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“VERY WELL, KILL ME IF YOU CANNOT USE ME!”
Prontis. The Black Hand.


3: 32 THE 3: 32
BLACK HAND
BY
VV IL. B E R T C. B L A K E MAN
Tömörön, wrotra";
BROADWAY PUBLISHING COMPANY
835 Broadway, * * New York


CoPYRIGHT, 1908
BY
WILBERT C. BLAKEMAN
All Rights Aeserved


THE BLACK HAND
I
Paris the magnifique! the marveilleuse! the
malheureuse! the only!
It is the Paradise of the French Fortunatus;
he knows and wants no other. Here to this
elysium of sight and sound, the high noon of
sensation, he comes and seethes in his gold.
His senses are steeped—this cosmopolitan
connoisseur who is guilty of the vice of over-
civilization—in his grand gardens where music
is celestial and in his broad boulevards where
life seems eternal, so that he does not hear the
chariot of destiny rumbling through the im-
pending gloom.
Beneath the Beauty sleeps the Beast and the
Paris beast is the most savage in the world.
Mirrored in the dark look of the vast crowds
of sad-faced men and sorrow-driven women
that swarm down every morning from the
great Faubourgs to capture the city and seize
its bread at the price of blood, one sees the
glare of hate and the surprise of new-found
strength. The leash of the law about the


2 THE BLACK HAND
neck of the Brute has been gnawed thin, and
the soul-fodder with which the well-fed eccle-
siastic would appease the deep-voiced growl is
trodden in contempt under the ponderous paw.
Souls! What use for such aerial con-
veniences have these hunger-pinched slaves, or
what purgatory can be hotter than the torture
to which the Trinitarian Devil—Hate, Want
and Lust—damns them now and here?
This on the right bank of the Seine. Look
now on the left. Here are the declassé people
who have capitulated before bayonets more
relentless than those with which William’s
soldiers swept these wretched streets. These
pickers and paupers live on the dust-bins of
the city—live by alms, wit, crook, crime, and
slowly surrender the right to live. Every year
more than two hundred of these palpitating
wrecks yield to the pistol’s quietus, or the
drug's lullaby, or the river's beck of rest.
Every day the sweet epic with which life be-
gins ends in this sad episode of crime. They
must die—or sin!
Over this Dead Sea of Shame glimmers the
phosphorescent brilliancy of a society the light-
est and most thoughtless the world has ever
seen. Its magnificent cruelty has hardened
into crystals of wondrous whiteness and
beauty and its sheen and gilding hide the dark
deeps beneath. The gay Parisian lolls, smokes,
drinks and flirts, not knowing that a millstone


4 THE BLACK HAND
the Lord High Adulterer–glittering all the
way from diamond shoe-buckle to golden head-
dress.
Nor is the selection of guests by the Comite
de Preparatif narrowed by national prejudice.
That good fighting Christian, Richard the
Lion, in the person of an elderly roue, a
French Beau Nash, rattles his sword and looks
ferociously around in search of slim-necked
Saracens; and that English king in the pigtail
—in reality a newly varnished count who has
married an American heiress—is Henry the
Eighth, whose abdominal largeness and in-
satiable lust are not a whit abridged by his
three and a half centuries of turf.
Even the spite against the land across the
Rhine yields to the love of sensation; and a
fat old burgher with an algebraic eye has coun-
terfeited that giganto-maniac, Frederick the
First, personating the great man-stealer spurs,
tobacco pouch, ineffable stupidity and all.
Nay even history is lacking in piquancy to
tickle the worn-out palates of these overswol-
len children of Mammon, paralyzed with en-
nui, and so fiction must be tortured. The
father of Hamlet, lending his post-mortem
presence and slipping ghostily out of his covers
of calf and vellum, consents to have hellebore
juice poured in his ear and to brush up against
these French animals perspiring with passion.
And here are the Furies and the Fairies, the


THE BLACK HAND 5
Graces and the Goddesses, the Stars and the
Seasons, a quill-haired Bluebeard who instead
of school-children devours shop-women—sad,
hollow-eyed creatures who for a franc a day
throw the thread of the loom and the thread
of life together; Spring, an angel with robes
supposed to be cut a la cherubim and tricked
out by Worth; Night, a Brobdingnagian fe-
male whose pseudonymous partner is the
Devil—for in the effort of each to out-charac-
ter his neighbor and offer something bizarre to
his tedium-stricken clan, even His Satanic
Majesty Himself is drafted into the service of
these wonder-breeders of the City of the Apos-
tate, whose high priest is the dressmaker and
whose heaven is the ballroom.
And so the grand panorama of human, ex-
human and anti-human beings rolls on, a fan-
tastic farrago of absurdities, but—the excuse
always easeful to the fatty degeneration of
conscience—throwing a million of francs into
trade.
And then the supper! Such gastronomic
miracles! Such Gallic ingenuity in candy and
cream. The Eiffel Tower in sugar and the
Champs Elysees in saccharine blocks! The
lost Alsace in a piece monte—a prophecy in
pie-crust, the Gaul capturing with his fork
what he means to retake with his bayonet.
On your life, my good Bonapartist, my good


6 THE BLACK HAND
Plutocrat, do not admit any hunger-bitten
Lazarus to this feast of the Holy Epicure!
“Mon Dieu! What do these bourgeoisie
mean?” was the exclamation of the beggar
who got a surreptitious glimpse of this culi-
nary wonderland before he was bundled into
the street.
But suddenly the fete came to an inglorious
end.
It was just at the moment when the revel-
lers, weary of their saltatory feats, were about
to tone their lax muscles with titillations of
the Bacchanalia—the very moment, in fact,
when the immaculate Beau, with a leer in his
mock-reverent eye, was calling upon His
Satanic Majesty to say grace, while Sardan-
apalus declared to the Squaw, “the Spaniards
discovered America, but the French have dis-
covered Heaven”—it was at this moment that
a terrific detonation shook the building. The
windows were blown in, the lights were blown
out, the ceiling fell, and the Eiffel Tower went
down in a flood of mortar.
The effect was a panic. The Angel had a
fainting fit; the hero of Austerlitz hid under
the table; the Lion carried his abscinded tail in
his trembling paw; Bluebeard derogated into
a callow youth calling for his mamma; the
Devil's horns perforated the Defender's ficti-
tious belly; Night went to pieces, the entire
structure of buckram and whalebone coi-


THE BLACK HAND
7
lapsing on the terrified head of a poor
little
page; the lords acted like lunatics, and the
caricature of the universe was reduced
painfully small farce.
When the excitement had somewhat
to a
sub-
sided and the discomfited masqueraders await-
ed their turn in the confusion of carriages—
some had taken ignominious flight on foot—
four dishevelled beings—Henry the Eighth,
the Man in the Iron Mask, reconstructed Night
and a wilted Fairy—drifted together in the
easy recognition of a family group.
“Oh! Are we all safe?” exclaimed the
sylph.
“Safe,—but hungry,” laughed the rakish
king, who thought, as the affair was not fatal,
it had better be treated as a huge joke.
With his crown off he was discovered
to be
a fat-faced, clean-shaven man about midway
his century—an ex-broker, ex-director of the
Bourse, ex-commercial schemer and financial
filibuster, in fact, a kind of universal ex—a
type of a class quite numerous in France who
have played the game of life for high stakes
and lost, a little staled among the rising young
bloods with latest fads, but still holding to the
fashionable set by the prestige of the past.
But the Man in the Iron Mask shook his
head.
“It was the hungry man who threw the
bomb.”
------------------------- -----
------> **


8 THE BLACK HAND
“What, an anarchist!” glowered the Night.
“A crawling viper! A loathsome toad Is
that the beast that has sneaked in here and
spoiled our sport?”
“Calm yourself, my good Madame Leon.
Ours is not the only pleasure that is spoiled.
There are a thousand people starving in Paris
to-night,” said he of the Iron Mask.
The general ex grew serious and even furi-
OU1S.
“The nation—pardonneg moi, M. Dupont—
this pusillanimous government is responsible
for the existence of these desperate people. It
was not always so. I remember when Louise
was born—he turned to the faded Fairy almost
hid in the substantial shadow of Night, who
threw her sable arms around the bedraggled
little beauty—“there was something then for
every man to do. There was war then, sir, –
war.”
The Man in the Iron Mask, M. Dupont, the
brilliant republican member of the House of
Deputies for the arrondissement of M *
looked from the father to the Fairy as one
who is in a quandary between politics and love.
“You rightly say that society”—he had the
party leader's trick of deftly shifting the
blame—“is responsible for anarchy, but not in
the way you suggest,” he replied, removing the
huge cage from his head as he suddenly be-
came aware that he was ugly. -


THE BLACK HAND 9
The lifted mask disclosed a high forehead
with the other features cast in a correspond-
ingly generous mould and an expression of
quiet confidence in the slightly sarcastic mouth
and the ready blue eyes.
“But it is responsible in the same way that
a good liver is responsible for the gout. The
world has lived fast and society has pain in
the foot. The remedy must be applied to the
seat of the disease, which is in the very vitals
of our social fabric. We must check the greed
of the rich and legislate in the interests of the
workpeople.”
“You sympathize then with these murderous
malcontents—these bomb-throwers?”
“I sympathize to some extent with their
object, which is to help the great under class,
but I abhor their methods. What right have
we to sit down to a hundred-thousand franc
feast when our neighbors are starving? We
must level down and level up. But the anar-
chist would level everything down, he would
cure the gout by killing the man, on the prin-
ciple that the dead feel no pain.”
“To my mind,” retorted the fat bourgeois,
“anarchy is a disease which we must be rid of
by the strong hand of the law. These brutes
should be exiled to some remote island where
they can have liberty to ply their fiendish arts
on each other and so rid the world of the
maniacs.”
* - ***** ------ - - - - - - - - - - - - -


IO THE BLACK HAND
“You mistake—poverty is the disease; anar-
chy is only the nerve that runs from the dis-
eased member into the head and gives the pang
of warning. We must doctor the disease and
not the symptoms. Depend upon it, not Paris
—not France only—but the whole civilized
world is on the eve of a social earthquake.
God help us to open the safety valve and let off
some of the accumulating steam!”
The professional legislator spoke with great
feeling as a physician alarmed about his pa-
tient. He had that day been waited on by a
committee from a convention of idle men, beg-
ging him for God's sake to do something for
their relief.
“The sans-culottes have always been dis-
satisfied,” snarled the general ex, who felt hurt
in the house of his friends by a sentiment only
fit to be heard in the Billingsgates and Tatter-
salls of Paris.
“But their dissatisfaction has never until
now been linked with power and the conscious-
ness of power. I tell you, M. Leon, if you
want to hear the lion growl go down into the
Faubourg St. Marcel any night after dark.”
“To-morrow evening some friends will drop
in to see me and I want you to come and dine
with them,” observed M. Leon, whose invita-
tion sounded much like a whistle for help.
“They are distinguished people and have some
original ideas, and, I think, can suggest some


THE BLACK HAND II
ways of dealing with the anarchists that are
new even to you.”
“I shall be glad to meet them,” assented M.
Dupont.
He had a reason for accepting his friend's
hospitality quite apart from the motive ad-
vanced. He could listen to distinguished peo-
ple with original ideas any day in the House of
Deputies, but he could nowhere else find such
agreeable women as Mme. and Mlle. Leon.
The general ex read his thought in his happy
eyes and it caused a slight swerve in his cur-
rent of talk.
“I am informed that a notorious woman is
in league with these miscreants, if indeed she
be not at the very head—a woman of ex-
traordinary beauty and boldness, fit for any-
thing—a very she-devil—and that she inspires
them to their hellish deeds.”
“A woman! The brazen-faced vixen' The
good-for-nothing creature! How I would like
to meet her and tell her what I think of her—
the shameless thing!” exclaimed Mlle. Leon
... from her mother's ample shadow.
* She belonged to the rather large class of
young ladies who have the habit of hitching
their speech with hyphens and spiking it with
exclamation points.
“Perhaps you will meet her some day and
then how the eagle will be crushed under the


12 THE BLACK HAND
blows of my wee little dove,” smiled the Dep-
uty.
“Oh, you are always laughing at me! You
think I don't know anything about anarchy,
but I found a funny thing yesterday. A man
came to the house with his little daughter in
answer to my advertisement for a maid and
he said that he was an anarchist, and a letter
dropped out of his ragged coat. When he
was gone I picked it up and read it and it said
that President Carnot was to be murdered.”
She imparted the startling information in
the small triumph of a bright little mind that
has secured a chance advantage over a large
O11e. -
“What did you do with the letter?” de-
manded M. Dupont, almost fiercely.
“Why, I put it in the fire! What else should
I do with such a dreadful thing?”
The Deputy groaned.
“Why did you not tell us this before?”
“Oh, I was too busy getting ready for the
ball. How could I think of a mere scrap of
paper?” -
M. Dupont and M. Leon looked at each
other significantly.
“Did I not tell you that Paris is sleeping on
a volcano?”
“More than one—more than one,” replied
M. Leon.
“What do you mean?”


THE BLACK HAND I3
“Come to my house to-morrow night and
you will learn.”
Some other kings now drew away His
Majesty and some other dark spirits per-
formed the same office for Night. M. Dupont
was left alone with the woman he loved. She
was a beauty of the typical French kind, dark,
petite, vivacious, passing at her full value;
features regular and fair, the white cheek
meeting the red lip like a sharp line between
milk and wine. Time should stand still on
such a face. The Deputy drank in her beauty
with his eyes while his mind pondered the
awful secret she had discovered.
“Strange they should want to kill so good
a man!” he murmured, more to himself than
to her.
“Oh, the President! You do not really
think there was anything in that bit of paper
do you? Why, the man was hardly better
than a tramp!”
“It is these aberrant fellows—these atro-
phied, half-born creatures that make all the
mischief.”
“Yes, I remember his actions were singular.
He looked at me as if—well, as if he hated me;
so different from all other men.”
“All other men admire you.”
“Well, you know what I mean. And the
girl, too,-she is such a freak. But then I
like freaks.”


I4 THE BLACK HAND
“Your admission of a preference for odd
people is hardly complimentary,” he laughed.
“Oh, I like odd people for servants, but reg-
ular people for companions. Still, I cannot
deny a kind of foreboding that the girl's com-
ing will be for evil; I am not superstitious,
but I cannot shake off the feeling.”
“We are all superstitious when trouble is
brewing. Who are these men whom your
father wishes me to meet?”
“Oh, some dear political friends of his. All
political friends are dear, are they not?”
“They come dear,” he replied, dryly. “Why
does your father wish me to meet them?”
“Oh, they have such grand ideas. A Deputy
wants to know the ideas of the people, does he
not?”
“Yes, if they conduce to the welfare of the
Republic.”
“The Republic! Oh, I hate the Republic!”
“Louise!” -
“M. Leon!” called the carriage director.


THE BLAck HAND I5
II
On the evening of the fete a fiery meteor
swept the heavens from the pillars of Hercules
to the Winter Palace and a great blood-moon
stood over Paris. The black breath of count-
less factories, which during the day had loafed
in the upper and thinner atmosphere, stole
down with the darkness and wound itself in
serpentine forms, sombre, hurtling, portentous.
Beneath these weird shapes the Seine glided
darkly amid the vast stores of merchandise out
of which the fortunate weave their silk cocoon,
and the dismal dens into which the ship-
wrecked slink.
The city lay like a coiled snake in repose,
awaiting the daybreak when, as the reptile
slowly unwound itself, the head would bite
the tail amid lashings horrible.
Under one of the darkest wreaths of smoke,
the entire course of whose fuliginous length
was pierced by ill-looking chimneys, the Fau-
bourg St. Marcel, the savagest quarter in
Paris, muttered in its sleep; and in a gray old
stone-pile, half-shop, half-dwelling, whose
massive walls kept well its awful secrets,


16 THE BLACK HAND
crouched the Black Hand. It was distant only
a few whips from the ball-room, for the House
of Have and the House of Want stood close
together; indeed, the carriage of many a
reveller brushed the raven wings beneath
which was hatching the plot to subvert the
social order.
The building had a forbidding front—all
wall except a dingy window with prison-like
bars and a thick door with a judas, whose iron
flap securely barred out prying eyes. Hardly
more inviting was the grim interior—a narrow
hall with small square rooms let into the wall
in the harsh manner of cells from the corridor
of a jail. The one that faced the street—labo-
ratory, curiosity shop, powder-den of men who
called themselves the progenitors of the new
race—contained, beneath dust undisturbed by
the feminine hand, the strange mechanical de-
vices and chemical compounds which the in-
ventors believed were to play an important
part in the emancipation of mankind; next to
this was the hall of the secret brotherhood;
further back were the living rooms.
It is in the second apartment that our inter-
est centers. Twelve dark faces glowered in a
semi-circle upon a table on which stood a tal-
low candle and a little box surmounted by a
wheel. It was no sentimental society playing
with mystery, but a band of desperate men
plotting world-wide revolution. They were of


THE BLACK HAND 17
many types from many lands—dark-browed
miners from under the Southern Cross, wasted
exiles from the great steppes of the Yenisei,
editors whose ink had been too rank for the
softness of the times, broken-down men with
a grudge against society.
They sat there—those grim revolutionists,
with black badges in their button-holes—in a
silence unbroken save by the slow-muttered
words of the vow that crept from lip to lip, or
by the solemn ticking of the clock, or by the
ominous rattle of a ball in the box as the
leader shook it from time to time to remind
them of the sable ship of fate on which they
were about to embark.
He was a remarkable man—not remarkable
for his stature or his physiognomy, but for a
certain indefinable expression in the steel-gray
eyes that burned above the coal-black beard,
suggesting that inward peace that made Abou-
ben-Adhem bold.
This man was Paul Adam, the foremost
anarchist of the world.
The person whom a spectator would select
as next worthy of note had features cut on
quite a different lathe—the strongly modelled
Anglo Saxon rather than the sunken Gallic
mould. His bearing, part of the soldier and
part of the scholar, together with his smooth-
shaven and finely modelled face would have


18 THE BLACK HAND
made him sit well among the noble Six Hun-
dred.
He had been Claiborne Douglas, the Ameri-
can, but he was known as Number Two among
men who despised both nationalities and
nameS.
Next to him—that phlegmatic little man in
the bearskin, whose knit brows and retroflexed
eyes seemed prying into himself—is a refugee
from the hills of Cracow, Malo-Russian with
an infusion of Polish, a disgraced majordomo
who had lost his place because he refused to
receive his pay in flash notes, a consequent
Nihilist of the dirk-and-bomb variety, hater of
priests and women—Jan Michel.
Then came Carl Barron, a red-bearded,
thick-set German doctor, who had been run
across the Rhine because of his gift for unfor-
tunate phrases; his lean complement, Antonio
Garcia, Spanish, with an Italian strain; Octave
Bourdalotte, a wiry, wolfish-eyed Frenchman
of Jacobin blood easily amalgamated with
proletarian; and six other determined-faced
men who vowed that they had done murder
and would do it again for the sake of the
human race.
Amid a silence which had become profound
and even painful, Paul Adam stood up and
administered the following oath to Douglas:
“I do solemnly swear that for the welfare
of oppressed humanity I will take the life of


THE BLACK HAND I9
the tyrant whose name shall be called when my
number is drawn from the wheel, and that I
will not under penalty of death reveal the se-
crets of this brotherhood to any man.”
It was couched in the simplest language, for
the Black Hand's words like its bolts were
aimed straight at the target.
Then Douglas stood up and administered
the oath to Michel; and so each one, in turn,
receiving and giving the awful adjuration, felt
doubly bound by its infrangible tie.
The very atmosphere of the bare, dim-
lighted room seemed to pulse with destiny.
The little clock ticked fatefully on the mantel,
and the labored breathing of the smileless men
became now and then audible.
Suddenly, there was a peculiar noise, coming
apparently from a closet directly back of Paul
Adam's chair. Barron was just giving the
oath to Garcia and he paused in the midst of
the fearful formula.
“Go on,” commanded the leader in a deep
voice and without even turning in the direc-
tion of the sound. “If the intruder be a spy,
he cannot escape; if an officer, he can only hear
what he has already heard.”
The administration of the oath went on until
all had taken the vow of blood.
The noise was repeated. The men ex-
changed glances, but remained perfectly calm.
The hiding-place was not large enough to hold


2O THE BLACK HAND
a formidable foe, and, besides, these men did
not place a high value upon their lives.
The closet was fastened on the outside, but
it had a slit in the form of a crescent, and
through this a hand protruded. It was not the
coarse hand of an officer of the law, but a fe-
male hand, the fingers of which were long and
tapering.
Then came an arm, round and running up
into a mass of fluffy material beyond. The
arm shot out swiftly and the trim hand turned
a button on the door.
Then from the widening aperture there
stepped forth a form—a woman clothed in
scarlet. Tall, taller than any man in the
room, the towering Hickory of the Ohio alone
excepted, and adding to her physical superi-
ority an expression of singular power upon her
mobile, finely-carved features, and a coquet-
tish manner that differentiated the woman
more certainly than the accident of dress, she
blazed upon the Black Hand with a brilliancy
and unexpectedness that for a moment struck
its members dumb.
Paul Adam alone retained his composure.
“Why have you come here?” he demanded,
coldly.
“I have come here because I am your daugh-
ter and because I want to be a member of the
conclave. Anarchy should know no age, or .
race, or sex.”


THE BLACK HAND 2I
The sentence was pealed from the depths of
a vigorous nature and thrilled the men like a
trumpet. Lip-born words were not for this
forceful woman. -
“Brothers,” inquired the leader, solemnly,
“what is the doom of an intruder in the Black
Hand P”
“Death !”
The direful chorus from deep-throated men
was enough to shake the soul of the stoutest
hero, but the woman stood with a curl of in-
expressible scorn upon her finely-cut lip.
“Very well, kill me if you cannot use me.”
The folded arms, the statuesque pose, the
calm audaciousness and resolve, together with
the measureless strength of character which
these indexed forth, filled the arch-plotters
with admiration, and one of them with a more
absorbing passion.
Claiborne Douglas from that moment felt
his fate inextricably linked with that of
Gabrielle Adam. He leaped impulsively to his
feet.
“Brothers, although the doom of the in-
truder is death, yet this is no intrusion, for this
is the home of Mlle. Adam, and how can she
be an intruder in her own home? There is no
rule against taking a woman into the league,
and I move that we receive her and christen
her the Bride of Anarchy. She is beautiful


22 THE BLACK HAND
enough for that title. Brothers, hail the Bride
of Anarchy!”
There was no formal putting of the ques-
tion, for the band despised all parliamentary
form, but the suggestion pleased the men and
they gave the secret salute, even the major-
domo yielding his prejudice to the dazzle of
his senses.
Paul Adam alone made no sign.
“You have made a fatal mistake,” he said
quietly to Douglas.
“A glorious mistake,” responded the infatu-
ated man; “she is every way worthy of us.”
“She is a woman,” replied Paul Adam.
“And a woman will yet head the human
race,” retorted Gabrielle, her face burning
with triumph and prophecy. “Why should
there not be a woman Alexander?”


THE BLACK HAND 23
E-
III
“Number Thirteen.”
All started as Paul Adam's deep bass in-
toned the superstitious numeral, which he
wrote upon a little black ball and tossed into
the wheel. The unlucky number which Ga-
brielle's admission added to the group of con-
spirators confirmed the ill omen of the taking
of a woman into the circle of the secret, almost
sacred, twelve.
The clock gave a warning stroke.
A drunken man in the street shouted, “Vive
Bonaparte!”
The arch plotters looked at each other in
dismay as the evil portents multiplied.
“Number Thirteen will take her place in the
band,” commanded the leader, grimly.
Douglas found a chair for the new member,
and took care to place it next to his own. Sev-
eral of his comrades glanced enviously at him,
as the Bride with a gracious nod of her regal
head accepted his politeness. He was so near
her that he heard her stertorous breathing as
her breast heaved with the excitement of her
daring. But she betrayed no timidity, real or


24 THE BLACK HAND
affected, in her position as the only woman
among a band of fierce revolutionists. She
displayed a proud superiority to sex, and
swept into her seat as if by right and not by
sufferance.
“Do you know what you have done?” de-
manded her father.
“I know what I have not done,” she an-
swered with incisive emphasis. “I have lived
a life empty and useless. I am here to do.”
“You are here to die.”
“To do and die.”
“You will have enough to do. Every one in
this room is pledged to remove a tyrant.”
The Bride bowed coldly.
“We are here to sign our death warrants,”
continued her father.
“I am ready to die.”
Jeanne d'Arc receiving her sentence from
her military judges could not have been more
lofty. A murmur of admiration ran around
the semicircle.
“By heaven, she's a Juno! Just see the
I’ll-strike-you-dead look in her eyes,” mut-
tered the German doctor to the majordomo.
“Better to look at than to live with,” sneered
the female hating nihilist, to whom a gown,
whether worn by woman or priest, was like
the red rag to the bull.
“Fear not; we will not die.”
Douglas spoke so low that no ear heard ex-


THE BLACK HAND 25
cept the one for whom the words were in-
tended. In a moment the American had
formed a desperate plan. He meant to save
and marry this lordly and lawless woman. She
turned her lustrous orbs upon him with a
searching look, hardly less penetrating than
those of her argus-eyed father, and read so
much of his secret as pertained to love; but
he, bewildered by the light of her crater fires,
could not in turn tell whether her heart corre-
sponded to his. Was she a kind of sexless
goddess, incapable of affection for a man, or
was she a woman raised to the fourth power, a
multiple of the ordinary female unit?
“We are here,” continued Paul Adam, in a
tone that recalled to the men the fearful busi-
ness of the hour, “to decide by whose hands
the thrones shall fall.”
“And you think this hand too weak?”
The Bride held up her right arm, bare and
tantalizingly white, and on one shapely digit
a single jewel burned.
“Remember the Maid of Orleans,” she said.
While her arm was raised Douglas, at a nod
from the leader, stood up and administered to
her the oath. She repeated the syllables big
with fate without a tremor in her pure and
penetrating voice, seeming to enjoy her fright-
ful promise.
“Are we ready?”


26 THE BLACK HAND
\
Paul Adam surveyed critically every one in
the palpitating crescent.
The majordomo spoke:—
“Would it not be better if the numbers were
selected instead of drawn? A Russian, for
example, could do better work in Russia than
a man from another country.”
“Anarchy,” pronounced Paul Adam, “has
no country. We are not here as Russians, or
Frenchmen, or Germans, or Americans, but
as world men. Are you ready?”
“We are ready.”
It was the calm and awful declaration of
men who had weighed life and were willing to
exchange it for the unknown factor of death.
“We will begin at home. Who will remove
the President of France?”
The wheel revolved, fast at first, then
slowly. A ball rolled out. Every eye was
fixed on the black oval of fate as Paul Adam
held it up. The figures one and three stood
out boldly against the daub of white paint.
NUMBER THIRTEEN.
Douglas turned pale. Every gaze was riv-
eted upon the person chosen to commit the na-
tional crime—a woman. A satisfactory play
of color ran over her white cheek.
“It is well,” she said, simply.
“Bravo!” applauded her American lover.
The men echoed his admiration in deep reg-


THE BLACK HAND 27
ister and thick gutteral, but one, a sceptical
Russian, elbowed the Jacobin with:—
“Zat ees veree fine, but ze stroke—zat veel
show. Zee femme to talk, but ze homme to
act.”
The Bride shot a withering glance at him,
and the lot went on.
“Who will remove the tyrant of Germany?”
Again the wheel turned, and another ball
rolled out.
It was Number Two.
“It is well,” said the American.
The drawing continued. It was decreed
that Karl Barron should be the assassin of the
Czar of Russia.
The Emperor of Austria must die by the
hand of Bourdalotte.
Still the wheel revolved, and still the work
of choosing regicides went on. Fate allotted
the taking off of King Humbert to Garcia, the
Spaniard.
Great Britain was now reached. They
might well pause here, for no one coveted this
task. Who could be so dastardly as to lift his
hand against a revered and venerable woman?
“Have we not just declared that anarchy
knows no sex?” demanded Paul Adam, noting
the reluctance on the faces of his comrades.
His inexorable hand again sought the box.
The ball that came out was Number Three.
- -**
------------- *-


28 THE BLACK HAND
“It is well,” said Jan Michel, the major-
domo, as he met the concert of inquiring looks.
And so the Wheel of Fate revolved until
each man had taken the vow of murder.
The last one to be removed was the Presi-
dent of the United States.
The choice fell upon Paul Adam.
“Be it so,” said the leader. He closed the
box with a sharp click.
The Bride heaved a deep sigh.
The little clock struck midnight.
Every man went unto his own house.


'THE BLACK HAND 29
IV
M. Leon's town residence was on one of the
southeastern boulevards, in a quarter of Paris
that had been fashionable before the plebeian
intrusion of trade caused the aristocrat to flee
the presence of the shopkeeper. It was a pre-
tentious pile of stone and iron, but, while the
veteran speculator had not yet seen the way of
dignified retreat, his foothold in his palatial
home was becoming more precarious every
year, and the knowing ones looked to see it
thrown on the market any day. Rumors of
his losses were freely circulated on the Bourse;
still he had the reputation of being fertile in
resources, and his operations were of a shady
sort, so that, like an expert juggler, although
a ball fell to the ground, no one knew how
many more he might have up his sleeve.
Mme. Leon still entertained handsomely, but
then a dinner party is often a kind of spectac-
ular overcoat to hide one's poverty, and if her
friends found no hint of their fears in the sup-
ply of wine, they fancied it to lurk in the am-
biguous language of her whitening hair, under-
scored by deep wrinkles on her forehead. But
---------- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


30 THE BLACK HAND
that infallible sign of darker days, the surrepti-
tious flow of furniture to the depot of broken
aristocracy, the Hotel Drouot” was as yet en-
tirely wanting. The Regnaults and Proudhons
that looked out of their mahogany frames, and
the statues that slept in the corner, seemed as
secure as the stone seats let into the wall on
either side of the portal—relics of ancient hos-
pitality to the wayfarer now fenced out by a
costly iron railing.
M. Dupont had passed many a blissful hour
with Mlle. Leon beneath the rare old paintings
and by the side of the nude marbles, and the
comparison between the cold classics and the
throbbing flesh had helped the ripening of his
love into a marriage engagement. His ancestry
was half Russian and half French, and it was
owing to this happy balance of nationalities
that he owed much of his success, both in legis-
lation and love. In the Chamber of Deputies
the persistency of the Great Bear slept behind
the civility of the country he called his foster
mother, while in the drawing room he added
the military bearing of the Slav to the mer-
curial mind of the Gaul.
But, although he carried his points in poli-
tics with such seeming surrender to his oppo-
nents that they counted the victory half their
*The building licensed by the government
for public auctions.


