The Professor gave an odd little scream like a shotrabbit.
The Professor gave an odd little scream like a shotrabbit.
The Professor gave an odd little scream like a shotrabbit.
He shambled out and groped in the recesses of the left-hand pocket, and there, side by side with his familiar handkerchief, the faithful companion of many days, was the feel of the rough spectacle case; it was all right, but also, what annoyed him a little, a pebble. It was natural that pebbles should get into one's pockets when one was out walking in the country; at least, he thought it was. He thought it went with those terrible animals called cows, and all that sort of thing. But he pulled it out mechanically, felt the prick of a pin and then gave an odd little scream, like a shot rabbit. Next (excuse him!) he rapped out a frightful oath. "My God!" cried the aged blasphemer. No less. But the violence of his emotion must have shaken his standards.
He stood there, with the emerald in the palm of his right hand, staring at it, distraught. And once more in his bewilderment he fell to repeating the name of his Creator—upon whose existence indeed, he had more than once learnedly discoursed, concluding upon the whole against it.
It is said that under the strain of very severe emotion men do things unnatural, out of themselves. And behold! Professor William de Bohun behaved for the next half hour like a whole group of characters, any one of whom you would have said he could not have thrown himself into for the world. Terror inspired him, and the tragic sense of impending doom.
It must be got rid of!
He had a mad impulse to swallow it. Luckily he restrained it in time: it was too big, its metal fastenings too angular for health; and then, there was the pin.
After he had given up the swallowing baulk, another, far more feasible, arose and formed itself more clearly. There appeared before his mind's eye a young, round naïve face, fresh to the world, an awkward figure, the whole standing out against the background of known poverty. It was the figure of McTaggart, the journalist.
A wicked glint illumined the Professor's eye.
"Oh! Baleful, hellish light, thus to suffuseThe inactive optic, wontedly so dulled,But now with evil purpose all inflamed!"
"Oh! Baleful, hellish light, thus to suffuseThe inactive optic, wontedly so dulled,But now with evil purpose all inflamed!"
as Milton has it in the matter of the fish-god, Dagon.
He made no excuses for himself. He recked nothing of the young man's ruin. He plunged heartily and heavily into sin. As his colleague the Professor of Pastoral Theology had once finely quoted in his Luther Commemoration Lecture, "Si peccas pecca fortiter."
It is generally held by the more liberal school among theologians that man acting of his own free will is not mastered by an external evil impulse, but may well submit to it.
So it was with Cousin William on this never-to-be-forgotten occasion of his chief downfall.
A Minor Devil happened at that moment to be wandering rather emptily through Paulings, seeking what he might devour. He was hungry, poor spirit; he had eaten nothing since he had left his own place at midnight and he had got lost in the fog all morning. He had almost caught a small housemaid, but she had slipped away through the efforts of her patron saint, sweet Millicent, and left him perfectly ravenous. It was almost noon and devils are not built for fasting. Judge then his joy at coming, by pure chance, upon this evil old man. He almost jumped out of his black fiendish skin for joy to perceive the flashing violet light which surrounds, in the eyes of supernatural beings, the head of a wicked man. He spotted it first from a corner of the hall where he had just come out of a corridor. He rubbed his hands together and even flapped his clawed wings in his excitement. He flew up to the Professor and began pouring all sorts of excellent suggestions into his ear—his left ear.
Young McTaggart could play billiards ... the Professor had heard them say that ... young McTaggart was probably proud of his billiards ... he could be got to go round the table exhibiting his billiards. He would take off his coat before exhibiting his billiards. And when the coat was once off, and its owner's eye was concentrated on the billiard table ... oh, then!...
The Devil, who can see through walls, gently shepherded his pupil into the little room next the library where the overflow of books was kept. That door, with horrid smile, the old conspirator opened; and there, indeed, he found the youth, looking miserably enough out of the window with his hands in his trousers pockets. He had slunk into that inhospitable fireless den in order to be free for a while from the terrors of high society.
"Ah, Mr. McTaggart, Mr. McTaggart, Mr. McTaggart!" carolled the scientist—and as he said it he opened his arms wide in a most genial gesture. "I've been looking for you everywhere!" There slyly wagging a knotted forefinger, "And I wonder if you can guess why? Eh? Why? Guess why!" Which words said, and smiling still broader, he repeated them once more three times, as was his wont, and then added: "I wonder whether you can guess why, Mr. McTaggart, whether you can guess why ... whether you can guess why?"
The Devil was now so happy that he could hardly refrain from manifesting himself, which would have been fatal. He whisked all round the room, jeering at McTaggart.
Poor young Mr. McTaggart! He had been all night and all that morning a most unhappy man. He exaggerated in his own mind the suspicions under which he lay. He was too innocent to believe that he shared it with such exalted beings as the lord and the Professor, of whom—though he had never heard his name—he was assured the fame to be European, and who, anyhow, was connected by blood with a cabinet minister.
