Peter started uneasily.
“Is that necessary?” he asked.
“I fear that it is,” Sogrange replied. “We had a brief meeting of the executive council last night, and it was decided, for certain reasons, to entrust this task into no other hands. You will smile when I tell you that these accursed pamphlets have found their way into the possession of many of the rank and file of our own order. There is a marked disinclination on the part of those who have been our slaves, to accept orders from any one. Espionage we can still command—the best, perhaps, in Europe—because here we use a different class of material. But of those underneath, we are, for the moment, doubtful. Paris is all in a ferment. Under its outward seemliness a million throats are ready to take up the brazen cry of revolution. One trusts nobody. One fears all the time.”
“You or I!” Peter repeated, slowly. “It will not be sufficient, then, that we find Bernadine and deliver him over to your country’s laws?”
“It will not be sufficient,” Sogrange answered, sternly. “From those he may escape. For him there must be no escape.”
“Sogrange,” Peter said, speaking in a low tone, “I have never yet killed a human being.”
“Nor I,” Sogrange admitted. “Nor have I yet set my heel upon its head and stamped the life from a rat upon the pavement. But one lives and one moves on. Bernadine is the enemy of your country and mine. He makes war after the fashion of vermin. No ordinary cut-throat would succeed against him. It must be you or I.”
“How shall we decide?” Peter asked.
“The spin of a coin,” Sogrange replied. “It is best that way. It is best, too, done quickly.”
Peter produced a sovereign from his pocket and balanced it on the palm of his hand.