the benches.

Then the man at the table on the rostrum got up abruptly, and pulled
out his red handkerchief as though to wipe his face.

At the sudden flourish of the red fabric, a burst of applause came
from the benches. Orator and audience were _en rapport_; the former
continued to wave the handkerchief, under pretence of swabbing his
features, but the intention was so evident and the applause so
enlightening that a police officer came part way down the aisle and
held up a gilded sleeve.

"Hey!" he called in a bored voice, "Cut that out! See!"

"That man on the platform is Max Sondheim," whispered Brisson. "He'll
skate on thin ice before he's through."

Sondheim had already begun to speak, ignoring the interruption from
the police:

"The Mayor has got cold feet," he said with a sneer. "He gave us a
permit to parade, but when the soldiers attacked us his police clubbed
us. That's the kind of government we got."

"Shame!" cried a white-faced girl in the audience.

"Shame?" repeated Sondheim ironically. "What's shame to a cop? They
got theirs all the same----"

"That's enough!" shouted the police captain sharply. "Any more of that
and I'll run you in!"

Sondheim's red-rimmed eyes measured the officer in silence for a
moment.

"I have the privilege," he said to his audience, "of introducing to
you our comrade, Professor Le Vey."

"Le Vey," whispered Brisson in Palla's ear. "He's a crack-brained
chemist, and they ought to nab him."

The professor rose from one of the benches on the rostrum and came
forward--a tall, black-bearded man, deathly pale, whose protruding,
bluish eyes seemed almost stupid in their fixity.

"Words are by-products," he said, "and of minor importance. Deeds
educate. T. N. T., also, is a byproduct, and of no use in conversation
unless employed as an argument--" A roar of applause drowned his
voice: he gazed at the audience out of his stupid pop-eyes.

"Tyranny has kicked you into the gutter," he went on. "Capital makes
laws to keep you there and hires police and soldiers to enforce those
laws. This is called civilisation. Is there anything for you to do
except to pick yourselves out of the gutter and destroy what kicked
you into it and what keeps you there?"

"No!" roared the audience.

"Only a clean sweep will do it," said Le Vey. "If you have a single
germ of plague in the world, it will multiply. If you leave a single
trace of what is called civilisation in the world, it wil