang the roar, with wonderful intensity, reflected from the earth as from a giant sounding-board. And Gabriel noted, with keen satisfaction, that one of the huge light-beams had gone dark.

“Put out one of them, anyway, so far!” thought he, and swung again to westward, and once more dropped a messenger of death to tyranny.

Now the bombardment became general. Trust aerial-gun projectiles began bursting all about. Every second or two, terrible concussions leaped toward the zenith; and the earth, hidden somewhere down there below the fog-blanket, seemed flaming upward like a huge volcano. One by one the search-lights, whipping the sky, went black; and now the glow of them was fast diminishing, only to be replaced by a ruddier and more intermittent glare.

“The plant’s burning, at last,” thought Gabriel. “Heaven grant the fire may spread to the oxygen-tanks! If we can only get those—!”

Again he launched a projectile, and again he circled over the doomed plant.

A swift black shape swooped by him. He had just time to exchange a yell of warning, when it was gone. The near peril gripped his heart, but did not shake it.

“Close call!” said he.

If that machine and his had met, good-bye forever! But after all, the danger of collision in mid-air, or of being struck by a projectile from some other machine, above, was no greater than his comrades on the ground were facing. Not so great, perhaps. Many a one would meet his death from the aerial attack. In a war like this, a thousand perils threatened. Gabriel only hoped that Hargreaves, down below there, could hold them back, away, till the walls should have been destroyed.

Circling, ever circling, now hearing some echoes of the earth-battle, some grenade-volleys and rapid-fire clattering, now deafened and all but blinded by the vast, up-belching explosions of the thanatos projectiles, Gabriel flew among the drifting mists and vapors. Still was he guided by one or two search-lights; but most of these were gone, now. Yet the glare of the conflagration, below, was luridly shuddering through the fog, painting it all a dull and awful red.

Red! Suddenly words came into Gabriel’s mind—the words of his own poem:

... Red as blood, red as blood! The blood of the shattered miner,

Blood of the boy in the rifle pits, blood of the coughing child-slave,

Blood of the mangled trainman, blood that the Carpenter shed!

“For your sake! For the world’s sake, this!” he cried, and hurled another thanatos. “If ever war of liberation was holy, this is that war!”

Suddenly, through all the turmoil of shattering explosions, tossing air-currents and drifting, acrid smoke, he became conscious of a sudden, swift-flying pursuer.

By the light of the burning Plant, down there somewhere in the vapors of the thunderous Falls, he saw a hawk-like ‘plane that swooped toward him with incredible velocity, savage and lean and black.

Off to the right, a sudden spattering of shots in mid-air told him the battle in the sky was likewise being engaged. He saw vague, veiled explosions, there, then a swift, falling trail of flame. A pang shot through his heart. Had one of his companions fallen and been dashed to death? He could not tell—he had no time to wonder, even, for already the attacker was upon him, the swift Air Trust épervier, one of the dreaded air-fleet of the world-monopoly!

Gabriel had just time to swerve from the attack, and swoop aloft—dropping his next to last projectile as he did so—when the whirling shape zoomed past, swung round and once more charged. He saw, vaguely, two men sat in it. One was the pilot, a “Gray” or Cosmos mercenary. The other—could it be? Yes, there was no mistaking! The other was Slade himself, commander of the hireling army of Plutocracy!

Out from the attacking ‘plane jetted sadden spurts of fire. Gabriel heard the zip-zip-zip of bullets; heard a ripping tear, as one of his canvas wings was punctured—God help him, had that explosive bullet struck a wire or a stay!

Then, maddened to despair; and burning with fierce rage against this monster of the upper air that now was hurling death at him, he once more “banked,” brought his machine sharp round, and charged, full drive, at the attacker!

This tactic for a second must have disconcerted the Air Trust mercenaries. Gabriel’s speed was terrific. With stupefying suddenness, the épervier loomed up ahead of him.

“Now!” he shouted. “Take this, from me!”

Half rising from his seat, he hurled his last remaining projectile full at Slade, then wrenched his own ‘plane off sharply to the left.

A thunderous concussion and a dazzling burst of light told him his chance shot had been effective.

He got a second’s vision of a shattered black mass, a tangle of girders, wires, collapsed planes, that seemed to hang a moment in midair—of whirling bodies—of wreckage indescribable. Then the broken debris plunged with awful speed and vanished through the red-glowing mist.

Even as he shuddered, sickened at the terrible, though necessary deed, the deed which alone could save him from swift death, an overwhelming air-wave from the terrible explosion struck his speeding machine, the machine captured in the Great Smokies from the Air Trust itself.

It heeled over like an unballasted yacht under the lash of a hurricane. Vainly Gabriel jerked at wheel and levers; he could not right it.

As it seemed to come under control, a stay snapped. The ‘plane swooped, yawned forward and stuck its nose into an air-hole, caused by the vast, uprising smoke and heat of the huge conflagration beneath.

Then, lost and beyond all guidance, it somersaulted, slid away down a long drop and, whirling wildly over and over, plunged with Gabriel into the glowing, smoking, detonating void!

CHAPTER XXXV.

TERROR AND RETREAT.

When, despite Flint’s imperative orders, Slade failed to reopen the lines of communication for him, before nightfall, and when President Supple wired in code for a little more time in obeying Air Trust orders, the Billionaire recognized that something of terrible menace now had suddenly broken in upon his dream of universal power.

He summoned Waldron and Herzog for another conference and together they feverishly planned to put the works under defense, until such time as troops could be got through to them.

