He was perfectly green with rage. Turning to Bonafede who, with us others, was sitting in the front parlour, he said, "Well, Signore, you have been one too much for me on this occasion, but remember, he laughs best who laughs last. We shall doubtless meet again soon." Bonafede merely shrugged his shoulders and turned aside, whilst the crestfallen Limpet, who had evidently received a severe wigging from his superior for allowing his quarry to escape, turned on me a look of intense hatred and hissed out, "Remember, miss, you may not always be in London; you will yet pay me for this!" and with this melodramatic threat he and his comrades departed amidst the jeers of the assembled lodgers. In the street they were met by deafening shouts of "Vive Deveril! Hurrah for the detective force!" Sylvestre, who had slipped out a few minutes before the arrival of the police, had assembled in the road all the Italian comrades of the _Tocsin_ group, several Frenchmen of his own acquaintance, and four or five organ-grinders, and amidst the ironic cheers of their enemies, the dejected guardians of law and order made their shamefaced exit from the scene. CHAPTER IX SOME ANARCHIST PERSONALITIES There has been of late years a remarkable, and, on the whole, a very futile tendency among certain men of science to dissect and classify abnormal people and abnormal ideas, to discover that geniuses are mad, and that all manner of well-intentioned fanatics are born criminals. But there were elements in the Anarchist party which defied the science of the psychological analyst, so strangely and intricately were the most heterogeneous qualities blended in certain of their number--fanaticism, heroism, criminality, and not unfrequently a spicing of genius. The primary difference between the ordinary normal man and the fanatic--as between the normal man and the madman or the genius--is the totally different standpoint whence each views life. This it is which renders it impossible for the normal man really to understand or judge fanatics. He cannot grasp their motive, their point of view, and is therefore morally incapable of judging them. Among the Anarchists, who may be said to represent the intellectual rather than the material side of the Socialist movement--there were many fanatics. This fanaticism showed itself in different ways--sometimes in the most admirable self-abnegation, in the sacrifice of wealth, position, and happiness; frequently in abnormal actions of other kinds, and most noticeably in deeds of violence.