Chapter IV: Part 4

“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 universe 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.

“John Gray,” Hall whispered to Grunya. “If the theatre were not so hopelessly commercialized, he would revolutionize the whole of it.”

“Logomachy,” they heard Lucoville begin his reply. “Word-mongering, tricks of speech, a shuffling of words and ideas. If you chaps will give me ten minutes, I’ll expound my position.”

“Behold!” Hall whispered. “Our amiable assassins, adorable philosophers. Now, would you rather believe them madmen than cruel and brutal murderers?”

Grunya shrugged her shoulders. “They may bend beauty any way they please, but I cannot forget that they are bent on killing Uncle Sergius--my father.”

“But don’t you see? They are obsessed by ideas. They take no count of mere human life--not even of their own. They are in slavery to thought. They live in a world of ideas.”

“At fifty thousand per,” she retorted.

It was his turn to shrug his shoulders.

“Come,” he said. “Let us enter. No, I’ll go first.”

He turned the door handle and went in, followed by Grunya. The conversation stopped abruptly, and seven men, seated comfortably about the room, stared at the two intruders.

“Look here, Hall,” Harkins said with evident irritation. “You were to be kept out of this. And we kept you out. Yet here you are, and with a--pardon me--a stranger.”

“And if it had depended on you fellows, I should have been kept out,” Hall answered. “Why so secret?”

“It was the Chief’s orders. He invited us here. And since we obeyed his instructions and didn’t let you in on it, our only conclusion is that it is he who let you in.”

“No he didn’t,” Hall laughed. “And you might as well ask us to be seated. This, gentlemen, is Miss Constantine. Miss Constantine, Mr. Gray; Mr. Harkins; Mr. Lucoville; Mr. Breen; Mr. Alsworthy; Mr. Starkington; and Mr. Hanover--with the one exception of Mr. Haas, the surviving members of the Assassination Bureau.”

“This is broken faith!” Lucoville cried angrily. “Hall, I am disappointed!”

“You do not understand, friend Lucoville. This is Miss Constantine’s house. In the absence of her father you are her guests, all of you.”

“We were given to understand it was Dragomiloff’s house,” Starkington said. “He told us so. We came separately, yet, since we all arrived here we can only conclude that there was no mistake of street and number.”

“It is the same thing,” Hall replied, with a quiet smile. “Miss Constantine is Dragomiloff’s daughter.”

On the instant Grunya and Hall were surrounded by the others, and hands were held out to her. Her own hand she put behind her, at the same time taking a backward step.

“You want to kill my father,” she said to Lucoville. “It is impossible that I should take your hand.”

“Here, this chair; be seated, dear lady,” Lucoville was saying, assisted by Starkington and Gray in bringing the chair to her. “We are highly honored--the daughter of our Chief--we did not know he had a daughter--she is welcome--any daughter of our Chief is welcome--”

“But you want to kill him,” she continued her objection. “You are murderers.”

“We are friends, believe me. We represent an amity that is higher and deeper than life and death. Dear lady, human life is nothing--less than a bagatelle. Life! Why, our lives are mere pawns in the game of social evolution. We admire your father, we respect him; he is a great man. He is--or, rather, he was--our Chief.”

“Yet you want to kill him,” she persisted.

“And by his orders. Be seated, please.” Lucoville succeeded in his attentions, insofar as she sank down in the chair. “This friend of yours, Mr. Hall,” he went on. “You do not refuse him as a friend. You do not call him a murderer. Yet it was he who deposited the fifty-thousand-dollar fee for your father’s life. You see, dear lady, already he has half destroyed our organization. Yet we do not hold it against him. He is our friend. We honor him because we know him to be a man, an honest man, a man of his word, an ethicist of no mean dimensions.”

“Isn’t it wonderful, Miss Constantine!” Hanover broke in ecstatically. “Amity that makes death cheap! The rule of right! The worship of right! Does it not make one hope? Think of it! It proves that the future is ours; that the future belongs to the right-thinking, right-acting man and woman; that such fierce, feeble stirrings and animal yearnings of the beastly clay, love of self and love of kindred flesh and blood, vanish away as dawn mist before the sun of the higher righteousness! Reason--and, mark me, _right reason_--triumphs! All the human world, some day, will comport itself, not according to the flesh and the abysmal mire, but according to high right reason!”

Grunya bowed her head and threw up her arms in admission of befuddled despair.

“You can’t resist them, eh?” Hall exulted, bending over her.

“It is the chaos of super-thinking,” she said helplessly. “It is ethics gone mad.”

“So I told you,” he answered. “They are all mad, as your father is mad, as you and I are mad insofar as we are touched by their thinking. And now what do you think of our lovable assassins?”

“Yes, what do you think of us?” Hanover beamed over the top of his spectacles.

“All I can say,” she replied, “is that you don’t look like it--like assassins, I mean. As for you, Mr. Lucoville, I will take your hand, I will take the hands of all of you, if you will promise to give up this attempt to kill my father.”

“You have a long way, Miss Constantine, to climb upwards to the light,” Hanover chided regretfully.

