The Assassination Bureau, Ltd.

by Jack London

  “But why have you, for instance, gone in for this mode of life?” Hall asked.

  They were sitting on the outside of the car, which had arrived in the hotel district. The theatres were just letting out, and the sidewalks were crowded.

  “Because it is right,” Haas answered, “and because it is a better means of livelihood than Greek and Hebrew. If I had my life all over again—”

  But Hall was never to hear the end of that sentence. The car was stopped at a crossing for a moment, and Haas was suddenly electrified by something he had seen. With a flash of eye, and without a word or motion of farewell, he sprang from the car and was lost to view in the moving crowd.

  Next morning Hall understood. In the paper was a sensational account of a mysterious attempt at murder. Haas was lying at the receiving hospital with a perforated lung. The doctors’ examination showed that he owed his life to an abnormal, misplaced heart. Had his heart been where it ought to have been, said the report, the bullet or missile would have passed through it. But this did not constitute the mystery. No one had heard the shot fired. Haas had suddenly slumped in the midst of a thick crowd. A woman, pressed against him in the jam, testified that at the moment before he fell she heard a faint, though sharp, metallic click. A man, in front of him, thought he had heard the click but was not sure.

  “The police are mystified,” the newspaper said. “The victim, a stranger in the city, is equally mystified. He claims to know of no person or persons who might be liable to seek his life. Nor does he remember having heard the click. He was aware only of a violent impact as the strange missile entered. Sergeant of Detectives O’Connell believes the weapon to have been an air-rifle, but this is denied by Chief of Detectives Randall, who claims to know air-rifles, who denies that such a weapon could be utilized unseen in a dense crowd.”

  “It was the Chief without doubt,” Murgweather was assuring Hall a few minutes later. “He is still in town. Will you please inform Denver, San Francisco, and New Orleans of the event? The weapon is the Chief’s own invention. Several times he has loaned it to Harrison, who always returned it after using. The compressed-air chamber is strapped on the body under the arm or wherever is most convenient. The discharging mechanism is no larger than a toy pistol, and can be readily concealed in the hand. We must be very careful from now on.”

  “I am in no danger,” Hall answered. “I am only Temporary Secretary, and am not a member.”

  “I am glad that Haas will recover,” Murgweather said. “He is a very estimable man and a scholar. I have the keenest appreciation of his intellect, though he is prone to be too serious at times, and, I fear me, finds a certain pleasure in taking human life.”

  “Don’t you?” Hall asked quickly.

  “No, and no other one of us, with the exception of Haas. He has the temperament for it. Believe me, Mr. Hall, though I have faithfully performed my tasks for the Bureau, and despite my ethical convictions as to the righteousness of the acts, I never put through an execution without qualms of the flesh. I know it is foolish, but I cannot overcome it. Why, I was positively nauseated by my first affair. I have written a monograph upon the subject, not for publication, of course, but it is a very interesting field of study. If you care to, I shall be glad for you to come out to the house some evening and glance over what I have written.”

  “Thank you, I shall.”

  “It is a curious problem,” Murgweather continued. “The sacredness of human life is a social concept. The primitive natural man never had any qualms about killing his fellow man. Theoretically, I should have none. Yet I do have. The question is: how do they arise? Has the long evolution to civilization impressed this concept into the cerebral cells of the race? Or is it due to my training in childhood and adolescence, before I became an emancipated thinker? Or may it not be due to both causes? It is very curious.”

  “I am sure it is,” Hall answered dryly. “But what are you going to do about the Chief?”

  “Kill him. It is all we can do, and we certainly must assert our right to live. The situation is a new one to us, however. Hitherto, the men we destroyed were unaware of their danger. Also, they never pursued us. But the Chief does know our intention, and, furthermore, he is destroying us. We have never been hunted before. He has certainly been more fortunate than we. But I must be going. I agreed to meet Hanover at quarter past.”

