“A question that I’ve asked myself, sir, a great many times over in the last twenty-four hours. Perhaps Mr. Smith could answer that best. Though—er—I think the shell was blown through the blowpipe to clear the deadly fumes from the room by its explosion, before any one else should suffer. Smith is, at least, not a wanton slaughterer.”
“You are right, sir, and I thank you,” said the foreigner. He drew himself up weakly but with pride. “Gentlemen, I am not a murderer. I am an avenger. It would have gone hard with my conscience had any innocent person met death through me. As for that Turkish dog, you shall judge for yourself whether he did not die too easily.”
From among the papers in a tiroir against the wall he took a French journal, and read, translating fluently. The article was a bald account of the torture, outrage and massacre of Armenian women and girls, at Adana, by the Turks. The most hideous portion of it was briefly descriptive of the atrocities perpetrated by order of a high Turkish official upon a mother and two young daughters. “An Armenian prisoner, being dragged by in chains, went mad at the sight,” the correspondent stated.
“I was that prisoner,” said the reader. “The official was Telfik Bey. I saw my naked daughter break from the soldiers and run to him, pleading for pity, as he sat his horse; and I saw him strike his spur into her bare breast. My wife, the mother of my children—”
“Don’t!” The protest came from the Fifth Assistant Secretary of State.
He had risen. His smooth-skinned face was contracted, and the sweat stood beaded on his forehead. “I—I can’t stand it. I’ve got my duty to do. This man has made a confession.”
“Your pardon,” said the foreigner. “I have lived and fed on and slept with that memory, ever since. On my release I left my country. The enterprise of which I had been the head, dye-stuff manufacturing, had interested me in chemistry. I went to England to study further. Thence I came to America to wait.”
“You have heard his confession, all of you,” said young Mr. McIntyre, rising. “I shall have him put under arrest pending advice from Washington.”
“You, may save yourself the trouble, I think, Tommy,” drawled Average Jones. “Mr. Smith will never be called to account in this world for the murder—execution of Telfik Bey.”
“You saw the marks on my finger-nails,” said the foreigner. “That is the sure sign. I may live twenty-four hours; I may live twice or three times that period. The poison does its work, once it gets into the blood, and there is no help. It matters nothing. My ambition is satisfied.”