The lad imagined himself watched by a thousand eyes. He dared not take his leave, and yet he was in hell during those hours he passed at Paulings. He would have been unhappy anyhow, for it was not his world; but to be within all that set and at the same time a marked criminal—for that is what he felt himself to be—was almost intolerable. How he had sprung up when the learned Ancient approached him, with those seeming kindly eyes! Ah! had McTaggart enjoyed a few more years of human experience he would have seen in those eyes such a mixture of cunning and evil joy as might have put him on his guard. But no; he thought that in his loneliness he had found a friend. Who knew?—perhaps a supporter.
The Professor's plan was simple, but McTaggart was simpler still.
Sudden interest in the game of Billiards upon thepart of the Professor of Crystallographyto the University.
Sudden interest in the game of Billiards upon thepart of the Professor of Crystallographyto the University.
Sudden interest in the game of Billiards upon thepart of the Professor of Crystallographyto the University.
"Mr. McTaggart," said the Ancient, with horrible geniality, "I hear that you are astonishing at billiards.... Billiards, billiards, yes, billiards.... Billiards. The Home Secretary was telling me, Humphrey, I mean, my cousin, my cousin Humphrey ... the Home Secretary, yes ... the Home Secretary was telling me that you were astonishing at billiards. Now you know"—and here he went so far as to make a step sideways and seize the young man by the arm—"it is the one thing I can watch for hours ... billiards ... good billiards.... I have gone into the mechanics of the thing"—he was lying freely, and gambling, rightly, on the idea that his companion could not distinguish between Crystallography and any other science—"and it fascinates me ... fascinates me ... oh! fascinates me. I wonder whether—" and in a fashion which would have been crude to any other man, but to the lonely McTaggart was heavenly kindness, he urged with linked arm and long sidling crablike step towards the billiard-room.
It was in the Professor's conception of things that when one is deceiving a fellow being one must talk the whole time. He is not the only one to suffer from that delusion.
He talked all the way to the billiard-room; he talked while McTaggart was pulling off the cloth; he talked while McTaggart was putting on the lights to see clearly on that dim January day; he talked while McTaggart was chalking his cue and thoughtfully placing the three balls in position.
The torrent of rapid words—all dealing with excellency at billiards, all squeaky—was interrupted only at one moment. It was the moment when McTaggart did what he had been expected to do—the moment when he took off his coat and threw it on the leather cushions by the side of his newly-made and slightly eccentric friend.
The sight of that coat so thrown immediately by his side, and subject to his hand, almost choked the senile conspirator with joy. But he recovered himself, and still poured out a torrent of repeated words as the young fellow walked slowly round the table, getting absorbed in a continuous break. The Professor interrupted that verbal spate only now and then to gaze with a murderous keenness at a projected stroke and to mutter "Marvellous!" two or three times; but all the while his heart was failing him. It was not the only mean thing he had done in his life by a long chalk. He had spent the whole of his life doing nothing but mean things; but it was the first actively and perhaps dangerously wrong thing the old booby had ever dared to do: for he did not count the Mullingar Diamond—that was in the cause of Science, and in the cause of Science you can do anything.
But the Devil chose his moment for him; it was a moment of silence when young McTaggart was waiting long and breathlessly to be certain of a stroke that would bring his break over the hundred. His back was turned to the Professor; he was intent upon his play.
The old bony hand, with the gesture of one that takes rather than gives, put the emerald into a side pocket of the coat, where lay he knew not what—but in point of fact, a tobacco pouch, a pipe, a pencil, and a piece of chocolate—of all things in the world!—no longer clean. Nor had the Emerald ever been in such society before, from the day when it had started life in the splendid court of Moscovy to these last evil days of ours.
McTaggart had brought off his shot: his break was 102, and the spot and the red lay perfect for a cannon and red in the pocket.
But you exaggerate the diplomatic value of the Professor if you think that he had the wit to continue his stream of gabble after the deed was done.
It was lucky for him that he was dealing with the candour of youth, or that abrupt retreat of his from the scene of his crime would have brought suspicion. For, his deed accomplished, he simply got up with a jerk, dropped all attention to the play, looked at his watch, muttered the time of day with an exclamation, and sidled out of the room, leaving his companion marooned ... and with him, full of success, went the Lesser Devil.
McTaggart could do without him; he went on playing for another ten minutes or so, till the break ended, and had reached the pretty figure of 151. Then he in turn looked at his watch in his waistcoat pocket, found it would be time for luncheon in a few minutes, put up his cue, and sadly resumed his coat.