“Kill? Kill?” Lucoville queried excitedly. “Why this fear of killing? Death is nothing. Only the beasts, the creatures of the mire, fear death. My dear lady, we are beyond death. We are full-statured intelligences, knowing good and evil. It is no more difficult for us to be killed than it is for us to kill. Killing--why, it occurs in every slaughterhouse and meat-canning establishment in the land. It is so common that it is almost vulgar.”

“Who has not swatted a mosquito?” Starkington shouted. “With one fell swoop of a meat-nourished, death-nourished hand smashed to destruction a most wonderful, sentient, and dazzling flying mechanism? If there be tragedy in death--think of the mosquito, the squashed mosquito, the airy fairy miracle of flight disrupted and crushed as no aviator has ever been disrupted and crushed, not even MacDonald who fell fifteen thousand feet. Have you ever studied the mosquito, Miss Constantine? It will repay you. Why, the mosquito is just as wonderful, in the phenomena of living matter, as man is wonderful.”

“But there _is_ a difference,” Gray put in.

“I was coming to that. And what is the difference? Swat the mosquito.” He paused for emphasis. “Well, he is swatted, isn’t he? And that is all. He is finished. The memory of him is not. But swat a man--by entire generations swat man--and something is left. What is it that is left? Not a peripatetic organism, not a hungry stomach, a bald head, and a mouthful of aching teeth, but thoughts--royal, kingly thoughts. That’s the difference. Thoughts! High thoughts! Right thoughts! Reasoned righteousness!”

“Hold!” Hanover shouted, in his excitement springing to his feet and waving his arms. “Swat--and I accept your word, Starkington, crude though it is, but expressive. Swat--and I warn you, Starkington--swat as much as the tiniest pigment cell of the diaphanous gauze of a new-hatched mosquito’s wing, and the totality of the universe is jarred from its central suns to the stars beyond the stars. Do not forget there is a cosmic righteousness in that pigment cell and in the last atom of the billion atoms that go to compose that pigment cell, and in every one of the countless myriads of corpuscles that go to compose one of those billion atoms.”

“Listen, gentlemen,” Grunya said. “What are you here for? I do not mean in the universe, but here in this house. I accept all that Mr. Hanover has so eloquently said of the pigment cell of the mosquito’s wing. It is evidently not right to--to swat a mosquito. Then, how in the name of sanity can you reconcile your presence here, bent as you are on a red-handed murder, with the ethics you have just expounded?”

An uproar of reconciliation arose from every mouth.

“Hey! Shut up!” Hall bellowed at them, then turned to the girl and commanded peremptorily, “Grunya, stop it. You’re getting touched. In five minutes you’ll be as bad as they are. A truce to argument, you fellows. Cut it out. Forget it. Let’s get down to business. Where is the Chief, Miss Constantine’s father? You say he told you to come here. Why have you come here? To kill him?”

Hanover wiped his forehead, collapsed from his passion of thought, and nodded.

“That is our reasoned intention,” he said calmly. “Of course, the presence of Miss Constantine is embarrassing. I fear we shall have to ask her to withdraw.”

“You are a brute, sir,” she gravely assured the mild-mannered scholar. “I shall remain right here. And you won’t kill my father. I tell you, you won’t.”

“Why isn’t the Chief here, then?” Hall inquired.

“Because it is not yet time. He telephoned to us, talked with us himself, and he said he would meet us here in this room at ten o’clock. It is almost ten now.”

“Maybe he won’t come,” Hall suggested.

“He gave his word,” was the simple but quite convincing answer.

Hall looked at his watch. It marked a few seconds before ten. And ere those seconds had ticked off, the door opened and Dragomiloff, blond and colorless, clad in a gray traveling suit, stepped in, passing a glance over the assemblage from silken eyes of the palest blue.

“Greetings, dear friends and brothers,” he said in his monotonously even voice. “I see you are all here, with the exception of Haas. Where is Haas?”

The assassins who could not lie stared at one another in awkward confusion.

“Where is Haas?” Dragomiloff repeated.

“We--ah--we don’t know exactly, that is it, exactly,” Harkins began haltingly.

“Well, I do, and exactly,” Dragomiloff chopped him short. “I watched you arrive from the upstairs window. I recognized all of you. Haas also arrived. He is now lying in the shrubbery inside the gate on the right-hand side of the walk, and exactly four feet and four inches from the lower hinge of the gate. I measured it the other day. Do you think that was what I intended?”

“We did not care to anticipate your intentions, dear Chief,” Hanover spoke up benignly, but with logical emphasis. “We debated your invitation and your instructions carefully, and it was our unanimous conclusion that we committed no breach of word or faith in assigning Haas to his position outside. Do you remember your instructions?”

“Perfectly,” Dragomiloff assented. “Wait till I go over them to myself.” For a half-minute of silence he reviewed his instructions, then his face thawed into almost a beam of satisfaction. “You are correct,” he announced. “You have committed no breach of right conduct. And now, dear comrades, all our plans are destroyed by this intrusion of my daughter and of the man who is your Temporary Secretary and who I hope some day will be my son-in-law.”

