The Man in the Twilight Part 53

The hum of talk snuffed right out as the leader rose to address the meeting. It was Leo Murko, the same man, a hard-faced, foreign-looking Hebrew whom a month before Bull's great arms flung through the broken window into the snowdrift beyond. His position now, however, was far different from that which it had been when his endeavours had been concentrated upon enrolling a Communist following. All that had been achieved or sufficiently so. Now he was the dictator whose orders could be backed by an irresistible force. His whole manner had changed. The velvet glove of persuasion had been discarded, and he hurled his commands with deep-throated authority, and the smile of encouragement and persuasion was completely abandoned.

His preliminary was brief. A phrase or two of flattery and acknowledgment to those on the platform supporting him dismissed that.

Then he pa.s.sed on to the objects in view. In five minutes he had dismissed also the ultimate destiny of the mills, and the manner in which the Workers were to benefit by its administration. Then he flung himself into a fiery denunciation of all capitalists, and particularly those who had dared to employ his audience on good wages for something like fifteen years. That completed he pa.s.sed on to the plans for taking over the mills forthwith.

During the earlier part of his address the audience listened with grave attention. Here and there little outbursts of applause punctuated his sentences. But when he came to the task which had been set for that night a deathly silence prevailed everywhere. The intensity was added to rather than broken by the harsh clearing of throats that came from almost every part of the hall.

"The whole thing needs cleaning up before daylight," he hurled at them.

"Our organisation is complete. Here," and he indicated the table nearby littered with papers and surrounded by four or five men who were members of the elected Soviet, "we have the lists of the names of every comrade, and the numbers of men to be used in every detail of the work before us.

They have been carefully drawn up with a view to the task required to be put through. Some tasks will be simple. Some will be less so." A grim light that was almost a smile shone in his black eyes. "But we have carefully discriminated in our personnel. That is as it should be. There will be certain bloodshed. Knowing the temperament and preparations of your late masters this seems to be inevitable. But again we have provided. Our greatest and most important task is the possession of the power station, and for the capture of that we have machine guns which will quickly reduce the enemy to capitulation. The strength of the enemy we know to the last fraction--"

"Do you?"

The challenge came from the back of the hall. It came in a quiet, refined voice that swept through the hall with the cold cut of a knife.

Someone had risen from a sitting position on a table. He stood up. It was the tall, dark figure of Father Adam clad in a garment which enveloped him from head to foot like the black ca.s.sock of a priest.

"Do you?" he cried again, as the startled leader stared stupidly at the interrupter.

Every eye turned to the back of the hall on the instant. The men on the platform looked up from their work to witness the daring of one who could interrupt the elected leader of the people. One man, slight, foreign-looking, who had been seated at the back of the platform stood up and leant against the wall.

"You know nothing of these people you are determined to destroy with machine guns," Father Adam went on. "You know nothing of the men with whom you are dealing, either the owners of the mill, or the men who have found an ample livelihood under their organisation. How can you know them? You are dastardly agents of an alien company, sent and paid to wreck a wholly Canadian enterprise. This is your first object. Your second is even more sinister, for you are the agents of that mad Leninism which has destroyed a whole race of workers in a vast country like Russia. You are a supreme pestilence seeking to destroy such human nature as will listen to your vile doctrines. It is I, I, Father Adam, tell you so. The men here to-night, whom you are inciting to theft and brutal murder, know me. They know me as their servant, as their loyal comrade and helper, ready to answer their call when trouble overtakes them, ready to yield them of my best service in the day of prosperity or the night of their woe. And as it is with them so it is with their women and their babes. That's the reason I am here to-night, the black night of their woe. And so I ask them to listen to me now as they have listened many times before in the woods and the mills, which is the world to which we all belong. If they do that, if only reason a.s.serts itself, they'll here and now turn on you, and rend you, you and your wretched gang. They'll cast you out of their midst, and fling off a foreign yoke, as they would cast out any other unclean pestilence for the purification of their homes. They'll pack you out into the northern night where no foul germs can exist. Are they to become thieves at your bidding? Are they to become murderers because your foreign money has bought them machine guns? Would they go back to their women, and their innocent babes, wiping their blood-stained hands to ask them to rejoice in the brutal crime committed in the name of brotherhood and fellows.h.i.+p?

