momentarily overcome with a feeling of nausea, which made his face
glisten white and damp, and caused the sweat to break hotly on his
brow, while the lake swayed and darkened before his eyes. It was a
feeling to which he was unfortunately subject when he saw the smaller
of God's creatures suffering these mischances at the hands of their
larger brethren. His nerves were not strong, and he had an excessive
dislike of witnessing unpleasant sights.
"You don't feel well?" Dr. Franchi solicitously inquired.
"The gold-fish," his guest murmured. "Eaten alive ... what an end!"
Dr. Franchi's delicate, dark Latin brows rose.
"The gold-fish? Ah, my wicked Pellico.... I cannot keep him from the
bowl, the rascal. I regret that he so upset you. But the sensibility
of gold-fish is not great, surely? As the peasants say, non son
chretiani loro!"
"Forgive me. To see a live fish devoured ... it took me unawares.... I
shall be all right soon...."
As from a great distance Henry, still fighting the sensation of
nausea, was half aware of the ex-cardinal's piercing eyes fixed on him
with extraordinary intensity.
"I am all right now," said Henry. "A momentary faintness--quite
absurd.... I expect gold-fish do not really feel either emotion or
pain. They say that fish do not feel hooks. Or worms, either.... They
say all sorts of comforting things about this distressing world, don't
they. One should try to believe them all...."
"You are," said Dr. Franchi quietly, "if I may say so, a decidedly
unusual young man."
"Indeed, no," said Henry. "But I have encroached on you long enough. I
must go."
18
The motor-launch churned its foaming path down the moonlit lake. Henry
sat in the stern, trailing his fingers in cool, phosphorescent water,
happy, drowsy, and well fed. What a delightful evening! What a
charming old man! What a divine way of being taken home! And now he
had the warm, encouraged feeling of not pursuing a lone trail, for the
ex-cardinal's last words to him had been: "Coraggio! Follow every
clue; push home every piece of evidence. Between us we will yet lay
this enemy of the public good by the heel."
The very thought that they would yet do that flushed Henry's cheek and
kindled his eye.
Assuredly the wicked should not always flourish like the bay tree. "I
went by, and lo he was not," thought Henry, quoting the queer message
received by the President before the first session of the Assembly.
The launch dashed up to the Quai du Seujet, and Henry presented
a franc to the pilot, and stepped off, trying to emulate this
gentleman's air of never having visited such a low wharf before. "You
have brought me rather too far," he said. "But I will walk back."
But, now he came to think of it, Dr. Franchi's man must obviously
know where he lived, so camouflage was unavailing. He had intended
(only, lost in thought, he had let the moment pass) to be set down
at the Paquis, as if he had been staying on the Quai du Mont Blanc
or thereabouts. But he had said nothing, and, without doubt or
hesitation, this disagreeable chauffeur (or whatever an electric
launch man was called) had made for the Quai du Seujet and drawn up
at it, as if he knew, as doubtless he did, that Henry's lodging was
in one of the squalid alleys off it.
It could not be helped. Things do get about; Henry knew that of old.
However, to maintain the effect of his words to the man, he started to
walk away from the St. Gervais quarter towards the Mont Blanc bridge,
until the launch was foaming on its homeward way. Then he retraced his
steps.
As he passed the end of the bridge, he saw a well-known and
characteristic figure, small, trim, elegant, the colour of ivory,
clad in faultless evening dress, beneath an equally faultless light
coat, standing by the parapet. Some one was with him, talking to
him--an equally characteristic figure, less well known to the world
at large, but not less well known to Henry.
Henry stopped abruptly, and stood in the shadow of a newspaper kiosk.
He was not in the least surprised. Any hour of the day or night did
for Charles Wilbraham to talk to the great. He would leave a dinner at
the same time as the most important person present, in order to
accompany him on his way. He would waylay cabinet ministers in
streets, bishops (though himself not of their faith) in closes, and
royal personages incognito. He would impede their progress, or walk
delicately beside them, talking softly, respectfully, with that
perfect propriety of diction and address which he had always at
command.
"Soapy Sam," muttered Henry from behind the kiosk.
The two on the bridge moved on. They came towards Henry, strolling
slowly and talking. The well-known personage was apparently telling an
amusing story, for Charles was all attention and all smiles.
"As Chang was saying to me the other night," Henry prospectively and
unctuously quoted Charles.
They left the bridge, and turned along the Quai du Mont Blanc.
Charles's rather high laugh sounded above the current of their talk.
They paused at the Hotel des Bergues. The eminent person mounted its
steps; Charles accompanied him up the steps and inside. Probably the
eminent person wished, by calling on some one there, to shake off
Charles before going to his own hotel. But he had not shaken off
Charles, who was of a tenacious habit.
