The Outlaws of the Air | Page 4

that if I had not come back to-night, instead of to-morrow, and had given that fellow twelve hours more grace, the fate of the whole world would have been changed."
"What! the fate of the world?" said she half incredulously, while the others ceased their conversation and turned to listen to this strange passage of words.
"Yes," said Max, slightly raising his tone till it had a note of triumph in it, and at the same time bringing his hand down on hers, which was resting on the arm of her chair. The quick blood came to her cheeks and a flash of anger to her eyes, and she made an effort to withdraw it, but he held it fast, and, before she could speak, went on-
"Yes, Lea, if the venture that I am going to undertake turns out a success, I shall hold the fate of human society in my hand, just as I hold this pretty little hand of yours, only in a somewhat rougher grip, and then-"
"And then, Monsieur Max," interrupted the girl, snatching her hand away as the pressure of his relaxed for a moment. "I suppose you will have what you have not got now, the right to take what you want by the universal law of might."
"Yes," he said, with another laugh, a somewhat more pleasant one this time. "And as I have the power; so will I use it, whether in love or war. Are you agreed?"
Lea looked at him steadily for a moment, and then, with a swift flush overspreading as fair a face as ever man's eyes rested upon with love and longing, said in a low voice that had just a perceptible tremor in it-
"Yes, I suppose might is right after all, in love as well as war and nineteenth century society. He who can take can have; but, if you please, we will wait until you can take."
"Agreed!" he said. "That's a bargain. And now we'll get to business. Have you found Comrade Berthauld a quiet resting-place?" he continued, addressing the two men, who had just returned to the room.
"Yes," said Casano in his pleasant Italian tenor. "Ve haf gifen him a bath. I don't sink zere vill be very mooch left of him or his clothes by ze morning."
"Very well," said Max, taking some papers out of the breast pocket of his jacket. "Now, sit down and listen."
They obeyed in silence, Casano first bolting the door.
"First," said Max, looking up from his papers and giving a quick glance at the expectant faces round the table, "Comrade Caserio Santo of the Cette Group has been chosen by lot to execute the sentence passed by this group on the 6th of February on Sadi Carnot in return for the lives which he refused to spare. Santo will be at Lyons soon after daybreak. If that rat Berthauld had got out of this room alive, Santo would have been arrested, and Carnot would have escaped. I have the proofs of his treachery here, if you wish to see them. As it is, is it agreed that I shall direct him to offer our congratulations to M. le President on his visit to Lyons?"
He stopped and looked round the table again. The others nodded in silence, but Lea looked up with something like softness in her eyes, and said-
"What a pity! Poor Carnot is an excellent fellow in his bourgeois way, isn't he? Quite a model husband and father, incorruptible in politics, and all that sort of thing. Wouldn't some one else do as well, say, Casimir-Perier or Dupuy? Incorruptible politicians are not so plentiful in France just now."
"The better the man the better the effect," said Max drily. "It is just as easy to strike high as a little lower. There are plenty of politicians in France, but only one President."
"Ja! dass is so," said a bright-faced, square-headed little German sitting opposite to Lea. "Strike high and hit hart. Dat is de vay to make dese sheepsheads open deir moufs and stare ven dey reads de papers on Monday. Let Carnot go first, and den - veil, den someone else. Dere are plenty of dem to spare."
A laugh followed this speech of Franz Hartog, who may as well be introduced here as elsewhere as the cleverest engineer in Europe, and an anarchist heart and soul-if he had a soul, which some of his nearest acquaintances were very much inclined to doubt.
"Very well," said Lea; "I withdraw my objection, if, indeed, I ever had one."
The veto of one member, by the rules of the Group, would have been fatal to the execution of the proposal. As Lea withdrew hers, she flicked some more ash off the end of her cigarette, and with it virtually fell the man whose death all Europe would be mourning