The Outlaws of the Air | Page 2

with which the worst that
society had so far learned to fear from anarchy would prove to be the
merest trifle.
But how was that most unimaginative and matter-of-fact of mortals, a
British policeman, to know that in his waistcoat pocket he carried a
foreign telegram, which, properly interpreted, conveyed the intelligence
that Caserio Santo was on his way to Lyons, to await there the order, in
obedience to which he would with one stroke of his knife send a
shudder through the civilised world; or how was he to divine that in the
brain behind that open, honest-looking brow there were thoughts
working which ere long might set the world in a blaze?
In St. Petersburg, or even in Paris, such a man would have been
shadowed, his every movement would have been watched, all his
comings and goings noticed, and at any moment - such a one as this,
for instance - he might have been pounced upon and searched as a
suspicious person; and assuredly, if he had been, the toils of the law
would have closed about him in such fashion that little but a miracle
could have set him free again.
But here in London, the asylum of anarchy, and the focus of the most
dangerous forces in the world, he went on his way unquestioned and
unsuspected, for, although the police were morally certain that such a
man existed, they had no idea as to his personality, no notion that this
smart, good-looking young fellow, whose name had never been heard
in connection even with such anarchist clubs as were known to have
their quarters in London, and much less, therefore, with any of the
crimes that had been laid to the charge of anarchy, was in reality even a

greater criminal than Vaillant or Henry, or even the infamous Ravachol
himself
These were only the blind if willing tools, the instruments of political
murder, the visible hands that obeyed the unseen brain, those who did
the work and paid the penalty. But Max Renault was the brain itself,
the intellect which conceived the plans for the execution of which the
meaner and cheaper disciples of the sanguinary brotherhood of the
knife and the bomb died on the scaffold, or wore out their lives in penal
prisons or the mines of Siberia.
In a word, he was the moving spirit and directing intellect of what was
soon to become the most dreaded body of men and women in the world,
but which was now only known to the initiated as "Autonomie Group
Number 7."
But the stroke which, if his true character bad been known, would have
cut short his career, whether by rope or axe, would have done more
than paralyse the brain which had plotted half the crimes that had been
committed in the name of anarchy during the previous five years, and
others in which the red hand had never been seen. It would have
stopped his career at the most important moment of his life, and
prevented him acting as the connecting link between two sets of
circumstances which, though naturally of the utmost antagonism to
each other, would, when united in such a personality as his, produce an
explosion which might shake the world.
A few hundred yards past the top of the hill, Max turned sharply to the
left, walked along a side street, turned to the right at the end of this, and
went into another. Three minutes' quick walking brought him to the
side door of a house which had a small timber yard on one side of it,
and on the other a deserted beer-house, which had lost its licence, and
remained unoccupied because the premises were fit for no other kind of
business.
The house itself had a low shop front, with the lower half of its
windows painted a dull green, and on the upper part was an arc of white
letters making the legend: "Social Club and Eclectic Institute." A lamp

over the shop door bore the same inscription in white letters on blue
glass, but the lamp was out now, for it was one of the rules of the club
that all members should leave the premises not later than twelve o'clock
at night on week-days and half-past eleven on Sundays.
This rule, however, seemed only to apply to a certain section of the
members. After Max had opened the side door with his latch-key, and
ascended the stairs at the end of the passage, with a familiarity that
enabled him to dispense with a light in the absolute darkness, he
knocked at the door of an upstairs room which he found without the
slightest hesitation. It was opened, and he found himself in the presence
of four men and three women sitting