THE BLACK HAND (31
own, M. Dupont was no compromiser in any
measure that concerned the welfare of the Re-
public. He believed the present regime the
best possible one for the chameleon nation, and
he was determined it should not again change
its spots. Hence he regarded Mlle. Leon's
final remark at the ball in much the same light
as if she had attacked the Church, or even the
family.
His fiancee, aware of his republican senti-
ments, had kept her own opinions in subordina-
tion, but the excitement of the explosion had
for a moment released the repressive bit. She
had now to decide whether she should again
put the chafing metal in her small pearl-full
mouth, or whether she should assume the air
of a pretty little rebel. The near coming of
her father's guests decided her course, as the
ring of the doorbell would bring reinforce-
mentS.
“Well, I do hate the Republic, and there's
no use in denying it!” she exclaimed, not un-
derstanding why a repetition was not as good
as a realSO11.
They had paused before the pier glass as
they came in from the informal dinner, M. Du-
pont good naturedly rallying her about her re-
mark the previous evening, and, as she turned
to give her expression emphasis, her full re-
flection confronted her. She was pretty, and


32 THE BLACK HAND
that was excuse enough for her opinion. Her
lover ought to yield to the argument of beauty.
“May I inquire whether your feeling is the
result of your own judgment, or whether you
are influenced by the views of others?” he
asked.
“Why, I—I hadn't thought about that.”
It was like asking whether her gown came
from Worth's, or from some other fashionable
dressmaker's. What matter as long as it was
becoming and cost a thousand francs?
“I only know that we had a strong govern-
ment, and now we have a weak one,” she
added, seizing upon the catch phrase of the
royalists.
“Which means that once we were ruled by
a monarch, and now we rule ourselves,” trans-
lated the Deputy.
“I don’t care; it is so common. We ladies
do not want every coarse tradeswoman staring
at us as if they were our equals.”
“Ah! Then it is not the government you
hate, but the people?”
“Well, then, yes; I don’t like vulgar people.”
“My dear little Cinderella, you should have
a Paris all to yourself and your set. But,”
more seriously, “these vulgarians after all have
little to do with the government. We are a
monarchy as much as before, only now we
have a hundred monarchs instead of one.”
M. Dupont was a diplomatist in love as well


THE BLACK HAND 33
as in law. If he could not make people choose
green instead of blue, he would make them see
that green was blue. He soon had an oppor-
tunity to try his art upon sterner stuff. M.
Leon’s political friends were announced.
The Duc de Broglie, the apparent leader of
the trio, was a heavy man, built much like his
obsequious host, his florid complexion and
white flowing side whiskers making his pres–
ence impressive, save for a cast in his right eye,
which, at first sight, unjustly perhaps, passed
for a mark of moral obliqueness. He stood
well on his stout legs, with an avoirdupois
nearly equal to the combined weight of his
two companions.
M. Dessereaux, who closely followed—
rather, glided—after him, a tall hollow
cheeked, bilious looking individual whose
rakish politeness would have graced a three
card monte table (but in Paris even the beg-
gars are genteel), wore an expression less san-
guine than that of his leader. Life's play of
wits had sharpened his doubts until they stood
out keenly on his face.
But the third man, M. Jacquot, was an en-
tirely unknown force. Likely enough an ac-
complice, he might also possibly be playing an
independent game, for the restless black eyes,
now flashing in harmony with the common fire
and anon retreating stealthily into their dark
caverns as if the owner had a private fuse to


34 THE BLACK HAND
look after, were as difficult of interpretation as
the mysterious markings on the planet Mars.
He bowed exceedingly low to Mlle. Leon, and
with a gesture which M. Dupont did not like.
All three of the visitors wore an air of busi-
IneSS.
“You are of Russian extraction, I believe,”
led off the Duc de Broglie, after breaking the
ice of small talk. “Will you permit me to in-
quire if you have any distinguished friends in
St. Petersburg?”
“His Grace is an ardent admirer of the
Czar's country,” bridged over M. Leon, who
had been chosen to play the part of the mutual
friend.
“I know well our Ambassador there, and I
have some slight acquaintance with members
in the four councils,” replied M. Dupont,
guardedly. “I have often used my influence
in behalf of Frenchmen who wished to travel
in Russia, and I shall be pleased to do so again,
if I can be of any service to you or yous
friends.”
He could well afford these little favors,
which every politician understands to be the
small coin of popularity, but as he bowed in
turn to each he caught the twinkle in Louise's
dancing eyes which told him his cue was
wrong.
The visitors looked pleased and exchanged
glances. *


THE BLACK HAND 35
“In case of a European war,” ventured the
Duc again, “you make no doubt that France
and Russia would act as one—you make no
doubt of that?”
“A general war, you understand,” amended
M. Leon.
The Deputy's tone changed at once.
“The community of interests between the
two nations would, I think, assure that result,
but I hope there will be no war,” he replied,
coldly.
“But surely Russia will not tolerate any in-
terference with her Roumanian programme,”
persisted the Duc. “She means to cut her way
to the Bosphorus; you make no doubt of that?”
“I think you mistake the spirit of Russia;
she has no desire for European aggrandize-
ment. Russia has a mission in Asia, but not
in Europe.”
“But as an ally of France,” broke in M. Des-
sereaux, “she has a mission in Europe. France
has a call to fight Germany, and Russia has a
call to give order to the distracted States of
the Balkan Peninsula. Why should not France
and Russia make a bargain—Roumania for
Alsace-Lorraine?”
The Deputy raised his hand deprecatingly.
“My dear Monsieur, France and Russia owe
to the world a higher duty than the regulation
of a division fence. The day of conquest for
the sake of conquest has gone by. Should
-*-*-**
--"


36 THE BLACK HAND
there come a war—which I pray God may not
come—it will be a war for ideas, and not for
provinces.”
M. Leon and his friends appeared discon-
certed. If they wanted a wedge in the House
of Deputies they must look for a more tracta-
ble tool. But M. Jacquot's eyes began to work
wickedly.
“What do you think of the anarchist plots?”
he inquired, carelessly opening the dangerous
switch, while he carried on a side play of small
talk with Louise.
M. Dupont was glad of the opportunity to
wheel about so as to keep him in full view.
“I regret to say that I regard their doings
with alarm. You have struck now the real
note of peril. The danger of France and of all
other nations of Europe is not from the hori-
zon, but from the nadir—not from a war cloud
in the sky, but from a mine under our feet.”
“Do you think the government is doing all
it can to suppress them?” M. Jacquot asked,
with a sceptical shrug of the shoulders.
He was speaking to the Deputy, but his gaze
fell lecherously on the lovely little woman who
divided the distance between them.
“Doubtless not. The republican party has
acted upon the theory that toleration is the bet-
ter policy. Possibly the time has come when
more stringent measures should be employed.”
“Have you ever thought that the war, which
-********** * *** -- - - - - - --------, -, -


THE BLACK HAND 37
ou fear, would afford an outlet for the social-
istic agitation, and so prove a benefit to the
country?” He was still looking at Louise.
“On the principle that you stab yourself to
cure yourself,” said the Deputy, with a sar-
castic laugh. “But after the war—what?”
“Beautiful women and brave men.”
“Pensions and paupers.”
“Mlle. Leon would like to see war,” sug-
gested M. Jacquot, tickling her, as it were, with
his restless eyes, which seemed to throw out
little points.
“Indeed, I would ! I love the troops, with
their bright uniforms. If I were a man I
would be a soldier!” sparkled the little beauty.
“But you are not a man; you are our
Dieudonne (God-given) pet and will always
be so,” said her mother, entering in time to
hear the last remark.
Mme. Leon was pious, and sought to carry
in her ample soul a supply of devoutness both
for herself and her carnal lord. She came and
stood purringly over Louise, who cuddled up
to her kittenishly. There was much more talk,
but, gradually, as the ladies engaged in the
conversation, the current ran toward social
matters, and presently the visitors rose to take
their leave. M. Jacquot held Louise's hand
and muttered something over it that printed a
richer crimson on her cheeks than the Deputy's
* ------"
-...------------------------------> -


38 THE BLACK HAND
avowals of love had ever been able to stamp
there.
M. Dupont looked at him blackly. He
would not mind anything a pure man could
say to her, he reflected, but this seducer, this
spotted soul Or did his jealousy warp
his judgment? He stood in this arrest of
thought, when he was rallied by Louise. Her
parents were attending the visitors to the door.
“Well, what do you think of them?”
“They seemed to hold something in reserve.
Evidently they said a great deal less than they
wanted to say.”
“They were afraid to trust you.”
“You should vouch for me.”
“I can vouch for your character, but not for
your politics. I wish you did agree with father
and M. Jacquot and—me.”
“We agree, except that you do not love the
republic. I begin to suspect **
But Louise turned pale, and he did not finish
the sentence.
“You do not love your country as I do,” she
said, with a little pout and tear. “You are not
rooted in France, as I am—and—you do not
love me.”
She broke down and began a real cry.
M. Dupont folded her in his arms and de-
nounced himself for a brute.
“Forgive me; I have been harsh, but I do
*~~~~ * *** -------- - - - - - - - - * -*** *-*.


THE BLACK HAND 39
- - - - -
not deserve that last thorn. You know I love
you, my sweet fairy.”
But he began to fear she was not so trans-
parent as he had supposed. He had regarded
her dislike for the Republic with as little sig-
nificance as her disrelish for a prayer book,
merely a girl's caprice—a wicked caprice to be
sure, but still only a passing whim. He now
suspected a definite plot for the overthrow of
the government and that his fiancee might be
in league with the conspirators. Her discov-
ery of the strange scrap of paper also per-
plexed him. Perhaps he ought to go straight
to the Prefect of Police and disclose the mat-
ter. But he could not believe there was any
plot against the President's life. The evi-
dence was too ridiculous; and, if it proved to
be unfounded, his enemies might make capital
Out of the affair, and defeat him at the next
election. It would be easy to do so, for he had
already been accused of socialistic sympathies.
But anarchy he could not bear to touch, even
to expose it. Who can handle soot without
getting black? M. Leon ought to report his
daughter's startling find, but the ex-broker
laughed it off as a kind of ghastly joke. Per-
haps he was right; President Carnot was prob-
ably in no danger. Still M. Dupont meant to
question the maid servant and find out whether
her father was connected with a secret band
-->
-------, -, ------------------------- -----


40 THE BLACK HAND
of assassins. His opportunity came sooner
than he expected.
Louise saw his troubled look, and its reflec-
tion began to darken her own lively little
mind.
“You must not judge me by my rash
speeches,” she said, not supposing his concern
could be for anything than her own precious
self. “Really I do not know much about poli-
tics.”
The confession was extorted by the fear that
she had been indiscreet, for, in truth, she re-
garded herself as a very wise politician.
“You pretty little plotter! How foolish of
me to think my country endangered by this pal-
pitating bit of beauty!”
“But the softest purring cat has a claw, you
know,” she replied archly.
“Yours is velvet; it would not scratch the
smallest government mouse, let alone the lion
of liberty.”
M. and Mme. Leon came in while the young
couple held each other.
“Well, France and Russia have made a
treaty at last!” exclaimed the ex-broker, wink-
ing jovially at the lovers.
His red face gleamed with overflowing good
nature. He was the best souled of men, ex-
cept when he had taken a little too much wine.
Mme. Leon also added her approval. M.
Dupont might not be rich, but he was brilliant
***** --~~~~~~~~~~~~~,


THE BLACK HAND 41
and famous, and the matrimonial alliance
would sustain the house of Leon until the next
deal of fortune. “Bless you, bless you, my
children!” she said, placing a hand on the head
of each.
At that moment there came from below a re-
port—a kind of muffled roar, accompanied by
female shrieks. All ran down stairs to find
Marie, the maid, prostrate on the floor, some
strips of powdered cloth lying about and the
carpet on fire.
“Why, Marie, what does this mean?” de-
manded Louise, after the men had extin-
guished the blaze.
“Oh, I was just playing with that and—
well, it went off.”
“What were you playing with?” inquired
the Deputy, sternly.
“Oh, just this!” replied the frightened girl,
holding up a small piece of tin.
“Was it a bomb?”
“I don’t know; I’ve seen father make them.”
“Who is your father?”
“Jan Michel.”
“Where does he live?”
The girl hesitated, for her wits had now re-
turned. She was a queer made child—a head
too old for her body, and a body too short for
her years. Her face wore a pinched look, and
the expression was a curious combination of
simplicity and cunning.


42 THE BLACK HAND
“I do not know; Paris has so many streets.”
“I shall take occasion to make you know.”
Then to his host:—
“M. Leon, you have an anarchist in your
house!”


THE BLACK HAND 43
V
“Curse you, I love you!”
Strange words to come out of wooing lips.
It was the day following Gabrielle Adam's
brilliant capture of the Black Hand. Her life,
hitherto in an eddy, was flowing out into the
current. She had lived alone with her father
in the prison of his prejudice, the great world
of secret designs in which he and his com-
rades moved as wide apart from her as an-
other planet.
Of her early history—of that most impor-
tant and impressionable period in life—the
journey from the alphabet to the abstract noun
—she knew almost nothing. Her mother—if
mother there had been—(she sometimes
thought a being so different from all other
women must have had a unique creation), had
died young and there were two irreconcilable
accounts of her.
In a dimly remembered visit to Asnieres she
had met a woman who told her that her
mother was the daughter of a bourgeois in
that suburb, a good and beautiful lady who
was disinherited for her marriage, and who


44 THE BLACK HAND
had lived only a short time with her husband,
and then entered a convent, where she was
known as Sister Pauline; but the crones of the
Rue Pascal declared that she was a notorious
character of the Faubourg St. Marcel, the
head of a band of female conspirators and
assassins, and had been called the Red Woman
of the Commune.
When Gabrielle looked in the glass she be-
lieved the Asnieres tradition, but when her
blood boiled with the malady of self-extension
she put her faith in the old crones. Possibly,
Regulus-like, there had flowed into her veins
both the nature of the wolf and the woman.
Her father was reticent on the subject, and
she had no other relatives. She had passed
her life in Paul Adam's black-walled den, do-
ing his simple housework, her mind feeding on
books of Anarchy and—herself, her only di-
version short walks or errands in a wretched
district where her appearance was so different
from that of the scant, scrawny, or stunted,
figures of her sex, as to awaken the admiration
of men and the envy of women.
Lovers she had in plenty; and if she could
have fed on the pabulum of the ordinary
blooming young lady of twenty, she would
have been happy. But she only sported with
her suitors as so many pet dogs—nice little
creatures to amuse one's self with, but unfit


THE BLACK HAND 45
for the serious business of life, which meant
killing people to make the world better.
She had now a new candidate for her hand.
His name was Santo Caserio—a name which
has since passed into history as the synonym
of everlasting infamy. His passion found
vent in muttered curses, because his open
heart's leaf found no opposite and correspond-
ing page in the woman he loved. Gabrielle
stood before him in all her regal beauty, more
superb in her scorn than in her smile.
“Curse you—a thousand curses upon you, if
you refuse me! Now will you be my bride?”
“I am the Bride of Death !”
Her face was as colorless as a statue while
she pronounced her own doom, and her abso-
lute invincibility lent a charm almost unearthly
to the head which she poised like a very god-
dess for loftiness.
“I am the Bride of Death ! I am not for
any man!”
“But me save you.”
His dark eyes looked into hers imploringly.
- He had not been long in France, and spoke the
language very imperfectly, but his rich voice
and softly vowelled speech had a charm pe-
culiar to the Italian. Signs were not wanting
also that in more fertile soil the crude exotic
might have been something better than a
# flower. His strongly knit frame and
is agile, catlike movements evinced a strength


46 THE BLACK HAND
and suppleness of body which the quickness
and lustre of his eyes seemed to indicate were
paralleled in a ready and robust mind. Partly
as workman, partly as suitor, he had hung
about Paul Adam's tenement since the day he
met the anarchist chief and his brilliant daugh-
ter at a labor demonstration in the Faubourg
St. Antoine. Gabrielle, half pleased and half
provoked by his devotion, had until now kept
him coquettishly at bay.
“Signorina Gabriella, you are a beautiful
woman; you must be mine.”
“No, no, you talk foolishly, knowing not
what you say. Go now!” She waved her
queenly arm, and her swarthy lover felt a
power he dared not disobey. He stalked sulk-
ily out just as Douglas was coming in, and, in
the passing, the door was left slightly ajar.
“Ha! that is why she wanted me to go—
she expected him!” growled the Italian, and
he determined to take advantage of the aper-
ture to hear what was said.
Gabrielle greeted the American pleasantly,
and in a humorous vein related Caserio's un-
prosperous suit.
“And do you love him?”
The question was impertinent, but they were
both living nervous lives, and the times were
exciting. Their eyes met, and each tried to
read the other's. Gabrielle's lead touched bot-
tom, but Douglas had only imperfect success


THE BLACK HAND 47
in fathoming the secret that lay deep in the
dark wells he strove to pierce.
“By what right do you ask?”
He took encouragement from her tones
rather than from her words; the inflections
were different from those in which she had
lightly treated of the Italian's advances.
£ but I would crave the right to ask.”
He came nearer and sought to take her
hand. She drew it partly back, but permitted
the shapely fingers to rest tantalizingly in his
hot palm. -
“Gabrielle—Mademoiselle Adam—you are
a mighty woman, and you deserve a brave
man. Could you think of me as a proper coun-
terpoise for a character like yours? Do I
come anywhere near your standard of a man
—of a husband, if, indeed, you could stoop to
take a husband?”
She did not speak for a moment, but her
gaze looked him through and through. He had
never been thrilled by such soul power, except
in the case of Paul Adam. She had inherited
her father's magnetism, though not the pe-
culiar scorching quality that made all men
wither before him. In her the burning glass
had become the microscope. The lover felt
himself searched to the lowest cell of thought.
“You mean to ask if you are worthy?”
“No, I am not worthy; nor is any one. I
only mean, am I as worthy as any other man?”


48 THE BLACK HAND
“Have you ever killed any one?”
The unexpected question came like a shot.
It made him reel. He was uncertain whether
she wanted yes or no. The quality of inno-
cence that would commend him to other
women might condemn him to her. Hesitat-
ing as one between two doors, he ventured an
implied affirmative.
“I am a member of the Black Hand.”
“And the password to the Black Hand is a
deed of blood. Enough. Now, what do you
want?”
The abrupt interrogative staggered him
again, but it brought him to his senses, as a
blow on the head sometimes imparts wisdom.
“Why—why, I want to marry you!” he
stammered, with a blushing consciousness that
he had not hitherto approached the subject in
the most straightforward way. She was the
most direct of women, and his proposal had
been a circumlocution. Caserio's method was
better.
“But I am doomed !”
“You need not be; I will die for you, or,
better yet, fly with you.”
Gabrielle shook her head.
“I must fulfil my oath; I must redeem the
honor of my sex.”
But the lover was not discouraged. He had
run the gauntlet of her immeasurable capacity
of scorn and had not been humiliatingly re-
--- * - -e- *~~~~~~~~~~


THE BLACK HAND 49
jected. It was assuring to know that he had
to cope with no rival in flesh and blood—only
death.
“Come,” he said, “let us make another oath;
let it be this—if you are spared, you are mine.”
“I will agree to that,” she answered, swiftly;
but he was uncertain whether it was the con-
sent of love or the assent of despair.
“Is it, then, Douglas or death?” he urged.
“It is Douglas or death,” she replied, with
no more tremor than if the fearful alternative
had been only a choice of alms between a
couple of troublesome beggars.
He thought it strange that one ordinarily so
passionate could be so calm on the most mo-
mentous of subjects. Hers was a volcanic
soul, and yet she could so speak that he could
construe the words to be either the devotion
of love or the abandonment of hope. He did
not know that opposite feelings in the deepest
natures have the same note, as at the highest
and lowest points of a globe all meridians
Imeet.
“Swear!” he said, holding up his hand.
She held up her hand. -
“Let us put it into writing.” He glanced
around for pen and paper.
“NO!” thundered a voice.
Paul Adam entered from the laboratory.
“No! An anarchist's word is as good as his
\
*
*


50 THE BLACK HAND
bond. Written pledges are for people who
cannot trust each other.”
“But marriage is a serious thing!” protested
the suitor.
“Life is a serious thing,” replied Paul
Adam. “Marriage binds duty to one person;
life to all. He who regards a promise lightly
is not worthy of life. Thus do the lawmakers
promise to take care of the people, and take
care only of their party. They have forfeited
life, as the unfaithful wife forfeits matri-
mony.”
“But at least you will approve our engage-
ment?” ventured Douglas.
“Let that man be married who seeks the
things of the man; we seek not the man, but
men.”
“And women,” laughed Douglas.
He stood so near the beautiful bride that he
could not resist the temptation to press the
red, ripe lips, but as he bent eagerly forward
he was arrested by a voice. The Italian, glar-
ing through the crack of the door, could not
restrain his jealousy.
“No kiss! No kiss!” he cried menacingly.
“Back, miscreant!” vociferated Douglas,
vexed at the intrusion, for his would-be rival
had advanced well into the room.
The Italian assumed a defiant attitude and
flourished a stiletto.


THE BLACK HAND 51
“You fight me; we see who brave man.
Come, I fight you. We see who love most
Signorina Gabriella.”
Douglas responded by drawing his revolver.
For a moment a bloody conflict seemed in-
evitable, but Paul Adam stepped calmly be-
tween the angry men.
“Fools! Are we not all ordered unto
death? Let us have peace to-day, for to-mor-
row we die.”
Caserio, awed by the terrible eye of the
master, backed slowly out of the room.
“I go, but he must go, too,” he appealed.
“Very well; he shall go.”
When the Italian had departed Paul Adam
turned to the American.
“The hour is at hand. We must prepare.”


52 THE BLACK HAND
VI
“Do not discharge her, but watch her. I be-
lieve we have hold of the end of a frightful
plot.”
This was M. Dupont's advice to his host
after the cross-questioning of the little maid
in the kitchen. The Deputy knew that Paris
was filled with desperate men. There were
earthquake mutterings in all parts of the city,
and every second pedestrian wore a fierce look.
This very night, as he passed the Halle des
Macons, where a workingmen's meeting was
in progress, he had been startled by a roar of
applause that made him look up in fear that
the building was falling. Behind the social-
ists glowered the anarchists, and it was in this
lowest stratum that Guy Fawkes might be ex-
pected to develop. To discover a gunpowder
plot against the government would bring him
into high favor with his co-legislators, and
might prove the step to the Presidency, for
M. Dupont belonged to the class of rule-of-
three statesmen who regarded the effect of all
things, first upon one's own popularity, then
upon his party, and lastly upon the people, .


THE BLACK HAND 53
At first sight Mlle. Leon's maid seemed too
small an agency to exercise the slightest influ-
ence upon any of these fundamental potentiali-
ties. For she was small, ugly and odd. Her
very coming into French existence was a stray
strand in Paris' many-colored web. Jan
Michel, like the Deputy, had his roots set in
two great countries. Born on the banks of the
Bug, in that province of the autocrat where
even the land often fails beneath the tiller's
feet, he had seen his little plot of ground dis-
appear piecemeal in the huge maw of the Rus-
sian satrap, who pacified its owner by bestow-
ing upon him the position of majordomo, a
place he was only permitted to hold until the
smart of his lost acres had somewhat eased,
when he was obliged to surrender it to a fellow
sufferer, in turn to go through the same course
of pruning and poultice. About the same time,
his Jadwiga ran off with a roving Skoptsy
priest. Thus, robbed by the government of
his land, by his master of his place, and by the
priest of his wife, there was left to poor Jan
Michel—the air. With three implacable
hatreds in his heart—a detestation of police,
priests and women—the luckless, landless and
wifeless man fled to France, and, falling into
the hotbed of Parisian conspiracy, the timid
nihilist became the fierce anarchist. Narrow
and suspicious, the unhappy man made few
friends, and, to relieve the loneliness of the


54 THE BLACK HAND
miserable shelter he called home, he adopted
a little child—stupidly forgetting to inquire its
sex—who grew up to be Marie Michel.
The little girl made strange acquaintances.
Long haired men with frowsy whiskers, and
shock headed men in rough attire, came to Jan
Michel's rooms and talked dark sentences in
strange jargon, paying no more attention to
the listening child than to Fido, the sleeping
dog.
One man, however—an ill looking fellow,
with scraggly whiskers, through which strug-
gled a sickly smile—regarded her as some-
thing more than a wall picture. He often tried
to converse with her, but the child shrank
away from his advances, noticing with super-
stitious terror that while he talked his eyes
twinkled and his beard grew black.
When her father procured for her the posi-
tion of maid to Mlle. Leon she was glad to
escape from this Giant Grim materialized out
of the story book. She did not know it was
this man—Le Fevre, her father called him—to
whom she owed the transition from the
squalor of the Rue Pascal to the palace of the
ex-broker, and so she was not a little aston-
ished and frightened on the third evening in
her new home, as she stood by the gate look-
ing out upon the grand procession of equip-
ages that rolled through the spacious avenue,
to find herself suddenly beneath a black cloud


THE BLACK HAND 55
of beard, over which glistened ominously two
ebon stars. He tried to smile, but his grin
suggested the cannibal more than his frown.
His voice was hideously hoarse.
“Good evening, my dear, my little pearl—
yes, my pretty little pet, my sweet little puss,
you know.”
Marie did not reply.
“And how do you like it? Pies and par-
ties, eh? Sweetmeats and silk stockings all
the time, eh?”
He tried to nudge her, but the girl drew
back.
“Rich people, eh? Nice place. And it was
I that got you here.”
Marie stole a surprised look.
“Yes; I said to your father, “That girl is a
prize. She ought to be living where she can
see things. She's got it in her—that girl has.’
And so I got you this place. Nice place, now.”
Marie's frozen face thawed, but she ven-
tured no reply.
“And now as I’ve helped you, I want you to
help me. I want you to tell me about these
people.”
“Tell you what?”
“Oh, about old Leon's money, and the la-
dies' jewels—where they keep them, what
room, what bureau drawer. And the win-
dows—have they got alarms? And are there
any dogs about? Just tell me all you know.”


56 THE BLACK HAND
“I don't know anything.”
He had been bending more and more as he
spoke, and his mouth almost touched her ear,
while his frightful beard rested upon her trem-
bling shoulder.
“Oh, you must know, and you must tell me
what you know. You mustn't tell it to any
one else. Hush is the word. Don't tell them
I’ve been here. You've just come, you know,
and you must be careful; a new coat should
have close pockets; that's my advice to you.
List you now. I can make you rich—dresses
and diamonds, and—”
But Marie had been retreating further and
further through the aperture, Le Fevre's
hoarseness dropping to a hiss as she edged
away, and by a quick movement she shut the
gate with a bang. Then she ran into the house.
But the little maid had escaped the fusilade
of questions at the gate only to receive a hotter
fire from another quarter. The servants, who
had been instructed to watch her, reported to
Mme. Leon, and she to M. Dupont, who ar-
rived a moment after Le Fevre's departure.
The Deputy immediately had her up in the
parlor.
“Now, Marie, who was the strange man you
were talking with at the gate? You had bet-
ter make a full confession and tell me all about
it.”
“I don't know.”


THE BLACK HAND 57
“What did he want?”
“Nothing.”
“What did he say to you?”
“I didn’t understand.”
“Where does he live?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you ever see him before?”
“Yes; at home.”
“Is he a friend of your father?”
“I have no father.”
“But this man—Michel?”
“He is not my father; my father and
mother are dead.”
“Who were your parents?”
“They were plaster wipers.”
“Plaster wipers?” t
“Yes; they got their rent free for living in
houses till the plaster was dry; and they got
their death, too.”
“Oh !”
The Deputy turned over and over again his
questions about the stranger at the gate, but
always with the same result.
“Did he give you anything?” broke in
Louise, who had come to regard her little maid
as a kind of mammoth firecracker, liable to go
off without notice. -
“Yes.”
“Oh, he did!” exclaimed the Deputy, rush-
ing upon what might prove an important trail.
“Now, what did he give you?”
-


58 THE BLACK HAND
“Some advice.”
“Advice? Good! Now, what was it?”
“He said a new coat must have close pock-
etS.
The interrogators glanced at each other.
“What did he mean by that?”
“I don’t know.”
M. Dupont reflected a moment, and then
made what he intended should be a grand coup.
Seizing her arm, he drew her toward him and
demanded abruptly:—
“Marie, when is M. Carnot to be mur-
dered?”
“Who is M. Carnot?” inquired the girl,
opening her blue eyes very wide.
The Deputy fell back helplessly, and after
some further questioning the maid was dis-
missed. She went down stairs, feeling that
as between Le Fevre and M. Dupont she was
like the lonely bird which was too black for a
dove and too white for a crow.
“Well, what do you think of her?” Louise
asked.
“The girl either knows nothing or she
knows a great deal too much,” he replied;
adding, with a wish to change a topic on which
he had failed to shine:—“But what a state of
society! These plaster wipers pay their rent
with their lives, because blood is cheaper than
money.”
“And, pray, who are the plaster wipers.”


| THE BLACK HAND 59
“They are the people who are permitted to
live in new houses rent free until the plaster is
dry enough for the owner's family or a better
class tenant. They save the rent, but they get
the rheumatism.”
“But why do people live in such places? If
they don’t like their lodgings, why don’t they
get other houses?” |
The Deputy smiled at the simplicity that
confounded poverty with rents at 3,000f. a
year and supposed that starvation meant only
to go without cake. Mlle. Leon went to the
St. Madelaine Mission, where her mind be-
came cast in the mould of moral atrophy, mis-
called piety, which prated about the poor, dear
Hottentots and horrible French peasants.
“Louise, there are thousands of people in
Paris whose lives are not worth a pin. I saw
a woman kill herself to-day.”
“Kill herself! Why, what did she do that
for P” t
Why, indeed, should any person want to die
who could live in Paris? The bright little
woman wrestled a moment with the great
problem and mastered it. She was never at a
loss to find a cause for anything. t
“It is all because we have no king; if we
had a king like other countries things would
not be so bad.”
“Why, what possible use have we got for a
king?”


60 THE BLACK HAND
He was surprised and amused.
“Oh, if we had a king we would have a
court. We Parisiennes are the leaders of fash-
ion, but we have no queen of fashion. We are
like a beautiful statue without a head,” replied
Louise, passing with the ready facility of small
minds from the troubles of others to her own.
“Ah, where did you pick up that notion?”
He must look further for the idea, as his
fiancee belonged to that rather numerous class
of people whose smart sayings are second hand
and whose original sayings are commonplace.
“Oh, I’ve heard M. Jacquot say so.”
The Deputy's face clouded.
“Louise, who is M. Jacquot?”
“Oh, he's such a gentleman, and he belongs
to such an old family, so very old!”
“Indeed! If the evolutionists are right, we
all belong to a pretty old family—the good
old Simian family, the anthropoid apes.”
“Oh, you horrid thing! You just hate M.
Jacquot, and I think it's real mean of you.”
She burst into a little gust of tears.
M. Dupont looked at her fondly. It was
because she was so intensely feminine, so very
womanish, that he loved her. Laying cocks
and crowing hens he abominated. But he was
angry and broke out:—
“I believe the man to be a lewd fellow and
not fit for the society of a lady.”
With most women this speech would have
---


THE BLACK HAND 6I
made the tempest a tornado, but Mlle. Leon
always cried just enough. Her small cloud
was soon spent. She was daily cautioned by
her managing mamma not to quarrel with the
Deputy, for if her love could not keep the,
peace there was a sufficient reason for the un-
broken troth in her father's banking account.
“Of course, I don’t hold him as—as equal
to you,” faltered the neat little tactician.
“Nor love him quite so much, I hope,”
laughed the Deputy, kissing the lips which
were more tempting for the pout.
M. Leon at this moment entered the room,
holding in his hand a paper. He was too ex-
cited to notice the confusion of the lovers.
“Here is news; at the workingmen's meet-
ing last night the sansculottes voted to abolish
the President, the Senate and House and take
things into their own hands.”
“I am afraid they will do it—I am afraid
they will do it,” replied the Deputy, gravely.
“And submit every question to the popular
vote?” demanded M. Leon, his voice shaking
with passion. “Why, the vagabonds would
vote away our property!”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“Sir, you are a Deputy. My friends, the
Duc de Broglie, M. Dessereaux and M. Jac-
quot, are coming again to-night, and I want
you to put some of their plans into a bill to
be acted upon by the Parliament at once.”
-* ------- ~~~~~
--" --~~~~~~~~~ --~~~~~~~~~~~~-


62 THE BLAck HAND
“I have already listened to some of their
plans, and I think there is too much prescrip-
tion and too little pill.”
“But they have some grand ideas to pre-
sent.”
“My dear sir, the people hate ideas; they
want potatoes.”
“Sir, sir; there are too many people—too
many vulgar people, and there must be an-
other war.”
M. Leon struck the table with his paper.
“There will be another war,” prophesied M.
Dupont, “but it will be a war for bread and
home.”
“Oh, for a day of Napoleon!” sighed Lou-
1Se.
“He will come in a blouse and smock shirt,”
answered the Deputy.
“The Duc de Broglie, M. Dessereaux and
M. Jacquot,” announced the maid.


THE BLACK HAND 63
VII
The next morning Paul Adam and Michel
went to view the palace of the Deputies. There
was an expression of peace on the seamed and
rugged features of the anarchist chief, as of
sunlight bathing cragged peaks, but the Rus-
sian wore a troubled look. He had taken an
oath to remove the most popular ruler on
earth, and that sovereign—a woman. He tried
to dismiss the notion that her sex should make
any difference in her fate, but there are cer-
tain compass points in the mind which cannot
be made to change by any wind of the will, so
that, when his intellect assented to the abstract
proposition that a queen representing tyranny
was no more deserving of mercy than a king
standing for the same odious quality, he met
with instinctive rebellion the moment he pro-
posed to himself the means by which he should
fulfil his vow of blood. He could not shoot a
woman; to stab her was even more revolting.
But there was the bomb—the weapon of
anarchy.
The Bourbon palace now lifted its massive
masonry before them, recalling Valliant's


64 THE BLACK HAND
fiasco a few months before. An aesthetic vein
ran through the cramped mould of the little
majordomo, and he could not help admiring
the noble pile. He had no pity for the life that
daily throbbed there at the red heart of the
nation—lawmakers were as much the natural
victims of the bomb as the mouse was the law-
ful prey of the cat—but he thought it too bad
that such a fine work of art should be de-
stroyed.
“What grand buildings!” he observed.
“They are at once the glory and the shame
of France, and they shall pass away,” replied
Paul Adam; “a little while and they shall not
be.”
“Could we not put them to a better use when
the government shall have been overthrown?”
ventured Michel.
“Have you then so misunderstood the spirit
of tyranny?” demanded his leader. “Do you
not know that evermore the lair invites the
lion? But it shall not be so here.”
A coupe containing two Deputies drew up
at the curbstone. As they alighted, Paul Adam
turned and faced them.
“To-day is yours, but to-morrow will be the
day of the people.”
The men glanced at him with a frightened
look and hurried away to the hall of legisla-
t1O11.
The clock on the Tower of Justice struck.


THE BLACK HAND 65
A boy thrust a paper in Michel's hand. It
announced the holding of a monster labor
meeting in the Place de la Bastille at that very
hour. “Let us go,” proposed Michel. “M.
Joule is going to speak.”
“They are poor sheep, without a shepherd;
they know not what they want; but we will
go,” assented Paul Adam.
The tram car was crowded, and when they
reached the Place de la Bastille, one of the
most crowded and wretched parts of the city,
a black mass of men wriggled through ten
glutted mouths into that court of the infamous
name. There did not appear to be much co-
herence in the vast swarm, the majority seem-
ing not to know for what purpose they had
come. The greater part were idle working-
men, who had a vague idea that things were
wrong, and a still more nebulous notion that
the meeting was a factor in setting them right.
But among these horny handed laborers in
smock shirts there was a large contingent of
malcontents, whose minds were very clear as
to what ought to be done and whose methods
were very startling for the doing.
“Le pain! le pain!” went up from a thou-
sand throats.
A patriotic device borne of four was car-
red through the crowd.
“Vive la France!” rent the air.
But as the sounds died away there came


66 THE BLACK HAND
another cry, sullen and defiant, like the roar of
a wild beast:—
“A bas la patrie!”
There was a small wooden stand for the
orator, but he had not yet arrived. While
the people were impatiently waiting, a man
swung himself over the low railing.
It was Karl Barron, the anarchist.
“Men,” he said, “you cry for your country,
but your country does not cry for you. You
ask for bread and you get a stone. You ask
for work and you get kicks. What has your
country ever done for you? What have the
bourgeoisie ever done for you? What have
the laws ever done for you except to keep you
in grinding poverty and thrust you into prison
if you dare complain. Curse your country!
Curse the bourgeoisie! Curse the laws! Curse
every man who robs you of your rights!
Strike for your freedom, you slaves of the
government! Do not ask for work, but make
Work!”
The last clause was so significant that many
stern-faced men looked at each other with
savage grins, and a few cheered. A police
officer vaulted upon the platform and rudely
pushed the speaker down. Claude Fouche, a
mechanic, chief of the metal workers’ guild,
then addressed the turbulent throng.
“Men, Frenchmen, brothers, you have been
listening to a false teacher. It is this man and


THE BLACK HAND 67
such as he who are the real foes of the toiling
masses. You have heard the whines of a
wolf in sheep's clothing. Beware! He would
lead you astray. We are met here as peace-
able citizens and not as revolutionists. We are
workingmen and not anarchists. We love our
country, and if need be we will die for our
country. (Cries ‘Vive la France!” followed
again by that hoarse, fierce undertone, ‘A bas
la patrie!") We only want our rights; we
want fair play; we want the public to know
our wrongs. We believe in the laws. God
forbid that we should be confounded with the
red-handed men who are trying to overthrow
the government and bring about revolution.
This fellow told you to strike for freedom;
but, brothers, we want not more freedom, but
more francs. We are to-day as free as any
man.”
The metal worker swung his muscular arms
lustily, as if to show he could take as much air
as belonged to him, much as a squirrel, with
great pretence of doing as he likes, whirls his
wheel in his little cage. The officer de pair
stood by and smiled.
“Come, let us go,” said Paul Adam.
Michel was disappointed. He believed that
the remarkable man at his side had but to
speak, and the vast assemblage, guardians of
the law and all, would be as magnetized as the
members of the Black Hand.