Had he been of those who smoke all day he would have pulled out his pipe, and ten to one would have found the thing lurking there next his tobacco; but he thought of the meal coming on, and much more did he think with dread that it would be breaking some mysterious etiquette of country houses if he were to smoke a pipe. He would not dare to do it till he saw some one of his betters at the same work. For the same reason, after he had heard them going towards the dining-room and had joined them, he was too nervous to put his hands in his pockets in a gesture of repose. He kept them dangling in his extreme anxiety to commit no solecism. He moved nervously about amid the sullen silence of the rest and wondered a little why the burst of geniality upon the part of the man of gems should have dried up so suddenly. For not a word more did the Professor speak to him; and all through luncheon McTaggart sat there in the same terror and the same misfortune of soul, never daring to speak some artificial word during the rare moments when anyone broke the silence.
They had not yet risen from table; he was still wondering what one did at the end of luncheon in the houses of the great—at what point one got up, whether immediately after one's host or simultaneously with one's host; whether the women went out first, as he knew they did at dinner; whether it was his duty to open the door for them—when Lord Galton pulled out his pipe, filled it deliberately enough, and lit it. After the easy manners of our happy times he slowly and with deliberation blew a cloud of smoke across the board which wreathed itself, not ungracefully, about the venerable head of Aunt Amelia. So natural an action was followed by his host, who in turn thoughtfully pulled out his own pipe and lit it, as he rose to fetch himself wine: he mixed tobacco and wine, did Humphrey de Bohun.
"Then," thought McTaggart to himself, in an agony of desire for tobacco, "it seems this kind of thingcanbe done,"—and he felt for his pipe, and pulled out his pouch.
Mr. McTaggart discovers the Emerald.
Mr. McTaggart discovers the Emerald.
Mr. McTaggart discovers the Emerald.
Now there happened to be in the room at that moment an Angel. He had come to Paulings express to counteract the Devil who had been putting in such strong work on the Professor, and the Angel saved the quill driver, whom, for his poverty, he loved. For that innocent, finding something that felt like his slab of chocolate in among his tobacco, and knowing himself to be well capable of having put it there, was just about to pull it out, and was already speculating on what sort of flavour chocolate gave to Bondman—or Bondman to chocolate—when the Angel seized his wrist and pinned it. He did not know the Angel was doing this—we never know our luck—he could not have told you what happened, except that he hesitated, and being of the opposite sex, was not lost. But for the Angel, he would have pulled out the thing before them all, and said, "Hallo, what's this?" and there would have been an end of McTaggart. Instead of which the Angel, with angelic swiftness, put a thought into his head.
"Don't pull out that lump of chocolate! It will make you look a fool. The great don't eat chocolate, except out of large expensive wooden boxes with Japanese pictures outside; elaborate boxes. The rich do not carry half-broken slabs of chocolate in their pockets—still less in their tobacco pouches!"
Therefore was it that McTaggart did not take out the lump, whatever it was; he grasped a fingerful of tobacco and peered down with one eye into the recesses of the pouch. When he saw what was there, his heart stopped beating! For a moment he felt faint and giddy.... But the angel firmly put the pouch back again, leaving the tobacco in his fingers, and with shaking hand he filled his pipe, and with shaking hand he lit it!
What the devil?
How on earth ...?
The unfortunate boy actually examined his own mind to see whether he could possibly have done such a thing, and then forgotten it—have done it inadvertently. Then he thought it had fallen into his coat when Marjorie had let it drop. Then he remembered that he had not been wearing that coat, that he had been in evening dress. Then he thought that the universe was made in some way that he did not understand. He looked at his coat, and fingered it. It was all right. His mind would not work properly again until he had satisfied himself beyond a doubt not once, but many times. He allowed—through terror—too long a time to pass lest he should seem in haste; strolled, looking as careless as he could, towards the library, looked round to make sure that no one had noticed him, leaped upstairs to his room, locked the door, took out his pouch and that which was within. He gazed at it for something like half a minute, putting it down on his dressing-table in the strong light to make sure.
There was no doubt at all. Either he was mad, or that was the emerald. He remembered some odiously vivid dreams that he had had as a child during the air raids—but he was certain this was no dream. He was McTaggart all right, a miserable young journalist against whom fate had woven some hellish plot; and there was the Emerald.
Next he tortured himself as to what he should do; obviously he must keep it upon him; he dared not secrete it anywhere. If one secretes things one can be traced. Conscience for one moment bade him go and tell his host, and risk all; but unfortunately the Angel had been called away at that very moment to tackle the Devil again, who had settled in the Vicarage; and in lack of such heavenly aid McTaggart fell, as any one of us would have fallen. He put the emerald into the inner pocket of his coat, pinned three pins round it carefully to make certain that it should not escape; and then went down with leaden heart to mix with his fellow beings and to trust to time.
The boy Ethelbert was suffering; not from contrition—which, I need hardly tell one of your learning, is the pure sorrow for sin—but from attrition—which, I need hardly tell one of your learning, is the sorrow for sin only in so far as one considers its unpleasant consequences to oneself.
