Comrades Part 39

"Indeed!"

The man fumbled in his pocket and drew out another order.

"And this one for you personally, sir."

"Oh--after the disarming?"

"Yes, sir!"

Norman read the second order and the lines of his mouth tightened suddenly. The note was brief but to the point:

"Comrade Norman Worth will report to the regent at ten o'clock for orders.

"HERMAN WOLF, "_Regent_."

For five minutes after the guards had gone Norman stood in silence staring at this order. It was the first he had ever received in his life except the one from his own father which he had disobeyed.

To be driven into another man's presence to take orders as from a master to a servant was an idea that had never entered his imagination. He had seen such things. He had given orders, but he had never, somehow, counted himself in the cla.s.s of men who took them.

For the first time he began to realize the meaning of the work he had been doing, and began to see how deftly and unconsciously he had been forging the chains of a system of irresponsible slavery on his fellow men. While the motive which impelled him was one of unselfish love, and he had thought only of their best interest, he saw now in a flash with what crus.h.i.+ng cruelty this power could be used.

It all seemed simple enough when he regarded his own will as the centre and source of power. Now that another man had grasped the lever and applied this power, the whole scheme of artificial life which he had created took on a new and darker meaning.

What should he do?

His first impulse was to walk into Wolf's presence, denounce him as a scheming scoundrel, and defy his power. That Wolf would fight was not to be questioned for a minute. His first act of disarming the colony was a master-stroke, and the longer the young leader thought of it the more hopeless his present situation became.

Beyond a doubt Wolf had been selecting the new regent's guard with the same patience and skill with which he had executed his political coup.

This guard was composed now only of his tried and trusted henchmen. A single false step on Norman's part would simply play into the wily brute's hands, and he would destroy himself at a single stroke.

He must use his brain. He must fight the devil with fire. He must submit for the moment, plan and work and wait with infinite patience, and when the work of patience was complete, then strike and strike to kill.

And yet the blood rushed to his heart and strangled with the thought of submission to such a man. But there was no other way. He had himself set the trap of steel he now felt crash into his own flesh.

To appeal to his father was unthinkable--his pride forbade it, even if it were possible.

To escape was out of the question. Every way had been cut and that by his own order. The mail was inspected. The steamer held no communication with the people of the island. No boat was allowed to land, and no boat, even the smallest sail or row boat, was permitted to a member of the Brotherhood on any pretext.

Besides, resignation or flight could not be thought of for another reason. To retreat now and leave thousands of people behind whom he had led into this enterprise would be the act of a coward.

There was nothing left except to fight it out on the lines he had himself laid down.

The one thing that hurt him most was the ugly suspicion that Barbara must have known something of this deeply laid scheme by which the Wolfs had gained control of the Brotherhood. And yet her surprise had been genuine, her anger real. He couldn't be mistaken about it. To believe her capable of such treachery and double-dealing was to doubt the very existence of truth and purity.

And yet, when he recalled how little he really knew of her past life, what dark secrets might lurk in the story of the years she had spent under the same roof with these people, he grew sick at the thought.

He knew now that the blond beast with the red scar on his neck and the slender, dark-eyed madonna-like mate who had always been his shadow were capable of anything. Two people who could smile in treacherous silence for a year and suddenly grip the throat of the man who had been their best friend, needed no written biography to tell their past. It was luminous. And in the glare in which he read it he shuddered at the sinister light it threw on the beautiful girl whom they had reared as their own.

He took from his mantel a little picture made one day in San Francis...o...b.. a tintype man. It was a singularly beautiful likeness of Barbara, taken on a sudden impulse without a moment's thought or preparation.

Her laughing face looked out at him, wreathed in a garland of wayward ringlets of dark brown hair. Truth, sincerity, beauty, intelligence, and a childlike innocence were stamped in every line.

A thousand times since he had seen her just like that. And from the moment of their advent on the island this impression of girlish innocence and sincerity had grown rather than decreased. The more he saw of her in the simpler, quieter moments of their a.s.sociation, the stronger, deeper, and more tender his love became, and the deeper grew his utter faith in the purity of her soul and body.

"I'll sooner doubt an angel of G.o.d!" he said at last, as he placed it back on the mantel.

He would see Wolf at once, learn his plans, and then carefully make his own.

He dressed with care and at the appointed hour rapped for admission at the executive office where the day before he sat as master.

He was told the regent was busy with others and ordered to wait his turn. He flushed with anger, recovered himself, waited a half hour, and was ushered into the presence of the new ruler.

Wolf sat in the big revolving chair at his desk with conscious dignity and power. Two of his guards stood outside the door, grim reminders of the substantial character of the new administration.

Norman seated himself with careless ease without invitation and waited for the older man to speak.

Wolf smiled grimly, stroked his thick, coa.r.s.e reddish beard, and looked at Norman thoughtfully a moment.

"Well, my boy," the regent began, with friendly patronage, "we'd as well come to the point without ceremony. You are down and out. The new board of governors will do what I wish. I am in supreme command of the s.h.i.+p of state. Do you want to fight or work?"

"It's a poor doctor, Wolf," Norman said, coolly, "who can't take his own medicine. I came here to work."

"Congratulations on your good sense!" the regent replied. "I've no desire to make trouble for you. I have nothing against you personally. I had to put you out and take command to save the colony from ruin. You meant well, but you were a bungling amateur, and you can be of greater service in the ranks than in command. I know you don't like me after what has happened, but you don't have to. I'll be generous. What sort of work would you like to have a.s.signed you?"

"Thanks, that's very kind of you, Wolf, I'm sure. I believe the warden of every penitentiary is equally generous to all convicts. However, that's a minor detail, seeing that I a.s.sisted in the creation of this ideal world."

Wolf smashed the desk top with his big fist and suddenly glared at Norman, his cold eyes gleaming angrily.

"Come to the point! I've no time to waste! Have you any choice as to the kind of work to which you wish to be a.s.signed?"

"I have a decided choice. Our mines have all failed. I'll redeem the failure by perfecting and completing the big dredge for mining gold from the low-grade sands on the beach."

"A waste of time and money," Wolf snapped. "I can't afford to spare the men on any more fool inventions. Such things must stop."

"You mean to stop all progress by stopping inventions?" Norman asked.

"So far as the State is concerned, yes," said the regent, with emphasis. "Under your slipshod administration we spent nearly two hundred thousand dollars during the past year on so-called inventions.

Every fool in the colony has invented something. Not one in a hundred has produced an idea that is practicable. We cannot afford to waste the capital of the State in such idiocy."

"Give me twenty men and I'll complete the dredge."

"Labour is capital in the Socialist State. I can't afford to waste it."

"But you are not wasting it," Norman pleaded. "I've spent sixty thousand already on this invention. Unless the machine is completed the capital will be lost to the colony."

"It will be lost anyhow," Wolf answered, impatiently. "Your whole conception is a piece of childish folly. You can't make a profit operating a dredge in sand containing only twenty cents' worth of gold to a ton of dirt."

"I can do better," Norman urged with enthusiasm. "I can make a hundred per cent. on the investment if the dirt pans out ten cents to the ton.

If it pans twenty cents a ton I can make millions."