68 THE BLACK HAND
“He is great in speech, but he does not
speak; I cannot understand him,” he reflected.
When they reached the Pont d'Austerlitz
some ragpickers were fishing a dead woman
out of the water.
“There is freedom!” said Paul Adam, point-
ing to the pinched ghastly face of the suicide.
“Only the dead are free.”
“Why, then, did you not speak?” inquired
Michel.
“My speech is in deeds and not in words.
Because I am a tamer of wild beasts, think you
that every foolish lamb will run after me?
But there cometh after me a shepherd whom
they will follow.”
Michel was not pleased with the metaphor.
“Beast!” was the epithet which the bourgeoisie
applied to the agitator. Still, from the anar-
chist point of view, it was better to be a wolf
than a sheep.
“Who is this shepherd?” he asked.
“Come apart where we can talk in secret.”
Paul Adam led the way to the timber port,
and they sat down upon some convenient
sticks in a retired spot. They did not see a
little slender creature of obscure gender that
crept after them and hid beneath the loose
boards. The master's manner was grave.
“Do you see yonder sun dog?” he inquired,
pointing to a bright spot in the hazy sky. “It
stands between the sun and the North Star.
... ------------ - - - - * * * **** - - - - - - - - - -****** * * * *** -


THE BLACK HAND 69
We are on the eve of such times as have not
been seen since the beginning of the world.”
“I have sometimes thought that you had
great plans which you have never made known
to any man,” ventured Michel.
“I have things to reveal to them that are
worthy to receive them.”
“Would that I were worthy!”
The master turned and looked at him in-
tently. Michel's countenance fell and wilted
beneath the keen scrutiny, but Paul Adam was
satisfied.
“Jan Michel, you are not a great man, but
you are true. I will tell you the things that
shall shortly come to pass.”
There was a slight rustle under the boards.
Michel peered all about. It was nothing—the
wind, a rat or the water washing the pier.
Paul Adam took three blank cards from his
pocket. Michel watched him with an awe born
of implicit faith, for he believed that this man
of mystery possessed a power almost super-
natural.
“You know already the fate of the thirteen
thrones according to the decree of the Black
Hand. And after them the other thrones shall
fall.”
“And what then?” inquired Michel, breath-
lessly.
Again the rustle under the timber.
*-*. * *- --~~~~
--


7o THE BLACK HAND
There was a commotion on the street, and
several men were swearing.
Some poor tenants were being dispossessed
by a greedy landlord.
An undertaker's cart came for the dead
WOnnan.
Paul Adam fixed his eyes on the cards.
They were written in cipher and traced with
strange hieroglyphical marks.
“Little Brother, hear the voice of the Fates.
Every man and every set of men who seek to
forge fetters for the people shall be slain.
Senate, Parliament, Reichstag, Congress—
they shall be no more. Thus it is written, and
thus the Hand points. Lo, I have told you.”
“You have plans for carrying out all this;
you will send men to blow up these law-
makers?” queried Michel, trembling at the
fearful nature of his master's disclosures.
“This—and much more. All this the Black
Hand contemplates, and will be prepared to
accomplish. But the end is not yet, for others
will take their places. Hear, then, what the
Fates say.”
Again the noise under the boards.
A sound of wailing was heard.
The undertaker's wagon had been caught in
the jam.
The dead woman had been recognized.
Paul Adam held up the second card.
“We are on the eve of a great universal war
--------------- ********** * *


THE BLACK HAND 71
—a war compared to which the German in-
vasion was only a petty skirmish. The bond-
holders and bloodsuckers will not release their
clutch upon the people's throat until the people
rise and throttle them. All Over the world the
soldiers keep the people down. The only rem-
edy is that the people themselves must be sol-
diers. Every labor union must have its corps;
every guild its regiment; every local society its
company; every secret hall its drill room.
Then, when every laborer is a soldier, the
world will soon be free. The war will be
short, sharp and decisive, but the people will
win, for we shall be the millions against the
thousands.”
“The scheme is grand, but I fear the world
is not ready for it,” doubted Michel.
“France is not ready for it, but I behold a
nation that is ready. It is the United States of
America. The people there are almost ripe for
civil war. They do not stand so in awe of mil-
itary power as they do here in Europe. The
workingmen there are thoroughly organized;
they need only supply themselves with arms.
Even the militia there are volunteers from the
people, and not conscripts, as they are here. The
anarchists and socialists in America ought to
enlist, and then when the time is fully come the
militia will declare for the people instead of
their masters. Then, with the workingmen an
organized army instead of a helpless mob, the
- - *-**
- - - - - - --------------------------~~~" " -


72 THE BLACK HAND
people of the United States will overthrow the
government and declare for world wide lib-
erty; and some son of toil will lead his free
millions to release their oppressed brothers on
this side of the sea, and, standing on the Eiffel
Tower, this Napoleon of labor will make his
universal proclamation, declaring the whole
world free. This is the shepherd who is to
come.”
Michel was staggered at these stupendous
plans, but he did not for a moment doubt that
all things which Paul Adam predicted would
come to pass. One thing, however, troubled
him. He had looked upon his leader as the
Messiah of labor, and he was sorry to hear of
one to come after him. There could not, he
thought, be a greater than Paul Adam. Pres-
ently his eye fell on the third card.
“You have something else; you have other
plans?”
“Yes, I have greater things than these.”
“Tell me.”
Paul Adam smiled grimly, but made no
reply.
“What is it—oh, what is it?”
Michel became even effeminate in his curi-
osity to know his leader's great secret. The
magnetism of Paul Adam never appeared to
better advantage. His entranced follower had
the ignorant man's appetite for mystery, and
------> --------------->s-or---"


THE BLACK HAND 73
to taste its sweets fairly grovelled at his mas-
ter’s feet.
“I have found the philosopher's stone, the
elixir of life, the remedy for all ills.”
The words were spoken with the seriousness
of calm conviction in the disinterested tone of
the umpire rather than with the excitement of
the partisan. The strange speech was not the
faith of one who held the foot of the ladder
and believed; this strangely wise man stood at
the top and saw, and the seeing made him sad.
His mystified disciple pressed closer.
There was a cry from the river.
Two sailors on a ship had engaged in a
quarrel and one had stabbed the other to the
heart.
Part of the crowd pursued the slayer, while
another part bore the dead man to the dock.
Groans, imprecations and excited cries rent
the air.
Paul Adam put the three cards in his
pocket.
“What is the Secret of universal life?”
begged Michel.
“It is universal death.”
The two gazed at each other—the one with
a serene air, as he who communicates a glori-
ous truth, the other with the perplexity of a
pupil who is beyond his depth.
“I have discovered that which in a moment
will put the quietus upon all the storm and


74 THE BLACK HAND
strain of life. I have invented a substance
which in one second will put to hush all the
aching hearts of the race.”
Light—awful light—began to break on
Michel's beetling brows. In Paul Adam's face
he read a meaning which made his blood run
cold.
“You mean to blow up the earth,” he gasped
in his horror, forgetting to modulate his tone.
But the rude play of life all about drowned
his voice. The crow and cackle of petty strife
absorbed all—none noted the brooding hen.
“You have said.”
“But how P I do not understand.”
“Come to the Black Hand to-morrow night
and you shall learn; I must go now.”
The leader rose abruptly and walked away,
leaving his companion gazing after him in a
dazed manner. The man was neither a
fanatic nor a lunatic. In his clear, honest
eyes there burned the sanest reason as he pro-
claimed his stupendous—to others, preposter-
ous—purpose.
Michel stood—a statue.
Again the noise among the loose boards.
Again the rattle of the wagon with the pine
box.
The undertaker had come for the dead man
on the dock.
A form crept from under the timber and
clasped the statue.


THE BLACK HAND 75
It was Marie Michel.
“What is it, father, oh, what is it?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Marie! I'm not well;
come let us go.”
But from that hour Jan Michel's heart died
within him.


THE BLACK HAND 77
strain, and his strongly modelled head indi-
cated the most solid of brain furniture. Be-
neath those steady eyes and straight mouth
slept the hero.
But why was he an anarchist? For, al-
though the Dark Order confined itself to no
nation or race, yet its members were a segre-
gated set, homogeneous in the pessimistic
glasses through which they viewed the world
and in the tiger heart they presented to the
upper classes. Douglas' countenance, on the
contrary, shone with a luminosity and hope-
fulness not unbecoming a well fed and over-
paid city Alderman. Nature's moulds are so
persistent that all training, association and will
cannot nullify a certain habit of the blood.
The fierce paws of the Black Hand often felt
his coat to make sure it was hair and not wool.
But Douglas kept his own counsel. His na-
tionality—which, indeed, he could not conceal
—was the only fact about himself he ever re-
vealed. Gabrielle did not inquire. Ancestry
and antecedents were little to one who had
nothing of which to boast in her own, and who
had been taught to hate a superior strain in
others. One burning interrogation alone she
wanted to fire at him—had he ever loved an-
other? But she was too proud to ask, and
there was no need. All other women beside
her were as tallow candles to wax. For Ga-
brielle knew that she was magnificent—knew


78 THE BLACK HAND
it before he told her, but now that another
shared the opinion, the smouldering flame of
self-conscious superiority became a conflagra-
tion. Her wild, passionate face gleamed like
the sunset glory after the storm.
“It is beautiful to give one's self in death;
it is not hard to die for the world.”
“But to live with you and for you—how
glorious that would be!”
Both looked down into the dark flowing
water that seemed to murmur with strange
SecretS.
“Do you not think we may be united after
death?” he inquired. “Is the grave a wall—
or a door?”
Gabrielle shook her head.
“But see,” persisted the lover, pointing to a
bend in the stream, “the river does not stop
where our sight fails. May it not be even so
With life?”
“That is a question of religion, and I hate
religion.”
“It is a question of life, and life is greater
than any religion.”
They continued gazing at the swollen
stream. A couple of floating casks were toss-
ing in the choppy waters, anon striking and
separating, but ever keeping near each other. .
“We are like those barrels,” said the lover,
bitterly. “A cruel fate brings us together only
to mock us.”


8o THE BLACK HAND
Douglas still gazed at her, speechless at her
splendid audacity. Yes, she had her father's
power—magnetism that coerced admiration,
ambition that stopped at nothing on the
planet's rim, self-confidence that reckoned no
obstacle, and a kind of godlike ease that did
without seeming to do.
And then her majestic beauty—a fearful
beauty some called it, like the glitter of dark
gems.
“Yes, the first woman of the world,” she
went on, more to herself than to him, as in
imagination she beheld the whole earth at her
feet; “but I will not have any throne; they
shall come to see me.”
She had emphasized unconsciously the dis-
tinctive feature of womanhood. People should
come to see—not her glory, but her glorious
self. She was then no sexless creature, Doug-
- las reflected; she had a woman's soul, but
pitched a whole octave higher than any one of
her sex he had met before. No unstrung in-
valid was she, starting at every sound and
shrieking at a mouse; no pink-and-white non-
entity bending with lambent eyes over a piece
of embroidery—this strong willed girl who
came down hard on her heels like a soldier,
and whose ideal lover was Captain Kidd. But
he liked her all the better for that—liked to
assert his authority over such an imperious
soul, as he liked to pull the reins over the back
-------------------------------------


THE BLACK HAND 8I
of a high mettled steed. He wanted a woman
—not a WOmanette.
And then her beauty—it was not the manu-
factured article of the modiste and the hair-
dresser, or the kind that would wilt in a bath-
ing dress, but nature's product of sound diges–
tion and full pulsed health. If France wanted
a model, where could such perfect flesh be
found as that which clothed the splendid
supremacy of this orbed being, whose every
poise and motion displayed curves of power
and beauty?
The lover's eyes fed greedily on her majes-
tic charms? -
“And what will you do when you are queen
of the world?” he inquired.
She turned upon him a flash that was like
consuming lightning.
“I would require the same standard of chas-
tity in man as in woman.”
He cowered beneath her burning gaze—he
who feared no man began to tremble before
the might of this overwhelming woman.
But she did not follow up her advantage,
her mood changing as the evening sun when
the clouds fleck it. On the pier below she saw
the white upturned face of a dead woman.
“Why do I talk thus? In a month—a week
—a day, perhaps—I shall be like that poor
creature down there.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - --~~~~~ * * * * *


THE BLACK HAND 83
The lovers turned around and faced—
Caserio.
“That Italian has been dogging our foot-
steps again; I shall have to chastise him for
his impudence.”
But Gabrielle held his arm.
“Why do you follow us?” she flashed.
“Beautiful Signorina!” he exclaimed, with
his soft accent.
“Stand back, you interloper!” commanded
Douglas.
Caserio drew his dagger.
A sharp whistle rent the air.
There was a cry from the wharf, whence
the dead woman was being borne.
Some idlers whetted their senses for a fight.
“Gabrielle, I do not want to be arrested in
a street brawl, but I must punish this fellow
myself or call upon the police. Which shall it
be?”
“Which ! Oh, can you think for a moment
of calling one of those detestable hirelings?
I had rather see you weltering in blood than
have you appeal to a minion of the law.”
She had learned well the anarchist vernacu-
lar—phrases bandied about by rough men on
the Rue St. Marcel, but having an odd sound
on soft feminine lips. Some passing work-
girls peered affrightedly at the statuesque fig-
ure, unearthly tall in the gathering gloom.
“Very well, then, I will slay him and throw


THE BLACK HAND 85
man, still smiling through his grizzled mus-
tache. “You belong to the Black Hand.”
“Well?”
“And you hope to make the bourgeoisie di-
vide.”
“Well ?”
“Come with me, and I will show you a bet-
ter way.”
Le Fevre enjoyed the other's mystification
a moment and added:—“Come with me, and I
will take you to the best fellows in Paris.
Anarchists talk, but we do.”
Douglas thought of Ravachol, of Henry, of
Vaillant. Were not these men of deeds? Was
there a pit under this pit? A secret organi-
zation that outanarchized the anarchists? His
curiosity was aroused. An incident hastened
his decision. In the deep gloom two forms
brushed past him.
They were Caserio and the Bride of An-
archy.
“Gabrielle!”
She should have no excuse for not recogniz-
ing him in the darkness. But she did not turn
at his voice, and in a moment the two had van-
ished.
“I will go with you,” he said to Le Fevre.
The guide had difficulty in keeping pace
with the quick, long strides of his taller com-
panion, who hoped that he might overtake
Gabrielle and her Italian lover.


86 THE BLAck HAND
The thought of these two in such close con-
tact was revolting. Juno on the arm of a rag
picker! A choice carnation, and a hideous
spider running over it! But, although they
threaded rapidly several of the lesser streets,
Douglas scoured in vain for the objects of his
jealous gaze.
At last they stopped before a rickety stair-
way in a part of Paris with which the Ameri-
can was entirely unacquainted. It was one of
the poorest and vilest quarters of the metropo-
lis. The air reeked with sickening odors, and
the haggard men who shuffled through the
slimy alleys or loafed upon the ill lit corners
had a knock-you-down expression that would
have dismayed a less stout heart than the one
the Hickory of the Ohio carried under his
light French suit.
But Douglas recked not of anything. The
more exciting the adventure the better would
it help to kill the poison rankling in his veins.
Up the stalls they stumbled, and after his guide
had knocked at a battered door they entered
a large room. By the light of a small, smoky
lamp he saw that he was in the hands of a set
of desperadoes. But what mattered it? He
was desperate himself.
Half a dozen evil looking men lounged
about on broken chairs or stretched at full
length upon a wooden bench. One burly fel-
low, upon whose corrugated forehead several


THE BLACK HAND 87
crimes sat easily, eyed the newcomer's muscu-
lar form as if inclined to measure it against
his own superfluous sinew. Next to him tilted
his smaller type, and the two, both of whom
were sipping German beer, were known as the
brothers Big Owl and Little Owl, the size and
peculiar color of their eyes gaining for them
their sobriquets. Four others playing cards
with a dirty pack on a broken table barely
glanced from their game.
“Brothers of the Swag and Spoil, I intro-
duce to you M. Douglas, of America.”
Some of the men gave him a rude greeting,
but the majority only scowled. He declined to
share the bench of the Big Owl, to which Le
Fevre pointed.
“I need not tell you that we are a secret so-
ciety, nor need I ask so honorable a gentleman
to take the oath—not at least at this stage of
the proceedings. Of course, if you join us,
you’ve got to swear, as we have all sworn.
But you will not betray us?”
Douglas gave a stiff nod, which meant either
a promise or an acknowledgment of the com-
pliment.
“You’d better swear the fool afore you
make him a pal,” growled the Little Owl.
“And let me fist his face to see if he’s of
the right stuff,” hooted the Big Owl.
“I know the gentleman and I know his heart
is in the right place,” averred Le Fevre.


88 THE BLACK HAND
“It's in the wrong place,” thought the jeal-
ous man. “Gabrielle has it.”
“We’re a band of freebooters—the Bievre
band, they call us,” continued Le Fevre. “We
have a shorter way of accomplishing our ends
than you anarchists. You talk and we take.
You crack the safe and your head at the same
time; we make off with the swag. We operate
largely through our employment agency; we
get places for the girls who apply to us on con-
dition that they help us, and we give them a
part of the profits. Our plan is to fix the
bourgeois and then make off with the booty.
But you see we don't want to overdo the thing
by too big a dose. We don't care to kill peo-
ple—just put 'em to sleep. No use riskin'
one's head for murder, when puttin' 'em to
sleep 'll do just as well. But we want a chem-
ist who knows the right dose, and we want
Paul Adam. I didn't feel just like approach-
ing him, but I thought if we got you we might
get him. You hate the bourgeoisie as much as
we do. Now, will you join the Spoil and
Swag?”
“I will think of it,” replied Douglas, “but
for the present I have a pressing engagement.”
He turned toward the door. The Big Owl
threw out his foot with tripping intent. The
Little Owl winked viciously at him. The men
at the cards looked up, their brutal instincts


THE BLACK HAND 89
eager for an encounter. The American's better
dress inflamed these human bears.
“When will you let us know your decision?”
inquired Le Fevre, who in craft and manners
led his companions by many lengths.
Douglas reflected. The anarchist plot was
drawing to a head. Great events were hasten-
ing. Forty-eight hours might witness the fall
of the head of the Republic. The double part
he was playing could not be sustained much
longer.
“Three nights from now,” he replied, well
knowing that before the expiration of the time
all Paris would be shaken.
“Very well,” said Le Fevre, following him
to the door.
Once on the sidewalk and out of sight of the
robbers, he scanned the number of the house
and carefully jotted it down in his note book.
“Ha, they little know what a Tartar they
have caught!” he muttered. “Now, I must
save her, or **


90 THE BLACK HAND
IX
Douglas, mad with jealousy, hurried to the
house of Paul Adam.
The Black Hand was in session.
He gave four raps—three—two.
There was no response, but he understood
the delay.
The oath—neither love nor hate could be
suffered to interrupt the making of the solemn
pact, the only ceremony tolerated by men who
hated form.
When the dark vow had run around the
semicircle he was admitted.
There was one vacant chair, and next it sat
the Bride—a refulgent moon amid lowering
thunder caps. He looked at her dubiously, but
she met his arrow with a royal sheaf of smiles.
“Come forward, Number Two, and take the
oath,” she commanded, in a voice that was
almost a bass.
He advanced, and, standing before the be-
wildering beauty, repeated the malevolent
words which, changed only in the tense, he
had a few nights before dictated to her.
“I do solemnly swear that for the welfare of


THE BLACK HAND 9I
oppressed humanity, I will take the life of the
tyrant whose name was called when my num-
ber was drawn from the wheel, and that I will
not reveal the secrets of the brotherhood to
any one.”
“Why did you do it?” he managed to whis-
per under the cover of resuming their seats.
“For your sake and Germany's,” he caught
from her moving lips, and rested in her ruse.
But the next moment his jealousy broke
forth afresh.
“Seven names are to be voted upon to-
night,” announced Paul Adam. “As we go
unto death in the fulfilment of our vow others
must take our places. The first name is that
of Santo Caserio. Brothers, you will pro-
nounce whether this man shall become a mem-
ber of the Black Hand.”
“Is he worthy?” cried a chorus of voices.
“He makes oath that once he slew a man
on the Lungo l’Arno, in Florence.”
Paul Adam took a ball from a box and
threw it into a little urn on the table.
Number Two arose.
“Is it black or white?” whispered Gabrielle.
“Black.”
“It must be white.”
Douglas fingered the little orbs hesitatingly.
His love demanded the black, but love com-
manded the white. The latter went into the
urn in spite of his will.
* ----------------------------


92 THE BLACK HAND
All the men voted, going forward one at a
time and depositing each his choice in im-
pressive silence.
One after another the leader declared the
seven elected.
Then every eye was fixed upon Paul Adam.
The man of mystery was accustomed to spring
surprises upon them. He was a bottomless
deep of resources, an orbit which their circles
could not circumscribe. Michel had hinted that
there would be something of an astonishing
nature disclosed this night.
“Brothers, the Black Hand is about to
strike. What shall be its weapon? What is
the surest way to carry out the will of the
Brotherhood?”
The cold-bloodedness and deep determina-
tion in the leader's voice struck a chill even in
hearts inured to deeds of violence. A shiver
ran around the group as each one felt the
power of a will that was inexorable—almost
omnipotent.
Paul Adam and tyranny could not live in
the same world.
At length Michel spoke:—
“I propose that we send the gracious lords
a present in a box.”
“Impracticable. The imbeciles who wash
the feet of tyrants would open it and get the
benefit of it.”
“I propose poison,” said Barron.
* - * ~ * --------> --- - - - - - - - - - - -


THE BLACK HAND 93
“Too uncertain. Anarchy's blow must be
sure; it must not be the womanish stroke of
a wife who wants to rid herself of a worthless
spouse.”
“I propose that we find out when they are
going to travel and lay a mine that will blow
their royal highnesses into their preached-up
heaven,” said Garcia.
“That would slaughter the innocent,” ob-
jected the leader again. “No, there is but one
way—we must give a life for a life. He who
will not do this is no true Anarchist. Who is
willing?”
The Bride leaped to her feet, her eyes flash-
ing with ardor for her task. The others rose,
but more slowly.
“Nobly done, my brothers,” said the chief.
“Such devotion cannot fail. Our cause is the
cause of humanity and is bound to succeed.
The day after to-morrow the President goes
to Lyons.”
All eyes met on the Bride, who blazed up
as a piece of cloth in the focus of a burning
glass.
“Come on, if you are men!” she cried.
“Come on, and do not let a woman outdo you.”
She swept majestically out of the room, and
the gaze of the group, as by a released spring,
dropped back to Paul Adam.
“She is the incarnation of my father,” he
said, while a faint smile played over the ashen
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ". . "
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - * * *.
- - - - --------- ~ *
---


94 THE BLACK HAND
face above the black beard. “The dead vic-
tims of tyranny live again in the slayers of
tyrants. Only, she is a woman.”
“And who are we?” demanded Barron,
quick to reflect the Buddhistic conceit, as in-
deed he would any notion of his adored leader.
“Danton, Robespierre, the apostles of liberty
—are they incarnated, too?”
“And what historic character has appeared
in the person of our chief ?” asked Douglas,
less seriously. “Who is Paul Adam?”
“Perhaps he is Ravaillac, the king-killer!”
“Or Bakunin, the founder of Anarchy!”
“Or Napoleon Bonaparte!”
Partly in pleasantry and partly in serious-
ness came the answers of men who knew little
of history, but much of life. The last sugges-
tion, however, was the height of unreason.
Bonaparte and Anarchy!
Satan and the Holy Virgin!
The chief waved his hand.
“I am none of these. He that is in me is
mightier than they, and he it is that doeth the
works. I am sent to redeem the world, but if
the world will not be redeemed, then am I sent
to destroy the world.”
The men looked at each other in astonish-
ment.
Was Paul Adam a madman?
Or a self-deceived fanatic?
Or a new Christ?
-******** ***************** * * ~ *


THE BLACK HAND 95
Then one said:—
“Tell us, Great Brother, what you mean by
these things.”
Paul Adam arose. The embers on the
hearth at that moment threw up a fitful flame.
The lamp burned low and red.
The men were in that semi-superstitious
state that looks for anything, from spirit rap-
pings to a resurrection.
The laboratory door opened mysteriously.
“Come, and I will show you the way of the
world's everlasting rest.” -
A peculiar odor came from the wizard's re-
treat. -
As a line of birds following a single beak,
the men filed after their leader.
No one spoke.
A fog, a roseate ether, a fire-mist, filled the
rOO111.
In the midst stood a vision, an angel—no,
a woman!
It was the Bride!
In her hand she held a pan of coals, from
which variegated flames flared up, making a
beautiful play of colors on her flushed face,
while a white incense, as a bridal veil, envel-
oped her, giving her an airy, unreal appear-
ance like the spirit forms conjured up in the
medium’s cabinet.
Intoxicated with mystery, the men gathered
in an awe-stricken circle, alternately gazing at


96 THE BLACK HAND
their chief and the woman of fire. Insensible,
as in a dream, the substance of things stole
away and left them in the shadow and echo,
while the black ball of the world rolled on
through boundless space and infinite night.
They seemed to be spectators of the earth-globe
as it ran around its little ring—unworld beings
who had shaken off matter and looked down
upon it as the newly winged insect sur-
veys its sloughed cocoon. In the crepuscular
light the black world was unlit by a black sun.
Immensity lay one way, eternity the other, and
between tossed the ceaseless surf of chaos.
The world was not made of atoms, but of
hearts—every atom a blood-red heart. Be-
yond the earth there were spirit-worlds like
the airy globe of the dandelion when the flower
has departed. The universe was filled with
these aerial orbs—a vast sweeping milky way
of phantoms upon which the fine snow-pow-
der of spirits from material worlds perpetually
fell.
But the earth held the race of the blind—a
billion eyes shut, a billion mouths open—bird-
lings of an unnatural mother. Over these
poor witlings rose some gaily decked forms,
great blonde beasts—millionaires, the earth-
people called them, but hollow, the heart by
me, ns of some chemical coin-pot having been
distilled out. These bulky cormorants swept
their little brothers into the huge world-cylin-


THE BLACK HAND 97
der as into a vast wine-vat, orphans at the bot-
tom, then work-people, and over these the sol-
diers, layers upon layer and press upon press;
then the screws were put on, and—
When the writhing, seething mass had been
pressed down again and again, they took some
coffin-boards and covered the vat, and on the
polished floor executed a brilliant dance. Then
the cracked earth exuded a Niagara cataract
of blood, but their music-lulled ears heard not,
and their dainty feet heeded not; and a round-
faced priest came forth and sprinkled them
with holy drops and said:—“Go do so, and
more likewise, ye blessed of the Lord,” while
nearby gleamed a tombstone carved with an
everlasting lie. Round all the throbbing globe
a hundred crested serpents coiled themselves
and lashed the red foam, while afar off slowly
rose a vast bank of ebon shadow—the eternal
night.
Then shrieked the dying ones:—“Where is
death? Where is Christ? Where is God?”
Stifled as the doomed ship drawn into the
trough of the sea, the cry rose louder on the
upheaving wave, and the grave flung back the
hollow mockery “God,” and all the spirit
worlds echoed “God,” and the all-immensity in
repeated reverberations tossed to and fro the
bitter cry, “God.” But there was no help and
1nOne to a11SWer.


98 THE BLACK HAND
The men stood shivering, cold beads of per-
spiration starting on their foreheads.
Was this jugglery?
Or insanity?
Or hypnotism?
Or the new trance?
The great clock of the universe pealed. (It
was the dusty little timepiece on the mantel,
tolling midnight.)
A voice that sounded far off said:—
“It is enough.”
The wizard dropped a fine powder in the
pan.
The flames of the fire-woman leaped up in
a new color.
A terrific detonation rent the air.
The earth-ball exploded.
The cries ceased.
The spirit worlds broke out into the most
bewitching sphere music.
The men experienced delightful sensations,
every sense expanded a thousand fold, and
new avenues of rapture opened everywhither.
The ego embraced the universe.
The eternal night sank back in the west, and
the all-of-peace, as a golden ether, filled the
sky, in the midst of which they beheld their
dead ones.
The elysium lasted only a moment.
£ a sign the Bride folded the pan and van-
ished.


THE BLACK HAND 99
*-
The men rubbed their eyes.
Dream or delirium, it was over.
Paul Adam looked around gravely on each
O11e.
“Brothers, I hold the keys of life and death.
The powder I dropped in the pan is a new
discovery—the greatest discovery man ever
made. By that little dust I can ignite the
world's dust. You understand the principles
of gunpowder and dynamite, but everything
has explosive power if you can only find its
key. Every one knows that fine dust under
certain conditions will explode, but no one un-
til now has discovered those conditions. I
have found the key to the matter that forms
the bulk of the earth. I have named it pyron-
ite. Should I throw a handful of it upon the
soil, it would in a second change this solid
globe into a flame of gas. Now go and do
your work. If you do it well, the world will
be saved; if not, I will destroy the world.”
They departed in silence. No one felt like
speaking. Only Michel whispered to Doug-
las:—
“We have seen strange things to-night.”


IOO THE BLACK HAND
X
Was it the double ego which certain philoso-
phers maintain inhabits the human soul that
impelled Marie to go out to the gate when she
saw Le Fevre peering invitingly through the
bars?
The man had not gone away after his inter-
view with the maid, but had paced up and
down, with his ferreting eyes on the house
he meant to rob. Marie was both attracted
and repelled by the fellow, half tramp and
half gentleman. He had said that he was her
friend and could make her rich, but he smiled
wickedly and possessed the evil eye.
“Good evening again, my little pretty; I’ve
come back, as we didn't quite finish our con-
versation. I saw you lolling in the door and
thought you might be looking for me. What
were you doing—dreaming you were grown
and great?”
“I was not dreaming, and I am not pretty,”
she answered, pettishly.
“Not pretty! Oh, yes, you are pink of
posies, my little dear. My good friends, the
Leons, must think a great deal of you.”
*** **----------- - - - - - - - - - - - ----., --- . . . . . . . .


THE BLACK HAND IOI
***
“No; they just hate me. Everybody hates
me and I hate everybody; I hate you.”
Flattery, a legal tender without act of legis-
lature, was buying the girl's tongue.
“But I can make them love you; I know the
secret of forcing people to love you.”
“Oh, tell me what it is?”
Le Fevre took a small vial from his pocket
and dropped some pellets in his hand. His
bland smile seemed to spread all over his abun-
dant beard.
“Who serves the wine?”
“I do.”
“Good; do they have wine to-night?”
“They have wine every night.”
“Good again; now take this vial and drop a
pellet in each glass. And take care that no-
body sees you.”
“And then will people love me?”
“Certainly; do just as I tell you.”
“But it will do no good; I am so ugly.”
“Listen. Did you ever hear of Cinderella?”
Marie's eyes brightened. “The queen of
the fairies—oh! yes.”
“Well, she's my friend. The fairies, you
know, make folks beautiful.”
“And will you send them to me?”
“I will tell the queen to send two of her
best fairies to-night. Only you must mind
and leave the door unlocked.”


IO2 THE BLACK HAND
“Josquin fastens the door at night, but I
can slip down and undo it.”
“Do, my pretty, and then, only think, you
will wake up in the morning and find your-
self the prettiest girl in Paris. But don't for-
get about the door, and the pellets. Remem-
ber, one in each glass, and nobody to see you.”
“And the fairies—”
“Yes, you drop the pellets and we'll do the
rest.”
Le Fevre hurried away, for he saw wonder-
ing faces at the window, but he turned to
throw back from the depths of his tangled
beard a reassuring smile, which Marie no
longer thought hideous, but the open sesame
to beauty and fortune. She stood gazing after
her mysterious friend, regretting that she had
not inquired which genii he would send, so
that she might call them by name if she should
chance to awake during the process of trans-
formation from a fright to a fairy. She was
looking superstitiously at the moon, as the
place whence her winged friends would prob-
ably come, when she was aroused from her
sense of delicious expectation by the approach
of three men.
They were the Duc de Broglie, M. Des-
sereaux and M. Jacquot.
“Why, the little witch is merry to-night,”
said the Duc, seeking to pinch the thin face
------~~~~< ******-***------------------ *********


THE BLACK HAND IO5
!
Marie was frightened by his determined
manner, but she hesitated about complying
with his demand. He slipped a piece of money
between the bars, and the coin and phial were
exchanged.
Then the man hurried away.
Marie went back to the kitchen just as M.
Leon rang for wine. The note of the bell was
sharp and mingled with excited voices. The
Duc de Broglie and his friends were issuing
a kind of monarchial ultimatum to the Deputy,
which he was answering with true republican
spirit.
“No,” he was saying in reply to the thun-
derous jingoism of the swaggering Duc; “no,
I have trustworthy advices from St. Peters-
burg that Russia has no disposition at present
to force her way to the Dardanelles. She is
pushing her interests in the East just now. In
short, the policy of the Czar is to conserve and
develop by the arts of peace the vast empire
he has acquired, rather than to gain new ter-
ritory by the arms of war.”
“But if the situation in Roumania should
become critical—” began M. Dessereaux,
but broke off, his potations rendering him un-
equal to the complications of a conditional
Sentence.
“Russia, of course, will not tolerate any in-
terference in Roumania,” supplied the Deputy,
“but she considers the Powers of Europe so


Io6 THE BLACK HAND
nearly balanced that no nation will seek ag-
grandizement at the risk of war. The chief
danger lies in the fickle nature and mixed blood
of the Roumanians themselves, but the Rus-
sian Minister does not think the situation seri-
ous enough to warrant any concern on the part
of the War Office at present.”
“And you will not fight for Alsace-Lor-
raine?” sneered M. Jacquot.
“The government will not make our lost
provinces an occasion for hostility. Should a
war cloud come from any other quarter the
result might be their restoration, but France
will not fight for these alone. The hare is
not worth the hunt.”
The finale of the Deputy was a nauseous
dose to the three filibusters. M. Dessereaux
fell back in his chair, quite overcome by dis-
appointment and drink. M. Jacquot turned to
Mme. Leon and muttered something about the
“cowardice of the government.” But the Duc
de Broglie leaped to his feet and struck the
table with his fist. “Well, sir, if you will not
make war for us we will make war for our-
selves.”
The Deputy looked astonished.
“Please explain yourself,” he said.
M. Leon, fearing an unseemly strife, rang
for Marie to bring the champagne. His idea
was that wine soothes speech as oil calms the
Sea.



