Chapter II: Part 2

“It does, it does,” was the enthusiastic response. “It is the most important thing we teach our members. Nothing that is not founded on right can endure.”

“You are an anarchist?” the visitor asked with sharp irrelevance.

The Chief of the Assassination Bureau shook his head.

“No; I am a philosopher.”

“It is the same thing.”

“With a difference. For instance, the anarchists mean well; but I do well. Of what use is philosophy that cannot be applied? Take the old-country anarchists. They decide on an assassination. They plan and conspire night and day, at last strike the blow, and are almost invariably captured by the police. Usually the person or personage they try to kill gets off unscathed. Not so with us.”

“Don’t you ever fail?”

“We strive to make failure impossible. Any member who fails, because of weakness or fear, is punished with death.” Dragomiloff paused solemnly, his pale blue eyes shining with an exultant light. “We have never had a failure. Or course, we give a man a year in which to perform his task. Also, if it be a big affair, he is given assistants. And I repeat, we have never had a failure. The organization is as near perfect as the mind of man can make it. Even if I should drop out of it, die suddenly, the organization would run on just the same.”

“Do you draw any line at accepting commissions?” Winter Hall asked.

“No; from emperor and king down to the humblest peasant--we accept them all, if--and it is a big _if_--if their execution is decided to be socially justifiable. And, once we have accepted payment, which is in advance, you know, and have decided it to be right to make a certain killing, that killing takes place. It is one of our rules.”

As Winter Hall listened, a wild idea flashed into his mind. So whimsical was it, so almost lunatic, that he felt immeasurably fascinated by it.

“You are very ethical, I must say,” he began, “a--what I might call--ethical enthusiast.”

“Or monstrosity,” Dragomiloff added pleasantly. “Yes, I have quite a penchant that way.”

“Anything you conceive to be right, that thing you will do.”

Dragomiloff nodded affirmation, and a silence fell, which he was the first to break.

“You have some one in mind whom you wish removed. Who is it?”

“I am so curious,” was the reply, “and so interested, that I should like to approach it tentatively ... you know, in arranging the terms of the bargain. You surely must have a scale of prices, determined, of course, by the position and influence of ... of the victim.”

Dragomiloff nodded.

“Suppose it were a king I wished removed?” Hall queried.

“There are kings and kings. The price varies. Is your man a king?”

“No; he is not a king. He is a strong man, but not of noble title.”

“He is not a president?” Dragomiloff asked quickly.

“No; he holds no official position whatever. In fact, he is a man in private life. For what sum will you guarantee the removal of a man in private life?”

“For such a man it would be less difficult and hazardous. He would come cheaper.”

“Not so,” Hall urged. “I can afford to be generous in this. It is a very difficult and hazardous commission I am giving you. He is a man of powerful mind, of infinite wit and recourse.”

“A millionaire?”

“I do not know.”

“I would suggest forty thousand dollars as the price,” the head of the Bureau concluded. “Of course, on learning his identity, I may have to increase that sum. On the other hand, I may decrease it.”

Hall drew bills of large denomination from his pocketbook, counted them, and handed them to the other.

“I imagined you did business on a currency basis,” he said, “and so I came prepared. And, now, as I understand it, you will guarantee to kill--”

“I do no killing,” Dragomiloff interrupted.

“You will guarantee to have killed any man I name.”

“That is correct, with the proviso, of course, that an investigation shows his execution to be justifiable.”

“Good. I understand perfectly. Any man I name, even if he should be my father, or yours?”

“Yes; though as it happens I have neither father nor son.”

“Suppose I named myself?”

“It would be done. The order would go forth. We have no concern with the whims of our clients.”

“But suppose, say tomorrow or next week, I should change my mind?”

“It would be too late.” Dragomiloff spoke with decision. “Once an order goes forth it can never be recalled. That is one of the most necessary of our rules.”

“Very good. However, I am not the man.”

“Then who is he?”

“The name men know him by is Ivan Dragomiloff.”

Hall said it quietly enough, and just as quietly was it received.

“I want better identification,” Dragomiloff suggested.

“He is a native of Russia, I believe. I know he is a resident of New York City. He is blond, remarkably blond, and of just about your size, height, weight, and age.”

Dragomiloff’s pale-blue eyes looked long and steadily at his visitor. At last he spoke.

“I was born in the province of Valenko. Where was your man born?”

“In the province of Valenko.”

Again Dragomiloff scrutinized the other with unwavering eyes.

“I am compelled to believe that you mean me.”

Hall nodded unequivocally.

“It is, believe me, unprecedented,” Dragomiloff went on. “I am puzzled. Frankly, I cannot understand why you want my life. I have never seen you before. We do not know each other. I cannot guess at the remotest motive. At any rate, you forget that I must have a sanction of right before I order this execution.”

“I am prepared to furnish it,” was Hall’s answer.

“But you must convince me.”

“I am prepared to do that. It was because I divined you to be what you called yourself, an ethical monstrosity, that I conceived this proposition and made it to you. I believe, if I can prove to you the justification of your death, that you will carry it out. Am I right?”

“You are right.” Dragomiloff paused, and then his face lighted up with a smile. “Of course, that would be suicide, and you know that this is an Assassination Bureau.”

“You would give the order to one of your members. As I understand, under pledge of his own life he would be compelled to carry out the order.”

Dragomiloff looked even pleased.

