Chapter 2

But I, for one, would never care to live in the socialist
state. It would be maddening.”

“You prefer the splendid, wild, cruel beauty of our present commercial
individualism?” he asked quietly.

“Almost I do. Almost I do. But the socialist state must come. I know
that, because of the second thing I so clearly see, and that is the
failure of amelioration to ameliorate.” She broke off abruptly, favored
him with a dazzling, cheerful smile, and announced, “But why should we
be serious with the hot weather coming on? Why don’t you leave town for
a breath of air?”

“Why don’t you?” he countered.

“Too busy.”

“Same here.” He paused, and his face seemed suddenly to become harsh
and grim, as if reflecting some stern inner thought. “In fact, I have
never been busier in my life, and never so near accomplishing something
big.”

“But you will run up for the week end and meet my uncle?” she demanded
impulsively. “He was here just a few minutes ago. He wants to make it
a--a sort of house party, just the three of us, and suggests the week.”

He shook his head reluctantly.

“I’d like to, and I’ll run up, but I can’t stay a whole week. This
affair of mine is most important. I have learned only today what I have
been months in seeking.”

And while he talked, she studied his face as only a woman in love can
study a man’s face. She knew every minutest detail of Winter Hall’s
face, from the inverted arch of the joined eyebrows to the pictured
corners of the lips, from the firm unclefted chin to the last least
crinkle of the ear. Being a man, even if he were in love, not so did
Hall know Grunya’s face. He loved her, but love did not open his eyes
to microscopic details. Had he been called upon suddenly to describe
her out of the registered impressions of his consciousness, he could
have done so only in general terms, such as vivacious, plastic,
delicate coloring, low forehead, hair always becoming, eyes that smiled
and glowed even as her cheeks did, a sympathetic and adorable mouth,
and a voice the viols of which were wonderful and indescribable. He had
also impressions of cleanness and wholesomeness, noble seriousness,
facile wit, and brilliant intellect.

What Grunya saw was a well-built man of thirty-two, with the brow of a
thinker and all the facial insignia of a doer. He, too, was blue-eyed
and blond, in the bronzed American way of those that live much in the
sun. He smiled much, and, when he laughed, laughed heartily. Yet often,
in repose, a certain sternness, almost brutal, was manifest in his
face. Grunya, who loved strength and who was appalled by brutality, was
sometimes troubled by fluttering divinations of this other side of his
character.

Winter Hall was a rather unusual product of the times. In spite of
the easy ways of wealth in which he had spent his childhood, and of
the comfortable fortune inherited from his father and added to by two
spinster aunts, he had early devoted himself to the cause of humanity.
At college he had specialized in economics and sociology, and had been
looked upon as somewhat of a crank by his less serious fellow students.
Out of college, he had backed Riis, both with money and personal
effort, in the New York crusade. Much time and labor spent in a social
settlement had left him dissatisfied. He was always in search of the
thing behind the thing, of the cause that was really the cause. Thus,
he had studied politics, and, later, pursued graft from New York City
to Albany and back again, and studied it, too, in the capital of his
country.

After several years, apparently futile, he spent a few months in a
university settlement that was in reality a hotbed of radicalism, and
resolved to begin his studies from the very bottom. A year he spent as
a casual laborer wandering over the country, and for another year he
wandered as a vagabond, the companion of tramps and yegg men. For two
years, in Chicago, he was a professional charity worker, toiling long
hours and drawing down a salary of fifty dollars a month. And out of it
all, he had developed into a socialist--a “millionaire socialist,” as
he was labeled by the press.

He traveled much, and investigated always, studying affairs at first
hand. There was never a strike of importance that did not see him among
the first on the ground. He attended all the national and international
conventions of organized labor, and spent a year in Russia during the
impending crisis of the 1905 Revolution. Many articles of his had
appeared in the heavier magazines, and he was the author of several
books, all well written, deep, thoughtful, and, for a socialist,
conservative.

And this was the man with whom Grunya Constantine chatted and drank tea
in the window-seat of her East Side apartment.

“But it is not necessary for you to keep yourself mewed up all the time
in this wretched, stifling city,” she was saying. “In your case I
can’t imagine what imperatively compels you--”

But she did not finish the sentence, for at that moment she discovered
that Hall was no longer listening to her. His glance had chanced to
rest on the afternoon paper lying on the seat. Entirely oblivious of
her existence, he had picked up the paper and begun to read.

Grunya sulked prettily, but he took no notice of her.

“It’s very nice of you, I ... I must say,” she broke out, finally
attracting his attention. “Reading a newspaper while I am talking to
you.”

He turned the sheet so that she could see the headline of McDuffy’s
assassination. She looked up at him with incomprehension.

