MRS. GRANT'S DIPLOMACY
A week later Private Bill Grant--late Mr. William Montmorency of
Denmore Manor--was approaching the parental roof of his friend, Alf
Higgins--_ex_ Wentworth. Bill neither looked nor felt happy. Life
during the period since the evacuation of Denmore had been profitless
and stale. True, he had plenty of money in his pocket for a man
in his position; but his trouble was that his position no longer
satisfied him. His home, after the glaring magnificence of Denmore,
seemed cramped and tawdry. The public-houses of Hackney, once palaces
of delight to be dreamed about from exile in a foreign land, were
squalid and stuffy. The liquid they purveyed was--by contrast with the
full-bodied brew supplied by Eustace--tasteless and flat. The barmaids
compared most unfavorably with his lost Lucy in beauty, in their manner
of dressing and in their attitude towards himself. Lucy, for instance,
had never advised him to boil his head.
Bill was, in fact, thoroughly miserable; and he saw no prospect
whatever of any alleviation of his trouble until his leave was over. He
did not see the faintest possibility of obtaining the Button from Alf,
until they were back in France--and he was living in anticipation of
that glorious moment.
He had no very clear idea why he was going to see Alf now. Just at
present, he and his mate were in that state of acute mutual irritation
known as "being on one another's nerves." Alf was still obstinately
determined never again to make use of the Button, and disliked any
reference to the subject; and Bill, impelled by some malignant demon,
seemed unable to keep veiled allusions to it out of his conversation.
To Alf their return to Hackney brought nothing but relief. His brief
spurt of passion for Isobel had been swallowed up in his joy at finding
himself once more free to live his own life, no longer the helpless
puppet of Fate in a station and a way of existence to which he had felt
himself a shrinking stranger. Isobel herself was now more than ever the
figure of a dream. In fact, all the events of that strange time seemed
to him hazy and unreal, until their reality was brought home to him in
an unexpected and startling manner.
Alf had imagined that the Denmore Manor chapter of his life was
definitely and forever closed when he reached Waterloo on the night
of his flight. He had at once started to grow his mustache again, and
already a bristly growth was doing its best to eliminate the last
traces of Alfred Wentworth, Esquire. But Alfred Wentworth had been too
important a personage in his short career for the world to accept so
lightly his disappearance. The papers had taken up the affair, and the
fuss they made of it both surprised and alarmed Alf. To make matters
worse, Mr. Higgins senior--who might be described politically as being
a half-baked semi-socialist--had regarded the whole affair as being in
some obscure way a device of Capital to defraud Labor, and had talked
of nothing else for some days, until Alf's irritation came to a head in
regrettable outbursts of temper.
Bill entered the house on this occasion to find Alf's father reading
aloud from an evening paper and making fierce marginal comments thereon
for the benefit of his wife and son. The former--a stout lady of placid
appearance--was lulling herself peacefully to sleep in a rocking-chair,
soothed by her husband's voice as much as by the motion. Alf was
sitting hunched up in a rickety basket-chair, sucking at an empty pipe.
"'Ullo!" said Alf, not very graciously.
"'Ullo!" returned Bill, as sourly as he.
Mr. Higgins senior, however, was pleased at the prospect of obtaining
an addition to his audience and welcomed his visitor more effusively.
"'Ullo, Grant," he said. "Come and sit down. Wodjer think o' this?" He
smote the paper in his hand. "The country's goin' to ruin under this
'ere gover'mint. Fair makes yer blood boil."
"What does?" asked Bill politely but without interest. Old Higgins'
blood had a habit of boiling on the smallest provocation.
"The 'ole bloomin' business. 'Ere you an Alf 'ere come back on leave to
this country, an' what do you find?"
He paused dramatically. His audience gazed at the fireplace with
complete apathy--except Mrs. Higgins, who emitted a slight snore and
dropped her head upon her ample bosom.
"What do you find, I say?" reiterated her husband.
"Well, what?" Alf asked when the pause had grown too painful to be
borne any longer.
"What? Why, 'eaps of things," returned his sire rather feebly. "It's
all wrong. The country's full o' spies, for one thing. Full of 'em. 'Ow
do we know 'oo's a spy an' 'oo isn't?--tell me that. Look 'ere, at this
'ere Denmore Manor business. We've 'ad the papers full o' that for a
week past, an' not a single arrest made. It's my belief that Capital
won't let 'em make any arrests, that's what I think. Disgustin', I call
it!"
