Sergeant Tolkeith hazarded the opinion that there were men at Scotland Yard at that moment who could drive—he looked round the room in search of some strange or Titanic vehicle to which the prowess of Scotland Yard would be equal—"Well, Anything."
"A man who knows the roads," continued B. "Though, for that matter, it's a simple enough route—the Portsmouth road all the way to Kingston, and then across to Willesden. You had better avoid Guildford, by the way, coming back. Now, what other assistance will you require?"
"How many are there likely to be in the car, sir?"
"No one but Salt, I am informed. He has been touring alone for a week past, at all events."
"In that case, sir, we had better take a couple of men from Guildford and drive towards Farnham. We can wait at a suitable place in the road and make the arrest. Then when the irons are on I shall need no one beyond the driver I take with me. The two local men—you'll want Mr Salt'schauffeurdetained for a few hours, I suppose, sir?"
"Yes, certainly; until you are well on your way. And any one else who may happen to be in the car. I will give you authority covering that."
"The two local men can take him, or them, back to Guildford—it will be dark by the time they get there—for detention while enquiries are being made. Then if a plain-clothes man meets me at Willesden we can go on, and our driver can take the car on to Scotland Yard."
"You see no difficulty throughout?" said B. anxiously. The inspector assured him that all seemed plain sailing. It was not his place to foresee difficulties in B.'s plans.
"Then I shall expect you to report to me from Stafford about 10.30 to-night that everything is satisfactory. Let me impress on you as a last word the need of care andunconcernin this case. It must be successfully carried out, and to do that there must be no fuss or publicity."
"Sergeant," said Detective-Inspector Moeletter, when they were outside, "between ourselves, can you tell me this: why they think it necessary to have three mute gentlemen looking on while we arrange a matter of this sort?"
"Between ourselves, sir," replied Sergeant Tolkeith, looking cautiously around, "it's my belief that it's come to this: that they are all half-afraid of themselves and can't trust one another."
"D.," remarked C., as they left together a few minutes later, "does anything strike you about B.?"
"It strikes me that he looks rather like an undertaker's man when he is dressed up," replied D.
"Does it not strike you that he isafraid?"
"Oh," admitted D., stroking his wounded cheek, "that's quite possible. So am I, for that matter."
"So may we all be in a way," said C.; "but it is different with him. I believe that he is in ablue funk. He's fey, and he's got Salt on the brain. Just remember that I venture on this prophecy: if Salt through any cause does not happen to get arrested, B. will throw up the sponge."
The office of the Unity League in Trafalgar Chambers was little more than an empty hive now. The headquarters of the operations had been transferred to the colony at Hanwood, and most of the staff had followed. With the declaration of the coal war, an entirely different set of conditions had come into force. The old offices had practically become a clearing house for everything connected with the League, and the high tide of active interest swept on elsewhere.
Miss Lisle remained, a person of some consequence, but in her heart she sighed from time to time for a sphere of action "down another little lane."
On the afternoon of the 13th of January she returned to the office about half-past three, and going to the instrument room unlocked the telescribe receiver-box and proceeded to sort the dozen communications which it contained—the accumulation of an hour—before passing them on to be dealt with. Most fell into clearly-defined departments at a glance. It was not until she reached the last, the earliest sent, that she read it through, but as she read that her whole half-listless, mechanical manner changed. With the first line apathy fell from her like a cloak; before she had finished, every limb and feature conveyed a sense of tingling excitement. In frantic haste she dragged the special writing materials across the table towards her, dashed off a sprawling, "Stop Mr Salt at any cost.—Lisle," and flashed it off to the League agency at Farnham.
A couple of minutes must pass before she could get any reply. She picked up the cause of her excitement, and for the second time read the message it contained:
"If you want to keep your Mr Salt from being arrested on a charge of murder, warn him that Inspector Moeletter from Stafford will be waiting for him on the road between Farnham and Guildford at three o'clock this afternoon with a warrant. No one believes in it, but he will be taken on in his motor to Willesden, and on to Stafford by the 7.30, and kept out of the way for a week while things have time to happen at Hanwood. There will be just enough evidence to get a remand, as there was to get a warrant. This is from a friend, who may remind you of it later and prove who he is by this sign."
The letter finished with a rough drawing of a gallows and a broken rope. It was written in a cramped, feigned hand and addressed to Sir John Hampden. It might have been lying in the box for an hour.
The telescribe bell gave its single note. Irene opened the box in feverish dread. An exclamation of despair broke from her lips as some words on the paper stood out in the intensity of their significance even before she took the letter from the box.
This was what Farnham replied:
"Hope nothing is the matter. Mr Salt left here quite half an hour ago, in his motor, for Guildford. He will stay there the night, or proceed to Hanwood according to the time he is occupied. Please let me know if there is any trouble."
Half an hour! There was not the remotest chance of intercepting him. Already, under ordinary circumstances, he would be in the outskirts of Guildford. It only remained to verify the worst. She wrote a brief message asking Mr Salt if he would kindly communicate with her immediately on his arrival, and despatched it to the agency at Guildford. If there was no reply to that request during the next half-hour she would accept the arrest as an established fact. And there being nothing apparently to do for the next half-hour, Miss Lisle, very much to the surprise of ninety-nine out of her hundred friends could they have seen her, went down on her knees in the midst of a roomful of the latest achievements of science and began to pray that a miracle might happen.
"I suppose that I may smoke?" said Salt. He was sitting handcuffed in his own motor-car, charged with murder, and formally cautioned that anything he should say might be used as evidence against him. It was scarcely a necessary warning in his case; with the exception of an equally formal protest against the arrest, he had not opened his lips until now. He and Moeletter had sat silently facing one another in the comfortably-appointed, roomy car, Salt with his face to the driver and leaning back in his easy seat with outward unconcern, the detective braced to a more alert attitude and with his knees almost touching those of his prisoner. For a mile or more—for perhaps seven or eight minutes by time, for the new driver was cautious with the yet unknown car—they had proceeded thus.
Yet Salt was very far from being unconcerned as he leaned back negligently among the cushions. He was thinking keenly, and with the settled, tranquil gaze that betrayed nothing, watching alertly the miles of dreary high-road that stretched along the Hog's Back before them. He had long foreseen the possibility of arrest, and he had taken certain precautions; but to safeguard himself effectually he would have had to abandon the more important part of his work, and the risk he ran was the smaller evil of the two. But he had not anticipated this charge. Some legal jugglery with "conspiracy" had been in his mind.
"I suppose that I may smoke?" Half a mile ahead a solitary wayfarer was approaching. Salt might have noted him, but there was nothing remarkable in his appearance except that pedestrians—or vehicles either, for that matter—were rare along the Hog's Back on that bitter winter afternoon.
"Why, certainly, sir; in your own car, surely," replied the inspector agreeably. He was there to do his duty, and he had done it, even down to the detail of satisfying himself by search that his prisoner carried no weapon. Beyond that there was no reason to be churlish, especially as every one had to admit that there was no telling what might have happened in a week's or a month's time. "Can I help you in any way?"
"Thank you, I will manage," replied Salt, and in spite of his manacles he succeeded without much difficulty in taking out his cigarette-case and a match-box. He lit a cigarette, blew out the match, and then looked hesitatingly round the rather elegant car, at the rich velvety carpet on the floor, at the half-burned vesta in his hand. Then with easy unconcern he lowered the window by his side and leaned forward towards it.
