There were one or two amongst those present in the Council room at Westminster that evening, who noted and never forgot a certain indefinable dignity which seemed to come to Stenson’s aid and enabled him to face what must have been an unwelcome and anxious ordeal without discomposure or disquiet. He entered the room accompanied by Julian and Phineas Cross, and he had very much the air of a man who has come to pay a business visit, concerning the final issue of which there could be no possible doubt. He shook hands with the Bishop gravely but courteously, nodded to the others with whom he was acquainted, asked the names of the few strangers present, and made a careful mental note of what industries and districts they represented. He then accepted a chair by the side of the Bishop, who immediately opened the proceedings.
“My friends,” the latter began, “as I sent word to you a little time ago, Mr. Stenson has preferred to bring you his answer himself. Our ambassador—Mr. Julian Orden—waited upon him at Downing Street at the hour arranged upon, and, in accordance with his wish to meet you all, Mr. Stenson is paying us this visit.”
The Bishop hesitated, and the Prime Minister promptly drew his chair a little farther into the circle.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “the issue which you have raised is so tremendous, and its results may well be so catastrophic, that I thought it my duty to beg Mr. Orden to arrange for me to come and speak to you all, to explain to you face to face why, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, I cannot do your bidding.”
“You don’t want peace, then?” one of the delegates from the other side of the table asked bluntly.
“We do not,” was the quiet reply. “We are not ready for it.”
“The country is,” Fenn declared firmly. “We are.”
“So your ambassador has told me,” was the calm reply. “In point of numbers you may be said, perhaps, to represent the nation. In point of intellect, of knowledge—of inner knowledge, mind—I claim that I represent it. I tell you that a peace now, even on the terms which your Socialist allies in Germany have suggested, would be for us a peace of dishonour.”
“Will you tell us why?” the Bishop begged.
“Because it is not the peace we promised our dead or our living heroes,” Mr. Stenson said slowly. “We set out to fight for democracy—your cause. That fight would be a failure if we allowed the proudest, the most autocratic, the most conscienceless despot who ever sat upon a throne to remain in his place.”
“But that is just what we shall not do,” Fenn interrupted. “Freistner has assured us of that. The peace is not the Kaiser’s peace. It is the peace of the Socialist Party in Germany, and the day the terms are proclaimed, democracy there will score its first triumph.”
“I find neither in the European Press nor in the reports of our secret service agents the slightest warrant for any such supposition,” Mr. Stenson pronounced with emphasis.
“You have read Freistner’s letter?” Fenn asked.
“Every word of it,” the Prime Minister replied. “I believe that Freistner is an honest man, as honest as any of you, but I think that he is mistaken. I do not believe that the German people are with him. I am content to believe that those signatures are genuine. I will even believe that Germany would welcome those terms of peace, although she would never allow them to proceed from her own Cabinet. But I do not believe that the clash and turmoil which would follow their publication would lead to the overthrow of the German dynasty. You give me no proof of it, gentlemen. You have none yourselves. And therefore I say that you propose to work in the dark, and it seems to me that your work may lead to an evil end. I want you to listen to me for one moment,” he went on, his face lighting up with a flash of terrible earnestness. “I am not going to cast about in my mind for flowery phrases or epigrams. We are plain men here together, with our country’s fate in the balance. For God’s sake, realise your responsibilities. I want peace. I ache for it. But there will be no peace for Europe while Germany remains an undefeated autocracy. We’ve promised our dead and our living to oust that corrupt monster from his throne. We’ve promised it to France our glorious Allies. We’ve shaken hands about it with America, whose ships are already crowding the seas, and whose young manhood has taken the oath which ours has taken. This isn’t the time for peace. I am not speaking in the dark when I tell you that we have a great movement pending in the West which may completely alter the whole military situation. Give us a chance. If you carry out your threat, you plunge this country into revolution, you dishonour us in the face of our Allies; you will go through the rest of your lives, every one of you, with a guilt upon your souls, a stain upon your consciences, which nothing will ever obliterate. You see, I have kept my word—I haven’t said much. I cannot ask for the armistice you suggest. If you take this step you threaten—I do not deny its significance you will probably stop the war. One of you will come in and take my place. There will be turmoil, confusion, very likely bloodshed. I know what the issue will be, and yet I know my duty. There is not one member of my Cabinet who is not with me. We refuse your appeal.”
Every one at the table seemed to be talking at the same time to every one else. Then Cross’s voice rose above the others. He rose to his feet to ensure attention.