"'Ow d'you know there _was_ spies at Denmore Manor?" asked Alf, in whom
the innocent accusation rankled deeply.
"Didn't it say there was niggers? An' didn't the paper 'ave a picture
o' the little boy as they kidnaped--_'e_ said they was spies, an' _'e_
ought to know, 'e ought. An' yet them blighters is allowed to escape,
an' they must be all over the country now, an' yet nothing's done."
"What's the paper say?" asked Bill calmly.
Mr. Higgins, much pleased, puffed out his chest and read.
"'The mystery of the whereabouts of the late occupants of Denmore Manor
continues to arouse a great deal of public interest. No light has yet
been thrown either on the reason for its occupation or upon the method
whereby these mysterious people have made good their escape. The police
have now a strong clew as to the identity of the ringleaders, and they
are following this up.' And I 'ope to 'Eaven," concluded the reader
piously, "as 'ow it'll come to something. But I'll bet it's a blinkin'
washout. The police is no good."
Alf and Bill stared blankly at one another.
"A strong clew ... they are following it up." The words sounded
ominous. And yet--what _could_ the clew be? Mr. Higgins, continuing
his scathing denunciation of the police, found that he had lost the
attention of his audience. Alf was raising enquiring eyebrows in Bill's
direction, while Bill was shaking his head. He had no idea what the
"clew"--if such existed--might be. The elder Higgins regarded this
pantomime with growing indignation for a moment.
"It don't seem to matter to you much _what_ 'appens," he said coldly at
last. "If _I_ was out at the front, an' came back an' found the country
in this kind o' state, I'd ... I'd...." His vocabulary suddenly proved
unequal to the strain placed upon it, and he tailed off into silence.
"_I_ don't believe they was spies at all," said Alf doggedly.
"Not spies?" His father's voice quivered with righteous indignation.
"Well, what about this 'ere parson, then?--tell me that."
Alf, who had forgotten Mr. Davies' very existence, remembered suddenly,
that in the hurry of departure he had left that unfortunate clergyman
and his wife still laboring under the disability so ruthlessly imposed
upon them. His conscience smote him.
"Why," he asked uneasily, "what's wrong with 'im? 'As 'e being gettin'
into trouble?"
"No, but 'e blinkin' well ought to!"
"What's 'e done?"
"It's what 'e 'asn't done as is the matter. 'E knows something about
this 'ere business. 'E went up to the 'ouse. But 'e won't say a word.
Won't tell the police nothing. Nobody can't get 'im to speak."
"But 'e ain't in no trouble, is 'e?" persisted Alf.
"Trouble? No. They can't touch _'im_. If it was you or me, now, it 'ud
be a case o' the police."
Alf, much relieved, stifled his conscience. The orator continued his
fierce harangue.
"Yer mean to tell me," he demanded, "as 'e couldn't say something if 'e
wanted to? 'E's in league with 'em, that's what 'e is. Not spies? Not
spies? Why, you're as bad as this 'ere Sassiety lady--FitzPeter they
call 'er."
"What's she done?" asked Alf sharply.
"Done? Why, she goes about saying in the paper as she don't believe
they was spies. All cammyflage, that is. What are they, if not
spies?--tell me that. I believe she's mixed up in it 'erself, too. Why,
this 'ere feller Wentworth, 'e went to 'er 'ouse to dinner the very
same night 'e 'ad to clear out. That makes you think a bit, eh? An'
I 'ear she went an' 'ad a talk with 'im in 'is own 'ouse too. It's
all Capital an' 'Idden 'And together. These 'ere Sassiety ladies is no
good. Wrong 'uns, my boy, that's what they are. If I 'ad me way I'd...."
"If I 'ad my way," said Alf with heat, "I'd 'ave people like you
muzzled, I would."
"You ... you ...!"
"'Ow dare you miscall a lady like Miss FitzPeter?"
"Steady, Alf--'old on," said Bill, in an agony lest passion should lead
his friend to indiscretion.
"I tell yer," resumed Alf, still at the top of his voice, waking his
mother from her comfortable nap, "I tell yer that Miss FitzPeter never
'ad nothing to do with no spies, never in 'er 'ole life she didn't, an'
any one 'oo says so is a liar."
