“Go slow,” I called to him. “You might hurt somebody.”
But he had his orders from the inspector. He suddenly darted ahead at full speed. The mob scattered in every direction, and we were in Broadway, bound up town full-tilt, before I or the mob realized what he was about.
I called to him to slow down. He paid not the slightest attention. I leaned from the window and looked up at him. It was not my chauffeur; it was a man who had the unmistakable but indescribable marks of the plainclothes policeman. “Where are you going?” I shouted.
“You’ll find out when we arrive,” he shouted back, grinning.
I settled myself and waited—what else was there to do? Soon I guessed we were headed for the pier off which my yacht was anchored. As we dashed on to it, I saw that it was filled with police, both in uniform and in plain clothes. I descended. A detective sergeant stepped up to me. “We are here to help you to your yacht,” he explained. “You wouldn’t be safe anywhere in New York—no more would the place that harbored you.”
He had both common sense and force on his side. I got into the launch. Four detective sergeants accompanied me, and went aboard with me. “Go ahead,” said one of them to my captain. He looked at me for orders. “We are in the hands of our guests,” said I. “Let them have their way.”
We steamed down the bay and out to sea.
* * * * *
From Maine to Texas the cry rose and swelled: “Blacklock is responsible! What does it matter whether he lied or told the truth? See the results of his crusade! He ought to be pilloried! He ought to be killed! He is the enemy of the human race. He has almost plunged the whole civilized world into bankruptcy and civil war.” And they turned eagerly to the very autocrats who had been oppressing and robbing them. “You have the genius for finance and industry. Save us!”
If you did not know, you could guess how those patriots with the “genius for finance and industry” responded. When they had done, when their program was in effect, Langdon, Melville and Updegraff were the three richest men in the country, and as powerful as Octavius, Anthony and Lepidus after Philippi. They had saddled upon the reorganized finance and industry of the nation heavier taxes than ever, and a vaster and more expensive and more luxurious army of their parasites. The people had risen for financial and industrial freedom; they had paid its fearful price; then, in senseless panic and terror, they flung it away. I have read that one of the inscriptions on Apollo’s temple at Delphi was, “Man, the fool of the farce.” Truly, the gods must have created us for their amusement; and when Olympus palls, they ring up the curtain on some such screaming comedy as was that. It