THE CONSPIRATORS.
III.
My dear Charles,—Essential to that millennium which our restless revolutionaries are after is your head on a charger and my head on a charger; provided both heads are present it may be the same charger for all they care. When you think of the importance which we of the detested middle classes attach to our heads and the regrettable violence we might exhibit towards whoever called at our houses to collect them, then it seems to me you must confess to a sneaking admiration for the bravery of the turbulent minority in attacking so big a problem.
But when you get the inside details of their schemes you find that discretion is not only the better part but the whole of their valour. For arms you find incendiary speeches; for ammunition, viperish propaganda, and for epoch-making action you have nothing. In that "nothing" lies their main ingenuity and strong hope. If they can prevail on the masses to do nothing, at the right moment, and to go on doing nothing till there is nothing left, then, say they, they will have civilisation under; and if our heads don't fall off of their own accord then a thousand willing hands will be stretched forward to pull them off.
You ask me how I know all this. Close the doors so that we cannot be overheard, and I will tell you. I buy their continental newspaper—"organ" they prefer to call it, being rather proud of the noise—and there I read all that I want to know. It costs a halfpenny a day, runs to six pages, is well printed and brightly composed and contains no advertisements. There is generally a picture in thick black lines in the centre of the first page. Blood being the easy thing for the printer to "feature," the picture generally deals with the cutting off of heads. If it refers to the past, you and I are cutting off the worker's head, severing from a fine muscular body a noble head with a halo to it. If it refers to the future, the worker is having our heads off, severing from a fat and uncontrolled corpus a most unpleasant excrescence in a very shiny top-hat.
To run a daily newspaper of that "make-up," without advertisements and for subscribers of whom the larger number, like myself, omit to pay their half-penny, is not easy business. In fact it is not business at all. The question being raised as to where the money came from, the producers tried to allay our suspicion by making a great show of an appeal for help. The published results, which I give you in their English equivalent, were much as follows:—
| £ | s. | d. | |
| B. de M. | 6 | 0 | |
| Z. X. | 5 | 0 | |
| Idealist | 5 | 0 | |
| U. W. K. | 5 | 0 | |
| A Frenchman who is ashamed of France | 4 | 6 | |
| Young Communist | 4 | 0 | |
| Three young Communists | 3 | 6 | |
| "Great Britain" (collection) | 3 | 3 | |
| Disgusted | 2 | 6 | |
| Association of Women Fighters for Justice | 2 | 3 | |
| O. F. | 1 | 0 | |
| Down with Capital | 9 | ||
| One Who will stick at Nothing | 3 | ||
| —— | —— | —— | |
| 2 | 3 | 0 | |
| Previous lists | 14 | 6 | 8-3/4 |
| —— | —— | —— | |
| £16 | 9 | 8-3/4 |
The grand total of sixteen pounds, nine shillings and eight-pence three-farthings shows a magnificent spirit, but wouldn't keep much more than a couple of square inches of the front page alive for more than one day. Reverting, then, to the more pressing question of the removal of our heads, who is paying for the operation?
He is a heavy-built octopus sort of man of about forty-seven; a red cheery complexion, rather more fat than muscle, long grey hair tending to curl at the extremes, and followed about by a lady who acts as his secretary, calls him "Master" and adores the ground he walks on. They are married, but not, I should hasten to add, to each other; none of your dull orthodox practices for them. About his profile there is an undeniable something which makes his head a suggestive model for sculpture. It is framed in a large, white, soft silk collar, which falls gracefully over the lapels of the coat and is, I am told, of a mode much worn among the élite of the anarchist and atheist world.
I've a friend here in the law-and-order business who thought that, having reported all the movements of this Master of the Black Arts, he might find it worth while to make his acquaintance in the flesh. Indirect enquiry elicited that the desire to get into touch was reciprocated, the attentions of the police being insufficient to satisfy his sense of importance. So the meeting was arranged, and I was allowed to come along too.