The boy Ethelbert clearly appreciated that in attempting to save himself from one danger he had run himself into another far greater. He had put a valuable jewel into a nobleman's pocket and that might be, in legal terms, for all he knew, embezzlement, malversation or even a compound and chronic felony ofmalice prepense; perhaps a misdemeanour—with which word he was familiar through the fate of an uncle of his called John.
He was in great agony, was the boy Ethelbert; in agony of that sort which youth cannot endure until it has relieved itself by communion. But how should he speak? His duty was to his natural lord, the Butler. The glorious, the remote Mr. Whaley: God of the Underworld. Should he confess to the Butler? It would be madness. Yet he must speak: he must unburden his mind.
The innocent child was not long in finding a plan. He would go to his true superior and, naming no names, mentioning no-one-like, he would give a nod as good as a wink to a blind horse, and them as understood could follow if they chose, and if they asked no questions they wouldn't be told no lies. And mum's the word. Such, in rapid succession, were the Napoleonic thoughts of Ethelbert.
It was shortly after luncheon that he sought the room in which the dignified O.C. of the household of Paulings was wont to repose from his labours: and never more thoroughly than after luncheon.
Midday sleep is unknown to the young, at least after they are very, very young. Those of young Ethelbert's age have no use for it and cannot understand what a boon it may be to others. Foolishly, therefore, did young Ethelbert knock at the door of the holy of holies, thereby suddenly awakening the sacred being within, who jerked into a startled gasp. He pulled a handkerchief from his face, thought for a moment that the house was on fire, expected to see an angry master perhaps; was on his feet with labouring breath, purple, expectant; when there entered the Boy.
A fine and hearty curse greeted the youth and almost blasted him from the room, but what he had to say was of such moment that he just stood his ground.
"Oh, sir!" he said, "I thought I'd come and tell you..."
"Come and tell me what? You young devil!" roared Mr. Whaley with a lack of dignity which I should have thought impossible had I not myself once spied upon him in his more relaxed moments, when he thought that none could observe. "I've a mind to have you larroped! Damned if I don't larrop you myself!" He made a vicious dash at the Boy, who was only spurred by such terror to the arresting cry of.
"Ho, sir! The Hemerald....!"
"The Emerald ..." gulped Mr. Whaley in a very changed tone. And then, almost meekly: "Well, what about the Emerald, young Bert? What about it?" The fierceness had gone out of him altogether; he sat down. "Anyone been saying who took it?" For conscience that makes cowards of us all makes us most cowardly when we are innocent—especially in a trade with perquisites.
Ethelbert recovered some little of his composure, and there came into his eyes a look of simple cunning.
"There's some," he said, nodding mysteriously, "what might speak if they chose."
"Oh! Is there?" said Mr. Whaley. "Well then, speak, you little rat!"
"I didn't say it was me as knew," answered Ethelbert a little plaintively. "But don't you think, sir, that when the clothes are brushed and all, him as brushes finds out what's in the pockets—yes" (mysteriously) "even in them of the 'ighest?"
"'Oo'd be fool enough to leave such a thing in their pocket?" said Mr. Whaley contemptuously. "And 'oo do you mean by the 'ighest?"
Ethelbert nodded with a superior air.
"Ah!" he answered doggedly, "all I said was, 'there's some could speak if they chose.' And there's things that may be left in the pockets even of the 'ighest."
"Look 'ere, young Bert," said Mr. Whaley, rising again ponderously, and with a new threat in his face: "I'm not going to have any ofthat." Then shaking a considerable sausage of a forefinger at the lad, he added, "When you say 'the 'ighest' that's enough! Don't let me 'ear you speak again: leastways not on jewels and such like. There's only one name that it can mean you're driving at"—and there rose up within his mind the majesty of the master, Humphrey de Bohun.
"I'm driving at no one," said the Boy, struck suddenly again with terror. He had not dreamed that the upper servants felt so strongly upon the immunity of lords such as he in whose pocket the gem, to Ethelbert's certain knowledge, reposed—for he had put it there.
"You've been a-brushing the clothes, young lad, have yer? Yes, of course you have; that's your place; and setting 'em out as they should be set. And you say you found something in the pocket of the 'ighest, did you?"
"I never ..." began Ethelbert, almost on the point of howling.
"You shut your dangerous young mouth," shouted Mr. Whaley. "It's talking like that against your betters as 'as put many and many a lad in prison."
"Oh, sir!" said the unfortunate Bert.
