It was winter-time, and darkness came early, and Jimmie was doing his work by electric light in the back of the shop, when Reilly came and mysteriously drew him into a corner.  Did he really mean what he said about hatred of war, and willingness to fight against it?  The Empire Shops were now turning out thousands of shell-casings every day, to be used in the murder of men.  It was useless to try to start a strike, there were so many spies at work, and they fired every man who opened his mouth; if an outsider tried it they would send him to jail—­for, of course, old Granitch had the city government in his vest-pocket.

All this was an old story to Jimmie; but now the Irishman went on to a new proposition.  There was a way to stop the work of the Empire, a way that had been tried in other places, and had worked.  Reilly knew where to get some T.N.T.—­an explosive many times more powerful than dynamite.  They could make bombs out of the steel tubing of bicycles, and Jimmie, knowing the Empire Shops as he did, could find a way to get in and arrange matters.  There was big money in it—­the fellows who did that job might live on Easy Street the rest of their lives.

Jimmie was stunned.  He had been perfectly sincere in classifying German spies with sea-serpents; and here was a sea-serpent right before his eyes, raising his head through the floor of Kumme’s bicycle-shop!

Jimmie answered that he had never had anything to do with that sort of thing.  That wasn’t the way to stop war; that was only making more war.  The other began to argue with him, showing that it wouldn’t hurt anybody; the explosion would take place at night, and all that would be damaged would be Abel Granitch’s purse.  But Jimmie was obdurate; fortunately one thing that had been incessantly pounded into his head at the local was that the movement could not use conspiracy, it must work by open propaganda, winning the minds and consciences of men.

First the Irishman became angry, and called him a coward and a molly-coddle.  Then he became suspicious, and wanted to know if Jimmie would sell him out to the Empire.  Jimmie laughed at this; he had no love for Abel Granitch—­the damned old skunk might do his own spying.  Jimmie would simply have nothing to do with the matter, one way or the other.  And so the project was dropped; but the little machinist was moved to keep his eyes open after that, and he made note of how many Germans, all strangers, were making the shop a meeting-place; also the quick intimacy which had developed between the Irishman and Heinrich, Kumme’s nephew, who held himself so straight and had no back to his head.