  “But aren’t you afraid?” Hall asked.

  “Of what?”

  “Of the Chief killing you?”

  “No; it won’t matter much. You see, I am well insured, and in my own experience I have exploded one generally accepted notion, namely, that the man who has taken many lives is, by those very acts, made more afraid himself to die. This is not true. I have demonstrated it. The more I have administered death to others—eighteen times, by my count—the easier death has seemed to me. Those very qualms I spoke of are the qualms of life. They belong to life, not to death. I have written a few detached thoughts on the subject. If you care to glance at them . . .”

  “Yes, indeed,” Hall assured him.

  “This evening, then. Say at eleven. If I am detained by this affair, ask to be shown into my study. I’ll lay the manuscript, and that of the monograph, too, on the reading table for you. I’d prefer to read them aloud and discuss them with you, but if I can’t be there, jot down any notes of criticism that may come to you.”

  10

  “I know there is much you are concealing from me, and I cannot understand why. Surely, you are not unwilling to aid me in saving Uncle Sergius?”

  Grunya’s last sentence was uttered pleadingly, and her eyes were warm with the golden glow that for this once failed to reach Hall’s heart.

  “Uncle Sergius doesn’t seem to need much saving,” he muttered grimly.

  “Now just what do you mean?” she cried, quickly suspicious.

  “Nothing, nothing, I assure you, except merely that he has escaped so far.”

  “But how do you know he has escaped?” she insisted. “May he not be dead? He has not been heard of since he left Chicago. How do you know but what those brutes have killed him?”

  “He has been seen here in St. Louis—”

  “There!” she interrupted excitedly. “I knew you were keeping things from me! Now, honestly, aren’t you?”

  “I am,” Hall confessed. “But by your uncle’s own instructions. Believe me, you cannot be of the least assistance to him. You can’t even find him. It would be wise for you to return to New York.”

  For an hour longer she catechized him and he wasted advice on her, and they parted in mutual irritation.

  Promptly at eleven, Hall rang the bell at Murgweather’s bungalow. A little sleepy-eyed maidservant of fourteen or fifteen, apparently aroused from bed, admitted and led him to Murgweather’s study.

  “He’s in there,” she said, pushing open the door and leaving him.

  At the further side of the room, seated at the table, partly in the light of a reading lamp, but more in shadow, was Murgweather. His crossed arms rested on the table, and on them rested his bowed head. Evidently asleep, Hall concluded, as he crossed over. He spoke to him, then touched him on the shoulder, but there was no response. He felt the genial assassin’s hand and found it cold. A stain upon the floor, and a perforation of the reading jacket beneath the shoulder, told the story. Murgweather’s heart had been in the right place. An open window, directly behind, showed how the deed had been accomplished.

  Hall drew the heap of manuscript from beneath the dead man’s arms. He had been killed as he pored over what he had written. “Some Casual Thoughts on Death,” Hall read the title, then searched on till he found the monograph, “A Tentative Explanation of Certain Curious Psychological Traits.”

  It would never do for Murgweather’s family if such damning evidence were found with the corpse, was Hall’s decision. He burned them in the fireplace, turned down the lamp, and crept softly out of the house.

  Early the following morning, the news was bro
ken to him in his room by Starkington, but it was not until afternoon that the papers published the account. Hall was frightened. The little maidservant had been interviewed, and that she had used her sleepy eyes to some purpose was shown by the excellence of the description she gave of the visitor she had admitted at eleven o’clock the previous night. The detail she gave was almost photographic. Hall got up abruptly and looked at himself in the glass. There was no mistaking it. The reflection he saw was precisely that of the man for whom the police were searching. Even to the scarf-pin, he was that man.

  He made a hurried rummage of his luggage and arrayed himself as dissimilarly as possible. Then, dodging into a taxi from the side entrance of the hotel, he made the round of the shops, from headgear to footgear purchasing a new outfit.

