A FRIENDLY CHAT.
Soon after eight the next morning Colston came into the sitting-room
where Arnold had slept on the sofa, and dreamt dreams of war and
world-revolts and battles fought in mid-air between aërial navies
built on the plan of his own model. When Colston came in he was just
awake enough to be wondering whether the events of the previous night
were a reality or part of his dreams--a doubt that was speedily set
at rest by his host drawing back the curtains and pulling up the
blinds.
The moment his eyes were properly open he saw that he was anywhere
but in his own shabby room in Southwark, and the rest was made clear
by Colston saying--
"Well, comrade Arnold, Lord High Admiral of the Air, how have you
slept? I hope you found the sofa big and soft enough, and that the
last cigar has left no evil effects behind it."
"Eh? Oh, good morning! I don't know whether it was the whisky or the
cigars, or what it was; but do you know I have been dreaming all
sorts of absurd things about battles in the air and dropping
explosives on fortresses and turning them into small volcanoes. When
you came in just now I hadn't the remotest idea where I was. It's
time to get up, I suppose?"
"Yes, it's after eight a good bit. I've had my tub, so the bath-room
is at your service. Meanwhile, Burrows will be laying the table for
breakfast. When you have finished your tub, come into my
dressing-room, and let me rig you out. We are about of a size, and I
think I shall be able to meet your most fastidious taste. In fact, I
could rig you out as anything--from a tramp to an officer of the
Guards."
"It wouldn't take much change to accomplish the former, I'm afraid.
But, really, I couldn't think of trespassing so far on your
hospitality as to take your very clothes from you. I'm deep enough in
your debt already."
"Don't talk nonsense, Richard Arnold. The tone in which those last
words were said shows me that you have not duly laid to heart what I
said last night. There is no such thing as private property in the
Brotherhood, of which I hope, by this time to-morrow, you will be an
initiate.
"What I have here is mine only for the purposes of the Cause,
wherefore it is as much yours as mine, for to-day we are going on the
Brotherhood's business. Why, then, should you have any scruples about
wearing the Brotherhood's clothes? Now clear out and get tubbed, and
wash some of those absurd ideas out of your head."
"Well, as you put it that way, I don't mind, only remember that I
don't necessarily put on the principles of the Brotherhood with its
clothes."
So saying, Arnold got up from the sofa, stretched himself, and went
off to make his toilet.
When he sat down to breakfast with his host half an hour later, very
few who had seen him on the Embankment the night before would have
recognised him as the same man. The tailor, after all, does a good
deal to make the man, externally at least, and the change of clothes
in Arnold's case had transformed him from a superior looking tramp
into an aristocratic and decidedly good-looking man, in the prime of
his youth, saving only for the thinness and pallor of his face, and a
perceptible stoop in the shoulders.
During breakfast they chatted about their plans for the day, and then
drifted into generalities, chiefly of a political nature.
The better Arnold came to know Maurice Colston the more remarkable
his character appeared to him; and it was his growing wonder at the
contradictions that it exhibited that made him say towards the end of
the meal--
"I must say you're a queer sort of conspirator, Colston. My idea of
Nihilists and members of revolutionary societies has always taken the
form of silent, stealthy, cautious beings, with a lively distrust and
hatred of the whole human race outside their own circles. And yet
here are you, an active member of the most terrible secret society in
existence, pledged to the destruction of nearly every institution on
earth, and carrying your life in your hand, opening your heart like a
schoolboy to a man you have literally not known for twenty-four
hours.
"Suppose you had made a mistake in me. What would there be to prevent
me telling the police who you are, and having you locked up with a
view to extradition to Russia?"
"In the first place," replied Colston quietly, "you would not do so,
because I am not mistaken in you, and because, in your heart, whether
you fully know it or not, you believe as I do about the destruction
that is about to fall upon Society.
"In the second place, if you did betray my confidence, I should be
able to bring such an overwhelming array of the most respectable
evidence to show that I was nothing like what I really am, that you
would be laughed at for a madman; and, in the third place, there
would be an inquest on you within twenty-four hours after you had
told your story. Do you remember the death of Inspector Ainsworth, of
the Criminal Investigation Department, about six months ago?"
"Yes, of course I do. Hermit and all as I was, I could hardly help
hearing about that, considering what a noise it made. But I thought
that was cleared up. Didn't one of that gang of garotters that was
broken up in South London a couple of months later confess to
strangling him in the statement that he made before he was executed?"
"Yes, and his widow is now getting ten shillings a week for life on
account of that confession. Birkett no more killed Ainsworth than you
did; but he had killed two or three others, and so the confession
didn't do him very much harm.
"No; Ainsworth met his death in quite another way. He accepted from
the Russian secret police bureau in London a bribe of £250 down and
the promise of another £250 if he succeeded in manufacturing enough
evidence against a member of our Outer Circle to get him extradited
to Russia on a trumped-up charge of murder.
"The Inner Circle learnt of this from one of our spies in the Russian
London police, and----, well, Ainsworth was found dead with the mark
of the Terror upon his forehead before he had time to put his
treachery into action. He was executed by two of the Brotherhood, who
are members of the Metropolitan police force, and who were afterwards
complimented by the magistrate for the intelligent efforts they had
made in bringing the murderers to justice."
