The Assassination Bureau, Ltd.

by Jack London

  “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 Dragomiloff’s 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, Jacobs’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.

  7

  “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 beyon
d 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?”

  “No, young man, that cannot happen. Whenever a commission is offered me—and I presume this is true of the other members—I first of all call for the evidence and weigh it carefully. I once even declined a certain commission because of reasonable doubt. It is true, I was afterwards proved wrong, but the principle was there, you see. Why, the Bureau could not last a year if it were not impregnably founded on right. I, for one, could not look my wife in the eyes nor take my innocent children in my arms did I believe it to be otherwise with the Bureau and the commissions I carry out for the Bureau.”

  Next, after the ex-professor, came Haas, livid and hungry-looking, to report progress.

  “The Chief is headed towards Chicago,” he began. “He ran his auto clear through to Albany and got away on the New York Central. His Pullman berth was for Chicago. I was too late to follow him, so I got a wire to Schwartz in the city here, who caught the next train. Also I telegraphed to the head of the Chicago Bureau—you know him?”

  “Yes; Starkington.”

  “I telegraphed him, telling him the situation and to put a couple of members after the Chief. Then I came on to New York in order to get Harrison. The two of us leave for Chicago the first thing in the morning, if, in the meantime, no word comes from Starkington that they have got him.”

  “But you have exceeded your instructions,” Hall objected. “I heard Drag—the Chief explicitly tell you that Schwartz and Harrison were to assist, and that the aid of the rest of the organization was to be called for only after the three of you had failed, and failed for a considerable time. You haven’t failed yet. You have not even really begun.”

  “Evidently you know little about our system,” Haas replied. “It has always been our custom when a chase leads to other cities to call upon any of the members who may be in those cities.”

  As Hall was about to speak, the deaf mute entered with a telegram addressed to Dragomiloff. Hall opened it and found it was from Starkington. He decoded it and then read it aloud to Haas.

  “Has Haas gone crazy? Have received word from Haas that you appointed him to execute you, that you are headed for Chicago, and that I am to detail two members to fix you. Haas has never lied before. He must be crazy. He may prove dangerous. See to him.”

  “That is what Harrison said when I told him not an hour ago,” was Haas’s comment. “But I do not lie, and I am not crazy. You must fix this up, Mr. Hall.”

  Assisted by Haas, Hall composed a reply.

  “Haas is neither lunatic nor liar. What he says is correct. Cooperate with him as requested.

  Winter Hall, Temporary Secretary.”


  “I’ll send it myself,” Haas said, as he rose to go.

  A few minutes later Hall was telephoning to Grunya that her uncle was headed towards Chicago. This was followed by an interview with Harrison, who came privily to verify what Haas had told him, and who went away convinced.

  Hall sat down alone to think things over. He glanced about at the book-cluttered walls and table, and the old feeling of unreality came over him. How could it be possible that there was an Assassination Bureau composed of ethical lunatics? And how could it be possible that he, who had set out to destroy this Assassination Bureau, was now actually managing it from its headquarters, and directing the pursuit and probable killing of the man who had created the Bureau, who was the father of the woman he loved, and whom he wished to save for his daughter’s sake—how could it be possible?

  And to prove that it was all true and real, a second telegram arrived from the head of the Chicago branch.

  “Who in hell are you?” it demanded.

  “Temporary acting secretary appointed by the Chief,” was Hall’s reply.

  Hall was awakened from sleep several hours later by a third Chicago telegram.

  “Everything too irregular. Decline further communication with you. Where is the Chief?

  Starkington.”

  “Chief gone to Chicago. Watch incoming trains and get him to verify instructions to Haas. I don’t care if you never communicate.”

  Hall flashed back.

  By noon of next day Starkington’s messages began to arrive thick and fast.

  “Have met Chief. He verifies everthing. Accept my apology. He broke my arm and got away. Have commissioned the four Chicago members to get him.”

  “Schwartz has just arrived.”

  “Think Chief may head west. Am wiring St. Louis, Denver, and San Francisco to watch for him. This may prove expensive. Forward money for contingencies.”