"You forget," said she, "that all public meetings have been prohibited, ever since last April. Federal statute—the new Penfield Bill—'The Muzzler' as we call it."
"That's so!" he murmured. "I forgot. Fact is, Kate, I am out of touch with things. While you've been fighting, I've been buried alive. Now, I must learn much, before I can jump back into the war again. And above all, I must lose my identity. That's the first and most essential thing of all!"
"Of course," she assented. "They—the Air Trust World-corporation—will trail you, everywhere you go. All this, as you know, has been provided for. You must vanish a while."
"Indeed I must. If they 'jobbed' me like that, in 1921, what won't they do now in 1925?"
"They won't ever get you, again, Gabriel," she answered, "if your wits and ours combined, can beat them. True, the Movement has been badly shot to pieces. That is, its visible organization has suffered, and it's outlawed. But under the surface, Gabriel, you haven't an idea of its spread and power. It's tremendous—it's a volcano waiting to burst! Let the moment come, the leader rise, the fire burst forth, and God knows what may not happen!"
"Splendid!" exclaimed Gabriel. "The battle calls me, like a clarion-call! But we must act with circumspection. The Plutes, powerful as they now are, won't need even the shadow of an excuse to plant me for life, or slug or shoot me. Things were rotten enough, then; but today they're worse. The hand of this Air Trust monopoly, grasping every line of work and product in the world, has got the lid nailed fast. We're all slaves, every man and woman of us. Even our Socialists in Congress can do nothing, with all these muzzling and sedition and treason bills, and with this conscription law just through. Now that the government—the Air Trust, that is to say—is running the railways and telegraphs and telephones, a strike is treason—and treason is death! Kate, this year of grace, 1925, is worse than ever I dreamed it would be. Oh, infinitely worse! No wonder our movement has been driven largely underground. No wonder that the war of mass and class is drawing near—the actual, physical war between the Air Trust few and the vast, toiling, suffering, stifling world!"
She nodded.
"Yes," said she, "it's coming, and soon. Things are as you say, and even worse than you say, Gabriel. I know more of them, now, than you can know. Remember London's 'Iron Heel?' When I first read it I thought it fanciful and wild. God knows I was mistaken! London didn't put it half strongly enough. The beginning was made when the National Mounted Police came in. All the rest has swiftly followed. If you and I live five years longer, Gabriel, we'll see a harsher, sterner and more murderous trampling of that Heel than ever Comrade Jack imagined!"
"Right!" said he. "And for that very reason, Kate, I've got to go into hiding till my beard and hair grow and I can reappear as a different man. Don't look, just now, but in a minute take a peek. Over on that third bench, on the other side of the park, see that man? Well, he's a 'shadow.' There were three waiting for me, at the prison gates. You couldn't spot them, but I could. One was that Italian banana-seller that stood at the curb, on the first corner. Another was a taxi driver. And this one, over there, is the third. From now till they 'get' me again, they'll follow me like bloodhounds. I can't go free, to do my work and take part in the impending war, till I shake them. Look, now, do you see the one I mean?"
Cautiously the girl looked round, with casual glance as though to see a little boy playing by the fountain.