The plant regiment was mustered and the Cosmos mercenaries and scabs were made ready. The machine-guns were unlimbered for action and large quantities of ammunition were delivered to them and to the aerial-bomb guns, as nightfall lowered. Herzog set eight hundred men to work covering all the tanks possible, with wire netting of heavy steel. The search-lights were all ordered into use; steam and electrical connections were made, the air-fleet was manned, and everything was done that unlimited wealth and bitter hate of the Workers could suggest.

With curses on the fog, which hid the upper air from view, the old man now stood at one of the west windows of his inner office—the office on the top floor of the main Administration Building, overlooking nearly the whole Plant.

“Damn the weather!” he snarled, his gold teeth glinting. “In addition to all this mist from the Falls, there’s a regular cloud-bank settling down, tonight! Under cover of it, what may not happen? Nothing could have been worse, Waldron. Though we shall soon control the air, that won’t be enough, so long as fogs and mists escape us. Our next problem—hello! Now what the devil’s that?”

“What’s what?” retorted Waldron, testily. He had been drinking rather more heavily than usual, that day, both because of the dull weather and because the Falls invariably got on his nerves, during his brief sojourns there. Away from New York and his favorite haunts, Waldron was lost. “What’s what?” he repeated with an ugly look. “This roaring, glaring, trembling place gives me—”

“That! That light in the sky!” cried Flint, excitedly pointing. “See? No—it’s gone now! But it looked like—like a rocket! A signal, of some kind, thrown from an aeroplane! A—”

Waldron laughed harshly.

“Seeing things, eh?” he sneered, coming across to the window, himself, and peering out. “I don’t see anything! Nothing here to worry about, Flint. With all these walls and guns, and netting, and air-ships and a private army and all, what more do you want? Not getting nervous in your old age, are you, eh?” he gibed bitterly. “Or is your conscience beginning to wake up, as the graveyard becomes more a probability than—”

“Enough!” Flint snapped at him. “When you drink, Waldron, you’re an idiot! Now, forget all this, and let’s get down to work. I tell you, I just now saw a signal-light up there in the mist. There’s trouble coming tonight, as sure as we own the earth. Trouble, maybe big trouble. Merciful God, I—I rather think we oughtn’t to be here, in person, eh? We’d be much better off out of here. If there—there should be any fighting, you know—”

His voice broke in a falsetto pipe. Waldron laughed brutally.

“Bravo!” cried he, with flushed and mottled face. “You’ll do, Flint! I see, right now, the firing-line is the life for you! Well, let the row come, and devil take it, say I. Better anything than—”

The sentence was never finished, For suddenly a shattering explosion hurled a vast section of the western encircling wall outward, out into the River, and, where but a moment before, the partners had been gazing at a high concrete-and-steel barrier, with electric lights on top, now only a huge gap appeared, through which the foam-tossed current could be seen leaping swiftly onward toward the Falls.

Hurled back from the window by the force of the explosion, both men were struck dumb with terror and amaze. Flint rallied first, and with a cry of rage, inarticulate as a beast’s howl, sprang to the window again.

Outside, a scene of desolation and wild activity was visible. The great, paved courtyard, flanked by the turbine houses and the wall, on one hand, and on the other by the oxygen tanks’ huge bulk that loomed vaguely through the electric-lighted mist, now had begun to swarm with men.

Flint saw a few forms lying prone under the hard glare of the arcs and vacuum lights. Others were crawling, writhing, making strange contortions. Here, there, men with rifles were running to take their posts. Hoarse orders were shouted, and shrill replies rang back.

Then, all at once, a kind of sputtering series of small explosions began to rip along the edge of the south wall. And now, machine-guns began to talk, with a dry, hard metallic clatter. And—though whence these came, Flint could not see—grenades began flying over the wall and bursting in the court. Though unwounded, men fell everywhere these gas-projectiles exploded—fell, stone dead and stiffening at once—fell, in strange, monstrous, awful attitudes of death.

Steam began billowing up; and crackling electrical discharges leaped along the naked wires of the outer barricades.

The whole Plant shook and rattled with the violent concussions of the aerial-bomb guns, already searching the upper air with shrapnel.

Somewhere, out of the range of vision, another terrible shock made the building tremble to its nethermost foundation; and wild yells and cries, as of a charge, a repulse, a savage and determined rush, echoed through the vast enclosure. Came a third detonation—and, blinding in its intensity, a globe of fire burst almost beneath the window, five stories below.

The partners, shaking and pale, retreated hastily. A swift, upward-rising shape swept over the courtyard and was gone—one of the air-fleet now launched to meet the attackers.

Far below a sudden crumbling shudder of masonry told the Billionaire not a moment was to be lost, for already one wing of the Administration Building was swaying to its fall.

“Quick, Waldron! Quick!” he shouted, in the shrill treble of senility, and ran into the corridor that led to the north wing. Waldron, suddenly sobered, followed; and from the offices, where the night-shift of clerks were laboring (or had been, till the first explosion), came crowding pale and frightened men. Not the fighting cast of Air Trust slaves, these, but the anaemic chemists and experimenters and clerical workers, scabs, to a man. Now, in the common sentiment of fear, they jostled Flint and Waldron, as though these plutocrats had been but common clay. And in the corridor a babel rose, through which fresh volleys and ever more and more violent explosions ripped and thundered.

Flint struck savagely at some who barred his way; and Waldron elbowed through, with curses.

“Get out of the way, you swine!” shrilled the old Billionaire. “Make way, there! Way!”

The two men reached a door that led by a private passage, through to the steel-and-concrete laboratories.