  Back at the hotel, he found he had just time to catch a westbound train. Fortunately, he was able to get Grunya to the telephone, so as to tell her of his departure. Also, he took the liberty of guessing that Dragomiloff’s next appearance would be in Denver, and he advised her to follow on.

  Once on the train and out of the city, he breathed more easily, and was able more calmly to consider the situation. He, too, he decided, was on the adventure path, and a madly tangled path it was. Starting out with the intention of running down the Assassination Bureau and destroying it, he had fallen in love with the daughter of its organizer, become Temporary Secretary of the Bureau, and was now being sought by the police for the murder of one of the members who had been killed by the Chief of the Bureau. “No more practical sociology for me,” he said to himself. “When I get out of this I shall confine myself to theory. Closet sociology from now on.”

  At the depot in Denver, he was greeted sadly by Harkins, the head of the local branch. Not until they were in a machine and whirling uptown did the cause of Harkins’s sadness come out.

  “Why didn’t you warn us?” he said reproachfully. “You let him give you the slip, and we were so certain that his account would be settled in St. Louis that we were not prepared.”

  “He has arrived, then?”

  “Arrived? Gracious! The first we knew, two of us were done for—Bostwick, who was like a brother to me, and Calkins, of San Francisco. And now Harding, the other San Francisco man, has dropped from sight. It is terrible.” He paused and shuddered. “I parted from Bostwick not more than fifteen minutes before it happened. He was so bright and cheerful. And now his little love-saturated home! His dear wife is inconsolable.”

  Tears ran down Harkins’s cheeks, so blinding him that he slowed the pace of the machine. Hall was curious. Here was a new type of madman, a sentimental assassin.

  “But why should it be terrible?” he queried. “You have dealt death to others. It is the same phenomenon in all cases.”

  “But this is different. He was my friend, my comrade.”

  “Possibly others that you have killed had friends and comrades.”

  “But if you could have seen him in his little home,” Harkins maundered on. “He was a model husband and father. He was a good man, an excellently good man, a saint, so considerate that he would not harm a fly.”

  “But what happened to him was only what he had made happen to others,” Hall objected.

  “No, no; it is different!” the other cried passionately. “If you had only known him. To know him was to love him. Everybody loved him.”

  “Undoubtedly his victims as well?”

  “Aye, had they had the opportunity they could not have helped loving him,” Harkins proclaimed vehemently. “If you only knew the good he has done and was continually doing. His four-footed friends loved him. The very flowers loved him. He was president of the Humane Society. He was the strongest worker among the anti-vivisectionists. He was in himself a whole society for the prevention of cruelty to animals.”

  “Bostwick . . . Charles N. Bostwick,” Hall murmured. “Yes, I remember. I have noticed some of his magazine articles.”

  “Who does not know him?” Harkins broke in ecstatically, and broke off long enough to blow his nose. “He was a great power for good, a great power for good. I would gladly change places with him right now, to have him back in the world.”

  Nevertheless, outside of his love for Bostwick, Hall found Harkins to be a keen, intelligent man. He stopped the machine at a telegraph office.

  “I told them to hold any messages for me this morning,” he explained as he got out.

  In a minute he was back, and together, with the aid of the cipher, they translated the telegram he had received. It was from Harding, and had been sent from Ogden.

  “Westbound,” it ran. “Chief on board. Am waiting opportunity. Shall succeed.”

  “He won’t,” Hall volunteered. “The Chief will get Harding.”

  “Harding is a strong and alert man,” Harkins affirmed.

  “I tell you, you fellows don’t realize what you’re up against.”

  “We realize that the life of the organization is at stake, and that we must deal with a recreant Chief.”

  “If you thoroughly realized the situation you’d head for tall timber and climb a tree and let the organization go smash.”

  “But that would be wrong,” Harkins protested gravely.

  Hall threw up his hands in despair.

