“He had no intention of acting as an agent of the Bolsheviks. He was a man who believed implicitly in the inherent wickedness of mankind—that every man and woman has his or her price—and he set himself, on that assumption, to obtain a power which should eventually rival that of Napoleon. And,” the Chief added, leaning forward in his seat, “he had gone quite a respectable way toward realizing his dream!”
We stared at him in genuine amazement this time.
“Yes,” the big man went on. “He had two methods, desire and intimidation. He came to this country originally with immense wealth in his possession or at his disposal. He brought a big stock of drugs with him, which we have found, by the way. And since then he had been importing synthetic drugs into this country from Germany in large quantities.”
“I noticed an article on that subject in The Times some time in November,” I interrupted. “I noticed it because it told of the amount of synthetic drugs being smuggled to America from Germany.”
“Yes,” the Chief nodded. “The Germans perfected the manufacture of synthetic drugs during the war and they keep our hands full. But this man did not use, nor intend to use, his drugs merely to gain wealth. He had a bigger motive. It was power he wanted, colossal power, and he was in a fair way toward getting it when we finally stopped him.
“He bought that house out there on Long Island, refitted it with all kinds of luxuries and electrical devices, and prepared to sit back in his web and wait for his victims. His gang was already organized, and at least four of his principal lieutenants were men—or women—with a good social entrée. These acted as decoys and brought the influential people, with whom the Emperor wanted to get in touch, to the man’s parties. Here they were given a wonderful time and were skillfully and thoroughly drugged. To give real parties of that kind he had, of course, to secure beautiful women—hence his method of kidnaping beautiful girls——” and the Chief bowed very handsomely to Natalie, who flushed and returned the courtesy prettily.
“Just there is where the man’s personality came in. Sometimes he would talk to his victims about life as it is to-day, and his idea of what it should be and could be if a few resolute men made up their minds to make it so. And in this way he actually enlisted quite a number of persons, mostly women, in his scheme for establishing a modern Utopia in these United States, with every man making his own laws and a free-and-easy life, love and religion for every one.
“Of course he had no such idea in his mind, except perhaps at first, with himself as head or Emperor. But he got these people eating out of his hand—Mrs. Fawcette was one of them—and they brought others. And among the others were often men of real power and influence whom the Emperor succeeded either in enlisting in his cause, blackmailing or drugging. If they were men in important political positions, he got secrets out of them and then blackmailed them. Or he threatened to destroy their public lives for them unless they did as he wanted.
“But his safest and most effective method was to drug his victims so subtly and with such skillfully prepared drugs that they acquired the drug habit and the drug hunger before they were aware of it. Then, as he was the only source of supply, they would do anything he told them to, to get some more of the same.”
“But surely,” Moore interrupted, “you don’t believe that he could have got away with anything like that for long, do you, sir?”