"Calling on the Latin Americans," Henry commented. "Wants to have a
drink and a chat without Charles. Won't get it, poor chap. Well, I
shall sleuth around till they come out. I'm going to trail Charles
home to his bed, if it takes all night."
He settled himself on the parapet of the Quai and watched the hotel
entrance. He did not have to wait long. In some minutes Charles came
out alone. He looked, thought Henry, observing him furtively from
under his pulled down hat brim, a little less elated than he had
appeared five minutes earlier. His self-esteem had suffered some blow,
thought Henry, who knew Charles's mentality. Mentality: that was the
word one used about Charles, as if he had been a German during the
late war (Germans having, as all readers of newspapers will remember,
mentalities).
Charles walked rapidly across the bridge, towards the road that led to
his own châlet, a mile out of the town. Henry, keeping his distance,
hurried after him, through the steep, silent, sleeping city, up on to
the dusty, tram-lined, residential road above it, till Charles stopped
at a villa gate and let himself in.
Then Henry turned back, and tramped drowsily down the dusty road
beneath the moonless sky, and down through the steep, sleeping city,
and across the Pont des Bergues, and so to the Quai du Seujet and the
Allée Petit Chat, which lay dense and black and warm in shadow, and
was full of miawling cats, strange sounds, and queer acrid smells. The
drainage system of the St. Gervais quarter was crude.
In the stifling bedroom of his crazy tenement, Henry undressed and
sleepily tumbled into bed as the city clock struck two.
In the dawn, below the miawling of lean cats and the yelping of dogs,
he heard the lapping and shuffling of water, and thought of boats and
beating oars.
19
To what cold seas of inchoate regret, of passionate agnosticism as to
the world's meanings, if any, does one too often wake, and know not
why! Henry, on some mornings, would wake humming (as the queer phrase
goes) with prosperity, and spring, warm and alive, to welcome the new
day. On other mornings it would be as if he shivered perplexed on the
brink of a fathomless abyss, and life engulfed him like chill waters,
and he would strive, defensively, to divest himself of himself and be
but as one of millions of the ant-like creatures that scurry over the
earth's face, of no more significance to himself than were the myriad
others. He could just achieve this state of impersonality while he lay
in bed. But when he got up, stood on the floor, looked at the world no
longer from beyond its rim but from within its coils, he became again
enmeshed, a creature crying "I, I, I," a child wanting Pears' soap and
never getting it, a pilgrim here on earth and stranger. Then the seas
of desolation would swamp him and he would sink and sink, tumbled in
their bitter waves.
In such a mood of causeless sorrow he woke late on the morning after
he had dined with Dr. Franchi. To keep it at arms' length he lay and
stared at his crazy, broken shutters, off which the old paint flaked,
and thought of the infinite strangeness of all life, a pastime which
very often engaged him. Then he thought of some one whom he very
greatly loved, and was refreshed by that thought; and, indeed, to love
and be loved very greatly is the one stake to cling to in these
troubled seas, the one unfailing life-buoy. Then, turning his mind
into practical channels, he thought of hate, and of Charles Wilbraham,
and of how best to strive that day to compass him about with ruin.
So meditating, he splashed himself from head to foot with cold water,
dressed, and sallied forth from his squalid abode to the nearest café.
Coffee and rolls and the Swiss morning papers and the clear jolly air
of the September morning put heart into him, as he sat outside the
café by the lake. Opening his paper, he read of "Femme coupée en
morceaux" and "L'Affaire Svensen," and then a large heading,
"Disparition de Lord Burnley." Henry started. Here was news indeed.
And he had failed to get hold of it for his paper. Lord Burnley, it
seemed, had been strolling alone about the city in the late afternoon;
many people had seen him in the Rue de la Cité and the neighbourhood.
He had even been observed to enter a bookshop. The rest was silence.
From that bookshop he had not been seen to emerge. The bookseller
affirmed that he had left after spending a few minutes in the shop. No
further information was to hand.
"_Cherchez la femme_," one comic paper had the audacity to remark, à
propos l'affaire Svensen and Burnley. Even Svensen and Burnley, so
pure-hearted, so public-spirited, so League-minded, were not immune
from such ill-bred aspersions.
20
The elegant and scholarly Spaniard, Luiz Vaga, strolled by. He wore a
canary-coloured waistcoat and walked like a fastidious and graceful
bullfinch. He stopped beside Henry's breakfast-table, cocked his head
on one side, and said, "Hallo. Good-morning. Heard the latest news?"
Henry admitted that he had heard no news later than that in the
morning press.
"Chang's gone now," said Vaga. "Gone to join Svensen and Burnley. I
regret to say that he was last seen, late last night, paying a call on
my fellow-countrymen from South America at Les Bergues hotel. Serious
suspicion rests on these gentlemen, for poor Chang has not been heard
of since."