"Now look here, my Boy," went on Mr. Whaley, in his heaviest manner, slowly transforming himself into the distant Superior and pronouncing divine moral judgment and guidance, as it were, for the very young. "You listen to me, and listen solemn. This may be a turning point in your life, it may. Talk like this among the lower servants, let alone a little bastard not yet sixteen, 'as been the ruin of some—aye, of many. So I tell ye. The gaols are full of 'em. Now, you mark what I say, young Ethelbert"—it was the first time he had ever used the entire name, but the occasion demanded it—"one word from your lips, and you're ruined. It's well you come to one like me, that might be your father like, and that has a care for your future, my lad. Remember that! One word from your lips, and you're ruined. It's not for you to be piecing this and that together. Gentlemen 'ave got ways o' their own, and, anyhow, I'm slow to believe you. There may be a game about all this, and, anyhow, not a word from your lips. Mark, my lad!" he went on, his voice booming, "ye're lost if ye speak. Have you taken that?" he ended, almost shouting again.
"Oh, yes, sir!" said the miserable Ethelbert, trembling. "Oh, sir, I meant no harm...."
"Well, then, you go anddono harm," concluded Mr. Whaley, and waved the infant away.
* * * * * * *
Mr. Whaley rose to his full height and girth and stretched. He looked in a little square looking-glass, one of his necessaries of life, thought his tie doubtful, carefully and gingerly put on a new one, worthy of the occasion. His boots—he glanced down at them—yes, his boots would do. His trousers were just what they should be. The fringe of hair round the majestic dome of his head never needed attention less than now.
It was a solemn moment in history. He, George Whaley, a man of weight and years, possessed, moreover, now of a sufficient competence, but not undesirous of making it larger still, was in possession of the dread secret. The head of the de Bohuns, one of His Majesty's principal Secretaries of State, had fallen, fallen, fallen! Humphrey de Bohun had pinched his own daughter's emerald. The Emerald of Catherine the Great. The fortune of the de Bohuns lay concealed by his master's hand, awaiting the receiver's gold. Oh, horror! In what embarrassment the unfortunate man had committed the fatal act Mr. Whaley knew not: could so good a man have been blackmailed by scoundrels? Why should he need money—and money at such risk? Alas! who can plumb the depths of the human heart? thought George Whaley—indeed, he almost spoke the words aloud, so apposite did they seem, and so often had he read them in his book of devotions. Yet was it so! And ever, in the least expected places, thought George Whaley again, lies the solution of a mystery. He shot his cuffs, drew himself up, coughed a little, and rehearsed the scene.
"I beg your pardon, sir, may I have the honour of a moment's confidential word with you?" And then another discreet cough.
Then how to put it? He thought long and deeply. He must put it with sympathy—almost as a friend. He must not forget that he was talking to a superior. It would need very skilful handling; but what are butlers for if they cannot skilfully handle? It is the very core of buttling!
He had handled other situations in his other situations, had Mr. Whaley: none quite so delicate as this, but still, some of 'em pretty delicate. Yes; he must talk to Humphrey as a friend. Respectfully, but as a friend: and above all firmly. It was clear that such a service would merit some reward.
God knows, there would be no tone of menace! Oh, no! Whatever honorarium might accrue to George Whaley as a reward for such revelation should be the gift of a grateful heart alone: and, said Mr. George Whaley to his own conscience, why not? He would be doing his master a very great service. Indeed, he would be doing a double service—nay, a treble one. For he would be rescuing the Home Secretary of England from his lower self; that was a moral service. He would be preventing him from inevitable discovery; that was a material service. He would be serving him faithfully as an honest domestic should; and that was a service of loyalty.
Was it to be wondered at (the whole scene rose vividly before his eyes as it was to be—as it certainly would be), was it to be wondered at that the grateful man should, on an impulse, seize the honest servitor's hand, grasp it warmly, and then, with a catch in his voice, cry aloud, "Whaley, you have served me well!" The rest would follow. Not less, he took it, than five hundred pounds.
Should he go further? Should he offer his services for taking back the gem discreetly and seeing that it should be laid, through means he could command, upon the dressing-table of the culprit's daughter—no one should know whence?
Time must show; the opportunity would develop; the details of the drama would be filled in. But the main lines were clear. George Whaley would save the head of the family of de Bohun; he would save the soul—and, incidentally, the more earthly reputation—of the head of the family of de Bohun. He would receive the little spontaneous, heartfelt reward due to so honest a liegeman of the de Bohuns. Ah! Chivalry was not dead....
But nothing must be done on impulse. He glanced at his watch. It was only just past three. He must watch the poor tortured soul until there had developed in it, as inevitably there would through the effect of time, a false security—a false security brought by suspicions and counter-suspicions among the guests, who could never dream the real truth. Upon such a mood the revelation would fall with tenfold effect.
Then, and then only—he would watch his moment—would George Whaley unburden himself of the curse of the de Bohuns and turn that curse into a blessing; moral to his master, and to himself material.
