The desperate strait demanded an eminence to speak from, but the way to the platform was blocked. Tom vaulted to the top of the grand piano, and his eyes blazed down upon the crowd.
"You shall listen to me!" he shouted, breaking in on Connelly. His right arm pointed across the hall to where Foley was bowed in humiliation. "Buck Foley has sold you out!"
In the great din his voice did not carry more than a dozen rows, but upon those rows silence fell suddenly. "What was that?" men just behind asked excitedly, their eyes on Tom standing on the piano, his arm stretched toward Foley. A tide of explanation moved backward, and the din sank before it.
Tom shouted again: "Buck Foley has sold you out!"
This time his words reached the farthest man in the hall. There was an instant of stupefied quiet. Then Foley himself stood up. He seemed to have paled a shade, but there was not a quaver in his voice when he spoke.
"This's a nice little stage play our friend's made up for the last minute. He's been fightin' a settlement right along, an' this is his last trick to get youse to put it off. He's sorter like a blind friend o' mine who went fishin' one day. He got turned with his back to the river, an' he fished all day in the grass. I think Keating's got turned in the wrong direction, too."
A few in the crowd laughed waveringly; some began to talk excitedly; but most looked silently at Tom, still stunned by his blow-like declaration.
Tom paid no attention to Foley's words. "Fifty thousand dollars was what he got!" he said in his loudest voice.
For the moment it was as if those fifteen hundred men had been struck dumb and helpless. Again it was Foley who broke the silence. He reared his long body above the bewildered crowd and spoke easily. "If youse boys don't see through that lie youse're blind. If I was runnin' the strike alone an' wanted to sell it out, what Keating's said might be possible. But I ain't runnin' it. A committee is—five men. Now how d'youse suppose I could sell out with four men watchin' me—an' one o' them a friend o' Keating?"
He did not wait for a response from his audience. He turned to Connelly and went on with a provoked air: "Mr. Chairman, youse know, an' the rest o' the committee knows, that it was youse who suggested we give up the strike. An' youse know I held out again' givin' in. Now ain't we had enough o' Keating's wind? S'pose youse put the question."