THE BLACK HAND 107
“Plainly, then—for we need play with
words no longer,” launched forth the Duc, his
red face getting redder, while the Deputy
turned white—“we must slaughter the Repub-
lic to save the nation. The present regime is
a failure from the President down to the Tuil-
eries doorkeeper. France is but a house of
sand. Why, the Panama Canal exposure
showed the government to be rotten to the
core.”
“Yes,” corroborated M. Dessereaux, roused
from his fog by the Duc's blow; “yes, and our
Deputies are bought and sold every day like
cattle.”
“And the Church,” supplemented M. Jac-
quot—“see how the Church has been degraded
since royalty went out of power.”
“A pirate solicitous for a prayer meeting,”
thought M. Dupont, knowing the libertine's
speech to be a sop to Mme. Leon's pious pro-
fession.
“And our defeat at the hands of those hate-
ful Germans!” chimed in Louise. “Oh, I
could cry my eyes out when I think of my
country's shameful humiliation under this
dreadful Republic!”
She did not know, or did not care to know,
that it was under the Monarchy that her na-
tion bit Sedan dust.
“The trouble is,” added M. Leon more
mildly, “that a republic is unable to put the


IO8 THE BLACK HAND
best men at the helm. De Tocqueville showed
that in his book about America. The day of
French statesmen seems to have gone by.”
“Yes,” stormed the Duc, “most emphatically
I say the present government must be over-
turned and the Monarchy re-established. We
shall never make France a first class Power
again until we have an Emperor.”
The Deputy sat trembling with suppressed
excitement while these blows of denunciation
and derision were rained upon him.
Marie brought in the wine, taking care to
set the glass that contained the pellets before
her young mistress. The little maid shivered
violently, but her fears were groundless, the
family and their excited guests taking no more
notice of her than of Trix, the cat.
M. Dupont arose, his eyes flashing.
“Messieurs”—he did not think the ladies
worth being taken into account as factors in
politics—“I understand you now, and I per-
ceive that I am in a nest of traitors. You
want war, not because you love France, but
because you hate the Republic. You want to
see the government overturned that, in the
new regime, you may yourselves get the places
of power. You are monarchists, and you
thought to use me as your tool to carry out
your treasonable purposes. Having dropped
the mask, you have no longer any use for my


THE BLACK HAND 109
company, and I have the pleasure to bid you all
a very good night.”
He bowed cynically and walked stiffly out
and down the stairs.
Louise rose and stood irresolute. If her
lover went away in that frame of mind he
would never return. It was a moment of
agonizing indecision. M. Dupont's footsteps
sounded ominously step after step. She stole
a swift look at her mother, and then bounded
after him, upsetting her glass of wine in her
flight.
The others sat in the awkward silence which
usually follows an unpleasant scene, but, as
the moments slipped by and Louise did not
return, they grew uneasy.
“The Deputy is handsome and witty; per-
haps she has gone over to him,” suggested the
Duc.
“Or gone with him,” added M. Jacquot.
The latter observation caused M. Leon to
leave the room hastily, but in a moment he
returned, with the assurance that his daughter
was safe. “I trust she sees the folly of caring
for a republican,” he said, avoiding the pro-
test in his wife's eyes. He had hinted this be-
fore, but Mme. Leon had insisted that, socially,
it was a splendid match. Now he was deter-
mined. “He shall not have her; I will give he
to one more worthy.” -
M. Jacquot rose and bowed.


IIO THE BLACK HAND
“Might I have that honor?”
M. Leon surveyed the unexpected suitor.
He was a man of faultless dress, pleasing man-
ners and unknown character. His acquaint-
ance with him had been altogether political; he
knew nothing about his life and habits. But,
then, family and fortune are the principal fac-
tors in French matrimony. He wanted to pun-
ish the Deputy in some way, and the loss of
his fiancee would hurt his wrong-headed friend
more than anything else. And so, like the
jilted lover marrying another for spite, M.
Leon gave away his daughter to gratify his
anger.
“She is yours,” he affirmed, returning the
bow. “I do not know much about you, but I
know I am not giving my daughter to a de-
testable liberalist.”
“You are giving her to a monarchist, and
more—you are giving her to one who has a
right to the throne of France.”
M. Leon and his good lady looked at him
and then at each other, in amazement.
Was M. Jacquot one of the royal family?
And was this the secret of his and his friends'
enthusiasm? Did there exist a deep laid plot
to place this man upon the throne?
M. Jacquot bowed to the company.
The Duc de Broglie rose.
“It is even so; this man has told you the
truth. He is the grandson of the Duc d'An-


THE BLACK HAND III
gouleme and the great grandchild of Charles
X. He is a prince and ought this day to be
the Emperor of France.
“But the Duc d’Angouleme had no chil-
dren.”
The Duc de Broglie smiled.
“No acknowledged—pardonneg moi, sire”
—with a very low bow to his Prince; “no pub-
licly announced children.”
“But why was not the birth of an heir made
public, and why has the present Prince re-
mained all his life in retirement?”
The three friends continued to smile patron-
izingly, M. Jacquot cynically.
“The times were stormy,” said the Duc.
“There have been—there are—rivals to the
throne of France. It is not always safe to
proclaim one's right and intentions. Remem-
ber the Duchesse de Berry and her unfortunate
ambition for her son. But the Comte is the
dark horse that is going to win in this race.
We are about ready to proclaim his heirship
to the throne. But meanwhile, for prudent
reasons, he prefers to be known simply as M.
Jacquot. Let us now drink to the coming
Emperor and Empress of France.”
The men grasped their wine glasses and
stood up, the half-crapulent M. Dessereaux
accomplishing the feat with some difficulty.
But M. Leon kept his seat, for at that moment
Marie, slipping in, placed a note in his hand.
- - - - - - - - *, *, * * * * * *
--------------------- - - ----~~~
---
-


112 THE BLACK HAND
When he had read its single line he leaped to
his feet.
“Hold on, there, on your lives—the wine is
poisoned !” he exclaimed.
Meanwhile, an interesting scene was taking
place down stairs.
The Deputy had unlocked the heavy door
and was passing out unattended, when he felt
a hand on his arm. He turned coldly.
“Monsieur Dupont—Henri !”
He closed the door, and the two white faces
confronted each other. As the Deputy looked
upon his betrothed, into whose cheeks tide
after tide of conflicting feeling surged, he felt
his ardent affection protesting against the
treatment she was receiving. The poor little
thing was being crushed between two heartless
walls of politics. But it was very much as if
he had fallen in love with the Queen of Ha-
waii. An impassable barrier separated them.
“Louise,” he said, with pain in his voice. “I
did not think this of you. You have deceived
me. You should have warned me of this
spider's web, and not lured me into it.”
Louise buried her face in her hands, and the
tears trickled between her slender white fin-
gers. She knew how to cry prettily, and her
lachrymose gland was large and convenient.
“Indeed, I did not mean to !” she sobbed.
“I can readily believe you have been the
dupe of others,” he replied, pityingly. “I can
--~~~~~~~~~~~~------------------ -


THE BLACK HAND II.3
forgive you that, but the fact remains that we
must part. We cannot marry when our politi-
cal sentiments are so opposed. One of us must
surrender. I, of course, as a member of the
House of Deputies, cannot do so; my princi-
ples have become a part of the public property.
It comes, then, to this—you must give up your
monarchial friends and their notions, or give
up me. Which shall it be?”
Louise leaned against the wall, her petite
form shaking convulsively.
The Deputy cursed himself, M. Leon and
his friends, the government, fate, everything
and everybody except the quivering heart into
which destiny forced him to shoot so rudely its
sharp arrow.
“Pardon me if I seem severe. I do not
blame you. Our acquaintance has been short
and our engagement hasty. I ought not to ex-
pect all the roots of your past life to be plucked
up in a moment. I do not reprove you for
hating the government; you have been edu-
cated in those ideas. The only question is, Can
you love the Republic for my sake?”
There came to Louise one psychical spasm,
then a calm, then a second of intense thought.
It was the trial moment.
The Deputy anxiously awaited her decision.
He loved her desperately. Once, while she
was hesitating, he came to an awful determina-
tion. He could not renounce his policy, but
- - - - - - - ---


II4 THE BLACK HAND
he would renounce himself. If she decided
against him he would kill himself! But he
checked the thought. On sturdy souls like M.
Dupont, seasoned with the salt of self-belief,
no such dark winged fly of temptation makes
more than a momentary alight. The suicide is
beaten, and he could never be beaten. In Par-
lement he either won or covered his retreat so
as to make it appear a victory, and if his en-
gagement with Mademoiselle broke, he would
make a brilliant match somewhere else as soon
as possible.
Louise assumed a statuesque posture, her
eyes fixed upon a spot on the carpet. For all
the lightness of her mind, she was not of the
quality that yields readily. The softest cotton
bale resists the swiftest cannon ball. Her dis-
like for the government was not the result of
well wrought opinions, but rather a habit of
the blood. She had grown up in an atmos-
phere that abhorred plebeianism. Vulgar peo-
ple, like insects that have a certain sanitary
value, were well enough in their place, but the
rough handed daughters of toil must not in-
trude into the select ballroom. For the rule of
the people, she thought, meant social equality.
Fancy meeting one's washerwoman at a soiree!
Hating the Republic with the unreasoning pas-
sion of a child, she yet loved this man with the
devotion of an affectionate nature.
Her decision must be speedy. The bell at


THE BLACK HAND II5
the gate rang once and again, and Marie was
admitting some one at the side door. Over-
head there were quick footsteps and loud
voices. She looked up and met her lover's
eager gaze, and her cheeks reddened under the
burning scrutiny as a sea beneath a crimson
sun. Louise knew the full value of the art of
blushing. He held out his arms, and she sank
into them with a little cry of joy.
“I will love you,” she murmured, “and—
and your paupers.”
But at that moment her father was coming
down the stairs to give her to another.


II6 THE BLACK HAND
XI
Paul Adam was working in his shop. He
was surrounded by a motley array of vacuum
lamps, bent tubes and curious little tools.
Pyronite, the new explosive that was to de-
stroy the world, slept potentially in some glass
phials on the work bench, while its inventor
experimented cautiously with a few infinitesi-
mal particles under new conditions.
Suddenly, there came a rap—the peculiar
knock of one of the initiated, and, when the
anarchist leader had satisfied himself through
the judas that the summons was not a counter-
feit, he opened the door and admitted Clai-
borne Douglas.
It was the evening following the strange
scene in the laboratory, and the visitor half
expected to see again the white cloud of in-
cense, the black world ball, the weird fire
woman, and all the awful accompaniments of
the splendid vision of the night before, but he
beheld nothing except a chemist's meagre out-
fit and a plain workman in cap and blouse. He
had been walking hurriedly and the hot pace
had left its mark on his cheek.


118 THE BLACK HAND
really to see you,” he heard the passionate
lover say. Then, jokingly, “I did not know
but you had gone up in the cloud after the
millenarian fashion; you looked angelic
enough to ascend with that mantle of fire mist
around you.”
“Did I play my part well?”
Flattery to this Cleopatra-Samson about to
pull down the Temple of Dagon was like the
forbidden apple, but, oh, it was so sweet!
“Gloriously. But, my queen, with what con-
summate devil play did your father befool us
all last night?”
“I cannot tell you; it is my father's secret.”
“Do you believe in pyronite?”
“I believe in my father.”
“And you will heed your father rather than
me?”
“I heed only the will of the Black Hand.”
“Is this, then, to be our last day, but one, on
earth?”
“It is to be mine; you are to live until you
follow me.”
“I shall follow you soon, then, for I cannot
live without you.”
“See, then, that you follow me by the same
road, I shall be sure; see me hit yonder tree.”
The moon was at its full and flooded with
light every object in the little yard.
“There, now,” as the stone hit the mark


THE BLACK HAND II9
fairly and rebounded, “suppose this had been
a bomb and that a man?”
Douglas shuddered, marvelling that such
cold blooded words could come from so hot a
heart. She was an enigma to him—this re-
splendent double being in whom the masculine
and feminine were at inappeasable strife—
and he could not help wondering how she
would demean herself at the supreme moment
on Sunday. He went up close to her and took
unresisted the ungloved hand. It was plump,
soft and shapely.
“Gabrielle, this hand was not made to cast
bombs, but if you will do it—if you will give
your beautiful self a sacrifice in this way, at
least let our last day be our best day. Let us
go now and be married.”
The ardent lover hardly breathed while he
awaited her reply, but he started violently as a
deep toned voice responded:—
“Prepare for your burial rather than your
bridal, you foolish ones.”
The dark face of Paul Adam was framed in
the window hardly two feet away.
“Where did you get the pellet?” inquired
the anarchist chief, nonchalantly, after he had
enjoyed their confusion a moment.
“The pellet! Oh, have you analyzed it so
quickly?”
“If it came from Le Fevre, I have no need
to analyze it.”


I2O THE BLACK HAND
“Truly, Great Brother, you know all things,
and I may as well tell you all, for there is noth-
ing hid from you. I learned somewhat of Le
Fevre's plans, and going to M. Leon's house I
saw the little maid—the little freak, Michel's
daughter—and found that the robber had
given her the pellets to drop in the wine, and
that he means to rob the house to-night.”
He paused, and the gaze of the two men
met.
“But you have not told me all.”
Douglas dropped his eyes. He had the un-
comfortable sensation of being weighed, and
he felt from this time forth that he had no
longer the confidence of his leader.
“The Black Hand and the Bievre robbers
must not be confounded; anarchy must free
itself of all suspicion of robbery. I will go
and warn the family,” said Paul Adam.
This was the task the young man had pur-
posed for himself, but he was quite willing to
delegate it to another, for he wanted the time
with Gabrielle. The flying hours were few,
and he was bent upon consummating their mar-
riage if possible. He noticed a play of irony
on Paul Adam’s face as he left the room. His
daughter darted after him.
“Father, you will not go into the very den
of our enemies! M. Leon is a Bonapartist,
and I read the other day that he said the anar-
chists should be treated as mad dogs.”


THE BLACK HAND I2I
“Never fear! If I fall it will be by the
hands of my friends and not my foes.”
The cynical shaft, like a Queen Anne mus-
ket, hurt at either end.
Dubiously, they watched him as he cut a
straight way through the throng that filled the
narrow street, moving with his easy gait as
one might walk for health, and not as if a rob-
bery or, perchance, a murder depended upon
his errand.
Arrived at M. Leon's house it took him
but a moment to make and project the paper
bomb that created so much consternation in the
ex-broker's parlor.
“I have received a note from a man who
says the wine is poisoned,” exclaimed the host
in a husky voice to the three friends, whose act
was arrested as they were on the point of
drinking to the future Emperor and Empress
of France.
The men, looking at each other in consterna-
tion, set down the glasses so violently that
much of the sparkling liquid was spilled upon
the table. Was their plot discovered? Had
the identity of M. Jacquot been found out?
Could it be that the conspiracy had been de-
tected, and that the drugged wine was a part of
a counterplot designed to frustrate the ambi-
tions of the monarchists?
After a moment of questioning with the
eyes, they turned their attention to little Marie,


I22 THE BLACK HAND
crouching in the corner, quite frightened at
the explosion the note had produced. The
queer imp had friends among the anarchists,
Mlle. Leon had told them, but the revolution-
ist had treated the matter lightly and even
approvingly, presuming that the dark plotters
had designs upon the present government only.
These lawless fellows ought not to attack the
Bonapartists, since the first step of the parties
at either extreme was a common one—the
overthrow of the present regime.
The note lacked the particulars they burned
to know, for when M. Leon read it aloud the
eager listeners gleaned no additional fact be-
yond the bare statement that the wine was
drugged.
“Who wrote it?” demanded the ex-broker.
“A man who said I was to give it to M.
Leon,” whimpered the cowering maid.
“Where is the man?”
“He went away.”
“Go after him and tell him to come back.”
Marie flew out of the room, while the group
of conspirators in deep suspense awaited her
return. Soon they had the satisfaction, and
no small apprehension as well, of hearing her
elastic step pioneering the heavy tread of a
111211.
All eyes were bent upon the stranger, with
a kind of biting stare, that would have dis-
concerted a person of ordinary nerve, but there


THE BLACK HAND 123
was no lack of self-possession in the steely
bows that threw back arrow for arrow; there
was no fear or anger—only pity and sorrow.
“Did you write this note?” demanded M.
Leon.
The man walked over to the table, picked
up the scrap of paper and crumpled it between
his fingers. Then he looked around reproach-
fully upon each one.
“He that is saved from the axe should not
strike the hand that turns the blow,” he said
at last.
The monarchists felt the rebuke, and per-
ceived that they had to deal with no common
clay. The allusion, also, to the national form
of capital punishment made them wince. M.
Leon's voice fell a whole octave, and his tone
was respectful, almost obsequious.
“Pardon me, my good sir, but you wrote
that the wine was drugged, and we seek to
know the source of your information. Who
drugged it, how, when and for what purpose?
And how can you prove it?”
“I do not wish to prove it. He that believeth
not my words let him now drink.”
Again the men looked at each other. The
Duc de Broglie now ventured:—
“How do we know you have not sought to
frighten us, in the hope of a reward?”
“Because you cannot give me any reward.”
“We can make you rich.”
- -- - - - - - - - - - - - * *
* * * * * ~ * - - - -------------------------- - - *


I24 THE BLACK HAND
“I am already rich.”
“How so? You do not dress like a man of
means.”
“He is rich who wants nothing for him-
Self.”
Again the men exchanged glances. They
were baffled before this strange character.
“Who are you? Will you tell us your
name?” inquired M. Dessereaux, whose fright
had completely sobered him.
“I am Paul Adam.”
“Paul Adam, the anarchist!” they ex-
claimed, in a concert of alarm.
They had sought to frighten him by their
united roaring, but he had turned the tables
upon them. The scene was dramatic—four
pale faced men and one woman, the elite of
Paris, in a huddling group, looking affright-
edly at this person of humble blood, who re-
turned their gaze with an air of calm superi-
ority, when he ought to have been overawed
in their gracious presence. It was one of those
social phenomenons which will sometimes oc-
cur in the best regulated parlor of Trim and
Tape, when the inherent power of a great na-
ture rebels against the thumbscrews of art—
he, the proletariat, regarding them, the aris-
tocracy, with contemptuous coolness, and they
gazing helplessly at him with a puzzled ex-
pression, like those who have dug an indefina-
ble ore.
- -, --- *-*-***** * * ~ *--- *--------------- - - - - - - -


THE BLACK HAND I25
The Duc de Broglie was the first to re-
cover himself.
“We have heard much of you. Do tell us
what you believe; you want to destroy the
State, do you not?”
“My mission is not to destroy, but to save.”
“But you would take away our property if
you could.”
“No; I would make you free.”
“You do not believe in law P”
“I would have the law strike the head and
not the foot, but in the final state every man
will be a law unto himself.”
The Duc was nonplussed, but M. Desse-
reaux came to his relief.
“How many anarchists are there?”
“All are anarchists who love liberty.”
“You want men to have absolute liberty to
do as they please, but every man's rights must
be bounded by the rights of other men.”
“I want men to have liberty to live; the
world is full of food, but men starve.”
“But what is your remedy?”
“Destroy the government, disband the army,
abolish the taxes, forbid the trusts, confiscate
all property above what a man needs, and give
the poor a chance.”
“But these would be steps toward barbar-
ism.”
“The barbarian is free and happy; what
more can a man want?”


126 THE BLACK HAND
“Then you believe that savagery is better
than civilization, and that all the comforts
and conveniences of modern life count for
nothing?”
“In savage life all are happy; in the present
order, a few are happy at the expense of the
rest.”
“But your medicine is far worse than the
malady.”
“It is to those who are not dying of the
malady.”
The monarchists were not accustomed to
this kind of reasoning. They felt the want of
a common foothold. It was as if this man
came from another earth and ventured to criti-
cise a planet for whose particular good every
other world was supposed to be made. They
could not locate the centre of his orbit, but M.
Jacquot assailed it from a new point.
“You do not believe in rulers, but if rumor
is correct you are yourself a ruler among the
men of your kind.”
“My rule is to destroy rule.”
“But you anarchists are murderers.”
“We murder that we may stop murder, as
your law takes life in order to save life. You
rulers are the real murderers. In one genera-
tion you have slain more than three millions of
men. And for what? That you may make
your thrones more secure. We anarchists slay
* * * * * ********-r- - - -----,-,-,--
* *** -->~ *----, 1.2 --------


THE BLACK HAND 127
the ruler to save the people, but you slay the
people to save the ruler.”
“Are you a Frenchman?”
It was M. Jacquot who put the question.
His keen self-interest saw in Paul Adam a
potent ally for the overthrow of the Republic.
“I am a world-man.”
“But you belong to a dangerous class,” said
M. Leon, who did not perceive what was in
the mind of his friend, the Pretender. The
ex-broker's first care was for his property,
then for the aristocracy, and lastly for the
throne of France, and he did not surmise that
M. Jacquot's concern might be in the reverse
order. -
“The dangerous classes are the landlords
and the lawlords,” replied Paul Adam. “They
are the world assassins. I say unto you that
we are on the eve of disturbances of all kinds
and such as never were since time was. Every
nation has had its crisis, but now we are come
to the world crisis. I warn you this night, not
merely of the wine, but of the great world-war
that is at your doors. Beware, ye apostles of
statecraft, priestcraft and goldcraft! I am
the prophet of the kingdom of man.”
These words, spoken in the great anarchist's
deep bass and with his forefinger uplifted, pro-
duced dismay in the minds of the conspirators.
Forgetting the counterplot, in fear of which
they had summoned this man, they stood mute


128 THE BLACK HAND
before the more lurid perils he had portrayed,
while the author of their consternation stalked
majestically out of the room.
In a moment, M. Leon recovered himself
and followed his strange visitor to the door.
Paul Adam turned and looked at him sorrow-
fully.
“Keep watch to-night; there is a plot to rob
you.”
“Thank you, monsieur. Oh, these robbers,
they are the terror of my life!”
“I can tell you how you can prevent rob-
bery once for all.”
“Pray tell me how?”
“Cease yourself to be a robber; give your
fortune to the poor, and come, follow me.”
Paul Adam walked away, leaving M. Leon
looking blankly after him.


THE BLACK HAND I29
XII
It was the day preceding the one that in the
French calendar will henceforth be marked in
black evermore. The government, all uncon-
scious of the plot against the life of the Presi-
dent, was preparing to transport some troops
to Africa, and the city had the half-holiday
appearance that exposed its misery more than
when clad in its ordinary work dress. Sol-
diers and idlers, as cause and effect, were
everywhere. The vast army of surplus popu-
lation cut off from means of support, rein-
forced by the almost equally large number who
were both unemployed and unemployable, and
who paid the penalty of uselessness in the coin
of hopelessness, came forth and massed itself
in despairing multitudes, gazing with sallow,
sullen faces at the military glory.
On this day Paul Adam and his devoted
disciple, Jan Michel, took their last long walk
together, and the heart of the anarchist chief
was stirred within him as he beheld the vast
want and waste of life. He was irrepressibly
roused when, a body of soldiers and priests
advancing, the mounted police drove the peo-


130 THE BLACK HAND
ple back, pressing them cruelly upon each other
amid the groans and curses of the crushed
ina SS.
“I behold the hour when every high head
shall be brought low, and every one who is
lifted up shall be cast down, and there shall
be no plutocrat, and no prince, and no priest.”
“Shall these also perish?” inquired Michel,
pointing to the soldiers, whose new uniforms
glistened in the light and excited the admira-
tion of those who fancied they saw in these
smooth fatlings the avengers of their coun-
try's wrongs.
They had been present at an execution, and
as they played the dead march the music
floated ominously on the pulseless air.
The sun passed into a cloud.
“The fool butts against evil, but the wise
man knows how to turn evil into good,” re-
plied the master. “We shall not kill the sol-
diers, but use the soldiers.”
At the corner of the Rue Richelieu, a man
inquired if the execution had taken place.
“Can you not see the time?” demanded Paul
Adam. “The law and the clock strike to-
gether, and the one is as heartless as the
other.”
“But I am blind!” explained the man.
“Better be blind than having eyes to see the
oppression of your brother.”
Paul Adam slipped a coin into his hand and


THE BLACK HAND I3 I
passed on. They had now reached the Champs
Elysees, and Michel began to speak of the
beauty and gayety of Paris.
Paul Adam uttered a parable.
“A lion one day fell asleep, and there came
a hunter and put a rope around his neck, and
a fetlock upon his feet, and an iron frame upon
his head. When the lion awoke he said, “What
is this cage upon my head?’ ‘That is your
crown,” replied the hunter. “And this rope
about my neck?’ ‘That is your beautiful neck-
lace.” “And what is this chain upon my feet?’
“That is your ruby bracelet.” “But I cannot
move,” said the lion. “Never mind, as long as
you are beautiful.” “But this rope is choking
me to death, protested the lion. “But you will
make a fine corpse, replied the hunter. Then
came a shepherd and rent off the fetters and
cut the rope and removed the muzzle. What,
then, did the lion do when he was free?”
“I suppose he killed the hunter,” replied
Michel.
“No; he killed the shepherd.”
“Do you speak of Vaillant, or of yourself?”
“I speak of every martyr for liberty from
Ravaillac to the end of the world. What they
have done to kill Vaillant and Henry in
France, they will do to you in England and to
me in America.”
“Do not go to America. Let some good man


I32 THE BLACK HAND
go in your place. Number Two is an Ameri-
can; let him go and slay his ruler.”
“No; for the oath's sake I must go. As for
this American, I want you to notice that he
cannot look me in the eye.”
“What do you mean?”
“He that hath the light needeth not that any
man should give him light, and let every man
beware of his fellow.”
“You speak in a mystery. Great Brother,
will you really destroy the world?”
“For that purpose am I come into the
world.”
A sudden shower now came up. They were
passing a large, pretentious edifice, and turned
in with the crowd, most of whom were intent
on worship, but a few, like the two anarchists,
had no other motive than shelter from the
Wet.
It was a red letter day in the church. Michel
had never been in such a place before and he
looked in astonishment at the vast canopy of
rich frescoes, the rows of polished columns,
the long perspective of statued saints, and the
splendidly robed priests marching in proces-
sion. He heard the cathedral organ sob. He
beheld a glorious being lifted up. He did not
understand what it all meant. It was another
great mystery—not dark like the one Paul
Adam had bodied forth in the fire and smoke
of the strange laboratory scene, but bright and
------------------------------------. . . . . . . . .


THE BLACK HAND I33
beautiful, though equally obscure. He was
entranced, overpowered, by the sweet and aw-
ful strains of music that rolled forth, as he
had been under the master's magic, only here
in the religious festival the overtones predomi-
nated.
But suddenly the spell was broken. An old
beggar woman, filthy and half naked, with a
basket on her arm, hobbled in. A functionary
of the church seized her rudely and thrust her
Out.
Michel uttered a low curse.
“Even here in what they call God's house
the poor have no chance,” he muttered. “The
law, the rich and the Church are all against
us.”
The scene changed again.
The procession halted.
The music ceased.
A priest advanced to celebrate the mass.
The service was in Latin, but the celebrant
now and then threw off an important line in
French.
“Cet est le sang de Dieu.” (This is the
blood of God.)
“Hold! It is a lie!” rang out a voice that
woke unwonted echoes in the great nave and
transepts, and startled every worshipper.
Paul Adam stood before the altar, his right
hand raised as if in adjuration.
“Hold there! It is not God’s blood, but the
... -------------------------------


I34 THE BLACK HAND
blood of thy brother whom thou hast cruci-
fied !”
The effect was electrical.
Men sprang to their feet and women fainted.
The crowd at the door surged in.
The frightened priest dropped the chalice.
The police pressed their way forward to
arrest the profane intruder.
But in the excitement Paul Adam glided
through the press and disappeared. Michel
also went out. He could not find his leader,
and, after waiting a while, decided to go down
and see Marie. Walking along, he reflected
upon the scene he had just witnessed. He
could not understand the master, but he had
felt a strange power resting upon him while his
mysterious chief talked. The event in the
church had imparted to him a reverence, and
even a superstitious awe, for the man who
feared neither priest nor king. But who was
Paul Adam? The Kossuth, the Cromwell, the
Washington to deliver his country! But he
claimed no country. Did he belong to the
divine ones—Zoroaster, Buddha, Christ?
Dazed with these questionings, he arrived
at M. Leon's house, and his ring brought
Marie. The girl had a frightened look, which
was not allayed by the expression on her fath-
er's face.
“Goodby, my little one; I am going away.”
“Going away, where?”
-: * * *****-** * * * * ******* *-* *...*.*.*.*- : * *
*** * *


THE BLACK HAND I35
“To England.”
“When will you come back?”
“I shall never come back.”
“And you are not going to take me with
you?”
“No, you have a good home here; the peo-
ple are kind to you.”
Marie burst into tears and stamped her little
foot.
“No, I haven't a good home, and the people
are not kind; no one is kind to me but the
White Lady, and she's to be married and go
away. I won't stay here; I'll follow you to
England!”
“No, stay here, and try to think kindly of
your old father when they speak against him.”
“I won't let any one speak against you. Why
should they speak against a good man like
you?”
“But they will; in a little while you will hear
every one cursing me. Then try to think
kindly of me, won’t you? I’ve been a good
father to you, haven't I?”
For a reply the child seized him by the arm
and clung to him so persistently that he could
with difficulty shake her off, but at length he
bade her goodby again and broke away. Marie
ran after him, and, pulling him down, whis-
pered in his ear:—
“What was that Paul Adam said at the
timber port—that about the end of the world?”
- - - - - - - . . ---------------------------> -- ~~~~~ *****


136 THE BLACK HAND
“Hush, hush, my little one! That talk was
not for you; go back now.”
He wrenched away again and hurried off,
leaving the child looking after him, her pro-
trusive lips drawn into a straight line of reso-
lution. Michel glanced back once and saw her
watching him wistfully.
“Poor little thing!” he muttered. “But an
anarchist has no business with wife or child.”
A tear slid out on the threshold of his eye.
He cursed himself for his weakness as he
brushed the drop away, but the music in the
cathedral had touched a chord which had not
ceased to vibrate.
In a little while he began to meet the people
returning from mass. There were women
with prayer books, and men with ribbons in
their buttonholes—badges of a secret order.
All were talking excitedly about the crazy man
who had interrupted the service.
When Michel reached the church again, it
was empty, save for two or three priests, who
were conversing just within the vestibule. He
looked in at the spacious doors, and wished he
had a bomb.
“Yes, they go on spending fortunes for
churches, when the people need homes.”
But the organ—he lingered, hoping it would
peal forth again its rich massive notes. But
he must move on. The priests were looking
at him suspiciously.
***** *-ra-r-s"--------------. ****


THE BLACK HAND I37
Some one touched his elbow.
It was the old beggar woman, who was ex-
tending her hand for an alms.
“Come with me,” he said.
The step from fine cathedrals to poor homes
was not a long one, and in a few moments they
were knocking at Paul Adam's door.
“Here is the poor wretch the priests and the
bourgeoisie turned out of church,” he ex-
plained, curious to see how the master would
treat the revolting creature.
Paul Adam bade her welcome, placed the
easiest chair before the fire, and with his own
hands made her a dish of gruel.
“God bless you!” murmured the degraded
woman, as he set the steaming liquid on a
stand before her. She tasted the food, while
she extended her half naked feet to the blaze,
and dried her wet, tattered garments.
“This is Heaven!” she said.
“This is Hell!” replied Paul Adam.
The woman eagerly devoured the savory
compound, and, the rain having ceased, pre-
pared to go.
Then the master did the strangest thing
Michel had ever witnessed. He stooped down
and pressed his lips to the corrugated, un-
washed brow of the old crone.
“You have been to church, Little Brother,”
he said, turning to Michel; “you have attended
the mass; but this,” laying his hand on the
---


138 THE BLACK HAND
swarthy skin his lips had just imprinted, “this
is the only sacrament of salvation, and this the
only mediator between God and man.”
Michel, dumfounded, gazed at him. He
knew the master was many sided, but this feat-
ure of his character was a new revelation.
“Why, I did not know you were religious!”
he exclaimed, when he had found his voice.
“My creed,” replied Paul Adam, with pro-
found solemnity, “is in one word—man, and
my righteousness is to oppose him who would
oppress my brother.”
The old hag gave a salacious leer, and pre-
pared to remain in her comfortable quarters.
She had misinterpreted the meaning of the
caress. Paul Adam's demeanor changed in-
stantly.
“Go!” he commanded firmly but gently, see-
ing his action was misunderstood.
Gabrielle at that moment entered the room.
The self-doomed girl had been doing some final
errands preparatory to the fatal stroke, and
her face wore the deadly air of one nerved for
mortal combat.
Her father challenged her to walk with the
woman down the street. The proud girl
glanced contemptuously at the beggar.
“The test of the anarchist is not that he is
a good hater, but that he is a good lover, and
that he despises the opinions of men,” asserted


THE BLACK HAND I39
her father. “Now, if you should walk with
this woman people would make remarks.”
He knew what key to strike in the girl's un-
governable nature.
“I will go with her,” she replied, fired at
the suggestion that she could be afraid of any-
thing.
They went out into the street—the bride and
the beggar—the girl's stature and beauty
making a striking contrast to the bowed form
and bleared features of the hag. Gabrielle's
dress was not made of expensive material, but
it was showy, and the crone's rags acted as a
foil. She had not gone far before she became
aware that people were turning to look at
them.
“Ha, they stare at us, do they? Well, they
shall have something to stare at.”
She took the beldame by the arm and even
carried her filthy bundle, finding a fierce de-
light in defying the public eye, and, proud of
being humbled, walked many rods with her
grisly companion.
The beggar peered up into her escort's hand-
some face.
“I was once like you,” she mumbled.
“What brought you so low?”
“The lust of man.”
A fine hard whiteness steeled Gabrielle's
face.


