"That is the position," announced Mr Tubes, when he had finished reading the general summary. "The question it raises may not be exactly urgent, but it is at least pressing. On the one hand, there is the undoubted feeling of grievance existing among a large proportion of electors—our own people. On the other hand, there is the serious question of national finances not to be overlooked. As the matter is one that must ultimately concern me more closely than anybody else, I will reserve my own opinion to the last."
The view taken by those present has already been indicated. Their platform was that of Moderate Socialism; they wished it always to be understood that they were practical. They had the interest of their fellow working men (certainly of no other class of the community) at heart, but as Practical Socialists they had a suspicion (taking the condition of the Exchequer into consideration) that for the moment they had reached the limit of Practical Socialism. There was an undoubted dilemma. If a mistake of policy on their part let in the impractical Socialists, the result would be disastrous. Most of them regarded the danger as infinitesimal; like every other political party during the last two centuries, they felt that they could rely on the "sound common-sense of the community." Still, admitting a possibility, even if it was microscopic, might it not be more—say practically socialistic (the word "patriotic" had long been expunged from their vocabulary) in the end to make some slight concessions? If there existed a more material inducement it was not referred to, and any ingenuous comrade, using as an argument in favour of compliance a homely proverb anent the inadvisability of quarrelling with one's bread and butter, would have been promptly discouraged. Yet, although the actors themselves in this great morality play apparently overlooked the consideration, it is impossible for the spectator to ignore the fact. Some few members of the Cabinet might have provided for a rainy day, but even to many of official class, and practically to all of the rank and file, a reversal at the polls must mean that they would have to give up a variety of highly-esteemed privileges and return to private life in less interesting capacities, some in very humble ones indeed.
It ended, as it was bound to end, in compromise. They would not play into the hands of the extreme party and ignore the voice of the constituencies; they would not be false to their convictions and be dictated to by the electors. They would decline to bring in the suggested Minimum Wage Bill, and they would not impose the Personal Property Tax. They would meet matters by extending the National Obligations Act, and save money on the Estimates. They would be sound, if commonplace.
The formal proceedings having been concluded, it was open for any one to introduce any subject he pleased in terms of censure, enquiry or discussion. Comrade Tirrel was on his feet at once, and returned to the subject that lay heavy on his mind.
"Is the Home Secretary in possession of any confidential information regarding the Unity League?" he demanded; "and can he assure us, in view of the admittedly hostile object of the organisation, that adequate means are being taken to neutralise any possible lines of action it may adopt?"
"The answer to the first part of the question is in the affirmative," replied Mr Tubes in his best parliamentary manner. "As regards the second part, I may state that after considering the reports we have received it is not anticipated that the League offers any serious menace to the Government. Should the necessity arise, the Council may rely upon the Home Office taking the requisite precautions."
"The answer is satisfactory as far as it goes. Being in possession of special information, will the Home Secretary go a step further and allay the anxiety that certainly exists in some quarters, by indicating the real intentions and proposedmodus operandiof the League?"
Mr Tubes conferred for a moment with his chief. "I may say that on broad lines the League has no definite plan for the future, and its intentions, as represented by the policy of its heads, will simply be to go on existing so long as the deluded followers will continue their subscriptions. I may point out that the League has now been in existence for two years, and during that time it has done nothing at all to justify its founders' expectations; it has not embarrassed us at any point nor turned a single by-election. For two years we heard practically nothing of it, and there has been no fresh development to justify the present uneasiness which it seems to be causing in the minds of a few nervous comrades. Its membership is admittedly imposing, but the bare fact that a million and a half of people are foolish enough——"
There was a significant exchange of astonished glances among the occupants of Mr Strummery's council chamber. Murmurs grew, and Mr Guppling voiced the general feeling by calling the Home Secretary's attention to the figures he had mentioned "doubtless inadvertently."
"No," admitted Mr Tubes carelessly, "that is our latest estimate. From recent information we have reason to think that the previous figure we adopted was too low—or the League may have received large additions lately through some accidental cause. We are now probably erring as widely on the other side, but it is the safe side, and I therefore retain that figure."
Mr Tirrel had not yet finished, but he was listened to with respectful attention now.
"Is the Home Secretary in a position to tell us who this man Salt is?" was his next enquiry.
The Home Secretary looked frankly puzzled. "WhoisSalt?" he replied, innocently enough.
"That is the essential point of my enquiry," replied the comrade. "Salt," he continued, his voice stilling the laughter it had raised, "is the Man behind the Unity League. You think it is Hampden, but I tell you that you are mistaken. Hampden is undoubtedly a dangerous power; the classes will follow him blindly, and he is no mere figure-head, but it was Salt who stirred Hampden from his apathy, and it is Salt who pulls the wires."
"And who is Salt?" demanded the Premier, as Mr Tubes offered no comment.
Tirrel shook his head. "I know no more than I have stated," he replied; "but his secret influence must be tremendous, and all doubt as to the identity of the man and his past record should be set at rest."
Mr Tubes looked up from the papers he had before him with a gleam of subdued anger in his eye. "I think that our cock-sure kumred has geete howd of another mare's neest," he remarked, relapsing unconsciously into his native dialect as he frequently did when stirred. "I remember hearin' o' this Saut in one o' th' reports, and here it is. So far from being a principal, he occupies a very different position—that of Hampden's private secretary, which would explain how he might have to come into contact with a great many people without having any real influence hissel. He is described in my confidential report as a simple, unsuspicious man, who might be safely made use of, and, in fact, most of my information is derived from that source."
There was a sharp, smothered exclamation from one or two men, and then a sudden stillness fell upon the room. Mr Tubes was among the last to realise the trend of his admission.
"Are we to understand that the greater part—perhaps the whole—of the information upon which the Home Office has been relying, and of the assurances of inaction which have lulled our suspicions to rest, have been blindly accepted from this man Salt, the head and fount of the League itself?" demanded Tirrel with ominous precision. "If that indicates the methods of the Department, I think that this Council will share my view when I suggest that the terms 'simple' and 'unsuspicious' have been inaccurately allotted—to Salt."
Mr Tubes made no reply. Lying at the bottom of the man's nature smouldered a volcanic passion that he watched as though it were a sleeping beast. Twice in his public career it had escaped him, and each time the result had been a sharp reverse to his ambitions. Repression—firm, instant, and unconditional—was the only safeguard, so that now recognising the danger-signal in his breast, he sat without a word in spite of the Premier's anxious looks, in spite of the concern of those about him.
"I will not press for a verbal reply," continued Tirrel after a telling pause; "the inference of silence makes that superfluous. But I will ask whether the Home Secretary is aware that Salt has been quietly engaged in canvassing the provinces for a month, and whether he has any information about his object and results. Yes," he continued vehemently, turning to those immediately about him, "for a month past this simple, unsuspecting individual from whom we derive our confidential information has been passing quietly and unmarked from town to town; and if you were to hang a map of England on the wall before me, I would undertake to trace his route across the land by the points of most marked discontent in the report to which we have just listened."
A knock at the locked door of the room saved the Home Secretary for the moment from the necessity of replying. It was an unusual incident, and when the nearest man went and asked what was wanted, some one was understood to reply that a stranger, who refused to give his name, wished to see Mr Tubes. Perhaps Mr Tubes personally might have welcomed a respite, but the master of the house anticipated him.
