THE NEW NAPOLEON.
"You say--I read it in your eyes--that I am mad," the Dumpling went
on, after a pause. "Wait and see. If mad I am, then mad were Cæsar,
Alexander, Moses--mad even perhaps the Christ Himself.
"You say--again I see it in your eyes--you say: 'This man claims to be
Napoleon, and condescends to become a criminal, a thief, a concocter
of plots to entrap and kidnap millionaires.' But listen. Napoleon is
unchanged. Should I, a hundred years ago, have hesitated to torture
a rich Jew--had I so chosen--to wring from him his millions for the
carrying on of my wars? Money I must have. Money I will have, if I am
to lead the legions of Labour to victory. These millionaires, these
wealthy parvenus whom I hold to ransom, are but the base pawns in the
game, from whom I wring the means of carrying on my war. I stop at
nothing. I scruple at nothing, so long as I achieve my end. At this
moment the mines are laid for a revolution which shall shake England
to its centre. I, who hold the strands of the whole network of the
conspiracy in my single hand, have not scrupled, in laying and carrying
out my plans, to use base tools--thieves and rogues and criminals. What
are they to me? I achieve my purpose. That is enough.
"And now again I read your thoughts, and this time you say: 'This man,
this Cæsar in conception, this criminal in act, preaches humanity and
practises inhumanity; this man speaks of the poor with Christ-like
compassion, even while his hands are red with his fellow-creatures'
blood.' But whom have I slain? _My_ enemies? Never! _My_ enemies,
_my_ deadliest enemy, I would not stoop so much as to strike across
the face. But God's enemies, the enemies of God's cause, against them
I will use all the cunning and craft of my brain, to wipe them off
the face of the earth. This negro of whom you have spoken, this man
Black Sam--he was slain at my command because he was the enemy of God,
the enemy of God's cause. It was he who betrayed us to Grant, the
detective. Therefore I slew him. Therefore would I slay a thousand
such as he. When I was on earth a hundred years ago, I never counted
the cost. I have sent regiments to certain destruction that I might
carry out my end. And am I changed? Yes; changed, inasmuch as, to-day,
I would sacrifice not a regiment, but an army--not a legion, but a
whole nation--so long as I attained my end. Am I not Napoleon? And does
Napoleon ever count the cost?"
Then, all in a moment, he ceased his restless pacings, starting back
and staggering wildly at some sudden thought, as a hit soldier starts
and staggers when he feels the bullet.
"My God!" he cried piteously, "I am forgetting! This man, this young
Grant whom to-night I killed, thinking him to be his brother, was no
enemy of the Cause! My hands are red with innocent blood. I have done
murder! I have slain an innocent man. Ah! if he have wife and child--a
wife whom I have made a widow, a child whom my hands have orphaned! My
God! My God! Have pity on them! Protect them, comfort them, for I Thy
servant have done this thing. I have taken innocent blood!"
I have seen strange sights in my somewhat adventurous life, but a
stranger spectacle than this madman, this wholesale murderer, the
blood of whose recent victims was surely as yet wet and warm upon his
hands, pacing backwards and forwards, his face literally distorted by
anguish of soul, as he cried out upon God to have pity upon the victims
of his crime, I am not likely soon to see again.
As he spoke, and as I stood watching him in amazement, there was a
sound like the scrunching of feet on the loose gravel outside.
Then a voice:
"There's someone in there, I'll swear, sergeant. Didn't you hear 'em
speaking? Turn your bullseye this way a moment, will you?... Ah! Would
you? Lay hold of him, sergeant; he's past me. Quick--or he'll get away!"
At the first hint of a sound outside, the Dumpling had turned off
the gas and stepped softly, swiftly to the door. As it opened I
saw the figures of the two policemen, their helmets and shoulders
outlined darkly but clearly against the light which streamed from the
incandescent gas-lamp in the side street, their lower limbs and feet
lost in the shadow thrown by the garden wall. I was too dazzled by
the sudden flashing of the bullseye to see more than that the Dumpling
was making a desperate dash for liberty; but my ears told me the rest.
[Illustration: "THE DUMPLING WAS MAKING A DESPERATE DASH FOR LIBERTY."]
The Dumpling had got clean away, perhaps to put the fuse to the mines
of which he had spoken as laid and ready, and to spring upon a startled
country the surprise of his great rebellion.
I heard his footsteps and the footsteps of his out-distanced, defeated
pursuers die away in the distance, and then, creeping noiselessly out,
I scaled the wall and made my way home to my own rooms and to bed. I
had had more than enough of adventure for one night.