"I read your articles in the Future Age."
"Well, then, who told you about the Future Age?"
Jack was tempted to try an experiment. "Fellow I used to room with. The hero who croaked old Silas Gyde. Emil Jansen."
It had an electrical effect. Barbarossa was out of his chair with a bound. His ruddy cheeks turned a gray color, on which the network of little dark veins stood out startlingly.
"Silence! Don't speak that name here! Hero nothing! Madman! Fool! What have you got to do with him?"
"Why, nothing!" stammered Jack, affecting a great confusion. "Isn't he one of you? Isn't he working for the Cause?"
"I don't know him!" cried Barbarossa. "If he claims to be my friend I repudiate him! Such madmen are like to ruin us all!"
"But—you said in your article that I read, that the capitalistic order must be overthrown at any cost. That he was a hero who gave up his life to accomplish it."
"That's all right in a periodical," said Barbarossa. "They don't care what you write. But murder——!" The fat man shuddered. "I'm a responsible citizen. I've got a wife and four children to think of."
Jack thought: "In anarchy, like other religions, there seems to be a considerable gap between preaching and practising."