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the bordering windows or on the sidewalks they didn t have time to realize
what was happening before it was all over.
Four men from the minibile were met by five from the van. The odds were not
too unequal, for the attackers had a discipline which Sprovis and his
companions lacked. An uneven, distorting light made the action seem jumpy, as
though the participants were caught at static moments, changing their
attitudes in flashes of invisibility between.
Their leader attempted to parley during one of these seconds of apparent
inaction.  Hey, you men
we got nothing against you. They s a thousand dollars apiece in it for you 
A fist smacked into his mouth. The light caught his face as he was jolted
back, but I hardly needed its revelation to confirm my recognition of his
voice. It was Colonel Tolliburr all right.
The Confederate agents had brass knuckles and blackjacks; the Grand Army men
had knives. Both sides were intent on keeping the struggle as quiet and
inconspicuous as possible; no one shouted with anger or screamed with pain.
This muffled intensity made the struggle the more gruesome. I
heard the impact of blows, the grunts of effort, the choked-back expressions
of pain, the scraping of shoes on the pavement and the thud of falls. One of
the defenders fell, and two of the attackers, before the two remaining
Southrons gave up the battle and attempted to escape.
They started for the minibile, evidently realized they would not have time to
get away in it, and began running down the street. Their indecision did for
them. As the Grand Army men closed in around them I saw them raise their arms
in the traditional gesture of surrender. Then they were struck down.
V
For the next days my reading was pretense. I used the opened book before me to
mask my privacy from Tyss while I pondered the meaning and extent of that
night s events. From scraps of conversation on which I eavesdropped, from the
newspapers, from deduction and remembered fragments I reconstructed the
picture which made the background. Its borders reached a long way from Astor
Place.
I have explained how the world had waited for years, half in dread, half in
resignation, for war between the German Union and the Confederate States.
Everyone expected the point of explosion would be the Confederacy s ally, the
British Empire, and that at least part of the war would be fought in the
United States. Apparently we were helpless to prevent this.
The Grand Army s scheme was evidently a far-fetched and fantastic attempt to
circumvent the probable course of history. The counterfeiting of Spanish money
on a large scale represented an aspect of this attempt, which was nothing less
than trying to force the war to start, not through the
Confederacy s ally, but through the German Union s the Spanish Empire. With
enormous amounts of the spurious currency, the Grand Army was planning to
circulate it by means of emissaries passing as Confederate agents and thus
embroil the Confederacy with Spain in the hope the war would commence and be
fought in the Spanish Empire. It was an ingenuous idea, I see now, evolved by
men without knowledge of the actual mechanics of world politics.
The second delivery had represented the less extravagant and romantic side of
the Grand Army.
Embarking, as they had years before, on activities of violence, the fine
distinction between crimes undertaken to advance a cause and allied crimes
undertaken to supply the organization with funds had become obscured.
Relations of increasing intimacy were established with ordinary gangsters.
The association was convenient to both, for the Grand Army often supplied
weapons and information in return for more immediately political favors.
Thus, Sprovis had been engaged in comparatively innocent gunrunning to a gang
which probably had no other connection with the Grand Army, when Tolliburr and
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his friends waylaid us in the minibile. Undoubtedly what they wanted was proof
of the counterfeiting scheme, but they had overlooked or somehow missed the
rendezvous on 26th Street disastrously for them.
Any lingering sentimental notions I might have entertained about the nature of
the Grand Army disappeared with the certainty Sprovis had killed his
prisoners. At the first opportunity I used the card Tolliburr had given me,
but the suspicion and lack of information with which I was received at the
address confirmed my idea. No bodies were found and there was no mention in
the newspapers of the disappearance of any Southrons. Naturally the
Confederate government would call no attention to their fate, but I had no [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]