"Ho! I'm a liar, am I?" Mr. Higgins leapt to his feet. His wife,
according to her invariable custom when her menfolk quarreled, began to
weep quietly, but persistently. "Get out o' the 'ouse! I ain't goin'
to be called names by no young 'ound like you. Get out of it! An' what
d'you know about 'er, anyway?"
"What do I know?" Alf laughed with scorn. "I know a dam' sight
more'n...."
"Come _on_, Alf!" urged Bill earnestly in his ear, anxious only to get
him away before he made some terrible revelation. Alf allowed himself
to be led into the street, where Bill gave him a "dressing down."
"You blinkin' fool," he said. "What the 'ell d'you want to go an' do
that for? You'll give the 'ole blinkin' show away if you ain't careful.
Nice we should look if any one found out it was us at the Manor!"
"Well," returned Alf, still fermenting, "what's 'e want to go talking
like that for? Spies, indeed! What's 'e know about it?"
"That ain't the question," replied Bill seriously. "What _I_ want to
know is, what's the police know about it. You 'eard what the paper said
about a clew."
"Don't they always say that?"
"Yes, but not so confident as that. If they don't know nothing about
it, they say: 'The police 'as a clew,' an' everybody knows they 'aven't
got nothing o' the sort. But this says: 'A strong clew, what the police
is followin' up.' Did we leave anything be'ind us?"
Rack their brains as they would, they could not remember anything they
had left as a clew. The question worried them considerably. Bill made
once more his suggestion that Eustace could be employed to set things
right, but dropped the idea hastily in face of Alf's reception thereof.
"I expect," he said at last, hopefully, but without real conviction,
"as it's all cammyflage, arter all. There ain't no clew, an' they just
pitched the tale extra strong so's people won't make remarks."
Each man kept an anxious eye on the papers for the next few days, but
nothing more was published concerning the clew; and when the time went
on, and the day before they were due to return to the front arrived
without any more light being thrown on the Manor mystery, they began to
feel more easy.
But that day, as Bill and his mother (a lady as aggressive as Mrs.
Higgins was the reverse) were finishing their dinner there came a heavy
knocking on the door.
Mrs. Grant peeped out of the window to see who her unexpected visitors
might be.
"Two policemen!" she exclaimed in angry alarm. "Is this some o' your
doin's, Bill Grant? What you been up to?"
"Nothin'," said Bill as jauntily as he could for the cold chills that
were chasing one another up and down his backbone. "Nothin' at all."
"I 'ope not," answered his mother grimly. She had seen his expression
at hearing the word "policeman," and she suspected the worst. Whether
or not the police succeeded in extracting anything from him, she was
confident that he had been doing something wrong. She determined that
once the police had been safely got away, Bill would have her to deal
with.
"If you've been doin' anythin'," she went on, "it'll be worse for you.
I'm a respectable woman, I am. Quick, go an' answer the door before the
neighbors see we got the police 'ere."
As Bill went towards the door the knocking was renewed with redoubled
violence. Mrs. Grant could see interested faces at the windows of the
houses opposite, and her temper became worse than ever. She went into
the passage, where Bill had just admitted two large constables.
"Come in 'ere," she said.
They entered.
Under his armpit the larger of the two--a sergeant--bore a book which
Bill at once recognized. It was the old lady's copy of the _Arabian
Nights_--and the "strong clew" of the newspapers. Bill prepared to lie
as he had never lied before.
The smaller policeman--he could not have weighed more than fourteen
stone--produced an indelible pencil and an official notebook. He
laid the latter on the table and moistened the former preparatory to
beginning his clerical labors, receiving thereby a purple stain on the
lip.
"Private William Grant?" asked the sergeant.
"That's me."
"5th Middlesex Fusiliers?"
"That's right," said Bill. He was relieved at being able to start by
telling the truth. It laid a firm foundation for the lies he would have
to construct later on.
"Regimental Number 2312?"
"Correct," said Bill. "What might you want o' me?"
"I just want to ask you a question or two." The scribe at the table
gave his pencil another lick, increasing the stain on his lip.
"What about?"
The spokesman gave a doubtful glance at Mrs. Grant, who was still
quivering in the background.
