ery 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