The Fire in the Flint by Walter White

Fifteen men sat around a table in an office on Lee Street. There was above them a single electric-light bulb, fly-specked, without a shade over it. At eleven o'clock they had silently crept up the stairs after looking cautiously up and down the deserted expanse of Lee Street to see if they were observed. Like some silent, creeping, wolf-like denizen of the forest, each had stolen as noiselessly as possible up the stairs. The window carefully covered, no ray of light could be seen from the outside. Though unsigned, the mysterious note each of the fifteen had received that morning had brought them all together promptly.

A fat man, with tiny eyes set close together, looking from amazing convolutions of flesh which gave him the appearance of a Poland-China hog just before slaughtering-time, was giving instructions to the men as they eagerly and closely followed his words. He occasionally emphasized his points by pounding softly on the pine table before him with large, oversized fists covered profusely with red hair. He was clad in a nondescript pair of trousers, a reddish faded colour from much wear and the red dust of his native hills, a shirt open at the neck and of the same colour as the trousers, the speaker's neck innocent of collar and tie. He was ending his instructions: