“Manly! Merciful goodness! do you think you can defend your life against the powerful Anti-Dreyfus League and its tools, the Black Brothers? This Dreyfus affair is nothing to you.”
“You are wrong!”
“How?”
“It is something to every man who loves liberty and justice!”
“But you cannot be willing to sacrifice your life in the cause. It is not required of you. There are others who may do that.”
“The existence of the league is well known; before I leave France I am going to try to show that the seven assassins in black are connected with the league. If I can do that, it may be that the league will go to pieces, for the decent ones in the lower degrees, who know nothing of its connection with murderers, may withdraw and denounce it.”
“And, in the meantime, you may follow other victims of the Black Brothers! It is horrible to think of! But the papers said the Duke of Benoit du Sault died a natural death.”
“Because they did not know any better. He was murdered!”
“How?”
“That is yet a mystery. I have thought much about it. I remember that he told me of an encounter with a bold woman of the streets. When he repulsed her, she struck him with a pin, inflicting a wound on his left wrist. That was bleeding when he was attacked by the pains. I remember that, from his manner, it seemed that the pains shot up his arm.”