"Tell him, whoever he may be, that Mr Tubes cannot be disturbed just now," he declared.
"He says it's important, very important," urged the voice, with a suggestion of largess received and more to come, in its eagerness.
"Then let him write it down or wait," said Mr Strummery decisively, and the matter was supposed to have ended.
The momentary interruption had broken the tension and perhaps saved Tubes from a passionate outburst. He rose to make a reply without any sign of anger or any fear that he would not be able to smooth away the awkward impression.
"As far as canvassing in the provinces is concerned," he remarked plausibly, "it is open for any man, whatever his politics may be, to do that from morning to night all his life if he likes, so long as it isn't for an illegal object. As regards Salt having been engaged this way for the past month, it is quite true that I have had no intimation of the fact so far. I may explain that as my Department has not yet come to regard the Unity League as the one object in the world to which it must devote its whole attention, I am not in the habit of receiving reports on the subject every day, nor even every week. It may be, however——"
There was another knock upon the door. Mr Tubes stopped, and the Premier frowned. In the space between the door and the carpet there appeared for a second a scrap of paper; the next moment it came skimming a few yards into the room. There was no attempt to hold further communication, and the footsteps of the silent messenger were heard descending the stairs again.
Mr Vossit, who sat nearest to the door, picked up the little oblong card. He saw, as he could scarcely fail to see, that it was an ordinary visiting-card, and on the upper side, as it lay, there appeared a roughly-pencilled sign—two lines at right angle drawn through a semicircle, it appeared superficially to be. As he handed it to Mr Tubes he reversed the position so that the name should be uppermost, and again he saw, as he could scarcely fail to see, that the other side was blank. The roughly-pencilled diagram was all the message it contained.
"It may be, however——" the Home Secretary was repeating half-mechanically. He took the card and glanced at the symbol it bore. "It may be, however," he continued, as though there had been no interruption, "that I shall very soon be in possession of the full facts to lay before you." Then with a few whispered words to the Premier and a comprehensive murmur of apology to the rest of the company, he withdrew.
Fully a quarter of an hour passed before there was any sign of the absent Minister, and then it did not take the form of his return. The conversation, in his absence, had worked round to the engaging alternative of whether it was more correct to educate one's son at Eton or at Margate College, when a message was sent up requesting the Premier's attendance in another room. After another quarter of an hour some one was heard to leave the house, but it was ten minutes later before the two men returned. It was felt in the atmosphere that some new development was at hand, and they had to run the curious scrutiny of every eye. Both had an air of constraint, and both were rather pale. The Premier moved to his seat with brusque indifference, and one who knew Tubes well passed a whispered warning that Jim had got his storm-cone fairly hoisted. The door was locked again, chairs were drawn up to the table, and a hush of marked expectancy settled over the meeting.
The Prime Minister spoke first.
"In the past half-hour a letter has come into our possession that may cause us to alter our arrangements," he announced baldly. "How it came into our possession doesn't matter. All that does matter is, that it's genuine. Tubes will read it to you."
"It is signed 'John Hampden,' addressed to Robert Estair, and dated three days ago," contributed the Home Secretary just as briefly. "The original was in cipher. This is the deciphered form:
"'My Dear Estair,—I now have Salt's complete report before me, and there seems to be no doubt that the proposal I have formulated is feasible, and the moment almost ripe. Salt has covered all the most important industrial centres, and everywhere the reports of our agents are favourable to the plan. Not having found universal happiness and a complete immunity from the cares incident to humanity in the privileges which they so ardently desired and have now obtained, the working classes are tending to believe that the panacea must lie, not in greater moderation, but in extended privilege."'For the moment the present Government is indisposed to go much further, not possessing the funds necessary for enlarged concessions and fearing that increased taxation might result in a serious stream of emigration among the monied classes. For the moment the working men hesitate to throw in their lot with the extreme Socialists, distrusting the revolutionary and anarchical wing of that party, and instinctively feeling that any temporary advantage which they might enjoy would soon be swallowed up in the reign of open lawlessness that must inevitably arise."'For the moment, therefore, there is a pause, and now occurs the opportunity—perhaps the last in history—for us to retrieve some of the losses of the past. There are scruples to be overcome, but I do not think that an alliance with the moderate section of the Labour interest is inconsistent with the aims and traditions of the great parties which our League represents. It would, of course, be necessary to guarantee to our new allies the privileges which they now possess, and even to promise more; but I am convinced, not only by past experience but also by specific assurances from certain quarters, that they would prefer to remain as they are, and form an alliance with us rather than grasp at larger gains and suffer absorption into another party which they dare not trust."'From the definite nature of this statement you will gather that the negotiations are more than in the air. The distribution of Cabinet offices will have to be considered at once. B—— might be first gained over with the offer of the Exchequer. He carries great weight with a considerable section of his party, and is dissatisfied with his recognition so far. Heape is a representative man who would repay early attention, especially as he is, at the moment, envious of R——'s better treatment. But these are matters of detail. The great thing is toget back on any terms. Once in power, by a modification of the franchise we might make good our position. I trust that this, a desperate remedy in a desperate time, will earn at least your tacit acquiescence. Much is irretrievably lost; England remains—yet."Yours sincerely,"John Hampden.'"
"'My Dear Estair,—I now have Salt's complete report before me, and there seems to be no doubt that the proposal I have formulated is feasible, and the moment almost ripe. Salt has covered all the most important industrial centres, and everywhere the reports of our agents are favourable to the plan. Not having found universal happiness and a complete immunity from the cares incident to humanity in the privileges which they so ardently desired and have now obtained, the working classes are tending to believe that the panacea must lie, not in greater moderation, but in extended privilege.
"'For the moment the present Government is indisposed to go much further, not possessing the funds necessary for enlarged concessions and fearing that increased taxation might result in a serious stream of emigration among the monied classes. For the moment the working men hesitate to throw in their lot with the extreme Socialists, distrusting the revolutionary and anarchical wing of that party, and instinctively feeling that any temporary advantage which they might enjoy would soon be swallowed up in the reign of open lawlessness that must inevitably arise.
"'For the moment, therefore, there is a pause, and now occurs the opportunity—perhaps the last in history—for us to retrieve some of the losses of the past. There are scruples to be overcome, but I do not think that an alliance with the moderate section of the Labour interest is inconsistent with the aims and traditions of the great parties which our League represents. It would, of course, be necessary to guarantee to our new allies the privileges which they now possess, and even to promise more; but I am convinced, not only by past experience but also by specific assurances from certain quarters, that they would prefer to remain as they are, and form an alliance with us rather than grasp at larger gains and suffer absorption into another party which they dare not trust.
"'From the definite nature of this statement you will gather that the negotiations are more than in the air. The distribution of Cabinet offices will have to be considered at once. B—— might be first gained over with the offer of the Exchequer. He carries great weight with a considerable section of his party, and is dissatisfied with his recognition so far. Heape is a representative man who would repay early attention, especially as he is, at the moment, envious of R——'s better treatment. But these are matters of detail. The great thing is toget back on any terms. Once in power, by a modification of the franchise we might make good our position. I trust that this, a desperate remedy in a desperate time, will earn at least your tacit acquiescence. Much is irretrievably lost; England remains—yet.
"Yours sincerely,
"John Hampden.'"