“Bishop,” he said, “there is one point in what Mr. Stenson has been saying which I think we might and ought to consider a little more fully, and that is, what guarantees have we that Freistner really has the people at the back of him, that he’ll be able to cleanse that rat pit at Berlin of the Hohenzollern and his clan of junkers—the most accursed type of politician who ever breathed? We ought to be very sure about this. Fenn’s our man. What about it, Fenn?”
“Freistner’s letters for weeks,” Fenn answered, “have spoken of the wonderful wave of socialistic feeling throughout the country. He is an honest man, and he does not exaggerate. He assures us that half the nation is pledged.”
“One man,” David Sands remarked thoughtfully. “If, there is a weak point about this business, which I am not prepared wholly to admit, it is that the entire job on that side seems to be run by one man. There’s a score of us. I should like to hear of more on the other side.”
“It is strange,” Mr. Stenson pointed out, “that so little news of this gain of strength on the part of the Socialists has been allowed to escape from Germany. However rigid their censorship, copies of German newspapers reach us every day from neutral countries. I cannot believe that Socialism has made the advance Freistner claims for it, and I agree with our friends, Mr. Cross and Mr. Sands here, that you ought to be very sure that Freistner is not deceived before you take this extreme measure.”
“We are content to trust to our brothers in Germany,” Fenn declared.
“I am not convinced that we should be wise to do so,” Julian intervened. “I am in favour of our taking a few more days to consider this matter.”
“And I am against any delay,” Fenn objected hotly. “I am for immediate action.”
“Let me explain where I think we have been a little hasty,” Julian continued earnestly. “I gather that the whole correspondence between this body and the Socialist Party in Germany has been carried on by Mr. Fenn and Freistner. There are other well-known Socialists in Germany, but from not one of these have we received any direct communication. Furthermore—and I say this without wishing to impugn in any way the care with which I am sure our secretary has transcribed these letters—at a time like this I am forced to remember that I have seen nothing but copies.”
Fenn was on his feet in a moment, white with passion.
“Do you mean to insinuate that I have altered or forged the letters?” he shouted.
“I have made no insinuations,” Julian replied. “At the same time, before we proceed to extremities, I propose that we spend half an hour studying the originals.”
“That’s common sense,” Cross declared. “There’s no one can object to that. I’m none so much in favour of these typewritten slips myself.”
Fenn turned to whisper to Bright. Mr. Stenson rose to his feet. The glare of the unshaded lamp fell upon his strained face. He seemed to have grown older and thinner since his entrance into the room.
“I can neither better nor weaken my cause by remaining,” he said. “Only let this be my parting word to you. Upon my soul as an Englishman, I believe that if you send out those telegrams to-night, if you use your hideous and deadly weapon against me and the Government, I believe that you will be guilty of this country’s ruin, as you certainly will of her dishonour. You have the example of Russia before you. And I will tell you this, too, which take into your hearts. There isn’t one of those men who are marching, perhaps to-night, perhaps tomorrow, to a possible death, who would thank you for trying, to save their lives or bodies at the expense of England’s honour. Those about to die would be your sternest critics. I can say no more.”
Julian walked with the Premier towards the door.
“Mr. Stenson,” he declared, “you have said just what could be said from your point of view, and God knows, even now, who is in the right! You are looking at the future with a very full knowledge of many things of which we are all ignorant. You have, quite naturally, too, the politician’s hatred of the methods these people propose. I myself am inclined to think that they are a little hasty.”
“Orden,” Mr. Stenson replied sternly, “I did not come to you to-night as a politician. I have spoken as a man and an Englishman, as I speak to you now. For the love of your country and her honour, use your influence with these people. Stop those telegrams. Work for delay at any cost. There’s something inexplicable, sinister, about the whole business. Freistner may be an honest man, but I’ll swear that he hasn’t the influence or the position that these people have been led to believe. And as for Nicholas Fenn—”
The Prime Minister paused. Julian waited anxiously.
“It is my belief,” the former concluded deliberately, “that thirty seconds in the courtyard of the Tower, with his back to the light, would about meet his case.”
They parted at the door, and Julian returned to his seat, uneasy and perplexed. Around the Council table voices were raised in anger. Fenn, who was sitting moodily with folded arms, his chair drawn a little back from the table, scowled at him as he took his place. Furley, who had been whispering to the Bishop, turned towards Julian.
“It seems,” he announced, “that the originals of most of Freistner’s communications have been destroyed.”
“And why not?” Fenn demanded passionately. “Why should I keep letters which would lay a rope around my neck any day they were found? You all know as well as I do that we’ve been expecting the police to raid the place ever since we took it.”