“Very true. It goes to show how perfect is the machine I have created. It is fitted to every contingency, even to this most unexpected one developed by you. Come. You interest me. You are original. You have imagination, fantasy. Pray show me the ethical sanction for my own removal from this world.”

“Thou shalt not kill,” Hall began.

“Pardon me,” came the interruption. “We must get a basis for this discussion, which I fear will quickly become academic. The point is, you must prove to me that I have done such wrong that my death is right. And I am to be judge. What wrong have I done? What person, not a wrong-doer, have I ordered executed? In what way have I violated my own sanctions of right conduct, or even have done wrong blunderingly or unwittingly?”

“I understand, and I change my discourse accordingly. First, let me ask if you were responsible for the death of John Mossman?”

Dragomiloff nodded.

“He was a friend of mine. I had known him all my life. There was no evil in him. He harmed no one.”

Hall was speaking warmly, but the other’s raised hand and amused smile made him pause.

“It was something like seven years ago that John Mossman built the Fidelity Building. Where did he get the money? It was at that time that he, who had all his life been a banker in a small, conservative way, suddenly branched out in a number of large enterprises. You remember the fortune he left. Where did he get it?”

Hall was about to speak, but Dragomiloff signified that he had not finished.

“Not long before the building of the Fidelity, you will remember, the Combine attacked Carolina Steel, bankrupted it, and then absorbed the wreckage for a song. The president of Carolina Steel committed suicide--”

“To escape the penitentiary,” Hall interpolated.

“He was tricked into doing what he did.”

Hall nodded and said, “I recollect. It was one of the agents of the Combine.”

“That agent was John Mossman.”

Hall remained incredulously silent, while the other continued.

“I assure you I can prove it, and I will. But do me the courtesy of accepting for a moment whatever statements I make. They will be proved, and to your satisfaction.”

“Very well then. You killed Stolypin.”

“No; not guilty. The Russian Terrorists did that.”

“I have your word?”

“You have my word.”

Hall ranged over in his mind all the assassinations he had tabulated, and made another departure.

“James and Hardman, president and secretary of the Southwestern Federation of Miners--”

“We killed them,” Dragomiloff broke in. “And what was wrong about it--mind you, wrong to me?”

“You are a humanist. The cause of labor, as that of the people, must be dear to you. It was a great loss to organized labor, the deaths of these two leaders.”

“On the contrary,” Dragomiloff replied. “They were killed in 1904. For six years prior to that, the Federation had won not one victory, while it had been decisively beaten in three disastrous strikes. In the first six months after the two leaders were removed, the Federation won the big strike of 1905, and from then to now has never ceased making substantial gains.”

“You mean?” Hall demanded.

“I mean that the Mine Owners League did not bring about the assassination. I mean that James and Hardman were secretly in the pay, and in big pay, of the Mine Owners League. I mean that it was a group of the miners themselves that laid the facts of their leaders’ treason before us and paid the price we demanded for the service. We did it for twenty-five thousand dollars.”

Winter Hall’s bafflement plainly showed, and he debated a long minute before speaking.

“I believe you, Mr. Dragomiloff. Tomorrow or next day I should like to go over the proofs with you. But that will be merely for formal correctness. In the meantime I must find some other way to convince you. This list of assassinations is a long one.”

“Longer than you think.”

“And I do not doubt but what you have found similar justification for all of them. Mind you, not that I believe any one of these killings to be right, but that I believe they have been right to you. Your fear that the discussion would become academic was well founded. It is only in that way that I can hope to get you. Suppose we defer it until tomorrow. Will you lunch with me? Or where would you prefer us to meet?”

“Right here, I think, after lunch.” Dragomiloff waved his hand around at his book-covered walls. “There are plenty of authorities, you see, and we can always send out to the branch Carnegie Library around the corner for more.”

He pressed the call button, and both arose as the servant entered.

“Believe me, I am going to get you,” was Hall’s parting assurance.

Dragomiloff smiled whimsically.

“I trust not,” he said. “But if you do it will be unique.”

_Chapter V_

For long days and nights the discussion between Hall and Dragomiloff was waged. At first confined to ethics, it quickly grew wider and deeper. Ethics being the capstone of all the sciences, they found themselves compelled to seek down through those sciences to the original foundations. Dragomiloff demanded of Hall’s _Thou shalt not kill_ a more rigid philosophic sanction than religion had given it. While, in order to be intelligible, and to reason intelligently, they found it necessary to thresh out and ascertain each other’s most ultimate beliefs and telic ideals.

It was the struggle of two scholars, and practical scholars at that; yet more often than not the final result sought was lost in the excitement and clash of ideas. And Hall did his antagonist the justice of realizing that on his part it was purely a pursuit of truth. That his life was the forfeit if he lost had no influence on Dragomiloff’s reasoning. The question at issue was whether or not his Assassination Bureau was a right institution.

Hall’s one thesis, which he never abandoned, to which he forced all roads of argument to lead, was that the time had come in the evolution of society when society, as a whole, must work out its own salvation. The time was past, he contended, for the man on horseback, or for small groups of men on horseback, to manage the destinies of society. Dragomiloff, he insisted, was such a man, and his Assassination Bureau was the steed he bestrode, by virtue of which he judged and punished, and, within narrow limits it was true, herded and trampled society in the direction he wanted it to go.