Colston told the dark story in the most careless of tones between the
puffs of his after-breakfast cigarette. Arnold stifled his horror as
well as he was able, but he could not help saying, when his host had
done--
"This Brotherhood of yours is well named the Terror; but was not that
rather a murder than an execution?"
"By no means," replied Colston, a trifle coldly. "Society hangs or
beheads a man who kills another. Ainsworth knew as well as we did
that if the man he tried to betray by false evidence had once set
foot in Russia, the torments of a hundred deaths would have been his
before he had been allowed to die.
"He betrayed his office and his faith to his English masters in order
to commit this vile crime, and so he was killed as a murderous and
treacherous reptile that was not fit to live. We of the Terror are
not lawyers, and so we make no distinctions between deliberate
plotting for money to kill and the act of killing itself. Our law is
closer akin to justice than the hair-splitting fraud that is
tolerated by Society."
Either from emotional or logical reasons Arnold made no reply to this
reasoning, and, seeing he remained silent, Colston resumed his
ordinary nonchalant, good-humoured tone, and went on--
"But come, that will be horrors enough for to-day. We have other
business in hand, and we may as well get to it at once. About this
wonderful invention of yours. Of course I believe all you have told
me about it, but you must remember that I am only an agent, and that
I am inexorably bound by certain rules, in accordance with which I
must act.
"Now, to be perfectly plain with you, and in order that we may
thoroughly understand each other before either of us commits himself
to anything, I must tell you that I want to see this model flying
ship of yours in order to be able to report on it to-night to the
Executive of the Inner Circle, to whom I shall also want to introduce
you. If you will not allow me to do that say so at once, and, for the
present at least, our negotiations must come to a sudden stop."
"Go on," said Arnold quietly; "so far I consent. For the rest I would
rather hear you to the end."
"Very well. Then if the Executive approve of the invention, you will
be asked to join the Inner Circle at once, and to devote yourself
body and soul to the Society and the accomplishment of the objects
that will be explained to you. If you refuse there will be an end of
the matter, and you will simply be asked to give your word of honour
to reveal nothing that you have seen or heard, and then allowed to
depart in peace.
"If, on the other hand, you consent, in consideration of the immense
importance of your secret--which there is no need to disguise from
you--to the Brotherhood, the usual condition of passing through the
Outer Circle will be dispensed with, and you will be trusted as
absolutely as we shall expect you to trust us.
"Whatever funds you then require to manufacture an air-ship on the
plan of your model will be placed at your disposal, and a suitable
place will be selected for the works that you will have to build.
When the ship is ready to take the air you will, of course, be
appointed to the command of her, and you will pick your crew from
among the workmen who will act under your orders in the building of
the vessel.
"They will all be members of the Outer Circle, who will not
understand your orders, but simply obey them blindly, even to the
death. One member of the Inner Circle will act as your second in
command, and he will be as perfectly trusted as you will be, so that
in unforeseen emergencies you will be able to consult with him with
perfect confidence. Now I think I have told you all. What do you
say?"
Arnold was silent for a few minutes, too busy for speech with the
rush of thoughts that had crowded through his brain as Colston was
speaking. Then he looked up at his host and said--
"May I make conditions?"
"You may state them," replied he, with a smile, "but, of course, I
don't undertake to accept them without consultation with my--I mean
with the Executive."
"Of course not," said Arnold. "Well, the conditions that I should
feel myself obliged to make with your Executive would be, briefly
speaking, these: I would not reveal to any one the composition of the
gases from which I derive my motive force. I should manufacture them
myself in given quantities, and keep them always under my own charge.
"At the first attempt to break faith with me in this respect I would
blow the air-ship and all her crew, including myself, into such
fragments as it would be difficult to find one of them. I have and
wish for no life apart from my invention, and I would not survive
it."
"Good!" interrupted Colston. "There spoke the true enthusiast. Go
on."
"Secondly, I would use the machine only in open warfare--when the
Brotherhood is fighting openly for the attainment of a definite end.
Once the appeal to force has been made I will employ a force such as
no nation on earth can use without me, and I will use it as
unsparingly as the armies and fleets engaged will employ their own
engines of destruction on one another. But I will be no party to the
destruction of defenceless towns and people who are not in arms
against us. If I am ordered to do that I tell you candidly that I
will not do it. I will blow the air-ship itself up first."
"The conditions are somewhat stringent, although the sentiments are
excellent," replied Colston; "still, of myself I can neither accept
nor reject them. That will be for the Executive to do. For my own
part I think that you will be able to arrive at a basis of agreement
on them. And now I think we have said all we can say for the present,
and so if you are ready we'll be off and satisfy my longing to see
the invention that is to make us the arbiters of war--when war comes,
which I fancy will not be long now."
Something in the tone in which these last words were spoken struck
Arnold with a kind of cold chill, and he shivered slightly as he said
in answer to Colston--
"I am ready when you are, and no less anxious than you to set eyes on
my model. I hope to goodness it is all safe! Do you know, when I am
away from it I feel just like a woman away from her first baby."
A few minutes later two of the most dangerous enemies of Society
alive were walking quietly along the Embankment towards Blackfriars,
smoking their cigars and chatting as conventionally as though there
were no such things on earth as tyranny and oppression, and their
necessarily ever-present enemies conspiracy and brooding revolution.