He nodded to Chamberlin, in back, who was manning the projector, and to Curry, who dimmed the lights, having not the slightest damn idea what this was about.

"Something happened on a field in South Chicago not long ago," Ness said quietly. "Not far from where I grew up."

And now Curry knew what Ness was up to; so did a good many of the cops in the room, but none could be prepared for the scenes that followed.

At first there was no sound other than the whirring of the sprocketed film, but then as images began to fill the screen, so did sound fill the room. It was raw footage, without any reporter doing voice-over; but no voice-over was needed.

In the midst of an open field, a parade of strikers and sympathizers-men, women, and children-encounter a wall of police; heated words are exchanged by one of the cops and the spokesman of the marchers. Suddenly the sound of gunfire rips the afternoon, and a dozen men in the front ranks of the strikers are cut down like weeds. Revolvers in hand, the police charge into the strikers; tear-gas grenades sail into the crowd, nightsticks fly.

Most of the crowd flees; a few strikers who lag behind are beaten senseless by police, sometimes two or three cops working over one striker, the manner of these public servants chillingly businesslike. A girl, not more than five feet tall, weighing perhaps one hundred pounds, is clubbed from behind by a nightstick. She staggers until thoughtful police jostle her into a paddy wagon, blood streaking her face like grotesquely smeared makeup.

For six minutes a symphony of swinging nightsticks, blasting revolvers, bleeding strikers, is played out, until, finally, the newsreel runs its course and the film flaps in the projector, like the wagging tail of a dog, anxious to please.