by Jack London
“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 e
ven 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.
4
“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.”