Revolution, according to Mr. Woslosky, could only be starved out. He had
no anxiety as to troops which would be sent against them, because he had
a cynical belief that a man's country was less to him than various other
things, including his stomach. He believed that all armies were riddled
with sedition and fundamentally opposed to law.
Copies of other important matters, too, were missing. Lists of officials
for the revolutionary city government and of deputies to take the places
of the disbanded police, plans for manning, by the radicals, the city
light, water and power plants; a schedule of public eating houses to
take the place of the restaurants.
Woslosky began to find this drug clerk with the ridiculous given name
getting on his nerves. He considered him a dangerous enemy to progress,
that particular form of progress which Mr. Woslosky advocated, and
he suspected him of a lack of ethics regarding trunks in storage. Mr.
Woslosky had the old-world idea that the best government was a despotism
tempered by assassination. He thought considerably about Willy Cameron.
But the plan concerning the farm house was, in the end, devised by Louis
Akers. Woslosky was skeptical. It was true that Cameron might stick his
head into the lion's jaws, but precautions had been known to be taken at
such times to prevent their closing. However, the Pole was desperate.
He took six picked men with him that afternoon to the farm, and made a
strategic survey of the situation. The house was closed and locked,
but he was not concerned with the house. Cusick had told Denslow the
meetings were held late at night in the barn, and to the barn Woslosky
repaired, sawed-off shotgun under his coat and cigarette in mouth, and
inspected it with his evil smile. Two men, young and reckless, might
easily plan to conceal themselves under the hay in the loft, and--
Woslosky put down his gun and went down into the cow barn below,
whistling softly to himself. He began to enjoy the prospect. He gathered
some eggs from the feed boxes, carrying them in his hat, and breaking
the lock of the kitchen door he and his outfit looted the closet
there and had an early supper, being careful to extinguish the fire
afterwards.
Not until dusk was falling did he post his men, three outside among
the outbuildings, one as a sentry near the woods, and two in the barn
itself. He himself took up his station inside the barn door, sitting on
the floor with his gun across his knees. Looking out from there, he saw
the sharp flash of a hastily extinguished match, and snarled with anger.
He had forbidden smoking.
“I've got to go out,” he said cautiously. “Don't you fools shoot me when
I come back.”
He slipped out into what was by that time complete blackness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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