“London, too, has its scars, and London is proud of them,” a great
morning paper declared the next morning. “The last and gigantic effort
of German ‘frightfulness’ has come and passed. London was visited before
dawn this morning by a fleet of sixteen Zeppelins and forty aeroplanes.
Seven of these former monsters lie stranded and wrecked in various parts
of the city, two are known to have collapsed in Essex, and another is
reported to have come to grief in Norfolk. Of the aeroplanes, nineteen
were shot down, and of the rest so far no news has been heard. The
damage to life and property, great though it may seem, is much less than
was expected. Such losses as we have sustained we shall bear with pride
and fortitude. We stand now more closely than ever in touch with our
gallant allies. We, too, bear the marks of battle in the heart of our
country.”
Thomson paused to finish his breakfast, and abandoning the leading
article turned to a more particular account.
“The loss of life,” the journal went on to say, “although regrettable,
is, so far as accounts have reached us, not large. There are thirty-one
civilians killed, a hundred and two have been admitted into hospitals,
and, curiously enough, only one person bearing arms has suffered.
We regret deeply to announce the death of a very distinguished young
officer, Captain Ronald Granet, a nephew of Sir Alfred Anselman. A bomb
passed through the roof of his house in Sackville Street, completely
shattering the apartment in which he was sitting. His servant perished
with him. The other occupants of the building were, fortunately for
them, away for the night.”
The paper slipped from Thomson’s fingers. He looked through the windows
of his room, across the Thames. Exactly opposite to him a fallen chimney
and four blackened walls, still smouldering, were there to remind him
of the great tragedy. He looked down at the paper again. There was no
mistake. It was the judgment of a higher Court than his!
He made his way down to the War Office at a little before ten o’clock.
The streets were crowded with people and there were throngs surrounding
each of the places where bombs had been dropped. Towards the Pall Mall
Arch the people were standing in thousands, trying to get near the wreck
of the huge Zeppelin, which completely blocked all the traffic through
St. James’s Park. Thomson paused for a moment at the top of Trafalgar
Square and looked around him. The words of the newspaper were indeed
true. London had her scars, yet there was nothing in the faces of the
people to show fear. If anything, there was an atmosphere all around of
greater vitality, of greater intensity. The war had come a little nearer
at last than the columns of the daily Press. It was the real thing with
which even the every-day Londoner had rubbed shoulders. From Cockspur
Street to Nelson’s Monument the men were lined up in a long queue,
making their way to the recruiting office.
Admiral Conyers paid his usual morning visit to the Admiralty, lunched
at his club and returned home that evening in a state of suppressed
excitement. He found his wife and Geraldine alone and at once took up
his favourite position on the hearth-rug.
“Amongst the other surprises of the last twenty-four hours,” he
announced, “I received one to-day which almost took my breath away. It
had reference to a person whom you both know.”
“Not poor Captain Granet?” Lady Conyers asked. “You read about him, of
course?”
“Nothing to do with Granet, poor fellow,” the Admiral continued.
“Listen, I was walking, if you please, for a few yards with the man who
is practically responsible to-day for the conduct of the war. At the
corner of Pall Mall we came face to face with Thomson. I nodded and we
were passing on, when to my astonishment my companion stopped and held
out both his hands. ‘Thomson, my dear fellow,’ he said, ‘I came round to
your rooms to-day but you were engaged three or four deep. Not another
word save this--thanks! When we write our history, the country will know
what it owes you. At present, thanks!’”
“Major Thomson?” Lady Conyers gasped.
“Hugh?” Geraldine echoed.
The Admiral smiled.
“We passed on,” he continued, “and I said to his lordship--‘Wasn’t that
Thomson, the Inspector of Field Hospitals?’ He simply laughed at me. ‘My
dear Conyers,’ he said, ‘surely you knew that was only a blind? Thomson
is head of the entire Military Intelligence Department. He has the rank
of a Brigadier-General waiting for him when he likes to take it. He
prefers to remain as far as possible unknown and unrecognised, because
it helps him with his work.’ Now listen! You’ve read in all the papers
of course, that we had warning of what was coming last night, that the
reason we were so successful was because every light in London had been
extinguished and every gun-station was doubly manned? Well, the warning
we received was due to Thomson and no one else!”
“And to think,” Lady Conyers exclaimed “that we were half afraid to tell
your father that Hugh was coming to dinner!”
Geraldine had slipped from the room. The Admiral blew his nose.
“I hope Geraldine’s going to be sensible,” he said. “I’ve always
maintained that Thomson was a fine fellow, only Geraldine seemed rather
carried away by that young Granet. Poor fellow! One can’t say anything
about him now, but he was just the ordinary type of showy young soldier,
not fit to hold a candle to a man like Thomson.”
Lady Conyers was a little startled.
“You have such sound judgement, Seymour,” she murmured.
Thomson was a few minutes late for dinner but even the Admiral forgave
him.
“Just ourselves, Thomson,” he said, as they made their way into the
dining-room. “What a shock the Chief gave me to-day! You’ve kept things
pretty dark. Inspector of Hospitals, indeed!”
Thomson smiled.
