"Captains of Industry"

by John Goodrich
originally published Cthulhu's Dark Cults, Chaosium, 2010

Janos and Dimitri work at Emerson's washing machine factory, near Boston, in 1921.  Janos is a big, hulking Hungarian, veteran of the Great War.  Dimitri is a small, slight Russian intellectual. Both are involved in forming a union, and, when we meet them, are heading a strike - that goes very bad when an army of strike-breakers hired by Emerson proceed to pound the living shoggoth-shit out of the strikers.

Bloodied but unbowed, organizer Antonio charges Dimitri and Janos to spy on Emerson, to find out how the skinflint factory owner found the wherewithal to bring in expensive strike-breakers.  They soon learn of his association with a private club called The Order of the Silver Twilight, a haven and network for the rich and powerful of Boston, passing itself off as a Masonic-type lodge.  Arrangements are made for Dimitri and Janos to join the wait staff for the Order's upcoming Xmas festivities.

 This seems to go off reasonably without a hitch.  As the party dwindles down, and clean-up begins, D&J sneak off to explore the lodge, hoping to find something incriminating they can use against Emerson.  

Instead they are captured and tortured by John Scott and Carl Stanford, the sinister heads of the organization, and Max Reed, Stanford's watchdog.  After using some nasty magic on them, Stanford hands off $100 to Janos, and the two are tossed into the streets.

Hard to say what to make of this piece.  Cthulhu's Dark Cults is a themed collection built around cults presented in scenarios written for Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu role-playing game, and the Order of the Silver Twilight, and its evil leaders, are important components of one of the earliest and most famous scenarios, Shadows of Yog-Sothoth. And it should be said that Goodrich sort of provides some personality and good description behind these cipher-ish characters.  

Unfortunately, though Goodrich writes well - Janos is a strong, entirely believable and compelling character, and the evocation of his poverty-stricken immigrant life is finely drawn, the story itself is rather empty.  Unless you're familiar with the original scenario it takes its inspiration from, there's no additional meaning, and the tale simply becomes an exercise in misery as Janos and Dimitri go from broken to more broken.  A bit of a waste of good writing, here.