Half past eleven at night
In the din of the Black Cat, Kyo and May had waited.
The five last minutes. Already they should have left. It astonished Kyo that Clappique had not come (he had collected almost two hundred dollars for him), although he had half expected it: each time Clappique behaved in this way he was so much himself that he only half surprised those who knew him. Kyo had at first considered him a rather picturesque eccentric, but he was grateful to him for having warned him, and was beginning little by little to feel a real friendship for him. However, he was beginning to doubt the value of the information the Baron had given him, and his failure to keep his appointment made him doubt it all the more.
Although the fox-trot was not over, there was a great stir in the direction of one of Chiang Kai-shek’s officers who had just come in: couples left the dance, drew near, and, although Kyo could hear nothing, he guessed that some important event had occurred. Already May was moving in the direction of the group: at the Black Cat a woman was suspected of everything, and therefore of nothing. She returned very quickly.
“A bomb has been thrown at Chiang Kai-shek’s car,” she told him in a low voice. “He was not in the car."'
“And the murderer?” asked Kyo.
She returned towards the group, came back followed by a fellow who insisted on her dancing with him, but who left her as soon as he saw she was not alone.
“Escaped,” she said.
“Let's hope so. ”
Kyo knew how inaccurate such information usually was. But it was scarcely probable that Chiang Kai-shek had been killed. The importance of such a death would be so great that the officer would not have ignored it. “We will find out at the Military Committee,” said Kyo. “Let’s go there right away.”
He was too hopeful of Ch’en’s escape to doubt it entirely. Whether Chiang Kai-shek was still in Shanghai or had already left for Nanking, the unsuccessful attempt at his life gave a capital importance to the meeting of the Military Committee. And yet, what was to be expected of it? He had transmitted Clappique’s statement, in the afternoon, to a Central Committee that was skeptical and made a point of being so: the repression confirmed Kyo’s thesis too directly not to make his confirmation of it lose some of its validity. Besides, the Committee was agitating for union with the Kuomintang, not for struggle: a few days earlier the political chief of the Reds and one of the Blue chiefs had made some touching speeches in Shanghai. And the failure of the attempt to seize the Japanese concession, at Hankow, was beginning to show that the Reds were paralyzed in Central China itself; the Manchurian troops were marching on Hankow, which would have to fight them before fighting those of Chiang Kai-shek. Kyo was advancing through the fog, May at his side, without speaking. If the Communists had to fight tonight, they would scarcely be able to defend themselves. Whether they had given up their last firearms or not, how would they fight, one against ten, in disagreement with the instructions of the Chinese Communist Party, against an army that would oppose them with its corps of bourgeois volunteers armed with European weapons and having the advantage of attack?
Last month the whole city was for the united revolutionary army; the dictator had represented the foreigner, and the city hated foreigners; the immense petty bourgeoisie was democratic, but not Communist; this time the army was there, menacing, not in flight towards Nanking; Chiang Kai-shek was not the executioner of February, but a national hero, except among Communists. All against the police last month; the Communists against the army today. The city would be neutral, rather favorable to the general. Scarcely would they be able to defend the workers' quarters; Chapei perhaps? And then?. If Clappique had been misinformed, if the reaction delayed a month, the Military Committee, Kyo, Katov would organize two hundred thousand men. The new shock groups, composed of thoroughgoing Communists, were taking the Unions in hand; but at least a month would be necessary to create an organization sufficiently strong to maneuver the masses.
And the problem of firearms remained unsolved. What he wanted to know was not whether the two or three thousand guns they possessed ought to be surrendered, but how the masses were to be armed in case of an attack by Chiang Kai-shek. As long as discussions continued, the men would be disarmed. And if the Military Committee, on the one hand, insisted on being given arms, no matter what happened, the Central Committee, knowing that the Trotskyist theses were attacking the union with the Kuomintang, was terrified by any attitude which might, rightly or wrongly, seem to be linked to that of the Russian Opposition.
Now Kyo could just make out the dim lights of the Military Committee headquarters, through the fog that had not yet lifted, and that obliged him to walk on the sidewalk to avoid the passing cars. Opaque mist and night: he had to light his cigarette-lighter to see his watch. He was a few minutes late. Deciding to hurry, he slipped his arm into May’s; she pressed gently against him. After a few steps, he felt in May’s body a jerk and a sudden limpness: she was falling, slipping in front of him. “May!” He stumbled, fell on aU fours, and, the moment he was starting to get up, received a violent blow from a bludgeon in the nape of the neck. He fell forward on top of her, full length.
Three policemen stepped out from a building and joined the one who had struck the blow. An empty car stood parked a short distance away. They bundled Kyo into it and drove off, binding him only after they were under way.
When May came to (the jerk that Kyo had felt had been caused by a blow below the ribs) a picket of Chiang Kai-shek’s soldiers was guarding the entrance to the Military Committee headquarters; because of the mist, she perceived them only when she was almost up to them. She continued to walk in the same direction (she was breathing with difficulty, and was suffering from the blow), and hurried back to Gisors’ house.
Midnight
As soon as he had learned that a bomb had been thrown at Chiang Kai-shek, Hemmelrich had run to get news. He had been told that the general was killed and that the murderer had gotten away; but, before the overturned car, the torn-off hood, he had seen Ch’en’s corpse on the sidewalk-small and bloody, already drenched by the fog-guarded by a soldier seated nearby; and had learned that the general was not in the car. Absurdly, it seemed to him that his having refused to give Ch’en shelter was one of the causes of his death; he had run to the Communist post of his quarter, in despair, and had spent an hour there vainly discussing the attempt upon Chiang Kai-shek’s life. A comrade had entered.
“The Union of the spinning-mill workers at Chapei has just been closed by Chiang Kai-shek’s soldiers.”
“Didn’t the comrades resist?”
“Al who protested were immediately shot. At Chapei the militants are also being shot or their homes are b^rced down. The Municipal Government has just been dispersed. All the Unions are being closed.”
No orders from the Central Committee. The married comrades had immediately run home, to save their wives and children through flight.
The moment Hemmelrich stepped outside, he heard volleys of gun-fire; he risked being recognized, but he must at all costs get the child and the woman off to safety. Before him, through the fog, passed two armored cars and trucks loaded with Chiang Kai-shek’s soldiers. In the distance the volleys continued; and others, close by.