"We will all gain by being direct," the huge cripple continued in his quick, curt way. "We have on hand a tremendous project. Everything I am now to tell you, as well as the matters you already know—such as the killing of four flyers—must be held in your mind in proper perspective. When you grasp the immensity and dignity of our plan, you will feel that the incidents which seem to have shocked you are matters of the smallest weight. You will see that we are not cruel; we are, in fact, most merciful. We are going to substitute strength for feebleness in the administration of affairs in the swiftest and most merciful way. We estimate that we will have to kill, probably, less than ten thousand people and destroy less than two hundred millions in property to put ourselves 'in.' It will be, relative to the results we are certain to achieve, the cheapest coup d'etat in history."
He pulled himself forward on his hands, in his intensity. Now he let himself drop. He allowed himself, for a few seconds, to lean and dream; and, as I gazed at him, I got an idea of the manner of the original conception of this enterprize. It had formed in the brain of this big, masterful man broken by an airplane fall. It had formed, probably, on a hospital bed when racked by pain and when his enormous, natural energies, which had found outlet through the excesses of flight, had turned inward to scheming and dreaming.
I glanced at Bane, who never looked at me. He was watching the face, the posture, the hands of the girl beside him who, now, never looked at him but at the huge, crippled man across the desk whom Bane had made his ambassador of these ideas. These were not, as I realized at the time, exactly Bane's ideas. The dreams, the schemes of the two diverged; in certain aspects, indeed, they were opposed: and the grandeur of the cripple's certainty was the greater; he endowed them with the greater dignity. This was what Bane wanted Helen Lacey to hear.
"The case of democracy today of course is absolutely desperate," Cawder flung at us, suddenly lifting his head. "The idea of democracy, with its illusion of individual independence, could only arise in a country of little landowners, sparsely settled and living under primitive conditions; it becomes ridiculous under modern, industrial conditions. Riven the colonials, whom we call the makers of America, had to propound the absurdest fallacies to prop up their theory. That all men are born free and equal! Equal!' he mocked, "when a few—a few can fly and the rest must crawl on the ground, as they have from the beginning of the world!"
He pulled himself up nearly straight. No doubt whatever, as I saw the pride in him, that he had been a flyer.
"West Point and Annapolis take the pick of picked men, don't they?" he referred to me.
I nodded.
"How many of them, twice selected as they are, can be passed as fit to fly?"
"Perhaps one in four," I said.
He nodded. "Flyers form the small, small minority—the minority of men naturally superior. They are actually in a class by themselves; they compose a caste of their own, so superior and unassailable that they have only to realize it to rule. It is the day, of course, not of the majorities, but of the minorities. Russia demonstrates it; Italy proves it; the pitiable and contemptible condition of law enforcement on this continent proclaims it to the skies. To the skies!" he repeated, liking the phrase.
He pushed back, jerking open a drawer beside him.
"A few years ago, after an event the effects of which must be obvious to you, I found myself confronted by the necessity of providing for myself under certain handicaps. I had never been a docile or patient person. I happened to meet with another man, also neither docile or patient. Not he," Cawder absolved Bane from this connection; and I became more sure that differences divided Cawder and Bane. "Another person," Cawder continued, "who teamed with me to take, for ourselves, what we wanted where and when we wanted it.
"I will confess to you—laughable as it now seems—that I went into this imagining that I would find a certain thrill in risks to be run—risks of my life, perhaps, or at least of imprisonment.
"Of course, I was even then familiar with the ridiculous record of law enforcement: yet I did not shake myself free, at first, of the idea that I was courting danger." He laughed shortly.
"A man with a pistol may do what he pleases at almost any time on almost any street. For years it has been so. A few men with bombs—not bombs in any real sense, either, but only home-made handgrenades, a half pint of nitroglycerin in six inches of steel pipe—can dictate to a whole trade or to a section of a city. They tell a citizen to change his methods in his shop or to close his shop, to go out of business and move away—and he closes his shop or is blown up. They tell him to pay—and he pays. Citizens so threatened dare scarcely speak even when surrounded by police and promised protection. That is the power of an occasional half pint of nitroglycerin tossed from the tail of an automobile."
He laughed again and delved in his drawer.