“Here, this way, Flint!” shouted Waldron. “If those Hell-devils drop a bomb on us, this building will cave in like jackstraws! Our only safety is here, here!”

Thoroughly cowed now, with all the brutal bluster and half-drunken swagger gone, Waldron whipped out a bunch of keys, tremblingly unlocked the door and blundered through. Flint followed. Behind them, others tried to press, on toward the armored laboratories; but with vile blasphemies the plutocrats beat them back and slammed the door.

“To Hell with them!” shouted Flint, perfectly ashen now and shaking like a leaf, the fear of death strong on his withered soul. “We’ve got all we can do to look after ourselves! Quick, Waldron, quick!”

Both men, sick with panic, with fear of the unknown terror from above, stumbled rather than ran along the passage, and presently reached the laboratory.

Here Waldron unlocked another door, this time a steel one, and—as they both crowded through—pressed a hand to his dizzy head.

“Safe!” he gulped, slamming the door again. “They can’t get us here, at any rate, no matter what happens! This place is like a fort, and—”

His speech was interrupted by a dazing, deafening tumult of sound. The earth trembled, and the laboratory, steel though it was, with concrete facing, rocked on its foundation. A glare through the windows, quickly fading, told them the building they had just quitted was now but a smoking pile of ruin.

Flint gasped, unable to speak. Waldron, shaking and cowed, tried to moisten his dry lips with a thick tongue.

“We—we weren’t any too soon!” he gulped, without one thought of the doomed scabs in the Administration Building. Stern justice was now overtaking these wretches. False to the working-class, and eager to serve the Air Trust—not only eager to serve, but zealous in any attack on the proletariat, and by their very employment serving to rivet the shackles on the world—now they were abandoned by their masters.

Between upper and nether millstone, moving with neither, they were caught and crushed. And as the great building quivered, gaped wide open, swayed and came thundering down in a vast pile of flame-lit ruin, whence a volcanic burst of fire, smoke and dust arose, they perished miserably, time-servers, cowards and self-seekers to the last.

But Flint and Waldron still survived. Though the very earth shook and trembled with the roar of bombs, the crumbling of massive walls, the rattle of volley-fire and the crashing of the terrible grenades that mowed down hundreds as they spread their poisonous gas abroad—though the shriek of projectiles, the thunder of the air-ship guns now sweeping the sky in blind endeavor to shatter the attackers all swelled the tumult to a frightful storm of terror and of death; they still lived, cowered and cringed there in the bomb-proof steel-and-concrete of the inner laboratories.

“Come, come!” Flint quavered, peering about him at the deserted room, still glaring with electric light—the room now abandoned by all its workers, who, members of Herzog’s regiment, had run to take their posts at the first signal of attack. “Come—this isn’t safe enough, even here. In—in there!”

He pointed toward a vault-like door, leading to the subterranean steel chambers where Herzog eventually counted on storing some hundreds of thousands of tons of liquid oxygen—the reserve-chambers, impregnable to lightning, fire, frost or storm, to man’s attacks or nature’s—the chambers blasted from the living rock, deep as the Falls themselves, vacuum-lined, wondrous achievement of the highest engineering skill the world could boast.

“There! There!” repeated Flint, plucking at the dazed Waldron’s sleeve. “Tool-steel and concrete, twenty-five feet thick—and vacuum chambers all about—there we can hide! There’s safety! Come, come quick!”

Staring, white-faced (he who had been so red!) and dumb, Waldron yielded. Together, furtive as the criminals they were, these two world-masters slunk toward the steel door, while without, their empire was crashing down in smoke, and flame, and blood!

They had almost reached it when a smash of glass at the far end of the laboratory whipped them round, in keener terror.

Staring, wild-eyed, they beheld the crouching figure of Herzog. Running, even as he cringed, he had upset a glass retort, which had shattered on the concrete floor. And as he ran, he screamed:

“They’re in! They’re coming! Quick—the steel vaults! Let me in, there! Let me in!”

The coward was now a maniac with terror, his face perfectly white, writhen with panic, and with staring eyes that gleamed horribly under the greenish vacuum-lights.

“Back, you! Get out!” roared Waldron, raising a fist. “We—”

A sudden belch of flame, outside, split the night with terrible virescence. The whole steel building trembled and swayed. Some of its girders buckled; and the east wall, nearest the oxygen-tanks, caved inward as a mass of many tons was hurled against it.

A stunning concussion flung all three men to the floor; and, as they fell, a withering heat-wave quivered through the place.

“The oxygen-tanks!” gasped Flint. “They’re blown up—they’re burning—God help us!”

Scorching, yet still eager to live, he crawled on hands and knees toward the steel door. Waldron dragged himself along, half-dead with terror. Now, dripping gouts of inextinguishable fire were raining on the roof of the building. A whirlwind of flame was sweeping all its eastern side; and a glare like that of Hell itself seared the eyes of the fugitives.

Quivering, trembling, slavering, the old man and Waldron wrenched the steel door open.

“Me! Me! Let me in! Me! Save me!” howled Herzog, dragging himself toward them.

They only laughed derisively, with howls of demoniacal scorn.

“You slave! You cur!” shouted Waldron, and spat at him as he drew the vault door shut. “You cringing dog—stay there, now, and face it!”

The great door boomed shut. In the cool of the winding stairway of steel which led, lighted by electricity, to the trap-door and the ladder down into the tremendous vaults, the world-masters breathed deeply once more, respited from death.

Herzog, screaming like a fiend in torment, clawed at the impenetrable steel door, raved, begged, entreated, and tore his fingers on the lock.

No answer, save the muffled echo of a jeer, from within.