It was a perfectly natural action, but Inspector Moeletter owed at least one step in his promotion to a habit of always being on his guard against natural-seeming actions of that kind. His left foot quickly and imperceptibly slid across the carpet, so that if Salt made any ill-judged attempt to leave the car he must inevitably come to grief across that rigid barrier; with a ready eye Moeletter noted afresh the handle of the door, the size of the window frame, and every kindred detail. His hands lay in unostentatious readiness by his side, and he felt no apprehension.
But Salt had not the faintest intention of attempting any sensational act. He dropped the match leisurely from between his fingers, cast a glance up to the sky, where the lowering clouds had long been threatening snow, and then drew in his head. But in some way, either from his position, a jolt of the car, or a touch against the sash, as he did so his cap was jerked off, and, despite a quick but clumsy attempt to catch it in his fettered hands, it was whirled away behind in their eddying wake.
"Please stop," he said, turning to Moeletter. "I am afraid that I shall find it too cold without."
The detective was not pleased, but there was nothing in the mishap that he could take objection to. Further, he had no wish to make his prisoner in any way noticeable during the latter part of their journey. "Pull up, Murphy," he called through the tube by his shoulder, and with a grinding that set its owner's teeth on edge, the car came to a standstill in two lengths.
Moeletter had intended that the driver should recover the cap, but he was saved the trouble. The solitary pedestrian had happened to be on the spot at the moment of the incident, and he was standing by the open window almost as soon as the car stopped. Forgetful of his indignity, Salt stretched out a manacled hand and received his property. "Thank you," he said with a pleasant smile. "I am much obliged."
"Go on," said Moeletter, through the tube.
"I think that I had better get used to these—'darbies' is the professional name, is it not, Inspector?—to these 'darbies' before I look out again," remarked Salt good-humouredly.
The telescribe bell announced another message. It found Irene sitting at the table in the instrument room with ordnance maps around her and the index book of the League's most trusted agents lying open on the shelf. She just glanced at the clock as she jumped up. It was 4.15, exactly the last minute of the half-hour that she had fixed as the limit of uncertainty. The message might even yet be from Salt. But it was not; it was this instead:
"Fear Mr Salt has been arrested. He is in his motor-car, handcuffed, proceeding towards Guildford, in charge of man who has appearance of belonging to police force. Driver is not Mr Salt's man. Mr S. made opp. for me to see sit., but said nothing. Passed just W. of Puttenham 3.55. Roads good, but snow beginning. Car trav only 10-12 m. hour. Shall remain here on chance being use. Don't hesitate."
A hall-formed plan was already floating in the space between Miss Lisle's adventurous brain and the maps. The Puttenham message crystallised it. There was now something to go on. The route she knew already; the times and mileages also lay beneath her hand. The scheme had a hundred faults, and only one thing to recommend it—that it might succeed. For ten minutes she flung herself into the details of the maps, jotting down a time, a distance, here and there a detail of the road. "Puttenham" might remain at his box till dawn, but all the work, all the chance, was forward—before the car. At the end of ten minutes Irene picked up the accumulation of her labours and rang up the telephone exchange.
"What is it, Murphy?" demanded the inspector through the tube, as the car came to a dead stop. "Something else in the way?"
"I can't quite make it out, sir," was the reply. "We're just outside the long railway arch, and there seems to be something on fire towards the other end. Terrible lot of smoke coming through."
"Can't we run up to it?"
"This is an unusually long bridge—fifty or sixty yards, I should say. I hardly like to take you on into that smoke, sir."
"Oh, very well. Jump down and see what it is. Only be as sharp as you can."
It was now pitch dark, and a driving, biting storm of snow and hail was blowing across their path from the east. When the constable-chauffeurhad learned sufficient of the car to give him confidence, the storm had swept down, and their progress had been scarcely any faster. There had been delays, too. By Ripley a heavy farm waggon had broken down almost before their eyes, and it had been ten minutes before a spare chain horse could be obtained to drag it to the roadside. Further on some men felling a tree in a coppice had clumsily allowed it to fall across the road, and another ten minutes elapsed before it was cut in two and rolled aside. Fortunately they were not pressed for time. Fortunately, also, the driver knew the way, for few people were afoot to face that dreadful stream of snow and ice with the lashing wind and the numbing cold. Two, two or three, or perhaps four men had chanced to be at hand when the car stopped, making their way towards the bridge, but the wreathing snow soon cut them off. Occasionally, when the wind and drift hung for a moment, a figure or two showed dimly and gigantic in the murk of the tunnel. Nothing of the fire could be seen, but the smoke continued to pour out, and the mingled odour of burned and unburned oil filled the car.
In a few minutes the driver returned. When he had left his seat Moeletter had leaned forward, and with a gruff word of half apology had laid a hand upon the rug across Salt's knees, so that he held, or at least controlled, the connecting links of the handcuffs, while at the same time his other hand had dropped quietly down to his hip-pocket. He now lowered the window on the further side, still keeping his left hand on the rug.
"Oil cart ablaze, sir," gasped the driver, between paroxysms of coughing. "Road simply running fire, and the fumes awful." His face was almost completely protected beneath cap, goggles, and a storm shade that fell from the cap over the shoulders and buttoned across the mouth, but no covering had seemed effectual against the suffocating reek of the burning oil. The fire had melted the snow off his clothes, and he stood by the door with a bar of darkness just falling across his face, and the electric light through the lowered window blazing upon his gleaming leathers, his gauntlets and puttee leggings, and the cumbrous numbered badge that the regulations then imposed.
"It will be some time before the road is passable?" asked Moeletter with a frown.
"Oh, hours perhaps," was the sputtering reply. "Would suggest going by Molesey Bridge, sir. Best way now."
"Is it much out?"
"The turning is half a mile back. From there it is no further than this way."
"And you know the way perfectly?"
The driver nodded. "Perfectly, sir."
"Very well; go on. We have plenty of time yet, but you might get a few more miles out of her, if you think you can."
The driver jumped up to his seat, the horn gave its bull-like note of warning, and gliding round the car began to head back towards Esher with the open common on either side and the pelting wind behind. It slackened for a moment at the fork in the high-road, turned to the right, and then began to draw away northward with an increased speed that showed the driver to be capable of rising to his instructions.
"It is fortunate that the inspector is not a motoring man," thought Salt to himself with an inward smile. "This is very much too good." But the inspector only noticed that with the increased speed the car seemed to run more smoothly, and even then he had no means of judging what the increase had become. The man whose car it was knew that a very different explanation than mere speed lay behind the sudden change that made the motion now sheer luxury. He knew with absolute conviction what had happened, and he would have known without any further evidence that the driver who now had his hand upon the wheel was a thousand miles ahead of constable-chauffeurMurphy in motor-craft.
It was not the first suggestion of some friendly influence at work that had stirred his mind. The incident of the stranded waggon across the road by Ripley was little in itself. Even when they were a second time delayed by the fallen tree a few miles further on nothing but an unreasoning hope could have called it more than coincidence. But with the third episode a matured plan began to loom through the meaningless delays. Oil was here, and where there was oil in England at that day the hand of the Unity League might be traced not far away. In his mind's eye Salt ran over half a dozen miles of the Portsmouth road. As far as he could remember, if it wasintendedto block the road there was scarcely a more suitable spot than the long railway bridge to be found between Esher and Kingston, and, followed the thought, if it was intended to force Moeletter to accept the bridge at Molesey, no point in all the high-road south of the fork would have served.