"If the lady wouldn't mind ..." he began politely.
"'Op it, mother!" said Bill. "You go an' get on with yer washin'."
"Oh, indeed! I'm not to know what goes on in me own 'ouse, ain't I?
Very well then, you can ask yer questions in the street, or the back
yard."
"P'raps it don't matter," said the sergeant uneasily. "I only want to
ask a question or two about this book."
"Right-o," said Bill. "Carry on!"
Should he deny all knowledge of the book? If he did, could he outface
the policemen and convince them? How much did the police know, and how
had they managed to connect him with the book at all? He could not
answer any of these questions, and his only course was to wait till his
adversary should give him a lead. He did not have to wait long.
"This book," said the sergeant, "was sent out to you at the front by
Miss So-fire Browne at a recent date."
"It was," admitted Bill. So that was how they had traced him, was
it--by the name and address of Miss Browne's brother written on the
fly-leaf? And seeing that they knew so much, it was well for him that
he had not after all denied his connection with the book.
"Can you tell me under what circumstances you relinquished possession
of the volume in question?"
This was the point where truth must begin to be tempered. Bill set his
intuitive faculty busily to work.
"Is that Latin for when did I lose it?" he asked, more with the idea
of gaining time than of procuring information or even of insulting the
policeman.
"None o' that," said the Arm of the Law majestically. "Answer the
question. When did you see the book last?"
The owner of the notebook, who had so far merely been ticking off the
various items of Bill's description as the correctness of each was
established, realized that the heavy part of his task was now just
about to begin. He devoted himself to suction of his pencil-point with
such assiduity that he began to look as though he had regaled himself
heavily with black cherries.
Bill, his mind still working at lightning speed, gazed at the
amanuensis in apparent fascination. His object was to invent a method
of disposing of the book which while being credible should not admit
of corroboration. Supposing he said he had lost it at Folkestone on
his way home?... But that might raise the question of the date of his
return to England, and he did not want his mother to know that he had
been home for some time before coming to her. He might manage to put
the police off, but once his mother had got hold of a suspicious fact,
there was no balking _her_.
"Come on," said the police sergeant impatiently. "What's the matter
with you?"
"I was just waitin' till the Town Clerk 'ere was ready," he explained
with his native impudence. "When did I last see the book? I don't know
as I can remember the exact day."
"Never mind that. 'Ow did you come to lose it?"
The sergeant's patience was wearing thin. Bill, who had now had time to
think out his story, took a deep breath.
"Last I seen of it," he said, "I lent it to a chap in the Scottish
Rifles what come into our dug-out one night--name o' Conky. 'E come in
about twenty-past eleven, 'avin' lost 'is way, an' 'e sez...."
"'Ere," said the constable at the table, speaking for the first time.
"Steady!"
"'Ow far 'ave you got with it?" asked Bill kindly.
The scribe, with beads of sweat standing out on his brow, and a
protruding tongue whose tip followed the motions of his pencil, was
writing madly.
"'Dug-out,'" he quoted. "Name o' ... what did you say?"
"Conky."
"That ain't no good," interposed the sergeant with severity. "Don't
waste yer time takin' down muck o' that kind, Collins. What was 'is
other name?"
"Smith, I think," said Grant, his fertile brain casting about for
further corroborative detail with which to give artistic verisimilitude
to his otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. "I can't be sure,
though."
"Well," said the sergeant in a resigned tone, "what did 'e do, any'ow?"
"'E took the book," resumed the romancer. "An' 'e said 'e'd like
to read it. So I lent it to 'im, an' 'e promised to let me 'ave it
back next time 'e was back restin'--stop me if I go too fast, Mr.
Collins--an' as it 'appened I never seed 'im again."
"What 'appened to 'im?"
"I dunno for certain. But I did 'ear a rumor as 'ow 'e got nabbed, poor
chap."
"Captured?"
"Yes. The Boche come over when 'is battalion was in the line."
"An' 'ow about the book?"
Bill considered a moment. The general consensus of opinion throughout
the country insisted on regarding the Denmore Manor affair as the work
of German spies. In Bill's eyes this was an exceedingly satisfactory
opinion for the country to hold. He decided to give the country a
little assistance.
"The book?" he repeated innocently. "I s'pose the Boche captured that,
too."
