Part 1

Transcriber’s Note: Italics are enclosed in _underscores_. Additional notes will be found near the end of this ebook.

The Assassination Bureau, Ltd.

Jack London

_Completed by Robert L. Fish from notes by Jack London_

The Assassination Bureau, Ltd.

McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc. New York Toronto London

The Assassination Bureau, Ltd.

Copyright © 1963 by Irving Shepard All Rights Reserved. Printed in the United States of America. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form without written permission of the publishers.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 63-20448

First Edition

38655

The Assassination Bureau, Ltd.

_Chapter I_

He was a handsome man, with large liquid-black eyes, an olive complexion that was laid upon a skin clear, clean, and of surpassing smoothness of texture, and with a mop of curly black hair that invited fondling--in short, the kind of a man that women like to look upon, and also, the kind of a man who is quite thoroughly aware of this insinuative quality of his looks. He was lean-waisted, muscular, and broad-shouldered, and about him was a certain bold, masculine swagger that was belied by the apprehensiveness in the glance he cast around the room and at the retreating servant who had shown him in. The fellow was a deaf mute--this he would have guessed, had he not been already aware of the fact, thanks to Lanigan’s description of an earlier visit to this same apartment.

Once the door had closed on the servant’s back, the visitor could scarcely refrain from shivering. Yet there was nothing in the place itself to excite such a feeling. It was a quiet, dignified room, lined with crowded bookshelves, with here and there an etching, and, in one place, a map-rack. Also against the wall was a big rack filled with railway timetables and steamship folders. Between the windows was a large, flattop desk, on which stood a telephone, and from which, on an extension, swung a typewriter. Everything was in scrupulous order and advertised a presiding genius that was the soul of system.

The books attracted the waiting man, and he ranged along the shelves, with a practiced eye skimming titles by whole rows at a time. Nor was there anything shivery in these solid-backed books. He noted especially Ibsen’s Prose Dramas and Shaw’s various plays and novels; editions de luxe of Wilde, Smollett, Fielding, Sterne, and the _Arabian Nights_; La Fargue’s _Evolution of Property_, _The Students’ Marx_, _Fabian Essays_, Brooks’ _Economic Supremacy_, Dawson’s _Bismarck and State Socialism_, Engels’ _Origin of the Family_, Conant’s _The United States in the Orient_, and John Mitchell’s _Organized Labor_. Apart, and in the original Russian, were the works of Tolstoy, Gorky, Turgenev, Andreyev, Goncharov, and Dostoyevski.

The man strayed on to a library table, heaped with orderly piles of the current reviews and quarterlies, where, at one corner, were a dozen of the late novels. He pulled up an easy chair, stretched out his legs, lighted a cigarette, and glanced over these books. One, a slender, red-bound volume, caught his eyes. On the front cover a gaudy female rioted. He selected it, and read the title: _Four Weeks: A Loud Book_. As he opened it, a slight but sharp explosion occurred within its papers, accompanied by a flash of light and a puff of smoke. On the instant he was convulsed with terror. He fell back in the chair and sank down, arms and legs in the air, the book flying from his hands in about the same fashion a man would dispense with a snake he had unwittingly picked up. The visitor was badly shaken. His beautiful olive skin had turned a ghastly green, while his liquid-black eyes bulged with horror.

Then it was that the door to an inner apartment opened, and the presiding genius entered. A cold mirth was frosted on his countenance as he surveyed the abject fright of the other. Stooping, he picked up the book, spread it open, and exposed the toy-work mechanism that had exploded the paper cap.

“No wonder creatures like you are compelled to come to me,” he sneered. “You terrorists are always a puzzle to me. Why is it that you are most fascinated by the very thing of which you are most afraid?” He was now gravely scornful. “Powder--that’s it. If you had exploded that toy-pistol cap on your naked tongue it would have caused no more than a temporary inconvenience to your facilities of speaking and eating. Whom do you want to kill now?”