“I beg your pardon, Grunya, but when I saw that, I forgot everything.”
He tapped his forefinger on the headline. “That is why I am so busy.
That is why I remain in New York. That is why I can allow myself no
more than a week end with you, and you know how dearly I would love to
have the whole week.”

“But I do not understand,” she faltered. “Because the anarchists
have blown up a chief of police in another city ... I ... I don’t
understand.”

“I’ll tell you. For two years I had my suspicions, then they became
a certainty, and for months now I have steadily devoted myself to
running down what I believe to be the most terrible organization
for assassination that has ever flourished in the United States, or
anywhere else. In fact, I am almost certain that the organization is
international.

“Do you remember when John Mossman committed suicide by leaping from
the seventh story of the Fidelity Building? He was my friend, as well
as my father’s friend before me. There was no reason for him to kill
himself. The Fidelity Trust Corporation was flourishing. So were all
his other interests. His home life was unusually happy. His health was
prodigiously good. There was nothing on his mind. Yet the stupid police
called it suicide. There was some talk about its being tri-facial
neuralgia--incurable, unescapable, unendurable. When men get that they
do commit suicide. But he did not have it. We lunched together the
day of his death. I know he did not have it, and I made a point of
verifying the fact by interviewing his physician. It was theory only,
and it was poppycock. He never killed himself, never leaped from the
seventh story of the Fidelity Building. Then who killed him? And why?
Somebody threw him from the seventh story. Who? Why?

“It is likely that the affair would have been dismissed from my mind
as an insoluble mystery, had not Governor Northampton been killed by
an air-rifle just three days later. You remember?--on a city street,
from any one of a thousand windows. They never got a clue. I wondered
casually about these two murders, and from then on, grew keenly alive
to anything unusual in the daily list of homicides in the whole country.

“Oh, I shall not give you the whole list, but just a few. There was
Borff, the organized labor grafter of Sannington. He had controlled
that city for years. Graft prosecution after graft prosecution failed
to reach him. When they settled his estate they found him possessed
of half a dozen millions. They settled his estate just after he had
reached out and laid hands on the whole political machinery of the
state. It was just at the height of his power and his corruption when
he was struck down.

“And there were others--Chief of Police Little; Welchorst, the big
promoter; Blankhurst, the Cotton King; Inspector Satcherly, found
floating in the East River, and so on, and so on. The perpetrators were
never discovered. Then there were the society murders--Charley Atwater,
killed on that last hunting trip of his; Mrs. Langthorne-Haywards; Mrs.
Hastings-Reynolds; old Van Auston--oh, a long list indeed.

“All of which convinced me that a strong organization of some sort was
at work. That it was no mere Black Hand affair, I was certain. The
murders were not confined to any nationality nor to any stratum of
society. My first thought was of the anarchists. Forgive me, Grunya--”
His hand flashed out to hers and retained it warmly. “I had heard much
talk of you, and that you were in close touch with the violent groups.
I knew that you spent much money, and I was suspicious. And at any
rate, you could put me in closer touch with the anarchists. I came
suspecting you, and I remained to love you. I found you the gentlest
of anarchists and a very half-hearted one at that. You were already
started in your settlement work down here--”

“And you remained to dissatisfy me with that, too,” she laughed, at the
same time lifting the hand that held hers and resting her cheek against
it. “But go on. I’m all excited.”

“I did get in close with the anarchists, and the more I studied them
the more confident I became that they were incapable. They were so
unpractical. They dreamed dreams and spun theories and raged against
police persecution, and that was all. They never got anywhere. They
never did anything but get themselves in trouble--I am speaking of the
violent groups, of course. As for the Tolstoians and the Kropotkinians,
they were no more than mild academic philosophers. They couldn’t harm a
fly, and their violent cousins couldn’t.

“You see, the assassinations have been of all sorts. Had they been
political alone, or social, they might have been due to some hopelessly
secret society. But they were commercial and society as well.
Therefore, I concluded, the world must in some way have access to this
organization. But how? I assumed the hypothesis that there was some
man I wanted killed. And there I stuck. I did not have the address of
the firm that would perform that task for me. Here was the flaw in my
reasoning, namely, the hypothesis itself. I really did not want to kill
any man.

“But this flaw dawned on me afterwards, when Coburn, at the Federal
Club, told half a dozen of us of an adventure he had just had this
afternoon. To him it was merely a curious incident, but I caught at
once the gleam of light in it. He was crossing Fifth Avenue, downtown,
on foot, when a man, dressed like a mechanician, dismounted alongside
of him from a motorcycle and spoke to him. In a few words, the fellow
told him that if there were anyone he wanted put out of the world it
could be attended to with safety and dispatch. About that time Coburn
threatened to punch the fellow’s head, and he promptly jumped on his
motorcycle and made off.