“What was the aim of your plan?” Starkington asked quickly.

“To destroy you,” Dragomiloff laughed. “And the aim of your plan was?”

“To destroy you,” Starkington admitted. “And destroy you we will. We regret Miss Constantine’s presence, as we likewise do Mr. Hall’s presence. They came uninvited. They can, of course, withdraw.”

“I won’t!” Grunya cried out. “You cold-blooded, inhuman, mathematical monsters! This is my father, and I may be abysmal mire, or anything else you please, but I will not withdraw, and you shall not harm him.”

“You must meet me halfway in this,” Dragomiloff urged. “Let us consider this once that we have failed on both sides. Let me propose a truce.”

“Very well,” Starkington conceded. “A truce for five minutes, during which time no overt act may be attempted and no one may leave the room. We should like to confer together over there by the piano. Is it agreed?”

“Yes, certainly. But first you will please notice where I am standing. My hand is resting against this particular book in this bookcase. I shall not move until you have decided on what course you intend to pursue.”

The assassins drew to the far end of the room and began talking in whispers.

“Come,” Grunya whispered to her father. “You have but to step through the door and escape.”

Dragomiloff smiled forgivingly. “You do not understand,” he said with gentleness.

She clenched her hands passionately, crying, “You are as insane as they.”

“But Grunya, love,” he pleaded, “is it not a beautiful insanity--if you prefer the misnomer? Here thought rules and right rules. It would seem to me the highest rationality and control. What distinguishes man from the lower animals is control. Witness this scene. There stand seven men intent on killing me. Here I stand intent on killing them. Yet, by the miracle of the spoken word we agree to a truce. We trust. It is a beautiful example of high moral inhibition.”

“Every hermit, on top of a pillar or living with the snakes in a cliff cave, has been a beautiful example of such inhibition,” she came back impatiently. “The inhibitions practiced in the asylums are often very remarkable.”

But Dragomiloff refused to be drawn, and smiled and joked until the assassins returned. As before, Starkington was the spokesman.

“We have decided,” he said, “that it is our duty to kill you, dear Chief. There is still a minute to run. When it is gone we shall proceed to our work. Also, in that interval, we again request our two unbidden guests to withdraw.”

Grunya shook her head positively. “I am armed,” she threatened, drawing a small automatic pistol and displaying her inexperience by not pressing down the safety catch.

“It’s too bad,” Starkington apologized. “But we shall have to go on with our work just the same.”

“If nothing unforeseen prevents?” Dragomiloff suggested.

Starkington glanced at his comrades, who nodded, then said, “Certainly, unless nothing unforeseen--”

“And here is the unforeseen,” Dragomiloff interrupted quietly. “You see my hands, my dear Starkington. They bear no weapons. Forbear a minute. You see the book against which my left hand rests. Behind that book, at the back of the case, is a push-button. One firm thrust in of the book presses the button. The room is a magazine of dynamite. Need I explain more? Draw aside that rug on which you are standing--that’s right. Now carefully lift up that loose board. See the sticks lying side by side. They’re all connected.”

“Most interesting,” Hanover murmured, peering down at the dynamite through his spectacles. “Death so simply achieved! A violent chemical reaction, I believe. Some day, when I can spare the time, I shall make a study of explosives.”

And in that moment, Hall and Grunya realized that the philosopher-assassins were truly not afraid of death. As they claimed for themselves, they were not burdened by the flesh. Love of life did not yearn through their mental processes. All they knew was the love of thought.

“We did not guess this,” Gray assured Dragomiloff. “But we apprehended what we did not guess. That is why we stationed Haas outside. You could escape us, but not him.”

“Which reminds me, comrades,” Dragomiloff said. “I ran another wire to the spot in the grounds where Haas is now lurking. Let us hope he does not blunder upon my button I concealed there, else we’ll all go up along with our theories. Suppose one of you goes and brings him in to join us. And while we’re about it, let us agree to another truce. Under the present circumstances, your hands are tied.”

“Seven lives for one,” said Harkins. “Mathematically it is repulsive.”

“It is poor economics,” Breen agreed.

“And suppose,” Dragomiloff continued, “we make the truce till one o’clock and you all come and have supper with me.”

“If Haas agrees,” Alsworthy said. “I am going to get him now.”

Haas agreed and, like any party of friends, they left the house together and caught an electric car for uptown.

_Chapter XIII_

In a private room at the Poodle Dog, the eight assassins and Dragomiloff, Hall, and Grunya sat at table. And a merry, almost convivial supper it was, despite the fact that Harkins and Hanover were vegetarians, that Lucoville eschewed all cooked food and munched bovinely at a great plate of lettuce, raw turnips, and carrots, and that Alsworthy began, kept up, and finished with nuts, raisins, and bananas. On the other hand, Breen, who looked a dyspeptic, orgied with a thick, raw steak and shuddered at the suggestion of wine. Dragomiloff and Haas drank thin native claret, while Hall, Gray, and Grunya shared a pint of light Rhine wine. Starkington, however, began with two Martini cocktails, and ever and again, throughout the meal, buried his face in a huge stein of Würzburger.