I40 THE BLACK HAND
“Henceforth I will be a man hater,” she
thought.
Having sufficiently demonstrated her inde-
pendence, she turned back, and then became
aware that she was being followed.
Caserio, her Italian lover, stood before her,
a broad smile upon his swarthy countenance.
“You seek odd company, Signorina.”
“They tell me I am an odd girl.”
“Good; me like odd people; me walk with
ou.”
y “But the beggar woman was odd; better
walk with her and carry her bundle.”
“Me love you, Signorina; me marry you.”
“But I hate you and all men.”
“Signorina no hate the American; no hate
Italian, too.”
Gabrielle turned suddenly upon him, as if
to vanquish him by her fierce motion and
startling speech.
“Do you know what I am about to do?”
“Me know all about it, Signorina.”
There was no one near at the moment, and
the Italian, coming close, seemed to grin rather
than to utter the fearful words in her ear, his
lips scarcely moving.
“You kill the President.”
“But how did you learn that? You have
not yet been initiated into the Black Hand.”
“No matter; Love, he have little ears all
around. But you no die; you no need die; me


THE BLACK HAND I4I
die for you, me save you; then, me marry
you.”
“No, Caserio; I am a woman, and woman,
they say, is a coward. I am going to vindicate
the name of my sex. I am not for marriage,
but—”
She hissed a word in his ear, and then as
they reached the burrow she called home, her
arm shot out.
“Go!” she commanded, and her dusky lover
obeyed, for her slender finger had the coercive
thrust of a bayonet.
Then, as lightly as if her lips had taken the
promise of love instead of the vow of murder,
she skipped up the worn stone steps, from the
top one of which Paul Adam and Michel had
been closely watching her.


I42 THE BLACK HAND
XIII
“To-night I shall be famous or dead!”
These words of Gabrielle on the morning of
the Day of Fate—the twenty-fourth of June—
were spoken to her father, as he expressed the
fear that her nerves would fail her at the criti-
cal moment, and the hope that she would dele-
gate her fearful task to some man willing to
die in her stead. She had prepared herself—
not like others of her sex, with camphor and
headache drops, but with a written vow signed
in her own rich blood.
“To-night M. Carnot dies by my hand!”
Paul Adam was used to her fits of frenzy,
but he had never seen her in a white heat like
this. Her face glowed like molten fire, and
her eyes were two blazing coals. She was
angry because he doubted the quality of her
mettle.
“Better let Caserio take your place; he has
no nerves.”
“Is it because you love me?” she inquired,
sarcastically.
“It is because I love man,” he answered,
significantly.


THE BLACK HAND I43
“And you believe I will fail?”
“You are a woman.”
“I am a woman on the outside, but within
I am something else.”
What it was she did not say, but her look
suggested diabolism. Her father was proud
of her spirit. It was his own in cold fearless-
ness and indomitable purpose, but annealed
with the fury of a hot tempered woman. Pro-
jected from the background of her magnificent
physique, it was like lava pouring from a
mountain. To oppose her was to stand before
darting flames and churned billows. Paul
Adam did not seek any more to dissuade her.
“Your emotion is well, but it needs salt,” he
said.
“Then it shall have salt.”
She dashed to a desk and, clinching a pen
in her puissant fist, wrote:—“I vow this night
to slay the President of France.”
She was about to sign it when she paused,
struck by a sudden thought.
“I am not like other women—they vow in
tears, but I will vow in blood!”
She was dressed for the journey, and wore
a pretty drab of light woollen stuff, but she
recklessly ripped up the sleeve almost to the
shoulder, exposing the large, round shaft of
milk-white flesh. Then she snatched a sharp
knife from the table, and, without a wince,
made an incision in the softest part of the
----------> ----- - - - --> --------------,-, *- : *******
-** *


THE BLACK HAND I45
her creamy skin and what it had been made to
trace upon the paper he turned pale and shud-
dered slightly. The arm that could stain itself
with its own blood would not scruple to shed
that of another.
“My queen,” he said (Paul Adam had con-
siderately withdrawn and left them alone),
“how could you permit such an assault upon
yourself?”
Gabrielle laughed scornfully.
“If a few drops of blood on my arm horrify
you, what will you do when the red river pours
from my neck?”
“For God’s sake, Gabrielle, don’t talk that
way! That glorious white shaft will never
feel the axe. I will not have it!”
“And why not?”
“Because I love you.”
She bent her head, as if to catch the lowest
sound of his soul.
“Such a face must not be blotted out of the
world.”
“With other women beauty is the excuse for
being; but for me, to be is to do.”
“With other women beauty is the trimming;
but with you it is the soul.”
She rewarded him with a melancholy light
out of the great, black wells where the poison
lurked.
“You have come to go with me to the train.”
“I have come to go with you to the tragedy.”
- - - -------- * *
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - * * * -
-------


146 THE BLACK HAND
“You mean to be near the hare when it turns
on the hounds, do you?”
“I mean to be near the hawk when it darts
on the hen.”
“Well, hare or hawk; it's good to have a
faithful mate.”
Then she threw toward him a sportive smile
and a speech that came as near playfulness as
her fearfully real life ever approached.
“We might have been married and real
mates. But I think Gabrielle Adam will sound
better in history than Mme. Douglas as the
name of the woman who took off the Presi-
dent of France. And then, I wouldn’t have a
priest to marry us, anyway. I would simply
stand and say, ‘I take you for my husband,”
and you would say, ‘I take you for my wife.”
That is an anarchist marriage. And so we can
have the ceremony as we go to the train—that
is if you want me.”
She threw lightly this shower of surprises
over her shoulder as she darted away to get
ready for her journey.
Her lover looked after her in a bewildered
way. He feared as well as admired the law-
less being who threw off the trammels of so-
cial life as lightly as a man knocks the ashes
from his cigar. Desiring a striking woman to
hold in leash, he began to doubt whether this
fierce beauty would not be too strong at the
bit. The day previous he had urged an imme-


THE BLACK HAND I47
diate marriage; she had put him off. Now she
appeared half willing; but he hung back.
It seemed no more than a moment when she
was back again, dressed now in black—a garb
more befitting her horrible mission. No man
need wait for this woman while she adjusted a
showy jewel or plastered a final curl. She
flew into the kitchen to say goodby to her
father. He was preparing dinner upon a small
rickety stove, and suggested that she take some
refreshment; she would need it.
“Oh, I cannot eat! I am feeding on myself
to-day!”
Paul Adam smiled grimly.
“To-morrow the world will write my name
by the side of Charlotte Corday.”
“The day will tell,” replied her father curtly.
Then, more gently, “Do not be too sure. No
one can foresee how he will act at critical mo–
ments. The bookshelf of the soul has many
leaves uncut.”
They did not kiss—she had never kissed any
man—a silent pressure of two hands and she
was gone.
“Oh, I had nearly forgotten this!”
She took a small green box carefully from
the closet, where, lying in ambush, she had
sprung forth and bewildered the Black Hand
on the night that fixed her destiny. The hand
that threw with equal recklessness loaves or
stones must move gingerly here.


148 THE BLACK HAND
Douglas looked dubiously at the box. What
if her careless grip should suffer it to fall?
Women were proverbially uncertain of clutch.
He was a brave man, but no one can foot the
sheer edge of eternity with unblanched cheek.
Caution and courtesy alike prompted him to
assume the charge of her ugly baggage, but
she fought him off.
They did not talk much on the journey. The
near approach of a tragedy fetters the tongue
as the shadows of the Alps chill human speech.
They arrived at Lyons in the twilight of that
long, pure evening. The City of Silk was in
holiday attire. On the morrow it would wear
black. Everywhere the tricolor flamed—
everywhere joy ran, sang, danced and floated.
It was a pity to spoil so much pleasure,
Douglas thought, and turned to see if his com-
panion showed any signs of weakening. Her
regal frame quivered with excitement as with
one hand she held his arm and pressed the
green box up against him all too closely. Her
face glowed and paled by turns like the night
sky over some great conflagration, while her
eyes blazed as black stars in a firmament of
fire.
“Shall it be now?” came words fairly hiss-
ing from a boiling heart. “Shall I die a
bride?”
She laughed bitterly where his answer
should have come in.


THE BLACK HAND I49
She was becoming hysterical.
“Well, then, Death shall be my bridegroom.”
“Hark, the procession is coming!” he ex-
claimed.
They had reached the Place des Cordeliers,
which was wedged with a dark human mass.
In the middle of the street stretched an end-
less line of landaus drawn by gayly capari-
soned steeds and filled with distinguished peo-
ple.
“The President is coming! Vive Carnot!”
went up from a thousand throats.
The chief of the French Republic, tall, hand-
some, dignified, his cheeks flushed with pleas-
ure at the heartiness of his reception, walked
slowly with his escort from the Chamber of
Commerce to the carriage in waiting.
The tall woman in black stood not ten paces
from his path. The strong man by her side
saw her bosom heave spasmodically. The
critical moment had come. She cast a swift
glance around her upon the excited crowd.
These parasites of the government would tear
her heart out—her great thumping heart—if
she slew their idol. To-night her beautiful
flesh would be a clod!
“Never mind!” she murmured. “Infamy is
better than obscurity—better for people to kill
me than never to know I have lived ! And
then—I shall sleep well to-night. Death asks
no questions.”


I50 THE BLACK HAND
She looked around to see if there was room
for the swing of her arm. Vaillant's arm was
caught at the fateful second; hers must not be
stayed. The sweep of her glance took in
something that gave her purpose pause. The
smoke of the torchlights had obscured the sky,
but straight in the zenith there shone a single
star, like a holy eye from another world.
Once, she had studied a little book about
astronomy—the only work except those upon
anarchy she had ever read. The volume had
been the property of her mother—not the Red
Woman of the Commune, but the Sister Paul-
ine of the Convent—and while she perused its
contents, in her imagination a sweet and glori-
ously beautiful face, like her own, only more
gentle, bent with her over the yellow pages.
She had, indeed, torn up the book in a fit of
passion, because it contained a statement she
did not like—God, it said, made the stars, and
she would not have any God—but its pages
had opened her gaze to other deeps besides
those of human nature, and a glimpse of the
stellar orbs was always associated with that
angelic face.
All about her were the cries, the roar, the
glare, the tumult of an excited throng, which
her act in a moment might convert into a fiend-
ish mob; within were the hot swelling passions
of her heart—hatred, envy, lust, murder, the
devil of malignant desire—but above, in the


THE BLACK HAND I5I
soft blue bosom of the night, there lay that
holy star, telling of eternal peace.
Was her dead mother looking at her?
There are in all great natures an attractive
and a repulsive force. When pressed too far,
emotion flies back from the positive to the
negative pole. The murderous girl experi-
enced a strong revulsion of feeling coming up
from the lowest deep of her being.
It was the recoil of divinity!
The band struck up the “Marseillaise” hymn.
The President was seating himself in the car-
riage and the procession was starting. The
music aroused her to the consciousness of the
critical moment, and she stretched forth her
long, graceful arm. Her white hand, pallid in
the torchlight, held the terrible weapon, whose
pasteboard covering she had torn off, bit by
bit, as she kept it partially screened by her
lover's coat.
No one saw her. Every eye was glued upon
the central jure in the principal landau. She
gathered herself for the tremendous fling.
In vain!
She could not recover her centrifugal force.
A current of cold air rushed down her back.
The cord held so long tense snapped.
The crowd surged and swayed before her
bewildered vision. The lights danced up and
down, and ran together—black, bizarre, blind-
~


I52 THE BLACK HAND
She saw through the mist a commotion near
the President's carriage—a wriggling mass
that might be men, a white, deathlike face fall-
ing back on the cushions.
She heard the shouts of madmen, the
shrieks of women, the cursing and clattering
of the mounted gendarmes, a writhing form,
with two bloodshot Italian eyes piercing her,
cry, as he was wrenched past:—
“Die—me die for you!”
Then dreamless darkness.
Limp and shapeless she was held in strong
a1111S.
Anon, she heard one as afar off say that she
had fainted.
She was a woman.


THE BLACK HAND I53
XIV
M. Dupont received a sudden commission to
go abroad on important business for his gov-
ernment. His presence was required imme-
diately, both in London and in Washington,
and under the accelerative spur of a danger-
ous rival, he insisted upon an immediate mar-
riage to his betrothed. Louise, obedient to the
wishes of her managing mamma, was not
averse, and so arrangements were hastily made
for a quiet ceremony and a long bridal tour.
M. Leon's gift of his daughter to the Pre-
tender, offered and accepted in the heat of
politics, availed nothing; the ex-broker's prom-
ise was repudiated in his house quite as often
as his note went to protest at the bank. M.
Leon had, in fact, even more influence in cir-
cles of finance than at his own fireside. The
glory of gigantic operations in the past still
made his name a doubtful force on the Bourse,
and the veteran speculator found himself
somewhat in the condition of many govern-
ments at the present day—very strong abroad
and very weak at home. Some unsubstantial
questions of pecuniary obligations, taking


I54 THE BLACK HAND
shape in the very substantial person of Mme.
Leon, induced the stalwart monarchist, much
against his will, to accept the rank republican
for his son-in-law.
“For you know,” urged the female diplo-
matist, “that M. Dupont, though not rich, is
supposed to be well fixed, and M. Jacquot has
only a title, and a very slender one at that.
Should he ever come to the throne, I doubt not
the thing could be managed some way, but for
the present some very brilliant diamonds at
Chevalier's are better than a rusty crown.”
And M. Leon—dear old-lady man—grow-
ing more pliable as his exchequer grew feeble,
replied meekly to that excellent and sensible
lady:—
“Certainly, my dear. But what shall we say
to M. Jacquot?”
“Oh, we will invite him to the wedding, and
explain it somehow.”
Thus it happened that on the appointed day
there were two bridegrooms and only one
bride; for M. Jacquot, holding the ex-broker
as the titular head of the house, to his promise,
insisted that Mlle. Leon, will or nill, should be
given to him.
To Louise herself it was a day of great per-
turbation. She was afraid of an outbreak be-
tween M. Dupont and M. Jacquot. Several
occurrences had boded ill. The newsman had
hurt his hand and left a bloody cross on the


156 THE BLACK HAND
All other matters must be held in abeyance to
this vital subject.
When she was dressed she stood looking at
herself in the mirror. There was a faint flush
—the kiss of the little love god—on either
cheek. She was handsome, and she knew it.
The Deputy ought not to have won his prize
so easily.
“I will make him a little jealous,” she
thought.
She stood in her enchanting loveliness when
he came that evening to claim her. His face
was pale—what faces did not blanch on that
day of direful news?
“My father has given me to another,” she
said, in mingled jest and seriousness.
“My father has given you to me,” he re-
plied, complacently.
“What do you mean, Henri?”
“God gives to each other those who love
each other.”
“And should not my father's choice have
any weight?”
“I am your father's choice; it is my politics
he does not choose. You do not marry my
politics.”
“Not every bride can have two bride-
grooms; I have not yet said ‘No’ to M. Jac-
quot,” she teased.
It was her last sweet bit of coquetry, and
she meant to make the most of it.
* -- ~~~~ **-- ~~~~~~~~- - - - --- . . . . .
------> - -


THE BLACK HAND 157
“And M. Jacquot is here to urge his own
suit. If I mistake not, that is his ring. I will
retire.”
He was in no mood for pleasantry.
But she ran and stood in the door.
“You do not want to marry me,” she pouted.
“Not if you want M. Jacquot.”
He was half vexed and half amused.
“But you don’t know what a chance I’ve
had; I might be queen of France if I would.”
And then she told him of M. Jacquot's pre-
tension and of his offer.
“He is undoubtedly an impostor,” replied
M. Dupont, after listening to her recital; “the
Duc d’Angouleme had no heir. But if he be
a real prince, and has made you a grand offer,
I do not want you unless you had rather marry
me than to be the Queen of France.”
“If you please, sir, some gentlemen wish to
see you,” announced Marie.
“I will give you five minutes to decide,” he
added, as he went down the stairs.
The meeting between the Deputy and the
three conspirators was somewhat strained.
“I presume you are aware that Mlle. Leon
is mine,” was the startling greeting of M. Jac-
quot. “Her father has given her to me. Your
conduct the other night was so outrageous that
he has decided that he cannot give his daughter
to an advocate of plebeianism.”
“Yes,” corroborated the Duc de Broglie,
-------------- - - - ---------- ~~~~ * * * ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


158 THE BLACK HAND
“you acted very injudiciously, for you lost not
only your bride, but a fat office as well. We
had intended to invite you to form the Minis-
try for us when the new government goes into
power.”
“And that will be very soon,” added M. Des-
sereaux. “Revolution is in the air. A turn
of the crank in the present unstable condition
of affairs will overthrow the Republic and re-
store the good old order. I should not wonder
if France had seen its last President.”
All three shook their heads in a significant
way to indicate that their potential hands were
already on the crank, but they did not venture
further than the broad hint.
The Deputy drew himself up haughtily.
“Monsieurs, you can have the office and the
honors, but Mlle. Leon is mine. No man shall
take her from me except by her free and full
consent. As for your revolutionary schemes,
I hope they will fail, as they deserve. And
may God save the Republic of France!”
The arrival of other guests put an end to
the unseemly discussion, and M. Dupont went
back to get the answer to his decisive question.
“Well, are you to be Mme. Dupont or Queen
Louise?”
“I will be a queen.”
The Deputy looked doubtfully at her, for
lips and eyes were not concomitantly adjusted.
***** ******* --~~~~~~~~~~~~ ------------------ - ------
-->= --...-


THE BLACK HAND I59
“But I will be your queen,” she added, as he
reeled beneath the playful blow.
He caressed his pert little bird as well as he
could without ruffling the plumed feathers, and
presently they went down to the bridal.
Louise observed in surprise that most of the
guests wore pained faces, and that there was
a nervousness in the group of friends, as if
they were ill at ease.
A hush fell upon the company.
The priest began to read. He had proceeded
half way through the ceremony when he
paused.
There were voices in the street and the
sounds of men running as if in hot fellness of
purpose.
A bat flew in through the broken pane. .
A shriek was heard below.
A lady guest fainted.
The priest dropped the book.
The bride let fall the ring.
A cry, hoarse, horrible, rent the night air:—
“Vengeance! Blood! Carnot shall be
avenged!”


160 THE BLACK HAND
XV
The wedding guests broke out into exclama-
tions of horror.
A howling mob had taken possession of the
city.
The men, headed by the bridegroom, ran out
into the street. A lawless throng swept down
the boulevard. Another one surged up from
a side street. At the corner the two met—a
whirlwind of human passion, a torrent of hot-
headed men, an unloosened menagerie of wild
CreatureS.
“Down with the anarchists!”
“Kill the Italians !”
“To arms! to arms!”
“Vive Dupont!” cried some students who
recognized the popular Deputy.
“For God's sake, talk to these madmen, if
you have any influence, else I fear Paris will
run with blood!” exclaimed a police officer.
M. Dupont mounted a little cart, while the
students held it against the swaying throng.
“Hearken to me, good people!” he cried,
and a few men in the immediate vicinity pre-
pared to listen, but beyond a dozen yards it
was like speaking into a hurricane.


THE BLACK HAND I61
“Hear me, men! A great crime has been
committed, but we are in danger of commit-
ting a greater crime. The President has been
stabbed [groans and curses], but in this hour
of excitement we are in danger of thrusting
the dagger into liberty—into the Republic—
into every man's right to life. We are in
danger of shedding innocent blood. Be calm.
Go home. Leave these anarchist wretches to
the strong hand of the law. And I promise
you this—I predict—that in a few weeks every
one of the red handed fiends shall be driven
out of Paris.” (Cheers.)
The unusual spectacle of a man in a wed-
ding suit making an address from a pedler's
wagon under the glare of an arc lamp would
have been ludicrous had not the situation been
so serious. As the heads grew cooler one and
another began to notice the personality of the
speaker.
“Vive Dupont!” shouted the people.
“Our next President!” cried the students.
The Deputy raised his hand deprecatingly.
But in spite of the unwisdom of the shouts he
felt flattered by these tokens of his popularity.
He might be the next President—who could
tell? It was unfortunate that he must go
abroad at this critical time.
Although his voice reached only a short dis-
tance, the cheering was heard much further
and drew at each outburst a greater number of


162 THE BLACK HAND
hearers within the radius of his influence. As
a practised speaker, he perceived this and
shaped his remarks so as to evoke applause,
soon having an audience quite equal to the
power of his lungs. Observing that he was
making an impression, he followed up the ad-
vantage by inculcating some political lessons.
“Listen, men! The danger from anarchy
is not in the dagger or the bomb. Deeds of
violence react upon themselves and their doers,
and by the horror which they produce defeat
their own aims. But the danger from anarchy
is that demagogues may use it in the interest of
revolution. The Monarchists would like to
see the anarchists succeed, so that on the ruins
of the Republic they may set up an Empire.
What I say unto you is, fear not the bombs,
but fear the Bonapartists.” (Derisive cries of
“Oh! oh!”)
The Deputy looked in the direction of the
sounds and saw the Duc de Broglie and his
friends mocking.
“Even now while I speak there are revo-
lutionists and traitors in your midst.” (Cries
of “Where? where?” and curses.)
The three conspirators turned livid and did
not venture to interrupt again.
“Our government,” continued the speaker,
“is a government of the people, but we have
enemies at the top and the bottom, and let me
say to you, my friends, that our upper class


THE BLACK HAND 163
foes are more to be feared than our under class
foes. The real enemies of France are those
who try to weaken the people's confidence in
the government. Carnot is dead, but the gov-
ernment will go on. Let me entreat you, my
friends, to stand by the new President, who-
ever he may be. Let me persuade you that
the present Republic is the best government
France ever saw.”
“Vive la Republique!”
“Vive notre nouveau President!”
The Deputy stepped down from his perilous
perch and encountered M. Jacquot, white with
passion.
“Sir, you have insulted me publicly, and I
demand satisfaction. I ask you to inform me
how and where you will meet me.”
M. Dupont turned sharply upon him.
“I will meet you in the public courts where
alone we ought to meet, and I will prove you
the enemy of your country.”
“You republican rapscallion, I will have
your blood!” hissed the Pretender.
But the Deputy walked so precipitately
toward him that he almost trod upon the royal
toeS.
“You traitor, I have but to lift my hand and
the people will trample you into the earth!”
“What is it?” demanded some men who had
partly overheard the altercation, while from
those who stood further back and who


164 THE BLACK HAND
imagined something had been said disrespect-
ful of the dead President came the cry, the
quick remedy of mobs:—“Kill him! Tear
him in pieces!” M. Jacquot was terrified and
slunk away, at first as rapidly as was com-
patible with the dignity of a prince, but at
last, finding the imprecatory shouts following
him, he ran.
It is the nature of mobs like dogs to pursue
the fleeing, and so the frenzied crowd dashed
after the fugitive of whose fault they knew
nothing, but only that some one had directed
their vengeance that way. Their victim might
be the wrong man. Never mind! They would
kill him first and inquire afterward.
A lawless mob strikes more terror into the
object of its fury than other peril. An assassin
or robber may be overpowered; a wild beast
can be faced and often cowed, but wild men
are an irresistible force. M. Jacquot, panting
and half paralyzed with fear, ran up the steps
of M. Leon's mansion.
In the doorway stood a snowy statue, a col-
orless woman—the bride.
“Save me!” implored the terror stricken
man, crowding past her into the unlit hall.
The strong wind had extinguished the
lamps, and Louise stood there white before
the black opening, her long veil floating in the
breeze and her hands raised protestingly
- * - - - * - -
******** *----------- *** - - - - - - - - - -
- - *


THE BLACK HAND 167
At the furthest corner he found a form
crouching and trembling.
“Go now, miscreant!” he commanded. “I
have saved you.” -
Without a word the Pretender slunk sul-
lenly away.
Louise looked up trustingly into the face of
the strong man. He stooped down and im-
printed a first kiss upon her immaculate brow.
“I shall be glad to leave Paris; I am weary
of these excitements,” she murmured.
“You wanted to go to Italy,” he replied.
“But how fortunate in this time of turmoil
that my mission is not to the land of pictures,
but to the land of peace. We must stop a day
in London, and then—America.”
#2 * * ... " " - " ")...A.," " '
---, ... ...--------------- - - - --~ * v- " - " " ' " ~ * : * ~ * ~ * *


THE BLACK HAND 169
mors of their rents. But Paris was full of
foolish fish that could be caught by the bait of
royalty. Daughters with dowries were as
plentiful as playing cards, and as fast as one
beauty was turned down he loved another.
About the only thing to which he unswerv-
edly held was his right to rule. Of this idea
he could not be disabused. Like many an-
other wise man who begins as an impostor and
ends as a dupe, M. Jacquot had labored so
hard at his rather obscure ancestry that he had
come to believe in the figment of his fancy, and
hence in the star of his destiny. He con-
ceived the notion that his mother, who was a
servant of the Duc d’Angouleme, was also a
daughter of that Prince with no reputable
heir. He did not scorn to put this stigma
upon the character of his mother; from her
obloquy should come his glory. The blood of
the great Louis, after a slight plebeian mean-
dering, flowed straight through his veins.
His country, deprived of the counsels of the
House of Orleans, needed a monarch—needed
him. And his hope was not unreasonable. In
fickle France all things were possible. On her
slippery soil how many empires might yet rise
and fall! In fact, under the form of a repub-
lic, there was still the stamp of the monarchy.
Rub off the vulgar excrescence, put a strong
man at the head and—presto!—the thing
would be done—not too great a change to ex-


17o THE BLAck HAND
pect in a government that set up and pulled
down Ministries almost in a day.
And then, once on the throne, what moves
on the living chessboard of Europe! He
would stir and spill the blood of her millions
of useless soldiers; he would crush Germary,
lying between the hammer of France and the
anvil of Russia, and wipe out the stain of
shame on his country's cheek.
Nor would he confine his exploits to war.
A social as well as a martial Bonaparte he
meant to be. The famous quadrilles of the
First Napoleon should be revived. France
wanted an aristocracy—not an aristocracy of
actresses, such as had come to the front under
the present coarse regime in lieu of a queen
and her court, but nobles of rare old blood,
Proud Paris, leader of fashion, must lift her
skirts out of the mire.
With this mingling of patriotism and policy,
carrying his lewd flesh austerely under his coat
of virtue, the Pretender had been received
with open arms by a small circle of the Bour-
bon cult who did not care to squint too closely
into the boughs of his fabulous family tree.
By the boulevard wits he was laughed at as a
harmless carpet knight.
It was rather hard, he thought, that he
should be mistaken for an anarchist, but ex-
plaining to a mob is awkward, and the safest
place when stones are flying is the cover of


THE BLACK HAND 171
one's hotel. He dropped a few quick paces
down a side street and came against—a mag-
net. A woman’s contour threw itself before
the fitful light. -
It was such a form as he had never seen
before, and M. Jacquot had met all types of
women. Tall, so as to seem even colossal,
under the arc lamp, she swept along without
any of those half halts and side looks that
characterized every pedestrian anxious to see
and hear the newest thing on this nervous
night. Only a half running man like M. Jac-
quot could have overtaken her.
Who was she? No female save the vile
solicitor walked unattended at that hour. She
was not that. The poise of her head, her con-
temptuous carriage, the straightforward step
that turned aside for no one, betokened a vir-
tue that could give odds without fear from the
worst of men.
He determined to accost her. Stepping
briskly to her side:—
“You are brave to walk alone at such an
hour and on such a night,” he ventured.
“I am not alone.”
The line of her sight bent only so much as
it might if a puppy had trotted by.
“Indeed, I do not see your servant follow-
ing you. Possibly he has lost you. There are
wild scenes in Paris to-night.”


172 THE BLAck HAND
“I am with myself—that is company
enough.”
The unique rebuff was so fearless that M.
Jacquot became more interested. His swift
stroke had brought him a little in advance so
that he could look almost squarely into her
face. He was astonished at what he saw. The
features so cleanly chiselled were like a Greek
statue for pattern, but alive, speaking. There
are characters in which we do not think
about the intellect; the soul overshadows the
mind. The woman had a soul face. He would
as soon have insulted the Mother Superior of
St. Maur. She was an acquaintance of the ex-
broker's family, for he had seen her talking
with Mlle. Leon in the doorway as he peered
out from his covert in the hall. He tried
again.
“I am a friend of M. Leon.”
“And I am not a friend of M. Leon.”
The catapult impact of her words staggered
him. He grew more curious.
“Indeed, I would give a great deal to know
who you are.”
“I am the Bride of Anarchy.”
M. Jacquot had vaguely heard of a woman
thus oddly designated, and he looked at her
as a botanist scrutinizing an unclassified speci-
men. His admiration grew. That wide
sweep of shoulder, that perfect neck, shooting
up like a polished column of marble—how


THE BLACK HAND I73
they would become a ballroom! He would
like to dance with her.
M. Jacquot was falling in love again! It
was absurd—his infatuation for a strange
woman whose very name he did not know,
and he the heir of the throne. But a Sheba
could charm away the wisdom of a Solomon,
and my Lord High Pretender felt his pound
of sense steadily reduced under the witching
wiles of female beauty. She was eccentric,
but imagine those epic proportions and those
majestic motions refined by a Paris drawing
room!
He was going to propose to her.
“And I will tell you who I am,” he began.
“I am known among my friends as M. Jac-
quot, a retired army officer, but in reality I
am a duke, a prince. I am heir to the throne
of France.”
He looked sharply at her, but the only effect
of the announcement was a more perceptible
curl of the scornful lip.
“Well?” As if she had said, “If you have
any business with me, out with it at once.”
“And when I come to the throne I want a
wife. France wants a queen. Paris wants a
leader of fashion. Will you be that one?”
She stopped so suddenly that he, in trying
to parallel the motion, nearly lost his balance.
She turned on him those two inquisitors, her


I74 THE BLAck HAND
detective eyes, and he felt like a burglar ex-
posed to a flash light.
“Is this your soul's soul?” she demanded, at
length, when she had pierced him through and
through.
M. Jacquot hung his head. He might as
well try to lie to his conscience.
“How many wives have you now? For
every woman you have wronged is your wife,
whether or not a priest has mumbled over her.
He still looked down, and she glanced over
him at the stars.
In strange contrast to the roar of the mobs
and the coarse laugh of the panderess, which
could not be stilled even in this hour of the
nation's heart throe, those mysterious orbs
sent down their sweet, peaceful smile, and the
one which last night had saved her soul from
murder dropped its holy ray of benediction on
her head. It was a friend, a guardian spirit;
perchance, the eye of her mother. She con-
tinued to look at the heavens, her gaze sweep-
ing the vast infinity of worlds.
“Do they all contain torn hearts?” she won-
dered.
Then she dropped her eyes upon the leprous
flesh before her.
“You would make me your creature, as you
have made a hundred weak fools already. Oh,
is there a hell? I have abolished it from my
mind, but such monsters as you make it neces-


THE BLACK HAND I75
sary. A thousand years of fire could not burn
you clean.”
Then having denounced him for his sin
against her sex, her thought, as a released
weight, gravitated to the ego. His insulting
proposition to her, which he had partly con-
vinced himself was a pure proposal of mar-
riage, was, after all, his crowning offence.
“Suppose you were really the heir of the
Empire, as you pretend, and your love were
honorable”—this last with such withering
irony that M. Jacquot held up his hand as
against a javelin—“what have you to offer
me more than anarchy? You would make me
Queen of France. I will be the head of the
human race. I will be the queen of woman.
When anarchy conquers the world, I will be
the first.”
She was coming back to her old belief in
herself with redoubled conviction. Fate had
made a scapegoat of Caserio because Gabrielle
Adam had a world destiny. She read it in
the infallible oracle—her star. She was drink-
ing its sweet promise with her eyes when M.
Jacquot began to break out in apology. He
interpreted her uplifted gaze as an attitude of
worship.
“Pardonnez moi, I did not know you were
pious.”
The word stung her more than if he had
called her a vile name.
* * * *
- - - - - - - - -, -, *, * * * * * * * ~ *-* * -->< * * * * *-* -- ~ *


176 THE BLACK HAND
“Pious!”
Every quivering nerve was brought into
play to speed the venom from eyes and
tongue.
“Pious! I hate religion! I loathe the
Church! I abjure God! We anarchists have
but one creed—no master, no king, no God!”
She swept away, leaving him staring after
her in amazement.
“Well,” he whistled, after she had rounded
a corner, “I have seen the Sphinx—a woman
virtuous as a saint and wicked as a pirate!”
--~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~-------
- - - -


THE BLACK HAND 177
XVII
The news of the assassination filled the
French people with madness. Mobs filled the
streets of Paris all the day succeeding the
tragedy—all the night—all the following day.
When darkness fell the second time after
that red Sunday, the members of the Dark Or-
der, obedient to a call from their leader, crept
to their old resort.
It was the last time.
The Bride was not with them.
“La victoire! la victoire!” they cried, when
the doors were barred. But—Nemesis!
“Henry, Vaillant, Ravachol, are revenged!”
exulted Barron.
“The first of the tyrants has fallen!”
chuckled Garcia.
“This is the greatest boon to France since
the taking off of Henry IV l” gloried Bour-
dalotte.
“Brothers,” said Paul Adam, “there is no
France—there is no Germany. Let him who
loves his brother be henceforth known as a
world man.”
“Vive les monde-hommes!” shouted Barron.
- - - - - - - - - - - - -------, --- ~~~~~~ ** **** *


178 THE BLACK HAND
“The men of the new race!” echoed Garcia.
“The only men fit to live!” declared Bour-
dalotte.
“And now I go away,” continued Paul
Adam. “The time of my departure is come.
Brothers, be true to your vows. Think not
of yourselves, but of mankind. Blows and
curses await us everywhere. We are all de-
livered unto death. But it is good to die for
the world. This is all. Adieu.”
All rose as one man.
“Paul Adam, you shall not go!”
“Let us go with you!”
“Let me go for you!”
Paul Adam raised his hand.
“You cannot go with me and you cannot go
for me.”
“But we are willing to die for you!” said
Michel.
And so said they all.
The leader, with one of his swift move-
ments, turned to Douglas and demanded in-
cisively:—
“Will you die for me?”
The American was taken aback by the sud-
denness of the question, but the magnetism
of the chief was upon him and he answered
simply, “I will.”
But Paul Adam continued to shoot the
lances out of his steel gray eyes. Douglas
had never quailed before any human being,
*------
**-*-------------
*i-


18O THE BLACK HAND
morrow. Even as I speak your enemies are
at the door. The time for action is now.”
Then he went out. But Michel, Barron and
Garcia followed him.
“Tell us,” they said, “which one of us shall
be the leader when you are gone?”
Paul Adam turned quickly.
“Have you, then, so misunderstood the
spirit of the brotherhood? The world men
can elect or appoint no leader. It is not fate
that makes the man, but the man that makes
the fate. If I have led you, it has not been I,
but the World-Soul within me. In him that is
greatest among you shall He dwell.”
“But what shall we do?”
“Renounce yourselves. Identify yourselves
with the human race. Do I live in Paul Adam?
I live in all men. And this is why I know men.
I live in them and read them through, and I
say unto you that one is a traitor.”
“Who is he?” they demanded in one breath.
“Are you blind? Who vows to slay the Em-
peror of Germany? And will he do it? Who
seeks to wed your Bride of Anarchy? And
will he wed her?”
“Great Brother, what shall we do to this
man?”
“It is not mine to say. Have I not left
you? And, now, again farewell.”
Paul Adam tore himself away and walked
rapidly up the street. But Michel followed


THE BLACK HAND 181
him. He did not venture to walk by his side,
for in the last moments his adored leader had
been exalted in his mind to the rank of a god.
“I will follow him,” he inwardly vowed, “to
the train—to the ship—to America even, if he
will let me.”
At length Paul Adam turned and saw
Michel following him. They were in front of
the majordomo's wretched lodgings—home
the place could not be called.
“Let us go in; I have somewhat more to
tell you,” said the master, as if he had ex-
pected this devotion on the part of his disciple.
When within he drew three small blank
books from his pocket, replacing one.
“You have followed me, and you have done
well. Now I know that you are worthy to
receive my will. It is here. In this book you
will find the plans for blowing up all the par-
liaments of the world. These parliaments are
sources of law, and we cannot destroy the law
until we destroy the lawmakers. Take with
you a few faithful brothers and form a soci-
ety better than the Black Hand. That has
been destroyed by a woman.”
“But surely, Great Brother,” interposed
Michel, upon whom the honor of being his
leader's confidant made less impression than
the pain of losing him, “your parting with us
is not final. You will come back from Amer-
• **
1Ca.