The three accidents had taken place each at the exact point where it would best serve its purpose.
Salt did not even glance at the driver when he returned from the fire. He leaned back in his seat in simple enjoyment, and Inspector Moeletter thought from his appearance that he was going to sleep.
There was little to be gained by looking out, apart from the policy of unconcern. The huge white motor-car that was waiting in the cross-road by Esher station had its head-lights masked, and in the snow-storm and the night it could not have been seen ten yards away. The driver of the green car sounded his horn for the road as he swept by, and ten seconds later the white car glided out from its place of concealment like a ghostly mastodon, and, baring its dazzling lamps, began to thrash along the road in the other's wake.
What would be their route when they had crossed the bridge? That was Salt's constant thought now, not because he was troubled by the chances, but because it was the next point in the unknown plan that would serve to guide him. He had not long to wait under the dexterous pilotage of the unknown hand outside. The flat, straight road became a tortuous village street, the lights of the Molesey shops and inns splashed in splintering blurs across the streaming windows, an iron bridge shook and rumbled beneath their wheels, and they were in Middlesex.
The horn brayed out a continuous warning note, the car swung off to the left, and Salt, with his eyes closed, knew exactly what had been arranged.
But there was yet Inspector Moeletter to be reckoned with. He was ignorant of the roads, but he had a well-developed gift of location, and the abrupt turn to the left when he had seen what appeared to be a broad high-road leading straight on from Molesey Bridge, gave him a moment's thought. He turned to the speaking-tube.
"Are you sure that this is right, Murphy?" he asked sharply. "Kingston must lie away on the right."
"We go through Hampton this way, sir, and into the Kingston road at Twickenham," came the chattering reply in a half-frozen voice. "It is just as near, and we don't meet the wind."
It was quite true, although the inspector might not know it, but the ready explanation seemed to satisfy him. Another circumstance would have set his mind at rest. At Hampton the route took them equally to the right. Salt did not know the road intimately, but he knew that if his surmise was correct, they must very soon draw away to the left again. What would happen then? For three or four miles they would run between hedges and encounter nothing more urban than a scattered hamlet. Twickenham they would never see that night. Inspector Moeletter was far from being unsophisticated, and his suspicion had already once, apparently, been touched. How would the race end?
The car slowed down for a moment, but so smoothly that it was almost imperceptible, and with a clanging bell an electric tram swung into their vision and out again. Salt was taking note of every trifle in this enthralling game. Why, he asked himself, had so expert a driver slackened speed with plenty of room to pass? He saw a possible explanation. They had been meeting and overtaking trams at intervals all the way from Molesey Bridge. In another minute they would have left the high-road and the tram route, and the driver wished to hide the fact from Moeletter as long as possible. He had thereforewaitedto meet this tram so that the inspector might unconsciously carry in his mind the evidence of their presence to the last possible point.
They were no longer on the high-road; they had glided off somewhere without a warning note or any indication of speed or motion to betray the turn they had taken. The houses were becoming sparser, fields intervened, with here and there a strung-out colony of cottages. Soon even the scattered buildings ceased, or appeared so rarely that they only dotted long stretches of country lanes, and at every yard they trembled on the verge of detection. Nothing but the glare of light inside the vehicle and the storm and darkness beyond could have hid for a moment from even the least suspicious of men the fact that they were no longer travelling even the most secluded of suburban high-roads. And now, as if aware that the deception could not be maintained much longer, the driver began to increase the speed at every open stretch. Again nothing but his inspired skill and the perfectly-balanced excellence of the car could disguise the fact that they flew along the level road; while among the narrow winding lanes they rushed at a headlong pace, shooting down declines and breasting little hills without a pause. The horn boomed its warning every second, and from behind came the answering note of the long white motor. It had crept nearer and nearer since they left the high-road, and its brilliant head-lights now lit up the way as far as the pilot car. Little chance for Moeletter to convoy his prisoner out of those deserted lanes whatever happened now!
What means, what desperate means, he might have taken in a gallant attempt to retrieve the position if he had suspected treachery just a minute before he did, one may speculate but never know.
As it was, the uneasy instinct that everything was not right awoke too late for him to make the stand. It was less than ten minutes after meeting the last tram that he peered out into the night doubtfully, but in those ten minutes the green car had all but won its journey's end.
"Murphy," he cried imperiously, with his mouth to the tube and a startled eye on Salt, "tell me immediately where we are."
"A minute, sir," came the hasty answer, as the driver bent forward to verify some landmark. "This brake——
"Stop this instant!" roared the inspector, rising to his feet in rage and with a terrible foreboding.
There was a muffled rattle as they shot over a snow-laden bridge, a curious sense of passing into a new atmosphere, and then with easy precision the car drew round and stopped dead before the open double doors of its own house. No one spoke for a moment. There was another muffled roar outside, the sound of heavy iron doors clashing together, and the great white car reproduced their curve and drew up by their side.
From the driver's seat of the green car the Hon. Bruce Wycombe, son and heir of old Viscount Chiltern and the most skilful motorist in Europe, climbed painfully down, and, pulling off his head-gear, opened the door of the car with a bow that would have been more graceful if he had been less frozen.
"Welcome to Hanwood after your long journey, Inspector Moeletter!" he exclaimed most affably.
Along the great west road, ten thousand Monmouth colliers were streaming towards London, in every stage of famine and discomfort. What they intended to do when they reached the Capital they had no clearer idea than had the fifteen thousand Midlanders at Barnet. All they knew was that they were starving at home, and they could be no worse off in London. Also in London there was to be found the Government, the Government that had betrayed them.
The conception of the march had been wild, the execution was lamentable. The leaders might have taken Napoleon's descent on Moscow as their model. Ten hand-carts exhausted their commissariat. They were to live on the land they passed through; but the land was agricultural and poor, the populace regarded the Monmouth colliers as foreigners, and the response was scanty. Only one circumstance saved the march from becoming a tragedy of hundreds instead of merely, as it was, a tragedy of scores.
The men were being fed from London. By whom, and why, not even their leaders knew, but each night a railway truck full of provisions was awaiting their arrival at a station on their route, and each day the men's leader-in-chief was informed where the next supply would be. It influenced them to continue their journey pacifically when they must otherwise, sooner or later, have abandoned all restraint and marched through anarchy. It enabled them to reach London. It added another element to the Government's distraction in their day of reckoning. It was a Detail.
But at Windsor there were no provisions waiting. No one knew why. The station authorities had nothing to suggest. After a week's regular supply the leaders had come to expect their daily truck-load, had come to rely implicitly upon it, and had made no other arrangements. They conferred together anxiously; it was all there was for them to do. Windsor was not sympathetic towards them. They had not expected it to be, but they had expected to be independent of Windsor's friendship. Two thousand special constables escorted them in and shepherded them assiduously. Otherwise there might have been disturbances, for a Castle guard comprised the extent of Windsor's military resources then. As it was, the miners reached the Royal Borough hungry, and left it famished. A rumour spread along the ranks as they set out that an unfortunate mistake had been made, but that supplies would be awaiting them in Hyde Park.