Such was the plan of George Whaley. Once more he recited, but in an undertone, a whisper, the words of which could not be heard by another, the very phrases he was to use, the gestures proper to the great moment when it should come. So discreetly did he rehearse that young Ethelbert without, his ear glued to the keyhole, heard nothing but a murmur of monologue within, and feared in one wild moment that the awful revelation about Lord Galton had driven the butler mad.
Marjorie had insisted upon seeing her father alone, and she had worked it easily enough.
The Professor in his relief from the accursed emerald had fallen into a sprightly mood. He had compelled young Galton to take asecondwalk, and therein had bored the turfist to agonies; which only shows that God is just, and that we are punished in that by which we sinned; in Galton's case, the avenue. During that walk the crystallographist volubly explained his exciting experiences in the past as an amateur detective. His large prattling mouth discoursed of marvellous sleuth-deeds in the past. But he did not go too far. He said nothing of emeralds. He kept the tit-bit, the great revelation, for his host—and he knew at what time to deliver it.
As for McTaggart, there was no difficulty in getting rid ofhim. All he desired was to be alone. He wandered off all solitary. Victoria Mosel, left with no one but Aunt Amelia, fled; and Aunt Amelia, once in her chair, was safe to remain there for the rest of the afternoon. Therefore was Marjorie safe to tell her father what should be done.
Her temper was at breaking point; she was in that mood when women will blame whatever is nearest at hand and most defenseless; and what more admirable butt than a widowed parent?
"Papa," she said, "there's only one thing to be done. You must get a detective! At once!"
"My dear child! My dear child!" said the shocked politician, all the traditions of the de Bohuns rising in his blood, "a detective at Paulings!"
"Oh, stuff and nonsense!" said the dutiful daughter. "I'm sick of all that. Considering the kind of people youdohave in Paulings—gaol birds like Tommy, and that damned old fool Cousin Bill, who steals diamonds ..."
"Hush! My dear, hush!" begged the appalled and terrified Home Secretary. He had noticed an open door, and hurriedly shut it. "Besides which, apart from being overheard, really, one must not say such things!"
"Say what?" retorted Marjorie sharply. "Oh, papa, for Heaven's sake don't talk any more nonsense, but do get that detective!"
"I can hardly telephone on such a thing as that," hesitated the poor man weakly. "Everything I say over the telephone is known at the exchange. And we know what happened that time when they were paid byThe Howl. As for letting one of the servants do it ..."
"Oh! Good heavens, papa!" said Marjorie. "Isn't there a car? Go up in the car! Tell Morden all about it."
"Morden can hold his tongue," mused de Bohun thoughtfully.
"Of course he can!" snapped Marjorie.
"But ..." hesitated her father, again, "I don't see how ... what with the guests ... and I wouldn't have them suspect for worlds...."
And as he said this he saw out of the corner of his eye his two cousins coming back towards the house, close at hand; the elder one was gesticulating in fine fury in his new-found happiness, and the other paced sombrely fierce at the end of his torture. Before they could open the front door ...
"Oh, damn!" said Marjorie—and she nearly added "you." "I'll telephone to you from my room. I'll give you an excuse to say the Home Office is calling." And she flew upstairs.
She was safely at her telephone before the two cousins had passed the front door. She gave them time to get into her father's presence, or for her to guess, at any rate, that one of them would be in the library. Then, with the promptitude of the young and the modern, she did the trick. The basement had put her through, and the bell on the big desk rang smartly. Galton and the Professor, sitting there in the room with the Home Secretary, looked up as quickly as did their host. He was on the receiver with a nervous rapidity; and the conversation was of a simple sort which I almost blush to recall.
"Now, papa, just tell them you've got to go to town because there is a hurried summons in London. Tell them you'll be back in a couple of hours."
"Who's on?" said Lord Galton.
"Yes! Yes!" said de Bohun. "All right! Yes! The Home Office? Ah! Yes? Tell me the details," knitting his brows a little; then turning to his two cousins, "It seems they want me at Whitehall."
The Telephone: "Hurry up, papa; it's all got to be fitted in pretty damn close, you know; they've got to get the man, and he's got to be got here by this afternoon, and got somehow!"
The Home Secretary: "Ah? Yes!" Frowning, "Oh! that's serious—well! You want me at once? All right! It's Saturday afternoon you know! Is Morden there? Tell him I'll be up within the hour." Then he turned to his guests. "Yes, they want me at once, it seems. Most urgent. But they say it won't take long." He spoke into the receiver in his turn: "Do you think I can get back here by five or a little after in the car? ... Yes," turning round and nodding at his guests thoughtfully, "they say I can get back by five—or a little after, in the car. What a business it is! I have often wondered," he added sententiously as he hung up the receiver on its hook and rang the bell to order the car—"I have often wondered what makes men take office. It's a tradition," he sighed, "Some one must serve the State! But it's a weary business." All this for the benefit of his two cousins, as though they had been a public meeting. "I'll get back at once; my man can do it in forty minutes from here if he takes the cut by Muffler's Lane, and there's not much traffic after the first two hours of a Saturday afternoon."