“I am a late comer,” Julian observed, “but surely some of you others have seen the original communications?”
Thomas Evans spoke up from the other end of the table,—a small, sturdily built man, a great power in South Wales.
“To be frank,” he said, “I don’t like these insinuations. Fenn’s been our secretary from the first. He opened the negotiations, and he’s carried them through. We either trust him, or we don’t. I trust him.”
“And I’m not saying you’re not right, lad.” Cross declared. “I’m for being cautious, but it’s more with the idea that our German friends themselves may be a little too sanguine.”
“I will pledge my word,” Fenn pronounced fiercely, “to the truth of all the facts I have laid before you. Whatever my work may have been, to-day it is completed. I have brought you a people’s peace from Germany. This very Council was formed for the purpose of imposing that peace upon the Government. Are you going to back out now, because a dilettante writer, an aristocrat who never did a stroke of work in his life, casts sneering doubts upon my honesty? I’ve done the work you gave me to do. It’s up to you to finish it, I represent a million working men. So does David Sands there, Evans and Cross, and you others. What does Orden represent? Nobody and nothing! Miles Furley? A little band of Socialists who live in their gardens and keep bees! My lord Bishop? Just his congregation from week to week! Yet it’s these outsiders who’ve come in and disturbed us. I’ve had enough of it and them. We’ve wasted the night, but I propose that the telegrams go out at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. Hands up for it!”
It was a counter-attack which swept everything before it. Every hand in the room except the Bishop’s, Furley’s, Cross’s and Julian’s was raised. Fenn led the way towards the door.
“We’ve our work to do, chaps,” he said. “We’ll leave the others to talk till daylight, if they want to.”
Julian and Furley left the place together. They looked for the Bishop but found that he had slipped away.
“To Downing Street, I believe,” Furley remarked. “He has some vague idea of suggesting a compromise.”
“Compromise!” Julian repeated a little drearily. “How can there be any such thing! There might be delay. I think we ought to have given Stenson a week—time to communicate with America and send a mission to France.”
“We are like all theorists,” Furley declared moodily, stopping to relight his pipe. “We create and destroy on palter with amazing facility. When it comes to practice, we are funks.”
“Are you funking this?” Julian asked bluntly.
“How can any one help it? Theoretically we are right—I am sure of it. If we leave it to the politicians, this war will go dragging on for God knows how long. It’s the people who are paying. It’s the people who ought to make the peace. The only thing that bothers me is whether we are doing it the right way. Is Freistner honest? Could he be self-deceived? Is there any chance that he could be playing into the hands of the Pan-Germans?”
“Fenn is the man who has had most to do with him,” Julian remarked. “I wouldn’t trust Fenn a yard, but I believe in Freistner.”
“So do I,” Furley assented, “but is Fenn’s report of his promises and the strength of his followers entirely honest?”
“That’s the part of the whole thing I don’t like,” Julian acknowledged. “Fenn’s practically the corner stone of this affair. It was he who met Freistner in Amsterdam and started these negotiations, and I’m damned if I like Fenn, or trust him. Did you see the way he looked at Stenson out of the corners of his eyes, like a little ferret? Stenson was at his best, too. I never admired the man more.”
“He certainly kept his head,” Furley agreed. “His few straight words were to the point, too.”
“It wasn’t the occasion for eloquence,” Julian declared. “That’ll come next week. I suppose he’ll try and break the Trades Unions. What a chance for an Edmund Burke! It’s all right, I suppose, but I wonder why I’m feeling so damned miserable.”
“The fact is,” Furley confided, “you and I and the Bishop and Miss Abbeway are all to a certain extent out of place on that Council. We ought to have contented ourselves with having supplied the ideas. When it comes to the practical side, our other instincts revolt. After all, if we believed that by continuing the war we could beat Germany from a military point of view, I suppose we should forget a lot of this admirable reasoning of ours and let it go on.”
“It doesn’t seem a fair bargain, though,” Julian sighed. “It’s the lives of our men to-day for the freedom of their descendants, if that isn’t frittered away by another race of politicians. It isn’t good enough, Miles.”
“Then let’s be thankful it’s going to stop,” Furley declared. “We’ve pinned our colours to the mast, Julian. I don’t like Fenn any more than you do, nor do I trust him, but I can’t see, in this instance, that he has anything to gain by not running straight. Besides, he can’t have faked the terms, and that’s the only document that counts. And so good night and to bed,” he added, pausing at the street corner, where they parted.
