would leave
on the detective's mind the impression that the anarchist brotherhood
was a very mild affair after all. He believed in his own literary power,
his capacity for suggesting fine shades and picking perfect words. He
thought that with care he could succeed, in spite of all the people
around him, in conveying an impression of the institution, subtly and
delicately false. Syme had once thought that anarchists, under all their
bravado, were only playing the fool. Could he not now, in the hour of
peril, make Syme think so again?

"Comrades," began Gregory, in a low but penetrating voice, "it is not
necessary for me to tell you what is my policy, for it is your policy
also. Our belief has been slandered, it has been disfigured, it has been
utterly confused and concealed, but it has never been altered. Those who
talk about anarchism and its dangers go everywhere and anywhere to get
their information, except to us, except to the fountain head. They learn
about anarchists from sixpenny novels; they learn about anarchists from
tradesmen's newspapers; they learn about anarchists from Ally Sloper's
Half-Holiday and the Sporting Times. They never learn about anarchists
from anarchists. We have no chance of denying the mountainous slanders
which are heaped upon our heads from one end of Europe to another. The
man who has always heard that we are walking plagues has never heard our
reply. I know that he will not hear it tonight, though my passion
were to rend the roof. For it is deep, deep under the earth that the
persecuted are permitted to assemble, as the Christians assembled in the
Catacombs. But if, by some incredible accident, there were here tonight
a man who all his life had thus immensely misunderstood us, I would put
this question to him: 'When those Christians met in those Catacombs,
what sort of moral reputation had they in the streets above? What tales
were told of their atrocities by one educated Roman to another? Suppose'
(I would say to him), 'suppose that we are only repeating that still
mysterious paradox of history. Suppose we seem as shocking as the
Christians because we are really as harmless as the Christians. Suppose
we seem as mad as the Christians because we are really as meek."'

The applause that had greeted the opening sentences had been gradually
growing fainter, and at the last word it stopped suddenly. In the abrupt
silence, the man with the velvet jacket said, in a high, squeaky voice--

"I'm