Boom!

What was that?

Mad with terror though he was, he whirled about, and faced the room now quivering with heat.

Even as he looked, a great gap yawned in the western wall, farthest from the flame-belching oxygen-tank that had been struck.

Through this gap, pouring irresistibly as the sea, swept a tide of attackers, storming the inner citadel of the infernal, world-strangling Air Trust.

At the head of this victorious army, this flood triumphant of the embattled proletaire, Herzog’s staring eyes caught a moment’s glimpse of a dreaded face—the face of Gabriel Armstrong.

Gasping, the coward and tool of the world-masters made one supreme decision. Close by, a rack of vials stood. He whirled to it, snatched out a tiny bottle and waiting not even to draw the cork—craunched the bottle, glass and all, in his fang-like, uneven teeth.

An instant change swept over him. His staring eyes closed, his head fell forward, his whole body collapsed like an empty sack. He fell, twitched once or twice, and was dead—dead ere the attackers could reach the door of steel where his bestial masters had betrayed him.

Thus perished Herzog, coward and tool, a victim of the very forces he himself had helped create.

And at the moment of his death, the masters he had cringed to and had served, sneering with scorn at him even in their mortal terror, were tremblingly descending the long metal ladder to the impregnable vaults of steel below.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

THE STORMING OF THE WORKS.

Plunged into the abyss of mist and flame by the attack of the Air Trust épervier, Gabriel had abandoned himself for lost. Death, mercifully swift, he had felt could be his only fate; and with this thought had come no fear, but only a wild joy that he had shared this glorious battle, sure to end in victory! This was his only thought—this, and a quick vision of Catherine.

Then, as he hurtled down and over, whirling drunkenly in the void, all clear perception left him. Everything became a swift blur, a rushing confusion of terrible wind, and lurid light, and the wild roar of myriad explosions.

Came a shock, a sudden checking of the plunge, a long and rapid glide, as the DeVreeland stabilizer of the machine, asserting its automatic action, brought it to a level keel once more.

But now the engine was stopped. Gabriel, realizing that some chance still existed to save his life, wrenched madly at his levers.

“If I can volplane down!” he panted, sick and dizzy, “there may yet be hope!”

Hope! Yes, but how tenuous! What chance had he, coasting to earth at that low level, to avoid the detonating bombs, the aerial shrapnel being hurled aloft, the poisonous gas, the surface-fire?

Here, there and yonder, terrific explosions were shattering the echoes, as the Air Trust batteries swept the fog with their aeroplane-destroying missiles. Whither should he steer? He knew not. All sense of direction was lost, nor could the compass tell him anything. A glance at the barometric gauge showed him an altitude of but 850 feet, and this was decreasing with terrible rapidity.

Strive as he might, he could not check the swift descent.

“God send me a soft place to fall on!” he thought, grimly, still clinging to his machine and laboring to jockey it under control.

Close by, a thunderous detonation crashed through the mist. His machine reeled and swerved, then plunged more swiftly still. All became vague, to Gabriel—a dream—a nightmare!

Crash!

Flung from the seat, he sprawled through treetops, caught himself, fell to a lower limb, slid off and landed among thick bushes; and through these came to earth.

The wrecked ‘plane, whirling away and down, fell crashing into the river that rushed cascading by, and vanished in the firelit mist.

Stunned, yet half-conscious, Gabriel presently sat up and pressed his right hand to his head. His left arm felt numb and useless; and when he tried to raise it, he found it refused his will.

“Where am I, now, I’d like to know?” he muttered. “Not dead, anyhow—not yet!”

A continuous roar of explosions shuddered the air, mingled with the booming of the mighty Falls. Shouts and cheers and the rattle of machine-guns assailed his ear. The glare of the search-lights, through the mist and steam, was darkened momentarily by thick, greasy coils of smoke, shot through by violent flashes of light as explosions took place.

Gabriel struggled to his feet, and peered about him,

“Still alive!” said he. “And I must get back into the fight! That’s all that matters, now—the fight!”

He knew not, yet, where he was; but this mattered nothing. His machine had, in fact, fallen near the river bank, in the eastern section of Prospect Park, beyond the Goat Island bridge—this region of the Park having been left outside the fortifications, in the extension of the Air Trust plant.

The trees, here, had saved his life. Had he smashed to earth a hundred yards further north, he would have been shattered against high walls and roofs.

Still giddy, but sensing no pain from his injured left arm, Gabriel made way toward the scene of conflict. He knew nothing of how the tide of battle was going; nothing of his position; nothing as to what men he would first meet, his comrades or the enemy.

But for these considerations he had no thought. His only idea, fixed and grim, was “The fight!” Dazed though he still was, he nerved himself for action.

And so, pressing onward through the livid glare, through the night shattered by stupendous detonations, he drew his revolver and broke into a run.

Strange evidences of the battle now became evident. He saw an unexploded grenade lying beside a wounded man who grasped at him and moaned with pain. Over a wrecked motor-car, greasy smoke was rising, as it burned. Louder shouting drew him down a path to the left. Masses of moving figures became dimly visible, through the mist. And now, stabs of fire pierced the confusion and clamorous night.

Gabriel jerked up his revolver, as he ran, the terrible weapon shooting bullets charged with hydrocyanic-acid gas.

A man rose before him, shouting.

Gabriel levelled the weapon; but a glimpse of red ribbon in the other’s coat brought it down again.

“Comrade!” cried he. “Where’s the attack?”

The other pointed.

“Gabriel! Is that you?” he gasped, staring.

“Yes! I fell—machine smashed—come on!”

