Page:The Cannery Boat.pdf/188

178 joined up every corner of the land the bourgeois were organizing themselves. Not only making use of them for their ordinary business and speculating, but also to concoct their plots and their coups to crush their enemy—the struggling proletariat.

"“500 tons coal&emsp;State price&emsp;Reply urgent&emsp;20,000 bushels rice arriving&emsp;Will sell 3000 Tokyo stock&emsp;N Y K down 20 points&emsp;Secure me Kanegafuchi Spinning at lowest price&emsp;Can you sell 300 at 2&emsp;Reply urgent&emsp;Indications that Communist remnants entered your district&emsp;Muster 15 detectives at XXX Station&emsp;Search thoroughly XX Maru arriving Port to-morrow&emsp;Communist aboard disguised as business man.”"

Then there are the telephones linking up with every police box, every country policeman’s house, every police station, all the political police offices, every gendarmerie.

The spy walking in the streets. He has his eagle eye fixed for any member of the proletariat who is wanted. In a passing taxi is a suspicious-looking figure; it tallies with the description; straightway the spy flies to the nearest police box and calls up headquarters. Then in every other box and every station the bells go ting-a-ling-ling.

“Man in black Inverness with brown felt hat and horn-rimmed glasses. Check up with picture of the Communist on your files and arrest.”

Within the short space of three minutes all over Tokyo a drag-net is cast. So efficient is the police telephone system for the bourgeois class.