If that was a detail, as it might well have been, it was not wholly successful. The men were hungry and dispirited, but London was not their immediate goal. For weeks they had been telling the vacillating Cabinet what ought to be done with the oil at Hanwood, and as they set out they had boasted to their brothers across the Rhymney that before they returned they would show them how to fire a beacon that would singe the hair of five million Leaguers. Midway between Windsor and London they proceeded to turn off from the highway under the direction of their leaders, and debouching from the narrow lanes on to the fields beyond, they began to advance across the country in a straggling, far-flung wave.
On the previous day both the Home Office and the War Office had received applications for protection from the Company at Hanwood, backed by evidence which left no possible doubt that the Monmouth unemployed contemplated an organised attack on the oil store. The two departments replied distantly, that in view of the existing conditions within the Metropolis and the forces at their disposal, it was impossible to despatch either troops or constabulary to protect private property in isolated districts. Hanwood acknowledged these replies, and gave notice with equal punctilio that they would take the best means within their power for safeguarding their interests, and at the same time formally notified the Government that they held them responsible, through their failure to carry out the obligations of their office, for all the developments that the situation might lead to—an exchange of civilities which in private life is sometimes attained much more simply by two disputants consigning each other to the society of the Prince of Darkness in four words.
Whatever there might be behind the intimation, there was little to indicate it at dusk that afternoon. The stranger or the native passing along Miss Lisle's secluded lane would have noticed only two circumstances to suggest anything unusual in the air.
A few hundred feet above the trees within the wall, a box-kite was straining at its rope in the rising gale. From the basket car a man watched every movement of the countryside through his field-glasses, and conversed from time to time through a telephone with the kite section down below. A second wire ran from the field telephone to a room of the offices where Salt was engaged with half a dozen of the chiefs of the Council of the League. Sir John Hampden was not present. He was remaining in London to afford the Government every facility for negotiating a settlement whenever they might desire it.
In the lane, a group of men with tickets in their hats were loitering about the bridge. They comprised a Peaceful Picket within the meaning of the Act. They had been there since daybreak, and so far no one had shown any wish to dispute their position.
The war-kite and the picket in the lane were the "eyes" of the opposing belligerents.
The League had nothing to gain by submitting the issue to the arbitrament of lead and fire. No one had anything to gain by it, but after a bout at fisticuffs a defeated child will sometimes pick up a dangerous stone and fling it. The League had accepted the challenge of those who marched beneath the red banner for war on constitutional lines. Some of those who marched beneath the red banner were now disposed to try the effect of beating their ploughshares into swords, and however much the League might have preferred them to keep to their bargain, the most effective retort was to turn their own pacific sickles into bayonets.
In the staff room Salt was addressing his associates—half military, half political—who now represented the innermost Council of the League. Some of them had been members of former Ministries, others soldiers who had worn the insignia of generals, but they rendered to this unknown man among them an unquestioning allegiance, because of what he had already done, because he inspired them with absolute reliance in what he would yet succeed in doing, and, not least, because he had the air that fitted the position.
"More than two years ago," he was saying, "the first draft of the formation and operations of the League contained a section much to the following effect:
"'It is an essential feature of the plan that the League should work on constitutional lines from beginning to end and in contemplation of bringing about the desired reforms without firing a solitary shot or violating a single law.
"'Nevertheless, it is inevitable that when the position becomes acute civil disorders will arise out of the involved situation, and demonstrations of the affected people will threaten the Government of the day on the one hand and the proposed League on the other.
"'In these circumstances it will be prudent to contemplate, as a last phase of the struggle, an organised military attack on the property of the League, masked under the form of a popular riot, but instigated or connived at by responsible authorities. I propose, therefore, to establish the League stores in a position naturally suited for defence, and to adopt such further precautions as will render them secure against ordinary attack.'
"We have now reached that closing phase of the struggle," continued Salt. "On the evidence of this report from Sir John Hampden we may assume that within twenty-four hours our aggressive work will be over. Will our opponents, in the language of the street, 'go quietly'?"
"It has fallen to my lot to read the Riot Act on three occasions," said one of the company, "and I have seen disturbances in Ireland; but I have never before known an unorganised mob to surround a position completely and then to sit down to wait for night."
"Lieutenant Vivash wishes to speak to Mr Salt personally," said a subordinate, appearing at the door.
Salt stepped into the ante-room, and spoke through the telephone.
"Yes, Vivash," he said to the man in the kite a quarter of a mile away. "What is it?"
"Two general service wagons with bridge-making tackle have just been brought up, and are waiting in Welland Wood," reported Vivash. "There is a movement among the colliers over Barfold Rise. With them are about two hundred men carrying rifles. They are not in uniform, but theymarch."
Salt turned to another instrument and jerked the switch rapidly from plate to plate as he distributed his orders.
"Captain Norris, strengthen the Territorials at the outer wire North."
"Send up two star rockets to recall the motor-cycle scouts."
"Tell Disturnal to have the searchlights in immediate readiness."
"Fire brigade, full strength, turn out with chemical engine, and stand under earthwork cover at central tank."
He turned again to the kite telephone to ask Vivash a detail. There was no response.
"Get on with Lieutenant Vivash as soon as you can, and let me know at once," he said to the one who was in charge, as he returned to the staff room.
In less than a minute the operator was at the door again.
"I am afraid there is something the matter, sir," he explained. "I can get no reply either from Lieutenant Vivash or from the kite section."
"Ring up the despatch room. Let some one go at once to Mr Moore and return here with report."
"Yes, sir." He turned to go. "HereisMr Moore," he exclaimed, standing aside from the door.
They all read some disaster in his face as he entered.
"I am deeply sorry to say that Lieutenant Vivash has been shot."
"Is he seriously hurt?" asked some one.
"He is dead. He was shot through the head by a marksman in Welland Wood."
Salt broke the shocked silence.
"We have lost a brave comrade," he said simply. "Come, General Trench, let us visit the walls."
It was dark when they returned. Salt passed through the room, calling to his side the man with whom he had been most closely associated at Hanwood, and traversing some passages led the way up a winding staircase into the lantern of the tower. Here, under the direction of an ex-officer of Royal Engineers, two powerful searchlights were playing on every inch of doubtful ground that lay within their radius beyond the entanglement that marked the outer line of the defences.
Nothing had been seen; not a solitary invader had yet shown himself within the zone of light. The officer in charge was explaining a technical detail of the land when, without the faintest warning, a fulgent blaze of light suddenly ran along the edge of a coppice half a mile away, and a noise like the crackling of a hundred new-lit fires drifted on the wind. With the echo, a thick hedge to the east and a wood lying on the west joined in the vicious challenge. A few bullets splashed harmlessly against the steel shield that ingeniously protected the lantern.
The searchlights oscillated uncertainly from sky to earth under the shock of the surprise, and then settled down to stream unwinkingly into the eyes of the enemy, while in the double darkness the defenders hugged the earth behind the wire and began to reply with cool deliberation to the opening volleys.
There was a knock upon the door of the little lantern room, and a telescribe message was placed before Salt. It bore a sign showing that it had come over the private system which the League maintained between Hanwood and the head office. He read it through twice, and for almost the first time since he had left his youth behind, he stood in absolute indecision.
"It is necessary for me to go at once to London," he said, turning to his companion, when he had made an irrevocable choice. "You will take command in my absence, Evelyn, under the guidance of the Council."
"May I venture to remind you, sir, that we are completely surrounded?" said Orr-Evelyn through his blank surprise.
