But for the certainty of the Plutocrats that their money will win them a victory, all the leaders of the Independence party would be forcibly done away with.

The prospects of the coming election look dubious for the people. On August thirteenth the Committee of Forty determined to take the step for re-emanc.i.p.ation. The time to strike the telling blow at monopoly is approaching. The men all know what the work outlined will entail, and they have brought themselves to look at the matter in much the same light as the originator of the unparalleled expedient.

"We have been forced into adopting the plan of annihilation," Professor Talbort declares to Henry Neilson, a fellow committeeman with whom he is traveling to the Pacific coast.

"I agree with you," replies Neilson, "it is the only course open to us; we have given every other proposal careful consideration. They would only temporarily avert a conflict."

"I have pondered on the question of how our acts will be accepted by the people," the Professor resumes. "I believe they will hail our acts as those of deliverance."

"They will appreciate that we gave our lives for them," Neilson declares unhesitatingly.

All of the Forty act with similar coolness.

Men of action are not as a usual thing great talkers; so it is with the members of this committee. They waive much that would be deemed essential by less resolute and active men. How the several annihilations are to be effected is a matter left for each man to decide for himself.

He will have to carry out any plan he devises, and it is considered as the best policy to let his method be known to no one else. This is the surest way of avoiding a possible miscarriage of the plan.

The failure of one of the forty men will not then involve the remaining thirty-nine. Every contingency is weighed. The chance of one or more of the men going insane because of the frightful secret, is taken into account and the idea that each man shall decide the details of the course he is to pursue is adopted.

"I am glad that we parted without formality," Nettinger declares to the group of committeemen who are his companions on a train that leaves Chicago for the South.

"It would have unnerved us to speak of our meeting as '_the last_'" says another of the group. "I have faced danger in my life, but I regard this as the most astounding departure that has ever been made in the interests of humanity."

"The future of the Republic is at stake," observes a third. "How will it all end?"

This is the question that is uppermost in the minds of all.

"There is no time left to weigh the effects of defeat," Nettinger a.s.serts. "Each of us has but one thing to do, and to do this successfully he has pledged his life. No man can do more."

The eleven disciples, as they separated after the crucifixion, each to pursue a separate course, inaugurated the preaching of a great and potential religion, and their work is the most momentous in history. So it may prove that this Nineteenth Century aggregation of men united for the purpose of benefiting their fellowmen, is of tantamount influence on the human race.

From acting as component parts in a body that exists as a moral protest against the wrongs of the world and the unrelenting hands of the usurpers of the right of the people, these forty men go forth as an army of crusaders.

On the committee of forty there is not a man who has not argued his conscience into a state of appreciation of the worthiness of the action he is to perform.

It is past midnight. Two months from this date, on October thirteenth, the fulfillment of the vows the men have taken, must be made. In the sixty days that are to intervene will any of these intrepid wills bend under the pressure of mental anxiety? Will any of them prove a modern Judas?

Nevins is the last to quit the store-room. He is nervous, almost hysterical; his thin cla.s.sical features are distorted and tense, as though he were undergoing actual physical pain. And indeed to his sensitive nature, the events of the night are sufficient to unnerve his mind and body.

He is to meet Carl Metz and Hendrick Stahl in the morning, to start for the East.

"The syndicate of annihilation is now incorporated," he observes, half aloud. "I am no longer the promoter; now I a.s.sume a place as one of the avengers of the people. G.o.d alone knows how repugnant this plan for physical vengeance is to me, yet it is better than to permit a storm of anarchy to come upon us. And the conditions that exist cannot long continue."

Although every man has been called upon to make a personal sacrifice there is none who makes a greater one than he. It is not alone the relinquishment of his position in the world as a patient and industrious worker; his sacrifice of love; the obliteration of his hope for preferment, but the extinction of life itself at an age when all men cherish it most highly.

Nevins is in the heyday of manhood; his forty years and six having been spent in the perfection of his mental and physical forces. He is equipped with a quick, perceptive brain that grasps the intricacies of a problem almost intuitively; his logic is profound. Years of study have made his mind a storehouse of knowledge.

To Nevins, in the allotment of the proscribed, has fallen the head of the money trust, a multi-millionaire banker, a financial Magnate known throughout the civilized world as the most rapacious miser on record.