182 THE BLACK HAND
“I shall never come back.”
Then, in a business way, he explained the
contents of the second book.
“Here you will find directions how to or-
ganize the workingmen of America into an
army for the conquest of the world. The time
may be remote, but our friends should begin
now. If I live after the taking off of him I
have vowed to strike down I will do this work
myself, but if not the plans must be carried
out by another. You will find here instruc-
tions how to form secret brotherhoods, how
to get into your hands the military power, and
all the steps for gaining control of the United
States government, and, through that, the
overthrow of all the governments of the
world.”
“But you forget that I am a doomed man.
Will I return after I have killed the British
Queen?”
“I do not forget, and you will not return.
Copy these plans and give them to one whom
you can trust. Some man will be raised up
who will carry out the will of the World-
Soul.”
When Paul Adam had said these words he
stood a moment as if intently listening.
“What is it, Great Brother? Do you hear
the mob P”
“I hear the tramp of freemen. On a cer-
tain day in every land a trumpet will be blown;


THE BLACK HAND 183
it will signal the emancipation of the human
race.”
Then, drawing himself up to his full
height:—
“Abraham Lincoln gave liberty to a race,
but I will free a world!”
Michel looked at the two little books in a
perplexed way.
“Stay; give me the third book!” he cried, as
his leader prepared to depart.
Paul Adam shook his head.
“No, that contains the great secret, and I
will not reveal it unto any man.”
“But if the world is to be destroyed, why
these plans to subdue the world?”
The dark face lighted into a sad smile.
“The hare has but one path to his hole; the
fox has many. Now I am going, and you are
forbidden to follow.”
“But may I not go with you at least to the
train?” pleaded Michel.
“No; return to the Black Hand, for great
things have come to pass there. Farewell!”
He was gone. Michel followed him to the
door and stood gazing until the revered form
was lost in the darkness, and then he made
haste to learn what meaning his leader had
couched in his last words. When he came in
sight of the Black Hand he paused in aston-
ishment. A seething mob filled the street. The
door was broken. A cry went up:—
“Kill the anarchists!”


THE BLACK HAND 185
The three went into the dark room, Douglas
taking care to keep his comrades, who, he was
convinced, were now his enemies, well before
him. Garcia carried a candle, and, going
ahead, held it up in front of a little mirror on
the further wall.
“There,” declared Barron, “if you will look
in the glass you will see the blackest devil that
ever walked the streets of Paris!”
As he spoke he threw some blinding mixture
into the American's eyes. Garcia blew out the
light, and the two men, rushing out, banged
and bolted the door.
“Betrayed ! But by whom?”
Had some one in turn played the spy upon
the spy? No, it was what Gabrielle called her
father's conscience.
“No secret is deep enough to escape his
probing eyes,” he muttered. “I have made a
mistake—yes, a decided mistake.”
It was a humiliating confession for one of
his kidney. In the difficult and dangerous
work in which he was engaged there had come
a moment when the grand blow should have
been struck. He already knew or supposed he
knew all the plans of the Black Hand. There
was no reason for further delay. The time for
his coup de maitre had come—had come be-
fore the murder of M. Carnot—and gone. But
Gabrielle's charms had chained him and he had
dallied in disregard of his better judgment.


186 THE BLACK HAND
Instead of arresting the plotters and exposing
the conspiracy to kill the President of France,
he had thought to thwart the purpose of the
anarchists by seizing the arm of the fair as-
sassin at the critical moment. But another
had struck the direful blow. Now France
mourned her fallen chief, and he, whose duty
it had been to save him, found his opportunity
for a grand expose lost, himself a suspected
spy among his late comrades, his fiancee prob-
ably turned against him, and his life in the
most imminent peril.
“Well, I have paid dearly for my love,” he
reflected, as he wiped the powder from his
eyes. “But I would do it again, and I will live
and marry her yet, in spite of these accursed
anarchists.”
He detested these bottom men of society
with all his sturdy American sense and sinew,
but his outburst, expressing his native aver-
sion, was stiffened also with a note of personal
exasperation on account of his spoiled plans.
Frustrating the designs of evil doers was to
him a matter of business rather than of senti-
ment. The French government desired to
shadow these enemies of order, and he had
offered his services because it seemed like a
bold piece of detective work. He had a gift in
that direction. God had given to some men
the impulse to commit crime, and to others
the instinct to ferret out crime, just as the


THE BLACK HAND 187
mouse was designed to break into the pantry,
and the cat was made to eat the mouse. Doug-
las had the detective temperament. He could
play any part. He had done the anarchist role
so perfectly that he held a place in the esteem
of these suspicious malcontents second only to
that of Paul Adam. All such phrases as “cor-
porate robbers,” “financial highwaymen,”
“statecraft and starvation,” sat easily on his
lips. He had no individual scruples—only the
official conscience. He could be guilty of any-
thing according to law, but never broke the
smallest bone of a statute. He had once killed
a man while making an arrest. What mattered
it? Life was a game of cards, in which a re-
volver was often the trump.
But with the acquaintance of Paul Adam
and his incalculable daughter a new world had
swung into his ken—a whole globe of psychic
problems, about which he was as much puz-
zled as the astronomers over the markings of
Mars. Such dark juttings out into the infi-
nite! Such supreme contempt for the rod-and-
tape laws which he served, and in the interest
of which he drew his pay! Such lofty altru-
ism! Such a glorious inferno! To arrest
Paul Adam—it were as unfit as to thrash a
bishop!
And then Gabrielle—he might possibly
checkmate the thaumaturgist, but this love-
sorceress, this siren on the sea of wretched-
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ------------- - - --


188 THE BLACK HAND
ness that surged all about the Fauborg St.
Marcel, this incomprehensible being, whose life
sang a weird, mad song that bewitched his
soul—he was as powerless against a woman
with such weapons as a steel sword against a
spirit.
His association with her had been like turn-
ing the pages of a fascinating novel—he never
knew what was coming next. An elemental
soul, a kind of fierce Eve before she had
learned to lie a la mode or the art of wearing
conventional clothes, a troglodyte woman more
used to the flourishing of a ham bone than the
fingering of a piano—she was separated by
such a diameter from the common creatures of
her sex that the only possible forecast of her
actions was to place the minus where, with all
others, he would put the plus. Nay, he was
not even sure that her tragic fiasco at Lyons
was not a stupendous coup de maitre—the au-
dacity of love. Perhaps she had not intended
to kill the President; possibly her purpose had
been to save herself for her lover.
He had not seen her since that eventful mo-
ment when she had swooned into his arms.
Going to procure a carriage he returned to
find that she had fled or had been lost in the
excited crowd. He could not find her any-
where in Lyons, or on the train, or in Paris.
Paul Adam only smiled and shook his head
when he asked for her.
-- " ------' r- - - - - -- . . . . . . *** * * * * * ~ *- :-


THE BLACK HAND 189
“She is mortified on account of her failure
and is hiding,” he had thought, and he rather
liked her the better for the swoon. It was the
positive proof that she was a woman, a point
on which he had stood in some doubt. He
would not have been pleased if she had fainted
at sight of a mad dog or a wild bull; he ab-
horred feminine nerves, but to lose herself in
a national tragedy was becoming a great
woman, and the more so, if, as he suspected, it
was a kind of gigantic ruse to act the chief
part in a bridal instead of a burial. It was so
much more sensible to live and get married
than to die for a sentiment. Caserio may have
been her tool. Perhaps she, with her great
mind, had planned it all out with the poor fool
that night, when she so abruptly left her Amer-
ican lover on the Pont d’Austerlitz and went
off with his Italian rival.
And he, bat-blind man, had been jealous of
her, while as a general of consummate skill she
was marshalling all events in the interest of his
marriage to this splendid strategist.
In fact, the infatuated man wove together a
great many circumstances favorable to the
opinion that his betrothed had been playing a
double part—for a flattering belief, like a mil-
itary captain, when once in possession is sure
to bring in recruits. She was capable of any-
thing, an ungauged woman of infinite possibili-
ties, whose ego was commensurate with the


THE BLACK HAND I91
room. Fumbling about, he found the latch
and tried to lift it, but it was fast. He placed
his powerful shoulders against the door, and
the frail wood yielded. As the full light
poured in he blinked for a moment. Then he
saw facing him a woman—a very queen for
dignity, tall and dazzling, and with a look of
flashing indignation on her noble countenance.
It was Gabrielle Adam.


192 THE BLACK HAND
XIX
Had Douglas entered the room half an hour
earlier he might have ascertained whether Ga-
brielle's swoon at the critical moment on that
night at Lyons was real or feigned, but now
her tumultuous heart was stirred by crossed
WaVeS.
Her father had knocked at her door to take
his final leave. His manner, always serious,
was painful in its solemnity, as of one passing
into the shadow of a mighty tragedy. He was
setting out upon the greatest of undertakings
—the murder of the most conspicuous man in
the Western Hemisphere, or, if he failed, the
catastrophe of the world. Every nerve of the
invincible altruist was toned to profound sin-
cerity. Paul Adam believed thoroughly in
himself and his sanguinary mission.
She was reading in the Figaro an account
of the assassination, and glanced up impa-
tiently.
“I go; you will see me no more,” he said,
simply.
“Then you expect to die?”
She was sullen and continued reading.


194 THE BLACK HAND
“And that you yourself will renounce an-
archy?”
“Never! Never! Never!”
“Within the hour all this shall come to pass.”
The Jeremian turned away. He never ex-
pected to see his daughter again, but he did not
kiss her or even offer his hand.
Gabrielle followed him to the door.
“Father, are you going to leave me thus?
I do not ask affection. I have never asked or
received it. But you have great plans, and I
ask you to tell me the secrets you have told
others, and to give me something to do.”
“The traitor is coming; he will give you
something to do,” he flung back, without turn-
ing around.
Gabrielle returned to her newspaper, but not
to read. Even the thrilling story of Caserio's
crime had lost its attraction.
Her lover a spy! A thief, a robber, a mur-
derer, a pirate—she could love the blackest
character; but an officer of the government—a
spy! The thick blood of crushed generations
boiled in her nihilistic blood. She sat stupe-
fied by the intelligence, her fine, white fore-
head warped in sinuous corrugations, her hand
unconsciously grasping the gleaming knife.
There were excited voices in the next room;
then some one tried to force her door. She
did not move.


THE BLACK HAND I95
“Friend or foe, he cannot harm me. One
cannot kill the dead,” she thought.
But she did not know. Beneath every deep
there is a lower deep. The door yielded. Clai-
borne Douglas was the intruder. He started
when he saw the awfulness in her look, and the
long, ugly dirk in her hand. She rose, and
they stood a moment silently confronting each
other, he astonished, her two eyes glaring in-
terrogation points.
“Well,” he said at length.
“IS it Well?” .
Dividing the distance between them with a
majestic stride, as if she would wring the an-
swer from his soul, she demanded:—
“Are you truly an anarchist?”
He drew himself up to the full of his great
height and hurled the terrific monosyllable:—
“NO !’
“Traitor! Spy! Sneak! Poltroon! Hire-
ling! Craven! Dastard! Renegade!”
She paused, searching for more blistering
epithets.
“Hold, Gabrielle! These are bad enough,
but an anarchist is worse than all. Listen, for
you might as well know everything now. I
am a detective, and my business here in Paris
is to ferret out the anarchist criminals and
bring them to justice!”
The inadequacy of all words kept her livid
lips silent a moment. Such a monstrous con-


196 THE BLACK HAND
fession should be met with a blow, and the
dagger quivered in her fingers. And then she
said, while to the half hypnotized lover the
words came almost as much from the tremul-
ous blade as from the piercing tongue:—
“I hate you—I loathe you—I execrate you!
What! am I a lamb that you dare come into
my presence with such language?”
“No, you are not a lamb-you are a tigress,
and a fierce one; but I love you all the better
for that. I could not love a negative woman,
I must have one in whose eyes the lightnings
leap as they do in yours. We can forgive fury
in a beautiful woman as we can faults in a
man of genius. If you were plain now, your
temper would spoil you, but you are the grand-
est woman in the world, my own, my beautiful
Gabrielle. A wicked anarchist, it is true, yet
the most superb, the very queen of women.”
And so he went on dealing out pearls and
poison. What could Gabrielle do? She must
do something tragic, characteristic. She ran
forward and threw herself storming into his
arms. He expected to feel the knife in his
flesh, but he felt the wild beating of another
heart against his—felt himself almost over-
borne by the Niagara rush of her passion. She
lay against him, her flushed face on his shoul-
der, her raven tresses sweeping over him, her
quivering lips invitingly near. His senses were
fairly drugged, intoxicated, magnetized.
- - - - - ------------ ****** * * ** - - - - - - - -


THE BLACK HAND 197
“Come,” she pleaded, “be mine and anar-
chy's. Be a true anarchist! And I will love
you—oh, such love as I will give you! I will
give you such love as never woman gave to
man before!”
The infatuated man felt himself borne along
by a well nigh irresistible current. But he did
not lose his reason. He had in his pocket the
complete exposure of the anarchists' plans, and
he was going the very next morning to click
the warning in all directions. The next day
the earth would quake with the revelation of
the wide, deep plot to assassinate the great
rulers. Yielding to this magnificent woman's
riot of charms that invaded eye, ear and nerve
and threw a spell over his soul would be to
suffer knife or bomb to do its horrid work
upon the Emperor of Germany, the Czar of
Russia, the King of Italy, the Queen of Eng-
land—nay, upon the President of his own
United States. He would be a world-mur-
derer, deserving the deepest damnation of the
human race. The fearful wrestle between
titanic passion and horror of conscience made
his countenance change weather several times
before he could find his tongue. By the effort
of a herculean will he broke the spell.
“Gabrielle, it cannot be. I will die for you,
but I cannot be like you. I cannot dye my
hands in the blood of innocent men. Believe
me, Gabrielle, you are all wrong in your no-
-
-----------


198 THE BLACK HAND
tions about government. An anarchist is an
adder, a viper, the worst of men. You are too
good and glorious for such people. Leave
them, my queen, and come with me. We will
go to America and be happy.”
The battle crossed over from the man to
the woman. It was as if a fire leaped from
house of stone to house of wood. She flamed
up, eyes, face, voice.
“Why do you kill me with your love?” she
moaned, in a tone so wild that he started at
the unnatural note.
Voices and footsteps were heard in the room
he had just left. The men were coming to
slay him.
“If you do not decide quickly, death will,”
he said.
Gabrielle lifted herself from his arms and
pointed to the outer door, which stood partly
open, as Paul Adam had left it.
“See; you can escape!”
“Escape! And without you? Hear me, Ga-
brielle; I either go out with you, or else you
go out over my dead body!”
Bang! Crash!
The anarchists, with the fury of wild beasts,
burst in upon them.
“You are to die like a dog, traitor that you
are!” cried Karl Barron. “But we have been
good enough to give you a choice. Tell us how
you will be put to death.”
** ******* ---------------------, --> --~~~~


2O2 THE BLACK HAND
“I am going to London to kill the Queen of
England.”
He felt the revelation to be indiscreet, but
his nerves were disordered, and he wanted to
brace himself by a strong assertion. Marie,
however, was little affected by the announce-
ment. Queen of the English or Queen of the
Zulus, it was only some indefinite person who
hated anarchy. She had listened all her life
to threats of killing.
“Yes,” repeated her father, “I am going to
kill the Queen—the great Queen.”
“I will go with you and help kill her.”
At the moment both started violently. The
door blew open, and some papers he had in-
tended to destroy flew across the room. A cry
wild, fierce, blood-intoned, rang through the
StreetS :-
“Down with the anarchists! Kill the anar-
chists!”
“Father, why do the people hate the anar-
chists?”
“It is because the anarchists hate the people.
But, come, we have no time to lose.”
Their few effects were soon packed and the
fugitives were in the street.
“Father, are you not going to lock the
door?”
“No; we shall never come back.”
“But some one might rob the house!”
“That is the landlord's business.”


THE BLACK HAND 2O3
“But the furniture is ours.”
“It is in pawn; let ma tante* have it. Come,
hurry.”
Then the self-doomed man and his little girl
stole along the less populous streets, Michel
pulling his cap over his eyes and partly halting
at times like a shy animal.
It was a long walk; he did not dare to take
a public conveyance. In spite of his early
preparation it was eight o'clock before they
reached the depot, which was crowded and
noisy. English officers swearing at the porters,
Jewish refugees wrangling in polyglot dis-
sonance, American tourists fussy about their
baggage, and Italian emigrants, with super-
numerary children, getting hurt and creating
a hubbub, made a scene of indescribable con-
fusion, quite dismaying to the untravelled
Michel. A square shouldered man, with a
fierce red beard, slipped out of the line of peo-
ple buying tickets and accosted him in the dark
corner where he had shrunk with Marie.
“Why, it is Karl Barron!”
“Yes, I am Barron. We go, I judge, upon
a common errand.”
“And to a common doom,” replied Michel,
grimly.
“You have no hope?”
*The colloquial name for one of the national
pawnbroking establishments.


2O4 THE BLACK HAND
“For anarchy, yes; for myself, no.”
The would-be regicide glanced quickly
around to see that no one was near, and then
said under his breath:—
“The Queen and the Czar—won't they be
rare food for the bomb?”
He grinned horribly. Even Michel was
shocked and fell back a pace.
“Well, we must part. You will find strange
things where you are going. It is not like
Paris. Paris is a city, but London is only some
soil covered with shops.”
“Goodby, Karl. When shall I see you
again?”
“You will never see me again. Goodby,
an.”
They shook hands, looked in each other's
eyes a moment, and then separated, not wish-
ing to be seen together, for the motley throng
contained a number of angry faced men.
Once, when about to enter the train yard,
Michel turned around to have one last look at
his old confederate, but he was gone.
He never saw him again. -
With Marie he took his place in the second
class conveyance and went all that day as one
under the spell of fate. There were the com-
fortless cars, then the ferryboat, then the train
again, then—London.
He was in the greatest city in the world, but
he was never so alone. There were all about


THE BLACK HAND 205
him nothing but people—only people. He
went with Marie to a cheap inn, and when
alone in his room drew from his pocket an
object he had carefully guarded all day.
“You’re a little thing,” he soliloquized, look-
ing at it fondly as a miser at his gold, “but
there's more power in you than in all the blood-
stained pockets of the bourgeoisie, and in all
the crowns of their kings, and in all the whips
of their laws. Rothschild has his dogs that are
better fed than I, and he wouldn't notice me so
much as would a yelping cur; but just let me
shake this before him and he'll blanch and beg
like a crawling slave. And this Queen the
fools think so much of—how she will get down
before me and beg for her life—yes, down be-
fore me, miserable Jan Michel—me and the
bomb. And if I should drop you, my pet—
only just drop you once in the street, we'd
make all London quake and cower. Ha! we're
a pair on us, you and me!”
“Ou demeure votre reine?” he inquired of
the landlord the next morning.
Boniface stared at him without replying.
He inquired again in English.
“Where does the Queen live?”
“Queen—eh?” -
“Yes, your Queen, Victoria, don’t you call
her? Can you tell me the street where she
lives?”
Poor proletarian Michel thought he could


206 THE BLACK HAND
find the English Sovereign by street and num-
ber, as he would inquire for his shoemaker.
The fat landlord, a Cockney, with a slight
Hibernian strain, thrust his hands deep in his
capacious pockets, and stared at his strange
guest in blank amazement.
“You're French,” he said at length.
Michel nodded.
“And you’ve been 'ere—how long?”
“Got in last night.”
“And you want to see our queen? Why,
me man, I've lived in Lunnon all me life, and
I’ve never seen her! There be them as sees
her—Gladstone and them, but she don’t be for
the likes of you and me. You don’t seem to
know much about English ways.”
“But you can tell me where she lives, can’t
you?” said Michel, querulously.
“Well, it's some at over there,” replied the
innkeeper, jerking his head toward the West
End. “But don't you go to thinkin' you can
get work there,” he added, as new light on his
guest's errand flashed upon his flabbby counte-
nance. “Them's all government jobs. Fur-
riners like you, unless you be the Count of
Paris, or some other somebody—and you don’t
look like him—'ll have the dogs set on you.”
With this discouraging information the
bomb thrower set out upon his fearful mission,
Marie following at his heels. He was averse
to asking questions, especially of these log


208 THE BLACK HAND
“Do you know that I am about to die?”
“To die, father?”
“Yes; after I have killed the Queen they
will kill me and you will be left alone.”
It was a moment before Marie could take so
large a fact into so small a mind, and then she
said:—
“But, father, the earth is going to be de-
stroyed. Paul Adam is going to end the
world. He said so.”
True, he had not thought of that. After all,
what did it matter? They were all going down
together. Men were but grains of sand shaken
from a bag. He might reach the earth before
others, but the great mass pressed closely after.
Paul Adam's pyronite would put all to sleep.
But Marie's next question startled him.
“Father, what after that?”
After that!
Oh, yes, there must be a circle beyond the
circle, a depth beyond the depth. His chaotic
imagination, too weak to evolve a plan of mur-
der, was striped with zones of horror when
once it was set travelling toward the infinite.
After that?
His body they would wreak vengeance upon
—hang, quarter, burn.
But the soul—
“Marie, you must not ask such questions.
Come, we must move on. The oath presses
me. The bomb is getting hot.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~------------------------
*-
*==


THE BLACK HAND 209
But he could not shake off the horrid
thought.
After that?—And after that?—And after
that?
“I will ask Paul Adam; he knows all
things.”
But when would he see Paul Adam again?
They had bidden each other an eternal fare-
well. The master himself had gone into the
great unknown.
“Accursed darkness!” he growled. . “Black,
black, black, everywhere!”
A voice of musical pathos rose above the din
of the street. A riband of song fell against
his ear. They were passing an open doorway
and some ill clad people were entering. An old,
white whiskered, saintly faced man was stand-
ing before a mixed audience and singing lust-
ily, while the little rivulets of the eye streamed
into the snow of the beard. Even with his
imperfect English, Michel caught a line.
“Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind.”
“Religion, more religion;” he sneered, and
walked on in disgust; then turned abruptly and
retraced his steps.
“Marie, do you see that old man yonder?”
he said, jerking his thumb toward the open
door. “When I am dead go there and speak
to that old man.”
Marie put up her arms, pulled down his
- - -- - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- ~~~~~~~~~~ * *
-"


2IO THE BLACK HAND
grizzled head and pressed her thin lips against
his sallow cheek.
It was the first time any one had ever kissed
Jan Michel. He stood a moment, confused,
blushing like a boy, and then clasped her to his
heart with a desperate clutch.
“Marie, my child, God bless you!”
Never before had he used the name of God;
even in his oaths he ignored the Deity; and
the pronunciation of the sacred word had a
strange effect upon him.
Michel wept.
Passers-by stopped to look at the unusual
sight—a surly browed man and a fragile girl
locked in close embrace, both faces moist.
Some ill looking fellows made remarks.
The clock of a great church tower struck.
“Father, where is the bomb?” asked the
child, chokingly.
“Hush, little one!” he commanded, glancing
about in alarm to see if the tabooed word had
been overheard, while his hand sought his
pocket.
“Marie, walk on my right side; keep away
from my left,” he cautioned.
The ill looking fellows were craning their
necks to hear.
A peak nosed man, who might be a detec-
tice, was gazing sharply from across the way.
Some gibbering Polish emigrants brushed
them rudely.
**- *-
- - ****** **-------------
–-


THE BLACK HAND 2II ,
A passing sightseer called a friend’s atten-
tion to a distant pile of architecture with the
information that it was Buckingham Palace,
the Queen's residence.
Michel began to tremble.
He remembered what Booth did before he
slew Lincoln, what Solovioff did before he
shot at Alexander.
He must drink.
There was a public house on the next corner,
and in front of it a wooden Hottentot held out
invitingly a mug of foaming ale. Michel stag-
gered into the barroom.
“Wine, wine!” he called, huskily.
He shut his eyes, meaning to drink three or
four glasses in quick succession, but he only
sipped a little, making a wry face; the bar-
keeper had given him whiskey. At that mo-
ment he felt a slight tug at his left side. He
let the glass fall and it was shivered on the
floor, while his hand flew to his pocket.
The bomb was gone!
Simultaneously with the sickening knowl-
edge he saw Marie darting out of the door.
“Hold, Marie, on your life—hold!” he
shouted, leaping like a wild beast after the girl.
The old stoic was fast breaking. He dashed
after her like a madman. She bounded on, de-
termined on her purpose. Looking over her
shoulder, she saw him gaining upon her.
“Father, you shall not!” she cried.


212 THE BLACK HAND
At the instant her arm was upraised as if
she would ward him off. But no! the move-
ment did not mean that. Oh, if it had meant
only that! The outstretched arm clutched
something tightly.
“Marie, Marie, are you mad?”
He reached forth his hand to seize her.
Some children running across the sidewalk
got in their way. Both tripped.
She let fall the bomb.
There was a detonation that shook the
strongest buildings.
Half a dozen people were prostrated.
Michel reeled, but kept his feet.
Through the blinding smoke and dust he
saw the body of a little girl with a great hole
torn in her breast.


THE BLACK HAND 217
Pedestrians plodded on as if the spot had not
been so recently marked by an awful tragedy.
Opposite the public house he observed a
small undertaking establishment, and a black
wagon standing in front. Presently two men
came out, bearing a plain pine box, which they
placed in the wagon, and then, getting into the
vehicle, drove away. The crowded condition
of the street prevented much speed, so that
Michel, on foot, was able to keep pace with
them.
The roar of awakened labor smote the lonely
man with a greater sense of solitude than had
the quiet of the slumbering city. It was as
Barron had said—a great huddling town, some
soil covered with shops, traffic, turmoil every-
where. The thunder of countless wheels
echoed between narrow walls; then, as the
burial wagon with its single mourner jour-
neyed on, came larger arteries, sending up
stronger pulsations of sound; then a broad
avenue yawned with a thinner note; then the
quiet suburbs, where the houses dropped down
and apart, giving their luckier tenants earth
and air; then loomed in view the inevitable red
wall, with its white shafts and its eternal
silence.
The undertaker had some routine business
at the little chapel by the gate, and Michel went
up and stood beside the wagon. Presently the
cemetery bell struck, and the parish hearse,


218 THE BLACK HAND
with its one follower, passed in. The old bell-
man looked curiously at him, but offered no
objection.
The men made short work at the grave.
Michel caught a small handful of the falling
earth, wrapped it in a piece of dirty newspaper,
and placed the parcel in his pocket.
“Why do you do that, my man?” asked one
of the grave diggers.
“Why do you ask?” returned Michel. “Is
there any harm?”
“No; but you're a queer 'un. Mebbe you
know the cove as is buried here?”
“It's a girl—my girl!”
The men touched their hats sympathetically;
then one, struck by a sudden thought, said:—
“You’d like, mebbe, to get a stone for the
kid. I can tell you where to get one cheap.”
“Yes, I want a stone.” Michel's eyes began
to blaze, and the graveman's to sparkle; he was
mentally figuring a liberal commission. “I
want a stone, and, mind you, I want it round,
and, mind you, I want it hollow—hollow ! And
I want it long—yes, and I want it filled. Ha!
Ha! What do you suppose I want it filled
with? I want it filled with powder, d'ye hear,
powder! no, dynamite! no, pyronite! And I
want it put right in the heart of that place you
call Buckingham Palace, and I want to touch
it off, mind you—I want to touch it off myself,
and I'll blow your Queen, and your Prince, and


22O THE BLACK HAND
joyously among the graves, as a star peeping
through portentous clouds.
Michel looked up angrily at the bird, and
then, the men having completed their task, he
picked up in the roadway a rose which had
fallen from the hand of some passing mourner
and laid the flower on the fresh mound.
If he had possessed a pistol he would have
shot himself!
He turned and walked past the long rows of
heaped turf, and then between the longer piles
of more pretentious clay down the congested
lungs of the metropolis, until when the clocks
were striking noon he found himself on Lon-
don Bridge.
It was such an easy place to die that a po-
liceman was stationed there to look out for
suicides. He glanced suspiciously at Michel
and divined his intention. The anarchist went
up to the officer and said bluffly:—
“Sir, may I throw myself from the bridge?”
“Of course not. If you try it, I shall arrest
you.” The man of law debated whether he
should not construe the question into a charge
of attempting the prohibited act. “I’ve caught
six a'ready this week trying to do it, and you’ll
be the seventh. One young woman was too
quick for me and jumped, but we fished her
out.”
“Alive?”
“No, dead.”
**-** * * * ****---------------------- - - - - - - -
- - - - -


THE BLACK HAND 223
“A procession—eh! Some cursed soldiers,
I’ll warrant!”
But the kind of soldiers Michel saw were
different from any he had ever met before.
There was a mere handful of mild looking,
badly disciplined paraders, half of whom were
women. They had no guns, but a ridiculous
band accompanied them. Michel was inclined
to jeer, but he followed them, wondering what
would happen. They halted at a narrow door-
way and filed up a flight of steep broken steps.
A small rabble of boys and loungers swarmed
behind, and in the wake sauntered Michel.
The dim hall in which he found himself
smelled of anarchy. But no! There was no
such good luck for him. He swung indiffer-
ently into a seat at the moment the diminutive
band began to play. When it ceased a little
blotch-faced man with a bald pate stood up
and said:—
“Now, Hallelujah Sam and Glory Ann will
sing.”
“Why, it's religion!” muttered Michel.
He was prepared for an anarchist meeting,
an auction sale or a variety show, but not for
a prayer meeting. His first impulse was to
depart, but he had reached the stage of despair
where he was inert, and he sat with his stone
face laid helplessly against the wall. There
was no reason for doing one thing rather
than another. His limbs, too, protested against


THE BLACK HAND 225
The man's words had a tug like the tie of
gravitation. Michel, rebelling at every step,
went up on the platform. The band played.
The piebald throng gathered around their
latest recruit and droned their metreless hymns
again and yet again, until Michel, his sense of
song atrophied by unuse, began to mumble
chewingly the outlandish refrain. The singing
operated as a soul intoxicant, and he went
around and shook hands with his strange fel-
low worshippers.
“But I am an anarchist!” he said, depre-
catingly, in reply to their profuse congratula-
tions.
“No, you are a Salvationist!” affirmed St.
Pierre.
“No, I ain't one of them religion fellers; I
ain't a priest-man, if that's what you mean.”
But when they went down on the uncarpeted
boards in their lawless worship Michel knelt
with them.


