Chapter IX
In St. Louis, Hall found no change in the situation. Dragomiloff had not reappeared and everybody was waiting for something to happen. Hall attended a conference at Murgweather’s house. Murgweather was the head of the St. Louis branch, and lived with his family in a comfortable suburban bungalow. All were gathered when Hall arrived, and he immediately recognized Haas, the lean flame of a man, and Starkington he knew by the arm in splints and sling.
“Who is the man?” demanded Lucoville, the New Orleans member, when Hall was being introduced.
“Temporary Secretary of the Bureau,” Murgweather started to explain.
“It is entirely too irregular to suit me,” Lucoville snapped back. “He is not one of us. He has killed no man. He has passed no test of the organization. Not only is his appearance among us unprecedented, but for men who pursue such a hazardous vocation as ours his presence is a menace. And in connection with this, I wish to point out two things. First, by reputation he is known to all of us. I have nothing derogatory to say about his work in the world. I have read his books with interest, and, I may add, profit. His contributions to sociology have been distinct and distinctive. On the other hand, though, he is a socialist. He is called the ‘Millionaire Socialist.’ What does that mean? It means that he is out of touch with us and our principles of conduct. It means that he is a blind creature of Law. Law is his fetish. He grovels in the mire of ignorance and worships Law. To him, we, who are above the Law, are arch-offenders against the Law. Therefore, his presence bodes no good for us. He is bound to destroy us for the sake of his fetish. This is only in the nature of things. This is the dictate of both his personal and his philosophical temperament.
“And secondly, notice that of all times, it is in this time of crisis to the organization that he has chosen to intrude. Who has vouched for him? Who has admitted him to our secrets? Only one man, and that man the Chief, the one who is now bent on destroying us, who has already killed six of our members and who threatens to expose us to the police. This looks bad, very bad, for him and us. He is the enemy within our ranks. It is my suggestion that we put him away—”
“Pardon me, my dear Lucoville,” Murgweather interrupted. “This discussion is out of order. Mr. Hall is my guest.”
“All our heads are in the noose,” retorted the member from New Orleans. “And guest or no guest, this is no time for social amenities. The man is a spy. He is bent on destroying us. I charge him with it in his presence. What has he to say?”
Hall glanced around at the circle of suspicious faces, and, with the exception of Lucoville, he noted that none was angry. In truth, he decided, they were mad philosophers.
Murgweather made a vain effort to interpose, but was overruled.
“What have you to say, Mr. Hall?” Hanover, the head of the Boston branch, demanded.
“If I may sit down, I shall be glad to reply,” was Hall’s answer.
Apologies were rendered all around, and he was ensconced in a big armchair that was drawn up to form one of the circle.
“My reply, like the charges, will be under two heads,” he began. “In the first place, I am bent on destroying your organization.”
This declaration was received in courteous silence, and the thought came into Hall’s mind that as philosophers and madmen they were certainly consistent. Emotion of every sort was absent from their faces. They waited at scholarly attention for the rest of his discourse. Even Lucoville’s flash of anger had been momentary, and he now sat as composed as the rest.
“Why I am bent on destroying your organization is too big a subject to open at this moment,” Hall continued. “I may say, in passing, that it is I who am responsible for your Chief’s changed conduct. When I discovered what an extreme ethicist he was, and each of the rest of you, I gave him fifty thousand dollars to accept a commission against himself. I furnished him with a sanction, ethical, of course, and the execution of the commission he turned over to Mr. Haas in my presence. Am I right, Mr. Haas?”
“You are.”
“And in my presence, the Chief informed you of my secretaryship. Am I right?”
“You are.”
“Now I come to the second head. Why did the Chief trust me with the headquarters management of the Bureau? The answer is simply and directly to the point. He knew that I was at least halfway as ethically mad as the rest of you. He knew that it was impossible for me to break my word. This I have proved by my subsequent actions. I have done my best to fulfill the office of acting secretary. I have forwarded all telegrams, general calls, and orders. I have granted all requests for funds. I shall continue to do as I have agreed, though I hold in detestation and horror, ethically, all that you stand for. I am doing what I believe to be right. Am I right?”
The pause that followed was very slight. Lucoville arose, walked over to him, and gravely extended his hand. The others did the same. Then Starkington preferred a request that adequate provision be made from the funds of the Bureau for the support of Dempsey’s widow and of Harrison’s widow and children. There was little discussion, and when the sums were decided upon, Hall wrote the checks and turned them over to Murgweather to be forwarded.
The question next taken up was that of the crisis and of how best to cope with the recreant Chief. In this Hall took no part, so that, lying back in his chair, he was able to observe and study these curious madmen. There were seven of them, and, with the exceptions of Haas and Lucoville, they had all the appearance of middle-aged, middle-class, scholarly gentlemen. He could not bring himself to realize that they were cold-blooded murderers, assassins for hire. And by the same token, it was incredible that they who were so calm should be the survivors of the deadly war that was being waged against them. Half of their number were already dead. Hanover was the sole survivor of Boston, Haas of New York, Starkington of Chicago, and their genial and bewhiskered host, Murgweather, of St. Louis.