“Hurt?”

“No! Arm, maybe. No matter! God! What’s this?”

Toward them a sudden swirl of men came sweeping, stumbling, shouting, in pandemonium.

“Our men!” cried Gabriel, starting forward again. “We’re being driven! Rally, here! Rally!”

Beyond, a louder crackling sounded. Here, there, men plunged down. The retreat was becoming a rout!

Yelling, Gabriel flung himself upon the men.

“Back there!” he vociferated. “Back, and at the walls! Come on, boys, now! Come on!”

His voice, well known to nearly all, thrilled them again with new determination. A shout rose up; it swelled, deepened, roared to majestic volume.

Then the tide turned.

Back went the fighting men of the great Revolution. back at the machine-guns, mounted in the breached walls.

Gabriel was caught and whirled along in that living tide. He found himself at its crest, its foremost wave. Behind him, a roaring, rushing river of men. Before the Inner Citadel.

Gathering speed and weight as it rolled up, the wave broke like an ocean surge over a crumbling dyke.

Down went the Air Trust gunners and the guns, down, down to annihilation!

Through the breach, foaming and swelling with irresistible power burst the tides of victory.

Silenced now were the Trust guns. The steam-jets had none to man them. Far aloft, a last explosion told the death story of the final épervier.

Here and there, from windows and corners of the wrecked and blazing plant, a little intermittent firing still continued; but now the hearts of these Air Trust defenders—scabs, thugs and scourings of the slum—had turned to water, in face of the triumphant army of the working class.

They fled, those mercenaries, and all the ways and inner strongholds—such as still were left—now lay open to Gabriel and his comrades.

Lighted by the blazing buildings and the vast fire torch of an oxygen-tank off to eastward, they stormed the final citadel, the steel and concrete laboratories, heart and soul and center of the hellish world-conspiracy.

Stormed it, as it began to blaze and crumble; stormed it, in search of Flint and Waldron, would-be murderers of the world.

Stormed it, only to see Herzog gnash his teeth upon the flask, and fall, and die; only to know that there, within the rock-hewn, steel-lined tanks, below, their enemies had still outwitted them!

The swift onrush of the fire drove the victors back.

“Out, comrades! Out of here!” shouted Gabriel, facing the attackers.

None too soon. Hardly had they beaten a retreat, back into the vast courtyard again, strewn with the dead, when a second oxygen tank exploded, overwhelming the laboratory building with tons of flying steel.

Leaping toward the zenith, a giant tongue of flame roared heavenward. So intense the heat had now become, that the solid brick and concrete walls, exposed to the direct verberation of the flame, began to crack and crumble.

Gabriel ordered a general retreat of the attacking army. Victory was won; and to stay near that gushing tornado of flame, with new explosions bound to occur as the other oxygen tanks let go, must mean annihilation.

So the triumphant Army of the Proletaire fell back and back still further, out into the wrecked and trampled Park, and all through the city, where shattered buildings, many of them ablaze, and broken trees, dead bodies, smashed ordnance and chaos absolute told something of the story of that brief but terrible war.

Ringed round the perishing ruins of the Air Trust they stood, these mute, thrilled thousands. Silence fell, now, as they watched the roaring, ever-mounting flames that, whipped by the breeze, crashed upward in long and cadenced tourbillions of white, of awful incandescence.

And the river, ever-hurrying, always foaming on and downward to its titanic plunge, sparkled with eerie lights in that vast glow. Its voice of thunder seemed to chant the passing and the requiem of the Curse of the World, Capitalism.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

DEATH IN THE PIT OF STEEL.

And Flint, now, what of him! And Waldron?

While the Air Trust plant was burning, crumbling, smashing down, what of its masters, the masters of the world?

A sense of vast relief possessed them both, at first, as the steel door clanged after them.

Now, for a time at least, they realized that they were safe, safe from the People, safe from the awakened and triumphant Proletariat. Even now, had they surrendered, they would have been spared; but nothing was further from their thoughts than any treating with the despised and hated enemy.

Foremost in the mind of each, now, was the thought that if they could but stand siege, a day or so, the troops of the government—their government and their troops, their own personal property—would inevitably rescue them.

With this comforting belief, together they descended the long steel staircase to the trap-door, passed through this, and climbed down the metal ladder to the vast storage-vaults.

Here, everything was cool and quiet and well-lighted. Not yet had the electric-generating plant been put out of action. Though all its workers had either been drafted into the ranks of the Cosmos mercenaries, or Herzog’s regiments, or else had fled to hiding, still the huge turbines and enormous dynamos were whirling, unattended. Thus, for the first few minutes, in their living tomb, down over which the ruins of the now white-hot laboratory-building had crashed, the world-masters had electric light.

Reassured a little, they descended to the very bottom of the first huge tank.

“God!” snarled Flint, as he breathed deeply and glared about him. “The curs! The swine! To think of this, this really happening! And to think that if we hadn’t got here just in time, they’d actually have—have used violence on us—”

Waldron laughed brutally, his body still trembling and his face chalky. His laugh echoed, hollowly, from the metal walls.

“You old fool!” he spat. “Canting old hypocrite to the last, eh? Violence? What the devil do you expect? Rosewater and confetti? Violence was all that ever held ‘em, wasn’t it? And when they slipped the leash, naturally they retorted—that’s all! Violence? You make me sick! Damned lucky for us if we get through this yet, without violence, you whining cur!”

Flint, for the first time hearing Waldron’s honest opinion of him, failed even to note it. All his panic-stricken ear had caught was the note of hope, of survival.