The talk was outspoken, though the feeling displayed was comradely and affectionate.

“We’d have got you,” Starkington told Dragomiloff, “if it hadn’t been for the inopportune arrival of your daughter.”

“My dear Starkington,” Dragomiloff retorted. “It was she who saved you. I’d have bagged the seven of you.”

“No you wouldn’t,” Breen joined in. “As I understand, the wire led to the bushes where Haas was hiding.”

“His being there was an accident, a mere accident,” Dragomiloff answered lightly enough, yet unable to conceal that he was somewhat crestfallen.

“Since when has the fortuitous been discarded from the factors of evolution?” Hanover began learnedly.

“You’d never have touched it off, Chief,” Haas was saying at the same time that Lucoville was demanding of Hanover, “Since when was the fortuitous ever classed as a factor?”

“Possibly your disagreement is merely of definition,” Hall said pacifically. “That asparagus is tinned, Hanover. Did you know that?”

Hanover forgot the argument, and sat back aghast. “And I never eat tinned stuff of any sort! Are you sure, Hall? Are you sure?”

“Ask the waiter. He’ll tell you the same.”

“It’s all right, dear Haas,” Dragomiloff was saying. “The next time I’ll surely touch it off, and you won’t be in the way. You’ll be at the other end of the wire.”

“Oh, I cannot understand, I cannot understand,” Grunya cried. “It seems a joke. It can’t be real. Here you are, all good friends, eating and drinking together and affectionately telling how you intend killing one another.” She turned to Hall. “Wake me up, Winter. This is a dream.”

“I wish it were.”

She turned to Dragomiloff. “Oh, Uncle Sergius, wake me up!”

“You are awake, Grunya, love.”

“Then if I’m awake,” she went on, firmly, almost angrily, “it is you who are the somnambulists. Wake up! Oh, wake up! I wish an earthquake would come, anything, if it would only rouse you. Father, you can do it. Withdraw that order for your death which you yourself gave.”

“But don’t you see, he can’t,” Starkington told her across the corner of the table.

Dragomiloff, at the other end of the table, shook his head. “You would not have me break my word, Grunya?”

“I’m not afraid to break--anything!” Hall interrupted. “The order started with me. I withdraw it. Return my fifty thousand, or spend it on charity. I don’t care. The point is, I don’t want Dragomiloff killed.”

“You forget yourself,” Haas reminded him. “You are merely a client of the Bureau. And when you engaged the service of the Bureau, you agreed to certain things. The Bureau likewise agreed to certain things. You may wish to break your agreement, but it has passed beyond you. The affair is in the hands of the Bureau, and the Bureau does not break its agreements. It never has broken them and it never will. If there be not absolute faith in the given word, if the given word be not as unbreakable as the tie-ribs of earth, then there is no hope in life, and creation crashes to chaos because of its intrinsic falsity. We deny this falsity. We prove it by our acts that clinch the finality of the given word. Am I right, comrades?”

Approval was unanimous, and Dragomiloff, half rising from his chair, reached across and grasped the hand of Haas. For once Dragomiloff’s undeviating, monotonous voice was touched with the emphasis of feeling as he proclaimed proudly:

“The hope of the world! The higher race! The top of evolution! The right-rulers and king-thinkers! The realization of all dreams and aspirings; the slime crawled upward to the light; the touch and the promise of Godhead come true!”

Hanover left his seat and threw his arms about the Chief in an ecstasy of intellectual admiration and fellowship. Grunya and Hall looked at each other despairingly.

“King-thinkers,” he murmured helplessly.

“The asylums are filled with king-thinkers,” was her angry comment.

“Logic!” he sneered.

“I, too, shall write a book,” she added. “It shall be entitled _The Logic of Lunacy, or, Why Thinkers Go Mad_.”

“Never has our logic been better vindicated,” Starkington said to her, as the jubilation of the king-thinkers eased down.

“You do violence with your logic,” Grunya flung back. “I will prove it to you--”

“By logic?” Gray interpolated quickly and raised a general laugh, in which Grunya could not help but join.

Hall lifted his hand solemnly for a hearing.

“We have yet to debate how many angels can dance on the point of a needle.”

“Shame on you!” Lucoville cried. “That is antediluvian. We are scholars, not scholastics--”

“And you can prove it,” Grunya stabbed across, “as easily as you can the angels and the needle and everything else.”

“If ever I get out of this mix-up with you fellows,” Hall declared, “I shall forswear logic. Never again!”

“A confession of intellectual fatigue,” Lucoville argued.

“Only he does not mean it,” Harkins put in. “He can’t help being logical. It is his heritage--the heritage of man. It distinguishes man from the lesser--”

“Hold!” Hanover broke in. “You forget that the universe is founded on logic. Without logic the universe could not be. In every fibre of it logic resides. There is logic in the molecule, in the atom, in the electron. I have a monograph, here in my pocket, which I shall read to you. I have called it ‘Electronic Logic.’ It--”

“Here is the waiter,” Hall interrupted wickedly. “He says of course that the asparagus was tinned.”