“I enjoyed your last book,” Hall’s host leaned over and whispered to him in an interval. “Your argument for organization by industry as against organization by craft was unimpeachable. But to my notion, your exposition of the law of diminishing returns was rather lame. I have a bone to pick with you there.”
And this man was an assassin!—all these men were assassins! Hall could believe only by accepting them as lunatics. And going into town on the electric car after the meeting, he sat and talked with Haas, and was astounded to find him an ex-professor of Greek and Hebrew. Lucoville proved to be an expert in Oriental research. Hanover, he learned, had once been headmaster of one of the most select New England academies, while Starkington turned out to be an ex-newspaper editor of no mean reputation.
“But why have you, for instance, gone in for this mode of life?” Hall asked.
They were sitting on the outside of the car, which had arrived in the hotel district. The theatres were just letting out, and the sidewalks were crowded.
“Because it is right,” Haas answered, “and because it is a better means of livelihood than Greek and Hebrew. If I had my life all over again—”
But Hall was never to hear the end of that sentence. The car was stopped at a crossing for a moment, and Haas was suddenly electrified by something he had seen. With a flash of eye, and without a word or motion of farewell, he sprang from the car and was lost to view in the moving crowd.
Next morning Hall understood. In the paper was a sensational account of a mysterious attempt at murder. Haas was lying at the receiving hospital with a perforated lung. The doctors’ examination showed that he owed his life to an abnormal, misplaced heart. Had his heart been where it ought to have been, said the report, the bullet or missile would have passed through it. But this did not constitute the mystery. No one had heard the shot fired. Haas had suddenly slumped in the midst of a thick crowd. A woman, pressed against him in the jam, testified that at the moment before he fell she heard a faint, though sharp, metallic click. A man, in front of him, thought he had heard the click but was not sure.
“The police are mystified,” the newspaper said. “The victim, a stranger in the city, is equally mystified. He claims to know of no person or persons who might be liable to seek his life. Nor does he remember having heard the click. He was aware only of a violent impact as the strange missile entered. Sergeant of Detectives O’Connell believes the weapon to have been an air-rifle, but this is denied by Chief of Detectives Randall, who claims to know air-rifles, and who denies that such a weapon could be utilized unseen in a dense crowd.”
“It was the Chief without doubt,” Murgweather was assuring Hall a few minutes later. “He is still in town. Will you please inform Denver, San Francisco, and New Orleans of the event? The weapon is the Chief’s own invention. Several times he has loaned it to Harrison, who always returned it after using. The compressed-air chamber is strapped on the body under the arm or wherever is most convenient. The discharging mechanism is no larger than a toy pistol, and can be readily concealed in the hand. We must be very careful from now on.”
“I am in no danger,” Hall answered. “I am only Temporary Secretary, and am not a member.”
“I am glad that Haas will recover,” Murgweather said. “He is a very estimable man and a scholar. I have the keenest appreciation of his intellect, though he is prone to be too serious at times, and, I fear me, finds a certain pleasure in taking human life.”
“Don’t you?” Hall asked quickly.
“No, and no other one of us, with the exception of Haas. He has the temperament for it. Believe me, Mr. Hall, though I have faithfully performed my tasks for the Bureau, and despite my ethical convictions as to the righteousness of the acts, I never put through an execution without qualms of the flesh. I know it is foolish, but I cannot overcome it. Why, I was positively nauseated by my first affair. I have written a monograph upon the subject, not for publication, of course, but it is a very interesting field of study. If you care to, I shall be glad for you to come out to the house some evening and glance over what I have written.”
“Thank you, I shall.”
“It is a curious problem,” Murgweather continued. “The sacredness of human life is a social concept. The primitive natural man never had any qualms about killing his fellow man. Theoretically, I should have none. Yet I do have. The question is: how do they arise? Has the long evolution to civilization impressed this concept into the cerebral cells of the race? Or is it due to my training in childhood and adolescence, before I became an emancipated thinker? Or may it not be due to both causes? It is very curious.”
“I am sure it is,” Hall answered dryly. “But what are you going to do about the Chief?”
“Kill him. It is all we can do, and we certainly must assert our right to live. The situation is a new one to us, however. Hitherto, the men we destroyed were unaware of their danger. Also, they never pursued us. But the Chief does know our intention, and, furthermore, he is destroying us. We have never been hunted before. He has certainly been more fortunate than we. But I must be going. I agreed to meet Hanover at quarter past.”
“But aren’t you afraid?” Hall asked.
“Of what?”
“Of the Chief killing you?”
“No; it won’t matter much. You see, I am well insured, and in my own experience I have exploded one generally accepted notion, namely, that the man who has taken many lives is, by those very acts, made more afraid himself to die. This is not true. I have demonstrated it. The more I have administered death to others—eighteen times, by my count—the easier death has seemed to me. Those very qualms I spoke of are the qualms of life. They belong to life, not to death. I have written a few detached thoughts on the subject. If you care to glance at them....”
“Yes, indeed,” Hall assured him.
“This evening, then. Say at eleven. If I am detained by this affair, ask to be shown into my study. I’ll lay the manuscript, and that of the monograph, too, on the reading table for you. I’d prefer to read them aloud and discuss them with you, but if I can’t be there, jot down any notes of criticism that may come to you.”