"THE MAN WHO STAYED AT HOME."
No, he was not a shirker, as you thought. Nor was he engaged in making
munitions of war, or khaki, or woollens, or military boots, or in
exporting cocoa to the enemy _viâ_ neutral Holland--that roaring
monopoly of the Pacificist. His business was to spy at spies--a task
that called for as much coolness and courage as any job at the Front.
And so when the officious flapper presented him with a white feather he
had no use for it except as a pipe-cleaner.
For his purpose _Christopher Brent_ had taken up his residence at a
"select boarding establishment" on the East Coast, which contained the
following members of the German Secret Service: _Mrs. Sanderson_,
proprietress; _Carl_, her son, clerk in the British Admiralty; _Fräulein
Schroeder_, boarder, and _Fritz_, waiter. Their design, if I rightly
penetrated its darkness, was to give information of the whereabouts of a
certain section of the Expeditionary Force which was "coming through
from the North"; to supply Berlin with plans of the coast defences; and
finally to give a signal to a German submarine by the firing of the
house, which would incidentally mean the roasting alive of its innocent
contents. All this (for the sake of ARISTOTLE and the Unities) was to
take place in a single day, though I for one could not believe that
either the pigeon post or the ordinary mail would be equal to the
strain.
Their utensils included a Marconi instrument concealed in the chimney; a
bomb; a revolver; maps of the minefield and harbour; a carrier-pigeon,
and a knife for disposing of the cliff-sentry.
To frustrate their schemes something more was needed than the wit of
_Brent_ and his ally, the widow _Leigh_; something more, even, than his
skill in shooting pigeons in flight with an air-rifle. The vacuum was
supplied by the crass stupidity of the EMPEROR'S minions. Even when full
credit is given to _Brent_ for letting his bath overflow so as to flood
the public salon and render it untenable, it was surely unwise of _Mrs.
Sanderson_ to offer her private parlour for the use of the boarders on
the very day set apart for the execution of her plans which were centred
in this room. It was also gross carelessness on the part of her son,
when he had _Brent_, with hands up, at his mercy, to place his own
revolver on the table and to use, in exchange, the unloaded weapon which
he had taken from his opponent's pocket. It was puerile, too, to accept
without proof the verbal assurances of the widow _Leigh_ that she was
one of themselves, a loyal German spy. And _Fritz_ committed an
unpardonable error in giving away the site of the Marconi apparatus by
his undisguised suspicion of anybody who took any interest in the
fireplace.
And so their schemes all went agley; the whole pack was arrested; and
when the curtain fell on a happy group of boarders in midnight
_déshabillé_ there was every promise that the misdemeanants would
receive a month's imprisonment or at least a caution to be of good
behaviour for the future.
Illustration:
"HANDS UP!"
"HANDS UP YOURSELF!"
_Carl Sanderson._ .. Mr. MALCOLM CHERRY.
_Christopher Brent._ .. Mr. DENNIS EADIE.
I understand, on good authority, that the tendency of the public at this
juncture of the War is to demand light refreshment. Well, they have it
here. For, though the subject deals with a serious problem of the hour,
it can be treated, and is treated, with a very permissible humour that
just stops short of farce. Some of the stage-devices, as I am assured by
my betters, may have a touch of antiquity, but their application is as
modern as can well be, and I should indeed be ungrateful if after an
entertainment so smoothly and dexterously administered I were to be
captious about origins or other matters of pedantry.
Mr. DENNIS EADIE, as _Brent_, both in his real character of detective
and in the assumed futility of his disguise as a genial idiot, was
equally excellent, and again proved his gift for quick-change artistry.
Miss MARY JERROLD'S _Fräulein Schroeder_ was extraordinarily Teutonic in
all but her quiet humour, which she seemed to have caught from the
country of her adoption. The _Fritz_ of Mr. HENRY EDWARDS was another
delightful sketch, though his actual German birth and his allegation of
Dutch nationality were both belied by the red Italian corpuscles with
which the authors had inoculated him. Miss JEAN CADELL, as usual, played
a pale and fatuous spinster, but this time, in the part of _Miss
Myrtle_, she had her chance, and seized it bravely. When that typical
British boarder, Mr. _John Preston, M. P._ (interpreted with great relish
and vigour by Mr. HUBERT HARBEN), remarked, "I call a spade a spade,"
she replied, "And I suppose you would call a dinner-napkin a
_serviette_"--one of the pleasantest remarks in a play where the good
things said were many and unforced.
I have not mentioned the admirable performance--its merits might easily
be missed--of Mr. STANLEY LOGAN as a Territorial Tommy; or the very
natural manners of Mrs. ROBERT BROUGH as _Mrs. Sanderson_; or the quiet
art of Miss RUTH MACKAY in a part (_Miriam Leigh_) that offered a
too-limited scope to her exceptional talents. Miss ISOBEL ELSOM
contributed her share of the rather perfunctory love-interest with a
very pretty sincerity; and Mr. MALCOLM CHERRY, in the ungrateful part of
the spy _Carl_, did his work soundly, with a lofty sacrifice of his own
obvious good-nature. Indeed, it was a very excellent cast.
I should like to congratulate the authors, Messrs. LECHMERE WORRALL, and
HAROLD TERRY, on having given the public what they want, without lapsing
into banality. The attraction of the first two Acts was not, perhaps,
fully sustained in the third, but they gave us quite a cheerful evening;
and at the fall of the curtain the audience was so importunate in their
applause that Mr. DENNIS EADIE had to break it to them that, though the
loss of their company would give him pain, he thought the time had come
for them to go away.
I did not notice Mr. REGINALD MCKENNA in the stalls, but it was a great
night for him and the Home Office.