Dragomiloff, on the other hand, did not deny that he played the part of the man on horseback, who thought for society, decided for society, and drove society; but he did deny, and emphatically, that society as a whole was able to manage itself, and that, despite blunders and mistakes, social progress lay in such management of the whole by itself. And this was the crux of the question, to settle which they ransacked history and traced the social evolution of man up from the minutest known details of primitive groupings to highest civilization.

In fact, so practical-minded were the two scholars, so unmetaphysical, that they accepted social expediency as the determining factor and agreed that it was in the highest way ethical. And in the end, measured by this particular yardstick, Winter Hall won. Dragomiloff acknowledged his own defeat, and, in his gratification and excitement, Hall’s hand went impulsively out to him. Firmly, and despite his surprise, Dragomiloff returned the grip.

“I see, now,” he said, “that I failed to lay sufficient stress on the social factors. The assassinations have not been so much intrinsically wrong as socially wrong. I even take part of that back. As between individuals, they have not been wrong at all. But individuals are not individuals alone. They are parts of complexes of individuals. There was where I erred. It is dimly clear to me. I was not justified. And now--” He broke off and looked at his watch. “It is two o’clock. We have sat late. And now I am prepared to pay the penalty. Of course you will give me time to settle my affairs before I give the order to my agents?”

Hall, who in the height of debate had forgotten the terms of the debate, was startled.

“I am not prepared for that,” he said. “And to tell the truth, it had quite slipped my mind. Perhaps it is not necessary. You are yourself convinced of the wrong of assassination. Suppose you disband the organization. That will be sufficient.”

But Dragomiloff shook his head.

“An agreement is an agreement. I have accepted a commission from you. Right is right, and this is where, I maintain, the doctrine of social expediency does not apply. The individual, per se, has some prerogatives left, and one of these is the keeping of one’s word. This I must do. The commission shall be carried out. I am afraid it will be the last handled by the Bureau. This is Saturday morning. Suppose you give me until tomorrow night before issuing the order?”

“Tommyrot!” Hall exclaimed.

“That is not argument,” was the grave reproof. “Besides, all argument is finished. I decline to hear any more. One thing, though, in fairness: considering how difficult a person I shall be to assassinate, I would suggest a further charge of at least ten thousand dollars.” He held up his hand in token that he had more to say. “Oh, believe me, I am modest. I shall make it so difficult for my agents that it will be worth all of fifty thousand and more--”

“If you will only break up the organization--”

But Dragomiloff silenced him.

“The discussion is ended. This is now my affair. The organization will be broken up in any event, but I warn you, according to our rules of long standing, I may escape. As you will recollect, I promised you, at the time the bargain was made, that if, at the end of a year, the commission had not been fulfilled, the fee would be returned to you plus five percent. If I escape I shall hand it to you myself.”

But Winter Hall waved his hand impatiently.

“Listen,” he said. “I insist on one statement. You and I are agreed on the foundation of ethics. Social expedience being the basis of all ethics--”

“Pardon me--” came the interruption “--of social ethics only. The individual, in certain aspects, is still an individual.”

“Neither you nor I,” Hall continued, “accepts the old Judaic code of an eye for an eye. We do not believe in punishment for crime. The killings of your Bureau, while justified by crimes committed by the victims, were not regarded by you as punishments. You looked upon your victims as social ills, the extirpation of which would benefit society. You removed them from the social organism on the same principle that surgeons remove cancers. I caught that point of view of yours from the beginning of the discussion.

“But to return. Not accepting the punishment theory, you and I regard crime as a mere anti-social tendency, and as such, expediently and arbitrarily, we classify it. Thus, crime is a social abnormality, partaking of the nature of sickness. It _is_ sickness. The criminal, the wrong-doer, is a sick man, and he should be treated accordingly, so that he may be cured of his sickness.

“Now I come to you and to my point. Your Assassination Bureau was anti-social. You believed in it. Therefore you were sick. Your belief in assassination constituted your sickness. But now you no longer believe. You are cured. Your tendency is no longer anti-social. There is now no need for your death, which would be nothing else than punishment for an illness of which you had already been cured. Disband the organization and go out of business. That is all you have to do.”

“Are you done--quite done?” Dragomiloff queried suavely.

“Yes.”

“Then let me answer and end the argument. I conceived my Bureau in righteousness, and I operated it in righteousness. Also, I created it, made it the perfect thing that it is. Its foundation was certain right principles. In all its history, not one of these principles was violated. A particular one of these principles was that portion of the contracts with our clients wherein we guaranteed to carry out any commission we accepted. I accepted a commission from you. I received forty thousand dollars. The agreement was that I should order my own execution if you proved to my satisfaction that the assassinations achieved by the Bureau were wrong. You have proved it. Nothing remains but to live up to the agreement.

“I am proud of this institution. Nor shall I, with a last act, stultify its basic principles, break the rules under which it operated. This I hold is my right as an individual, and in no way does it conflict with social expediency. I do not want to die. If I escape death for a year, the commission I accepted from you, as you know, automatically terminates. I shall do my best to escape. And now, not another word. I am resolved. Concerning breaking up the Bureau, what would you suggest?”

“Give me the names and all details of all members. I shall then serve notice on them to disband--”

“Not until after my death or until the year has expired,” Dragomiloff objected.

“All right, after your death, or the expiration of the year, I shall serve this notice, backed by the threat of going to the police with my information.”

“They may kill you,” was the warning.

“Yes; they may. I shall have to take that chance.”