  “To make it doubly sure,” the other continued, “I shall immediately tell the comrades at St. Louis to come on. If Harding fails—”

  “Which he will.”

  “We’ll proceed to San Francisco. In the meantime—”

  “In the meantime, you’ll please run me back to the depot,” Hall interrupted, glancing at his watch. “There’s a westbound train due. I’ll meet you in San Francisco, at the St. Francis Hotel, if you don’t meet the Chief first. If you do meet him first . . . well, it’s goodbye now and for good.”

  Before the train started, Hall had time to write a note to Grunya, which Harkins was to deliver to her on the train. The note informed her of her uncle’s continued westward flight and advised her, when she got to San Francisco, to register at the Fairmont Hotel.

  11

  At Reno, Nevada, a dispatch was delivered to Hall. It was from the sentimental Denver assassin.

  “Man ground to pieces at Winnemucca. Must be Chief. Return at once. Members all arriving Denver. We must reorganize.”

  But Hall grinned and remained on his westbound train. The reply he wired was:

  “Better identify. Did you deliver letter to lady?”

  Three days later, at the St. Francis Hotel, Hall heard again from the manager of the Denver Bureau. This wire was from Winnemucca, Nevada.

  “My mistake. It was Harding. Chief surely heading for San Francisco. Inform local branch. Am following. Delivered letter. Lady remained on train.”

  But no trace of Grunya could Hall find in San Francisco. Nor could Breen and Alsworthy, the two local members, help him. Hall even went over to Oakland and ferreted out the sleeping car she had arrived in and the Negro porter of the car. She had come to San Francisco and promptly disappeared.

  The assassins began to string in—Hanover of Boston, Haas, the hungry one with the misplaced heart, Starkington of Chicago, Lucoville of New Orleans, John Gray of New Orleans, and Harkins of Denver. With the two San Francisco members there was a total of eight. They were all that survived in the United States. As was well known to them, Hall did not count. While Temporary Secretary of the organization, disbursing its funds and transmitting its telegrams, he was not one of them and his life was not threatened by the mad leader.

  What convinced Hall that they were all madmen was the uniform kindness with which they treated him and the confidence they reposed in him. They knew him to be the original cause of their troubles; they knew he was bent upon the destruction of the Assassination Bureau and that he had furnished the fifty thousand dollars for the death of their Chief; and yet they gave Hall credit for what he considered the rightness of his conduct and for the particular streak of ethical madness that simmered somewhere in his make-up and compel
led him to play fairly with them. He did not betray them. He handled their funds honestly; and he performed satisfactorily all the duties of Temporary Secretary.

  With the exception of Haas, who, despite his achievements in Greek and Hebrew, was too kin to the tiger in lust to kill, Hall could not help but like these learned lunatics who had made a fetish of ethics and who took the lives of fellow humans with the same coolness and directness of purpose with which they solved problems in mathematics, made translations of hieroglyphics, or carried through chemical analyses in the test-tubes of their laboratories. John Gray he liked most of all. A quiet Englishman, in appearance and carriage a country squire, John Gray entertained radical ideas concerning the function of the drama. During the weeks of waiting, when there was no sign of Dragomiloff or Grunya, Gray and Hall frequented the theatres together, and to Hall their friendship proved a liberal education. During this period, Lucoville became immersed in basketry, devoting himself in particular to the recurrent triple-fish design so common in the baskets of the Ukiah Indians. Harkins painted water colors, after the Japanese school, of leaves, mosses, grasses, and ferns. Breen, a bacteriologist, continued his search of years for the parasite of the corn-worm. Alsworthy’s hobby was wireless telephony, and he and Breen divided an attic laboratory between them. And Hanover, an immediate patron of the city’s libraries, surrounded himself with scientific books and worked at the fourteenth chapter of a ponderous tome which he had entitled Physical Compulsions of the Aesthetics of Color. He put Hall to sleep one warm afternoon by reading to him the first and thirteenth chapters.