Six men were on their feet before the signature was reached. With an impatient gesture Strummery waved them collectively aside.
"We all know your opinion on the writer and the letter, and we can all put it into our own words without wasting time in listening," he said with suppressed fury. "In five minutes' time I shall entirely reopen the consideration of the reports which we met this afternoon to discuss."
"Has any effort been made to learn the nature of Estair's reply?" enquired Tirrel. If he was not the least moved man in the room he was the least perturbed, and he instinctively picked out the only point of importance that remained.
"It probably does not exist in writing," replied Mr Tubes, avoiding Tirrel's steady gaze. "I find that he arrived in town last night. There would certainly be a meeting."
"Was Bannister summoned to this Council?" demanded another. It was taken for granted that "B" stood for Bannister.
"Yes," replied the Premier, with one eye on his watch. "He was indisposed."
"I protest against the reference to myself," said Heape coldly.
Mr Strummery nodded. "Time's up," he announced.
That is the "secret history" of the Government's sudden and inexplicable conversion to the necessity of the Minimum Wage Bill and to the propriety of imposing the Personal Property Tax. A fortnight later the Prime Minister outlined the programme in the course of a speech at Newcastle. The announcement was received almost with stupefaction. For the first time in history, property—money, merchandise, personal belongings—was to be saddled with an annual tax apart from, and in addition to, the tax it paid on the incomes derived from it. It was an entire wedge of the extreme policy that must end in Partition. It was more than the poorer classes had dared to hope; it was more than the tax-paying classes had dared to fear. It marked a new era of extended privilege for the one; it marked the final extinction of hope even among the hopeful for the other.
"It could not have happened more opportunely for us even if we had arranged it in every detail," declared Hampden, going into Salt's room with the tidings in huge delight, a fortnight later.
"No," agreed Salt, looking up with his slow, pleasant smile. "Not even if we had arranged it."
Sir John Hampden paused for a moment with arrested pen. He had been in the act of crossing off another day on the calendar that hung inside his desk, the last detail before he pulled the roll-top down for the night, when the date had caught his eye with a sudden meaning.
"A week to-day, Salt," he remarked, looking up.
"A week to-day," repeated Salt. "That gives us seven more days for details."
Hampden laughed quietly as he bent forward and continued the red line through the "14."
"That is one way of looking at it," he said. "Personally, I was rather wishing that it had been to-day. I confess that I cannot watch the climax of these two years approaching without feeling keyed up to concert pitch. I suppose that you never had any nerves?"
"I suppose not. If I had, the Atlantic water soon washed them out."
"But you are superstitious?" he asked curiously. It suddenly occurred to him how little he really knew of the man with whom he was linked in such a momentous hazard.
"Oh yes. Blue water inoculates us all with that. Fortunately, mine does not go beyond trifles, such as touching posts and stepping over paving stones—a hobby and not a passion, or I should have to curb it."
"Do you really do things like that? Well, I remember Northland, the great nerve specialist, telling me that most people have something of the sort—a persistent feeling of impending calamity unless they conform to some trivial impulse. I am exempt."
"Yes," commented Salt; "or you would hardly be likely to cross off the date before the day is over."
"Good Heavens!" exclaimed Hampden. "What an age we live in! Is it tannin or the dregs of paganism? And you think it would be tempting Providence to do it while there are five more hours to run?"
"I never do it, as a matter of fact," admitted Salt with perfect seriousness. "Of course, Iknowthat nothing would happen in the five hours if I did, but, all the same, I rather think that something would."
"I hope that something will," said Hampden cheerfully. "Dinner, for example. Did I ever strike you as a gourmet, Salt? Well, nevertheless, I am a terrific believer in regular meals, although I don't care a straw how simple they are. You may read of some marvellous Trojan working under heavy pressure for twenty-four hours, and then snatching a hurried glass of Château d'Yquem and a couple of Abernethy biscuits, and going on again for another twenty-four. Don't believe it, Salt. If he is not used to it, his knees go; if he is used to it, they have gone already. If I were a general I solemnly declare that I would risk more to feed my men before an engagement, than I would risk to hold the best position all along the front. Your hungry man may fight well enough for a time, but the moment he is beaten he knows it. And, strangely enough, we English have won a good many important battles after we had been beaten."
He had been locking up the safe and desk as he ran on, and now they walked together down the corridor. At the door of his own office Salt excused himself for a moment and went in. When he rejoined the baronet at the outer door, he held in his hand a little square of thin paper on which was printed in bold type
JULY 14.
JULY 14.
"You will regret it," said Hampden, not wholly jestingly. He saw at once that it was the tag for the day, torn from his calendar, that Salt held.
"No," he replied, crumpling up the scrap of paper and throwing it away, "I may remember, but I shall not regret. When you have to think twice about doing a thing like that, it is time to do it.... You have no particular message for Deland?"
"None at all, personally, I think. You will tell him as much as we decided upon. Let him know that his post will certainly be one of the most important outside the central office. What time do you go?"
"The 10 train from Marylebone. Deland will be waiting up for me. There is an early restaurant train in the morning—the 7.20, getting in at 10.40. I shall breakfasten route, and come straight on here."
"That's right. Look out for young Hampshire in the train; he will probably wait on you, but you won't recognise him unless you remember the Manners-Clinton nose in profile. He regards it as a vast joke, but he is very keen. And sleep all the time you aren't feeding. Can't do better. Good night."
Salt laughed as he turned into Pall Mall, speculating for a moment, by the light of his own knowledge, how little time this strenuous, simple-living man devoted to the things he advocated. If he had been able to follow Sir John's electric brougham for the remainder of that night he would have had still more reason to be sceptical.
When Hampden reached his house and strode up to the door with the elastic step of a young man, despite his iron-grey hair and burden of responsibility, instead of the bronze Medusa knocker that had dropped from the hands of Pietro Sarpi and Donato in its time, his eyes encountered the smiling face of his daughter as she swung open the door before him. She had been sitting at an open window of the dull-fronted house until she saw the Hampden livery in the distance.
"There is some one waiting in the library to see you," she said, as he kissed her cheek. "He said that he would wait ten minutes; you had already been seven."
"Who is it?" he asked in quiet expectation. It was not unusual for Muriel to watch for him from the upper room, and to come down into the hall to welcome him, but to-night he saw at once that there was a mild excitement in her manner. "Who is it?" he asked.
She told him in half a dozen whispered words, and then returned to the drawing-room and the society of a depressing companion, who chanced to be a poor and distant cousin, while Sir John turned toward the library.
"Tell Styles to remain with the brougham if he is still in front," he said to a passing footman. The visit might presage anything.
A young man, an inconspicuous young man in a blue serge suit, rose from the chair of Jacobean oak and Spanish leather where he had been sitting with a bowler hat between his hands and a cheap umbrella across his knees, and made a cursory bow as he began to search an inner pocket.
"Sir John Hampden?" he enquired.
"Yes," replied the master of the house, favouring his visitor with a more curious attention than he received in return. "You are from Plantagenet House, I believe?"
The young man detached his left hand from the search and turned down the lapel of his coat in a perfunctory display of his credentials. Pinned beneath so that it should not obtrude was an insignificant little medal, so small and trivial that it would require the closest scrutiny to distinguish its design and lettering.