“You can avoid it. When you serve notice, inform them that all information is placed in escrow in half a dozen different cities, and that in event of your being killed it goes into the hands of the police.”

It was three in the morning before the details for disbanding the organization were arranged. It was at this time that a long silence fell, broken at last by Dragomiloff.

“Do you know, Hall, I like you. You are an ethical enthusiast yourself. You might almost have created the Bureau, than which I know no higher compliment, because it is my belief that the Bureau is a remarkable achievement. At any rate, not only do I like you, but I know I can trust you. You would keep your word as I keep mine. Now, I have a daughter. Her mother is dead and in the event of my death she would be without kith or kin in the world. I should like to put her in your charge. Are you willing to accept the responsibility?”

Hall nodded his acquiescence.

“She is a grown woman, so there is no need for guardianship papers. But she is unmarried, and I shall leave her a great deal of money, the investment of which you will have to see to. I am running out to see her this afternoon. Will you come along? It is not far, only at Edge Moor on the Hudson.”

“Why, I’m making a week-end visit to Edge Moor myself!” Hall exclaimed.

“Good. Whereabouts in Edge Moor?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never been there.”

“Never mind. It is not a large place. You can spare a couple of hours Sunday morning. I’ll run over for you in a machine. Telephone me where and when to come. Suburban 245 is my number.”

Hall jotted the number down and rose to go.

Dragomiloff yawned as they shook hands.

“I wish you would reconsider,” the other urged.

But Dragomiloff yawned again, shook his head, and showed his visitor out.

_Chapter VI_

Grunya ran the machine that carried Winter Hall from the station at Edge Moor.

“Uncle is really eager to meet you,” she assured him. “He doesn’t know who you are, yet. I teased him by not telling him. Perhaps it is the teasing that accounts for his eagerness, for he certainly is eager.”

“Have you told him?” Hall asked significantly.

Grunya became suddenly absorbed in operating the car.

“What?” she asked.

For reply, Hall laid his hand on hers upon the steering wheel. She ventured one glance at him, looking into his eyes with audacious steadiness for a moment. Then the telltale flush betrayed her, the steady gaze wavered, and with dropped eyes she returned to the steering.

“That might account for his eagerness,” Hall remarked quietly.

“I--I never thought of it.”

Her eyes were turned from him, but he could see the rosy warmth in her cheek. After a minute he made another remark.

“It is a pity to shame so splendid a sunset with unveraciousness.”

“Coward,” she cried; but her enunciation made the epithet a love note.

And then she looked at him again, and laughed, and he laughed with her, and both felt that the sunset was unsmirched and that the world was very fair.

It was when they entered the driveway to the bungalow that he asked her in what direction lay the Dragomiloff place.

“Never heard of it,” was her response. “Dragomiloff? No such person lives in Edge Moor, I am sure. Why?”

“They may be recent comers,” he suggested.

“Perhaps so. And here we are. Grosset, take Mr. Hall’s suitcase. Where’s Uncle?”

“In the library, writing, miss. He said not to disturb him till dinner.”

“Then at dinner you’ll meet,” she said to Hall. “And you’ll only just have time. Show Mr. Hall his room, Grosset.”

Fifteen minutes later, Winter Hall, in the absence of Grunya, entered the living room and found himself face to face with the man he had parted from at three that morning.

“What the devil are you doing here?” Hall blurted out.

But the other’s composure was unshaken.

“Waiting to be introduced, I suppose,” he said, holding out his hand. “I am Sergius Constantine. Grunya has certainly surprised both of us.”

“And you are also Ivan Dragomiloff?”

“Yes; but not in this house.”

“But I do not understand. You spoke of a daughter.”

“Grunya is my daughter, though she believes herself my niece. It is a long story, which I shall make short, after dinner, when we get rid of Grunya. But let me tell you now, that the situation is beautiful, gratifyingly beautiful. You, whom I selected to watch over my Grunya, I find are already--if I am right--her lover. Am I right?”

“I--I don’t know what to say,” Hall faltered, his wit for one time not ready, his mind stunned by this most undreamed dénouement.

“Am I right?” Dragomiloff repeated.

“You are right,” came the answer, prompt at last. “I do love--her--I do love Grunya. But does she know ... you?”

“Only as her uncle, Sergius Constantine, head of the importing house of that name--here she comes. As I was saying, I agree with you in preferring Turgenev to Tolstoy. Of course, this without detracting from the power of Tolstoy. It is Tolstoy’s philosophy that is repugnant to one who believes--ah, here you are, Grunya.”

“And already acquainted,” she pouted. “I had expected to be present at such a momentous encounter.” She turned chidingly to Hall, while Constantine’s arm encircled her waist. “Why didn’t you warn me you could dress with such speed?”

She held out her free hand to him.

“Come,” she said, “let us go in to dinner.”

And in this manner, Constantine’s arm around Grunya, and she lightly leading Hall by the hand, the three passed into the dining room.

At table Hall caught himself desiring to pinch himself in order to disprove the reality of which he was a part. The situation was almost too preposterously grotesque to be real--Grunya, whom he loved, alternately tilting and smiling at her father whom she believed her uncle, and whom she never dreamed was the originator and head of the dread Assassination Bureau; he, Hall, whom Grunya loved in return, joining in the badinage against the man to whom he had paid fifty thousand dollars to order his own execution; and Dragomiloff himself, unperturbed, complacent, unbending in the general mirth, until his habitual frostiness thawed into actual geniality.

