by Jack London
The two months of inaction would not have occurred, and the assassins would have gone back to their home cities, had it not been for the fact that they were baited to remain by a weekly message from Dragomiloff. Regularly, each Saturday night, Alsworthy was called up by telephone, and over the wire heard the unmistakable toneless and colorless voice of the Chief. He always reiterated the one suggestion that the surviving members of the Assassination Bureau disband the organization. Hall, present at one of their councils, seconded the proposition. The hearing they accorded him was out of courtesy only, for he was not one of them; and he stood alone in the opinion he expressed.
As they saw it, there was no possible way by which they could break their oaths. The rules of the Bureau had never been broken. Even Dragomiloff had not broken them. In strict accord with the rules he had accepted Hall’s fee of fifty thousand dollars, judged himself and his acts as socially hurtful, passed sentence on himself, and selected Haas to execute the sentence. Who were they, they demanded, that they should behave less rightly than their Chief? To disband an organization which they believed socially justifiable would be a monstrous wrong. As Lucoville said, “It would stultify all morality and place us on the level of the beasts. Are we beasts?”
And “No! No! No!” had been the passionate cries of the members.
“Madmen yourselves,” Hall called them. “As mad as your Chief is mad.”
“All moralists have been considered mad,” Breen retorted. “Or, to be precise, have been considered mad by the common ruck of their times. No moralist, unworthy of contempt, can act contrary to his belief. All crucifixions and martyrdoms have been gladly accepted by the true moralists. It was the only way to give power to their teaching. Faith! That’s it! And, as the slang of the day goes, they delivered the goods. They had faith in the right they envisioned. What is the life of man compared with the living truth of the thought of man? A vain thing is precept without example. Are we preceptors who dare not be exemplars?”
“No! No! No!” had been the chorus of approbation.
“We dare not, as true thinkers and right-livers, by thought, much less by deed, negate the high principles we expound,” said Harkins.
“Nor can we otherwise climb upwards towards the light,” Hanover added.
“We are not madmen,” Alsworthy cried. “We are men who see clearly. We are high priests at the altar of right conduct. As well call our good friend, Winter Hall, a madman. If truth be mad, and we are touched by it, is not Winter Hall likewise touched? He has called us ethical lunatics. What else, then, has his conduct been but ethical lunacy? Why has he not denounced us to the police? Why does he, holding our views abhorrent, continue to act as our Secretary? He is not even bound by solemn contracts as we are. He merely bowed his head and consented to do the several things requested of him by our recreant Chief. He belongs to both sides in the present controversy; the Chief trusts him; we trust him; and he betrays neither one side nor the other. We know and like him. I, for one, find but two things distasteful in him: first, his sociology, and, second, his desire to destroy our organization. But when it comes to ethics he is as like us as a pea in a pod is to its fellows.”
“I, too, am touched,” Hall murmured sadly. “I admit it. I confess it. You are such likable lunatics, and I am so weak, or strong, or foolish, or wise—I don’t know what—that I cannot break my given word. All the same, I wish I could bring you fellows to my way of thinking, as I brought the Chief to my way of thinking.”
“Oh, but did you?” Lucoville cried. “Why then did the Chief not retire from the organization?”
“Because he had accepted the fee I paid for his life,” Hall answered.
“And for the same reasons precisely are we plighted to take his life,” Lucoville drove the point home. “Are we less moral than our Chief? By our compacts, when the Chief accepted the fee we were bound to carry into execution his agreement with you. It mattered not what that agreement might be. It chanced to be the Chief’s own death.” He shrugged his shoulders. “What would you? The Chief must die, else we are not exemplars of what we believe to be right.”
“There you go, always harking back to morality,” Hall complained.
“And why not?” Lucoville concluded grandly. “The world is founded on morality. Without morality the world would perish. There is a righteousness in the elements themselves. Destroy morality and you would destroy gravitation. The very rocks would fly apart. The whole sidereal system would fume into the unthinkableness of chaos.”
