Part 42 (1/2)

”You lie!” the woman interrupted. ”You lie or you do yourself an injustice. We gave you four years, and looking into your face, I think that it has been enough. I think that the weariness is there already. In any case, the charge which I lay upon you in these my last moments, is one which you can escape by death only.”

A low murmur of voices from those others repeated her words.

”By death only!”

Peter Ruff opened his lips, but closed them again without speech. A wave of emotion seemed pa.s.sing through the room. Something strange was happening. It was Death itself, which had come among them.

A morning journalist wrote of the death of Madame eloquently, and with feeling. She had been a broad-minded aristocrat, a woman of brilliant intellect and great friends.h.i.+ps, a woman of whose inner life during the last ten or fifteen years little was known, yet who, in happier times, might well have played a great part in the history of her country.

Peter Ruff drove back from the cemetery with the Marquis de Sogrange, and, for the first time since the death of Madame, serious subjects were spoken of.

”I have waited here patiently,” he declared, ”but there are limits. I want my wife.”

Sogrange took him by the arm and led him into the library of the house in the Rue de St. Quintaine. The six men who were already there waiting rose to their feet.

”Gentlemen,” the Marquis said, ”is it your will that I should be spokesman?”

There was a murmur of a.s.sent. Then Sogrange turned toward his companion, and something new seemed to have crept into his manner--a solemn, almost a threatening note.

”Peter Ruff,” he continued, ”you have trifled with the one organization in this world which has never allowed liberties to be taken with it. Men who have done greater service than you have died, for the disobedience of a day. You have been treated leniently, according to the will of Madame. According to her will, and in deference to the position which you must now take up among us, we will treat you as no other has ever been treated by us. The Double-Four admits your leaders.h.i.+p and claims you for its own.”

”I am not prepared to discuss anything of the sort,” Peter Ruff declared, doggedly, ”until my wife is restored to me.”

The Marquis smiled.

”The traditions of your race, Mr. Ruff,” he said, ”are easily manifest in you. Now hear our decision. Your wife shall be restored to you on the day when you take up this position to which you have become ent.i.tled.

Sit down and listen.”

Peter Ruff was a rebel at heart, but he felt the grip of iron.

”During these four years when you, my friend, have been growing turnips and shooting your game, events in the great world have marched, new powers have come into being, a new page of history has been opened. As everything which has good at the heart evolves toward the good, so we of the Double-Four have lifted our great enterprise onto a higher plane.

The world of criminals is still at our beck and call, we still claim the right to draw the line between moral theft and immoral honesty, but to-day the Double-Four is concerned with greater things. Within the four walls of this room, within the hearing of these my brothers, whose fidelity is as sure as the stones of Paris, I tell you a great secret.

The government of our country has craved for our aid and the aid of our organization. It is no longer the wealth of the world alone, which we may control, but the actual destinies of nations.”

”What I suppose you mean to say is,” Peter Ruff remarked, ”that you've been going in for politics?”

”You put it crudely, my English bull-dog,” Sogrange answered, ”but you are right. We are occupied now by affairs of international importance.

More than once, during the last few month, ours has been the hand which has changed the policy of an empire.”

”Most interesting,” Peter Ruff declared, ”but so far as I, personally, am concerned--”

”Listen,” interrupted the Marquis. ”Not a hundred yards from the French Emba.s.sy, in London, there is waiting for you a house and servants no less magnificent than the Emba.s.sy itself. You will become the amba.s.sador in London of the Double-Four, t.i.tular head of our a.s.sociation, a personage whose power is second to none in your great city. I do not address words of caution to you, my friend, because we have satisfied ourselves as to your character and capacity before we consented that you should occupy your present position. But I ask you to remember this. The will of Madame lives even beyond the grave. The spirit which animated her when alive breathes still in all of us. In London you will wield a great power. Use it for the common good. And, remember this--the Double-Four has never failed, the Double-Four never can fail.”

”I am glad to hear you are so confident,” Peter Ruff said. ”Of course, if I have to take this thing on, I shall do my best, but if I might venture to allude, for a moment, to anything so trifling as my own domestic affairs, I am very anxious to know about my wife.”

Sogrange smiled.

”You will find Mrs. Ruff awaiting you in London,” he announced. ”Your address is Porchester House, Porchester Square.”