“Now here’s the point. Coburn was in deep trouble. He had recently been
double-crossed (if you know what that means) by Mattison, his partner,
to the tune of a tremendous sum. In addition, Mattison had cleared out
for Europe with Coburn’s wife. Do you see? First, Coburn did have, or
might be supposed to have, or ought to have, a desire for vengeance
against Mattison. And secondly, thanks to the newspapers, the affair
was public property.”

“I see!” Grunya cried, with glowing eyes. “There was the flaw in your
hypothesis. Since you could not make public your hypothetical desire
to kill a man, the organization, naturally, could make no overtures to
you about it.”

“Correct. But I was no forwarder. Or yet, in a way, I was. I saw now
how the world got access to the organization and its service. From
then on I studied the mysterious and prominent murders with this in
mind, and I found, so far as the society ones were concerned, that they
were practically always preceded by sensational public exploitation
of scandal. The commercial murders--well, the shady and unfair
transactions of a fair proportion of the big businessmen are always
leaking out, even though they do not get into print. When Hawthorn
was found mysteriously dead on his yacht, the gossip of his underhand
dealings in the fight against the Combine had been in the clubs for
weeks. You may not remember them, but in their day the Atwater-Jones
scandal and the Langthorne-Haywards scandal were most sensationally
featured by the newspapers.

“So I became certain that this murder organization must approach
persons high in political, business, and social life. And I was also
certain that its overtures were not always rebuffed as in the case of
Coburn. I looked about me and wondered what ones of the very men I met
in the clubs or at directors’ meetings had patronized this firm of
men-killers. That I must be acquainted with such men I had no doubt,
but which ones were they? And imagine my asking them to give me the
address of the firm which they had employed to wipe out their enemies.

“But at last, and only now, have I got the direct clue. I kept close
eye on all my friends who were high in the world. When any one of them
was afflicted by a great trouble, I attached myself to him. For a time
this was fruitless, though there was one who must have availed himself
of the services of the organization, for, within six months, the man
who had been the cause of his trouble was dead. Suicide, the police
said.

“And then my chance came. You know of the furor of a few years ago
caused by the marriage of Gladys Van Martin with Baron Portos de
Moigne. It was one of those unfortunate international marriages. He was
a brute. He has robbed her and divorced her. The details of his conduct
have only just come out, and they are incredibly horrible. He has even
beaten her so badly that the physicians despaired of her life, for a
time, and, later, of her reason. And by French law he has possessed
himself of their children--two boys.

“Her brother, Percy Van Martin, and I were classmates at college. I
promptly made it a point to get in close with him. We’ve seen a good
deal of each other the last several weeks. Only the other day the thing
I was waiting for happened, and he told me of it. The organization
had approached him. Unlike Coburn, he did not drive the man away,
but heard him out. If Van Martin cared to go further in the matter,
he was to insert the single word MESOPOTAMIA in the personal column
of the _Herald_. I quickly persuaded him to let me take hold of the
affair. I inserted MESOPOTAMIA, as directed, and, acting as Van
Martin’s representative, I have seen and talked with one of the men
of the organization. He was only an underling, however. They are very
suspicious and careful. But tonight I shall meet the principal. It is
all arranged. And then....”

“Yes, yes,” Grunya cried eagerly. “And then?”

“I don’t know. I have no plans.”

“But the danger!”

Hall smiled reassuringly.

“I don’t imagine there will be any risk. I am coming merely to transact
some business with the firm, namely, the assassination of Percy Van
Martin’s ex-brother-in-law. Firms do not make a practice of killing
their clients.”

“But when they find out you are not a client?” she protested.

“I won’t be there at that time. And when they do find out, it will be
too late for them to do me any harm.”

* * * * *

“Be careful, do be careful,” Grunya urged as they parted at the door
half an hour later. “And you will come up for the week end?”

“Surely.”

“I’ll meet you at the station myself.”

“And I’ll meet your redoubtable uncle a few minutes afterwards, I
suppose.” He made a mock shiver. “He’s not a regular ogre, I hope.”

“You’ll love him,” she proclaimed proudly. “He is finer and better than
a dozen fathers. He never denies me anything. Not even--”

“Me?” Hall interrupted.

Grunya tried to meet him with an equal audaciousness, but blushed and
dropped her eyes, and the next moment was encircled by his arms.

_Chapter IV_

“So you are Ivan Dragomiloff?”

Winter Hall paused a moment to glance curiously around at the
book-lined walls and back again to the colorless blond in the black
skullcap, who had not risen to greet him.

“I must say access to you is made sufficiently difficult. It leads one
to believe that the--er--work of your Bureau is performed discreetly as
well as capably.”

Dragomiloff smiled the ghost of a pleased smile.

“Sit down,” he said, indicating a chair that faced him and that threw
the visitor’s face into the light.

Again Hall glanced around the room and back at the man before him.

“I am surprised,” was Hall’s comment.