12
One evening, at the Poodle Dog Café, Hall waited vainly for John Gray to join him at dinner. The theatre, as usual, had been planned for afterwards. But John Gray did not come, and by half past eight Hall returned to the St. Francis Hotel, under his arm a bundle of current magazines, intent on early to bed. There was something familiar about the walk of the woman who preceded him towards the elevator, and, with a quick intake of breath, he hurried after.
“Grunya,” he said softly, as the elevator started.
In one instant she gave him a startled glance from trouble-burdened eyes, and the next instant she had caught his hand between both of hers and was clinging to it as if for strength.
“Oh, Winter,” she breathed. “Is it you? That is why I came to the St. Francis. I thought I might find you. I need you so. Uncle Sergius is mad, quite mad. He ordered me to pack up for a long journey. We sail tomorrow. He compelled me to leave the house and to come to a downtown hotel, promising to join me later, or to join me on the steamer tomorrow morning. I engaged rooms for him. But something is going to happen. He has some terrible plan in mind, I know. He—”
“What floor, sir?” the elevator operator interrupted.
“Go down again,” Hall ordered, for there was no one else in the car.
“Wait,” he cautioned. “We will go to the Palm Room and talk.”
“No, no,” she cried. “Let us get out on the street. I want to walk. I want fresh air. I want to be able to think. Do you think I am mad, Winter? Look at me. Do I look it?”
“Hush,” he commanded, pressing her arm. “Wait. We will talk it over. Wait.”
It was patent that she was in a state of high excitement, and her effort to control herself on the down-trip of the elevator was successful but pitiful.
“Why didn’t you communicate with me?” he asked, when they had gained the sidewalk and were walking to the corner of Powell, where he intended directing their course across Union Square. “What became of you when you reached San Francisco? You received my message at Denver. Why didn’t you come to the St. Francis?”
“I haven’t time to tell you,” she hurried on. “My head is bursting. I don’t know what to believe. It seems all a dream. Such things are not possible. Uncle’s mind is deranged. Sometimes I am absolutely sure there is no such thing as the Assassination Bureau. It is an imagining of Uncle Sergius. You, too, have imagined it. This is the twentieth century. Such an awful thing cannot be. I . . . I sometimes wonder if I have had typhoid fever, or if I am not even now in the delirium of fever, with nurses and doctors around me, raving all this nightmare myself. Tell me, tell me, are you, too, a sprite of fantasy—a vision of a disease-stricken brain?”
“No,” he said gravely and slowly. “You are awake and well. You are yourself. You are now crossing Powell Street with me. The pavement is slippery. Do you not feel it underfoot? See those tire chains on that motorcar. Your arm is in mine. This is a real fog drifting across from the Pacific. Those are real people on yonder benches. You see this beggar, asking me for money. He is real. See, I give him a real half-dollar. He will most likely spend it on real whiskey. I smelled his breath. Did you? It was real, I assure you, very real. And we are real. Please grasp that. Now, what is your trouble? Tell me all.”
“Is there truly an organization of assassins?”
“Yes,” he answered.
“How do you know? Is it not mere conjecture? May you not be inoculated with uncle’s madness?”
&
nbsp; Hall shook his head sadly. “I wish I were. Unfortunately, I know otherwise.”
“How do you know?” she cried, pressing the fingers of her free hand wildly to her temple.
“Because I am Temporary Secretary of the Assassination Bureau.”
She recoiled from him, half withdrawing her arm from his and being restrained only by a reassuring pressure on his part.
“You are one of the band of murderers that is trying to kill Uncle Sergius!”
“No; I am not one of the band. I merely have charge of its funds. Has you—er—your Uncle Sergius told you anything about the—er—the band?”
“Oh, endless ravings. He is so deranged that he believes that he organized it.”
“He did,” Hall said firmly. “He is crazy, there is no doubt of that; but nevertheless he made the Assassination Bureau and directed it.”
Again she recoiled and strove to withdraw her arm.