But Sir John Hampden did not require any assurance upon the point. He knew by the evidence of just such another medallion which lay in his own possession that upon one side, around the engraved name of the holder, ran the inscription, "Every man according as he purposeth in his heart;" upon the other side a representation of St Martin dividing his cloak with the beggar. It was the badge of the Order of St Martin of Tours.
The Order of St Martin embodied the last phase of organised benevolence. In the history of the world there had never been a time when men so passionately desired to help their fellow men; there had never been a time when they found it more difficult to do so to their satisfaction. From the lips of every social reformer, from the reports of the charitable organisations, from the testimony of the poor themselves the broad indictment had gone forth that every casual beggar was a rogue and a vagabond. Promiscuous alms-giving was tabulated among the Seven Curses of London.
Organised charity was the readiest alternative. Again obliging counsellors raised their conscientious voices. Organised charity was wasteful, inelastic, unsympathetic, often superfluous. The preacher added a warning note: Let none think that the easy donation of a cheque here and there was charity. It was frequently vanity, it was often a cowardly compromise with conscience, it was never an absolution from the individual responsibility.
So brotherly love continued, but often did not fructify, and the man who felt that he had the true Samaritan instinct, as he passed by on the one side of the suburban road, looked at his ragged neighbour lying under the hedge on the other side in a fit which might be epilepsy but might equally well be soap-suds in the mouth, and assured himself that if only he could believe the case to be genuine there was nothing on earth he would not do for the man.
It was a very difficult age, every one admitted: "Society was so complex."
There was evidence of the generous feeling—ill-balanced and spasmodic, it is true—on every hand. The poor were bravely, almost blindly, good to their neighbours in misfortune. The better-off were lavish—or had been until a few years previously—when they had certified proof that the cases were deserving. If a magistrate or a police court missionary gave publicity to a Pathetic Case, the Pathetic Case might be sure of being able to retire on a comfortable annuity. If only every Pathetic Case could have been induced to come pathetically into the clutches of a sympathetic police court cadi, instead of dying quite as pathetically in a rat-hole, one of the most pressing problems of benevolence might have been satisfactorily solved.
The Order of St Martin of Tours was one of the attempts to reconcile the generous yearnings of mankind with modern conditions. Its field of action had no definable limit, and whatever a man wished to give it was prepared to utilise. It was not primarily concerned with money, although judged by the guaranteed resources upon which it could call if necessary, it would rank as a rich society. It imposed no subscription and made no outside appeal. Upon its books, against the name of every member, there was entered what he bound himself to do when it was required of him. It was a vast and comprehensive list, so varied that few ever genuinely applied for the services of the Order without their needs being satisfied. The city man willing to give a foolish and repentant youth another chance of honest work; the Sussex farmer anxious to prove what a month of South Down fare and Channel breezes would do for a small city convalescent; the prim little suburban lady, much too timid to attempt any personal contact with the unknown depths of sin and suffering, but eager to send her choicest flowers and most perfect fruit to any slum sick-room; the good-hearted laundry girl who had been through the fires herself, offering to "pal up to any other girl what's having a bit of rough and wants to keep straight without a lot of jaw,"—all found a deeper use in life beneath the sign of St Martin's divided cloak. Children, even little children, were not shut out; they could play with other, lonely, little children, and renounce some toys.
The inconspicuous young man standing in Sir John Hampden's library—he was in a cheap boot shop, but he gave his early closing day to serve the Order as a messenger, and there were millionaires who gave less—found the thing he searched for, and handed to Sir John an unsealed envelope.
"I accept," said the baronet, after glancing at the slip it contained. This was what he accepted:
ORDER OF ST. MARTIN OF TOURS.Case. . . John Flak, 45 Paradise Buildings, Paradise Street, Drury Lane, W.C.Cause. . Street Accident.Requirement. . Service through the night.Recommender. . L. K. Stone, M.D., 172 Great Queen Street, W.C.Waltham, Master.
ORDER OF ST. MARTIN OF TOURS.
Case. . . John Flak, 45 Paradise Buildings, Paradise Street, Drury Lane, W.C.
Cause. . Street Accident.
Requirement. . Service through the night.
Recommender. . L. K. Stone, M.D., 172 Great Queen Street, W.C.
Waltham, Master.
He could have declined; and his membership would have been at an end. But in a mission of personal service he could not accept and appoint a substitute. The Order was modern, business-like, reasonable, unemotional, and quite prepared to take humanity as it was. It did not seek to impose the ideal Christian standard, logically recognising that if a man gaveallhe possessed, a system of Christian laws (a Cæsar whom he was likewise bidden to obey) would at once incarcerate him in a prison for having no visible means of subsistence, and, if he persisted in his unnatural Christian conduct, in a lunatic asylum, where in its appointed season he would have the story of the Rich Ruler read for his edification.
The Order was practical and "very nice to do with;" but it had a standard, and as a protest against that widespread reliance in the omnipotence of gold that marred the age it allowed no delegation of an office of mercy. On all points it was open; its thin medallion symbolised no mysteries or secret vows; nor, and on this one point it was unbending, as far as lay in the power of the Order should any second-hand virtue find place beneath its saintly ensign.
A few years before, Paradise Street, with that marked inappropriateness that may be traced in the nomenclature of many London thoroughfares, had been the foulest, poorest, noisomest, most garbage-strewn and fly-infested region even in the purlieus of Drury Lane. It was not markedly criminal, it was merely filthy; and when smell-diseases broke out in central London it was generally found that they radiated from Paradise Street like ripples from a dead dog thrown into a pond. Presently a type foundry in the next street, growing backwards because it was impossible to expand further in any other direction, pushed down the flimsy tenements that stood between and reared a high wall, pierced with windows of prismatic glass, in their place. Soon public authorities, seeing that the heavens did not fall when a quarter of Paradise Street did, suddenly and unexpectedly tore down another quarter as though they had received a maddened impulse and Paradise Street had been a cardboard model. The phœnix that appeared on this site was a seven-storied block of workmen's dwellings. It could not be said to have given universal satisfaction. The municipal authorities who devised it bickered entertainingly over most of the details that lay between the foundations and the chimney-pots; the primitive dwellers in Paradise Street looked askance at it, as they did at most things not in liquid form; social reformers complained that it drove away the very poor and brought in a class of only medium poor; and ordinary people noticed that in place of the nearest approach to artistic dirt to be found in the metropolis, some one had substituted uninteresting squalor.
Hampden dismissed his carriage in Lincoln's Inn Fields and walked the remainder of the way. He had changed into a dark lounge suit before he left, but, in spite of the principle he had so positively laid down, he had not stayed to dine. The inevitable, morbid little group marked the entrance to Paradise Buildings, but the incident was already three hours old, and the larger public interest was being reserved for the anticipated funeral.
A slipshod, smug-faced woman opened the door of No. 45 in response to his discreet knock. He stepped into a small hall where coal was stored in a packing-case, and, on her invitation, through into the front room. Five more untidy women, who had been drinking from three cups, got up as he entered, and passed out, eyeing him with respectful curiosity as they went, and each dropping a word of friendly leavetaking to the slatternly hostess.
"Don't be down'arted, my dear."
"See you later, Emm."
"Let's know how things are going, won't you?"
"You'll remember about that black alpaker body?"
"Well, so long, Mrs Flak. Gord bless yer."
Sir John waited until the hall door closed behind the last frowsy woman.