Hanover ceased fumbling in his pocket in order to vent a tirade against the waiter and the management of the Poodle Dog.

“That was not logical,” Hall smiled, when the waiter had left the room.

“And why not, pray?” Hanover asked, with a touch of asperity.

“Because it is not the season for fresh asparagus.”

Ere Hanover could recover from this, Breen began on him.

“You said earlier this evening, Hanover, that you were interested in explosives. Let me show you the quintessence of universal logic--the irrefragable logic of the elements, the logic of chemistry, the logic of mechanics, and the logic of time, all indissolubly welded together into one of the prettiest devices ever mortal mind conceived. So thoroughly do I agree with you, that I shall now show you the unreasoned logic of the stuff of the universe.”

“Why unreasoned?” Hanover queried faintly, shuddering at the uneaten asparagus. “Do you think the electron incapable of reason?”

“I don’t know. I never saw an electron. But for the sake of the argument, let us suppose it does reason. Anyway, as you’ll agree, it’s the keenest logic, the absolutest and most unswervable logic you’ve ever seen. Look at that.” Breen had gone to where his overcoat hung on the wall and drawn out a flat oblong package. This, when unwrapped, resembled a folding pocket camera of medium size. He held it up with eyes sparkling with admiration. “By George, Hanover!” he exclaimed. “I think you are right. Look at it!--The eloquent-voiced, the subduer of jarring tongues and warring creeds, the ultimate arbiter. It enunciates the final word. When it speaks, kings and emperors, grafters and falsifiers, the Scribes and Pharisees and all wrong-thinkers remain silent--forever remain silent.”

“Let it speak,” Haas grinned. “Maybe it will silence Hanover.”

The laughter died away as they saw Breen, the object poised in his hand, visibly thinking. And in the silence they saw him achieve his concept of action.

“Very well,” he said. “It shall speak.” He drew from his vest pocket an ordinary-looking, gun-metal watch. “It is an alarm watch,” he went on, “seventeen-jeweled movement, Swiss-Elgin works. Let me see. It is now midnight. Our truce”--he bowed to Dragomiloff--“expires at one o’clock. See, I set it for precisely one minute after one.” He pointed to an opening in the camera-like object. “Behold this slot. It is specially devised to receive this watch--mark me, I say, specially devised. I insert the watch, thus. Did you hear that metallic click? That is the automatic locking device. No power can now remove that watch. I cannot. The decree has gone forth. It cannot be recalled. All this is of my devising save for the voice itself. The voice is the voice of Nakatodaka, the great Japanese who died last year.”

“A phonograph record,” Hanover complained. “I thought you said something about explosives.”

“The voice of Nakatodaka is an explosive,” Breen expounded. “Nakatodaka, if you will remember, was killed in his laboratory by his own voice.”

“Formose!” Haas said, nodding his head. “I remember now.”

“So do I,” Hall told Grunya. “Nakatodaka was a great chemist.”

“But I understand the secret died with him,” Starkington said.

“So the world understood,” was Breen’s reply. “But the formula was found by the Japanese government and stolen from the War Office by a revolutionist.” His voice swelled with pride. “This is the first Formose ever manufactured on American soil. I manufactured it.”

“Heavens!” Grunya cried. “And when it goes off it will blow us all up!”

Breen nodded with intense gratification.

“If you remain it will,” he said. “The people in this neighborhood will think it an earthquake or another anarchist outrage.”

“Stop it!” she commanded.

“I can’t. That’s the beauty of it. As I told Hanover, it is the logic of chemistry, the logic of mechanics, and the logic of time, all indissolubly welded together. There is no power in the universe that can now break that weld. Any attempt would merely precipitate the explosion.”

Grunya caught Hall’s hand as she stared at him in her helplessness, but Hanover, fluttering and hovering about the infernal machine, peering at it delightedly through his spectacles, was off in another ecstasy.

“Wonderful! Wonderful! Breen, I congratulate you. We shall now be able to settle the affairs of nations and put the world on a higher, nobler basis. Hebrew is a diversion. This is an efficiency. I shall certainly devote myself to the study of explosives ... Lucoville, you are refuted. There _is_ morality in the elements, and reason, and logic.”

“You forget, my dear Hanover,” Lucoville replied, “that behind this mechanism and chemistry and abstraction of time is the mind of man, devising, controlling, utilizing--”

But he was interrupted by Hall, who had shoved his chair back and sprung to his feet.

“You lunatics! You sit there like a lot of clams! Don’t you realize that that damned thing is going to go off?”

“Not until one after one,” Hanover mildly assured him. “Besides, Breen has not yet told us his intentions.”

“The mind of man behind and informing unconscious matter and blind force,” Lucoville gibed.

Starkington leaned across to Hall and said in an undertone, “Transport this scene to a stage setting with a Wall Street audience! There’d be a panic.”

