That night, at Englewood—in the Billionaire's home and in the workman's simple room at Oakwood Heights—history was being made.
The outcome, tragic and terrible, who could have foreseen?
CHAPTER IX.
DISCHARGED.
Almost all the following morning, working at his bench in the electro-chemical laboratories of the great Oakwood Heights plant, Gabriel Armstrong pondered deeply on the problems and responsibilities now opening out before him.
The finding of that little red-leather note-book, he fully understood, had at one stroke put him in possession of facts more vital to the labor-movement and the world at large than any which had ever developed since the very beginning of Capitalism. A Socialist to the backbone, thoroughly class-conscious and dowered with an incisive intellect, Gabriel thrilled at thought that he, by chance, had been chosen as the instrument through which he felt the final revolution now must work. And though he remained outwardly calm, as he bent above his toil, inwardly he was aflame. His heart throbbed with an excitement he could scarce control. His brain seemed on fire; his soul pulsed with savage joy and magnificent inspiration. For he was only four-and-twenty, and the bitter grind of years and toil had not yet worn his spirit down nor quelled the ardor of his splendid strength and optimism.
Working at his routine labor, his mind was not upon it. No, rather it dwelt upon the vast discovery he had made—or seemed to have made—the night before. Clearly limned before his vision, he still saw the notes, the plans, the calculations he had been able to decipher in the Billionaire's lost note-book—the note-book which now, deep in the pocket of his jumper that hung behind him on a hook against the wall, drew his every thought, as steel draws the compass-needle.
"Incredible, yet true!" he pondered, as he filed a brass casting for a new-type dynamo. "These men are plotting to strangle the world to death—to strangle, if they cannot own and rule it! And, what's more, I see nothing to prevent their doing it. The plan is sound. They have the means. At this very moment, the whole human race is standing in the shadow of a peril so great, a slavery so imminent, that the most savage war of conquest ever waged would be a mere skirmish, by comparison!"