"I am here to be of any use I can," he said. "Did Dr Stone mention that some one would come?"
"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir," she replied. She stood in the middle of the room, a picture of domestic incapacity, with a foolish look upon her rather comely features. The room was not bare of furniture, was not devoid of working-class comforts, but the dirty dishes, the dirty clothing, the dirty floor, told the plain tale.
"I do not know any particulars of the case yet." He saw at once that he would have to take the lead in every detail. "Did the doctor speak of coming again, or leave any message?"
"Yes, sir," she replied readily. She lifted an ornament on the mantelpiece and gave him a folded sheet of paper, torn from a note-book, that had been placed there for safety. He had the clearest impression that it would never have occurred to the woman to give it to him unasked.
"To rep of O. St M.," ran the pencilled scrawl. "Shall endeavour to look in 8-8.30.—L.K.S."
Even as he took out his watch there came a business-like knock at the door, an active step in the hall, and beneath the conventional greeting, the two men were weighing one another.
Dr Stone had asked the Order to send a man of common-sense who could exercise authority if need be, and one who would not be squeamish in his surroundings. For reasons of his own he had added that if with these qualifications he combined that of being a Justice of the Peace, so much the better. Dr Stone judged that he had the man before him. Hampden saw a brisk, not too well shaven, man in a light suit, with a straw hat and a serviceable stick in his hands, until he threw them on the table. There was kindness and decision behind his alert eyes, and his manner was that of a benevolent despot marshalling his poor patients—and he had few others—as a regiment before him, marching them right and left in companies, bringing them sharply to the front, and bidding them to stand there and do nothing until they were told.
"You haven't been into the other room yet?" he asked. "No, well——"
He stopped with his hand on the door knob, turned back like a pointer on the suspicion of a trail, and looked keenly at the woman, then around the bestrewn room. If her eyes had slid the least betraying glance, Hampden did not observe it, but the doctor, without a word, strode to the littered couch, put his hand behind a threadbare cushion, and drew out a half-filled bottle. There was a gluggling ripple for a few seconds, and the contents had disappeared down the sink, while the terebinthine odour of cheap gin hung across the room.
"Not here, Mrs Flak," he said sharply; and without changing her expression of vacuous good-nature, the woman meekly replied, "No, sir."
Dr Stone led the way into the inner room and closed the door behind them. A man, asleep, insensible, or dead, lay on the bed, his face half hidden in bandages.
"This is the position," explained the doctor, speaking very rapidly, for his time was mapped out with as little waste as there is to be found between the squares on a chess board. "This man went out of here a few hours ago and walked straight into an empty motor 'bus that was going round this way. That's how they all put it: he walked right into the thing. Why? He was a sober enough man, an attendant of some kind at one of the west end clubs. Because, as I have good reason to suppose, he was thinking absorbingly of something else.
"Well, they carried him in here; it ought to have been the hospital, of course, but it was at his own doorstep it took place, you see, and it doesn't really matter, because to-morrow morning——!"
"He will die then?" asked Hampden in a whisper, interpreting the quick gesture.
"Oh, he will die as sure as his head is a cracked egg-shell. Between midnight and dawn, I should say. But before the end I look confidently for an interval of consciousness, or rather sub-consciousness. If I am wrong I shall have kept you up all night for nothing; if I am right you will probably hear something that he wants to say very much."
"Whatever was in his mind when he met with the accident?"
"That is my conviction. There has already been an indication of partial expression. Curiously enough, I have had two exactly similar cases, and this is going just the same way. In one it was a sum of money a man had banked under another name to keep it from his wife and for his children; in the second it was a blow struck in a scuffle, and an innocent man was doing penal servitude for it."
"That is what you wished to have some one here for chiefly, then?" asked Hampden.
"Everything, practically. You see the kind of people around? The wife is a fool; the neighbours are the class of maddening dolts who leave a suicide hanging until a policeman comes to cut him down. They would hold an orgie in the next room. In excitement the women fly to gin as instinctively as a nun flies to prayer. Order them out if they come, but I don't think that they will trouble you after I have spoken to the woman as I go. If there is anything to be caught it will have to be on the hop, so to speak. It may be a confession, a deposition of legal value, or only a request; one cannot guess. Questioning, when the sub-conscious stage is reached, might lead to something. It's largely a matter of luck, but intelligence may have an innings."
"Is there nothing to be done—in the way of making it easier for him?"
Dr Stone made a face expressive of their helplessness and shrugged his shoulders; then mentioned a few simple details.
"He will never know," he explained. "Even when he seems conscious he will feel no pain and remember nothing of the accident. The clock will be mercifully set back." He smiled whimsically. "Forgive me if it never strikes." He turned to go. "The nearest call office is the kiosk in Aldwych," he remarked. "I am 7406 Covent Garden." No paper being visible he wrote the number on the wall. "After 10.30 as a general thing," he added.
So the baronet was left alone with the still figure that counterfeited death so well, the man who would be dead before the dawn. He stepped quietly to the bed and looked down on him. The lower half of the face was free from swathing, and the lean throat and grizzled beard struck Sir John with a momentary surprise. It was the face of an elderly man; he had expected to find one not more than middle-aged as the companion of the young woman in the other room.
There was a single chair against the wall, and he sat down. There was nothing else to do but to sit and wait, to listen to the sounds of voluminous life that rose from the street beneath, the careful creaking movements in the room beyond. From the shallow wainscotting near the bed came at intervals the steady ticking of a death-watch. It was nothing, as every one knew, but the note of an insect calling for its mate, but it thrilled and grew large in the stillness of the chamber ominously.
A low tap on the door came as a relief. He found the woman standing there.
"Is there anything different?" she asked, hanging on to the door. "I kept on thinking I heard noises."
"No, there is no change," he replied. "Will you come in?"
She shrank back at the suggestion. "Gord 'elp us, no!" she cried. "It's bad enough out there."
"What are you afraid of?" he asked kindly.
She had no words for it. Self-analysis did not enter into her daily life. But, sitting there alone among the noises, real and imagined, she had reached a state of terror.
"There is nothing at all dreadful, nothing that would shock you," he said, referring to the appearance of the dying man. "You are his wife, are you not?"
The foolish look, half stubborn, half vacuous, flickered about her face. "As good as," she replied. "It's like this——"
"I see." He had no desire to hear the recital of the sordid details.
"His wife's in a mad-house. Won't never be anywhere else, and I've been with him these five years, an honest woman to him all the time," she said, bridling somewhat at the suggestion of reproach. "No one's got no better right to the things, I'm sure." Her eloquence was stirred not so much to defend her reputation as by the fear that some one might step in to claim "the things."
"There will be plenty of time to talk about that when—when it is necessary," he said. "Has he no relations about here who ought to be told?"
"Nah," she said decisively; "no one but me. Why, he didn't even have no friends—no pals of his own class, as you may say. Very close about himself he was. All he thought of was them political corkses, as they call um." She came nearer to the door again, the gossiping passion of her class stronger than her fear, now that the earlier restraint of his presence was wearing off. "It's the only thing we ever had a 'arsh word about. It's all right and well for them that make a living at it, but many and many a time my 'usband's lost 'alf a day two and three times a week to sit in the Distingwidged Strangers' Gallery. You mightn't 'ardly think it, sir, but he was hand and foot with some of the biggest men there are; he was indeed."