"I have not overlooked it. You will——"
There was a sullen roar away in the north, a mile behind the coppice that had first spoken. Something whistled overhead, not unmelodiously, and away to the south a shell burst harmlessly among the ridges of a ploughed field. The nearer searchlight elevated its angle a fraction and centred upon a cloud of smoke that hung for a moment until the gale whirled it to disintegration. The army, like the navy, had reverted to black powder. It was Economy; and as it was not intended ever to go to war again, it scarcely mattered.
"Marsham will engage that gun from both platforms D and E. Make every effort to silence it with the least delay; it is the only real menace there is. Hold the entanglement, but not at too heavy a cost. If it should be carried——Come to my room."
"You have considered the possible effect of your withdrawal at this moment, Salt?" said Orr-Evelyn in a low voice, as they hastened together along the passages.
"I can leave the outcome in your hands with absolute reliance," replied Salt. "If Hanwood is successfully held until to-morrow, it will devolve upon Sir John Hampden to dictate terms to the Government. The end is safely in sight independent of my personality.... My reputation——!" He dismissed that phase with a shrug.
He threw open the door of his private office. A shallow mahogany case, about a foot square, locked and sealed, was sunk into the opposite wall. Salt knocked off the wax and opened the case with a key which he took off the ring and gave to Orr-Evelyn as he spoke. Inside the case were a dozen rows of little ivory studs, each engraved with a red number. Fastened to the inside of the lid was a scale map of the land lying between the outer wall and the wire fence. Every stud had its corresponding number, surrounded by a crimson circle, indicated on the plan.
"If the entanglement should be carried you will take no further risk," continued Salt. "Captain Ford will give you the general indication of the attack from the lantern. There are two men detailed to each block of mines who will signal you the exact moment for firing each mine. Those are the numbered indicators above the box. Good-bye."
He paused at the door; time was more than life to him, but he had an ordered thought for everything.
"If you hear no more of me, and what might be imagined really troubles you, Evelyn, you can make use of this," he remarked, and laid the telescript he had received upon a table.
It was not the time for words, written or spoken, beyond those of the sheerest necessity. Half an hour passed before Orr-Evelyn had an opportunity of glancing through the letter that had called Salt from his post. When he had finished it he took it down, and read it aloud to the headquarter staff amidst the profoundest silence, in passionate vindication of his friend and leader. This was what they heard:
"Unity League, Trafalgar Chambers."The building is surrounded by mob. Seaton Street, Pantile Passage, and Pall Mall and the Haymarket, as far as I can see, densely packed with frantic men. All others in building had left earlier.I shall remain.Wires cut, and fear that you may not receive this, as other telescribe messages for help unanswered. Mob howling continuously for Sir John Hampden and Mr Salt; dare not look out again, stoned. Shall delay advance, doors and stairs, as long as possible, and burn all important League books and papers last resource."Good-bye all, my dear friends."Irene Lisle."
"Unity League, Trafalgar Chambers.
"The building is surrounded by mob. Seaton Street, Pantile Passage, and Pall Mall and the Haymarket, as far as I can see, densely packed with frantic men. All others in building had left earlier.I shall remain.Wires cut, and fear that you may not receive this, as other telescribe messages for help unanswered. Mob howling continuously for Sir John Hampden and Mr Salt; dare not look out again, stoned. Shall delay advance, doors and stairs, as long as possible, and burn all important League books and papers last resource.
"Good-bye all, my dear friends.
"Irene Lisle."
The storm had not decreased its violence when, three minutes later, Salt stood unperceived on the broad coping outside an upper storey of the tower, and, sinking forward into the teeth of the gale, was borne upwards with rigid wings as a kite ascends.
In accordance with his instructions the two searchlights had turned their beams steadily earthward for the time, and in the absolute blackness of the upper air he could pass over the firing lines of friends and foes in comparative safety. As he rose higher and higher before turning to scud before the wind, he saw, as on a plan, the whole field of operations, just distinguishable in its masses of grey and black, with the points of interest revealing themselves by an occasional flash. Immediately beneath him, beneath him at first, but every second drawing away to the south-west as he drifted in the gale he breasted, lay Hanwood, with its three outer lines of defence. From above it seemed as though a very bright needle was every now and then thrust out from the walls into the dark night and drawn back again. On each of the platforms D and E two 4.7-inch quick-firing guns appeared to be rocking slightly in the wind. By all the indication there was of smoke or noise, or even flame, the gunners might have been standing idly behind their shields; but over the steep scarp of the little hill, a mile and a half away, shells were being planted every ten yards or so, with the methodical regularity of a farmer dropping potatoes along a furrow.
Salt might not have quite expected that there would be the necessity to fire those guns when, a year before, he had obtained for Hanwood its complement of the finest artillery that the world produced, but when the necessity did arise, there was no need for the League gunners to use black powder.
When he had reached the height he required, simply leaning against the wind, Salt moved a pinion slightly and bore heavily towards the right. It was the supreme moment for the trial of skill, as the long flight that followed it was the trial of endurance. If his nerve had failed, if a limb had lost its tension for the fraction of a second, his brain reeled amidst that tearing fury of the element, or a single ring or swivel not answered to its work, he would have been crumpled up hopelessly, beyond the chance of recovery, and flung headlong to the earth. As it was, the wind swept him round in a great half circle, but it was the wind his servant, not his master, and he turned its lusty violence to serve his ends. He caught a passing glimpse of the coppice whence the attack had first been opened; he saw beneath him the line of guns ensconced behind the hill, one already overturned and centred in confusion; and then the sweeping arc reached its limit, and he came, as it seemed, to anchor in mid-air, with the earth slipping away beneath him as the banks glide past a smoothly-moving train, and a thousand weights and forces dragging at his aching arms.
He had nothing to do but to maintain a perfect balance among the conflicting cross winds that shot in from above and below, and from north and south, and to point his course towards the glow in the sky that marked the Capital. A dozen words could express it, but it required the skill of the practised wingman, the highest development of every virile quality, and the spur of a necessity not less than life and death, to dignify the attempt above the foolhardy. Whether beyond all that the accomplishment lay within the bounds of human endurance was a further step. It would at that time have been impossible to pronounce either way with any authority, for not only had the attempt never been made, but nothing approaching the attempt had been made. A breeze that ran five miles an hour was considered enough for any purpose; to take to the air when the anemometer indicated fifteen miles an hour was not allowed at the practice grounds, and the record in this direction lay with an expert who had accomplished a straight flight in a wind that travelled a little less than thirty miles an hour. The storm on the night of the 15th of January tore across the face of the land with a general velocity of fifty or sixty miles an hour, rising at times even higher.
Under the racking agony of every straining tendon and the heady pressure of the wind, a sense of mundane unreality began to settle upon the flier. He saw the earth and its landmarks being drawn smoothly and swiftly from beneath him with the detachment of a half-conscious dream. He saw—for he remembered afterwards—the Thames lying before him like a whip flicked carelessly across the plain. A town loomed up, black and inchoate, on his right, developed into streets and terraces, and slid away into the past. It was Richmond. The river, never far away, now slipped beneath him at right angles, reappeared to hold a parallel course upon his left, and flung a horse-shoe coil two miles ahead. A colony of strange shining roofs and domes next challenged recognition. They were the conservatories at Kew, looking little more than garden frames, and they were scarcely lost to view before he was over the winding line of Brentford's quaint old High Street, now, as it appeared, packed with a dense, moving crowd. The irresistible pounding of the gale was edging the glow of London further and further to his right. Instinctively he threw more weight into the lighter scale, and slowly and certainly the point of his destination swung round before his face again.
