For its semi-monthly conference the committee meets at Drover’s hall.  The deliberations are not open to the public; still, no attempt is made to conceal the fact that there is a meeting.

Nevins and the other leading members decide that the secret meeting at which he is to develop his plan shall be held in a place where there will be no possible way for a spy to creep in.

They select a deserted rolling mill on the edge of the river in North Chicago.  This mill was one of the most prosperous in the city prior to the consolidation of the iron industries.  Immediately following the combine the mill had been closed and the work that should have gone to it was transferred to the Trust’s great plant in Pittsburg.

For eight years the fires in the furnaces have been extinguished; the incompleted iron work that lies about the ground has been given over to the ravages of rust; desolation is the master of the mill.

The spot is an ideal one for a secret meeting place.  The police never enter the grounds except at long intervals, when the inspector of the precinct is on his rounds.  This official makes a perfunctory survey of the mausoleum of dead industry.  In his report the entry, “Iron works vacant,” sufficiently describes the place.

On the night of the secret meeting the members arrive at the mill by various routes.  There are three entrances on land and a wharf extends along the eastern limit of the enclosure.  Five of the delegates cross the river in a skiff.

At nine o’clock all the men are present.  They gather on the second floor of the storage shed, a brick structure one hundred by one hundred and fifty feet in area, and three stories high.  There are no windows in its bleak walls.  On each floor in the wall that faces the interior court of the mill enclosure are two corrugated iron doors.  These doors are closed, and effectually exclude the light from without, as well as any light that might be made within.  On the floor where the committee meet there is a rough plank table that was used by the machinists of the mill.

At this improvised tribunal the Forty meet to discuss the regeneration of the nation.

Two candles at either end of the ten foot table serve to reveal the dense darkness rather than to dispel it.  The flickering-lights fall on the faces of the men as they sit on the floor in a semi-circle.  Their eyes are alone perceptible, and the several members are unable to distinguish one another.

The voice of one speaker after another issues from the darkness, producing a supernatural effect upon the assemblage.  The nerves of even the most intrepid are at a high tension.

A gust of wind rattling the iron doors causes the men to start; the lowest whisper is intensified to what seems a sonorous shout.  In this strange theatre, the actors in what is to be the greatest world-drama, wait to be assigned their parts and to play the first act.