The car was round promptly enough. It was stopped within five miles for the great man to telephone back—from a local box—to Paulings for something he had forgotten to leave word of. But he did not telephone to Paulings. He telephoned to the Home Office, of which he was the chief. To such abasement do modern contrivances drive us. He called up the invaluable Morden and discovered to his enormous relief that the invaluable Morden, though it was a Saturday and already a quarter to four, was working away.
Within twenty minutes more the great statesman was in his official palace of Whitehall. Morden was there all right, as the telephone had told him. Morden was there! Oh invaluable Morden! have you not earned those directorships and that sinecure in the Engrossing Department? By God! you have.
"Morden," said the Home Secretary.
"Aye, aye," answered Mr. Morden wittily.
"You know Scotland Yard?"
Morden did not turn a hair. Did he know Scotland Yard? Did he? He, Morden of the Home Office! The man who laid the traps for the scapegoats ... the man who worked the parks.
So young—not forty—he had already seen pass before him a long troop of politicians, and he was ready to take any folly from them, short of physical violence. So when he was asked whether he, the junior brain of the Home Office, knew the place and institution called Scotland Yard, he said that he did; and he said it as naturally as though he had been asked for some information on Thibet.
"Now who do you think," said the Home Secretary musingly, as he rose from his chair and paced up and down the enormous room, his brows tortured with deep thought—"who do you think there would be—connected with Scotland Yard, mind you!—who would undertake a private inquiry, and be rigidly secret?"
"They are all rigidly secret," said Morden simply.
The Home Secretary wagged his long head with a weary simulation of cunning, and a would-be sly smile illuminated—or at least undimmed—his eye.
"That's all right for thepublic, Morden," he said. "But you'll see what I mean in a moment. Could they find some one evenmorerigidly secret than the rest? Eh?"
"Icould," said Morden. "I can tell you his name. A man called Brailton, close over sixty, but very good indeed. He was the man we used when there was that trouble about the death in Lady Matcham's house just before her administration went out of office."
"Oh, was he?" cried the Home Secretary eagerly. "Was he?" Then with great satisfaction in his voice: "In that case he is all right. It was certainly astonishing, the way that was kept back....You see, Morden, it's something of the same case here.The trouble is in my own house...Paulings."
For once Morden was genuinely taken aback. He was silent. "I see," he at last murmured gravely. "Yourhouse—and the safe side?—Of course!"
"It's in my own house—and the safe side? Good God, yes!" The Home Secretary spoke firmly. Then after a pause he added, "When they find out who has done it ..."
"Done what?" said Morden.
"Never mind," answered his courteous chief. "You're bound to know all about it in good time. Well, as I was saying, when they know who's done it, it might turn out to be some one of whom not a soul in the Press must know that he has done it. I mean, if hehasdone it, nobody must know that it was he who did it, outside the few who know that hehas. Have I made myself quite, quite clear?" he asked anxiously.
"Perfectly," said Morden.
"Now this man Brailton. When could he get down to Paulings?"
"He could come at an hour's notice," said Morden. "He got back from Yorkshire last night, and he's got nothing on for the moment."
"Ring him up," said the Home Secretary.
It was at six removes, and took just over ten minutes. The man in the outer room rang up the department, which told the section, which sent for the controller, who gave the order to the third floor, which got hold of the group, and the group had the good fortune to find Brailton at the end of a wire. Brailton would take whatever train he was told, and was waiting.
The Home Secretary meditated.
"I am going down by car now," he said. He looked at his watch. "It takes well under the hour by train—it's not seventeen miles. I shall be home by half past five, and I'll tell Marjorie. The best train is the six-thirty from St. Pancras. It gets down in forty minutes. I'll have him met and brought straight to Paulings. He'd be in time for dinner.... By the way," he added suddenly, as a thought struck him, "he'll be all right, will he? Go down?"
"Perfectly," said Morden eagerly. "Perfectly."
"No one'll suspect anything?" persisted his chief anxiously.
"Oh, no, no, no!" assured Morden airily. "I know the man like an uncle. Quiet, silver, rather too refined, silent, tall. Dresses—if anything—a little too carefully. At Lady Matcham's he passed for a Don working in Egypt who hadn't come to London for months. And in this last Yorkshire case he passed as aTimescorrespondent just back in England from the east after some years. All you have to do is to make up good reasons for people not having seen him before. He passes perfectly."
"The accent?" said the Home Secretary, knitting his brows again. "Is—well—you know what I mean?"
"Oh, perfectly. It's beautiful; it's remarkably smooth—yet not conspicuous," said Morden. Then, "You knew old Dickie Hafton?" he added suddenly.