Thenceforward it was all town. Gunnersbury became Chiswick, Chiswick merged into Hammersmith, Kensington succeeded, in ceaseless waves of houses that ran north and south, and long vistas of roofs that stretched east and west. It was a kaleidoscope of contrasts. Scenes of saturnalian gaiety, where ant-like beings danced in mad abandonment round fires that blocked the road, or seemed to gyrate by companies in meaningless confusion, bounded districts plunged into an unnatural gloom and solitude, where for street after street neither the footstep of a wayfarer nor the light of a public lamp broke the uncanny spell. Immediately beyond, by the glare of the flambeaux which they carried, an orderly concourse might be marching eastward, and fringing on their route a garish gutter mart, where busy costermongers drove their roaring trade and frugal housewives did their marketing with less outward concern than if the crisis in the State had been a crisis in the price of butter.
The multitudinous sounds beat on his ears through the plunging gale like a babel of revelry heard between the intermittent swinging of an unlatched door. The sights in their grotesque perspective began to melt together lazily. The upper air grew very cold. The weights hung heavier every mile, the contending forces pulled more resistlessly. Strange fancies began to assail him as the brain shrank beneath the strain; doubts and despairs to gather round like dark birds of the night with hopeless foreboding in the dull measure of their funereal wings. In that moment mind and body almost failed to contend against the crushing odds; nothing but his unconquerable heart flogged on his dying limbs.
It was scarcely more than half an hour after she had written her despairing message that from her post at the head of the broad stone staircase Irene Lisle heard a noise in the garret storey above that sent her flying back to her stronghold. It was the last point from which she had expected an attack. Through the keyhole of the door behind which she had taken refuge, she saw a strangely outlined figure groping his way cumbrously down the stairs, and then, without a word or cry, but with a face whiter than the paper that had summoned him, she threw open the door to admit Salt.
He walked heavily along the corridor and turned into his own room, while she relocked the door and followed him. There was mute enquiry in her eyes, but she did not speak.
A powerful oil-stove stood upon the hearth-stone, throwing its beams across the room. He stood over it while the beaded ice melted from his hair and fell hissing on the iron. He opened his mouth, and the sound of his voice was like the thin piping of a reed. She caught a word, and began to unbuckle the frozen straps of his gear. When he was free he tried to raise his hand to a pocket of his coat, but the effort was beyond the power of the cramped limb. Irene interpreted the action, and, finding there a flask, filled the cup and held it to his lips.
She got a blue, half-frozen smile of thanks over the edge of the cup. "Ah," he said, beginning to find his voice again, and stamping about the room, "we owe Wynchley Slocombe a monument, you and I, Miss Lisle. Now you must write a telescript for me, please; for I cannot."
"If you will remain here, where it is warmer, I will bring the materials," she suggested.
He thanked her and allowed her to go, watching her with thoughtful eyes that were coming back to life. She paused a moment at the top of the stairs to listen down the shaft, and then sped quickly through the smoke to the instrument room on the floor beneath.
Salt glanced round the office. On and about his desk all the books and papers that might be turned to a hostile purpose had been stacked in readiness, and by them stood the can of oil that was to ensure their complete destruction. He stepped up to the window and looked out cautiously. Every pane of glass was broken—every pane of glass in Trafalgar Chambers was broken, for that matter—but it was not easy for an unprepared mob to force an entrance. When the Unity League had taken over the whole block of building in its expansion many alterations had been carried out, and among these had been to fix railings that sprang from the street and formed an arch, not only over the basement, but over the ground floor windows also. If the shutters on the windows had been closed in time, the assailants would have been baffled at another point, but the shutters had been overlooked, and the mob, after lighting great fires in the street, was now flinging the blazing billets through the lower windows.
In a very brief minute Irene was back again with the telescribe accessories. She seated herself at a table, dipped her pen into the ink, and looked up without a word.
"Trafalgar Chambers."6.25P.M.," dictated Salt. "Most of the miners drawn off and passing through Brentford. Over Barfold Rise half battery of 18-pounders, one out of action. In Spring Coppice and Welland Wood about four companies regulars each. Reconnoitre third position assuming same proportion. Act."
"Trafalgar Chambers.
"6.25P.M.," dictated Salt. "Most of the miners drawn off and passing through Brentford. Over Barfold Rise half battery of 18-pounders, one out of action. In Spring Coppice and Welland Wood about four companies regulars each. Reconnoitre third position assuming same proportion. Act."
He stood considering whether there was anything more to add usefully. The sound of Irene's agate pen tapping persistently against the table caught his ear.
"You are not very much afraid?" he asked with kindly reassurance in his voice as he looked at her hand.
"No, not now," she replied; but as she wrote she had to still the violent trembling of her right hand with the left.
"All going well here. Send messenger Hampden with report immediately after engagement," he concluded.
"All going well here. Send messenger Hampden with report immediately after engagement," he concluded.
"I will try to sign it myself." He succeeded in sprawling a recognisable "George Salt" across the paper, and after it wrote "Finis," which happened to be the pass-word for the day.
"Your message came through; this may possibly do the same," he remarked. He turned off the radiator as orderly as though he had reached the close of a working day, and they went out together, locking the doors behind them.
"They were attacking Hanwood when you left?" she asked with the tensest interest. They had sent off the telescript, and it seemed to Irene that they had reached the end of things.
"Yes," he replied. "But all the same," he added, as a fresh outburst of cries rose from the street, and the light through the shattered window attracted a renewed fusillade of missiles, "I think that we have kept our promise to let you be in the thick of it."
She shook her head with the very faintest smile. "That seems a very long time ago. But you, how couldyoucome? When I sent I never thought ... I never dreamed——"
"It was possible to leave," he said. "My work is done. Yes," in reply to her startled glance, "it has all happened!"
"You mean——?" she asked eagerly.
He took a paper from his pocket-book. It was, as she saw immediately, a telescript from Sir John Hampden. It had reached him at Hanwood an hour before he left.
"I have this afternoon received a deputation of Ministerialists who have the adherence of a majority in the House without taking the Opposition into account," she read. "The Parliamentary Representation Committees throughout the country are frantically insisting upon members acceptingany terms, if we will give an undertaking that the normal balance of trade and labour shall be restored at once. The Cabinet is going to pieces every hour, and the situation can no longer either be faced or ignored by the Government. There will be a great scene in the House to-night. The deputation will see me again to-morrow morning with a formal decision. I have confidential assurances that a complete acceptance is a foregone conclusion. The arrival of the Midland colliers to-night, if not of those from Monmouth, will precipitate matters."
"I have this afternoon received a deputation of Ministerialists who have the adherence of a majority in the House without taking the Opposition into account," she read. "The Parliamentary Representation Committees throughout the country are frantically insisting upon members acceptingany terms, if we will give an undertaking that the normal balance of trade and labour shall be restored at once. The Cabinet is going to pieces every hour, and the situation can no longer either be faced or ignored by the Government. There will be a great scene in the House to-night. The deputation will see me again to-morrow morning with a formal decision. I have confidential assurances that a complete acceptance is a foregone conclusion. The arrival of the Midland colliers to-night, if not of those from Monmouth, will precipitate matters."