Clutching eagerly at Waldron’s sleeve, he cackled:

“If we get through? If we get through, you say? Then, in your opinion, there is a chance to get through? They can’t get us here? We surely shall be rescued?”

“Bah!” Waldron flung at him, some latent spark of courage still smouldering in his sodden breast, whereas old Flint was craven to the marrow. “You nauseate me! Afraid to die, eh? Well, so am I; but not so damned paralyzed and sick with panic as all that! If you’d taken less dope, the last twenty years, you’d have more nerve now, to face the music! World-master, you? Eh? Playing the biggest game on earth—and now, when things break bad, you squeal! Arrrh! You called me a quitter once, you mealy-mouthed old Pecksniff! We’ll see, now, who quits! We’ll see, at a show-down, who can face it, you or I!”

Waldron’s brutality, the hard, savage quality that all his life had made him “Tiger” Waldron, now was beginning to reassert itself. His first sheer panic over, a little manhood was returning. But as for Flint, no manhood dwelt in him to be awakened. Instead, each moment found him more abject and more pitiable. Like an old woman he now wrung his hands and groaned, hysterically; and now he paced the steel floor of the vault that was destined to be his tomb; and now he stopped again and stared about him with wild eyes.

On all sides, sheer up a hundred feet or more, the smooth steel sides of the vast oxygen tank rose, studded with long lines of rivets.

Near the top a dark aperture showed where the six-inch pipe joined the tank; the pipe destined to fill it, when Herzog’s last process—never, now, to be completed—should have been done.

The huge floor, 150 feet in diameter, sloped gently downward toward the center; and here yawned another pipe, covered by a grating—the pipe to drain the liquid oxygen out to the pumping station.

So deeply set in the rock of the Niagara cliff was this stupendous tank, and so cunningly surrounded by vacuum-chambers, that now no faintest sound of the Falls was audible. All that betrayed the nearness of the cataract was a faint, incessant trembling of the metal walls, as though the solid ribs of Earth herself were shuddering with the impact of the plunge.

Old Flint surveyed this extraordinary chamber with mingled feelings. It surely offered absolute protection, for the present—or seemed to—but his distressed mind conjured alarming pictures of the future, in case no rescue came. Death by starvation, thirst and madness loomed before him. Nervously he recommenced his pacing. Another terribly serious factor was to be considered. He had now been three hours without his dose of morphia, and his nerves were calling, tugging insistently for it.

“Rotten luck,” he grumbled, “that I’ve got none with me!” Even there, in the imminent presence of disaster and death, his mind reverted to the poison, more necessary to him than food.

Waldron now had grown fairly calm. He stood leaning against the steel ladder, down which they had descended. Choosing a cigar, he proceeded to light up.

“Might as well be comfortable while we wait,” said he. “I only wish we had a couple of chairs, down here. Oversight on our part that we didn’t have some steel ones put in, and a line of canned goods and a few quarts of Scotch. The floor’s a bit damp and cold to sit on, and I want a drink damn bad!”

Flint swung about and faced him, pale and shaking, tortured with fear and with longing for his dope.

“You—you don’t think it will be long, eh, do you?” he demanded. “Not long before we’re taken out?”

Waldron shrugged his shoulders and blew a long, thin arrow of smoke athwart the brightly-lighted air.

“Search me!” he exclaimed. “To judge by what was happening when we made our exit, the Plant must be a mess, by this time. We seem to have been checked, even if not mated, Flint. I must admit they caught us by surprise. Caught us napping, damn them, after all! They were stronger than we thought, Flint, and cleverer, and better organized. And so—”

“Don’t say ‘we,’ curse you!” snarled Flint. “Blame yourself, if you want to, but leave me out! I knew there was trouble due, I tell you. I saw it coming! Who’s been trying to crush the swine completely, if not I? Who’s worked night and day to have those bills put through, and who had the army increased, and conscription started? Who’s driven the President to back all sorts of things? Who’s forced them? Who made the National Mounted Police a reality, if not I? Damn you, don’t include me in your blame!”

Waldron shrugged his shoulders, and smoked contemplatively.

“Suit yourself,” he answered. “If we both die, down here, it won’t matter much either way.”

“Die?” quavered the old jackal, suddenly forgetting his rage and peering about with furtive eyes. “Did you say die, Wally? No, no! You didn’t say that! You didn’t mean that, surely!”

Waldron smiled, evilly, joying in this abject fear of his hated partner.

“Oh, yes, I did, though,” he retorted. “It’s quite possible, you know. In case our government—yours, if you prefer—can’t get troops through, here, or a big general revolution sweeps things, inside a day or two, we’re done. We’ll starve and stifle, here, sure as shooting!”

“No, no, no! Not that, not that!” whimpered Flint, shuddering. “I can’t die, yet. I—I’m not ready for it! There’s all that missionary work of mine not yet done, and my huge international Sunday School League to perfect; and there’s the tremendous ten-million-dollar Cathedral of Saint Luke the Pious that I’m having built on Riverside Drive, and there’s—”

“Cut it!” gibed Waldron, spitting with very disgust. “If your time’s come, Flint, you’ll die, cathedrals or no cathedrals. Your Sunday schools won’t save you any more than my investments will—which have largely been wine, women and song. As a matter of fact, if it comes to starvation, if we aren’t rescued and taken out from under the red-hot wreckage that’s on top of us, I’ll outlive you! I can exist on my surplus adipose tissue, for a while; but you—you’re nothing but skin and bone. You’ll starve far quicker than I will, old man.”

“Don’t! Don’t!” implored the shaking wretch, covering his eyes with both trembling hands.

