“You are in wrong on the revolution,” said the stranger.  “It is not to come off in South America, but in the city of New York.  If Blizzard’s plans carry, this will happen.  On the 15th of January there will be an explosion of dynamite loud enough to be heard from, the Battery to the Bronx.  At that signal two-thirds of the police force, at the moment on active duty, will be shot dead in their tracks.  The assassins, distinguished from law-abiding citizens by straw hats of a peculiar weave—­”

“I have such a hat in my trunk.”

“Are to assemble together with that third of the police force whom it was not necessary to annihilate, at the Sub-Treasury in Wall Street.  Here they will receive further orders—­some to loot the Sub-Treasury, some to loot banks, some Tiffany’s, some the great wholesale jewellers of Maiden Lane.  You, perhaps, as a man of superior talk and breeding, would be sent with a picked crew of Polacks, dagoes, and other high-minded patriots to rifle the Metropolitan Museum of Art—­”

“Look here, did O’Hagan—­”

“He did.  Meanwhile all communication by telephone, by telegraph, by cable between New York and the outer world will be cut off.  For at least twenty-four hours the city will be in Blizzard’s power, at his, disposition.”

“How about communication by train?”

“Trains will come into the Grand Central and the Pennsylvania, but they will not go out.”

“A man could jump into an automobile and carry the news.”

“Ferries will stop running.  Bridges will be closed.”

The idea of looting New York had fired Wilmot’s imagination.  It was a possibility to which he had never before given any thought,

“But,” he objected, “there must be a flaw somewhere.”

“Probably,” admitted the stranger.  “For there is a flaw in Blizzard’s mind.  It is the only way to account for him.  He stands on the verge of insanity.”

“Suppose the plan carries.  The city has been looted.  What next?”

“The stuff is hidden under Blizzard’s house in Marrow Lane in cellars that he has been preparing for years.  A passage leads from these cellars to a pier on the East River.  Either he gets away with his loot in a stolen liner, or he finds that he may live on in New York, or perhaps in Washington.”

“I don’t see that.”

“What effect would a successful revolution in New York have upon the discontented and the murderous of other cities?  Are the criminals of San Francisco, Denver, Chicago to be outdone by the criminals of the effete East?  I tell you, Mr. Allen, that sometimes in mad visions the legless beggar sees upon his brows a kingly crown.”

“But the rest of the police—­the garrison at Governor’s Island?”

“O’Hagan was Blizzard’s right-hand man, his general in the West.  For the honor of being his left-hand man there are two aspirants—­the mayor of New York City and the police commissioner—­nor will the lieutenant-governor of our great State hold his hands behind his back and shake his head when the loot is being distributed.”