Emil Gluck, having disposed of his immediate enemies, now sought a wider
field, though his enmity for newspaper men and for the police remained
always active. The royalties on his ignition device for gasolene-engines
had mounted up while he lay in prison, and year by year the earning power
of his invention increased. He was independent, able to travel wherever
he willed over the earth and to glut his monstrous appetite for revenge.
He had become a monomaniac and an anarchist—not a philosophic anarchist,
merely, but a violent anarchist. Perhaps the word is misused, and he is
better described as a nihilist, or an annihilist. It is known that he
affiliated with none of the groups of terrorists. He operated wholly
alone, but he created a thousandfold more terror and achieved a
thousandfold more destruction than all the terrorist groups added
together.
He signalized his departure from California by blowing up Fort Mason. In
his confession he spoke of it as a little experiment—he was merely trying
his hand. For eight years he wandered over the earth, a mysterious
terror, destroying property to the tune of hundreds of millions of
dollars, and destroying countless lives. One good result of his awful
deeds was the destruction he wrought among the terrorists themselves.
Every time he did anything the terrorists in the vicinity were gathered
in by the police dragnet, and many of them were executed. Seventeen were
executed at Rome alone, following the assassination of the Italian King.
Perhaps the most world-amazing achievement of his was the assassination
of the King and Queen of Portugal. It was their wedding day. All
possible precautions had been taken against the terrorists, and the way
from the cathedral, through Lisbon’s streets, was double-banked with
troops, while a squad of two hundred mounted troopers surrounded the
carriage. Suddenly the amazing thing happened. The automatic rifles of
the troopers began to go off, as well as the rifles, in the immediate
vicinity, of the double-banked infantry. In the excitement the muzzles
of the exploding rifles were turned in all directions. The slaughter was
terrible—horses, troops, spectators, and the King and Queen, were riddled
with bullets. To complicate the affair, in different parts of the crowd
behind the foot-soldiers, two terrorists had bombs explode on their
persons. These bombs they had intended to throw if they got the
opportunity. But who was to know this? The frightful havoc wrought by
the bursting bombs but added to the confusion; it was considered part of
the general attack.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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