Hampden was looking at her curiously. He read into her "'arsh word" the ceaseless clatter of her nagging, shameless tongue when the old man brought home a few shillings less than he was wont; the aftermath of sullen silence, the unprepared meals and neglected home. He pictured him a patient, long-suffering old man, and pitied him. And now she took pride and boasted of the very things that she had upbraided him with.
"Vickers he knew," she continued complacently, "and Drugget. He's shaken hands with Mr Strummery, the Prime Minister, more than onest. Then Tubes—you've heard speak of him?—he found Mr Tubes a very pleasant gentleman. Oh, and a lot more I can't remember."
Hampden disengaged himself from further conversation with a single formal sentence, and returned to his vigil. There he was secure from her callous chatter. He saw the renewed look of terror start into her eyes when a board behind her creaked as the door was closing. He heard the startled shriek, but her squalid avarice cut off his sympathies. He sat down again and looked round at the already familiar objects in the room. The form lying on the bed had not changed a fraction of its rigid outline; but he missed something somewhere in the room, and for a minute he could not identify it. Then he remembered the ticking of the death-watch. It had ceased. He looked at his watch; it was not yet nine o'clock.
He had not been back more than ten minutes when the subdued tapping—it was rather a timid scrape, as though she feared that a louder summons might call another forth—was repeated.
"I don't see that it's no good my staying here," she gasped. "I've been sitting there till the furniture fair began to move towards me, and every bloomin' rag about the place had a face in it. It's giving me the fair horrors."
He could not ignore her half-frenzied state. "What do you want to do?" he asked.
"I want to go out for a bit," she replied, licking her thin feline lips. "You don't know what it's like. I want to hear real people talk and not see things move. I'll come back soon; before Gord, I will."
"Yes,howwill you came back?"
"I won't. May it strike me dead if I touch a drop. I'll go straight into Mrs Rugg's across the street, and she's almost what you might call a teetotaler."
"The man you call your husband is dying in there, and he may need your help at any minute," he said sternly. It needed no gift of divination to prophesy that if the woman once left the place she would be hopelessly drunk before an hour had passed. "Don't sit down doing nothing but imagining things," he continued. "Make yourself some tea, and then when one of your friends comes round to see you, you can let her stay. But only one, mind."
He saw the more sullen of her looks settle darkly about her face as he closed the door. He waited to hear the sound of the kettle being moved, the tea-cup clinking, but they never came. An unnatural, uncreaking silence reigned instead. He opened the door quietly and looked out. That room was empty, and, as he stood there, a current of cooler air fell across his cheek. Half a dozen steps brought him to the entrance to the little hall—the only other room there was. It also was empty, and the front door stood widely open. There was only one possible inference: "Mrs Flak" had fled.
Sir John had confessed to possessing nerves, and to few men the situation would have been an inviting one. Still, there was only one possible thing to do, and he closed the door again, noticing, as he did so, that the action locked it. As he stood there a moment before returning to the bedroom and its tranquil occupant lying in his rigid, unbreathing sleep, a slight but continuous sound caught his ear. It was the most closely comparable (to attempt to define it) with the whirring of a clock as the flying pinion is released before it strikes. Or it might be that the doctor's simile prompted the comparison. It was not loud, but the room beyond seemed very, very still.
It was not a time to temporise with the emotions. Hampden stepped into the next room and stood listening. He judged—nay, he was sure—that the sound came from the bedroom, but it was not repeated. Instead, something very different happened, something that was either terrifying or natural, according to the conditions that provoked it. Quite without warning there came a voice from the next room, a full, level, healthy voice, even strong, and speaking in the ordinary manner of conversation.
"Will you please tell Mr Tubes that I am waiting here to see him?"
There was something in the situation that was more than gruesome, something that was peculiarly unnerving.
In his anticipation of this moment as he had sat almost by the bedside, Hampden had conjectured that the dying man would perhaps lift a hand or move his head uneasily with the first instinct of returning consciousness. A sigh, a groan, might escape him, incoherent words follow, then broken but rational expressions of his suffering, and entreaties that something might be done to ease the pain. Or perhaps, after realising his position, he would nerve himself to betray no unmanly weakness, and, in the words of the significant old phrase, "turning his face to the wall," endure in stoical silence to the end. It would be painful, perhaps acutely distressing, but it would not be unnatural.
There had been no groan, no sigh or broken words, no indication of weakness or suffering behind that half-closed door, nothing but the curious clock-like sound that had gone before the voice. And that voice! It was as full and strong, as vibrant and as ordinary as his own could ever be. Standing in the middle of the living-room Sir John could not deceive himself. It came from the other room where a minute before he had left the dying—yes, the almost dead—man lying with stark outline on the bed. There was no alternative: it was from those pallid lips that the words had come, it was by that still, inanimate man that they were spoken.
The suddenness of the whole incident was shocking in itself, but that was not all; the mere contrast to what he had looked for was disconcerting, but there was something more; the curious unexpected nature of the request, if request it was, was not without its element of mystery, but above and beyond all else was the thought—the thought that for a dreadful moment held his heart and soul in icy bonds—what sight when he returned to the inner room, as return at once he must, what gruesome sight would meet his eyes?
What phantoms his misgivings raised, every man may conjecture for himself. Follow, then, another step in imagination, and having given a somewhat free and ghastly fancy rein, push the chamber door cautiously and inch by inch, or fling it boldly open as you will; then pause upon the threshold, as Hampden did, in sharp surprise.
Nothing was altered, no single detail had undergone the slightest change! On the bed, rigid and very sharp beneath the single unclean sheet, lay the body of the mangled man. Not a fold of his shroud-like wrapping differed from its former line, it did not seem possible that a breath had stirred him.
Had the voice been a trick of the imagination? Hampden knew, as far as mortal man can be sure of any mortal sense, that the voice had been as real as his life itself. Then——? It occurred to him in a flash: here was the stage of under-consciousness of which Dr Stone had spoken. Of his pain, the accident, where he at that moment lay, and all his real surroundings, the sufferer knew nothing, and never would know. But out of the shock and shattering, some of the delicate machinery of the brain still kept its balance, and would continue to exercise its functions to the end.
It was an ordeal, but it had to be done. It was the purpose for which he had been summoned. Sir John moved to the bedside, nerved himself to watch the ashen face, and said slowly and distinctly: "Mr Tubes is not here. Do you wish to see him?"
There was just a perceptible pause, and then the bloodless lips replied. But not the faintest tremor of a movement stirred the body otherwise from head to foot, and in the chilling absence of expression the simile occurred to Hampden of bubbles rising from some unseen working to the surface of an inky pool.
"I have come on purpose. Let him be told that it is most important."
Hampden had to feel his way. The woman had mentioned that Flak was at least on terms of acquaintanceship with Mr Tubes. The doctor had surmised that the man had something he must say before he died. But was this the one true line, or a mere vagary of the sub-conscious state—a twist in the tortuous labyrinth that would lead to nothing?
"He is not here at present," he said. "If you will tell me what you wish to say I will write it down, so that it cannot fail to reach him."
"No. I cannot tell any one else. I must see him."
"Mr Tubes is a very busy man. You know that he is the Home Secretary. Is it of sufficient importance to telegraph for him?"
