Page:The Descent of Bolshevism.djvu/51

 And their bloody deeds were sometimes done in the open and sometimes in the most mysterious manner. King Sanjar once determined to attack the castle of Alamut. But one morning he found near his bed a dagger stuck in the ground and bearing this message: Sultan Sanjar, beware. Had not thy character been respected, the hand which stuck this dagger in the hard ground could with greater ease have stuck it into thy soft bosom. Whereupon, King Sanjar changed his mind. There is no doubt that Hasan ibn Sabah was a man of penetrating insight and deep worldly wisdom. And he might have become a power at the court of either Malek Shah or the Khalif Mostanser, had he been decent enough to be thoughtful at least of his benefactors. But the imposing rascal would never have become the supreme ruler of a sect that made a profession of crime and a religion of assassination. Still, he must have died a disappointed man. For the thrones he sought to overturn and the religions he tried to destroy by the