The others were discussing the matter, and seemed not to have noticed Lindau, who controlled himself and sighed:  “You are right.  I must have patience.”

Beaton was saying to Dryfoos, “Pity your Pinkertons couldn’t have given them a few shots before they left.”

“No, that wasn’t necessary,” said Dryfoos.  “I succeeded in breaking up the union.  I entered into an agreement with other parties not to employ any man who would not swear that he was non-union.  If they had attempted violence, of course they could have been shot.  But there was no fear of that.  Those fellows can always be depended upon to cut one another’s throats in the long run.”

“But sometimes,” said Colonel Woodburn, who had been watching throughout. for a chance to mount his hobby again, “they make a good deal of trouble first.  How was it in the great railroad strike of ’77?”

“Well, I guess there was a little trouble that time, colonel,” said Fulkerson.  “But the men that undertake to override the laws and paralyze the industries of a country like this generally get left in the end.”

“Yes, sir, generally; and up to a certain point, always.  But it’s the exceptional that is apt to happen, as well as the unexpected.  And a little reflection will convince any gentleman here that there is always a danger of the exceptional in your system.  The fact is, those fellows have the game in their own hands already.  A strike of the whole body of the Brotherhood of Engineers alone would starve out the entire Atlantic seaboard in a week; labor insurrection could make head at a dozen given points, and your government couldn’t move a man over the roads without the help of the engineers.”

“That is so,” said Kendrick, struck by the dramatic character of the conjecture.  He imagined a fiction dealing with the situation as something already accomplished.

“Why don’t some fellow do the Battle of Dorking act with that thing?” said Fulkerson.  “It would be a card.”

“Exactly what I was thinking, Mr. Fulkerson,” said Kendricks.

Fulkerson laughed.  “Telepathy—­clear case of mind transference.  Better see March, here, about it.  I’d like to have it in ‘Every Other Week.’  It would make talk.”

“Perhaps it might set your people to thinking as well as talking,” said the colonel.

“Well, sir,” said Dryfoos, setting his lips so tightly together that his imperial stuck straight outward, “if I had my way, there wouldn’t be any Brotherhood of Engineers, nor any other kind of labor union in the whole country.”

“What!” shouted Lindau.  “You would sobbress the unionss of the voarking-men?”

“Yes, I would.”

“And what would you do with the unionss of the gabidalists—­the drosts—­and gompines, and boolss?  Would you dake the righdt from one and gif it to the odder?”

“Yes, sir, I would,” said Dryfoos, with a wicked look at him.

Lindau was about to roar back at him with some furious protest, but March put his hand on his shoulder imploringly, and Lindau turned to him to say in German:  “But it is infamous—­infamous!  What kind of man is this?  Who is he?  He has the heart of a tyrant.”