LITMIR.BIZ

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a second finds it as it is to-night; and to-morrow or next day, all may have been changed. If you love romance (as artists do), few lives are more romantic than that of the obscure individual now addressing you. Obscure yet famous. Mine is an anonymous, infernal glory. By infamous means, I work towards my bright purpose. I found the liberty and peace of a poor country, desperately abused; the future smiles upon that land; yet, in the meantime, I lead the existence of a hunted brute, work towards appalling ends, and practice hell’s dexterities.’

      Somerset, glass in hand, contemplated the strange fanatic before him, and listened to his heated rhapsody, with indescribable bewilderment. He looked him in the face with curious particularity; saw there the marks of education; and wondered the more profoundly.

      ‘Sir,’ he said —‘for I know not whether I should still address you as Mr. Jones —’

      ‘Jones, Breitman, Higginbotham, Pumpernickel, Daviot, Henderland, by all or any of these you may address me,’ said the plotter; ‘for all I have at some time borne. Yet that which I most prize, that which is most feared, hated, and obeyed, is not a name to be found in your directories; it is not a name current in post-offices or banks; and, indeed, like the celebrated clan M’Gregor, I may justly describe myself as being nameless by day. But,’ he continued, rising to his feet, ‘by night, and among my desperate followers, I am the redoubted Zero.’

      Somerset was unacquainted with the name, but he politely expressed surprise and gratification. ‘I am to understand,’ he continued, ‘that, under this alias, you follow the profession of a dynamiter?’

      (The Arabian author of the original has here a long passage conceived in a style too oriental for the English reader. We subjoin a specimen, and it seems doubtful whether it should be printed as prose or verse: ‘Any writard who writes dynamitard shall find in me a never-resting fightard;’ and he goes on (if we correctly gather his meaning) to object to such elegant and obviously correct spellings as lamp-lightard, corn-dealard, apple-filchard (clearly justified by the parallel — pilchard) and opera dancard. ‘Dynamitist,’ he adds, ‘I could understand.’)

      The plotter had resumed his seat and now replenished the glasses.

      ‘I do,’ he said. ‘In this dark period of time, a star — the star of dynamite — has risen for the oppressed; and among those who practise its use, so thick beset with dangers and attended by such incredible difficulties and disappointments, few have been more assiduous, and not many —’ He paused, and a shade of embarrassment appeared upon his face —‘not many have been more successful than myself.’

      ‘I can imagine,’ observed Somerset, ‘that, from the sweeping consequences looked for, the career is not devoid of interest. You have, besides, some of the entertainment of the game of hide and seek. But it would still seem to me — I speak as a layman — that nothing could be simpler or safer than to deposit an infernal machine and retire to an adjacent county to await the painful consequences.’

      ‘You speak, indeed,’ returned the plotter, with some evidence of warmth, ‘you speak, indeed, most ignorantly. Do you make nothing, then, of such a peril as we share this moment? Do you think it nothing to occupy a house like this one, mined, menaced, and, in a word, literally tottering to its fall?’

      ‘Good God!’ ejaculated Somerset.

      ‘And when you speak of ease,’ pursued Zero, ‘in this age of scientific studies, you fill me with surprise. Are you not aware that chemicals are proverbially fickle as woman, and clockwork as capricious as the very devil? Do you see upon my brow these furrows of anxiety? Do you observe the silver threads that mingle with my hair? Clockwork, clockwork has stamped them on my brow — chemicals have sprinkled them upon my locks! No, Mr. Somerset,’ he resumed, after a moment’s pause, his voice still quivering with sensibility, ‘you must not suppose the dynamiter’s life to be all gold. On the contrary, you cannot picture to yourself the bloodshot vigils and the staggering disappointments of a life like mine. I have toiled (let us say) for months, up early and down late; my bag is ready, my clock set; a daring agent has hurried with white face to deposit the instrument of ruin; we await the fall of England, the massacre of thousands, the yell of fear and execration; and lo! a snap like that of a child’s pistol, an offensive smell, and the entire loss of so much time and plant! If,’ he concluded, musingly, ‘we had been merely able to recover the lost bags, I believe with but a touch or two, I could have remedied the peccant engine. But what with the loss of plant and the almost insuperable scientific difficulties of the task, our friends in France are almost ready to desert the chosen medium. They propose, instead, to break up the drainage system of cities and sweep off whole populations with the devastating typhoid pestilence: a tempting and a scientific project: a process, indiscriminate indeed, but of idyllical simplicity. I recognise its elegance; but, sir, I have something of the poet in my nature; something, possibly, of the tribune. And, for my small part, I shall remain devoted to that more emphatic, more striking, and (if you please) more popular method, of the explosive bomb. Yes,’ he cried, with unshaken hope, ‘I will still continue, and, I feel it in my bosom, I shall yet succeed.’

      ‘Two things I remark,’ said Somerset. ‘The first somewhat staggers me. Have you, then — in all this course of life, which you have sketched so vividly — have you not once succeeded?’

      ‘Pardon me,’ said Zero. ‘I have had one success. You behold in me the author of the outrage of Red Lion Court.’

      ‘But if I remember right,’ objected Somerset, ‘the thing was a fiasco. A scavenger’s barrow and some copies of the Weekly Budget — these were the only victims.’

      ‘You will pardon me again,’ returned Zero with positive asperity: ‘a child was injured.’

      ‘And that fitly brings me to my second point,’ said Somerset. ‘For I observed you to employ the word “indiscriminate.” Now, surely, a scavenger’s barrow and a child (if child there were) represent the very acme and top pin-point of indiscriminate, and, pardon me, of ineffectual reprisal.’

      ‘Did I employ the word?’ asked Zero. ‘Well, I will not defend it. But for efficiency, you touch on graver matters; and before entering upon so vast a subject, permit me once more to fill our glasses. Disputation is dry work,’ he added, with a charming gaiety of manner.

      Once more accordingly the pair pledged each other in a stalwart grog; and Zero, leaning back with an air of some complacency, proceeded more largely to develop his opinions.

      ‘The indiscriminate?’ he began. ‘War, my dear sir, is indiscriminate. War spares not the child; it spares not the barrow of the harmless scavenger. No more,’ he concluded, beaming, ‘no more do I. Whatever may strike fear, whatever may confound or paralyse the activities of the guilty nation, barrow or child, imperial Parliament or excursion steamer, is welcome to my simple plans. You are not,’ he inquired, with a shade of sympathetic interest, ‘you are not, I trust, a believer?’

      ‘Sir, I believe in nothing,’ said the young man.

      ‘You are then,’ replied Zero, ‘in a position to grasp my argument. We agree that humanity is the object, the glorious triumph of humanity; and being pledged to labour for that end, and face to face with the banded opposition of kings, parliaments, churches, and the members of the force, who am I— who are we, dear sir — to affect a nicety about the tools employed? You might, perhaps, expect us to attack the Queen, the sinister Gladstone, the rigid Derby, or the dexterous Granville; but there you would be in error. Our appeal is to the body of the people; it is these that we would touch and interest. Now, sir, have you observed the English housemaid?’

      ‘I should think I had,’ cried Somerset.

      ‘From a man of taste and a votary of art, I had expected it,’ returned the conspirator politely. ‘A type apart; a very charming figure; and thoroughly adapted to our ends. The neat cap, the clean print, the comely person, the engaging manner; her position between classes, parents in one, employers in another; the probability that she will have at least one sweet-heart, whose feelings we shall address: — yes, I have a leaning — call it, if you will, a weakness

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