“And will you next admit that it is you who paid the Bureau fifty thousand dollars in advance for his death?” she demanded.
“It is true. I admit it.”
“How could you?” she moaned.
“Listen, Grunya, dear,” he begged. “You have not heard all. You do not understand. At the time I paid the fee I did not know he was your father—”
He broke off abruptly, appalled at the slip he had made.
“Yes,” she said, with growing calmness, “he told me he was my father, too. I took it for so much raving. Go on.”
“Well, then, I did not know he was your father; nor did I know he was insane. Afterwards, when I learned, I pleaded with him. But he is mad. So are they all, all mad. And he is up to some new madness right now. You dread that something is going to happen. Tell me what are your suspicions. We may be able to prevent it.”
“Listen!” She pressed close to him and spoke quickly in a low, controlled voice. “There is much explanation needed from both of us and to both of us. But first to the danger. When I arrived in San Francisco, why I do not know save that I had a presentiment, I went first to the morgue, then I made the round of the hospitals. And I found him, in the German Hospital, with two severe knife wounds. He told me he had received them from one of the assassins . . .”
“A man named Harding,” Hall interrupted and guessed. “It happened up on the Nevada desert, near Winnemucca, on a railroad train.”
“Yes, yes; that is the name. That is what he said.”
“You see how everything dovetails,” Hall urged. “There may be a great deal of madness in it, but the madness even is real, and you and I, at any rate, are sane.”
“Yes, but let me hurry on.” She pressed his arm with renewed confidence. “Oh, we have so much to tell each other. Uncle swears by you. But that is not what I want to say. I rented a furnished house, on the tip-top of Rincon Hill, and as soon as the doctors permitted, I moved Uncle Sergius to it. We’ve been keeping house there for the last few weeks. Uncle is entirely recovered—or Father, rather. He is my father. I believe that now, for it seems I must believe everything. And I shall believe . . . unless I wake up and find it all a nightmare. Now Un—Father has been tinkering about the house the last few days. Today, with everything packed for our voyage to Honolulu, he sent the luggage aboard the steamer, and sent me to a hotel. Now I know nothing about explosives, save glints and glimmerings from my reading; but just the same I know he has mined the house. He has dug up the cellar. He has opened the walls of the big living room and closed them again. I know he has run wires behind the partitions, and I know that today he was making things ready to run a wire from the house to a clump of shrubbery in the grounds near the gateway. Possibly you may guess what he plans to do.”
Hall was just remembering John Gray’s failure to keep the theatre engagement.
“Something is to happen there tonight,” Grunya went on. “Uncle intends to join me later tonight at the St. Francis, or tomorrow morning on the steamer. In the meantime—”
But Hall, having reasoned his way to action, was urging her by the arm, back out of the park to the corner where stood the waiting row of taxicabs.
“In the meantime,” he told her, “we must rush to Rincon Hill. He is going to kill them. We must prevent it.”
“If only he isn’t killed,” she murmured. “The cowards! The cowards!”
“Pardon me, dear, but they are not cowards. They are brave men, and they are the most likable chaps, if a bit peculiar, under the sun. To know them is to love them. There has been too much killing already.”
“They want to kill my father.”
“And he wants to kill them,” Hall retorted. “Don’t forget that. And it is by his order. He is as mad as a hatter, and they are precisely as mad as so many more hatters. Come! Quick, please! Quick! They are assembling there now in the mined house. We may save them—or him, who knows?”
“Rincon Hill—time is money—you know what that means,” he said to the taxi driver, as he helped Grunya in. “Come on, now! Burn up that juice! Rip up the pavement, anything you want, as long as you get us there!”
Rincon Hill, once the aristocratic residence district of San Francisco, lifts its head of decayed gentility from out of the muck and ruck of the great labor ghetto that spreads away south of Market Street. At the foot of the hill, Hall paid off the cab, and he and Grunya began the easy climb. Though it was still early in the evening, no more than half past nine, few persons were afoot. Chancing to glance back, Hall saw a familiar form pass across the circle of light shed by a street lamp. He drew Grunya into the house shadows of the side street and waited, and in a few minutes was rewarded by seeing Haas go by, walking in his peculiar, effortless, cat-like way. They continued on, half a block behind him, and when, at the crest of the hill, under the light from the next street lamp, they saw him vault a low, old-fashioned iron fence, Grunya nudged Hall’s arm significantly.