"That is something of the power of direct methods, when applied in only half pint packages; here is something of the honor and respect in which men, who deal in directness are held. Here are a few letters to me, begging favors, thanking me, fawning on me—from politicians, governors, national figures, collectors and disbursers of campaign purses. Would you like to look at them?" He offered them to the girl beside Bane.
She shook her head. She was biting her lips and trembling; her cheeks were chalk white. Bane watched her.
"You doubt their authenticity?" Cawder challenged her.
Again she shook her head; and Cawder glanced at Bane. He wanted to help Bane with her and he was aware that he was not making much headway. He said, "I remember, your father is an important politician in his state."
"That's enough of that," put in Bane, suddenly defending her.
"Oh, all right," agreed Cawder, confirming my idea that he had, himself, no interest in her conversion. He referred tome. "Would you like to see these?"
"No," I said. "I know that such things are."
"Then you are exceedingly stupid," Cawder caught me up sharply, "to know nothing more." He struck, suddenly, the side of his chair. "Man alive and flying! If half a pint of nitro tossed from the tail of a motor-car can supercede law and impose obedience, what do you figure to be the power of a few airplanes with ton bombs of TNT? Don't you see that we can do whatever we like? We have them absolutely at our mercy! How they lie down and cringe and crawl and dare scarcely speak before the threat of half a pint of nitro tossed from a motor-car! What will they do, or what will they refuse to do, if we order it and back our orders by a few ton bombs of TNT dropped on them out of the sky?"
"They?" Helen Lacey cried. "They? who do you mean? They?"
Cawder returned to her. "They?" he repeated. "The people who imagine they rule. Nothing is more trite nor true than the observation that history repeats itself. The same causes always create the same conditions. It is inevitable. It must be so. Therefore, the day of democracy is done. The airplane brings in another state of affairs—the airplane with its tremendous powers put in the hands of the few who can fly.
"With flying, feudalism returns. It is idle to deny it. It must be so. What created the former feudalism? What established and supported the knights who for centuries ruled the world? Armor and the strength and skill to wear mail and weild the sword—superior equipment in the possession of the few. When gunpowder was invented and any fool with an arquebus became as powerful as a knight, feudalism was done; weapons made everyone equal. But at last the airplane, with TNT, puts back the overwhelming advantage of equipment in the hands of the few."
He sat back, resting on his huge hands. "We shall establish ourselves with the greatest ease. We shall strike hard and swiftly once; twice; perhaps a third time may be necessary; but I doubt it. Modern society concentrates its vital points most conveniently for us. If we had ourselves devised and ordered a method of grouping the millions of people to put them at our mercy, we could not have improved upon the present organization of things. No; we shall give two illustrations of what we can do; and no one will ask any more. They will ask us only what we want; and they will give it to us, whatever it is."
"You mean," said Helen Lacey's quivering lips, "you mean, by striking, you are going to drop your ton bombs upon some city?"
"Not necessarily," Bane put in before Cawder could answer. "Perhaps we strike first a ship at sea. There is something peculiarly impressive about the destruction of a ship at sea. The loss on board the Titanic was nothing in comparison to earthquakes; but the Titanic took the popular imagination as no other disaster until another ship like it was sunk, when the Lusitania was sent down."
"Perhaps you had better proceed," suggested Cawder coldly.
"I suppose," continued Bane, ignoring him, "it is the completeness of it; nothing left; not even ruins."
Cawder sat back, interposing nothing more; and Bane became silent. Perfectly evident again was a difference between them; momentarily, indeed it had developed to open opposition.
"This is enough for tonight," said Cawder, dismissing us and he lifted himself on his hands as he had done when we had entered. It was his substitute for rising.
Helen Lacey noticed this and, as she had swiftly seated herself to let him relax, now she arose and followed Bane. I went with them toward the panel door which had opened. That is, I thought it was the door, the same which had admitted us, until in the passage I discovered that we were led in another direction. We came, in fact, not to the outer office of the deserted desks but to a small inner room, windowless like Cawder's office and undoubtedly created from space stolen from the offices which opened, honestly, on the hallways. It was furnished with a couch, table and chairs—a cubby for temporary detention, obviously.
Bane ushered us into it; but his mind was not with us. He brooded upon his contest with Cawder; and abruptly, without a word to us, he left us.
I pushed nearly shut the panel behind him. One hand sufficed for this; my other grasped, and was grasped by, her hand. I faced her and my arms went about her to try to combat the terror in her eyes and upon her lips.