the hall.

"The whole thing needs cleaning up before daylight," he hurled at them.
"Our organisation is complete. Here," and he indicated the table nearby
littered with papers and surrounded by four or five men who were members
of the elected Soviet, "we have the lists of the names of every comrade,
and the numbers of men to be used in every detail of the work before us.
They have been carefully drawn up with a view to the task required to be
put through. Some tasks will be simple. Some will be less so." A grim
light that was almost a smile shone in his black eyes. "But we have
carefully discriminated in our personnel. That is as it should be. There
will be certain bloodshed. Knowing the temperament and preparations of
your late masters this seems to be inevitable. But again we have
provided. Our greatest and most important task is the possession of the
power station, and for the capture of that we have machine guns which
will quickly reduce the enemy to capitulation. The strength of the enemy
we know to the last fraction--"

"Do you?"

The challenge came from the back of the hall. It came in a quiet,
refined voice that swept through the hall with the cold cut of a knife.
Someone had risen from a sitting position on a table. He stood up. It
was the tall, dark figure of Father Adam clad in a garment which
enveloped him from head to foot like the black cassock of a priest.

"Do you?" he cried again, as the startled leader stared stupidly at the
interrupter.

Every eye turned to the back of the hall on the instant. The men on the
platform looked up from their work to witness the daring of one who
could interrupt the elected leader of the people. One man, slight,
foreign-looking, who had been seated at the back of the platform stood
up and leant against the wall.

"You know nothing of these people you are determined to destroy with
machine guns," Father Adam went on. "You know nothing of the men with
whom you are dealing, either the owners of the mill, or the men who have
found an ample livelihood under their organisation. How can you know
them? You are dastardly agents of an alien company, sent and paid to
wreck a wholly Canadian enterprise. This is your first object. Your
second is even more sinister, for you are the agents of that mad
Leninism which has destroyed a whole race of workers in a vast country
like Russia. You are a supreme pestilence seeking to destroy such human
nature as will listen to your vile doc