"Somehow," Henry said thoughtfully, "I am not surprised. L'addition,
s'il vous plaît. No, I cannot say I am surprised. I rather thought
that there would be more disappearances very shortly. Burnley and
Chang. A good haul.... Who saw him going into the Bergues?"
"Our friend Wilbraham, who was out late with him last night. And the
Bergues people don't deny it. But they say he left again, soon after
midnight. The hall porter, who has, it is presumed, been corrupted,
confirms this. But he never returned to his hotel. Poor Burnley and
Chang! Two good talkers, scholars, and charming fellows. There are
few such, in this vulgar age. It is taking the best, this unseen
hand that strikes down our delegates in their prime. So many could
be spared.... But God's will must be done. These South Americans are
its very fitting tools, for they don't care what they do, reckless
fellows. Mind you, I don't accuse them. Personally I should be more
inclined to suspect the Zionists, or the Bolshevik refugees, or your
Irishmen, or some of the Unprotected Minorities, or the Poles, or
the Anti-Vivisection League, who are very fierce. But, for choice,
the Poles; anyhow as regards Burnley. There were certain words once
publicly spoken by Burnley to the Polish delegation about General
Zeligowsky which have rankled ever since. Zeligowsky has many wild
disbanded soldiers at his command.... However--Chang, anyhow, went
to see the South Americans, and has not emerged. There we are."
"There we are," Henry thoughtfully agreed, as they strolled over the
Pont du Mont Blanc. "And what, then, is Wilbraham's explanation of the
affair Chang?"
Vaga shrugged his shoulders.
"Our friend Wilbraham is too discreet to make allegations. He merely
states the fact--that he saw Chang into the Bergues between twelve and
one and left him there.... I gather that he accompanied him into the
hotel, but did not stay there long himself. I can detect a slight
acrimony in his manner on the subject, and deduce from it that he was
not perhaps encouraged by Dr. Chang or his hosts to linger. I flatter
myself I know Wilbraham's mentality fairly well--if one may be
permitted that rather opprobrious word."
"Yes, indeed," Henry said. "It is precisely what Wilbraham has. I know
it well."
"In that case, I believe if you had heard Wilbraham on this matter of
his call at Les Bergues that you would agree with me that his
importance suffered there some trifling eclipse."
"There may be other reasons," said Henry, "in this case, for the
manner you speak of.... But I won't say any more now." He bit off the
stream of libel that had risen to his lips and armed himself in a
careful silence, while the Spaniard cocked an inquiring dark eye at
his brooding profile.
In the Jardin Anglais they overtook Dr. Franchi and his niece, making
their way to the Assembly Hall. The ex-cardinal was greatly moved.
"Poor Dr. Chang," he lamented, "and Burnley too, of all men! A wit, a
scholar, a philosopher, a metaphysician, a theologian, a man of
affairs. In fine, a man one could talk to. What a mind! I am greatly
attached to Lord Burnley. They must be found, gentlemen. Alive or
(unthinkable thought) dead, they must be found. The Assembly must do
nothing else until this sinister mystery is unravelled. We must employ
detectives. We must follow every clue."
Miss Longfellow said, "My! Isn't it all quite too terribly sinister!
Don't you think so, Mr. Beechtree?"
Henry said he did.
21
They reached the Assembly Hall. The lobby, buzzing with delegates,
Secretariat, journalists, Genevan syndics, and excitement, was like a
startled hive. The delegates from Cuba, Chili, Bolivia, and Paraguay,
temporarily at one, were informing the eager throng who crowded round
them that Dr. Chang had left the Bergues hotel, after a chat and a
whisky with the delegate from Paraguay, at twelve-thirty precisely.
The delegate from Paraguay had gone out with him and had left him on
the Pont des Bergues. He had said that he was going to cross this
bridge and stroll round the old _cité_ before going to bed, as he
greatly admired the picturesque night aspect of these ancient
streets and houses that clustered round the cathedral. He had then,
presumably, made his way to this old, tortuous and unsafe maze of
streets, so full of dark archways, trap-doors, cellars, winding
stairways, evil smells, and obscure alleys. ("These alleys," as a
local guide-book coldly puts it, "are not well inhabited, but the
visitor may safely go through those of houses 5 and 17." Had Dr.
Chang, perhaps, been through, part of the way through, numbers 4 or 16
instead?)
"That's right; put it on the _cité_," muttered Grattan, who was fond
of this part of Geneva, for he often dined there, and who admired the
representatives of the South American states as hopeful agents of
crime and mystery.
No evidence, it seemed, was forthcoming that any one had seen Dr.
Chang in the _cité_, but then, as the delegate from Paraguay remarked,
even the inhabitants of the _cité_ must sleep sometimes.
Police and detectives had early been put to work to search the
cathedral quarter. Systematically they were making inquiries in it,
street by street, house by house. Systematically, too, others were
making inquiries in the old St. Gervais quarter.
