Dave looked around. Magee’s face gave him no help. ‘What is it that I have to swear to?’ he temporized.
The parley was brought to an abrupt ending by the sound of pounding outside. There was a shout, muffled by two closed doors and a stairway, of ‘Open up down there!’ Magee got lightly to his feet and beckoned to Dave.
‘That’s for us, kid,’ he said. ‘Come along.’
He stepped over to a ponderous, old-fashioned radiophonograph which stood against the wall, reached under it, fiddled for a moment, then swung out one side panel of it. Dave saw that the mechanism had been cunningly rearranged in such a fashion that a man could squeeze inside it. Magee urged him into it, slammed the panel closed, and left him.
His face was pressed up close to the slotted grill which was intended to cover the sound box. Molly had cleared off the two extra glasses from the table, and was dumping one drink so that it spread along the table top and erased the rings their glasses had made.
MacKinnon saw the Fader slide under the table, and reached up. Then he was gone. Apparently he had, in some fashion, attached himself to the underside of the table.
Mother Johnston made a great-to-do of opening up. The lower door she opened at once, with much noise. Then she clumped slowly up the steps, pausing, wheezing, and complaining aloud. He heard her unlock the outer door.
‘A fine time to be waking honest people up!’ she protested. ‘It’s hard enough to get the work done and make both ends meet, without dropping what I’m doing every five minutes, and — ‘
‘Enough of that, old girl,’ a man’s voice answered, ‘just get along downstairs. We have business with you.’
‘What sort of business?’ she demanded.
‘It might be selling liquor without a license, but it’s not-this time.’
‘I don’t-this is a private club. The members own the liquor; I simply serve it to them.’
‘That’s as may be. It’s those members I want to talk to. Get out of the way now, and be spry about it.’
They came pushing into the room with Mother Johnston, still voluble, carried along in by the van. The speaker was a sergeant of police; he was accompanied by a patrolman. Following them were two other uniformed men, but they were soldiers. MacKinnon judged by the markings on their kilts that they were corporal and private-provided the insignia in New America were similar to those used by the United States Army.
The sergeant paid no attention to Mother Johnston. ‘All right, you men,’ he called out, ‘line up!’
They did so, ungraciously but promptly. Molly and Mother Johnston watched them, and moved closer to each other. The police sergeant called out, ‘All right, corporal-take charge!’
The boy who washed up in the kitchen had been staring round-eyed. He dropped a glass. It bounced around on the hard floor, giving out bell-like sounds in the silence.
The man who had questioned Dave spoke up. ‘What’s all this?’
The sergeant answered with a pleased grin. ‘Conscription-that’s what it is. You are all enlisted in the army for the duration.’
‘Press gang!’ It was an involuntary gasp that came from no particular source.
The corporal stepped briskly forward. ‘Form a column of twos,’ he directed. But the little man with the worried eyes was not done.
‘I don’t understand this,’ he objected. ‘We signed an armistice with the Free State three weeks ago.’
‘That’s not your worry,’ countered the sergeant, ‘nor mine. We are picking up every able-bodied man not in essential industry. Come along.’
‘Then you can’t take me.’
‘Why not?’
He held up the stump of a missing hand. The sergeant glanced from it to the corporal, who nodded grudgingly, and said, ‘Okay-but report to the office in the morning, and register.’
He started to march them out when Alec broke ranks and backed up to the wall, screaming, ‘You can’t do this to me! I won’t go!’ His deadly little vibrator was exposed in his hand, and the right side of his face was drawn up in a spastic wink that left his teeth bare.
‘Get him, Steeves,’ ordered the corporal. The private stepped forward, but stopped when Alec brandished the vibrator at him. He had no desire to have a vibroblade between his ribs, and there was no doubt as to the uncontrolled dangerousness of his hysterical opponent.