Two shootings in the north.
One bobby dead.
Don't know how many hurt.
But the fun will probably only start when the mass meetings finish.
Are you through here?"
"Yes," said I. "We were just about to close down."
"Then come along."
I looked across at the proprietor.
He nodded.
"So long, then," said I.
"So long," replied the proprietor indolently. "Look after yourselves."
We went.
Outside it smelt like snow.
Broadsheets were lying on the street like big, white, dead butterflies.
"Gottfried's missing," said Koster. "He's in one of these mass meetings.
I hear they're going to be broken up, and imagine anything might happen.
It would be good if we could nab him before the finish.
He's not exactly the coolest of people."
"Do you know where he is then?" I asked.
"Not exactly.
But almost certainly at one of the three main meetings.
We must do the round.
Gottfried's pretty easy to spot with his yellow top."
"Good."
We got in and set off with the car for the first meeting place.
On the street was a lorry with police.
The straps of their helmets were lowered.
Carbine barrels glimmered dully in the lamplight.
Coloured banners were hanging from the windows.
Crowded in the entrance were a number of people in uniform.
Nearly all were very young.
We bought two tickets, declined pamphlets, collecting boxes and membership cards, and went into the hall.
It was crowded and well lighted in order that interrupters could be spotted immediately.
We stayed near the entrance and Koster ran his keen eyes over the rows.
On the platform was a powerful, stocky fellow, talking.
He had a full chesty voice that could be understood without difficulty in the remotest corner.
It was a voice that carried conviction without one's heeding, much what it. said.
And what it did say was easy to understand.
The man walked about the stage, casually, with little movements of his arms, off and on drank a mouthful of water and cracked a joke.
But then suddenly he stood still, turned full on the audience, and in a changed, shrill voice, whipped out sentence after sentence, truths that everybody knew of misery, starvation, unemployment, climbing all the time higher and higher, sweeping his hearers along with him till in a furioso he smashed out,
"This cannot go on I This must be changed!"
The audience roared applause, it clapped and yelled, as if that had already changed everything.
The man above waited.
His face shone.
And then it came—broad, persuasive, irresistible—promise after promise; it simply rained promises; a paradise was built up over the assembled heads; domes majestically coloured—it was a lottery where every loser was a winner, and in which every man found his private happiness, his private right and his private revenge.
I looked at the audience.
They were people of every calling—clerks, little business people, civil servants, a sprinkling of workers and lots of women.
They sat there in the hot hall, leaning back or looking forward, row upon row, cheek by jowl, the torrent of words pouring over them, and it was curious—different as they all were, the faces had all the same absent expression, a sleepy yearning look into the remoteness of some misty Fata Morgana; there was vacancy in it, and at the same time a supreme expectancy that obliterated everything—criticism, doubt, contradictions and questions, the obvious, the present, reality.
He, up there, knew everything—had an answer for every question, a help for every need.
It was good to trust oneself to him.