Part 42 (1/2)
Blizzard is planning a revolution. You are to be one of the leaders. You imagine that one of the h.e.l.l-governed Latin republics is to be the seat of operations, or you wouldn't have gone into the thing. But Blizzard is after bigger game than undeveloped wildernesses. Mr. Allen, you are part of a conspiracy to overthrow the government of New York City.”
”Say that again.”
The stranger smiled. ”O'Hagan at the last made a clean breast of everything. He had to. I came West to make him.”
”At the _last_? What does that mean?”
”When a man won't talk you have to make him--even if you fix him so that he can never talk again.”
”Is O'Hagan _dead_?”
”He had his choice. But he _had_ to talk. If I had let him off afterward--I couldn't have gotten away with the information. One of us had to go out, and I had the power to decide which. I chose that O'Hagan should be the one. He was a man steeped in crime. I am not.”
”You killed him?”
”I am a very poor talker if I have conveyed another meaning. I tracked him into the mountains. He shot me twice before I could get my hands on him. I twisted the truth out of him, and then as I was about to faint like a school-girl, and as my information was precious, I flung him over a cliff. If I hadn't, you see, he could have fixed me while I was unconscious.”
The man's voice was very quiet, very matter-of-fact. Wilmot stared at him with a sort of wondering horror, for he knew that the man was telling the truth.
”He shot you twice. That was some time yesterday. You've seen a doctor?”
”There was none, and I had to ride all night to get here.”
”Are you badly hit?”
The stranger drew back his coat and disclosed a s.h.i.+rt twice perforated over the abdomen and dark with dried and thickening blood. ”Please don't try to do anything. There's no help. The damage is where it doesn't show. Only listen, please, and believe, and be frank with me.”
Wilmot nodded gravely. ”I don't know who you are,” he said, ”but you are hurt, and if you'd rather talk than try to do something about it, of course I'll listen.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”I twisted the truth out of him, and then flung him over a cliff”]
”You are in wrong on the revolution,” said the stranger. ”It is not to come off in South America, but in the city of New York. If Blizzard's plans carry, this will happen. On the 15th of January there will be an explosion of dynamite loud enough to be heard from, the Battery to the Bronx. At that signal two-thirds of the police force, at the moment on active duty, will be shot dead in their tracks. The a.s.sa.s.sins, distinguished from law-abiding citizens by straw hats of a peculiar weave--”
”I have such a hat in my trunk.”
”Are to a.s.semble together with that third of the police force whom it was not necessary to annihilate, at the Sub-Treasury in Wall Street.
Here they will receive further orders--some to loot the Sub-Treasury, some to loot banks, some Tiffany's, some the great wholesale jewellers of Maiden Lane. You, perhaps, as a man of superior talk and breeding, would be sent with a picked crew of Polacks, dagoes, and other high-minded patriots to rifle the Metropolitan Museum of Art--”
”Look here, did O'Hagan--”
”He did. Meanwhile all communication by telephone, by telegraph, by cable between New York and the outer world will be cut off. For at least twenty-four hours the city will be in Blizzard's power, at his, disposition.”
”How about communication by train?”
”Trains will come into the Grand Central and the Pennsylvania, but they will not go out.”
”A man could jump into an automobile and carry the news.”