Afterwards, Grunya played and sang, until Dragomiloff, under the double plea of an expected visitor and a desire for a man-talk with Hall, advised her, in mock phrases of paternal patronage, that it was bedtime for a chit of her years. With a parting fling, she said good night and left them, her laughter rippling back through the open door. Dragomiloff got up, closed it, and returned to his seat.

“Well?” Hall demanded.

“My father was a contractor in the Russian-Turkish War,” was the reply. “His name was--well, never mind his name. He made a fortune of sixty million rubles, which I, as an only son, inherited. At university I became inoculated with radical ideas and joined the Young Russians. We were a pack of Utopianists and dreamers, and of course we got into trouble. I was in prison several times. My wife died of smallpox at the same time that her brother Sergius Constantine died of the same disease. This took place on my last estate. Our latest conspiracy had leaked, and this time it meant Siberia for me. My escape was simple. My brother-in-law, a pronounced conservative, was buried under my name, and I became Sergius Constantine. Grunya was a baby. I got out of the country easily enough, though what was left of my fortune fell into the hands of the officials. Here in New York, where Russian spies are more prevalent than you imagine, I maintained the fiction of my name. And there you have it. I have even returned once to Russia, as my brother-in-law, of course, and sold out his possessions. Too long did I maintain the fiction; Grunya knew me as her uncle, and her uncle I have remained. That is all.”

“But the Assassination Bureau?” Hall asked.

“Believing it was right, and stung by the charge that we Russians were thinkers, not doers, I organized it. And it has worked, successfully, perfectly. It has been a financial success as well. I proved that I could act, as well as dream dreams. Grunya, however, still calls me a dreamer. But she does not know. One moment.”

He went into the adjoining room and returned with a large envelope in his hand.

“And now to other things. My expected visitor is the man to whom I shall give the order of execution. I intended to do so tomorrow, but your opportune presence tonight expedites matters. Here are my instructions to you.” He handed over the envelope. “Grunya, legally, must sign all papers, deeds, and such things, but you must advise her. My will is in my safe. You will have to handle my funds for me until I die or return. If I telegraph for money, or anything, you will do as instructed. In this envelope is the cipher I shall use, which is likewise the cipher used by the organization.

“There is a large emergency fund which I have handled for the Bureau. This belongs to the members. I shall make you its custodian. The members will draw upon it at need.” Dragomiloff shook his head with simulated sadness and smiled. “I am afraid I shall prove very expensive to them before they get me.”

“Heavens, man!” Hall cried. “You are furnishing them the sinews of war. What you should do is to prevent their access to the fund.”

“That would not be fair, Hall. And I am so made that I must play fairly. And I do you the honor to believe that in the matter you will likewise play fairly and obey all my instructions. Am I right?”

“But you are asking me to furnish aid to the men who are going to kill you, the father of the girl I love. It is preposterous. It is monstrous. Put a stop to the whole thing now. Disband the organization and be done with it.”

But Dragomiloff was adamant.

“My mind is made up. You know that. I must do what I believe to be right. You will obey my instructions?”

“You are a monster! A stubborn, stiff-necked monster of absurd and lunatic righteousness. You are a scholar’s mind degraded, you are ethics gone mad, you are ... are....”

But Winter Hall failed in his quest for further superlatives, and stuttered, and ceased. Dragomiloff smiled patiently.

“You will obey my instructions. Am I right?”

“Yes, yes, yes. I’ll obey them,” Hall cried angrily. “It is patent that you will have your way. There is no stopping you. But why tonight? Won’t tomorrow be time enough to start on this madman’s adventure?”

“No; I am eager to start. And you have hit the precise word. Adventure. That is it. I have not had it since I was a boy, since I was a young Bakuninite in Russia dreaming my boyish dreams of universal human freedom. Since then, what have I done? I have been a thinking machine. I have built up successful businesses. I have made a fortune. I have invented the Assassination Bureau and run it. And that is all. I have not lived. I have had no adventure. I have been a mere spider, a huge brain thinking and planning in the midst of a web. But now I break the web. I go forth on the adventure path. Why, do you know, I have never killed a man in my life. Nor have I ever seen one killed. I was never in a railroad accident. I know nothing of violence; I who possess the vast strength of violence have never used that strength save in amity, in boxing and wrestling and such exercises. Now I shall live, body and brain, and play a new role. Strength!”

He held out his lean white hand and looked at it angrily.

“Grunya will tell you that I can bend a silver dollar between those fingers. Was that all they were made for?--to bend dollars? Here, your arm a moment.”

Merely between fingertips and thumb, he caught Hall’s forearm midway from wrist to elbow. He pressed, and Hall was startled by the fierce pang of the bruise. It seemed as if fingers and thumb would meet through the flesh and bone. The next moment the arm was flung aside, and Dragomiloff was smiling grimly.

“No damage,” he said, “though it will be black and blue for a week or so. Now do you know why I want to get out of my web? I have vegetated for a score of years. I have used those fingers to write my signature and to turn the pages of books. From my web I have sent men out on the adventure path. Now I shall play against those men, and I, too, shall do. It will be a royal game. Mine was the master mind that made the perfect machine. I created it. Never has it failed to destroy the man appointed. I am now the man appointed. The question is: _is it greater than I, its creator?_ Will it destroy its creator, or will its creator outwit it?”