But Hall shook the interruption aside.

“Look here, Breen, just what is your intention? I, for one, and Miss Constantine, are going to get out, now, at once.”

“There is plenty of time,” replied the custodian of Nakatodaka’s voice. “I’ll tell you my intention. The truce expires at one. I am between our dear Chief and the door. He can’t go though the walls. I guard the door. The rest of you may depart. But I remain here with him. The blow is sped. Nothing can stop it. One minute after the truce is up the last commission accepted by the Bureau will have been accomplished. Pardon me, dear Chief, one moment. I have told you that even I cannot stop the process now at work in that mechanism. But I can expedite it. You see my thumb, lightly resting in this depression? It just barely brushes a button. One press of the thumb, and the machine immediately explodes. Now, as an honorable and logical man and comrade, you can see that any attempt of yours to get out of this door will blow all of us up, your daughter and the Temporary Secretary as well. Therefore you will remain in your seat. Hanover, the formula is safe. I shall remain here and die with the Chief at one minute after one. You will find the formula in the top drawer of the filing cabinet in my bedroom.”

“Do something!” Grunya entreated Hall. “You must do something.”

Hall, who had sat down, again stood up, moving the wineglass to one side as he rested one hand on the table.

“Gentlemen.” He spoke in a quiet voice, but one which immediately gained him the respectful attention of the others. “Until now, despite my abhorrence of killing, I have felt bound to respect the ideals that directed your actions. Now, however, I must question your motives.”

He turned to Breen, who was watching him carefully.

“Tell me,” Hall pursued, “do you feel that you, personally, merit extinction? If you give your life in order to assassinate your Chief, you are violating the tenet that any death at your hand is one warranted by the crimes of the victim. Of what crimes are you so guilty as to make this sentence--which you have passed upon yourself--a just one?”

Breen smiled at this adroit argument. The others listened politely.

“But you see,” the bacteriologist explained happily, “we in the Assassination Bureau recognize the possibility of our own death in the execution of our assignments. It is a normal risk of our business.”

“Accidental death, yes, as a result of the unexpected,” was Hall’s quiet reply. “Here, however, we are speaking of a planned death, and that of an innocent person--yourself. This is in violation of your own principles.”

There was a moment’s thoughtful silence.

“He’s quite right, Breen, you know,” Gray finally offered. He had been listening to the verbal duel with puckered forehead. “I’m afraid that your solution is scarcely acceptable.”

“Still,” Lucoville contributed, “consider this: Breen, by arranging an innocent’s death, might be warranting his own death for dereliction of principle.”

“A priori,” Haas snapped impatiently. “Specious. You are arguing in circles. Until he dies, he is not guilty; if he is not guilty, he does not warrant death.”

“Mad!” Grunya whispered. “They are all mad!”

She stared at the animated faces about the festive table with awe. They had the intent gleam in their eyes of scholars at a seminar. No one seemed in the slightest affected by the knowledge of the deadly bomb ticking away the minutes. Breen had released his thumb from the small button on the side of the weapon. His eyes followed each speaker eagerly as they argued his proposal.

“There is one possible solution,” Harkins remarked slowly, leaning forward to join the discussion. “Breen, by setting the bomb during the period of a truce, was dishonoring a commitment. I do not say that this, of itself, merits a punishment as severe as he contemplates, but certainly he has been guilty of an action beyond the strict morality of our organization....”

“True!” cried Breen, his eyes sparkling. “It is true, and that is the answer! By speeding the blow during an armistice, I have committed a sin. I find myself guilty and deserving of death.” His eyes flashed to the wall-clock. “In exactly thirty minutes....”

But his inattention to Dragomiloff proved fatal. Swift as a striking cobra, the strong hands of the ex-Chief of the Bureau sought and found vital nerves in Breen’s neck. The death-touch of the Japanese was immediately effective; even as the others watched in startled surprise Breen’s hand relaxed on the small bomb and he slid lifeless to the floor. In almost the same motion Dragomiloff had snatched up his coat and was at the door.

“I shall see you on the boat, Grunya, my dear,” he murmured, and was through and away before any of the others could move.

“After him!” cried Harkins, springing to his feet. But he found his way barred by the tall form of John Gray.

“There is a truce!” Gray reminded him fiercely. “Breen broke it and has paid dearly for his dereliction. We are still bound by our honor for another twenty minutes.”

Starkington, who had watched the entire discussion dispassionately from one end of the long table, lifted his head and spoke.

“The bomb,” he observed quietly. “Our polemics, I am afraid, will have to be postponed. There are exactly--” he glanced at the wall-clock “--eighteen minutes until it is scheduled to detonate.”

Haas leaned down curiously, picking the small box from Breen’s lax hand.

“There must be a way....”

“Breen assured us there was not,” Starkington responded dryly. “I believe him. Breen never equivocated in a scientific statement.” He came to his feet. “As head of the Chicago office I must assume command of our greatly reduced forces. Harkins, you and Alsworthy must take the bomb to the Bay as quickly as possible. We cannot leave it here to explode and kill innocents.”

