"Drive to the Twenty-third street ferry as fast as you can. I'll give you an extra dollar if you make the four o'clock boat," he tells the cab driver.
"All right Mr. Trueman," replies the man, who recognizes the people's candidate. "You'll get the boat. Don't worry about that."
From Twenty-third street and Broadway the cab starts. It turns west on
Twenty-fourth street. Then the driver whips up his horse. At Eleventh
Avenue a freight train is passing. It will delay Trueman for five
minutes. He jumps from the cab.
"Mr. Benson will pay you," he calls to the cab-man. The train moves down the street at a slow rate of speed.
Trueman jumps on a car, climbs across it and jumps to the street. At a run he makes for the ferry house.
As he passes the gateman he throws down a silver piece for ferry fare and rushes toward the boat. Half a minute later the boat draws out of the slip. When he enters the train, Trueman seats himself in the smoking-car. The man next to him is reading a late extra which he has bought at Cortlandt street.
Glancing over the man's shoulder, Trueman reads of the deaths of financiers, statesmen, manufacturers. All have met sudden and violent deaths, and in each instance there is announced the suicide or accidental death of an unknown companion.
Under a seven-column head, printed in red, is a suggestive paragraph. It asks if the wave of annihilation can have any connection with the Committee of Forty. And as if to answer the interrogation affirmatively, the paragraph concludes in these words:
"On the cards of six of the men whose bodies have been found with the murdered multi-millionaires, reference to the Committee of Forty is made point-blank. One asserts: 'In the future, arrogant capitalists will not sneer at the protestations of a committee of the people. As a deliberative body the Committee of Forty was impotent; as the avenger of the downtrodden, it will never be forgotten.' Another bears this strange inscription: 'When anarchy seems imminent, take courage, for an honest leader will deliver you from harm.'
"There are two cards which quote direct from the Scriptures: 'The wicked in his pride doth persecute the poor: let them be taken in the devices that they have imagined.' This gives the motive which supplied the assassin of the Sugar King with courage to commit a double crime. He was a religious fanatic. The name George M. Watson was scribbled on the back of the card. This is the name of one of the Committee of Forty.