No, sir. I know them. You don't--"

The Bolshevist flung out a denouncing hand and bellowed in his seething wrath:

"Traitor! He is of the Cap--"

But immediate uproar drowned his denunciation and a great voice shouted in the din.

"Let him speak."

A dozen other voices strove to make themselves heard, and a wild pandemonium was rising when clear and sharp Father Adam's voice rang out again above it.

"I tell you they'll have no more of you," he cried as the leader dropped back to his seat, and the dark man at the back of the platform further bestirred himself. "Order them now to man your machine guns and murder the men in the power house! Give your orders here and now! Read out your list of names and see--"

A shot rang out. The flame of a gun leapt somewhere at the back of the platform, to be followed by complete, utter silence.

Then came a sound. It was a hardly-suppressed moan. Father Adam reeled slowly. He half turned about. Then he crumpled and dropped to his knees and fell forward into hands outstretched to catch him.

Paralysis seemed to grip that dense-packed human throng. But it was only for a second. Then the avalanche leapt for the abyss.

"Father! Father Adam!"

The cry went up seemingly from a thousand throats. And with a roar the crowd surged forward. It hurled itself at the platform.

Bull stared up at the house. He moved away and glanced over the windows.

Then his eyes turned to the valley below, and his gaze settled itself on the great fires burning on the northern foresh.o.r.e of the Cove.

For some moments he stood contemplating the thing he beheld. Then, at last, he turned back to the locked door of his office. Without a word he raised one foot, and, with all his force, crashed its sole against the lock.

The lock gave and the door fell back into the pitch darkness beyond. He pa.s.sed within. After a while a light appeared in the office window. It pa.s.sed. Then it reappeared in each window of the building in succession.

Presently it remained stationary and fresh lights appeared in several of the windows. Minutes later he reappeared in the doorway.

He stepped out into the snow and came over to the waiting dog train.

"It's a cold sort of welcome," he said quietly. "But--will you please come right in, and I'll see how I can fix you up for comfort. I guess things have happened since I've been away. They've turned off heat.

However--"

Nancy McDonald rose from her place in the sled. She flung back the wealth of furs under which she had been well-nigh buried and stepped out. She made no reply, but stood waiting while Bull gave orders to his driver.

"Get those dogs fixed, Gouter," he said. "Then come right along back here. You'll need to gather fuel and set those stoves going."

A great fire was roaring in the wood stove in the office. Nancy and Bull were standing before it seeking to drive out the cold which seemed to have eaten into their bones. Bull had drawn up his own rocker-chair for the girl but she had not availed herself of it.

"You are not going to keep me here, prisoner in--your house?"

The girl spoke in a low, hushed tone. In the indifferent lamp-light she looked ghastly pale and utterly weary-eyed. She had removed her furs, revealing herself clad in the heavy clothing which alone could have served on her desperate journey through the camps. It robbed her figure of much of its usual grace.

"I'm afraid I am." Bull smiled gently, for all the decision of his words. "You see, Nancy, we're still at war. Still fighting the battle that others have forced on us."

Nancy inclined her head.

"I'd forgotten," she said almost humbly. "But you have no women folk around you," she went on urgently a moment later. "Does war mean that--that I must submit even--to that?"

It was the woman in her that had taken alarm. Her hands were pressed together as she held them over the stove. The man understood. She moved away to the window, over which the curtains had not been drawn, and Bull watched her.

"Every respect will be paid you," he said. "You've nothing to fear. When Gouter returns he'll get food, and we'll make the best preparations we can. I've to consider others with more at stake than even I."

"Look!"

The girl had turned. Her eyes were wide with terror. She was pointing at the window, and Bull hurried to her side.

A great fire was raging on the north sh.o.r.e of the Cove. It was the recreation room, that room which Bat had so bitterly come to hate. It was ablaze from end to end, and lit up its neighbourhood so that the scene was of daylight clearness. A horde of human figures were gathered about it, in a struggling, seething ma.s.s, and the man realised that a battle was raging, a human battle, whilst the demon of fire was left to work its will.

He stood there, held speechless by the thing he beheld.

"What is it? What does it mean?"

Panic drove the questions to the girl's lips. And she turned in an agony of appeal to the man beside her.

"It means the work of the Skandinavia has been well and truly done."