“That was my excuse,” he explained, “for running backwards and forwards
between France and England at the beginning of the war. There’s no
particular secret about my position now. I’ve had a very hard fight to
keep it, a very hard fight to make it a useful one. Until last night,
at any rate, it hasn’t seemed to me that English people realised that
we were at war. Now, I hope at last that we are going to take the gloves
off. Do you know,” he went on, a little later, “that in France they
think we’re mad. Honestly, in my position, if I had had the French laws
at my back I believe that by to-day the war would have been over. As it
is, when I started even my post was a farce. We had to knuckle under the
whole of the time, to the civil authorities. They wanted to fine a spy
ten shillings or to bind him over to keep the peace! I’ve never had to
fight for anything so hard in my life as I’ve had to fight once or twice
for my file of men at the Tower. At the beginning of the war we’d catch
them absolutely red-handed. All they had to do was to surrender to the
civil authorities, and we had a city magistrate looking up statutes to
see how to deal with them.”
“There are a good many things which will make strange reading after the
war is over,” the Admiral said grimly. “I fancy that my late department
will provide a few sensations. Still, our very mistakes are our
justification. We were about as ready for war as Lady Conyers there is
to play Rugby football for Oxford.”
“It has taken us the best part of a year to realise what war means,”
Thomson assented. “Even now there are people whom one meets every day
who seem to be living in abstractions.”
“Last night’s raid ought to wake a few of them up,” the Admiral grunted.
“I should like to have shown those devils where to have dropped a few of
their little toys. There are one or two men who were making laws not so
long ago, who’d have had a hole in their roofs.”
Geraldine laughed softly.
“I really think that dad feels more bloodthirsty when he talks about
some of our politicians than he does about the Germans,” she declared.
“Some of our worst enemies are at home, any way,” Sir Seymour insisted,
“and we shall never get on with the war till we’ve weeded them out.”
“Where did the nearest bomb to you drop?” Thomson inquired.
“The corner of St. James’s Street,” Sir Seymour replied. “There were two
houses in Berkeley Street alight, and a hole in the roof of a house in
Hay Hill. The bomb there didn’t explode, though. Sad thing about young
Granet, wasn’t it? He seems to be the only service man who suffered at
all.”
Lady Conyers shivered sympathetically.
“It was perfectly ghastly,” she murmured.
“A very promising young officer, I should think,” the Admiral continued,
“and a very sad death. Brings things home to you when you remember that
it was only yesterday he was here, poor fellow!”
Geraldine and her mother rose from their places, a few minutes later.
The latter looked up at Thomson as he held open the door.
“You won’t be long, will you?” she begged.
“You can take him with you, if you like,” the Admiral declared, also
rising to his feet. “He doesn’t drink port and the cigarettes are in
your room. I have to take the Chair at a recruiting meeting at Holborn
in a quarter of an hour. The car’s waiting now. You’ll excuse me, won’t
you, Thomson?”
“Of course,” the latter assented. “I must leave early myself. I have to
go back to the War Office.”
Geraldine took his arm and led him into the little morning-room.
“You see, I am carrying you off in the most bare-faced fashion,” she
began, motioning him to a seat by her side, “but really you are such
an elusive person, and only this morning, in the midst of that awful
thunder of bombs, when we stood on the roof and looked at London
breaking out into flames, I couldn’t help thinking--remembering, I
mean--how short a time it is since you and I were face to face with the
other horror and you saved my life. Do you know, I don’t think that I
have ever said ‘thank you’--not properly?”
“I think the words may go,” he answered, smiling. “It was a horrible
time while it lasted but it was soon over. The worst part of it was
seeing those others, whom we could not help, drifting by.”
“I should have been with them but for you,” she said quietly. “Don’t
think that I don’t know it. Don’t think that I don’t regret sometimes,
Hugh, that I didn’t trust you a little more completely. You are right
about so many things. But, Hugh, will you tell me something?”
“Of course!”
“Why were you so almost obstinately silent when father spoke of poor
Captain Granet’s death?”
“Because I couldn’t agree with what he said,” Thomson replied. “I think
that Granet’s death in exactly that fashion was the best thing that
could possibly have happened for him and for all of us.”
She shivered as she looked at him.
“Aren’t you a little cruel?” she murmured.
“I am not cruel at all,” he assured her firmly. “Let me quote the words
of a greater man--‘I have no enemies but the enemies of my country, and
for them I have no mercy.’”
“You still believe that Captain Granet--”
“There is no longer any doubt as to his complete guilt. As you know
yourself, the cipher letter warning certain people in London of the
coming raid, passed through his hands. He even came here to warn you.
There were other charges against him which could have been proved up to
the hilt. While we are upon this subject, Geraldine, let me finish with
it absolutely. Only a short time ago I confronted him with his guilt, I
gave him ten days during which it was my hope that he would embrace the
only honourable course left to him. I took a risk leaving him free, but
during the latter part of the time he was watched day and night. If he
had lived until this morning, there isn’t any power on earth could have
kept him from the Tower, or any judge, however merciful, who could have
saved him from being shot.”
“It is too awful,” she faltered, “and yet--it makes me so ashamed, Hugh,
to think that I could not have trusted you more absolutely.”
He opened his pocket-book and a little flush of colour came suddenly
into her cheeks. He drew out the ring silently.
“Will you trust yourself now and finally, Geraldine?” he asked.
She held out her finger.
“I shall be so proud and so happy to have it again,” she whispered. “I
do really feel as though I had behaved like a foolish child, and I don’t
like the feeling at all, because in these days one should be more than
ordinarily serious, shouldn’t one? Shall I be able to make it up to you,
Hugh, do you think?”
He stooped to meet her lips.
“There is an atonement you might make, dear,” he ventured. “Do you
remember a suggestion of mine at one of those historic luncheons of Lady
Anselman’s?”
She laughed into his eyes for a moment and then looked away.
“I was wondering whether you had forgotten that,” she confessed.
End of Project Gutenberg’s The Kingdom of the Blind, by E. Phillips Oppenheim