"I am sorry that things have fallen out as they have, _mon ami_; but such being the case, there is no help for it."
"I--Gerald Brooke--whose ancestors fought at Cressy, to sink to the level of a common assassin? Never!"
"Pardon. Might it not be as well, before you express your determination in such emphatic terms, to consider what would be the consequence of a refusal on your part to comply with the instructions of which I have the misfortune to be the bearer?--Mrs. Brooke is very young to be left a widow."
"Pardon. But that is what it means. Any affiliated member who may be so ill-advised as to refuse to carry out the decrees of the Tribunal renders himself liable to the extreme penalty; and so surely as you, Gerald Brooke, are now a living man, so surely, in a few short weeks, should you persist in your refusal, will your wife be left a widow."
"Obedience, blind and unquestioning, the utter abnegation of your individuality to the will of your superiors, is the first great rule of the Propaganda to which you and I have the honour to belong. But all this you knew, or ought to have known, long ago."
"Obedience carried to the verge of murder is obedience no longer--it becomes a crime. However you may put it, assassination remains assassination still."
"Pardon. We recognise no such term in our vocabulary."
"Karovsky, had you been called upon to do this deed"----
"I should have done it. For if there be one man in the world, Brooke, whom I have cause to hate more than another, that man is Baron Otto von Rosenberg!"
"Pardon. Did I not mention the name before? But he is the man."
For a moment or two Gerald could not speak. "It is but half an hour since I parted from him," he contrived to say at last.--"Karovsky, I feel as if I were entangled in some horrible nightmare--as if I were being suffocated in the folds of some monstrous Python."
"It is a feeling that will wear itself out in the course of a little while. I remember---- But that matters not."
"But Von Rosenberg is not a Russian; he is a German ex-diplomatist. What can such a man as he have done to incur so terrible a vengeance?"
"Listen. Four years ago, when attached to the Embassy at St Petersburg, certain secrets were divulged to him, after he had pledged his sacred word of honour that no use whatever should be made of the information so acquired. Wretch that he was! Von Rosenberg turned, traitor, and revealed everything to those in power. In the dead of night, a certain house in which a secret printing press was at work was surrounded by the police. Two of the inmates were shot down while attempting to escape. The rest were made prisoners, among them being three women and a boy of seventeen--my brother. Two of those arrested died in prison, or were never heard of more; the rest were condemned to the mines. On the road, my brother and one of the women sank and died, killed by the dreadful hardships they had to undergo; the rest are now rotting away their lives in the silver mines, forgotten by all but the dear ones they left behind.--You now know the reason why the Baron Otto von Rosenberg has been sentenced to death. The vengeance of the Supreme Tribunal may be slow, but it is very sure."