* A lie.

And as the oligarchs had done with the morning papers, so had they done in a thousand other ways.  These we learned afterward, as, for example, the secret messages of the oligarchs, sent with the express purpose of leaking to the ears of the revolutionists, that had come over the wires, now and again, during the first part of the night.

“I guess the Iron Heel won’t need our services,” Hartman remarked, putting down the paper he had been reading, when the train pulled into the central depot.  “They wasted their time sending us here.  Their plans have evidently prospered better than they expected.  Hell will break loose any second now.”

He turned and looked down the train as we alighted.

“I thought so,” he muttered.  “They dropped that private car when the papers came aboard.”

Hartman was hopelessly depressed.  I tried to cheer him up, but he ignored my effort and suddenly began talking very hurriedly, in a low voice, as we passed through the station.  At first I could not understand.

“I have not been sure,” he was saying, “and I have told no one.  I have been working on it for weeks, and I cannot make sure.  Watch out for Knowlton.  I suspect him.  He knows the secrets of a score of our refuges.  He carries the lives of hundreds of us in his hands, and I think he is a traitor.  It’s more a feeling on my part than anything else.  But I thought I marked a change in him a short while back.  There is the danger that he has sold us out, or is going to sell us out.  I am almost sure of it.  I wouldn’t whisper my suspicions to a soul, but, somehow, I don’t think I’ll leave Chicago alive.  Keep your eye on Knowlton.  Trap him.  Find out.  I don’t know anything more.  It is only an intuition, and so far I have failed to find the slightest clew.”  We were just stepping out upon the sidewalk.  “Remember,” Hartman concluded earnestly.  “Keep your eyes upon Knowlton.”

And Hartman was right.  Before a month went by Knowlton paid for his treason with his life.  He was formally executed by the comrades in Milwaukee.

All was quiet on the streets—­too quiet.  Chicago lay dead.  There was no roar and rumble of traffic.  There were not even cabs on the streets.  The surface cars and the elevated were not running.  Only occasionally, on the sidewalks, were there stray pedestrians, and these pedestrians did not loiter.  They went their ways with great haste and definiteness, withal there was a curious indecision in their movements, as though they expected the buildings to topple over on them or the sidewalks to sink under their feet or fly up in the air.  A few gamins, however, were around, in their eyes a suppressed eagerness in anticipation of wonderful and exciting things to happen.

From somewhere, far to the south, the dull sound of an explosion came to our ears.  That was all.  Then quiet again, though the gamins had startled and listened, like young deer, at the sound.  The doorways to all the buildings were closed; the shutters to the shops were up.  But there were many police and watchmen in evidence, and now and again automobile patrols of the Mercenaries slipped swiftly past.