Both policemen fell into the trap. Their eyes met in a stare full of
meaning.
"The Boche!" exclaimed the sergeant. "Then it _was_ a spy as...." He
paused, remembering his orders not to divulge to his victim the object
of his questions.
"Look 'ere," said Bill, who was beginning to enjoy himself. "What's
this all about, any'ow? Where did you get the book from, an' what's it
got to do with the police?"
"This chap Smith, now," resumed the sergeant blandly, ignoring Bill's
questions. "What sort of a lookin' feller might 'e be, now?"
Bill pondered.
"Mind you," he said, with the air of an honest man who does not want
to mislead his audience, "I can't be sure 'is name _was_ Smith. Might
'a been Brown--or Thompson. One o' them common names, any'ow. 'E was
one o' them middlin' chaps, not exactly dark, you know--an' yet I don't
know as I should call 'im fair. 'E 'ad blue eyes, an' 'e said 'e come
from Lambeth. P'raps they'll know 'im there."
"We might ask the recruiting office," said the sergeant to the
painstaking Collins, now laboriously engaged in taking down Bill's
minute description of Mr. "Conky" Smith (or Brown or Thompson) of
Lambeth.
"You might," agreed Bill. "But o' course," he went on helpfully, "'e
might not 'ave been in Lambeth when 'e joined up. P'raps 'e 'listed in
Scotland, seein' 'e was in a Jocks regiment."
The sergeant rose to his feet with a sigh. He had started out with high
hopes, but now he felt that he was not very much further forward than
before with the Manor Mystery.
"Well," he said. "If that's all you knows, I'll be getting along. Good
afternoon, mum. Sorry to 'ave troubled you."
Mrs. Grant gave a grunt, and looked anything but pleasant. She
followed her visitors to the door with the sourest of faces. But
on the doorstep her demeanor changed with startling suddenness. She
became positively effusive, making one or two little jokes at which
the sergeant, puzzled, but relieved at her change of attitude, roared
appreciatively. Finally she insisted on shaking hands with both
officers, and as they tramped off down the street she stood at her
door, waving her hand at their unconscious backs. Having thus appeased
the curiosity and disappointed the hopes of all the dear friends and
neighbors who had been waiting in ghoulish joy to find out the nature
of the police visit to her house, she returned to her son, who, very
pleased with himself, was smiling at his reflection in the mirror.
"An' now," she said briskly, "what's all this about, eh? What's all
this talk about books, an' spies, an' Mr. Bloomin' Conky o' Lambeth,
eh?"
"You 'eard what I told 'im," said Bill.
"Yes, an' I knows enough about you, Bill Grant, to tell when you're
lyin'. I didn't meet yer this week for the first time. Now let's 'ave
the truth. What d'you mean by bringin' the police into a respectable
'ouse, eh?"
Bill looked round him in hunted fashion. Then, obeying his lifelong
instinct that in dealing with his mother, discretion was the better
part of valor, he picked up his cap and backed to the door. He mumbled
something about--"Step out an' 'ave a look round"--and was gone.
His mother glared furiously at the door. If only she had thought to
lock it when the policemen went! But she wasted no time in useless
regrets. When Bill came back to supper she'd get it all out of him.
Meanwhile it might be as well to go out and explain to one or two
neighbors how her two cousins in the police force had been to see her.
She put on her bonnet and went.
Bill, skulking at the corner of the street, waited till she was out
of sight. Then, slipping into the house, he collected his kit and his
rifle, and went to a Y.M.C.A. at Victoria, and there he spent the
night. Mrs. Grant did not see her son again before he departed for
the front; she was thus free to invent her own reasons for his visit
from the police. But she never connected Bill with the statement which
appeared subsequently in the less dignified newspapers.
"The Denmore Manor Mystery still continues to baffle the most acute
intellects of the police force. It is, however, certain, from evidence
of the most unimpeachable nature, that the whole affair is a plot of
German intrigue and the Hidden Hand. When will the Government ...?
Etc., etc."
Bill, on the steamer crossing from England to France, read this passage
aloud to Alf, to whom he had already recounted the story of "Conky."
"You _are_ a one, Bill," said Higgins, quite in his ancient vein of
fervent admiration.
Bill merely looked self-conscious. He felt that the tribute was no more
than his due.