“You expected low-browed ruffians and lurid melodrama, I suppose?”
Dragomiloff queried pleasantly.

“No, not that. I knew too keen a mind was required to direct the
operations of your--er--institution.”

“They have been uniformly successful.”

“How long have you been in business?--if I may ask.”

“Eleven years, actively--though there was preparation and elaboration
of the plan prior to that.”

“You don’t mind talking with me about it?” was Hall’s next query.

“Certainly not,” came the answer. “As a client, you are in the same
boat with me. Our interests are identical. And, since we never
blackmail our clients after the transaction is completed, our interests
remain identical. A little important information can do no harm, and I
don’t mind saying that I am rather proud of this organization. It is,
as you say, and if I immodestly say so myself, capably directed.”

“But I can’t understand,” Hall exclaimed. “You are the last person
in the world I should conceive of as being at the head of a band of
murderers.”

“And you are the last person in the world I should expect to find
here seeking the professional services of such a person,” was the
dry counter. “I like your looks. You are strong, honest, unafraid,
and, in your eyes is that undefinable yet unmistakable tiredness of
the scholar. You read a great deal, and study. You are as remarkably
different from my regular run of clients as I am, obviously, from the
person you expected to meet at the head of a band of murderers. Though
executioners is the better and truer description.”

“Never mind the name,” Hall answered. “It does not reduce my surprise
that you should be conducting this--er--enterprise.”

“Ah, but you scarcely know how we conduct it.” Dragomiloff laced and
interlaced his strong, lean fingers and meditated for further answer.
“I might explain that we conduct our trade with a greater measure of
ethics than our clients bring to us.”

“Ethics!” Hall burst into laughter.

“Yes, precisely; and I’ll admit it sounds funny in connection with an
Assassination Bureau.”

“Is that what you call it?”

“One name is as good as another,” the head of the Bureau went on
imperturbably. “But you will find, in patronizing us, a keener, a more
rigid standard of right-dealing than in the business world. I saw the
need of that at the start. It was imperative. Organized as we were,
outside the law, and in the very teeth of the law, success was only
to be gained by doing right. We have to be right with one another,
with our patrons, with everybody, and everything. You have no idea the
amount of business we turn away.”

“What!” Hall cried. “And why?”

“Because it would not be right to transact it. Don’t laugh, please.
In fact, we of the Bureau are all rather fanatical when it comes to
ethics. We have the sanction of right in all that we do. We must have
that sanction. Without it we could not last very long. Believe me, this
is so. And now to business. You have come here through the accredited
channels. You can have but one errand. Whom do you want executed?”

“You don’t know?” Hall asked in wonderment.

“Certainly not. That is not my branch. I spend no time drumming up
trade.”

“Perhaps, when I give you the man’s name, you will not find that
sanction of right. It seems you are judge as well as executioner.”

“Not executioner. I never execute. It is not my branch. I am the head.
I judge--locally, that is--and other members carry out the orders.”

“But suppose these others should prove weak vessels?” Dragomiloff
looked very pleased.

“Ah, that was the rub. I studied it a long time. Almost as conclusively
as anything else, it was that very thing that made me see that our
operations could be conducted only on an ethical basis. We have our own
code of right, and our own law. Only men of the highest ethical nature,
combined with the requisite physical and nervous stamina, are admitted
to our ranks. As a result, almost fanatically are our oaths observed.
There have been weak vessels--several of them.” He paused and seemed
to ponder sadly. “They paid the penalty. It was a splendid object
lesson to the rest.”

“You mean--?”

“Yes; they were executed. It had to be. But it is very rarely necessary
with us.”

“How do you manage it?”

“When we have selected a desperate, intelligent, and reasonable
man--this selecting, by the way, is done by the members themselves,
who, rubbing shoulders everywhere with all sorts of men, have better
opportunity than I for meeting and estimating strong characters.
When such a man is selected, he is tried out. His life is the pledge
he gives for his faithfulness and loyalty. I know of these men, and
have the reports on them. I rarely see them, unless they rise in the
organization, and by the same token very few of them ever see me.

“One of the first things done is to give a candidate an unimportant and
unremunerative murder--say, a brutal mate of some ship, or a bullying
foreman, a usurer, or a petty grafting politician. It is good for the
world to have such individuals out of it, you know. But to return.
Every step of the candidate in this, his first killing, is so marked
by us that a mass of testimony is gathered sufficient to convict him
before any court in this land. And the affair is so conducted that
this testimony proceeds from outside persons. We would not have to
appear. For that matter, we have never found it necessary to invoke the
country’s law for the castigation of a member.

“Well, when this initial task has been performed, the man is one of us,
tied to us body and soul. After that he is thoroughly educated in our
methods--”

“Does ethics enter into the curriculum?” Hall interrupted to ask.

“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.