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Read books online » Fiction » Hartmann, the Anarchist; Or, The Doom of the Great City by E. Douglas Fawcett (ebook reader online TXT) 📖

Book online «Hartmann, the Anarchist; Or, The Doom of the Great City by E. Douglas Fawcett (ebook reader online TXT) 📖». Author E. Douglas Fawcett



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chair by the left-hand corner of the fire sat an elderly man apparently of the higher artisan class. His face was most unprepossessing. There was a bull-dog’s obstinacy and attachment about it, but the eyes were unspeakably wicked and the mouth hard and cruel. I diagnosed it at once as that of a man whose past was best unread, whose hand had in dark by-ways been persistently raised against his fellowmen. It takes time to analyze this impression, but originally it seized me in a moment. I was prejudiced, accordingly, at the outset, but judge of my astonishment and disgust when Burnett cried, “Here, Schwartz, is my old pal Stanley.” It was the shameless miscreant known as the shadow of Hartmann!

Coldly enough I took the proffered hand. So this was the fanatic supposed to be long ago dead. One felt like abetting a murderer.

“Stanley seems startled,” laughed Burnett. “He is not much accustomed to high life. Come, man, acknowledge you had a surprise.”

The meeting was half of my seeking, and decency after all forbade openly expressed dislike. Besides, Schwartz was in practice only what Burnett was in theory, and what possibly even I and other moderates might become at a pinch.

30“I confess,” I replied, “I was taken somewhat aback. It is seldom the sea gives up its dead, and one does not meet celebrities like Herr Schwartz every day.”

Schwartz laughed grimly. I could see he was pleasantly tickled. Monstrous conceits sprout from the shedding of blood. He seemed to chuckle that he, outcast and rebel, had hurled so many of his fellows into nothingness. If this was the man, what of the master?

“Fill up your glass, Stanley,” and Burnett pushed the whisky across the table. “Sit down and ask what questions you like.”

Schwartz looked me carefully over. “You say again that you answer for this friend,” he muttered to Burnett.

“As I would for myself.”

“It is well.”

“Hartmann is alive then,” I ventured, “after all?”

“Very much so,” put in Burnett. “The most he got was a wetting. He and Schwartz were picked up by a fishing-boat and carried to Dieppe. Hence they made their way to Switzerland, where they have been for some years. Hartmann had money, Schwartz devotion. Money bred money—they grew rich, and they will yet lead anarchy to triumph, for at last, after long years of danger, delay, and disappointment, the dream of Hartmann is realized!”

31My companions exchanged meaning glances. Evidently they were in high spirits.

“And the deputy, the socialist, will he join us?” cried Schwartz. “He will have no struggles, no dangers; he will tread capital underfoot; he will raise his hand, and fortresses will rattle around him.”

Both the anarchists broke into renewed laughter. I was tired of hyperbole and wished to get at the facts. But do what I would my men refused to be “squeezed.” For a long time I could only glean from them that Hartmann was in London, and plotting mischief on some hitherto unimagined scale. At last I grew irritated at the splutter.

“Nonsense, Herr Schwartz, nonsense! Stir a step worth the noting and the very workers will rise and crush you. I tell you your notions are fantastic, your campaign against society maniacal. How can a few scattered incendiaries or dynamiters, ceaselessly dodging the law, hope to defy a state? The thing is ridiculous. As well match a pop-gun against a Woolwich infant.”

“My friend speaks of a struggle such as one man might wage against a mob in the street. It is not for this that Hartmann has plotted so long. It is not to be shot by soldiers or hunted by police that he will once more shake this city. Do you wish to guess his 32weapon? Take this piece of stuff in your hand, and tell me what you think of it.”

As he spoke he rummaged his pockets and produced a small plate, apparently of silvery grey metal, of about two square inches of surface, and one-tenth of an inch or so in thickness. I examined it carefully.

“Now take this steel knife and hammer and test its hardness and texture.” I did so. Burnett looked on knowingly.

“Well, it is extremely tough and hard, for I can make no impression. What it is, however, I can’t say.”

“But its weight, its weight!” said Burnett.

I must have changed colour. “Why, it is as light or lighter than cardboard. What an extraordinary combination of attributes!”

“Extraordinary indeed! It is the grandest of Hartmann’s strokes! But you cannot guess its use?”

I shook my head.

“Well, suppose you try to think it out between now and Saturday night, when I will promise to introduce you to the inventor himself.”

“What, Hartmann?”

“Yes; let us see, you address a meeting down at Turner’s Hall in this quarter on Saturday. I will be in the audience, and we will beard the captain in 33company. Midnight, Kensington Gardens, by the pond to the left as you enter from the Queen’s Road—that is the rendezvous. Come, are you ready? I think I may tell you that you will run no risks, while at any rate you will see something strange beyond compare.”

“YOU CANNOT GUESS ITS USE?”

34I hesitated, the mystery was deepening, and to confront and “have it out” with the celebrated, if hateful, anarchist, would be interesting. And these queer hints too?

“Yes, I’m your man; but we must have no companions—for obvious reasons.”

Burnett nodded. Shortly afterwards the obnoxious German took his departure and left us to ourselves. I am not sure that he quite trusted my intentions, for the dread of the police spy was ever present with him.

We two talked on till midnight. On rising to go I made a final effort to “squeeze” the anarchist.

“Come, John, it’s no use playing the mystery man any longer. I shall know everything by Saturday night, or rather Sunday morning. You trust me with your other secrets, trust me with this; at any rate, a three days’ interval can’t make much difference.”

