I would believe that the power of introspection had no real place in her mental equipment, else how can we explain her attitude towards the man whom she had once defied and reconcile those outbursts of hers, wherein she called for his death, for his terrible punishment, wherein, too, she allowed herself the rare luxury of unrestrained speech, how can we reconcile these tantrums with the fact that this man’s voice filled her thoughts day and night, the recollection of this man’s eyes through his mask followed her every movement, till the image of him became an obsession?
It may be that I have no knowledge of women and their ways (there is no subtle smugness in the doubt I express) and that her inconsistency was general to her sex. It must not be imagined that she had spared either trouble or money to secure the extermination of her enemies, and the enemies of the Red Hundred. She had described them, as well as she could, after her first meeting, and the sketches made under her instruction had been circulated by the officers of the Reds.
Sitting near the window of her house, she mused, lulled by the ceaseless hum of traffic in the street below, and half dozing.
The turning of the door-handle woke her from her dreams.
It was Schmidt, the unspeakable Schmidt, all perspiration and excitement. His round coarse face glowed with it, and he could scarcely bring his voice to tell the news.
“We have him! we have him!” he cried in glee, and snapped his fingers. “Oh, the good news!—I am the first! Nobody has been, Little Friend? I have run and have taken taxis—”
“You have—whom?” she asked.
“The man—one of the men,” he said, “who killed Starque and François, and—”
“Which—which man?” she said harshly.
He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a discoloured sketch.
“Oh!” she said, it could not be the man whom she had defied. “Why, why?” she asked stormily, “why only this man? Why not the others—why not the leader?—have they caught him and lost him?”
Chagrin and astonishment sat on Schmidt’s round face. His disappointment was almost comic.
“But, Little Mother!” he said, crestfallen and bewildered, “this is one—we did not hope even for one and—”
The storm passed over.
“Yes, yes,” she said wearily, “one—even one is good. They shall learn that the Red Hundred can still strike—this leader shall know—This man shall have a death,” she said, looking at Schmidt, “worthy of his importance. Tell me how he was captured.”
“It was the picture,” said the eager Schmidt, “the picture you had drawn. One of our comrades thought he recognized him and followed him to his house.”
“He shall be tried—tonight,” and she spent the day anticipating her triumph.
Conspirators do not always choose dark arches for their plottings. The Red Hundred especially were notorious for the likeliness of their rendezvous. They went to nature for a precedent, and as she endows the tiger with stripes that are undistinguishable from the jungle grass, so the Red Hundred would choose for their meetings such a place where meetings were usually held.
It was in the Lodge Room of the Pride of Millwall, A.O.S.A.—which may be amplified as the Associated Order of the Sons of Abstinence—that the trial took place. The financial position of the Pride of Millwall was not strong. An unusual epidemic of temperate seafaring men had called the Lodge into being, the influx of capital from eccentric bequests had built the tiny hall, and since the fiasco attending the first meeting of the League of London, much of its public business had been skilfully conducted in these riverside premises. It had been raided by the police during the days of terror, but nothing of an incriminating character had been discovered. Because of the success with which the open policy had been pursued the Woman of Gratz preferred to take the risk of an open trial in a hall liable to police raid.
The man must be so guarded that escape was impossible. Messengers sped in every direction to carry out her instructions. There was a rapid summoning of leaders of the movement, the choice of the place of trial, the preparation for a ceremony which was governed by well-established precedent, and the arrangement of the properties which played so effective a part in the trials of the Hundred.
In the black-draped chamber of trial the Woman of Gratz found a full company. Maliscrivona, Tchezki, Vellantini, De Romans, to name a few who were there sitting altogether side by side on the low forms, and they buzzed a welcome as she walked into the room and took her seat at the higher place. She glanced round the faces, bestowing a nod here and a glance of recognition there. She remembered the last time she had made an appearance before the rank and file of the movement. She missed many faces that had turned to her in those days: Starque, François, Kitsinger—dead at the hands of the Four Just Men. It fitted her mood to remember that tonight she would judge one who had at least helped in the slaying of Starque.
Abruptly she rose. Lately she had had few opportunities for the display of that oratory which was once her sole title to consideration in the councils of the Red Hundred. Her powers of organization had come to be respected later. She felt the want of practice as she began speaking. She found herself hesitating for words, and once she felt her illustrations were crude. But she gathered confidence as she proceeded and she felt the responsive thrill of a fascinated audience.
It was the story of the campaign that she told. Much of it we know; the story from the point of view of the Reds may be guessed. She finished her