“Moral, you oughtn’t to have been a dope-fiend, all these years,” continued Waldron, cuttingly, determined that now, once for all, his despised partner should hear the truth. “How you’ve lived so long, as it is, I don’t understand. When I tried to marry Kate, and failed, I reckoned you’d pass over in almost no time—and, by the way, that’s why I was so insistent. But you’ve disappointed me, Flint. Disappointed me sorely. You still live. It won’t be long, however. Down here, you know, you simply can’t get any dope. In a little while you’ll begin to suffer the torments of Hell. You’ll die of starvation and drug ‘yen,’ Flint, and you’ll die mad, mad, mad! Understand me! Mad, for morphine! And I, I shall watch you, and exult!”

Flint cringed, shuddering and stopped his ears. His partner, gloating over him, smoked faster now. A strange light shone in his eyes. His pulse beat faster than usual, and a certain extravagance of thought and speech had become manifest in him.

He tried to compose himself, feeling that he must not push the cowardly Flint too far, but his ideas refused to flow in orderly sequence. Wonderingly he stared at his cigar, the tip of which was now glowing more brightly than before.

And then, suddenly sniffing the air he understood. His eyes widened with horror absolute. He started forward, gasped and cried:

“Flint! Flint! The oxygen is coming in!”

Uncomprehending, the old man still stood there, mumbling to himself. His face was now tinged with unusual color, and his heart, too, was thumping strangely.

“Oxygen!” shouted Waldron, shaking him by the shoulder. “It—it’s leaking in, here, somewhere! If we can’t stop it—we’re dead men!”

“Eh? What?” stammered the Billionaire, staring at him with eyes of half-intoxicated fear. “What d’you mean, the oxygen? In—in here?”

“In here!” cried “Tiger,” casting a wild and terrible gaze about him at the vast, empty trap of steel. “Can’t you smell it? That ozone smell? My God, we’re lost! We’re lost!”

“You’re crazy!” retorted Flint, with vigor. “Nothing of the sort could happen!” His head was held high, now, and new life seemed surging through that spent and drug-wrecked body. “There’s no way those curs could have turned on any gas, here. You’re crazy, ha! ha! ha! Insane, eh? A good joke—capital joke, that! I must tell it at the Union League Club! ‘Tiger’ Waldron, suddenly insane, and—ha! ha! ha!”

He burst into a long, shrill cacchination. Already his face was scarlet and his mind a whirl. Though neither man understood the reason, yet the fact remained that one of the last great explosions had ruptured a subterranean check-valve closing the six-inch pipe that was to feed the storage-tanks; and now a swift, huge stream of pure oxygen gas was rushing at tremendous velocity into the vast chamber of steel.

Waldron, his heart leaping as though it would burst his ribs, raised a fist to strike down his insulter; then, with drunken indecision, joined in the maniacal laughter of the staggering old man.

In their ears a strange, wild humming now became audible. Lights danced before their eyes; their senses reeled, and violent, extravagant ideas surged through their drunken brains.

“Ha! Ha! Ha!” rang Waldron’s crazy laughter, echoing the old man’s. All at once, his cigar broke into flame. Cursing, he hurled it away, staggering back against the ladder and stood there swaying, clutching it to hold himself from falling.

There he stood, and stared at Flint, with eyes that started from his head, with panting breath and crimson face.

The old man, in a sudden revulsion of terror, was now grovelling along the floor, by one of the massive walls, clawing at the steel with impotent hands and screaming mingled prayers and oaths. His ravings, horrible to hear, echoed through the great tank, now swiftly filling with gas.

“Help! Help!” he screamed. “Save me—my God—save me—. Let me out, let me out! A million, if you let me out! A billion—the whole world! The world, ha! ha! ha! Damn it to Hell—the world, I say! I’ll give the world to be let out! It’s mine—I own it—all, all mine! Ha! Dogs! You would rise up against your master and your God, would you? But it’s no use—we’ll beat you yet—out! out!—the world—I own it! All this plant—this gas, all mine! My oxygen—ah! it chokes me! Help! Help!—Swine! I’ll scourge you yet—absolute power—the world—!”

With one final spark of energy, panting, his heart flailing itself to death under the pitiless urge of the oxygen, old Flint sprang up, ran wildly, blindly straight across the steel floor, and, screaming blasphemies like a soul in Hell, dashed into the opposite wall.

He recoiled, staggered, spun round and fell sprawling most horribly—stone dead.

Waldron, at sight of this awful end, felt an uncontrollable terror sweep over his drunk and maddened senses. Though all his blood was leaping in his arteries, and his breath coming so fast it choked him, yet a moment’s seeming sanity possessed his reeling brain.

“The door! The door, up there!” he screamed, with a wild, terrible curse.

Then, turning toward the ladder, in spite of his fat and flabby muscles quivering in terrible spasms, he ran up the long steel structure with a supreme and ape-like agility.

Fifty feet he made, seventy-five, ninety—

But, all at once, something seemed to break in his overtaxed heart.

A blackness swam before his dazzled eyes. His head fell back. Unnerved, his fingers lost their hold. And, whirling over and over in midair, he dropped like a plummet.

By one wall lay Flint’s body. At the foot of the ladder, like a crushed sack of bones, sprawled the corpse of “Tiger” Waldron.

And still the rushing oxygen, with which they two had hoped to dominate the world, poured through the six-inch main, far, far above—senseless matter, blindly avenging itself upon the rash and evil men who impiously had sought to cage and master it!

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

VISIONS.