There was something curiously different about the demeanour of Julian’s trusted servant, as he took his master’s coat and hat. Even Julian, engrossed as he was in the happenings of the evening, could scarcely fail to notice it.
“You seem out of sorts to-night, Robert!” he remarked.
The latter, whose manners were usually suave and excellent, answered almost harshly.
“I have enough to make me so, sir—more than enough. I wish to give a week’s notice.”
“Been drinking, Robert?” his master enquired.
The man smiled mirthlessly.
“I am quite sober, sir,” he answered, “but I should be glad to go at once. It would be better for both of us.”
“What have you against me?” Julian asked, puzzled.
“The lives of my two boys,” was the fierce reply. “Fred’s gone now—died in hospital last night. It was you who talked them into soldiering.”
Julian’s manner changed at once, and his tone became kinder.
“You are very foolish to blame anybody, Robert. Your sons did their duty. If they hadn’t joined up when they did, they would have had to join as conscripts later on.”
“Their duty!” Robert repeated, with smothered scorn. “Their duty to a squirming nest of cowardly politicians—begging your pardon, sir. Why, the whole Government isn’t worth the blood of one of them!”
“I am sorry about Fred,” Julian said sympathetically. “All the same, Robert, you must try and pull yourself together.”
The man groaned.
“Pull myself together!” he said angrily. “Mr. Orden, sir, I’m trying to keep respectful, but it’s a hard thing. I’ve been reading the evening papers. There’s an article, signed ‘Paul Fiske’, in the Pall Mall. They tell me that you’re Paul Fiske. You’re for peace, it seems—for peace with the German Emperor and his bloody crew.”
“I am in favour of peace on certain terms, at the earliest possible moment,” Julian admitted.
“That’s where you’ve sold us, then—sold us all!” Robert declared fiercely. “My boys died believing they were fighting for men who would keep their word. The war was to go on till victory was won.. They died happily, believing that those who had spoken for England would keep their word. You’re very soft-hearted in that article, sir, about the living. Did you think, when you sat down to write it, about the dead?—about that wilderness of white crosses out in France? You’re proposing in cold blood to let those devils stay on their own dunghill.”
“It is a very large question, Robert,” Julian reminded him. “The war is fast reaching a period of mutual exhaustion.”
The man threw all restraint to the winds.
“Claptrap!” was his angry reply. “You wealthy people want your fleshpots again. We’ve a few more million men, haven’t we? America has a few more millions?”
“Your own loss, Robert, has made you—and quite naturally, too—very bitter,” his master said gently. “You must let those who have thought this matter out come to a decision upon it. Beyond a certain point, the manhood of the world must be conserved.”
“That sounds just like fine talk to me, sir, and no more; the sort of stuff that’s printed in articles and that no one takes much stock of. Words were plain enough when we started out to fight this war. We were going to crush the German military spirit and not leave off fighting until we’d done it. There was nothing said then about conserving millions of men. It was to be fought out to the end, whatever it cost.”
“And you were once a pacifist!”
“Pacifist!” the man repeated passionately. “Every human being with common sense was a pacifist when the war started.”
“But the war was forced upon us,” Julian reminded him. “You can’t deny that.”
“No one wishes to, sir. It was forced upon us all right, but who made it necessary? Why, our rotten government for the last twenty years! Our politicians, Mr. Julian, that are prating now of peace before their job’s done! Do you think that if we’d paid our insurance like men and been prepared, this war would ever have come? Not it! We asked for trouble, and we got it in the neck. If we make peace now, we’ll be a German colony in twenty years, thanks to Mr. Stenson and you and the rest of them. A man can be a pacifist all right until his head has been punched. Afterwards, there’s another name for him. Is there anything more I can get you to-night before I leave, sir?”
“Nothing, thanks. I’m sorry about Fred.”
Julian, conscious of an intense weariness, undressed and went to bed very soon after the man’s departure. He was already in his first doze when he awoke suddenly with a start. He sat up and listened. The sound which had disturbed him was repeated,—a quiet but insistent ringing of the front-door bell. He glanced at his watch. It was barely midnight, but unusually late for a visitor. Once more the bell rang, and this time he remembered that Robert slept out, and that he was alone in the flat. He thrust his feet into slippers, wrapped his dressing gown around him, and made his way to the front door.
Julian’s only idea had been that this might be some messenger from the Council. To his amazement he found himself confronted by Catherine.
“Close the door,” she begged. “Come into your sitting room.”
