“And what, pray, do you think you are going to achieve with your mumbo jumbo?” he asked, suddenly spinning the button off his foil. “It is wrong in ethics, it stands outside the law, it is an affront to religion, it is opposed to the deepest instincts of the human race.”
Mrs. Carburton said cautiously that the rules of the Society did not permit its case to be argued. But its members sincerely believed that by fearless coöperative action they could do permanent good to the world.
Saul Hartz took leave to doubt it. And to kill a man because one did not happen to agree with his opinions, gloss it over as one might, was simple murder.
“But does it kill people?” said Mrs. Carburton, with a slow and steady widening of fine gray eyes.
Was this real innocence? Or did she merely think him a fool? His stern eyes questioned her candid ones, but they told him nothing.
“In effect,” said Saul Hartz brutally, “this Society is a murder club. Barely a fortnight ago the unfortunate Garland was done to death by it.”
“A coroner’s jury,” said Rose Carburton, “declared William Garland’s death to be from an unknown cause.”
“The cause is not unknown to the Council of Seven.”
“I do not belong to the Council,” said Rose Carburton simply. “No woman does. But speaking as an ordinary member of society—we’ll dispense with the ‘the’—from the bottom of my heart I rejoice that a man so infamous as William Garland is no longer able to do harm to his fellow creatures.”
“Infamous is a strong word.”