Tears she could not hold back stood in her eyes as she returned to him the paper. "Then it has not been in vain," she said softly.
"No," he replied. "Nothing has been in vain."
They stood silently for a minute, looking back over life. So might two shipwrecked passengers have stood on a frail raft waiting for the end, resigned but not unhopeful of a larger destiny beyond, while the elements boiled and roared around them.
"It was very weak of me to send that message," said Irene presently; "the message that brought you. I suppose," she added, "that itwasthe message that brought you?"
"Yes, thank God!" he replied.
"And if it had been impossible for you to come? If it had been an utterly critical moment in every way, what would you have done?"
He laughed a little, quietly, as he looked at her. "The question did not arise, fortunately," he replied.
"No," she admitted; "only I felt a little curious to know, now that everything is over. Itis, isn't it? There is nothing to be done?"
"Oh yes," he replied with indomitable cheerfulness. "There is always something to be done."
"A chance?" she whispered incredulously. "A chance of escape, you mean?"
"It is possible," he said. "At least, I will go and hear what they have to say."
"No! no!" she cried out, as a dreadful scene rose to her imagination. "You cannot understand. Don't you hear that?... They would kill you."
"I do not suppose that I shall find myself popular," he said with a smile, "but I will take care. You—I think you must stay here."
"Cannot I come with you?" she pleaded. "See, I am armed."
He took the tiny weapon that she drew from her dress and looked at it with gentle amusement. It was a pretty thing of ivory and nickeled steel, an elaborate toy. He pressed the action and shook out the half-dozen tiny loaded caps—they were little more than that—upon his palm.
"I would rather that you did not use this upon a mob," he said, reloading it. "It would only exasperate, without disabling. As for stopping a rush—why, I doubt if one of these would stop a determined rabbit. You have better weapons than this."
"I suppose you are right. Only it gave me a little confidence. Then you shall keep it for a memento, if you will."
"No; it might hold off a single assailant, I suppose. I should value this much more, if I might have it." He touched a silk tie that she had about her neck, as he spoke; it was one that she had often worn. She held up her head for him to disengage it.
"Some day," he said, lingering a little over the simple operation, "you will understand many things, Irene."
"I think that I understand everything now," she replied with a brave glance. "Everything that is worth understanding."
He placed the folded tie in an inner pocket, and went down the stone steps without another word. The well was thick with smoke, but the fire had not yet spread beyond the lower rooms. Half-way down he encountered a barricade of light office furniture which the girl had flung across the stairs and drenched with oil. It was no obstacle in itself, but at the touch of a match it would have sprung into a conflagration that would have held the wildest mob at bay for a few precious moments. He picked his way through it, descended the remaining stairs, and unlocked the outer door. Beyond this was an iron curtain that had been lowered. A little door in it opened directly on to the half-dozen steps that led down to Seaton Street.
Salt looked through a crevice of the iron curtain, and listened long enough to learn that there was no one on the upper steps; for the upper steps, indeed, commanded no view of the windows, and the windows were the centres of all interest. Satisfied on this point, he quietly unlocked the door and stepped out.
To the majority of those who thronged Seaton Street the effect of Salt's sudden—instantaneous, as it seemed—and unexpected appearance was to endow it with a dramatic, almost an uncanny, value. The front rows, especially those standing about the steps, fell back, and the further rows pressed forward. And because an undisciplined mob stricken by acute surprise must express its emotion outwardly—by silence if it has hitherto been noisy, and by exclamation if it has been silent—the shouts and turmoil in the street instantly dwindled away to nothing, like a breath of vapour passing from a window pane.
Salt raised his hand, and he had the tribute of unstirring silence, the silence for the moment of blank astonishment.
"My friends and enemies," he said, in a voice that had learned self-possession from the same school that Demosthenes had practised in, "you have been calling me for some time. In a few minutes I must listen to whatever you have to say, but first there is another matter that we must arrange. I take it for granted that when you began your spirited demonstration here you had no idea that there was a lady in the building. Not being accustomed to the sterner side of politics, so formidable a display rather disconcerted her, and not knowing the invariable chivalry of English working men, she hesitated to come out before. Now, as it is dark, and the streets of London are not what they once were, I want half a dozen good stout fellows to see the lady safely to her home."
"Be damned!" growled a voice among the mass. "What do you take us for?"
"Men," retorted Salt incisively; "or there would be no use in asking you."
"Yes, men, but famished, desperate, werewolf men," cried a poor, gaunt creature clad in grotesque rags, who stood near. "Men who have seenourwomen starve and sink before our eyes; men who have watchedourchildren dying by a slower, crooler death than fire. An eye for an eye, tyrant! Your League has struck atourwomen folk through us."
"Then strike at ours through us!" cried Salt, stilling with the measured passion of his voice the rising murmurs of assent. "I am here to offer you a substitute. Do you think that no woman will mourn for me?" He sent his voice ringing over their heads like a prophetic knell. "The cause that must stoop to take the life of a defenceless woman is lost for ever."
As long as he could offer them surprises he could hold the mere mob in check, but there was among the crowd an element that was not of the crowd, a chosen sprinkling who were superior to the swaying passions of the moment.
"Not good enough," said a decently-dressed, comfortable-looking man, who had little that was famished, desperate, or wolfish in his appearance. "You're both there, and there you shall both stay, by God! Eh, comrades?" He spoke decisively, and made a movement as though he would head a rush towards the steps.
Salt dropped one hand upon the iron door with a laugh that sounded more menacing than most men's threats.
"Not so fast, Rorke," he said contemptuously; "you grasp too much. Even in your unpleasant business you can practise moderation. I am here, but there is no reason on earth why I should stay. Scarcely more than half an hour ago I was at Hanwood—where, by the way, your friends are being rather badly crumpled up—and you are all quite helpless to prevent me going again."
They guessed the means; they saw the unanswerable strength of his position, and recognised their own impotence. "Who are you, any way?" came a dozen voices.
"I am called George Salt: possibly you have heard the name before. Come, men," he cried impatiently, "what have you to think twice about? Surely it is worth while to let a harmless girl escape to make certain of that terrible person Salt."
There was a strangled scream in the vestibule behind. Unable to bear the suspense any longer, Irene had crept down the stairs in time to hear the last few sentences. For a minute she had stood transfixed at the horror of the position she realised; then, half-frenzied, she flung herself against Salt's arm and tried to beat her way past to face the mob.
"You shall not!" she cried distractedly. "I will not be saved at that price. I shall throw myself out of the window, into the fire, anywhere. Yes, I'm desperate, but I know what I am saying. Come back, and let us wait together; die together, if it is to be, but I don't go alone."
The crowd began to surge restlessly about in waves of excited motion. The interruption, in effect, had been the worst thing that could have happened. There were in the throng many who beneath their seething passion could appreciate the nobility of Salt's self-sacrifice; many who in the midst of their sullen enmity were wrung with admiration for Irene's heroic spirit, but the contagion to press forward dominated all. Salt had irretrievably lost his hold upon their reason, and with that hold he saw the last straw of his most forlorn hope floating away. In another minute he must either retreat into the burning building where he might at any time find the stairs impassable with smoke, or remain to be overwhelmed by a savage rush and beaten to the ground.
"Men," cried Irene desperately, "listen before you do something that will for ever make to-day shameful in the history of our country. Do you know whom you wish to kill? He is the greatest Englishman——"
There were angry cries from firebrands scattered here and there among the crowd, and a movement from behind, where the new contingents hurrying down the side streets pressed most heavily, flung the nearest rows upon the lower steps. Salt's revolver, which he had not shown before, drove them back again and gave him a moment's grace.
