There were several others present among whom the loafer type was perhaps in the ascendant. But there were also many of the more intelligent artisan class, discontented with their lot; labourers and dockers who had tramped up after a hard day's work, a young artist who looked rather of the Social Democratic type, a cabman, a few stray gentlemen, a clever but never-sober tanner, a labour agitator, a professional stump-orator, and one or two fishy and nondescript characters of the Hebraic race. O'Flynn, the printer of the Bomb, was a cantankerous Irishman with a taste for discoursing on abstract questions, concerning which he grew frightfully muddled and confused. He had a rather mad look in his eye and a disputatious manner.
When at last inquiry was made whether all companions expected were present, the red flag began to quiver and writhe most noticeably and finally to unfurl, and there emerged from its depths the dirtiest and most slovenly man I had ever seen, and the frouziest and most repulsive of dogs. This man, if man I may call him, was bony and ill-built, and appeared to consist largely of hands and feet. His arms were abnormally long and his chest narrow and hollow, and altogether he seemed to hang together by a mere fluke. His ill-assorted limbs were surmounted by a sallow, yellowish face, large repulsive lips, and a shapeless nose, and to him belonged the long, black greasy hair which I had already noted amid the folds of the red banner. Large gristly ears emerged from his uncombed mop of hair, and the only redeeming feature about the abject creature was his large, brown, dog-like eyes. He crept forward, grinding his teeth and rubbing his bony hands, and subsided into a waste-paper basket which was the only available seat left unoccupied.
And now at last, after much talking and shifting about, and not before a young German hairdresser had been stationed with one eye glued to a hole in the outer wall of the shed, in order to make sure that no detective was listening outside, the proceedings commenced.
Banter, the little man who had opened the door to me, rose to his feet, cleared his throat, and said "Comrades" in a stentorian voice. Then followed a long and rambling statement which he read out, from amid the grammatical inaccuracies and continual digressions of which I was enabled to gather that he had noticed of late something very peculiar about the conduct of Jacob Myers, who had appeared to exercise undue influence and power over his brother Augustin; that, moreover, Jacob had been seen by a third party drinking a glass of rum in the "Nag and Beetle" in company with a well-known detective, and that, in final and conclusive proof of some very fishy transactions on his part, three undeniable half-crowns had been distinctly observed in his overcoat pocket the previous week. "And how should he come by these by honest means?" indignantly inquired Banter. "He says he's out of work, and he's not got the courage to steal!"
"'Ear, 'ear! Why pay rent to robber landlords?" the navvy, Armitage's neighbour, ejaculated at this juncture, after which irrelevant inquiry he spat defiance at Society.
Then followed the speeches for the prosecution, if the use of such a word may be permitted in connection with an Anarchist transaction. The chief accusations made against Myers were his violent blood-and-thunder speeches which he had in no wise carried out in action, but which he had delivered under the eyes and in the hearing of the police who had listened and seen it all with quite commendable Christian forbearance. Besides this several sensational articles had appeared in the daily press in connection with Augustin's death, exaggerating the importance of the affair and hinting at dark plots; of which articles he was suspected of being the author. Jacob was in fact accused of having egged on his unfortunate brother to his doom in order that he might turn a little money out of the transaction between newspaper reports and police fees. It apparently mattered little to this modern Shylock whence came his pound of flesh or what blood ran or congealed in its veins.
Through all these statements and questions Myers sat in stolid and insolent silence—occasionally whistling snatches of some music-hall air. At last when reference was made to some chemicals which he was alleged to have procured and handed on to his brother, he roused up from his affected indifference and appealed to Armitage for assistance. "Dr. Armitage knows," he exclaimed indignantly, "that I only procured the sulphuric acid from him for domestic purposes."
My eyes were riveted on the doctor's face, and only to one who knew him well could the expression be at all decipherable. To me it distinctly denoted disappointment—that humiliating sense of disappointment and disillusion which must invariably come upon a man of strong and fanatical convictions when brought into contact with the meanness and cowardice of his fellows.
Dr. Armitage was a fanatic and an idealist, and two convictions were paramount in his mind at this time: the necessity and the justice of the "propaganda by force" doctrine preached by the more advanced Anarchists, and the absolute good faith and devotion to principle of the men with whom he was associated. A man of the Myers type was quite incomprehensible to him. Not for a single instant had Armitage hesitated to throw open the doors of his Harley Street establishment to the Anarchists: to him the cause was everything, and interests, prudence, prospects, all had to give way before it. And here was this man who had professed the same principles as himself, with whom he had discoursed freely on the necessity of force, who had openly advocated dynamite in his presence—this man who had spoken of the revolution and the regeneration of Society with the same warmth as himself—talking of "domestic purposes," and ready to recant all that he had preached and said. And what lay behind this reticence and these denials? Treachery of the basest kind, and the most sordid, abominable calculations which it was possible to conceive.
These thoughts I read in the doctor's face, and turning my eyes from him to the abject Jacob I could only wonder at the naïve sincerity of Armitage, which could ever have laid him open to such illusions and disillusions.