"Of course I knew old Dickie Hafton!" answered the indignant Home Secretary. "He was my mother-in-law's first cousin—went to the Lords in 1895 and to the Lord in 1910. Fond o' women." And there rose before his mental eye the image of that aged peer, thin, aquiline, too proud, too careful of his dress, a man of exquisite voice a trifle thin in tone, but how precise! with the old, not uncharming habit of a few French words here and there. A public figure to the last, famous for his activities in the evangelical world.
"Well," answered Morden, "old Brailton's the startling image of Dickie Hafton. You'll like him. He goes down."
"All right," said the Home Secretary, hugely satisfied. "That's settled! I'm off; I leave it to you to make arrangements. The six-thirty."
But to make his chief quite at ease, Morden whispered something in his ear.
"Really?" said the Home Secretary, as he struggled into his coat—and he said it very loudly, so that everyone could hear it in the next room, to Morden's horror. "Not old Dickie'sson? There wouldn't be time for it!"
Morden nodded mysteriously, and whispered again: "Yes, there is! He was only eighteen.... It was the housemaid at his grandmother's." And the Home Secretary went out bemused and marvelling at the strange revelations of this pur world.
Many of our most important modern inventions have been forestalled by the Chinese, for whom we should have the greater regard in that they are not Christians. Gunpowder, False Money, the art of Printing, Diplomacy, Propaganda, Prison Fortunes, Taximeters and the Strike—all these are of the extreme Orient. But what have I to do with all these? It is of the Mariner's Compass that I sing—which also was first spotted by the Chink.
Now of the various forms of Mariner's Compass there is one with which some few of my readers may be acquainted. It is used in certain scientific experiments which have nothing to do with pointing to the North, but with the measurement of delicate electrical hints. The needle swings on a jewelled pivot, very nicely balanced, encased in a small round box about an inch across, covered in with glass so that no dust can affect the very sensitive affair; and at the side there is a little stud on a spring which you press with your finger when you want to fix and register the pointing of the needle. So long as you press the stud the needle stands firm. When you release the stud the needle trembles again.
All very interesting. But what of it?
Wait a moment. Retain this clearly in your mind, and I will proceed to the second point.
It has been remarked by the less stupid of psychologists—and that is not saying much—that cunning and intelligence are not often combined. Conversely, as Dr. Nancy Neerly shrewdly remarked, when her assistant at the Hospital for Nervous Diseases, gonophed her microscope, extreme incompetence is often accompanied by cunning. Nothing is more cunning than your half-wit.
Getting that principle firmly into your head, you will appreciate that when Professor de Bohun slunk out in the evening after his cousin's departure for town, into the neighbouring suburban villas of Bakeham (which, for one thing, fringed the Park—the de Bohuns had long ago screened it by a dense row of quickly-growing timber—and for another, provided the Home Secretary with a considerable part of his insufficient income) his action was not unconnected with that upon which his mind had been exercised for now nearly twenty-four hours.
He sought a policeman, and said with a sudden squeak which made that high official jump:
"Oh! Can you tell me if anyone round here sells scientific instruments? Optical instruments? Electrical instruments? ... Instruments?"
"Wot?" said the policeman.
"Let us say ... ah, for instance," went on the squeaky voice, "clinometers.... Shall we say Clinometers? Clinometers? ... Yes! Clinometers!"
"Pass along!" said the policeman. "Pass along!" And there was that in his eye of a man who hesitates between a verdict of lunacy and arrest for leg-pull.
"But, Constable ..." pleaded the unfortunate cadet of an ancient house.
"Pass on! Pass on!" boomed the tyrant, and as there was a difference of at least three octaves between the two men's voices, the unfortunate Professor obeyed the double bass, crossed the street at the risk of his life, and wandered inanely past the shop windows.
But there is a Providence for such as he, as also for drunkards and babes; and there, right before him, was an ancient bow window of bottle-glass panes; the name of the shop in old Georgian script; the information that it had been founded in 1805; and, behind the glass, two telescopes, a microscope, a clock, several watches, and a sextant of immense age.
The Professor went in.
"What I want ... ah!" he said. Then his eye fell upon the very thing he desired. It lay there in a glass case, and the owner of the shop, no younger than his customer, brought it out with a palsied hand.
"That's it," said the Professor, nodding genially. "That's it. That's what I want. That's it." Slipping it into his pocket, he made for the door, nodding good day.
"Hi! Mister! That'll be five guineas," said the ancient. Oh! vileness of avaricious age! He had seen his client coming out by the garden gate by the Great House, he had noted guilty haste, he had noted academic idiocy, and he charged accordingly.
"Oh, yes! Of course ... ah!What! Five guineas? ... fiveguineas! FIVE GUINEAS!"
It was a sickener. But the wages of Sin is Death. He must have it—or something of the sort. And he must have it now, before Humphrey got home. Sin will not wait.