He stopped abruptly, looked at his watch, and pressed a bell.

“Have the car brought around,” he told the servant who responded, “put into it the suitcase you will find in my bedroom.”

He turned to Hall as the servant left the room.

“And now my hegira begins. Haas should be here any moment.”

“Who is Haas?”

“Bar none and absolutely the most capable member we have. He has always been given our most difficult and hazardous commissions. He is an ethical fanatic, a Danite. No destroying angel was ever so terrible as he. He is a flame. He is not a man at all, but a flame. You shall see for yourself. There he is now.”

A moment later the man was shown in. Hall was shocked by the first view of his face--a wasted, ravaged face, hollow-cheeked and sunken, in which burned a pair of eyes the like of which could be experienced only in nightmares. Such was the fire of them that the whole face seemed caught up in the conflagration.

Hall acknowledged the introduction, and was surprised at the firm, almost savagely firm, grip of the handshake. He noted the man’s movements as he took a chair and seated himself. He seemed to move cat-like, and Hall was confident that he was muscled like a tiger, though all this was belied by the withered, blighted face, which gave an impression that the rest of the body was a shrunken slender shell. Slender the body was, but Hall could mark the bulge of the biceps and shoulder muscles.

“I have a commission for you, Mr. Haas,” Dragomiloff began. “Possibly it may prove the most dangerous and difficult one you have ever undertaken.”

Hall could have sworn that the man’s eyes blazed even more fiercely at the intimation.

“This case has received my sanction,” Dragomiloff continued. “It is right, essentially right. The man must die. The Bureau has received fifty thousand dollars for his death. According to our custom, one-third of this sum will go to you. But so difficult am I afraid it will prove, that I have decided your share shall be one-half. Here are five thousand for expenses--”

“The amount is unusual,” Haas broke in, licking his lips as if they were parched by the flame of his being.

“The man you are to kill is unusual,” Dragomiloff retorted. “You will need to call upon Schwartz and Harrison immediately to assist you. If, after a time, the three of you have failed--”

Haas snorted incredulously, and the fever that seemed consuming him burned up with increasing heat in his lean and avid face.

“If after a time, the three of you have failed, call upon the whole organization.”

“Who is the man?” Haas demanded, and he bit the words out almost in a snarl.

“One moment.” Dragomiloff turned to Hall. “What shall you tell Grunya?”

Hall considered for a space.

“A half-truth will do. I sketched the organization to her before I knew you. I can tell her you are menaced. That will suffice. And no matter what the outcome, she need never know the rest.”

Dragomiloff bowed his approbation.

“Mr. Hall is to serve as secretary,” he explained to Haas. “He has the cipher. All applications for money and everything else will be made to him. Keep him informed from time to time of progress.”

“Who is the man?” Haas rasped out again.

“One minute, Mr. Haas. There is one thing I want to impress on you. Your pledge you remember. No matter who the person may be, you know that you must perform the task. You know in every way you must avoid risking your own life. You know what failure means, that all your comrades are sworn to kill you if you fail.”

“I know all that,” Haas interrupted. “It is unnecessary.”

“It is my wish to have you absolutely straight on this point. No matter who the person--”

“Father, brother, wife--ay, the devil himself, or God--I understand. Who is the man? Where will I find him? You know me. When I have anything to do, I want to do it.”

Dragomiloff turned to Hall with a smile of gratification.

“As I told you, I selected our best agent.”

“We are wasting time,” Haas muttered impatiently.

“Very well,” Dragomiloff answered. “Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

“Now?”

“Now.”

“I, Ivan Dragomiloff, am the man.”

Haas was staggered by the unexpectedness of it.

“You?” he whispered, as if louder speech had been scorched from his throat.

“I,” Dragomiloff answered simply.

“Then there is no time like now,” Haas said swiftly, at the same time moving his right hand towards his side pocket.

But even more swift was the leap of Dragomiloff upon him. Before Hall could rise from his chair the thing had happened and the danger was past. He saw Dragomiloff’s two thumbs, end on, crooked and rigid, drive into the two hollows at either side of the base of Haas’s neck. So quickly that it was practically simultaneous, at the instant of the first driven contact of the thumbs, Haas’s hand stopped moving in the direction of the weapon in his pocket. Both his hands shot up and clutched spasmodically at the other’s hands. Haas’s face was distorted in an expression of incredible and absolute agony. He writhed and twisted for a minute, then his eyes closed, his hands dropped, his body went limp, and Dragomiloff eased him down to the floor, the flame of him quenched in unconsciousness.

Dragomiloff rolled him on his face, and, with a handkerchief, knotted his hands behind his back. He worked quickly, and as he worked he talked.

“Observe, Hall, the first anaesthetic ever used in surgery. It is purely mechanical. The thumbs press on the carotid arteries, shutting off the blood supply to the brain. The Japanese practiced it in surgical operations for centuries. If I had held the pressure for a minute or so more, the man would be dead. As it is, he will regain consciousness in a few seconds. See! He is moving now.”

He rolled Haas over on his back; his eyes fluttered open and rested on Dragomiloffs face in a puzzled way.

“I told you it was a difficult case, Mr. Haas,” Dragomiloff assured him. “You have failed in the first attempt. I am afraid that you will fail many times.”

“You’ll give a run for my money, I guess,” was the answer. “Though why you want to be killed is beyond me.”

“But I don’t want to be killed.”