226 THE BLACK HAND
XXII
“I am Cain! I am Judas! I am worse than
all men!”
His lip drooped under his mustache, and
his eyes were bent inward—two daggers
piercing his self-accused soul. The Bride of
Anarchy, the self styled Bride of Death, had
become the bride of Douglas. It was when
they alighted at the wharf at Dover and were
halting at that hinge of rail and steam transit
that Gabrielle said:—
“I take you to be my husband. Say now
‘I take you to be my wife.’”
“I take you to be my wife,” he repeated,
mechanically, as one under a spell.
He felt himself being swept down the cur-
rent—a grand one, rolling with a thousand
tides and storms, but black, death dealing, bot-
tomless.
He had won in the final battle of love at the
Black Hand, but this magnificent woman knew
how to conquer by surrender. She gave up to
him and took him. His victory was more
costly than defeat. When he escaped by a
hair's breadth from his late confederates in


THE BLACK HAND 227
Paul Adam's house he did not go at once to the
Police Headquarters and divulge the plot
against the powers as he intended—he fol-
lowed her. -
She, on her part, half mad with anarchy,
madder with love, regarded him in the light of
a splendid conquest. Not every woman could
tie such a man to her waist belt.
“There, now we are married just as much
as if we had a canting priest mumbling over us.
Here are witnesses, I am sure.”
She turned to the three or four astonished
spectators who stood near.
“I am satisfied if you are, but I'm afraid it's
hardly according to law. Remember, we are
on English soil now.”
“But we are going to outlaw the law, and
this will be the form of marriage when kings
and priests are abolished,” replied Gabrielle, in
her clear, ringing speech. She did not care
who heard her now. Out of France meant out
of the world, and she breathed more freely.
She stood there towering over all other
women in physical splendor and Douglas could
not help being proud of her. But he was ill at
ease. He had betrayed his trust. By his adroit
detective skill he had woven a net about the
Bievre robbers and would soon have captured
them and made a name for himself, but for
this siren, whose charms paralyzed him. He
had given up his position and was without


THE BLACK HAND 229
Gabrielle laughed—a cold, cruel laugh that
made him shudder. He thought of her words
—“I am woman on the outside, but within I
am something else,” for she had repeated once
to him the mysterious challenge she had flung
in the face of Paul Adam's doubt. That she
had faith in her father's universal explosive
and could laugh over the holocaust of a billion
beating hearts marked her as something quite
anti-human—what, he knew not.
And yet he loved her! Her superb form,
the galvanic flashing of her eyes, her dash, her
brilliancy, the magnificent abandon of this
dazzling being, woman or ? who did every-
thing in a continent-like way—the grand en-
semble of her charms bound him to her with
an infrangible tie, physical, but none the less.
enchaining.
“Well, what do you propose to do?” she de-
manded, with the air of the captor to the cap-
tive.
“Go to the first telegraph office and expose
the conspiracy,” came the arrow that hurt at
either end.
Gabrielle stood up to give emphasis to what
she was about to say. She did not leap to her
feet in the impetuous manner of an angry
woman—she was too deeply resolute for that,
and she spoke with the blood-edged determi-
nation that gave her words the effect of a pro-
- *****-*-*-*~~~~ -


230 THE BLACK HAND
cession of teeth in a saw, each successive one
cutting deeper.
“Then, Claiborne Douglas, you and I part-
in the very hour of our bridal we part. And
mark this—if we part, we part forever!”
He would have believed her even if she had
not spoken with such frightful white cheeked
earnestness, for the hollowness in her tone-
the voice as of one dead talking—made him
tremble. He did not fear death, but he did
fear this woman.
“And you would kill my father and Michel
and Barron and Garcia and me. For you
know that is what it means if you expose the
plot. You would worm your way into our
favor and spy out our plans and gain our confi-
dence, and then you would turn round and
betray better men than you. Yes, you are
Cain! You are Judas! You are the blackest-
hearted being that wears the mask of man!”
Every accusing word of the woman he
adored hurt him more than if she had struck
him so many blows in the face. He could not
escape her fury, for the compartment was
locked, but the poor wretch sank down on the
seat and, turning, glued his hot forehead to
the car window. They were shooting out of
the shallow pocket of commerce, Dover, into
a long stretch gray with mist and smoke. He
saw, but did not note anything—how the
downs chased the sands—how the fields pur-
* * * * * * ******* * -------------- *-**** ------ . . . . ... -- *****


232 THE BLACK HAND
to a halt, without waiting for assistance, she
bounded upon the platform.
Douglas dashed after her.
“Surely, Gabrielle—love—we are not going
to part so!”
She answered—no, not so much as by a
change in the wrinkle circle of her pursed lips,
and swept on as if she had not heard. The
guard supposed him to be an impertinent
stranger who had taken advantage of their
joint occupancy of the compartment to insult
her.
“Stand out of the way, young fellow,” he
said roughly, for Douglas had stopped where
his heart died.
Down the street she sailed, past the rows of
cabmen, through the surge of pedestrians,
around the corner, and still the deadly pallor
in her cheek and the wicked look in her eyes.
She had no idea where she was going or for
what—she had no object in view—she only
sought motion as an outlet for the crater fires
within. The sullen thunder of the compressed
traffic, so different from the gay rumble on the
broad boulevards of Paris, made no impres-
sion upon her. There were no people—no
voices—only rays and tones. She went on
this way for some time, fearing and heeding
nothing, as one might walk in a sleep; but at
length out of the shadow and echo she was
** ********* -
*** *** -----~~~~~


THE BLACK HAND 233
aroused by a hand on her arm. She started as
one waking from a dream.
Michel stood staring at her. It was Michel,
and yet he wore an expression quite foreign
to the vinegar-faced little anarchist.
His sour visage had grown sweet.
“Why, how fortunate!” he exclaimed with
a warmth quite unnatural to him and seizing
both her hands. (He was a woman-hater, too,
and hardly had spoken to one of her sex save
Marie in many years.) “How fortunate that
I met you! I didn't know you were in Lon-
don. Where is Douglas? Never mind; I am
glad that I met you, and I want you to come
with me. I have found what you are seeking
for.”
“I am seeking for nothing but death.”
“But come with me, and I will show you
life.”
Still holding her hand and talking, he turned
about and led the way down the street whence
he had come.
Gabrielle followed him mechanically. She
was not glad to see Michel. She did not care
for his discovery, whatever it might be. Curi-
osity even was dead. But his meeting with
her was a breeze to direct her drifting bark.
It was better to go somewhere than nowhere.
In complete abandon she suffered herself to
be towed along and would have been borne
with equal indifference to the dram-shop, to
- - - - - - - --- - - - - - - - - - - - - -


234 THE BLACK HAND
the house of the harlot, or to the dark waters
of the castaway's refuge beneath London
Bridge, if the tide had swept in that direction.
What mattered it which way the dead went?
Michel, almost running in his eagerness,
pulled her on and up a rickety flight of stairs
and in at a door over which a blaring sign bore
the word “Welcome.”
She had a vague consciousness that there
were other people there—a sea of heads. They
were singing and some one gave her a book.
It was a meeting of some kind. She saw every-
thing in a haze, in the center of which like a
glowing sun gleamed the white, flowing beard
of an old man, who appeared to be directing
things. The sounds she heard entered only the
drum of her ear—they did not penetrate the
thought-cells. Nothing reached her save the
frightful pain at her heart.
She did just as the others did—moved her
lips in the hymns, laughed at the odd remarks
of two grotesque figures they called Hallelujah
Sam and Glory Ann, and bowed when the
forest of heads went down under the breath
of prayer. She was an automaton. She was
under a spell.
Suddenly, through the haze and buzz, she
heard her name pronounced. The patriarchial
beard was on her shoulder. The old man was
speaking to her. Some people near her fell


236 THE BLACK HAND
arch the glistening bayonets of her eyes and
answered fiercely:—
“I am an anarchist!”
“Kneel !”
She trembled. The old man's lips came close
to her ear.
“The hope of the world is not in anarchy,
but in the Christ. The great force is love.
God loves you.”
“Love!”
She flung the word contemptuously. Did he
think her a schoolgirl to be treated with hypo-
dermic injections of sentiment? Her only
love had turned into an apple of Sodom.
“I hate all men! I hate you! And I hate
your God!”
“Oh, you poor lost one!” sighed the old
man. “How God pities you! How he loves
you! Now kneel before him.”
She felt her limbs sliding under her.
Bracing herself against the impulse that was
stealing over her through the old man’s words,
she tried to think of some shocking thing to
say.
But in vain. A sweet and holy emotion
polarized her thoughts.
“The Great Lover speaks to you. He says,
‘I have been like you. I have trodden the
winepress alone and of the people there was
none with me. I know you. I want you. I
love you.' Kneel.”


238 THE BLACK HAND
an uncontrollable fit of weeping. Never had
she wept before—not in her overwhelming
mortification at her failure to kill M. Carnot—
not in the insatiable pain of parting with
Douglas. But now she wept—wept as only a
mighty nature can weep at its supreme hour.
Her loud sobs filled the room and struck a
kind of awe to the hearts of the rude worship-
pers. The sorrows of the penitent had often
bubbled over these hard benches, but this was
a cataract of remorse—the contrition of this
woman as superior to the common type of
mourner as the sun is to the glow worm. The
very foundations of her soul seemed to be
breaking up. She could not have told why she
wept, but, as the scalding tears fell, the pain
at her heart grew less.
“‘Peace I leave with you: my peace I give
unto you. Your sins, which are many, are
freely forgiven. Go, and sin no more.’”
As the old man spake these words, Gabrielle
gave a great cry of joy. She still continued to
weep, but the sombre sky had changed and the
rain fell in sunshine. A strange sensation of
rest, as of being held, came over her, and at
the moment she became conscious that a
stranger was kneeling at her side. He was so
close to her that their sleeves touched.
“‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’” cried
the new penitent.


THE BLACK HAND 239
The voice pierced her, and she turned
quickly to look at the man.
It was Claiborne Douglas !
Then he did love her. She had lashed him
unmercifully, but, as a dog following his mas-
ter in all the pain of the stripes, he had stag-
gered after her this long, weary way. And
now he was humbling himself for her sake—
he, the proudest of men.
With the supernatural glow in her heart, she
felt that she had never truly loved him until
this transcendent moment. But the climax
was not yet. She longed to go somewhere out
of sight of all men but him, and, throwing her
flooded heart on his reconciled breast, tell
him how dearly she loved him. Her new-
found joys blinded her to the impassable bar-
rier—the remorseless parting of the ways—
that separated her from this man—her hus-
band, as she now for the first time fondly
called him. She never knew how long they
knelt there side by side, but at length strong
arms lifted her to a seat.
“God is married to the believer,” said the
old man, who had taken his place again on
the platform, “and the best type of that holy
fellowship is the wedlock of two sanctified
souls. Hallelujah Sam and Glory Ann will
come forward.”
They advanced—the tall, gawky youth and
the short, waddling woman—and the old man
-- - - - - - - - - - - - ----, - - - - - -------> --- ********* * * *


240 THE BLACK HAND
with a few simple words pronounced them
One.
“Clay,” whispered Gabrielle, “let us do the
same.”
“But I thought we were already married,”
he replied.
“But I mean Christian marriage. I want to
be married as these people are. It is the bet-
ter way.”
Douglas conferred with the old man, slipped
out and procured the necessary license, and
then, with the congratulations and amens of
the rough congregation, St. Pierre performed
the ceremony.
She was a resplendent bride, the plain sur-
roundings setting off her grandeur as the black
coal adds lustre to the bright diamond, and the
squat figure of Glory Ann with her tawny face
and work-day dress acting as a foil.
Douglas felt the pool of his heart stirred
anew by the fresh beauty of the glorious being
at his side and his eager gaze quaffed deep in
her brimming eyes.
“I never saw you look so beautiful,” he mur-
mured as they passed into the street.
“It is because she is now beautiful within,”
replied the old man, who had followed them
to the door.
“You are doing a great work here,” ob-
served Douglas, who felt moved to add a com-
pliment to the coin he passed into St. Pierre's
**~~~~~~~~~<-----------------------------------------


THE BLACK HAND 241
hand for a marriage fee. “A few such places
as yours would close the doors of vice and
misery.”
He pointed to a table where some bustling
lassies were getting ready for the hungry
camp-followers, as the missionary jocosely
termed his luckless hearers. The old man
shook his head sorrowfully.
“Oh, you don’t know London, or you
wouldn't say that—you would never say that.
We give a meal, but it's like giving the mail
to the man at the post office window—the
whole ragged, wretched line hitches up a pace,
and one joins at the foot for every one we re-
move at the head. They appear mysteriously
from every whither. There will always be
the poor and the starving. The problem of
poverty is hopeless—hopeless. It is a blood
disease, a world evil. But it is not often that
people like you stray in here. We are glad to
see you, for you can be of help to us. You
will come again to the Zion Barracks.”
“I fear we cannot; we are on a long jour-
ney; we are going to America.”
“America! I, too, am going there to look
over our work. Possibly we may embark on
the same vessel.” -
“That would be delightful!” exclaimed Ga-
brielle.
Then, after a few mutual well-wishes, the
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - * *** * * * *


242 THE BLACK HAND
couple bade their benefactor good night and
went out strangely changed.
“I have been blind,” she said.
“But not dumb,” he laughed.
“Clay !”
“Gabrielle!”
“But we will not quarrel again, will we,
dear?” she cooed, leaning upon his arm.
“Not until we disagree,” he answered,
dryly, fearing the make-up to be only a truce
instead of a peace.
“No, but we will not,” she asserted with her
old-time emphasis. “Strange where my an-
archy has gone. I cannot see now that there
was any sense in it—only horrible plots and
murders. It is just as St. Pierre says, poverty
is a pail without a bottom, and misery forever
boils up from below. Anarchy would blow
the pail to pieces, but cannot quench the spring.
I see it all now; I am another woman.” Then
as he was silent on the subject, wisely keeping
aloof from a volcano so recently covered:—
“But where are we?”
“Together.”
“I know,” nestling her hand in his, “but
where are we going?”
“Anywhere, so long as we are not going to
break with each other.”
At that moment their attention was attracted
to the queer action of Michel, who, thinking
they would prefer to be alone, had walked a
--------------------------------


244 THE BLACK HAND
XXIII
Michel was rejoiced to see his old leader;
Douglas would have preferred to avoid him;
while Gabrielle regarded her father with con-
flicting emotions. -
He greeted them without enthusiasm or sur-
prise. He was busy for the moment, but would
see them in a little while.
As the place was an inn, the party arranged
to stop, and while waiting for Paul Adam,
Michel gave an account of the accident on the
way to the Queen's Palace, of the death of lit-
tle Marie, and of the meeting with St. Pierre
on London Bridge. In about half an hour the
anarchist leader sent for them to come to his
rOOin.
“Now tell us why you have done this?”
burst out Michel, as soon as they were alone.
“He who called me out of France spake to
me and told me to tarry here for a season.”
“Who was it that spoke to you?”
“The great World-Soul who speaks to all
men if they will hear his voice. Sometimes he
speaks to the inner man, but oftener to the
senses by the things that come to pass. Three


THE BLACK HAND 245
nights ago a voice said unto me “Arise and go
to London. As I was passing by this inn, a
baker dropped three loaves of bread, which
signified that I was to stop here three days or
until three persons should come seeking me.
The bread denoted that I should feed men. I
have fed men three days, and, behold, three
come seeking me.”
“When are you going to kill the President
of the United States?”
Paul Adam's brow clouded as a reproof to
the indiscreet question, but Michel, whose un-
derstanding was not fine enough to read the
weather in his master's face, continued:—
“Or have you given up your purpose?”
Douglas and his bride leaned breathlessly
forward to catch the reply on which hinged
their happiness or sorrow. The American, al-
though not pleased to meet the man whom he
regarded as his mortal foe, at the same time re-
joiced to know that the world assassin had not
yet embarked on his errand of death. Some-
how, the anarchist leader did not seem so for-
midable now that he was stripped of all the sin-
ister surroundings of the Black Hand, and
Douglas felt that he could cope with him on
more equal terms. He meant to keep the chief
under vigil and thwart his plans. He was glad
of Michel’s question.
“Paul Adam is Paul Adam still.”


246 THE BLACK HAND
“But Gabrielle Adam is not Gabrielle Adam
Still.”
Her father looked at her sorrowfully.
“You are married.”
“I did not mean that—I meant that I am
not what I was. I have embraced religion.”
“Bravo! She beards the lion in his den.
What a glorious woman she is!” was Doug-
las' silent comment of admiration.
“You may embrace all the religions of the
world so long as you do not renounce anar-
chy,” replied her father, quietly.
“But I have renounced it; I do not believe
in it.”
Gabrielle set her foot down firmly to em-
phasize her complete repudiation of her for-
1ner CauSe.
Her father turned to Michel.
“Said I not unto you that if a woman came
into the Black Hand it would be betrayed?
Yet you received her against the voice and
vote of Paul Adam. In that you did not
wisely. And what three noble friends are
these that come seeking me? One a spy, an-
other a traitor, and the third a renegade—for
you, too, Michel, have turned a half compass
around.”
“Oh, say not so, Great Brother! I am still
an anarchist.”
“Oh, Michel, how can you say that? You
have accepted the Christ!” protested Gabrielle.


THE BLACK HAND 247
“And, of course, he cannot at the same time
accept the anti-Christ; that is what the Paulist
Fathers called me,” said Paul Adam, rising as
if to end the interview. -
“Come, let us go; your father does not wish
to see us longer.”
Douglas took his bride by the arm.
“Will you also go?” demanded the anar-
chist chief, transfixing with a reproachful look
him who had been his most devoted disciple.
Michel was in a strait betwixt two. He had
to choose between Paul Adam and St. Pierre.
Would that these two greatest of teachers
might come together and decide which had the
truth! But the spell of the old master was
upon him. He hesitated, walked back and
forth betwen Paul Adam's chair and the door,
stood fluctuating a moment before the imper-
turbable face of his old chief, and then threw
himself down on the floor at the feet of the
great anarchist.
“Paul Adam, thou art the man of men.”
“Rise, Jan Michel; do not worship me—
worship the Godhood of Humanity. I am
only a fragment of God.”
Michel staggered to his feet as one under
a crushing load. When the young couple left
the room they saw him pleading with Paul
Adam that he would go and hear St. Pierre.


248 THE BLACK HAND
“Poor Michel! He does not know him; he
might as well try to bend the Equator,” Ga-
brielle said as they passed out.
“Oh, I forgot! the preacher slipped a tract
in my pocket; you might give that to your
father,” offered Douglas, jestingly.
He drew the leaflet out and there fluttered
with it a loose piece of paper. It was the copy
of the unsent telegram, warning the world of
the anarchist designs, and revealing not only
the plot, but even the names of the would-be
assassins.
“What are you going to do with this?”
Her face as she snatched and read was as
white as the pillows of the bridal bed, and the
flesh had the pulverized appearance that de-
notes violent molecular change.
“Send it to St. Petersburg, Vienna,
Rome—”
“But not to Washington—do not say Wash-
ington!”
“Yes—Washington. I wrote that telegram
on the train and should have sent it the mo-
ment I reached London. But I followed you
—I could not lose sight of you. And when I
saw your father in the room below I waited
again, hoping against hope that he had changed
his mind. But his purpose is unalterable, and
my duty is plain. I must not delay another
moment. The assassins are on the road.”
He extended his hand for the paper, but Ga-


250 THE BLACK HAND
to the electricity that forked forth from her
hot eyeballs.
He rang again, shoving the button with a
desperation that brought a louder squeal from
the bowelless imp below.
Gabrielle pushed a step nearer and laid her
hand on the wall close to the vibrating knob-
the long, shapely hand he had once declared to
be too pretty to be encased in gloves.
His finger-tip thrilled before the white bat-
tery and froze fast to the button, as flesh
against a charged wire, and he had to exert the
strength of his muscular arm before the rein-
forced digit could a third time drive the ivory
into the wall.
He shut his eyes and rang again.
Four times!
One more stroke—the police would be there,
the electric fluid would dart out every way and
alarm the world, the regicides would be appre-
hended—perhaps torn limb from limb.
One more stroke—Gabrielle, his bride of a
day, would be forever lost to him, even if she
did not strike him dead.
But he could not yield; the demands of hu-
manity were upon him.
He must press the fatal button.
With his eyes still shut, his brain sped the
inexorable decree, but ere the finger-tip that
still adhered to the disk could respond to the
shock of impulse his hand was gripped in the


THE BLACK HAND 251
jaws of an immovable vise. There was bone
in Gabrielle's hand—it had seemed only soft,
delicious flesh when she had dropped it trust-
ingly in his at the bidding of the good old mis-
sion father. At the same time a voice, rau-
cous, unnatural, stretched with the immeasur-
able passion of a woman's will, beat in his
ear -
“You shall not! I forbid you! I will kill
you! I command you to die!”
Oh, if the I-potency alone could slay, this
man would have fallen lifeless at this woman's
feet!
Such tension of high-strung nerve! Such a
voice—a great tonal sword that seemingly
plunged straight into his soul, disdaining the
petty gateway of the ear! Such multiple force
of individuality, as of all womankind concen-
trated in six feet of white, quivering flesh!
She stood a moment, towering in a passion
almost superhuman in its intensity, and then
the stretched bowstring snapped. She dropped
down weeping. Tears came easily enough now
that St. Pierre's magic blade had cut the fur-
row. She wailed forth :—
“Oh, you do not love me! You want to kill
my father! Oh, I wish I had died in Paris!
Why did you take me only to torment me?”
“Gabrielle, you said hardly an hour since
that we would never quarrel again.”
“But how can I help it when our lives go
- - -----------------------------, ----------- *** -


252 THE BLACK HAND
apart in this way? It seems as if we could
never be happy together.”
“I will tell you, Gabrielle; we will make one
more effort to compromise. I will wait until
to-morrow before I expose the anarchist plot,
if you will promise to try to get your father
to turn from his purpose.”
“I promise to try.”
Neither felt much relieved by the patched-
up peace, for they knew what an infinite dis-
tance lay between the trial and the turning, but
it was the only possible truce between two
wills adamantine and antipodal.
They were startled by excited voices and
rapid footsteps in the hall, while at the same
time the din of the street below was augmented
by the heavier thunder of wheels and the clang
of bells.
Men were pounding at the door.
“Where is the fire?” cried an excited group
when Douglas opened it.
“The fire!” he exclaimed in a dazed way.
“Yes, you rang for fire.”
“Oh, I wanted some in my room, I guess;
the weather is chilly.”
The landlord and his knot of underlings
looked disgusted and retired.
“Remember—the first thing in the morn-
ing,” said Douglas when the door was closed
again. “You must put it to him strong. You
know it's the ultimatum, as the diplomats Say.
- *- - - - - - --------------------- *-* * - - - - - - - - -


THE BLACK HAND 253
Your father must halt or be halted—haltered,
I fear, if he gets to America.”
Gabrielle's look rebuked him for his unfeel-
ing jest.
“I will see him the first thing,” she said,
coldly.
But the next morning when they sought
Paul Adam's room, they found that he and
Michel had gone. They had left without a
word of farewell or a sign to indicate whither
they went.
Douglas and his wife looked blankly at each
other.
------------ ~~~~~~~~~ ----- ----- - - ------------------~~~~


254 THE BLACK HAND
XXIV
“To the cars—to the steamer—to America!”
he cried, as soon as he had recovered from his
astonishment.
When they reached the depot the first Liver-
pool train had already gone, but the second
made close connection with one of the Atlantic
liners. They had not booked themselves to
sail, but there would doubtless be room; the
tide of travel was running Europeward now.
Douglas, with his bride on his arm and his un-
sent telegram in his pocket—for he had writ-
ten it again after Gabrielle's mad outburst—
stepped on board the swift express, which to
his impatience seemed to creep.
To the instinct of the officer was added the
enthusiasm of the patriot. For the time he
forgot the perils of king and czar—his concern
was to seize the man who was stealing with re-
morseless purpose upon his country's chief.
He might, indeed, send a cable despatch of
warning causing the arch-plotter to be appre-
hended the moment he touched the New York
pier, but he wanted himself the fame of arrest-
ing the great anarchist, and besides there were
f*****-*** ---------- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


THE BLACK HAND 255
possibilities of infernalism in Paul Adam with
which an inexperienced officer might not be
able to cope. For although Douglas was half
incredulous about the power of the universal
explosive which the leader of the Black Hand
claimed to have discovered, still the mysterious
man knew enough about the arts of diabolism
to make him the most dangerous person that
ever set foot on American soil. Once again his
eye upon that inscrutable face and he would
not suffer it to escape him until it was past
doing mischief.
And was not he, too, Douglas thought,
making history, ferreting out a fouler crime
than the murder of poor Darnley, exposing a
more nefarious plot than that of Guy Fawkes?
There was no rest for him. He was matched
against the boldest, darkest man of the times,
if not of all time—a man he suspected of other-
world influences. And then—he had taken the
spotted leopard for his mate!
Arriving at Liverpool they dashed with the
best horseflesh to the pier, he with the nervous
hurry of the American temperament, she with
the racer's glow in her handsome face. They
were in time. The ocean greyhound was just
bracing for the long run. They did not have
to look long for the objects of their search.
The two anarchists stood on deck watching
the preparations to sail.
Paul Adam noted their arrival with no more


256 THE BLACK HAND
sign than in his surveyal of the half thousand
other passengers who crowded ship and shore,
but Michel was a little shamefaced in the pres-
ence of the friends he had left so unceremoni-
ously.
“So we have found you,” Gabrielle said.
“Yes, you have found us,” replied her
father; “you have found us, to your sorrow
and mine. This will be an unhappy voyage. A
cage, with two birds, fell over the rail as you
came on board. One was black and one white,
and both were drowned. The fates pursue us
across the sea.”
To Gabrielle his words were a shadow fall-
ing upon a shade. She, too, felt the boding of
ill-felt that there was treachery in the green
sea that licked so fawningly the steamer's
fresh paint. But she was borne irresistibly on.
Though assured the cringing billows would
rise and strangle her, she could not have given
her foot pause on the returnless way. Some
life currents are too strong and rapid for the
strongest swimmer.
But just as the great ship gave its parting
cough, among the passengers who crowded the
upper deck, there flashed a form that inspired
the oppressed woman with hope.
It was St. Pierre.
The young couple started involuntarily to-
ward him. Even Michel for the moment


THE BLACK HAND 257
tugged at his chain, and then sank back again
under the absolute fire of his master's eye.
The good father greeted the bridal pair cor-
dially, holding a hand of each.
“Oh, if you could only help us!” sighed Ga-
brielle.
She would not have spoken in this manner to
any other person, but, some way, to ask him
did not seem a request.
“He cannot help us—none can help us,” said
her husband, “for whoever helps the one harms
the Other.”
“My children! Married yesterday and di-
vided to-day! Does the road fork so soon?”
“It always forked! There was never one
road, but two!” she replied, passionately.
“And, knowing this, you tried to join to-
gether what God had not joined together? Oh,
my children!”
“We loved each other,” murmured Ga-
brielle. “I suppose we ought not to have loved
—I mean not in this way.”
“My poor children, God pities you—God
loves you!”
And he turned sorrowfully away, leaving
them alone with their incurable malady. As a
mask for their feelings, they hastened to join
those who were crowding the rail to wave
adieus to friends on shore, for the ship had
swung into the channel. The bridal couple
had no one to take leave of, but they had not


THE BLACK HAND 259
vision that takes in things without seeming to
See.
“Those Frenchy looking fellows are watch-
ing us,” the American whispered. “But we
have nothing to fear; we stand on an equal
deck, and soon, my love, we hope to tread the
free soil of the New World.”
He said this with patriotic pride, but his
kindling glow brought no reciprocal flush to
Gabrielle's cheek. Fear! Why should she fear
anything save the inexorable purpose of the
iron man by her side? Hope! What had she
to expect in the new, strange land but the
slaughter of her kindred? In the insoluble
problem—how to reconcile the irreconcilable—
one issue alone became clear—she would never
live with the man who should ruin her father!
Slowly the shore melted away—to a bluish
bank—to a faded ribbon—to a wavering
thread. As the Old World vanished, the pas-
sengers one by one turned and gazed dream-
ily from the other side of the ship out into the
twin vacuity, the vast solitude, confronting
faces of uncanny sky and inscrutable sea—the
unknown ring of Fate.


260 THE BLACK HAND
XXV
Two brides of height so unequal that the line
of vision of the one who sat in a steamer chair,
and the one who stretched her petite form to
the full of its dainty inches, made like angles
with the ocean's rim, leaned over the ship's
side, gazing at the wide waste of sea and sky.
“How dreadful!” exclaimed Louise, shud-
dering slightly with tightening clutch upon her
husband's arm. “I dislike the night on the sea.
No theatre, no opera, no parties—nothing but
waves and stars. How shall we pass the
time?”
“How glorious!” murmured Gabrielle, in the
ear of the man to whom she had twice vowed.
“Paris is beautiful, but the wide sky is better
than the most gilded cage. I begin to feel my
wings. Oh, if we had only met before—”
She paused abruptly, for as they drew away
simultaneously from the rail at the sharp whis-
tle of a craft shaving the ship on the opposite
side the eyes of the two women met.
A single second they looked at each other,
the Bride of Aristocracy and the Bride of An-
archy—pale lily and flushing rose, Louise
- - ---------- - - - - - - - -


THE BLACK HAND 261
shrinking in mute protest and Gabrielle crim-
soning in defiant shame.
The men did not see the flashing of the level
glances. M. Dupont was busy gathering up
some chairs, and Douglas had turned to say
something to Michel.
“We are known,” whispered Gabrielle,
drawing her husband apart from the group.
“The Deputy of M and the daughter of
M. Leon are on board.”
“My Paris beauty,” he replied, exulting in
the physical splendor of his own bride as he
surveyed the inferior charms of the other, “I
am not now the hunted hare, but the tracking
hound. We have nothing to fear; I am an offi-
cer, not an anarchist.”
“An officer—oh, how I hate the word | But
now we won’t quarrel; I’ve said we won't and
we won’t. But I'll tell you what we will do;
we will go away somewhere by ourselves when
we get to America, and we won't be either offi-
cers or anarchists, will we, dear?”
She smiled archly, pressing his arm, with as
near an approach to purring as the tiger is ca-
pable of. But he was not caught by her coo-
ing. It was the trick of woman to gain by art
what she could not carry by storm. He liked
her better when she was her flashing self.
“Gabrielle, you know it cannot be,” he said,
ruefully. “The issue is between your father
and me. He will not yield; I cannot yield.”
---------------t- -* ---


262 THE BLACK HAND
“But my father is as good a man as your
President,” she broke out, passionately. “And
you will kill him—you will kill my old father?
Did not you Americans hang the anarchists at
Chicago?”
They were quite alone now, so that they
could talk without fear of being overheard—
only from the distant cabin window did they
see the man with the forked beard peering at
them. He took both of her hands and tried to
reason with her.
“Gabrielle, this is not a comparison between
one man and another; it is a question of prin-
ciple. If anarchy is right, then governments
and parliaments, kings and presidents are
wholesale murderers, and ought this instant to
be blown from the face of the earth; but if
anarchy is wrong, then he who teaches such
things should be prevented from doing mis-
chief. Now, is anarchy right or wrong?”
His deep earnestness awed her, but it was
the dilemma in the question more than its
moral quality that troubled her. Casuistry was
a species of harmless theology, but the dough-
tiest soldier quails before a pair of horns.
“Must I answer now?”
“So far as your father is concerned—yes.”
She thought her case hard. She could not
marry a weak character, and she could not live
with a strong one. She must bend or break
before this mighty willed man.
-----G--------- r *** ***... --- (- - - -, -- *- :


THE BLACK HAND 263
No—it was not quite that alternative yet.
Her bag of resources had still an arrow.
“You know I was to give my father another
trial.”
“And you have not yet done so. Well, if
you wish to catch at that straw, you are wel-
come. Perhaps he will be more tractable on
the sea than on the land.”
He smiled sarcastically.
“At any rate I will try this once.”
With bitten lip she dashed away on her
hopeless errand. The bitter dose must be taken
in the swing of impulse; she could not do any-
thing if she stopped to reflect.
Her husband followed more slowly. He
pitied her not only because of the fate that
awaited her father, but also for the probabili-
ties of peril to herself—a peril which her self-
sufficiency prevented her from properly weigh-
ing. It was doubtful if Paul Adam's arrest
could be effected without entangling also in
the meshes of the law his proud and beautiful
daughter—herself a well known anarchist of
Paris. M. Dupont's wife had recognized her
as a fellow passenger. And the two mysteri-
ous Frenchmen with the roving eyes—who
were they?
Douglas overtook her just as, in response
to her importunate knock, her father opened
his stateroom door. Crushed between the ice-
bergs of two unchangeable wills, the unhappy
* -------------------------- ------ *****


266 THE BLACK HAND
The two men stood facing each other, the
American with his Herculean shoulders
against the door and his quivering hand raised
to give emphasis to the threat.
Paul Adam quietly took from his pocket a
blue phial. His face was ashed with his awful
determination, but his passion was so com-
pletely under rein that not a nerve thrilled.
“You have said it,” he remarked, calmly.
“Said What?”
“You have declared the day of doom. I
shall dash this phial against the first soil. Go
now and pack up for the next world the priests
prate about, for the end of all things is at
hand.”
“Then I understand you, do I? Rather
than have your will thwarted you will dye
your hands in the blood of the whole human
race?”
“The World-Soul sent me to save mankind.
Whether I shall save them by life or death is
not mine to say, but his that sent me.”
“And you mean to blow all men into eter-
nity?”
“I dO.”
“Then you are the devil.”
The American turned upon his heel and
went out so abruptly that he almost ran into a
man standing just outside the door, evidently
having heard all that had transpired within.
It was the Frenchman with the forked beard.


