The Assassination Bureau, Ltd.

by Jack London

  “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.”

&nbs
p; “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 through 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 bul
ging brow. “There are enough of us remaining to check easily 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!”

  14

  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.”