Chapter 3

“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.