This time the answer followed on his last word with startling rapidity. Until the last phase that was the only variation in the delivery of the sentences—that sometimes there was a pause as though the working of the mind had to make a revolution before it reached the point of the mental clutch, at others it dropped into its gear at once.
"It is important enough to send a coach and four for him," was the reply.
Hampden might not be convinced of this but he was satisfied of one thing: the coherence of idea was being regularly maintained. How long would it last? It occurred to him to put the question.
"I shall have to go out either to send the telegram myself or to find some one who will take it," he explained. "Until Mr Tubes comes or sends his reply will youremain here?"
It was rather eerie to be holding conversation with the fragment of a man's brain with the man himself for all practical purposes eliminated. But he seemed to have arrived at a practical understanding with the centre of sub-consciousness.
"I will remain," was the unhesitating reply, and Hampden felt assured that the line would not be lost.
He had not definitely settled in his mind what to do when he opened the door leading on to the common stairs. A small child who had been loitering outside in a crouching position staggered back in momentary alarm at his sudden appearance. It was a ragged girl, perhaps ten or twelve years old, with cruelly unwieldy boots upon her stockingless feet, matted hair, and a precocious face full of unchildish knowledge. The inference that she had been applying either an eye or an ear to the keyhole was overwhelming.
Her fear—it was only the slum child's instinct of flight—died out when she saw the gentleman. Toffs (so ran her experience) do not hit you for nothing.
"Ee's in there yet, ain't ee?" she whispered, coming back boldly and looking up confidentially to his face. "I 'eard yer talking, but I couldn't tell what yer said. 'Ow long d'yer think 'e'll last?"
Sir John looked down at the child, the child who had never been young, in shuddering pity.
"It was me what picked 'is 'at up, but they wouldn't let me go in," she continued, as though the fact gave her a standing in the case. "Did yer see it in there?" She looked proudly at her right hand with horrid significance.
"Come in here," he said, after considering. "Can you run an errand?"
Her face reflected gloating eagerness as she entered, her attitude had just a tinge of pleasurable awe. He did not permit her to go further than the hall.
"Is it to do with 'im?" she asked keenly. "Yehs!"
"It is to go to the post office in Fleet Street," he explained. "You must go as fast as ever you can."
"I can go anywhere as well as any boy, and as fast if I take my boots off. When that there Italian knifed her man—him what took up with Shiny Sal—in the Lane a year ago, it was me what fetched the police."
He left her standing there—her face to the chink of the door before he had turned away—and went into the next room to write the message. He desired to make it neither too insistent nor too immaterial. "John Flak, of 45 Paradise Buildings, Paradise Street, Drury Lane, has met with fatal accident, and earnestly desires to see you on important business," was the form it took. He had sufficient stamps in his pocket for the payment, and to these he added another for a receipt.
"You can read?" he asked, returning to her.
"Yehs!" she replied with her curious accent of lofty scorn at so ingenuous a question. "I read all the murders and sewercides to Blind Mike every Sunday morning."
"Well, go as fast as you can to the post office in Fleet Street, and give them this paper where you see 'Telegrams' written up. Then wait for another piece of paper which they will give you, and bring it back to me. Here is sixpence for you now, and you shall have another shilling when you come back." He was making it more profitable for her to be honest than to be dishonest, which is perhaps the safest way in an emergency.
It was nearly ten o'clock when he looked at his watch on her departure; it was not ten minutes past when she returned. She was panting but exultant, and watched his face for commendation as she gave him the receipt, as a probationary imp might watch the face of the Prince of Darkness on bringing in his first human soul. One boot she had dropped in her wild career, but so far from stopping to look for it, she had thrown away the other then as useless.
Leaving the ghoul-child seated on the coal to thrill delightfully at every unknown sound, Hampden returned to the bedside. Much of the first, the absolutely cold horror of the situation, was gone. He judged it better not to allow too long an interval of silence in which that dim consciousness might slip back into the outer space of trackless darkness. Now that he knew what to expect it was not very unlike speaking to one who slept and held converse in his sleep.
"I have sent for Mr Tubes, but, making due allowance, he can scarcely get here in less than an hour," he said. "If in the meantime there is anything that you wish to tell me, to make doubly sure, it will be received as a most sacred confidence."
There was a longer pause than any before, so long that the watcher by the bedside was preparing to speak again; then the lips slowly opened, and the same full, substantial voice made reply.
"I will wait. But he must be quick—quick!"
The words seemed to disclose a fear, but there was no outward sign of failing power. Hampden ventured on another point.
"Are you in pain?" he asked.
The reply came more quickly this time, and, perhaps because he was looking for some such indication, the listener fancied that he caught the faintest stumbling, a little blurring of the outline here and there.
"No, I am in no pain. But I have a terrible anxiety that weighs me down."
There was nothing to be gained by further questioning. Sir John returned to the other room. The fire was low and the grate choked with ashes; he had begun to replenish it when a curious sound startled him. He only heard it between the raspings of the poker as he raked the ashes out, but it was not to be mistaken. It was the sharp, dry, clock-like whirring that had been the first indication of life and speech beyond the bedroom door more than an hour before.
A board creaked behind him, and he turned with an exclamation to see the dreadful child standing in the middle of the room. Barefooted, she had slipped noiselessly in from the hall at the first tremor of that unusual sound, and now, with her dilated eyes fixed fearfully on the door, her shrinking form bent forward, she slowly crept nearer step by step. Her face quivered with terror, her whole body shook, but she went on as surely as though a magnet drew her.
"What are you doing?" cried Hampden sharply. "Why did you not stay where I told you?"
She turned her face, but not her eyes, towards him. "Yer heard it, didn't yer?" she whispered. "Ain't that what they call the death-rattle what comes?"
He took her by the shoulder and swung her impatiently round. "Go back, you imp," he commanded. "Back and stay there, or you shall go out."
She crept back, looking fearfully over her shoulder all the way. Something else was happening to engage Hampden's attention. In the next room the man was speaking, speaking spontaneously, as he had done once before, but beyond all doubt the voice was weaker now. The momentary interruption of the child's presence had drowned the first part of the sentence, but Hampden caught a word that strung up every faculty he possessed—"League."
"——League will then suddenly issue a notice to all its members, putting an embargo—a boycott, if you will—on——"
The voice trailed off, and, although he sprang to the door, Sir John could not distinguish another word. But that fragment alone was sufficiently startling. To the President of the Unity League it could only have one meaning; for it was true! Some—how much?—of their plan lay open. And to how many was it known? The terrible anxiety of this poor, battered wreck, unconsciously loyal to his class in death, to give the warning before he passed away, seemed to indicate that nothing but the frayed thread of one existence stood in the League's path yet.
Was there anything to be done? That was Hampden's first thought. There was plainly one thing: to learn, if possible, before Mr Tubes's arrival, how much was known.
Nothing was changed; only the death-watch ticked again. He leaned over the bed in his eagerness, and, stilling the throbbing excitement of his blood, tried to speak in a tone of commonplace indifference.
"Yes, continue."
There was no response.
"Repeat the sentence," he commanded, concentrating his voice in his desperation, and endeavouring by mere force of will to impose its authority on the indefinite consciousness.
Just as well might he have commanded the man to get up and walk.