“That is the house, our house,” she whispered. “Watch him. Little he dreams he is going to his death.”
“Little I dream he is either,” Hall whispered back skeptically. “In my opinion Mr. Haas is a very difficult specimen to kill.”
“Uncle Sergius is very careful. I have never known him to blunder. He has arranged everything, and when your Mr. Haas goes through that front door—”
She broke off. Hall had gripped her arm savagely.
“He’s not going through that front door, Grunya. Watch him. He’s prowling to the rear.”
“There is no rear,” she said. “The hill falls away in a bulkhead down to the next back yard, forty feet below. He’ll prowl back to the front. The garden is very small.”
“He’s up to something,” Hall muttered, as the dark form came in sight again. “Ah ha! Mr. Haas! You’re the wily one! See, Grunya, he’s crawled into that shrubbery by the gate. Is that where the wire was run?”
“Yes; it’s the only thick clump of shrubbery a man can hide in. Here comes somebody. I wonder if it’s another of the assassins.”
Not waiting, Hall and Grunya walked on past the house to the next corner. The man who had come from the other direction turned into Dragomiloff’s house and walked up the steps to the door. They heard it, after a momentary delay, open and shut.
Grunya insisted on accompanying Hall. It was her house, she said, and she knew every inch of it. Besides, she still had the pass-key, and it would not be necessary to ring.
The front hall was lighted, so that the house number showed plainly, and they walked boldly past the bushes that concealed Haas, unlocked the front door, and entered. Hall hung his hat on the rack and pulled off his gloves. From the door to the right came a murmur of voices. They paused outside to listen.
“Beauty is a compulsion,” they heard one voice master the conversation.
“That’s Hanover, the Boston associate,” Hall whispered.
“Beauty is absolute,” the voice went on. “Human life, all life, has been bent to beauty. It is not a case of paradoxical adaptation. Beauty was not bent to life. Beauty was in the un
iverse when man was not. Beauty will remain in the universe when man has vanished and again is not. Beauty is—well, it is beauty, that is all, the first word and the last, and it does not depend upon little maggoty men a-crawl in the slime.”
“Metaphysics,” they could hear Lucoville sneer. “Pure illusory metaphysics, my dear Hanover. When a man begins to label as absolute the transient phenomena of an ephemeral evolution—”
“Metaphysician yourself,” they heard Hanover interrupt. “You would contend that nothing exists save in consciousness, that when consciousness is destroyed, beauty is destroyed, that the thing itself, the vital principle to which developing life has been bent, is destroyed. When we know, all of us, and you should know it, that it is the principle only that persists. As Spencer has well said of the eternal flux of force and matter, with its alternate rhythm of evolution and dissolution, ‘ever the same in principle but never the same in concrete result.’ ”
“New norms, new norms,” Lucoville blurted in. “New norms ever appearing in successive and dissimilar evolutions.”
“The norm itself!” Hanover cried triumphantly. “Have you considered that? You, yourself, have just asserted that the norm persists. What then, is the norm? It is the eternal, the absolute, the outside-of-consciousness, the father and the mother of consciousness.”
“A moment,” Lucoville cried excitedly.
“Bah!” Hanover went on with true scholarly dogmatism. “You attempt to resurrect the old exploded, Berkeleyan idealism. Metaphysics—generations behind the times. The modern school, as you ought to know, insists that the thing exists of itself. Consciousness, seeing and perceiving the thing, is a mere accident. ’Tis you, my dear Lucoville, who are the metaphysician.”
There was a clapping of hands and rumble of approval.
“Hoist by your own petard,” they heard one mellow voice cry in an unmistakable English accent.