THE BLACK HAND 267
Gabrielle did not notice him, but closely fol-
lowing her husband was breaking out into a
gusty exclamation.
“Hush !” he commanded.
The corners of his mouth were white and
straight, and an expression new to her over-
spread his countenance.
“What is the matter? Why do you look in
that terrible way?”
Douglas turned around and saw the stranger
watching them. Other passengers, too, were
regarding them curiously.
“Let us go aft; we are exciting attention,”
he said, in a low voice.
“What is it? What are you about to do?”
she pleaded, for a look of ghastly resolve made
his features as the face of another man.
“It must be done,” he muttered, speaking to
himself rather than to her.
“What must be done? You are planning
something against my father, but I implore you
not to touch those gray hairs. The vial prob-
ably contains some harmless mixture.”
“Gabrielle, your father's threats are not
harmless. You know better—or worse—than
you say. His pyronite may not have the ex-
plosive power he claims for it, but I have no
doubt there is enough of devilishness in that
vial to make a terrible slaughter. Your father
is a man of the black arts, and may send the
ship and all on board into eternity any mo-


268 THE BLACK HAND
ment. I would tell the captain about him and
have him put in irons, but I fear that with one
of his lightninglike movements he would hurl
his vial before any one could seize him.”
“What, then, do you mean to do?”
His only reply was a smile—a cold, bitter
smile—that failed to undo the resolution that
sat so whitely about his lips.
“Clay, I have thought of a man—an elo-
quent man—who might talk with my father.”
“St. Pierre?”
“No; father hates a priest, and would not
listen to him. I mean the Deputy of M •
He is a radical, almost a socialist, and a man
of great power.”
“I have no faith that any man can change
Paul Adam, but you can try. You had better
speak to the Deputy yourself; you are French
and—a woman.”
“Oh, Clay, I cannot ask a favor of him—a
lawmaker! You know how I loathe all of his
class.” After a moment she added, falter-
ingly:—“I might, I suppose, speak to his
wife.”
“Happy thought, my queen. You know her
–you spoke to her once, I think you said.”
Gabrielle winced. She had cursed M. Du-
pont's bride on her wedding night. Could she
now beg of her?
“You need not tell her all,” suggested her


THE BLACK HAND 269
husband, mistaking the cause of her embar-
raSSment.
She struggled a moment, and then set her
lips hard together. Her pride had been al-
ready humbled; another stoop could not add
much to her abasement. Anything, if only
she could drive the deadly glare, the white
awfulness that meant she knew not what, from
the face of the man she loved.


27o THE BLACK HAND
XXVI
“Three days married and still happy!”
Louise laughed and looked coyly at her hus-
band as they sat alone in a cosey little corner
of the cabin. It was her first night on the sea,
and the strangeness of the situation drew her
closely to the man who filled the bounds of her
small horizon.
“Yes, we are the happiest people on board,”
he replied, regarding her fondly. “I breathe
an air of freedom hitherto unknown; I shall
go back with reluctance to my politics and
place hunters.”
“Oh, let us never go back; let us always be
like this!”
“What, always sailing on—no theatres, no
operas, no parties?”
“No, I don't mean that; but always be just
together. Here I have you all to myself, but
in Paris you are full of bills that you want to
pass or don't want to pass, and those tiresome
lobbyists running to see you, and then the
anarchist plots—oh, dear! I think sometimes
I’d rather live in New York, only I hear there
are Indians there.”


THE BLACK HAND 273
directly toward her. Louise turned pale and
shrank back.
“Do not fear me! Am I then so terrible?”
was the salutation of the taller bride, whose
piratical beauty made the other a trifle en-
vious.
“You pronounced a curse upon me,” fal-
tered Louise.
“I will make it a prayer. Forgive me. I
love you; you are beautiful.”
She said the words chokingly. Louise
looked at her doubtfully.
“You do not believe me. Trust me. I am
not the same person I was.”
“But you were such a violent woman; you
were called the Bride of Anarchy.”
“I have found peace.”
“And you don’t want to kill us all?”
“No; I want to save you, and for that rea-
son am I come to you. There is a desperate
man on board this vessel.”
“Jules Jacquot?”
“No; Paul Adam.”
Louise had heard of the great anarchist, but,
compared with her persistent suitor, he repre-
sented an invisible pestilence, while the Pre-
tender stood for a very visible wild beast.
“This man,” went on Gabrielle, “has some
fearful scheme he means to put into action as
soon as we reach America, and he must be dis-
suaded from his purpose.”
*
- - - - - - - - - - - - - * * * ~ * ~ *- : - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


274 THE BLACK HAND
“Why don't they arrest him?” inquired Lou-
ise, innocently.
Gabrielle knit her fine brows.
“Oh, we don't want to arrest him—we want
to influence him! Your husband is a great and
eloquent man, and I thought he might say
something to turn him from his bent.”
“Yes, my husband has great powers of per-
suasion,” assented the flattered little woman.
“What is it you wish him to say to this man?”
Gabrielle was nonplussed. She had no clear
idea of what she wanted M. Dupont to say to
Paul Adam.
“Oh, well—ask him not to be an anarchist.”
“Why, I thought you were an anarchist!”
“Well, I am; but not such an anarchist as
he is. I am a Christian anarchist.”
“Oh p”
Louise had as definite an idea of this new
species of malcontent as she had of brilliant
darkness. Still, there were white crows, per-
haps, though she had never seen any.
“He is so set—this man,” added Gabrielle.
“But my husband can influence him. Why,
I’ve heard men say he could twist the House
of Deputies around his finger.”
“And you will promise for your husband not
to have the man arrested—only to talk to
him?”
“Certainly; my husband will do just as I
wish.”


THE BLACK HAND 275
“A good husband. I wish mine—” but
she checked herself.
They stood talking a few minutes longer,
Gabrielle in her crushed strength, but yet re-
taining so much of dominance that her re-
quests had the intonation of commands; and
Louise in a flutter of mingled joy and fear, as
of a boy waiting on a giant, and uncertain
whether his huge friend will fee him or eat
him. And then the two women parted, mu-
tually pleased, just as M. Dupont re-entered
the cabin.
“I am sorry that your eyes were only too
correct,” he said. “M. Jacquot is on board,
but he is thoroughly cowed and seems afraid
of me. I do not think he will dare to do any
mischief.”
“Oh, Henri, I have had such a strange re-
quest! That wild woman, the Bride of An-
archy, has been to see me, and she wasn’t so
very wild either, but she wants you to do a
very funny thing.”
“Well, I am in the humor for something
funny. Pray, what does she want me to do—
repeat my speech in the House on the “Toler-
ation of Anarchy’? That was about the queer-
est of all my efforts, seeing that the murder of
M. Carnot followed.”
“No; but she does want you to make a
speech, and to one person only. She wants


276 THE BLACK HAND
you to use your influence with a man to dis-
suade him from doing something.”
The Deputy looked amazed.
“Dissuade him from getting married, I sup-
pose. No, I beg to be excused; my eloquence
would fail there.”
“No, it isn't that; it's some plot or other.
Oh, Henri, do help her ! Go and find the man
and talk with him; she seemed to be in such
distress about him.”
“But who is the man, and how am I to know
him among all the six hundred pasengers? Did
you ask her to describe him?”
“Oh, I forgot that!”
“But what is it I am to say to him?”
“Why, I told you—to keep him from doing
something.”
Her husband laughed outright.
“Well, I like that. I am to talk to a man I
do not know, to prevent him from doing I
know not what. That is blindfolding a blind
man in the dark.”
“Oh, but I remember now. She told me his
name; it was Paul Adam.”
“Paul Adam, the Anarchist!”
“Oh, yes, and I remember now what you
were to say! You were to ask him not to be an
anarchist.”
M. Dupont laughed again.
“Which is much like asking a bear not to be
a bear.”


THE BLACK HAND 277
“But, Henri, you will go and speak to him; I
promised her for you.”
“Well, I will go and see him for your sake,
but I can only fire a few general propositions
at him, unless he should get a streak of confi-
dence and confide in me this great and terrible
thing he is about to do.”
He spoke lightly, and then, there being no
one within eye range, he stooped and kissed
her. They were very happy. M. Dupont did
not want an intellectual woman. The half man
in female attire who harangued on the plat-
form and the neuter blue stocking who wrote
books he abhorred. His woman must love a
man better than an idea and prefer a kiss to a
vote. A married couple, he reasoned, should
not be twin stars of equal lustre, but a great
globe and a small satellite. He was the globe.
A wife had no business with opinions; she
should revolve around her liege lord. When
his pert little bride criticised the republic—his
republic—he did not take her seriously. Her
thoughtless twitter merited as much attention
as the harmless squeaks of her pet bird, which
turned its pretty head knowingly and objected
in absurd falsetto to his wise speeches. And
so the Deputy caressed the doll that possessed
the three qualities of the French wife—beauty,
vivacity and appreciation of the masculine unit
of which she was only the prefixed cipher.
“I will now go in search of Paul Adam,” he
said.


278 THE BLACK HAND
XXVII
The Deputy's task was not so difficult as it
seemed. While looking for M. Jacquot, he
had observed two strange men standing in the
extreme bow of the vessel, and he rightly con-
jectured that one of them was the famous an-
archist.
The place suited Paul Adam's nature. He
stood with a hand on either rail, gazing in-
tently into the sea as the great ship ploughed
its way through the blue-black liquid, his gaunt
form in the prow towering up against the wisp
of light in the west like one of the carved fig-
ures on the quaint craft of the ancient Vikings.
Behind him stood Michel.
The Deputy approached quite near.
“The deep appears to have a fascination for
you,” he observed, pleasantly.
“It is because the dead are there. The dead
are better than the living.”
Paul Adam did not so much as turn around.
Even curiosity in this self-mastered man was
under bit.
“Is that the reason you kill men?”
The Deputy meant to make short work with


282 THE BLACK HAND
you are unwilling to arbitrate? It is because
you are afraid of losing your ill-gotten power.
You think a standing army is a better protec-
tion than an unbiassed judge. It is because
you are unjust, and know yourselves to be un-
just, and dare not submit your claims to an
impartial council, that you are willing to be
wholesale murderers of men.”
Paul Adam became tragic in his fearful
earnestness. One accusing forefinger trem-
bled in the Deputy's pale face, while the other
hand pointed to the sea, beneath which slept
the championed dead. In the east, the full
moon rose over the waves like a fiery red eye
of retribution, and the increasing wind, pilot-
ing a storm, came in great ghostly whispers
through the ship's rigging. Michel had never
seen his leader aroused before, and he looked
on in astonishment and awe. At last, the long
slumbering volcano was in awful eruption.
“Suppose I grant all you say, how does an-
archy help the case?” inquired the Deputy, try-
ing the wrestler's trick of shifting the ground.
“Anarchy calls the attention of humanity to
the great crying wrongs. We have tried in
vain to rouse men through the press, but the
world that shuts its eyes to printer's ink will
read what is writ in blood. Anarchy will have
no government whose tender toes are in con-
stant danger of being trodden on by a neigh-
boring power, and for whose soft sake mil-


THE BLACK HAND 283
lions of men must shoulder arms and kill each
other. Anarchy demands to know why, if
there must be rulers, all Europe may not have
one government instead of twenty—one great
federated republic, with no standing armies
and no more wars. Anarchy declares for the
people—for man—for the race.”
“And you propose to kill the rulers to bring
about your millennium?” sneered M. Dupont.
But he shook from head to foot, as one in a
fit of ague. What before had been a vague
foreboding, and of which he had tried to warn
M. Leon and his monarchist friends, became
an irresistible conviction under the startling
sentences of the great Prophet of Unrest—the
near coming of a day when the Black Beast
should rise and the whole world should run
blood. He made a silent vow to resign his seat
in the House of Deputies and devote his life
to the welfare of humanity—to the averting of
the Day of Judgment. He could not join the
anarchists, for they (to change his metaphor to
the striking figure of Paul Adam) were giving
the wrong medicine, but the disease—the dis-
ease of murder, the horrible plague of war that
was eating out the very vitals of Europe—he
would no longer lend himself as an agent to
propagate its damning virus. As a legislator
he was responsible for converting a continent
into a camp, but he would wash his hands of
further guilt.
----------------


284 THE BLACK HAND
“This is a step—a first step; other means
will come later,” replied the apostle of the New
Order. He bared his head to the salt spray
that the rising waves tossed up, and then, lift-
ing again the awful arm of prediction, added
in lower register, “I say unto you that so sure
as this moaning wind will bring the storm to-
morrow, so sure shall the wail of the world
bring the equinoctial in the to-morrow of
man.”
“You are a dreamer—a visionary; you will
never convert the world to Paul Adam,” re-
plied the Deputy, for he must retreat in good
form.
“The dreamer of to-day is the prophet of
to-morrow. The world will never be con-
verted to me, but it will be restored to man,
whose prophet I am.”
“Well, I am sorry you have contrived to im-
bibe such ideas; they will only make you
trouble.”
“Expend your sympathy upon the men who
are under law—not upon the free.”
“And who are the free?” demanded the
Deputy, and when he had said this he turned
away in sorrow, as did every one who knew
this sad man with the world heart.
“I am free; I have nothing, I am nothing, I
want nothing.”
“Great Brother, now I believe in you!” ex-
claimed Michel, as they were left alone.
- * * * **** * *** ----------- - - - - - - - - - -


286 THE BLACK HAND
XXVIII
Signs of severe weather multiplied in sea
and sky. There were cloud flocks the next day
huddling along the horizon, like an army
manoeuvring for position. The sun hung in
the haze like a ball of snow, and at night the
moon fortified itself with a stately circle. A
stormy petrel hovered over the stern of the
ship, following it steadily hour after hour. It
seemed as if fixed in the air as it moved in
equal motion with the vessel.
The seamen shook ther heads ominously.
“It means death,” said the gray haired mate,
calling attention to the bird of ill omen.
“Somebody will die before we reach port. I
never knew the sign to fail.”
About sunset the captain ordered the steam-
er's direction turned more to the southward,
hoping to run under the stern of the threaten-
ing cyclone.
Then appeared directly over the bow of the
ship in its changed course, a fiery streak, part-
ing the sinister clouds. A line crossed it trans-
versely, giving it the form of a long red dag-
£er.
** *********** *-*--> --~~~~~~~~~~~


THE BLACK HAND 287
“See there!” exclamed Paul Adam, pointing
to the strange phenomenon. “The fates swing
a sword. And, note you, the point is toward
the East. We shall soon hear of the fall of
one of Europe's rulers.”
“I wonder which one it will bel” mused
Michel.
“It is the despot of the Russias. See! The
sword bends to the north. Great tyrant and
trampler of men, thy time is come.”
“Will he die a natural death?” queried
Michel.
“It will be given out so, but tyrants do not
die natural deaths. I know a chemical that will
force its way into the most guarded stomach.”
“Does Barron know it?”
“They who follow me do not walk in dark-
ness.”
At that moment another stormy petrel ap-
peared and hung in the ship's wake, following
the first.
“Great Heavens! Another death bird!”
cried the mate.
The wind rose steadily, and the vessel began
to pitch unpleasantly. The passengers slowly
gravitated below, but Gabrielle remained on
the upper deck, the weird scene suiting her
fierce nature, the riotous waves rolling syn-
chronously with her lawless soul. She felt a
kind of superiority here. She was riding on
the billowy back of the globe in a magnificent


288 THE BLACK HAND
chariot for which all things must give the right
of way. If the world of society did not ac-
knowledge her queenship, the world of wild
nature did, for, in the rocking of the huge
leviathan, the stars, which now and then eluded
the clouds, came forth and made obeisance to
her.
As the steamer's motion grew more and
more violent, she was repeatedly urged by the
ship's officers to go below, but she delighted in
shocking them by taking a more exposed posi-
tion with each renewal of the request. Her
old nature, somewhat humbled by adversity
and by the change that passed upon her in the
meeting at the Zion Barracks, was reasserting
itself under the stirrings of the storm wing.
“I only need a tragedy now to make me feel
at home!” she exclaimed.
It came sooner than she expected.
In the flicker of the ship's lights there
bunched a shape which she had met once before
under the glare of a Paris street lamp.
“You are taking a great risk, Mlle. Adam,”
said the man.
“I am Mme. Douglas, and I risk nothing but
my life.”
“And you count that of little value? Your
marriage has made your life less worth liv-
ing?”
“I was never happy; I was not made for
happiness; I was made for war.”


292 THE BLACK HARD
“You liked the company you were in; I
should not have interrupted your tete-a-tete.”
“It was company that could appreciate me.
You are an American and cannot understand
what a French woman likes.”
The poison in her speech was both native
and imported—her own inimitable hauteur,
M. Jacquot's paraphrased insult. She was glad
the villain was punished, but her husband
ought to copy his adoration of her.
Stung to a cruel reply, he bit the end of a
word that would have been the wedge of hope-
less irreconciliation.
She was a woman, and beauty was the ex-
cuse for liberty.
“When an anarchist you had no country.
What has narrowed you, Christianity or—
marriage?” he asked, assailing her with dry
reasons, when she wanted palpitating passion.
“Neglect!”
“Gabrielle 35
He went up to her and tried to seize her
hand, but she drew back. She had been more
gracious to M. Jacquot.
“Gabrielle, what more would you have? Do
I not love you as man never loved a woman?
Do I not 55
Ah, he was becoming sensible now ! She
bent to listen, but there came a vulgar inter-
ruption.
A man had fallen, or jumped, overboard.
--------- *** - - - - ------------------- - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - -


294 THE BLACK HAND
“We shall know soon,” said her husband;
“dead or alive, they have him in the boat.”
Another lurch of the ship and another dash
of the spray in their faces.
“Come!” urged St. Pierre, taking her by the
arin.
But Gabrielle was looking where the arc-
light made a yellow splash on the waves. A
blotch of shadow danced upon it—a boat.
“We’ve got him, but he'll have to be put
back again,” was the significant comment of
one of the men as they hoisted a limp, black
form over the guards.
Put back! It was a new thought to Ga-
brielle—a dark hint of the secrets of the sea.
The men laid the suicide down tenderly on
the deck while they raised the boat.
“Come!” repeated St. Pierre, exerting some
of the magnetism with which he had subdued
her in the mission. Her husband seized her by
the other arm.
But Gabrielle was looking down at a particu-
lar spot in the sea.
It was where the waters swirled after the
uplifted boat.
“Are there dead people down there?” she
cried, her wild black eyes riveted on the briny
void.
“Yes, and God is overhead,” replied St.
Pierre, who divined her fearful thought.
Gabrielle—the men still holding her—
* - * * * * ~ * ------------- r -------. . . . . . . . . ...--
* * *


THE BLACK HAND 295
worked along the rail until she stood near the
wet, silent shape that stared frozenly at them.
She looked down into the dead man's face.
It was M. Jacquot!
With a little cry she turned and went below.
- - ** --
-----------------------------~~~~ -----


296 THE BLACK HAND
XXIX
The storm increased all the night, and in the
morning the ocean's fury was at its full. Great
billows like frothing dragons raved and raced
across the deep, their heads every moment
whipped off by the keen cimeter of the gale.
White faced men and wild eyed women gath-
ered in panic stricken groups.
“Oh, it is dreadful to die now, when we are
so happy!” cried Louise, clinging in terror to
her husband.
“The happy hour is the best time to enter
death, my darling.” He tried to speak the sol-
emn words cheerfully, but the gravity reflected
from Paul Adam still lingered as a touch of
sadness in his tone. “Our cup is full. I would
not like to go down bankrupt and beaten.”
“Like M. Jacquot, you mean?”
“Yes, poor wretch, he was beaten in war and
beaten in love.”
“There are other unhappy people on board.
Do you see that wild woman, the Bride of An- .
archy, as she is called? She paces up and
down in a perfectly fearful way.”
“All anarchists are unhappy, and bound to
: ---> ***=~~~~.--~~~~~~~ *...*


THE BLACK HAND 297
be so; they are quarrelling with God, who did
not make all men equal. But I fear she has a
greater misfortune even than anarchy.”
“Pray, what is it?”
“She loves her husband.”
“Henri! To call that a misfortune!”
“It is for her. There are people who should
not love. A powder house should not have a
tenant. See her—she is all on fire!”
By some strange telepathy Gabrielle's mind
was threading the same thought. She was
pacing the saloon, except when the roll of the
ship threw her down. But she did not mind
that. Motion, motion—it must kill meditation.
She did not want to think. The mystery of
death was in the sea last night—in M. Jac-
quot's white, waxy face, whose every dark pas-
sion was forever laid.
The twin mystery—birth—was in her—in
her eternal craving for what could not be.
Why had she ever been brought into the
world? Šhe thought of the words of one of
the St. Marcel crones, “Some souls should not
be born.”
A thousand things boiled in her mind as in
some huge cauldron—the irreconcilable tradi-
tions about her mother, the cruelty of fate, her
merciless father, her iron willed husband, the
Black Hand, anarchy, eternity, God
Heavens! How did a woman feel when she
was going mad?
- -, -- a-- - - - ---------------- - - ------------------------> *


THE BLACK HAND 299
while between the two deeps—water and
ether, ether and water—the ship, a puny planet
hung in space, swung on into the sable hol-
lows.
A voice rose above the roar of the ocean:—
“‘By one man's disobedience sin entered
the world, and death by sin.’”
The words in their wild setting of the sea
and storm were like a blast from the day of
judgment.
Gabrielle started and looked around.
They were putting back the body they had
taken out of the sea.
St. Pierre was reading out of a black book.
A plain pine box was placed near the ship's
rail, and some of the crew stood Over it with
bared heads. The captain had not thought it
best to give notice of the sad event, as the man
had no friends and the deck was hardly safe
walking yet. A suicide at sea was a depressing
occurrence, and it was the policy of the steam-
ship company to keep all such matters as quiet
as possible.
The long, gray hair falling about the shoul-
ders of the holy father gave him a saintly, and
even a supernatural appearance, which was
heightened by the dark background of cloud
and wave.
Gabrielle was awed, and Michel thought of
the vision in his London dream, and of the
white being lifted up in the Paris cathedral.


300 THE BLACK HAND
“What does he mean?” he asked.
“Shall I tell you how sin entered the world?”
demanded Paul Adam. “Do you ask me the
origin of evil? Do you want to know why
this world is such an infernal place?”
A fierce light burned in his face, and several
persons gathered around him.
“I will tell you why men are so bad and why
they seek to kill each other. It is because the
devil is our father.”
Paul Adam spoke clearly, though with
hoarse earnestness. He was not near enough
to disturb the simple service over the dead.
“Why, father is talking religion, and I have
heard him say that anarchy was his only the-
ology,” whispered Gabrielle to her husband.
“This is something greater than anarchy or
theology—it is Life,” he replied.
“And love is greater than life; there is noth-
ing greater than love!”
It was almost a question, and she searched
his impassive face.
“Except duty.”
Their gaze met, and she read anew his un-
alterable purpose.
There was murder in those fine blue eyes.
The man with the forked beard came and
looked into the coffin and then whispered some-
thing to the captain.
“What does he mean?” queried Michel, who
had not taken his eyes off the box.


THE BLACK HAND 3OI
“He means to make sure it is not an anar-
chist they're going to pitch into the sea; he has
better use for him,” replied Douglas, signifi-
cantly.
“No, no; what does the Great Brother
mean?” inquired Michel.
“‘The first man is of the earth earthy; the
second man is the Lord from Heaven,’” fell
the sublime notes of the funeral service.
Gabrielle shut her eyes, and she would have
shut her ears but for the need of one hand for
clinging. Yet she would not go below; her
nature craved excitement against weaker Na-
ture that rebelled. Besides, she dared not leave
her husband alone with his white faced pur-
pose. And so she stood there and let the death
sounds beat sickeningly against the drum of
her ear—the grate of the screwdriver, the saw-
ing of the ropes, the splash as the box struck
the water.
She peered down then; the box turned—she
saw it turn—and then, as it floated away, she
saw a black fin flash and follow.
She shut her eyes again, and now other
sounds were beating in—Paul Adam was
speaking.
“The two parts do not quite fit. Cain—not
Adam—was the first man, and he was a mur-
derer. As the second man was born of the
Holy Spirit and a woman, so the first man was
born of the Evil Spirit and a woman. That


THE BLAck HAND 3O3
–!!
risk
|"
SO':
em.
#
#
:
n:
#:
0m-
where the dress of snow met the flesh of wax
—crept along the deck and clasped the old man
by the knees.
“Speak to him—oh, speak to him!” en-
treated the prostrate woman, pointing to her
father.
St. Pierre turned and threw his arm around
Paul Adam’s neck.
“Brother Paul, God loves you—I love you.”
Paul Adam turned and threw both of his
arms around St. Pierre's neck.
“Truly, thou art my brother. All men at
the top are one. Great natures, like great
studies, run together in their higher parts.”
Then, with a look toward the North Star—
which at that moment twinkled through the
cloud—as if he saw the pole where all meridi-
ans meet, he released himself, and, stepping
back, cried out to those around him:—
“I bear witness unto this man. He is the
greatest of the sons of men. And I will now
declare unto you who I am. I am—”
But at that instant a huge green sea, tower-
ing high above the bulwarks, crashed over the
deck, carrying every one down before it.
Gabrielle thought the end had come, but in
the momentary hush that followed rose a tone
m*------~~~~ --~~~
sweet and clear:—
“God alone is great—God alone is great!”
It was the voice of St. Pierre.


306 THE BLACK HAND
He took from his pocket the little blue phial.
Michel gazed down into the jaws of the
deep. He did not want to look around toward
Douglas.
“What after the end?” he faltered, trying
to prolong the time.
Paul Adam pierced the waves with his eyes
as if he did not hear.
“Is there another life?” persisted Michel.
Far out he saw the white capped billows
rising and falling in their eternal dance, weird
forms with their mysterious murmur coming
on—and coming on—and coming on.
“There is life for those who want life,” said
Paul Adam, scanning a bright spot on the
horizon that foretokened the rising moon.
“But it would be the blackest tyranny to com-
pel him to live forever who wanted to die.
You did not choose to be born; must you con-
tinue everlastingly to suffer against your
choice at the option of another? That would
be an infinite despotism. But it is given unto
men in the hereafter to sip their fond cup of
life until they have had enough.”
“Do you want life?” queried Michel, trem-
bling from head to foot.
A mantle of profound sadness overspread
the face of the anarchist chief.
“The Son of Sorrow has no will but for the
world. We will all go down now into the sea,
--------------------- ***-*, *** *


THE BLACK HAND 307
and at some future time into the deep beneath
this deep.”
As Paul Adam said these words Douglas
came nearer and leaned against the rail. He
was a magnet, and Michel was pulled half way
around to see the form of fate he could not
escape. He wanted to run away, but the Amer-
ican's gaze transfixed him as a spear.
There was no one in that part of the vessel
save these three men.
The hour was late and most of the passen-
gers had retired.
Paul Adam held up the phial. A shadow fell,
as the risen moon slid behind a black cloud.
“The solution of all mysteries is here. If
you wake you will know; if you sleep on for-
ever you will not know that you sleep.”
He shook the phial slightly, and there came
forth a hissing sound.
“I shall cast it into the deep, and in one sec-
ond it will set on fire the ship and the sea.
Michel, have you said your prayers?”
Douglas raised his hand.
A whistle came from the ocean, and the
steamer coughed twice in reply.
A black mass loomed to leeward.
The critical second had come. In a mo-
ment the deck would swarm with men curious
to see the object of the midnight salute.
“No70 P”
Douglas leaped forward, and he and Michel


308 THE BLACK HAND
seized Paul Adam and hurled him into the
Se’Ol.
The eight bells rang.
The moon shot out its weird, fiery eye.
The strange steamer whistled again—a
shriek.
The form in the water did not struggle or
swim.
It sank immediately.
But Michel seemed to see through the water.
It appeared to him that Paul Adam lay on
the ocean's bed, with blood on his breast and
his great gray eyes staring up through the
green of the sea.
There was a scurry of feet, as the passen-
gers began to pour on the deck.
They were all looking at him—no, beyond
him, at the strange shape on the sea.
They did not know.
But one whispered in Michel's ear.
“Did a man fall overboard just now?”
It was the Frenchman with the forked beard.
Michel started. Some night birds screamed
overhead, and one flew close to his ear.
Michel went down to his room, and, throw-
ing himself on his cot, burst into uncontrollable
sobs, wishing that he lay there on the ocean’s
bed with Paul Adam, the blood on his breast
and his great gray eyes staring up through the
green of the sea.


3IO THE BLACK HAND
wedded. She did not ask about her father,
but her eyes roamed restlessly everywhere, and
she started nervously at every sound.
“God pity you, my poor child!” said the
saint. “Some burden rests upon you.”
“Yes, I am the most unhappy of brides; if
I only knew * *
“If you knew what?”
“Never mind! I shall know soon; we are
almost at the pier.”
“You expect friends?”
“Alas, no! I have not one friend in all the
World!”
“But, my dear madame, your husband
But she held up her hand entreatingly, and
the good father forebore. Michel came and
stood by them. The little Russian had aged
rapidly in a few days. A congeries of wrinkles
enmeshed his shrunken face, and he had the
haggard appearance of one who had not slept.
His only hope was that in this new land he
might escape from the dead face under the sea,
which had pursued him, gliding along in the
deep abyss and keeping pace with the ship.
“Oh, if he had only cried out I could have
borne it!” he thought.
“But to die in that mute way, and then keep
looking at me from the water—oh, it is dread-
ful!”
Once he threw something venomously into
the waves. It was the purse his leader had
5 *


THE BLACK HAND 3II
given him, and out of which he had paid his
fare.
The steamer touched the dock and three men
leaped aboard. The Frenchman with the
forked beard and his shorter companion went
up to them and said a few words. Then the
five came to Michel and Gabrielle, and their
mysterious fellow voyager, with an official air,
politely informed them that they would not be
permitted to land.
“Must we go back?” cried Gabrielle.
The man bowed courteously.
“Where is Paul Adam?” he demanded,
ironically.
Douglas and Michel glanced at each other,
and the former said:—
“He is not here; he is dead.”
Gabrielle gave a shriek and would have
fallen had not St. Pierre caught her.
“Didn't I say there were two of them devil-
birds following the ship?” exclaimed the mate,
who stood by. “I knew another man had to
die, and I couldn't make out how it was we
only dropped one into the sea.”
“And I—am I wanted, too?” inquired Doug-
las.
“You are an American and an officer.”
“And a murderer!” exclaimed Gabrielle.
“And the husband of—” but Douglas
checked his rash speech.
“We didn't suspect you at first; we thought


THE BLACK HAND 3I3
coiled upon the curser—with the pity woman
has for woman.
Gabrielle, half kneeling beside St. Pierre,
felt the hands that held her feverish face
gently put aside, and soft lips pressing hers.
“I am sorry for you—oh, so sorry!”
The kiss stung worse than a thousand blows.
Pity from a woman—and this woman!
“Oh, God! My cup was full without this!”
she cried, as the Deputy and his happy bride
stepped ashore.
“Poor daughter, some have sown the wind,
but you have sown the whirlwind,” said the
holy father, for she had confessed to him a
part of her joyless history.
He gave the three miserable beings his part-
ing blessing, and then they were left alone—
alone with their crimes and God and, worst of
all, with themselves. The officers were con-
tent with keeping a watch upon the gangway.
In a few days the steamer, like a mighty
pendulum, swung back.
“Can you tell us where we were when the
strange ship passed us coming in?” Michel
inquired of the mate after three days.
“It was longitude 41 degrees west. We are
about on that meridian now. And look there!”
Michel looked where the seaman pointed and
saw three huge dark birds like pirate flags
hanging over the stern of the ship. The mate


3I4 THE BLACK HAND
shuddered as he spoke and shook his head
ominously.
Michel went and told Douglas.
“Go and call her!” commanded the Ameri-
Ca11.
They had not spoken—he and she—in all
these days of torment, but when Michel sum-
moned her in these words:—
“We have reached the place where the mas-
ter left us, and your husband calls you.”
She rose quickly and followed.
They stood upon the main deck, near the
spot where the lost man had kept his lonely
vigil.
It was night.
The ocean had been again in travail, but the
storm had passed and left the sea and sky as
on that night. There was no moon, but here
and there, through huge rents in the black
sheet, the stars looked down in calm, mute pro-
teSt.
“There should be no misunderstanding in
the Great Night,” Douglas said, turning to his
bride, like a flower beautiful even when
crushed.
“Come, it is the last time!”
They kissed each other—once formally,
again frantically, Michel only standing by.
Then they all climbed upon the rail and
peered down into the frothing jaws of the
deep.


THE BLACK HAND 3I5
It seemed like the boiling whirlpool of hell!
“A thousand years of tossing in that sea
should wash one white.” Gabrielle mused.
“But St. Pierre said the Christ must do it.”
Then to her husband:—
“I wonder if, when you come up, it will be
as if—as if—as if you had not?”
The triple terrors—the weird black night,
the roaring sea, the Dark Unknown—froze his
tongue.
There were great ice drops in his eyes.
And the ship drove on over the naked back
of the world, the stars looked down, sweet and
sorrowful, and underneath—the dead.
“Then—then,” she faltered, “wake me with
a kiss from the sleep of death!”
Afar off the lightning rived the clouds, and
through the distant break there fell a vision.
A face, peaceful, pure, sadly smiling, looked
down upon them.
Michel thought it was the greeting of the
Great Brother, but Gabrielle said it was her
mother.
“I am the happiest woman in all the world!”
she laughed. “This is the real bridal!”
Michel said:—
“Master, I come to thee.”
Then, holding hands, all jumped, two gaz-
ing straight before them into the gaping deep,
but the murderer, looking up at the sublime
spheres, cried out:-
------- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - --~~~~~~~~------------


316 THE BLACK HAND
“God, am I justified?”
Then, while the thunder rolled over the
vasty deep and a loud alarm rang through the
vessel, his soul went to receive the answer to
its appalling question.
And the ship drove on over the naked back
of the world, the stars looked down, sweet and
sorrowful, and, underneath—the dead!
THE END.
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