“Then why under the sun have you given me the order?”

“That’s my business, Mr. Haas. And it is your business to see that you do your best. How does your throat feel?”

The recumbent man rolled his head back and forth.

“Sore,” he announced.

“It is a trick you ought to learn.”

“I know it now,” Haas rejoined, “and I am very much aware of the precise place in which to insert the thumbs. What are you going to do with me?”

“Take you along with me in the car and drop you by the roadside. It’s a warm night, so you won’t catch cold. If I left you here, Mr. Hall might untie you before I got started. And now I think I’ll bother you for that weapon in your coat-pocket.”

Dragomiloff leaned over, and from the pocket in question drew forth an automatic pistol.

“Loaded for big game and cocked and ready,” he said, examining it. “All he had to do was to drop the safety lever with his thumb and pull the trigger. Will you walk to the car with me, Mr. Haas?”

Haas shook his head.

“This is more comfortable than the roadside.”

For reply, Dragomiloff bent over him and lightly effected his terrible thumb grip on the throat.

“I’ll walk,” Haas gasped.

Quickly and lightly, though his arms were tied behind him, and apparently without effort, the recumbent man rose to his feet, giving Hall a hint of the tiger-muscles with which he was endowed.

“It’s all right,” Haas grumbled. “I’m not kicking, and I’ll take my medicine. But you caught me unexpectedly, and I’ll tell you one thing. It is that you can’t do it again, or anything else.”

Dragomiloff turned and spoke to Hall.

“The Japanese claim seven different death-touches, but I only know four. And this man dreams he could best me in physical encounter. Mr. Haas, let me tell you one thing. You see the edge of my hand. Omitting the death-touches and everything else, merely using the edge of that hand like a cleaver, I can break your bones, disjoint your joints, and rupture your tendons. Pretty good, eh, for the thinking machine you have always known? Come on; let us start. This way for the adventure path. Goodbye, Hall.”

The front door closed behind them, and Winter Hall, stupefied, looked about him at the modern room in which he stood. He was more pervaded than ever by the impression of unrealness. Yet that was a grand piano over there, and those were the current magazines on the reading table. He even glanced over their familiar names in an effort to orient himself. He wondered if he were going to wake up in a few minutes. He glanced at the titles of a table-rack of books--evidently Dragomiloff’s. There, incongruously cheek by jowl, were Mahan’s _Problem of Asia_, Buckner’s _Force and Matter_, Wells’s _Mr. Polly_, Nietzsche’s _Beyond Good and Evil_, Jacob’s _Many Cargoes_, Veblen’s _Theory of the Leisure Class_, Hyde’s _From Epicurus to Christ_, and Henry James’s latest novel--all forsaken by this strange mind which had closed the page of its life on books and fared forth into an impossible madness of adventure.

_Chapter VII_

“There is no use waiting for your uncle,” Hall told Grunya next morning. “We must eat breakfast and start for town.”

“We?” she asked in frank wonder. “What for?”

“To get married. Before his departure, your uncle made me your unofficial guardian, and it seems to me that the best thing to do is to make my position official--that is, if you have no serious objections.”

“I have, decidedly,” was her reply. “In the first place, I dislike being bullied into anything, even into so gratifying a thing as marriage with you. And next, I detest mystery. Where is Uncle? What has happened? Where did he go? Did he catch an early train for the city? And why should he go to the city on Sunday?”

Hall looked at her gloomily.

“Grunya, I am not going to tell you to be brave and all that fol-de-rol. I know you, and it is unnecessary.” He noted growing alarm in her face and hurried on. “I don’t know when your uncle will return. I don’t know if he will ever return, or if you will ever see him again. Listen. You remember that Assassination Bureau I told you about?”

She nodded.

“Well, it has selected him for its next victim. He has fled, that is all, in an attempt to escape.”

“Oh! But this is outrageous!” she cried. “My Uncle Sergius! This is the twentieth century. They don’t do things like that now. This is some joke you and he are playing on me.”

And Hall, wondering what she would think if she knew the whole truth concerning her uncle, smiled grimly.

“On my honor, it is true,” he assured her. “Your uncle has been selected as the next victim. You remember he was writing a great deal yesterday afternoon. He had had his warning and was getting his affairs in shape and preparing his instructions for me.”

“But the police. Why has he not appealed to them for protection from this band of cutthroats?”

“Your uncle is a peculiar man. He won’t listen to any suggestion of the police. Furthermore, he has made me promise to keep the police out of it.”

“But not me,” she interrupted, starting towards the door. “I shall call them up at once.”

Hall caught her by the wrist, and she swung angrily around on him.

“Listen, dear,” he said placatingly. “The whole thing is madness, I know. It is the sheerest impossible lunacy. Yet it is so, it is true, every last bit of it. Your uncle does not want the police brought in. It is his wish. It is his command to me. If you violate his wish, it will be because I have made the mistake of telling you. I am confident I have made no mistake.”

He released her, and she hesitated on the threshold.

“It can’t be!” she exclaimed. “It is unbelievable! It--it--oh, you are joking!”

“It is unbelievable to me, too, yet I am compelled to believe. Your uncle packed a suitcase last night and left. I saw him go. He said goodbye to me. He put me in charge of his affairs and yours. Here are his instructions on that score.”

Hall drew out his pocketbook and selected several sheets of paper in the unmistakable handwriting of Sergius Constantine.