The speaker was a striking contrast to his visitor. So blond was he that it might well be described as washed-out blond. His eyes, veiled by the finest and most silken of lashes that were almost like an albino’s, were the palest of pale blue. His head, partly bald, was thinly covered by a similar growth of fine and silky hair, almost snow-white so fairly white it was, yet untinctured by time. The mouth was firm and considerative, though not harsh, and the dome of forehead, broad and lofty, spoke eloquently of the brain behind. His English was painfully correct, the total and colorless absence of any accent almost constituting an accent in itself. Despite the crude practical joke he had just perpetrated, there was little humor in him. A grave and somber dignity, that hinted of scholarship, characterized him; while he emanated an atmosphere of complacency of power and seemed to suggest an altitude of philosophic calm far beyond fake books and toy-pistol caps. So elusive was his personality, his colorless coloring, and his almost lineless face, that there was no clew to his age, which might have been anywhere between thirty and fifty--or sixty. One felt that he was older than he looked.

“You are Ivan Dragomiloff?” the visitor asked.

“That is the name I am known by. It serves as well as any other--as well as Will Hausmann serves you. That is the name you were admitted under. I know you. You are secretary of the Caroline Warfield group. I have had dealings with it before. Lanigan represented you, I believe.”

He paused, placed a black skullcap on his thin-thatched head, and sat down.

“No complaints, I hope,” he added coldly.

“Oh, no, not at all,” Hausmann hastened to assure him. “That other affair was entirely satisfactory. The only reason we had not been to you again was that we could not afford it. But now we want McDuffy, chief of police--”

“Yes, I know him,” the other interrupted.

“He has been a brute, a beast,” Hausmann hurried on with raising indignation. “He has martyred our cause again and again, deflowered our group of its choicest spirits. Despite the warnings we gave him, he deported Tawney, Cicerole, and Gluck. He has broken up our meetings repeatedly. His officers have clubbed and beaten us like cattle. It is due to him that four of our martyred brothers and sisters are now languishing in prison cells.”

While he went on with the recital of grievances, Dragomiloff nodded his head gravely, as if keeping a running account.

“There is old Sanger, as pure and lofty a soul as ever breathed the polluted air of civilization, seventy-two years old, a patriarch, broken in health, dying inch by inch and serving out his ten years in Sing Sing in this land of the free. And for what?” he cried excitedly. Then his voice sank to hopeless emptiness as he feebly answered his own question. “For nothing.”

“These hounds of the law must be taught the red lesson again. They cannot continue always to ill-treat us with impunity. McDuffy’s officers gave perjured testimony on the witness stand. This we know. He has lived too long. The time has come. And he should have been dead long ere this, only we could not raise the money. But when we decided that assassination was cheaper than lawyer fees, we left our poor comrades to go unattended to their prison cells and accumulated the fund more quickly.”

“You know it is our rule never to fill an order until we are satisfied that it is socially justifiable,” Dragomiloff observed quietly.

“Surely.” Hausmann attempted indignantly to interrupt.

“But in this case,” Dragomiloff went on calmly and judicially, “there is little doubt but what your cause is just. The death of McDuffy would appear socially expedient and right. I know him and his deeds. I can assure you that on investigation I believe we are practically certain so to conclude. And now, the money.”

“But if you do not find the death of McDuffy socially right?”

“The money will be returned to you, less ten percent to cover the cost of investigation. It is our custom.”

Hausmann pulled a fat wallet from his pocket, and then hesitated.

“Is full payment necessary?”

“Surely you know our terms.” There was mild reproof in Dragomiloff’s voice.

“But I thought, I hoped--you know yourself we anarchists are poor people.”

“And that is why I make you so cheap a rate. Ten thousand dollars is not too much for the killing of the chief of police of a great city. Believe me, it barely pays expenses. Private persons are charged much more, and merely for private persons at that. Were you a millionaire, instead of a poor struggling group, I should charge you fifty thousand at the very least for McDuffy. Besides, I am not entirely in this for my health.”

“Heavens! What would you charge for a king!” the other cried.