"Quick!" he cried. "My offer still holds good."
One man shouldered his way through to the front, and, seeing him, Salt allowed him to come on. He walked up the steps deliberately, with a face sad rather than revengeful, and they spoke together hurriedly under the shadow of the large-bore revolver.
"If it can be done yet, I'll be one of the posse to see to the young lady," said the volunteer. "I have no mind to wait for the other job that's coming."
"Take care of her; get her back into the hall," replied Salt. "Gently, very gently, friend."
Two more volunteers had their feet upon the steps, one, a butcher, reeking of the stalls, the other sleek and smug-faced, with the appearance of a prosperous artisan.
"I'll pick my men," cried Salt sharply, and his steady weapon emphasised his choice, one man passing on through the iron doorway, the other turning sharp from the insistent barrel to push his way back into the crowd with a bitter imprecation.
It was too much to hope that the position could be maintained. The impatient mob had only been held off momentarily from its purpose as a pack of wolves can be stayed by the fleeing traveller who throws from his sleigh article after article to entice their curiosity. Salt had nothing more to offer them. His life was already a hostage to the honour of those whom he had allowed to pass. Others were pressing on to him with vengeance-laden cries. The terrible irresistible forward surge of a soulless mob, when individuality is merged into the dull brutishness of a trampling herd, was launched.
"Capt'n Stobalt!" cried a lusty voice at his shoulder.
Salt turned instinctively. A man in sailor's dress, with the guns and star of his grade upon his sleeve, had climbed along the arch of the railings with a sailor's resourcefulness, and had reached his ear. Salt remembered him quite well, but he did not speak a word.
"Ah, sir, I thought that warn't no other voice in the world, although the smoke befogged my eyes a bit. Keep back, you gutter rats!" he roared above every other sound, rising up in his commanding position and balancing himself by a stanchion of the gate; "d'ye think you know who you're standing up before, you toggle-chested galley-sharks! Salt? Aye, he'ssaltenough! 'Tis Capt'n Stobalt of the oldUlysses.Stobalt of Salaveira!"
Three years before, the moment would have found Salt cold, as cold as ice, and as unresponsive, but he had learned many things since then, and sacrificed his pride and reticence on many altars.
He saw before him a phalanx of humanity startled into one common expression of awe and incredulity; he saw the hostile wave that was to overwhelm him spend itself in a sharp recoil. By a miracle the fierce lust of triumphant savagery had died out of the starved, pathetic faces now turned eagerly to him; by a miracle the gathering roar for vengeance had sunk into an expectant hush, broken by nothing but the whispered repetition of his name on ten thousand lips. He saw in a flash a hundred details of the magic of that name; he knew that if ever in his life he must throw restraint and moderation to the winds and paint his rôle in broad and lurid colours, that moment had arrived, and at the call he took his destiny between his hands.
They saw him toss his weapon through the railings into the space beneath, marked him come to the edge of the step and stand with folded arms defenceless there before them, and the very whispers died away in breathless anticipation.
"Yes," he cried with a passionate vehemence that held their breath and stirred their hearts, "I am Stobalt of Salaveira, the man who brought you victory when you were trembling in despair. I saved England for you then, but that was when men loved their country, and did not think it a disgraceful thing to draw a sword and die for her. What is that to you to-day, you who have been taught to forget what glory means; and what is England to you to-day, you whose leaders have sold her splendour for a higher wage?"
"No! No!" cried a thousand voices, frantic to appease the man for whose blood they had been howling scarcely a minute before. "You shall be our leader! We will follow you to death! Stobalt of Salaveira! Stobalt for ever! Stobalt of Salaveira! Stobalt and England!"
The frenzied roar of welcome, the waving hands, the hats flung high, the mingled cries caught from lip to lip went rolling up the street, kindling by a name and an imperishable memory other streets and other crowds into a tumult of mad enthusiasm. Along Pall Mall, through Trafalgar Square, into the Strand and Whitehall, north by Regent Street and the Haymarket to Piccadilly, running east and west, splitting north and south, twisting and leaping from group to group and mouth to mouth, ran the strange but stirring cry, carrying wonder and concern on its wing, but always passing with a cheer.
Seven years had passed since the day of Salaveira, and the memory of it was still enough to stir a crowd to madness. For there had been no Salaveiras since to dim its splendour. Seven years ago the name of Salaveira had brought pallor to the cheek, and the thought of what was happening there stole like an icy cramp round the heart of every Englishman. The nation had grown accustomed to accept defeat on land with the comfortable assurance that nothing could avert a final victory. Its pride was in its navy: invincible!...
The war that came had been of no one's seeking, but it came, and the nation called upon its navy to sweep the presumptuous enemy from off the seas. Then came a pause: a rumour, doubted, disbelieved, but growing stronger every hour. The English fleets, not so well placed as they might have been, "owing to political reasons that made mobilisation inadvisable while there was still a chance of peace being maintained," were unable to effect a junction immediately, and were falling back before the united power of the New Alliance. Hour after hour, day after day, night after night, crowds stood hopefully, doubtfully, incredulously, in front of the newspaper office windows, waiting for the news that never came. The fleets had not yet combined. The truth first leaked, then blazed: they were unable to combine! Desperately placed on the outer line they were falling back, ever falling back into a more appalling isolation. A coaling station had been abandoned just where its presence proved to have been vital; a few battleships had been dropped from the programme, and the loss of their weight in the chain just proved fatal.
Men did not linger much at Fleet Street windows then; they slunk to and fro singly a hundred times a day, read behind the empty bulletins with poignant intuition, and turned silently away. In the mourning Capital they led nightmare lives from which they could only awake to a more definite despair, and the first word of the hurrying newsboy's raucous shout sent a sickening wave of dread to every heart. There was everything to fear, and nothing at all to hope. Could peace be made—not a glorious, but a decent, living peace? Was—was even London safe? Kind friends abroad threw back the answers in the fewest, crudest words. England would have to sue for peace on bended knees and bringing heavy tribute in her hands. London lay helpless at the mercy of the foe to seize at any moment when it suited him.
All this time Commander Stobalt, in command of theUlyssesby the vicissitudes of unexpected war and separated from his squadron on detached service, was supposed to be in Cura Bay, a thousand miles away from Salaveira, flung there with the destroyersLimpetandDabfishby the mere backwash of the triumphant allied fleet. According to the rules of naval warfare heoughtto have been a thousand miles away; according to the report of the allies' scouts hewasa thousand miles away. But miraculously one foggy night theUlyssesloomed spectrally through the shifting mist that drifted uncertainly from off the land and rammed the first leviathan that crossed her path, while the two destroyers torpedoed her next neighbour. Then, before leviathans 3 and 4 had begun to learn from each other what the matter was, theUlysseswas between them, sprinkling their decks and tops with small shell, and perforating their water-line and vital parts with large shell from a range closer than that at which any engagement had been fought out since the day when the Treasury had begun to implore the Admiralty to impress upon her admirals what a battleship really cost before they sent her into action. For theUlysseshad everything to gain and nothing but herself to lose, and when morning broke over Salaveira's untidy bay, she had gained everything, and lost so little that even the New Alliance took no pride in mentioning it in the cross account.