* * * * *
That evening Jake Vodell addressed the largest crowd that had yet assembled at his street meetings. With characteristic eloquence the agitator pictured Captain Charlie as a martyr to the unprincipled schemes of the employer class.
"McIver and his crew are charging the strikers with this crime in order to set our union brothers against us," he shouted. "They think that by setting up a division among us they can win. They know that if the working people stand together, true to their class, loyal to their comrades, they will rule the world. Why don't the police produce the murderer of Captain Charlie? I will tell you the answer, my brother workmen: it is because the law and the officers of the law are under the control of those who do not want the murderer produced—that is why. They dare not produce him. The life of a poor working man—what is that to these masters of crime who acknowledge no law but the laws they make for themselves. You workers have no laws. A slave knows no justice but the whim of his master. Think of the mothers and children in your homes—you slaves who create the wealth of your lords and masters. And now they have taken the life of one of your truest and most loyal union leaders. Where will they stop? If you do not stand like men against these cruel outrages what have you to hope for? You know as well as I that no workman in Millsburgh would raise his hand against such a fellow worker as Captain Charlie Martin."
While the agitator was speaking, Billy Rand moved quickly here and there through the crowd, as if searching for some one.
After the mass meeting on the street there was a meeting of the Mill workers' union.
Later, Vodell's inner circle met in the room back of Dago Bill's pool hall.
It was midnight when Billy Rand finally returned to the waiting
Interpreter.
Evidently he had failed in the mission entrusted to him by the old basket maker.
The next morning, Billy Rand again went forth with the Interpreter's message.