She pushed past him and he obeyed, still dumb with surprise and the shock of his sudden awakening. Catherine herself seemed unaware of his unusual costume, reckless of the hour and the strangeness of her visit. She wore a long chinchilla coat, covering her from head to foot, and a mantilla veil about her head, which partially obscured her features. As soon as she raised it, he knew that great things had happened. Her cheeks were the colour of ivory, and her eyes unnaturally distended. Her tone was steady but full of repressed passion.
“Julian,” she cried, “we have been deceived—tricked! I have come to you for help. Are the telegrams sent out yet?”
“They go at eight o’clock in the morning,” he replied.
“Thank God we are in time to stop them!”
Julian looked at her for a moment, utterly incredulous.
“Stop them?” he repeated. “But how can we? Stenson has declared war.”
“Thank heaven for that!” she exclaimed, her voice trembling. “Julian, the whole thing is an accursed plot. The German Socialists have never increased their strength except in their own imaginations. They are absolutely powerless. This is the most cunning scheme of the whole war. Freistner has simply been the tool of the militarists. They encouraged him to put forward these proposals and to communicate with Nicholas Fenn. When the armistice has been declared and negotiations begun, the three signatures will be repudiated. The peace they mean to impose is one of their own dictation, and in the meantime we shall have created a cataclysm here. The war will never start again. All the Allies will be at a discord.”
“How have you found this out?” Julian gasped.
“From one of Germany’s chief friends in England. He is high up in the diplomatic service of—of a neutral country, but he has been working for Germany ever since the commencement of the war. He has been helping in this. He has seen me often with Nicholas Fenn, and he believes that I am behind the scenes, too. He believes that I know the truth, and that I am working for Germany. He is absolutely to be relied upon. Every word that I am telling you is the truth.”
“What about Fenn?” Julian demanded breathlessly.
“Nicholas Fenn has had a hundred thousand pounds of German money within the last few months,” she replied. “He is one of the foulest traitors who ever breathed. Freistner’s first few letters were genuine enough, but for the last six weeks he has been imprisoned in a German fortress—and Fenn knows it.”
“Have you any proof of all this?” Julian asked. “Remember we have the Council to face, and they are all girt for battle.”
“Yes, I have proof,” she answered, “indirect but damning enough. This man has sometimes forwarded and collected for me letters from connections of mine in Germany. He handed me one to-night from a distant cousin. You know him by name General Geroldberg. The first two pages are personal. Read what he says towards the end,” she added, passing it on to Julian.
Julian turned up the lamp and read the few lines to which she pointed:
By the bye, dear cousin, if you should receive a shock within the next few days by hearing that our three great men have agreed to an absurd peace, do not worry. Their signatures have been obtained for some document which we do not regard seriously, and it is their intention to repudiate them as soon as a certain much-looked for event takes place. When the peace comes, believe me, it will be a glorious one for us. What we have won by the sword we shall hold, and what has been wrested from us by cunning and treachery, we shall regain.
“That man,” Catherine declared, “is one of the Kaiser’s intimates. He is one of the twelve iron men of Germany. Now I will tell you the name of the man with whom I, have spent the evening. It is Baron Hellman. Believe me, he knows, and he has told me the truth. He has had this letter by him for a fortnight, as he told me frankly that he thought it too compromising to hand over. To-night he changed his mind.”
Julian stood speechless for a moment, his fists clenched, his eyes ablaze.
Catherine threw herself into his easy-chair and loosened her coat.
“Oh, I am tired!” she moaned. “Give me some water, please, or some wine.”
He found some hock in the sideboard, and after she had drunk it they sat for some few minutes in agitated silence. The street sounds outside had died away. Julian’s was the topmost flat in the block, and their isolation was complete. He suddenly realised the position.
“Perhaps,” he suggested, with an almost ludicrous return to the commonplace, “the first thing to be done is for me to dress.”
She looked at him as though she had noticed his dishabille for the first time. For a moment their feet seemed to be on the earth again.
“I suppose I seem to you crazy to come to you at such an hour,” she said. “One doesn’t think of those things, somehow.”
“You are quite right,” he agreed. “They are unimportant.”
Then suddenly the sense of the silence, of their solitude, of their strange, uncertain relations to one another, swept in upon them both. For a moment the sense of the great burden she was carrying fell from Catherine’s shoulders. She was back in a simpler world. Julian was no longer a leader of the people, the brilliant sociologist, the apostle of her creed. He was the man who during the last few weeks had monopolised her thoughts to an amazing extent, the man for whose aid and protection she had hastened, the man to whom she was perfectly content to entrust the setting right of this ghastly blunder. Watching him, she suddenly felt that she was tired of it all, that she would like to creep away from the storm and rest somewhere. The quiet and his presence seemed to soothe her. Her tense expression relaxed, her eyes became softer. She smiled at him gratefully.
