My God! did we not instantly realize the terrible import! We rushed
through the dayrooms—she was not there—and on to her own apartments.
The door was locked, but we crashed it down by hurling ourselves against
it. There she lay, just as she had finished dressing for the opera,
smothered with pillows torn from the couch, the flush of life yet on her
flesh, the body still flexible and warm. Let me pass over the rest of
this horror. You will surely remember, John, the newspaper accounts.
Late that night Mr. Hale summoned me to him, and before God did pledge
me most solemnly to stand by him and not to compromise, even if all kith
and kin were destroyed.
The next day I was surprised at his cheerfulness. I had thought he would
be deeply shocked by this last tragedy—how deep I was soon to learn.
All day he was light-hearted and high-spirited, as though at last he had
found a way out of the frightful difficulty. The next morning we
found him dead in his bed, a peaceful smile upon his careworn
face—asphyxiation. Through the connivance of the police and the
authorities, it was given out to the world as heart disease. We deemed
it wise to withhold the truth; but little good has it done us, little
good has anything done us.
Barely had I left that chamber of death, when—but too late—the
following extraordinary letter was received:
OFFICE OF THE M. of M., February 17, 1900.
MR. EBEN HALE, Money Baron:
Dear Sir,—You will pardon our intrusion, we hope, so closely upon the
sad event of day before yesterday; but what we wish to say may be of
the utmost importance to you. It is in our mind that you may attempt
to escape us. There is but one way, apparently, as you have ere this
doubtless discovered. But we wish to inform you that even this one
way is barred. You may die, but you die failing and acknowledging your
failure. Note this: WE ARE PART AND PARCEL OF YOUR POSSESSIONS. WITH
YOUR MILLIONS WE PASS DOWN TO YOUR HEIRS AND ASSIGNS FOREVER.
We are the inevitable. We are the culmination of industrial and
social wrong. We turn upon the society that has created us. We are the
successful failures of the age, the scourges of a degraded civilization.
We are the creatures of a perverse social selection. We meet force with
force. Only the strong shall endure. We believe in the survival of the
fittest. You have crushed your wage slaves into the dirt and you have
survived. The captains of war, at your command, have shot down like
dogs your employees in a score of bloody strikes. By such means you have
endured. We do not grumble at the result, for we acknowledge and have
our being in the same natural law. And now the question has arisen:
UNDER THE PRESENT SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT, WHICH OF US SHALL SURVIVE? We
believe we are the fittest. You believe you are the fittest. We leave
the eventuality to time and law.
Cordially yours,