He waited as the two men took their coats and left, carrying the deadly ticking container of Formose.

“Our respected ex-Chief made mention of a boat,” he continued evenly. “I had assumed this was his motive in coming to San Francisco; his statement merely confirmed it. Since we cannot stoop to extracting the name of the steamer from his lovely daughter, we must make other arrangements. Haas...?”

“There are but three steamers sailing in the morning with the tide,” responded Haas almost mechanically, while Grunya marveled at the wealth of information stored behind the bulging brow. “There are enough of us remaining to easily check upon all of them.”

“Good,” Starkington agreed. “They are...?”

“The _Argosy_, at Oakland; the _Eastern Clipper_ at Jansen’s Wharf, and the _Takku Maru_ at the Commercial Dock.”

“Fine. Then Lucoville, you will take the _Argosy_. Haas, the _Takku Maru_ should be more suitable for you. Gray, the _Eastern Clipper_.”

The three men rose alertly, but Starkington waved them to their seats.

“There is time until the tide, gentlemen,” he remarked easily. “Besides, there are still twelve minutes remaining of our armistice.” He stared at the body of Breen lying twisted on the floor. “We must make arrangements for the removal of our dear friend here, as well. An unfortunate heart attack, I should say. Hanover, if you would handle the telephone.... Thank you.”

His hand reached over to the table to find a wine-list.

“After which I would suggest a brandy, a bodied brandy. Possibly from Spain. A fitting drink, taken at the end of a repast. We shall drink, gentlemen, to the end of a most difficult assignment. And we shall toast, gentlemen, the man who made the assignment possible.”

Hall swung about to object to this macabre humor at his expense, but before he could speak, the even voice of Starkington continued quietly.

“We shall toast, gentlemen: Ivan Dragomiloff!”

_Chapter XIV_

Winter Hall, aided by a full purse, experienced little difficulty in convincing the purser that space was available, even for a latecomer, aboard the _Eastern Clipper_. He had stopped briefly at his hotel for a bag, had left a short note to be delivered first thing in the morning, and had met an anxious Grunya at the gangplank. While he was completing his financial arrangements for passage, Grunya disappeared below to inform her father of Hall’s presence aboard ship. An elfin smile lit Dragomiloff’s features.

“Did you expect me to be angry, my dear?” he inquired. “Upset? Or even surprised? While the thought of a trip alone with my newly discovered daughter is enjoyable, it will be even more enjoyable to travel with her when she is happy.”

“You have always made me happy, Uncle--I mean, Father,” she pouted, but her eyes were twinkling.

Dragomiloff laughed.

“There comes a time, my dear, when a father is limited in the happiness he can impart. And now, if you do not mind, I shall sleep. It has been a tiring day.”

Grunya kissed him tenderly and was opening the door when memory struck.

“Father,” she exclaimed. “The Assassination Bureau! They intend to investigate every ship sailing on the morning’s tide.”

“But of course,” he said gently. “It is the first thing they would do.” He kissed her again and closed the door behind her.

She mounted to the upper deck and found Hall. Hand in hand they stood at the rail, peering at the lights of the sleeping city. His hand tightened on hers.

“Must it really be a year?” he asked sadly.

“There are only three months remaining,” she laughed. “Do not be impatient.” Her laughter faded. “In truth, this is advice more suitable to myself.”

“Grunya!”

“It is true,” she admitted. “Oh, Winter, I want to be married to you so much!”

“Darling! The captain of the ship can marry us tomorrow!”

“No. I am as mad as all of you. I have given my word and I will not change it.” She faced him soberly. “Until the year is up I will not marry you. And should anything happen to my father before then....”

“Nothing will happen to him,” Hall assured her.

She looked at him steadily.

“Yet you will not promise me to prevent anything from happening.”

“My darling, I cannot.” Hall stared over the rail at the darkened waters below. “These madmen--and I must include your father in that category--will not allow anyone to interfere in their dangerous game. And that’s what it is to them, you know. A game.”

“Which no one can win,” she agreed sadly, and then glanced at her time-piece. “It is very late. I really must go to sleep. Shall I see you in the morning?”

“You can scarcely avoid me on a small steamer,” he laughed, and bending his head he kissed her fingers passionately.

* * * * *

Dragomiloff, finding his cabin warm, unbolted the porthole and swung it wide. His stateroom fronted upon the dockside and a solid row of inscrutable warehouses lit only by a row of small electric bulbs, swinging faintly in the night breeze. The maneuver resulted in little improvement; the night without was sultry and quiet.

He stood in the dark of his room, leaning against the brass rim of the porthole, breathing deeply. His thoughts ranged over the past nine months and the narrow escapes he had managed. He felt tired, mentally and physically tired. Age, he thought. The one variable in life’s equation beyond the power of the brain to control or to evaluate. At least there were ten days ahead of freedom from stress; ten pleasant days of sea-voyage in which to recuperate. Suddenly, as he stood there, he heard a familiar voice rising from the shadows below.