Thus perished Flint and Waldron, scourges of the earth. Thus they died, slain by the very force which they had planned would betray mankind and deliver it into their chains. Thus vanished, forever, the most sinister and cruel minds ever evolved upon this planet; the greatest menace the human race had ever known; the evil Masters of the World.

And as they died, massed around their perished Air Trust plant, a throng of silent, earnest watchers stood, with faces illumined by the symbolic, sacrificial flames—a throng of emancipated workers, of toilers from whose bowed shoulders now forever had been lifted the frightful menace of a universal bondage.

Explosion after explosion burst from the tortured Inferno of the vast plant. Buildings came crashing, reeling, thundering down; walls fell, amid vast, belching clouds of dust and smoke; a white, consuming sheet of flame crackled across the sinister and evil place; and in its wake glowed incandescent ruins.

Then, in one final burst of thunderous tumult, the hugest tank of all, exploding with a roar like that of Doom itself, hurled belching flames on high.

For many miles—in Buffalo, Rochester, Toronto and scores of cities on both sides of the Great Lakes—silent multitudes watched the glare against the midnight sky; and many wept for joy; and many prayed. All understood the meaning of that sight. The light upon the heavens seemed a signal and a beacon—a promise that the Old Times had passed away forever—a covenant of the New.

And, as the final explosion shattered the Temple of Bondage to wreckage, flung it far into the rushing river and swept it over the leaping, thundering Falls, the news flashed on a thousand wires, to all cities and all lands; and though the mercenaries of the two dead world-masters still might struggle and might strive to beat the toilers back to slavery again, their days were numbered and their powers forever broken.

Together in the doorway of the refuge at Port Colborne, Catherine stood with Gabriel, watching the beacon of liberty upon the heavens. The light, a halo round her eager face, showed his powerful figure and the smile of triumph in his eyes. His left arm, broken by the fall in the aeroplane, now rested in a sling. His right, protecting in its strength, was round the girl. And as her head found shelter and rest, at length, upon his shoulder, she, too, smiled; and her eyes seemed to see visions in the glory of the sky.

“Visions!” said she, softly, as though voicing a universal thought. “Do you behold them, too?”

He nodded.

“Yes,” he answered, “and they are beautiful and sweet and pure!”

“Visions that we now shall surely see?”

“Shall surely see!” he echoed; and a little silence fell. Far off, they seemed to hear a vast and thousand-throated cheering, that the night-wind brought to them in long and heart-inspiring cadences.

“Gabriel,” she said, at last.

“Well?”

“I wish he might have seen them, and have understood! In spite of all he did, and was, he was my father!”

“Yes,” answered Gabriel, sensing her grief. “But would you have had him live through this? Live, with the whole world out of his grasp, again? Live, with all his plans wrecked and broken? Live on in this new time, where he could have comprehended nothing? Live on, in misery and rage and impotence?

“Your father was an old man, Catherine. You know as well as I do—better, perhaps—the whole trend of his life’s thought and ambition. Even if he’d lived, he couldn’t have changed, now, at his age. It would have been an utter impossibility. Why say more?”

Catherine made no reply; but in her very attitude of trust and confidence, Gabriel knew he read the comfort he had given her.

Silence, a while. At last she spoke.

“Visions!” she whispered. “Wonderful visions of the glad, new time! How do you see them, Gabriel?”

“How do I see them?” His face seemed to glow with inspiration under the shining light in the far heavens. “I see them as the realization of a time, now really close at hand, when this old world of ours shall be, as it never yet has been, in truth civilized, emancipated, free. When the night of ignorance, kingcraft, priestcraft, servility and prejudice, bigotry and superstition shall be forever swept away by the dawn of intelligence and universal education, by scientific truth and light—by understanding and by fearlessness.

“When Science shall no longer be ‘the mystery of a class,’ but shall become the heritage of all mankind. When, because much is known by all, nothing shall be dreaded by any. When all mankind shall be absolutely its own master, strong, and brave, and free!”

“Like you, Gabriel!” the girl exclaimed, from her heart.

“Don’t say that!” he disclaimed. “Don’t—”

She put her hand over his mouth.

“Shhhh!” she forbade him. “You mustn’t argue, now, because your arm’s just been set and we don’t want any fever. If my dreams include you, too, Gabriel, don’t try to tell me I’m mistaken—because I’m not, to begin with, and I know I’m not!”

He laughed, and shook his head.

“Do you realize,” said he, “that when it comes to bravery, and strength, and the splendid freedom of an emancipated soul, I must look to you for light and leading?”

“Don’t!” she whispered. “Look only to the future—to the newer, better world now coming to birth! The time which is to know no poverty, no crime, no children’s blood wrung out for dividends!

“The future when no longer Idleness can enslave Labor to its tasks. When every man who will, may labor freely, whether with hand or brain, and receive the full value of his toil, undiminished by any theft or purloining whatsoever!”

“The future,” he continued, as she paused, “when crowns, titles, swords, rifles and dreadnaughts shall be known only by history. When the earth and the fulness thereof shall belong to all Earth’s people; and when its soil need be no longer fertilized with human blood, its crops no longer be brought forth watered by sweat and tears.

“Such have been my visions and my dreams, Catherine—a few of them. Now they are coming true! And other dreams and other visions—dreams of you and visions of our life together—what of them?”

“Why need you ask, Gabriel?” she answered, raising her lips to his.

The sound of singing, a triumphal chorus of the accomplished Revolution, a vast and million-throated song, seemed wafted to them on the wings of night.

And the pure stars, witnessing their love and troth, looked down upon them from the heavens where shone the fire-glow of the Great Emancipation.