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 a _second_ walk,
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 of _him_. 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 you _do_ have 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 by _The 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 the _public_, Morden," he said. "But you'll see
what I mean in a moment. Could they find some one even _more_ rigidly
secret than the rest? Eh?"
"_I_ could," 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. "_Your_ house--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 he _has_ done it, nobody must
know that it was he who did it, outside the few who know that he _has_.
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 a _Times_ correspondent 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's _son_? 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.