“Oh, I cannot tell you,” she exclaimed, “how glad I am to be with you just now! Everything in the outside world seems so terrible. Do you mind—it is so silly, but after all a woman cannot be as strong as a man, can she?—would you mind very much just holding my hand for a moment and staying here quite quietly. I have had a horrible evening, and when I came in, my head felt as though it would burst. You do not mind?”
Julian smiled as he leaned towards her. A kind of resentment of which he had been conscious, even though in some measure ashamed of it, resentment at her unswerving loyalty to the task she had set herself, melted away. He suddenly knew why he had kissed her, on that sunny morning on the marshes, an ecstatic and incomprehensible moment which had seemed sometimes, during these days of excitement, as though it had belonged to another life and another world. He took both her hands in his, and, stooping down, kissed her on the lips.
“Dear Catherine,” he said, “I am so glad that you came to me. I think that during these last few days we have forgotten to be human, and it might help us—for after all, you know, we are engaged!”
“But that,” she whispered, “was only for my sake.”
“At first, perhaps,” he admitted, “but now for mine.”
Her little sigh of content, as she stole nearer to him, was purely feminine. The moments ticked on in restful and wonderful silence. Then, unwillingly, she drew away from his protecting arm.
“My dear,” she said, “you look so nice as you are, and it is such happiness to be here, but there is a great task before us.”
“You are right,” he declared, straightening himself. “Wait for a few minutes, dear. We shall find them all at Westminster—the place will be open all night. Close your eyes and rest while I am away.”
“I am rested,” she answered softly, “but do not be long. The car is outside, and on the way I have more to tell you about Nicholas Fenn.”
If the closely drawn blinds of the many windows of Westminster Buildings could have been raised that night and early morning, the place would have seemed a very hive of industry. Twenty men were hard at work in twenty different rooms. Some went about their labours doubtfully, some almost timorously, some with jubilation, one or two with real regret. Under their fingers grew the more amplified mandates which, following upon the bombshell of the already prepared telegrams, were within a few hours to paralyse industrial England, to keep her ships idle in the docks, her trains motionless upon the rails, her mines silent, her forges cold, her great factories empty. Even the least imaginative felt the thrill, the awe of the thing he was doing. On paper, in the brain, it seemed so wonderful, so logical, so certain of the desired result. And now there were other thoughts forcing their way to the front. How would their names live in history? How would Englishmen throughout the world regard this deed? Was it really the truth they were following, or some false and ruinous shadow? These were fugitive doubts, perhaps, but to more than one of those midnight toilers they presented themselves in the guise of a chill and drear presentiment.
They all heard a motor-car stop outside. No one, however, thought it worth while to discontinue his labours for long enough to look out and see who this nocturnal visitor might be. In a very short time, however, these labours were disturbed. From room to room, Julian, with Catherine and the Bishop, for whom they had called on the way, passed with a brief message. No one made any difficulty about coming to the Council room. The first protest was made when they paid the visit which they had purposely left until last. Nicholas Fenn had apparently finished or discontinued his efforts. He was seated in front of his desk, his chin almost resting upon his folded arms, and a cigarette between his lips. Bright was lounging in an easy-chair within a few feet of him. Their heads were close together; their conversation, whatever the subject of it may have been, was conducted in whispers. Apparently they had not heard Julian’s knock, for they started apart, when the door was opened, like conspirators. There was something half-fearful, half-malicious in Fenn’s face, as he stared at them.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded. “What’s wrong?”
Julian closed the door.
“A great deal,” he replied curtly. “We have been around to every one of the delegates and asked them to assemble in the Council room. Will you and Bright come at once?”
Fenn looked from one to the other of his visitors and remained silent for a few seconds.
“Climbing down, eh?” he asked viciously.
“We have some information to communicate,” Julian announced.
Fenn moved abruptly away, out of the shadow of the electric lamp which hung over his desk. His voice was anxious, unnatural.
“We can’t consider any more information,” he said harshly. “Our decisions have been taken. Nothing can affect them. That’s the worst of having you outsiders on the board. I was certain you wouldn’t face it when the time came.”
“As you yourself,” Julian remarked, “are somewhat concerned in this matter, I think it would be well if you came with the others.”
“I am not going to stir from this room,” Fenn declared doggedly. “I have my own work to do. And as to my being concerned with what you have to say, I’ll thank you to mind your own business and leave mine alone.”