This man has repeatedly shown that he has no regard for honesty of purpose, and his moral appreciation is imperceptible. To recount the deeds of cunning, of fraud, of gigantic robbery that he has committed in his relentless quest for wealth, would be to retell the story of wrecked railroads, enormously profitable bond issues and Wall street panics of the past decade. The obituaries of the hundreds he has ruined afford the best method of arriving at a partial conception of his power for evil.

"What a privilege to rid the world of this genius of evil!" is Nevins's inward comment as he reads the fatal slip and sees that upon him has fallen the lot to execute the sentence of annihilation upon James Golding, the King of Wall street.

CHAPTER XX.

IN THE ENEMY'S STRONGHOLD.

After an absence of weeks, during which time Harvey Trueman carries the war into the very heart of the Magnates' strongholds, he returns to Chicago. His first mission is to visit Sister Martha. She had been kept in touch with his movements by short notes and aggravatingly brief telegrams, which he sent her as occasion permitted. In the papers she finds but meagre notice of the progress which the Independence party is making, for the censor of the press has effectually silenced all the important mediums. The News a.s.sociations, even, are brought under the ban and are given to understand that a violation of the orders of the Plutocratic Party will mean a forfeiture of all privileges of transportation to papers using the offensive news.

The meeting of these two ardent patriots is fraught with emotion.

Trueman is the more moved by reason of the knowledge that he is regarded by Martha as the embodiment of all virtue, wisdom and power. He feels his incapacity to fill this exalted role, especially as the unrequited love he bears for Ethel Purdy is still burning in his heart.

"You do not seem yourself to-night," Martha tells him frankly.

"No, that is true; I have so much to think about; so many details to keep in mind that I suffer from abstraction when I am not under the stress of actual labor."

Trueman is seated beside a table in the centre of the Sisters' Home, which has come to be the only haven of rest he knows in the whole world.

He is in a communicative mood, and appreciating that the woman before him is an interested listener he is ready to review the events of the campaign.

"I have so many evidences of treachery in my own camp that at times I despair of the result of the struggle," he says, half despondently.

"It is the accursed power of gold that is fighting you," Martha breaks in vehemently. "O, if we could only have a few thousand dollars to fight them with their own weapon."

At the mention of so paltry a sum to be pitted against the unlimited millions of the Magnates, Trueman cannot repress a smile.

"I know it may seem ludicrous for a woman to talk politics," continues his gentle adviser, apologetically. "Yet it would not take as much as you imagine to nullify the effect of the millions of bribe money and tribute money that the Plutocrats are spending.

"What would you have me do with the money?"

"Use it in enlightening the people as to their true condition. It is impossible to conceive of men who would knowingly sell their birthright.

The perfidy of the press is the sin of sins in this age of unbridled iniquity," she declares, her face flushing with indignation. "Free speech has not yet been totally interdicted. Speak to the people; tell them to emanc.i.p.ate themselves."

"You make me wish, almost, that your s.e.x was not debarred from the exercise of suffrage," Trueman declares. "If I receive as staunch support from the men of the land as I have already been accorded by the women I shall triumph at the polls.

"Let me recount the events of the past few days that I have only hinted at in my letters. It will make you glad that you were born a woman.

"When I reached Milwaukee, ten days ago," continues Trueman, "I found that the committee of coercion had antic.i.p.ated my arrival and had issued its edict against the citizens turning out to see me. The police had received their instructions to keep the streets clear, and they were untiring in their efforts to earn the approbation of their masters. The train arrived at one-thirty in the afternoon. Ordinarily there would have been a large crowd at the depot; to our surprise we found the depot and the adjoining streets practically deserted.

"As our party moved in the direction of the hotel, I noticed that a woman was keeping pace with us on the opposite side of the street. She was dressed in a modest gown and would not have attracted attention had she not continually turned her head to look behind her.

"Yielding to an impulse of curiosity I turned my head and saw that at the distance of a block a squad of police was following us. Then it dawned upon me that the woman was endeavoring to give our party the cue.

When the steps of the hotel were reached I felt impelled to see where the woman would go. She stood on the corner of the street for half a minute and then disappeared around the corner.

"Half an hour later I was handed the card of a 'Mrs. Walton.' Upon going to the reception room I found that the strange woman had come to see me.

"Her first words, 'Are we alone?' made me feel that I should have a new element to meet. I suspected a trap of the enemy. When I a.s.sured her that she was at liberty to speak, Mrs. Walton went directly to the point.