“You are certain? Dragomiloff. It is very possible that he is a passenger aboard.”

“Quite sure,” the purser replied. “There is no one of that name on the ship. You may be certain that we would do everything in our power to aid the Federal government.”

In the safety of his darkened stateroom, Dragomiloff grinned. His weariness fled as, all senses alert, he listened intently. Gray was clever to adopt the guise of a Federal man, but then Gray had always been extremely worthy of his position in the Bureau.

“There is a chance this man is not using his real name,” Gray pursued. “He is a smallish person, deceptively frail-looking--although, believe me, he is not--and he is traveling with his daughter, a quite beautiful young lady whose name is Grunya.”

“There is a gentleman traveling with his daughter....”

Dragomiloff’s smile deepened. In the blackness of his room his small, strong fingers flexed and unflexed themselves preparatorily.

There was a moment’s silence on the dock below; then Gray spoke thoughtfully.

“I should like to check further if you don’t mind. Could you give me his cabin number?”

“Of course. One second, sir. Here it is--31--on the lower deck.” There was a hesitant pause. “But if you should be wrong....”

“I shall apologize.” There was coldness in Gray’s voice. “The Federal government has no interest in embarrassing innocent people. But still, I have my duty to perform.”

The shadowy figures at the foot of the gangplank separated, the taller one mounting the inclined stairway easily, brushing past the other.

“I can find it, thank you. There is no need for you to leave your post.”

“Certainly, sir. I hope....”

But Gray was beyond earshot. Stepping lightly to the deck of the ship he strode quickly to a door leading to an inner passageway. Once inside he immediately checked the numbers on the cabins facing him. The door before him was marked 108; without hesitation he swung to the stairway and descended. Here the numbers were of two digits. He smiled to himself and crept along the silent corridor, marking each door.

Number 31 lay beyond a turn in the passage, set in a small alcove. Flattening himself against the wall of the alcove, Gray considered his next step. He did not underestimate Dragomiloff, who had taught him not only the beauty of logic, ethics, and morality, but who had also taught him to break a man’s neck with one swift blow. There was a sudden shudder to the ship, and he stiffened, but it was only the great engines below beginning to revolve, warming up preparatory to sailing.

In the silence of the deserted corridor Gray considered and rejected the thought of using his revolver. In the confined space the sound would be deafening, escape made that much more difficult. Instead he withdrew a thin, sharp knife from a holster on his forearm, and tested the edge briefly against his thumb. Satisfied, he gripped it firmly, edge uppermost, while his other hand crept to the lock, master-key in hand.

One quick glance assured him that he was alone in the passageway; the passengers were all asleep. As silently as possible he inserted the key, turning it slowly.

To his surprise the door was suddenly jerked inwards. Before he could recover his balance he was being pulled into the room and strong fingers were being clamped upon the hand holding the knife. But Gray’s reactions had always been swift. Rather than pulling back, he went forward with his assailant, pushing fiercely, adding his weight to the impetus of the other’s force. The two men fell in a sprawl against the bunk beneath the porthole. With a sudden heave, Gray was on his feet, twisting to one side, the knife once more firmly in position in his fingers. Dragomiloff was also on his feet, hands outstretched, his taut fingers searching for an opening to give a death-touch to his opponent.

For a moment they stood panting a few feet from one another. The small electric lights from the dock gave the cabin eerie shadows. Then, swift as lightning, Gray’s arm flashed forwards, the knife whistling in the darkness. But it encountered only empty air; Dragomiloff had dropped to the floor, and as the other’s arm swept above him he reached up and clutched it, twisting. With a smothered cry Gray dropped the knife and fell upon the smaller man, straining with his free hand for a grip on the other’s throat.

They fought in fury and in silence, two trained assassins each aware of the other’s ability and each convinced of the rightness, as well as the necessity, for the other’s death. Each hold and counter-hold was automatic; their proficiency in the death-science of the Japanese equal and devastating. Beneath them the rumble of the huge pistons slowly turning over increased. Within the stateroom the battle waged relentlessly, grip matching grip, their panting breath now lost in the larger sound of the ship’s engines.

Their thrashing legs encountered the open door; it slammed shut. Gray attempted to roll free and suddenly felt his lost knife pressing against his shoulder blades. With a thrust of his arched back he rolled further, fending off Dragomiloff’s attack with one hand while he searched for the weapon with his other. And then his fingers found it. Twisting violently, he pulled free, swinging the blade for a frontal blow, and thrust it forward viciously. He felt it bite into something soft and for one second he relaxed. And in that moment Dragomiloff’s eager fingers found the spot they had been seeking. Gray fell back, his fingers dragging the knife from the mattress of the bunk with their last dying effort.

Dragomiloff staggered to his feet, staring sombrely down at the shadowy figure of his old friend lying at the foot of the narrow bunk. He leaned against the closed porthole, fighting to regain his breath, aware of how much the years had taken from his fighting ability. He rubbed his face wearily. Still, he thought, he had not succumbed to Gray’s attack, and Gray was as deadly as any member.