“Mr. Fenn,” the Bishop interposed, “I beg to offer you my advice that you join us at once in the Council room.”
Julian and Catherine had already left the room. Fenn leaned forward, and there was an altered note in his tone.
“What’s it mean, Bishop?” he asked hoarsely. “Are they ratting, those two?”
“What we have come here to say,” the Bishop rejoined, “must be said to every one.”
He turned away. Fenn and Bright exchanged quick glances.
“What do you make of it?” asked Fenn.
“They’ve changed their minds,” Bright muttered, “that’s all. They’re theorists. Damn all theorists! They just blow bubbles to destroy them. As for the girl, she’s been at parties all the evening, as we know.”
“You’re right,” Fenn acknowledged. “I was a fool. Come on.”
Many of the delegates had the air of being glad to escape for a few minutes from their tasks. One or two of them entered the room, carrying a cup of coffee or cocoa. Most of them were smoking. Fenn and Bright made their appearance last of all. The latter made a feeble attempt at a good-humoured remark.
“Is this a pause for refreshments?” he asked. “If so, I’m on.”
Julian, who had been waiting near the door, locked it. Fenn started.
“What the devil’s that for?” he demanded.
“Just a precaution. We don’t want to be interrupted.”
Julian moved towards a little vacant space at the end of the table and stood there, his hands upon the back of a chair. The Bishop remained by his side, his eyes downcast as though in prayer. Catherine had accepted the seat pushed forward by Cross. The atmosphere of the room, which at first had been only expectant, became tense.
“My friends,” Julian began, “a few hours ago you came to a momentous decision. You are all at work, prepared to carry that decision into effect. I have come to see you because I am very much afraid that we have been the victims of false statements, the victims of a disgraceful plot.”
“Rubbish!” Fenn scoffed. “You’re ratting, that’s what you are.”
“You’d better thank Providence,” Julian replied sternly, “that there is time for you to rat, too—that is, if you have any care for your country. Now, Mr. Fenn, I am going to ask you a question. You led us to believe, this evening, that, although all letters had been destroyed, you were in constant communication with Freistner. When did you hear from him last—personally, I mean?”
“Last week,” Fenn answered boldly, “and the week before that.”
“And you have destroyed those letters?”
“Of course I have! Why should I keep stuff about that would hang me?”
“You cannot produce, then, any communication from Freistner, except the proposals of peace, written within the last—say—month?”
“What the mischief are you getting at?” Fenn demanded hotly. “And what right have you to stand there and cross-question me?”
“The right of being prepared to call you to your face a liar,” Julian said gravely. “We have very certain information that Freistner is now imprisoned in a German fortress and will be shot before the week is out.”
There was a little murmur of consternation, even of disbelief. Fenn himself was speechless. Julian went on eagerly.
“My friends,” he said, “on paper, on the facts submitted to us, we took the right decision, but we ought to have remembered this. Germany’s word, Germany’s signature, Germany’s honour, are not worth a rap when opposed to German interests. Germany, notwithstanding all her successes, is thirsting for peace. This armistice would be her salvation. She set herself out to get it—not honestly, as we have been led to believe, but by means of a devilish plot. She professed to be overawed by the peace desires of the Reichstag. The Pan-Germans professed a desire to give in to the Socialists. All lies! They encouraged Freistner to continue his negotiations here with Fenn. Freistner was honest enough. I am not so sure about Fenn.”
Fenn sprang to his feet, a blasphemous exclamation broke from his lips. Julian faced him, unmoved. The atmosphere of the room was now electric.
“I am going to finish what I have to say,” he went on. “I know that every one will wish me to. We are all here to look for the truth and nothing else, and, thanks to Miss Abbeway, we have stumbled upon it. These peace proposals, which look so well on paper, are a decoy. They were made to be broken. Those signatures are affixed to be repudiated. I say that Freistner has been a prisoner for weeks, and I deny that Fenn has received a single communication from him during that time. Fenn asserts that he has, but has destroyed them. I repeat that he is a liar.”
“That’s plain speaking,” Cross declared. “Now, then, Fenn, lad, what have you to say about it?”
Fenn leaned forward, his face distorted with something which might have been anger, but which seemed more closely to resemble fear.
“This is just part of the ratting!” he exclaimed. “I never keep a communication from Freistner. I have told you so before. The preliminary letters I had you all saw, and we deliberated upon them together. Since then, all that I have had have been friendly messages, which I have destroyed.”
There was a little uncertain murmur. Julian proceeded.