“That depends. A king, say of England, would cost half a million. Little second- and third-rate kings come anywhere between seventy-five and a hundred thousand dollars.”

“I had no idea they came so high,” Hausmann muttered.

“That is why so few are killed. Then, too, you forget the heavy expenses of so perfect an organization as I have built up. Our mere traveling expenses are far larger than you imagine. My agents are numerous, and you don’t think for a moment that they take their lives in their hands and kill for a song. And remember, these things we accomplish without any peril whatsoever to our clients. If you feel that Chief McDuffy’s life is dear at ten thousand, let me ask if you rate your own at any less. Besides, you anarchists are poor operators. Whenever you try your hand you bungle it or get caught. Furthermore, you always insist on dynamite or infernal machines, which are extremely hazardous--”

“It is necessary that our executions be sensational and spectacular,” Hausmann explained.

The Chief of the Assassination Bureau nodded his head.

“Yes, I understand. But that is not the point. It is such a stupid, gross way of killing that it is, as I said, extremely hazardous for our agents. Now, if your group will permit me to use, say, poison, I’ll throw off ten percent; if an air-rifle, twenty-five percent.”

“Impossible!” cried the anarchist. “It will not serve our end. Our killings must be red.”

“In which case I can grant you no reduction. You are an American, are you not, Mr. Hausmann?”

“Yes; and American born--over in St. Joseph, Michigan.”

“Why don’t you kill McDuffy yourself and save your group the money?”

The anarchist blanched.

“No, no. Your service is too, too excellent, Mr. Dragomiloff. Also, I have a--er--a temperamental diffidence about the taking of life or the shedding of blood--that is, you know, personally. It is repulsive to me. Theoretically I may know a killing to be just, but, actually, I cannot bring myself to do it. I--I simply can’t, that is all. I can’t help it. I could not with my own hand harm a fly.”

“Yet you belong to a violent group.”

“I know it. My reason compels me to belong. I could not be satisfied to belong with the philosophic, non-resistant Tolstoians. I do not believe in turning the other cheek, as do those in the Martha Brown group, for instance. If I am struck, I must strike back--”

“Even if by proxy,” Dragomiloff interrupted dryly.

Hausmann bowed.

“By proxy. If the flesh is weak, there is no other way. Here is the money.”

As Dragomiloff counted it, Hausmann made a final effort for a bargain.

“Ten thousand dollars. You will find it correct. Take it, and remember that it represents devotion and sacrifice on the parts of many scores of comrades who could ill afford the heavy contributions we demand. Couldn’t you--er--couldn’t you throw in Inspector Morgan for full measure? He is another foul-hearted beast.”

Dragomiloff shook his head.

“No; it can’t be done. Your group already enjoys the biggest cut-rate we have ever accorded.”

“A bomb, you know,” the other urged. “You might get both of them with the same bomb.”

“Which we shall be very careful not to do. Of course, we shall have to investigate Chief McDuffy. We demand a moral sanction for all our transactions. If we find that his death is not socially justifiable--”

“What becomes of the ten thousand?” Hausmann broke in anxiously.

“It is returned to you less ten percent for running expenses.”

“And if you fail to kill him?”

“If, at the end of a year, we have failed, the money is returned to you, plus five percent interest on the same.”

Dragomiloff, indicating that the interview was at an end, pressed a call-button and stood up. His example was followed by Hausmann, who took advantage of the delay in the servant’s coming to ask him another question.

“But suppose you should die?--an accident, sickness, anything. I have no receipt for the money. It would be lost.”

“All that is arranged. The head of my Chicago branch would immediately take charge, and would conduct everything until such time as the head of the San Francisco branch could arrive. An instance of that occurred only last year. You remember Burgess?”

“Which Burgess?”

“The railroad king. One of our men covered that, made the whole transaction and received the payment in advance, as usual. Of course, my sanction was obtained. And then two things happened. Burgess was killed in a railroad accident, and our man died of pneumonia. Nevertheless, the money was returned. I saw to it personally, though it was not recoverable by law. Our long success shows our honorable dealing with our clients. Believe me, operating as we do outside the law, anything less than the strictest honesty would be fatal to us. Now concerning McDuffy--”

At this moment the servant entered, and Hausmann made a warning gesture for silence. Dragomiloff smiled.

