“Jim!” she said. And then:
“You must go away, Jim. I warn you.
I am going to tell all I know.”
But the figure turned, and it was Howard Cardew, a
tense and strained Howard Cardew, who loomed amazingly
tall and angry, but not with her.
“I’m sorry, Nellie dear,” he said,
bending over her. “If we’d only
known—can you talk now?”
Her mind was suddenly very clear.
“I must. There is very little time.”
“I want to tell you something first, Nellie.
I think we have located the Russian woman, but we
haven’t got Doyle.”
Howard was not very subtle, but Willy Cameron saw
her face and understood. It was strange beyond
belief, he felt, this loyalty of women to their men,
even after love had gone; this feeling that, having
once lain in a man’s arms, they have taken a
vow of protection over that man. It was not
so much that they were his as that he was theirs.
Jim Doyle had made her a prisoner, had treated her
brutally, was a traitor to her and to his country,
but—he had been hers. She was glad
that he had got away.
It was dark when Howard Cardew and Willy Cameron left
the hospital. Elinor’s information had
been detailed and exact. Under cover of the
general strike the radical element intended to take
over the city. On the evening of the first day
of the strike, armed groups from the revolutionary
party would proceed first to the municipal light plant,
and, having driven out any employees who remained at
their posts, or such volunteers as had replaced them,
would plunge the city into darkness.
Elinor was convinced that following this would come
various bomb outrages, perhaps a great number of them,
but of this she had no detailed information.
What she did know, however, was the dependence that
Doyle and the other leaders were placing in the foreign
element in the nearby mill towns and from one or two
mining districts in the county.
Around the city, in the mill towns, there were more
than forty thousand foreign laborers. Subtract
from that the loyal aliens, but add a certain percentage
of the native-born element, members of seditious societies
and followers of the red flag, and the Reds had a
potential army of dangerous size.
As an actual fighting force they were much less impressive.
Only a small percentage, she knew and told them,
were adequately armed. There were a few machine
guns, and some long-range rifles, but by far the greater
number had only revolvers. The remainder had
extemporized weapons, bars of iron, pieces of pipe,
farm implements, lances of wood tipped with iron
and beaten out on home forges.
They were a rabble, not an army, without organization
and with few leaders. Their fighting was certain
to be as individualistic as their doctrines.
They had two elements in their favor only, numbers
and surprise.