“You see,” he said, “Mr. Fenn is not able to clear himself from my first accusation. Now let us hear what he will do with this one. Mr. Fenn started life, I believe, as a schoolmaster at a parish school, a very laudable and excellent occupation. He subsequently became manager to a firm of timber merchants in the city and commenced to interest himself in Labour movements. He rose by industry and merit to his present position—a very excellent career, but not, I should think, a remunerative one. Shall we put his present salary down at ten pounds a week?”
“What the devil concern is this of yours?” the goaded man shouted.
“Of mine and all of us,” Julian retorted, “for I come now to a certain question. Will you disclose your bank book?”
Fenn reeled for a moment in his seat. He affected not to have heard the question.
“My what?” he stammered.
“Your bank book,” Julian repeated calmly. “As you only received your last instalment from Germany this week, you probably have not yet had time to purchase stocks and shares or property wherever your inclination leads you. I imagine, therefore, that there would be a balance there of something like thirty thousand pounds, the last payment made to you by a German agent now in London.”
Fenn sprang to his feet. He had all the appearance of a man about to make a vigorous and exhaustive defence. And then suddenly he swayed, his face became horrible to look upon, his lips were twisted.
“Brandy!” he cried. “Some one give me brandy! I am ill!”
He collapsed in a heap. They carried him on to a seat set against the wall, and Catherine bent over him. He lay there, moaning. They loosened his collar and poured restoratives between his teeth. For a time he was silent. Then the moaning began again. Julian returned to the table.
“Believe me,” he said earnestly, “this is as much a tragedy to me as to any one present. I believe that every one of you here except—” he glanced towards the sofa—“except those whom we will not name have gone into this matter honestly, as I did. We’ve got to chuck it. Tear up your telegrams. Let me go to see Stenson this minute. I see the truth about this thing now as I never saw it before. There is no peace for us with Germany until she is on her knees, until we have taken away all her power to do further mischief. When that time comes let us be generous. Let us remember that her working men are of the same flesh and blood as ours and need to live as you need to live. Let us see that they are left the means to live. Mercy to all of them—mercy, and all the possibilities of a free and generous life. But to Hell with every one of those who are responsible for the poison which has crept throughout all ranks in Germany, which, starting from the Kaiser and his friends, has corrupted first the proud aristocracy, then the industrious, hard-working and worthy middle classes, and has even permeated to some extent the ranks of the people themselves, destined by their infamous ruler to carry on their shoulders the burden of an unnatural, ungodly, and unholy ambition. There is much that I ought to say, but I fancy that I have said enough. Germany must be broken, and you can do it. Let the memory of those undispatched telegrams help you. Spend your time amongst the men you represent. Make them see the truth. Make them understand that every burden they lift, every time they wield the pickaxe, every blow they strike in their daily work, helps. I was going to speak about what we owe to the dead. I won’t. We must beat Germany to her knees. We can and we will. Then will come the time for generosity.”
Phineas Cross struck the table with the flat of his hand.
“Boys,” he said, “I feel the sweat in every pore of my body. We’ve nigh done a horrible thing. We are with you, Mr. Orden. But about that little skunk there? How did you find him out?”
“Through Miss Abbeway,” Julian answered. “You have her to thank. I can assure you that every charge I have made can be substantiated.”
There was a little murmur of confidence. Everyone seemed to find speech difficult.
“One word more,” Julian went on. “Don’t disband this Council. Keep it together, just as it is. Keep this building. Keep our association and sanctify it to one purpose—victory.”
A loud clamour of applause answered him. Once more Cross glanced towards the prostrate form upon the sofa.
“Let no one interfere,” Julian enjoined. “There is an Act which will deal with him. He will be removed from this place presently, and he will not be heard of again for a little time. We don’t want a soul to know how nearly we were duped. It rests with every one of you to destroy all the traces of what might have happened. You can do this if you will. To-morrow call a meeting of the Council. Appoint a permanent chairman, a new secretary, draw out a syllabus of action for promoting increased production, for stimulating throughout every industry a passionate desire for victory. If speaking, writing, or help of mine in any way is wanted, it is yours. I will willingly be a disciple of the cause. But this morning let me be your ambassador. Let me go to the Premier with a message from you. Let me tell him what you have resolved.”
“Hands up all in favour!” Cross exclaimed.
Every hand was raised. Bright came back from the couch, blinking underneath his heavy spectacles but meekly acquiescent.
“Let us remember this hour,” the Bishop begged, “as something solemn in our lives. The Council of Labour shall justify itself, shall voice the will or the people, fighting for victory.”
“For the Peace which comes through Victory!” Julian echoed.