“Can’t hear a word,” he said.

“But you rang for him just now. And, by Jove, he answered my ring at the door.”

“A ring for him is a flash. Instead of a bell, an electric light is turned on. He has never heard a sound in his life. As long as he does not see your lips, he cannot understand what you say. And now, about McDuffy. Have you thought well about removing him? Remember, with us, an order once given is as good as accomplished. We cannot carry on our business otherwise. We have our rules, you know. Once the order goes forth it can never be withdrawn. Are you satisfied?”

“Quite.” Hausmann paused at the door. “When may we hear news of--of activity?”

Dragomiloff considered a moment.

“Within a week. The investigation, in this case, is only formal. The operation itself is very simple. I have my men on the spot. Good day.”

_Chapter II_

One afternoon, a week later, an electric cab waited in front of the great Russian importing house of S. Constantine & Co. It was three o’clock when Sergius Constantine himself emerged from the private office and was accompanied to the cab by the manager, to whom he was still giving instructions. Had Hausmann or Lanigan watched him enter the cab they would have recognized him immediately, but not by the name of Sergius Constantine. Had they been asked, and had they answered, they would have named him Ivan Dragomiloff.

For Ivan Dragomiloff it was who drove the cab south and crossed over into the teeming East Side. He stopped, once, to buy a paper from a gamin who was screaming “Extra!” Nor did he start again until he had read the headlines and brief text announcing another anarchist outrage in a neighboring city and the death of Chief McDuffy. As he laid the paper beside him and started on, there was an expression of calm pride on Constantine’s face. The organization which he had built up worked, and worked with its customary smoothness. The investigation--in this case almost perfunctory--had been made, the order sent forth, and McDuffy was dead. He smiled slightly as he drew up before a modern apartment house which was placed on the edge of one of the most noisome East Side slums. The smile was at thought of the rejoicing there would be in the Caroline Warfield group--the terrorists who had not the courage to slay.

An elevator took Constantine to the top floor, and a pushbutton caused the door to be opened for him by a young woman who threw her arms around his neck, kissed him, and showered him with Russian diminutives of affection, and whom, in turn, he called Grunya.

They were very comfortable rooms into which he was taken--and remarkably comfortable and tasteful, even for a model apartment house in the East Side. Chastely simple, culture and wealth spoke in the furnishing and decoration. There were many shelves of books, a table littered with magazines, while a parlor grand filled the far end of the room. Grunya was a robust Russian blonde, but with all the color that her caller’s blondness lacked.

“You should have telephoned,” she chided, in English that was as without accent as his own. “I might have been out. You are so irregular I never know when to expect you.”

Dropping the afternoon paper beside him, he lolled back among the cushions of the capacious window-seat.

“Now Grunya, dear, you mustn’t begin by scolding,” he said, looking at her with beaming fondness. “I’m not one of your submerged-tenth kindergarteners, nor am I going to let you order my actions, yea, even to the extent of being told when to wash my face or blow my nose. I came down on the chance of finding you in, but principally for the purpose of trying out my new cab. Will you come for a little run around?”

She shook her head.

“Not this afternoon. I expect a visitor at four.”

“I’ll make a note of it.” He looked at his watch. “Also, I came to learn if you would come home the end of the week. Edge Moor is lonely without either of us.”

“I was out three days ago,” she pouted. “Grosset said you hadn’t been there for a month.”

“Too busy. But I’m going to loaf for a week now and read up. By the way, why was it necessary for Grosset to tell you I hadn’t been there in a month, unless for the fact that you hadn’t been there?”

“Busy, you inquisitor, busy, just like you.” She bubbled with laughter, and, reaching over, caressed his hand.

“Will you come?”