“And here, also, is a note to you. He was in great haste, you know. Come in and read them at breakfast.”

It was a depressing meal, Grunya taking nothing more than a cup of coffee, and Hall toying half-heartedly with an egg. The final convincing of Grunya was brought about by a telegram addressed to Hall. The fact that it was in cipher, and that he possessed the key, satisfied her, but did not diminish the mystery.

“_Shall let you hear from me from time to time_,” Hall translated it. “_Love to Grunya. Tell her you have my consent to marry her. The rest depends on her._”

“By this telegram I hope to be able to keep track of his movements,” Hall explained. “And now let us go and be married.”

“While he is a hunted creature over the face of the earth? Never! Something must be done. We must do something. I thought you were going to destroy this nest of murderers. Destroy it, then, and save him.”

“I can’t explain everything to you,” he said gently. “But this is part of the program for destroying them. I did not plan it this way, but it got beyond me. I can tell you this much, though. If your uncle can escape for a year he will be immune; he will never be endangered again. And I think he can avoid his pursuers for that long. In the meantime I shall do everything in my power to aid him, though his own instructions limit me, as, for instance, when he says that under no circumstances are the police to be called in.”

“When the year is up, then I shall marry,” was Grunya’s final judgment.

“Very well. And in the meantime, today, are you going in to stop in the city, or will you remain here?”

“I am going in on the next train.”

“So am I.”

“Then we’ll go in together,” Grunya said, with the first faint hint of a smile that morning.

It proved a busy day for Hall. Parting from Grunya when town was reached, he devoted himself to Dragomiloff’s affairs and instructions. The manager of S. Constantine & Co. was stubbornly suspicious of Hall, despite the letter he delivered to him in his employer’s handwriting. And when Hall called up Grunya on the telephone to confirm him, the manager doubted that it was Constantine’s niece at the other end of the wire. So Grunya was compelled to come in person and substantiate Hall’s statements.

Following upon that he and Grunya lunched together, after which, alone, he went to take possession of Dragomiloff’s quarters. Certain that Grunya knew nothing about the rooms where the deaf mute presided, Hall had sounded her and found that he was right.

The deaf mute made little trouble. By talking straight to him so that he could watch the lips, Hall discovered that conversation was no more difficult than with an ordinary person. On the other hand, the mute was forced to write whatever he wished to communicate to Hall. Upon receiving the letter which Hall presented from Dragomiloff, the fellow immediately pressed it to his nose and sniffed long and carefully. Satisfied by this means of its genuineness, he accepted Hall as the temporary master of the place.

That evening Hall had three callers. The first, a rotund, bewhiskered, and genial person who gave the name of Burdwell, was one of the agents of the Bureau. By reference to the list of descriptions of the members, Hall identified him, though not by the name he had given.

“Your name is not Burdwell,” Hall said.

“I know it,” was the answer. “Perhaps you can tell me what is.”

“I can. It is Thompson--Sylvanius Thompson.”

“It sounds familiar,” was the jolly response. “Perhaps you can tell me something more.”

“You have been associated with the organization for five years. You were born in Toronto. You are forty-seven years old. You were professor of sociology at Barlington University, and you were forced to resign because your economic teachings offended the founder. You have carried out twelve commissions. Shall I name them for you?”

Sylvanius Thompson held up a warning hand.

“We do not mention such occurrences.”

“We do in this room,” Hall retorted.

The ex-professor of sociology immediately acknowledged the correctness of the statement.

“No use naming them all,” he said. “Give me the first and the last, and I’ll know I can talk business with you.”

Again Hall referred to the list.

“Your first was Sig Lemuels, a police magistrate. It was your entrance test. Your last was Bertram Festle, who was supposed to have been drowned while going aboard his yacht at Bar Point.”

“Very good.” Sylvanius Thompson paused to light a cigar. “I merely wanted to make sure, that’s all. I’ve never met anybody but the Chief here, so it was rather unprecedented to have to deal with a stranger. Now to business. I haven’t had a commission for some time now, and funds are running low.”

Hall drew out a typed copy he had made of Dragomiloff’s instructions and read a certain paragraph carefully.

“There is nothing on hand now,” he said. “But here is two thousand dollars with which to keep going. This is an advance on future services. Keep closely in touch, for you may be needed any time. The Bureau has a big affair on hand, and the assistance of all its members may be called for any time. In fact, I am empowered to tell you that the very life of the organization is at stake. Your receipt, please.”

The ex-professor signed the receipt, puffed at his cigar, and evidenced no intention of going.

“Do you like to kill men?” Hall asked bluntly.

“Oh, I don’t mind it,” answered Thompson, “though I can’t say that I like it. But one must live. I have a wife and three children.”

“Do you believe your way of making a living is right?” was Hall’s next question.

“Certainly; else I would not make my living that way. Besides, I am not a murderer. I am an executioner. No man is ever removed by the Bureau without cause--and by that I mean righteous cause. Only arch-offenders against society are removed, as you know yourself.”

“I don’t mind telling you, Professor, that I know very little about it. It is true, though I am in temporary charge of the Bureau and acting under most rigid instructions. Tell me, may you not place mistaken faith in the Chief?”

“I do not follow.”

“I mean ethical faith. May he not be mistaken in his judgments? May he not select you, for instance, to kill--I beg pardon--to execute, a man who is not an arch-offender against society, or who may be entirely innocent of the misdeeds charged against him?”