Had that last elusive thread that held him to mortality been broken? Hampden bent still lower. The pallid face was no more pallid than before, but before it could scarcely have been more death-like. The acutest test could not have found a trace of breath. He put together the gradual failing of the voice that little more than an hour ago had been as full and vigorous as his own, the unfinished sentence, the silence——
Suddenly he straightened himself by the bedside with a sense of guilt that struck him like a blow. What was he thinking—hoping? Who was he—Sir John Hampden, President of the Unity League? Not in that room! The man who watched by the bedside stood there even as the humblest servant of the Order of St. Martin, pledged while in that service to succour in "trouble, sorrow, need, sickness, or any other adversity."
It did not occur to him to debate the point. His way seemed very straight and clear. His plain duty to the dying man was to try by every means in his power to carry out his one overwhelming desire. Its successful accomplishment might aim a more formidable blow at his own ambition than almost anything else that could happen. It could not ward off the attack upon which the League was now concentrating—nothing could do that—but an intimate knowledge of the details of that scheme of retaliation might act in a hundred adverse ways. Hampden did not stop to consider what might happen on the one side and on the other. A thousand years of argument and sophistries could not alter the one great fact of his present duty. He had a very simple conscience, and he followed it.
If he could have speeded Mr Tubes's arrival he would have done so now. He went into the hall to listen. The street child was still there, sitting on the coal, as sharp-eyed and wakefully alert as ever. He had forgotten her.
"Come, little imp," he said kindly, "I ought to have packed you off long ago." It was, in point of fact, nearly eleven o'clock.
"Ain't doin' no aharm to the coal," she muttered.
"That's not the question. You ought to have been at home and in bed by this time of night."
She looked up at him sharply with a suspicion that such innocence in a grown-up man could not be unassumed.
"Ain't got no bed," she said contemptuously. "Ain't got no 'ome."
A sentence rang through his mind: "The birds of the air have nests."
"Where do you sleep?" he asked.
"Anywhere," she replied.
"And how do you live?"
"Anyhow."
The lowest depths of human poverty had not been abolished by Act of Parliament after all.
A knock at the door interrupted the reflection. The child had already heard the step and sought to efface herself in the darkest corner.
Hampden had not noticed the significance of the knock. He opened the door, prepared to admit the Home Secretary. So thoroughly had he dissociated his own personality from the issue, that he felt the keenest interest that the man should arrive before it was too late. He opened the door to admit him, and experienced an actual pang of disappointment when he saw who stood outside.
He had sent a telegram instead. Whatever the telegram said did not matter very much. Hampden instinctively guessed that he was not coming then—was not on his way. Anything less than that would be too late.
He took the orange envelope and opened it beneath the flaring gas that piped and whistled at the stairhead.
"There is no reply," he said quietly, folding the paper slowly and putting it away in his pocket-book. Were it not that the gain to Hampden of the League was so immense one might have thought, to see him at that moment, that he felt ashamed of something in life.
Members of Parliament had every department of the postal system freely at their service. The statement may not be out of place, for this was what the telegram contained:
"Deeply regret to hear of Comrade Flak's accident, and will have it fully enquired into. Was it while he was engaged at work? Cannot, however, recall any business upon which he could wish to see me. Probably a mental hallucination caused by shock. Have been terribly busy all day, and am engaged at this moment with important State papers whichmustbe finished before I go to bed. If it is thought desirable I will, on receiving another wire, come first thing in the morning, but before deciding to take this course I beg you to consider incessant calls made on my time. Let everything possible be done for the poor fellow."James Tubes."
"Deeply regret to hear of Comrade Flak's accident, and will have it fully enquired into. Was it while he was engaged at work? Cannot, however, recall any business upon which he could wish to see me. Probably a mental hallucination caused by shock. Have been terribly busy all day, and am engaged at this moment with important State papers whichmustbe finished before I go to bed. If it is thought desirable I will, on receiving another wire, come first thing in the morning, but before deciding to take this course I beg you to consider incessant calls made on my time. Let everything possible be done for the poor fellow.
"James Tubes."
The burden of failure pressed on Hampden as he walked slowly to the bedroom. In that environment of death his own gain did not touch him at all, so completely had he succeeded in eliminating for the time every consideration except an almost fanatical sense of duty to the articles of the Order. It would be better, he felt, if the shadowy consciousness that hovered around the bed could have sunk finally into its eternal sleep, without suffering the pang of being recalled only to hearthis, but something in the atmosphere of the room, a brooding tension of expectancy that seemed to quicken in the silence, warned him that this was not to be.
"A reply has been received from Mr Tubes in answer to our telegram."
"He is here?" There was no delay this time; there was an intense eagerness that for a brief minute overcame the growing weakness.
"No. He cannot come. He regrets, but he is engaged on matters of national importance."
Silence. Painful silence. In it Hampden seemed to share the cruel frustration of so great a hope deferred.
"There is this," he continued, more for the sake of making any suggestion than from a belief in its practicability; "I might go and compel him to come. If he understood the urgency——"
"It is too late.... A little time ago there was a thin white mist; now it is a solid wall of dense rolling fog. It is nearer—relentless, unevadable...."
"I can still write down what you have to say. Consider, it is the only hope."
"I cannot judge.... I had a settled conviction that no other ear.... Stay, quick; there are the notes! Incomplete, but they will put him on the track.... Swear, swear that you will place them in his hand unread."
"I swear to do as you ask me. Go on quickly."
"To-night, now. Do not ... do not let ... do not wait...."
"Yes, yes. But the notes? Where are they? How am I to know them?" The voice was growing very thin and faltering, weaker with every word. The disappointment had sapped all its failing strength at a single blow.
"The notes ... yes. You will explain.... The black wall ... how it towers!..." He was whispering inaudibly.
Hampden leaned over the dying man in a final effort.
"Flak!" he cried, "the notes on the Unity League! Where are they? Speak!"
"The envelope"—he caught a breath of sound—"... coat lining....I must go!"
Twenty minutes later Sir John picked up his motor brougham in New Oxford Street. He had telephoned immediately on leaving Paradise Buildings for it to start out at once and wait for him near Mudie's corner. In Paradise Street he had seen a bacchanalian group surrounding "Mrs Flak," high priestess, who chanted a song in praise of home and the domestic virtues. It was at this point that he missed the ghoul-child from his side.
A south-east wind was carrying the midnight boom of the great clock at Westminster as far as Kilburn when he turned out of the High Road, and the little clocks around had taken up the chorus, like small dogs envious of the baying of a hound, as he stopped before the Home Secretary's house.
There was a light still burning in a room on the ground floor, and it was Mr Tubes himself who came to the door.
"I have to place in your hands an envelope of papers entrusted to me by a man called Flak who died in Paradise Street an hour ago," said Hampden, and with the act he brought his night of duty as a faithful servant of his Order to an end.
"Oh, that's you," said Mr Tubes, peering out into the darkness. "I had a wire about it. So the poor man is dead?"
"Yes," replied Hampden a shade drily. "The poor man is dead."
Mr Tubes fancied that he saw the lamps of a cab beyond his garden gate, and he wondered whether he was being expected to offer to pay the fare.
"Well, it's very good of you to take the trouble, though, between ourselves, I hardly imagine that the papers are likely to be of any importance," he remarked. "Now may I ask who I am indebted to?"
Hampden had already turned to go. He recognised that in the strife which he was about to precipitate, the man who stood there would be his natural antagonist, and he regretted that he could not find it in his nature to like him any better than he did.