"I just mentioned the matter, y'know, because you anarchists have got the reputation of not sticking at much."

"My dear Don Miguel, a statesman in your own islands once evolved the policy of Thorough. We have adopted the selfsame principle. Nobody and nothing must stand in the way of our ends. We stand up for humanity in the mass. Bourgeois society is bound to go under. And to hasten its downfall any one of our members is proud to offer himself as a sufferer, or as even a martyr to death, for the Cause. We aim at producing a state of society in which men may live together in harmony without laws. You must see that we are merely extreme philanthropists, and that our motives are pure in the extreme. And, amigo, you must disabuse your mind from the vulgar illusion that we are nothing but a band of brutal assassins who murder only through sheer lust for blood."

I started some sort of apology, but he cut me short.

"My dear fellow, you haven't put my back up in the very least. A man is bound to misunderstand us unless he is on our side; because if he does understand and appreciate, and has any claim to the title of man, he could not help being an anarchist. But now let us drop the question and get to the work of the more immediate present. I am going to the telegraph office first. Let me accompany you back as far as your hotel."

"When shall I see you again?" I asked, as we parted at Bustamente's doorway.

"When I find where the Recipe is."

"And that will occupy how long? A week?"

Taltavull laughed. "You will see me to-morrow afternoon at the latest," said he.

Confidence is said to be infectious, but I can't say that my hopes were very highly excited by Taltavull's sanguineness of success. As to Haigh, he had scoffed at the idea of tracing up the Recipe from the first, and all I could tell him about the new power on the scent would not change his cheerful pessimism. "The whole loaf we are not going to get, dear boy," was his stated opinion; "and we may as well be contented with the crumbs we've grabbed, and enjoy 'em accordingly. There's the dinner bell. Let's go and make merry with the drummers."

However, true to his word, and not a little to our surprise, Taltavull turned up about four the next afternoon and told us that he had been successful. There was a little subcutaneous pride to be noted as he made the announcement, for, after all, he was a human man as well as an anarchist, and had done a thing which we deemed very nigh impossible. But he kept this natural exultation under very modestly, saying that all credit that might be due was owing not to him, but to the great organization. We were merely offered a proof, he said, of what the anarchist body could encompass when once their machinery was put in motion. And then, having given us the broad fact, he proceeded to show out details. Or rather, to be strictly accurate, he gave us a string of results, without any hint as to how they had been arrived at, a certain amount of mystery being the salt without which no secret society could possibly exist.