Burnett thought a moment, stepped to his shelves, and took down a work of somewhat antique binding. It was from the pen of a nineteenth-century savant of high repute in his day.[1] Slowly, and without comment, he read me the following passage:—“Yet there is a real impediment in the way of man 35navigating the air, and that is the excessive weight of the only great mechanical moving powers hitherto placed at his disposal. When science shall have discovered some moving power greatly lighter than any we yet know, in all probability the problem will be solved.”

1.  Duke of Argyll, Reign of Law.

The silvery grey substance had solved it!

36 CHAPTER III.
A MOTHER’S TROUBLES.

A raw London morning is a terrible foe to romance—visions that have danced elf-like before the view on the foregoing night tend to lose their charm or even to merge themselves wholly in the commonplace. So it was with me. When I came down to breakfast and reviewed the situation calmly, I was ready to laugh at my faith in what seemed the wild vagaries of Schwartz and Burnett. The memory of the queer little parlour and its queerer tenants had lost its over-night vividness and given place to a suspicion that either I or my hosts had indulged too freely in whisky. The little plate, however, was still in my possession, and this very tangible witness sufficed, despite a growing scepticism, to give me pause. “A striking discovery no doubt,” was my verdict, “but the dream of Hartmann, as Burnett calls it, is not so easily realized.” Still I should know all—if anything worth the mention 37was to be known—on Saturday night if I showed up at the odd trysting-place named by Burnett—a trysting-place which at that hour meant a scramble over palings, and a possible trouble with the police. But these things were trifles. All things considered, I should do well to present myself with or without Burnett, for the boasted aëronef apart, the threats of the anarchists had begun to perplex me mightily, and the wish to meet their notorious leader, the so terrible son of my old friend Mrs. Hartmann, was not to be summarily exorcised.

I had passed the morning in study. Luncheon over, I jotted down some notes for my speech on the following Saturday. Next, I sent Lena a note promising to look in on Sunday afternoon, sallied out with it to the post, and then ensconced myself in an omnibus which was plying in the direction of Islington. Whither was I bound? For the house of my friend Mrs. Hartmann, whom, as already mentioned, I had not seen for some time, and whose conversation just now might be fraught with peculiar interest. Had the son as yet seen the mother? Had any inkling of these vaguely discussed new plots reached her? Had she any clue to the mystery tapped over-night? Questions such as these surged up in dozens, and I determined, if possible, to feel my way to their answers.

38It was late in the afternoon when I reached Mrs. Hartmann’s modest villa in Islington. The maid who admitted me said that she was not at home, having gone to visit a sick child in the neighbourhood. She expected her back to tea, and meanwhile perhaps I would like to wait. There was clearly no resource open to me but to do so, and entering the narrow hall I was shown into a drawing-room, simply but withal not uncomfortably furnished. The bay window which lighted the apartment looked on to a neat grass-plot diversified by some small but well-kept parterres.

There was little within to catch the eye. Exploring the walls I came across a shelf full of musty books, mathematical and engineering text-books, and a variety of treatises on political economy and the sciences, evidently mementos of the son! While glancing through some and noting the numerous traces of careful study, the thought struck me that the photograph of their misguided possessor might also be accessible. I had been many times in the room before, but had never been favoured with the old lady’s confidences on the score of her son. The wound caused by his crime was ever green, and I, at least, was not cruel enough to disturb it. However, being now left alone I resolved to consult her albums, 39which, at any rate, might serve to while away the hour. Loosening the clasp of one that lay near to hand, I turned over its leaves rapidly. As a rule, I dislike collections of this sort; there is a prosiness peculiar to albums which forbids incautious research. But here the hunt was of interest. True, there were mediocre denizens in plenty, shoals of cousins, sisters, and aunts, hordes of nonentities whom Burnett would have dubbed only “fit for fuel,” but there was discoverable one very satisfactory tenant—a loose photograph marked on the back, “R. Hartmann, taken when twenty-three years of age,” just about the time of the celebrated bridge incident.

It was the face of a young man evidently of high capacity and unflinching resolution. A slight moustache brushed the upper lip, and set off a clear-cut but somewhat cruel mouth. A more completely independent expression I never saw. The lineaments obscured by time defied accurate survey, but the general effect produced was that they indicated an arbitrary and domineering soul, utterly impatient of control and loftily contemptuous of its kind.

I was carefully conning the face when I heard the garden-gate creak on its hinges, a sound followed by the rattle of a latch-key in the lock of the front door. Mrs. Hartmann had returned. Passing into the room, 40she met me with a pleasant smile which showed up in curious contrast to the look of depression so familiar to me of yore. I interpreted that brightness in an instant. Hartmann had returned, and had paid her the visit of one raised from the dead. But of his terrible designs, of his restless hatred of society, he had clearly told her nothing.

Hers was an expressive face, and the shadows upon it were few enough to warrant that inference. Probably he had smoothed over the past and fooled her with some talk of a reformed life and a changed creed. It is so easy for an only son to persuade a mother—particularly when he rises after long years from a supposed grave.

“Well, Mr. Stanley, you are the last person I expected to see. I heard you were to be in Paris to-day.”

“So, my dear Mrs. Hartmann, I was, but the Northertons, you see, have returned, and I had hoped to have done some touring with the old gentleman.”

“Or perhaps with Miss Lena. No, don’t look so innocent, for she tells me more than you think. But what of this return? I had a note from her when she was in Paris, but she said nothing

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