“It’s only Monday, now,” she considered. “Yes; if--” She paused roguishly. “If I can bring a friend for the week end. You’ll like him, I know.”

“Oh, ho; it’s a _him_, is it? One of your long-haired socialists, I suppose.”

“No; a short-haired one. But you ought to know better, Uncle, dear, than to be repeating those comic-supplement jokes. I never saw a long-haired socialist in my life. Did you?”

“No; but I’ve seen them drink beer,” he announced with conviction.

“Now you shall be punished.” She picked up a cushion and advanced upon him menacingly. “As my kindergarteners say, ‘I’m going to knock your block off.’--There! And there! And there!”

“Grunya! I protest!” he grunted and panted between blows. “It is unbecoming. It is disrespectful, to treat your mother’s brother in such fashion. I’m getting old--”

“Pouf!” the lively Grunya shut him off, discarding the cushion. She picked up his hand and looked at the fingers. “To think I’ve seen those fingers tear a pack of cards in two and bend silver coins.”

“They are past all that now. They ... are quite feeble.”

He let the members in question rest limply and flaccidly in her hand, and aroused her indignation again. She placed her hand on his biceps.

“Tense it,” she commanded.

“I--I can’t,” he faltered. “--Oh! Ouch! There, that’s the best I can do.” A very weak effort indeed he made of it. “I’ve gone soft, you see--the breakdown of tissue due to advancing senility--”

“Tense it!” she cried, this time with a stamp of her foot.

Constantine surrendered and obeyed, and as the biceps swelled under her hand, a glow of admiration appeared in her face.

“Like iron,” she murmured, “only it is living iron. It is wonderful. You are cruelly strong. I should die if you ever put the weight of your strength on me.”

“You will remember,” he answered, “and place it to my credit, that when you were a little thing, even when you were very naughty, I never spanked you.”

“Ah, Uncle, but was not that because you had moral convictions against spanking?”

“True; but if ever those convictions were shaken, it was by you, and often enough when you were anywhere between three and six. Grunya, dear, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but truth compels me to say that at that period you were a barbarian, a savage, a cave-child, a jungle beast, a--a regular little devil, a she-wolf of a cub without morality or manners, a--”

But a cushion, raised and threatening, caused him to desist and to throw up his arms in arches of protection to his head.

“’Ware!” he cried. “By your present actions the only difference I can note is that you are a full-grown cub. Twenty-two, eh? And feeling your strength--beginning to take it out on me. But it is not too late. The next time you attempt to trounce me, I _will_ give you a spanking, even if you are a young lady, a fat young lady.”

“Oh, you brute! I’m not!” She thrust out her arm. “Look at that. Feel it. That’s muscle. I weigh one hundred and twenty-eight. Will you take it back?”

Again the cushion rose and fell upon him, and it was in the midst of struggling to defend himself, laughing and grunting, dodging and guarding with his arms, that a maid entered with a samovar and Grunya desisted in order to serve tea.

“One of your kindergarteners?” he queried, as the maid left the room.

Grunya nodded.

“She looks quite respectable,” he commented. “Her face is actually clean.”

“I refuse to let you make me excited over my settlement work,” she answered, with a smile and caress, as she passed him his tea. “I have been working out my individual evolution, that is all. You don’t believe now what you did at twenty.”

Constantine shook his head.

“Perhaps I am only a dreamer,” he added wistfully.

“You have read and studied, and yet you have done nothing for social betterment. You have never raised your hand.”

“I have never raised my hand,” he echoed sadly, and, at the same moment, his glance falling on the headlines of the newspaper announcing McDuffy’s death, he found himself forced to suppress the grin that writhed at his lips.

“It’s the Russian character,” Grunya cried. “--Study, microscopic inspection and introspection, everything but deeds and action. But I--” Her young voice lifted triumphantly. “I am of the new generation, the first American generation--”

“You were Russian born,” he interpolated dryly.

“But American bred. I was only a babe. I have known no other land but this land of action. And yet, Uncle Sergius, you could have been such a power, if you’d only let business alone.”