"But police detective work is never any good," as Henry, a well-read
person in some respects, remarked. "It is well known that one requires
non-constabulary talent."
22
The bell rang, and a shaken and disorganised Assembly assembled in the
hall. The Deputy-President, in an impassioned speech, lamented the
sinister disappearance of his three so eminent colleagues. As he
remarked, this would not do. Some evil forces were at work, assaulting
the very life of the League, for it must now be apparent that these
disappearances were not coincidences, but links in a connected chain
of crime. What and whose was the unseen hand behind these dastardly
deeds? What secret enemies of the League were so cunningly and
assiduously at work? Was murder their object, or merely abduction?
Whose turn would it be next? (At this last inquiry a shudder rippled
over the already agitated assembly.) But MM. les Délégués might rest
assured that what could be done was being done, both for the discovery
of their eminent colleagues, the detection of the assaulters, and the
aversion of such disasters in future.
At this point the delegate for Greece leapt to his feet.
"_What_," he demanded, "is being done with this last object? What
provision is being made for the safety of our persons?"
His question was vigorously applauded, while the English interpreter,
quite unheard, explained it to those in the hall who lacked adequate
knowledge of the French language.
The Deputy-President was understood to reply that it was uncertain as
yet what effective steps could be taken, but that all the forces of
law and order in Geneva had been invoked, and that MM. les Délégués
were hereby warned not to go about alone by night, or, indeed, much by
day, and not to venture into obscure streets or doubtful-looking
shops.
Mademoiselle the delegate from Roumania demanded the word.
Mademoiselle the delegate for Roumania was a large and buxom lady with
a soft, mellifluous voice that cooed like a turtle-dove's when she
spoke eloquently from platforms of the wrongs of unhappy women and
poor children. This delegate was female indeed. Not hers the
blue-stocking sexlessness of the Scandinavian lady delegates, with
their university degrees, their benign, bumpy foreheads, and their
committee manners. She had been a mistress of kings; she was a very
woman, full of the _élan_ of sex. When she swam on to the platform and
turned her eyes to the ceiling, it was seen that they brimmed with
tears.
"Mon Dieu, M. le Vice-Président," she ejaculated. "Mon Dieu!" And
proceeded in her rich, voluptuous voice to dwell on the iniquities of
the traffic in women and children all over the world. The nets of
these traffickers were spread even in Geneva--that city of good
works--and who would more greatly desire to make away with the good
men of the League of Nations than these wicked traffickers? How well
it was known among them that Lord Burnley, Dr. Svensen, and Dr. Chang
held strong opinions on this subject....
At this point a French delegate leaped to his feet and made strong and
rapid objection to these accusations. No one more strongly than his
pure and humane nation disliked this iniquitous traffic in flesh and
blood, but the devil should have his due, and there was no proof that
the traffickers were guilty of the crimes now under discussion. Much
might be allowed a lady speaker in the height of her womanly
indignation, which did credit to her heart and sex, but scarcely so
much as that.
For a moment it looked like a general squabble, for other delegates
sprang to their feet and called out, and the interpreters, dashing
round the hall with notebooks, could scarcely keep pace, and every one
was excited except the Japanese, who sat solemnly in rows and watched.
For the hold, usually so firm, exercised by the chair over the
Assembly, had given way under the stress of these strange events, and
in vain did the Deputy-President knock on the table with his hammer
and cry "Messieurs! Messieurs! La parole est à Mademoiselle la
Déléguée de la Roumanie!"
But he could not repress those who called out vehemently that "Il ne
s'agit pas à present de la traite des femmes; il s'agit seulement de
la disparition de Messieurs les Délégués!" And something unconsidered
was added about those states more recently admitted to the League,
which had to be hastily suppressed.
Mademoiselle la Déléguée on the platform continued meanwhile to coo to
heaven her indignation at the iniquitous traffic in these unhappy
women, until the Deputy-President, in his courteous and charming
manner, suggested in her ear that she should, for the sake of peace,
desist, whereupon she smiled and bowed and swept down into the hall,
to be surrounded by congratulating friends shaking her by the hand.
"M. Menavitch demande la parole," announced the Deputy-President, who
should have known better. The delegate for the Serb-Croat-Slovene
state stood up in his place (it was scarcely worth while to ascend the
platform for his brief comments) and remarked spitefully that he had
just (as so often) had a telegram from Belgrade to the effect that a
thousand marauding Albanians had crossed their frontier and were
invading Serbia, and that, to his personal knowledge, there was a gang
of these marauders in Geneva, and, in his view, the responsibility for
any ruffianly crime committed in this city was not far to seek. He
then sat down, amid loud applause from the Greeks and cries of "shame"
from the English-speaking delegates. A placid Albanian bishop rose
calmly to reply. He, too, it seemed, had had a telegram from the seat
of his government, and his was about the Serbs, but before he had time
to state its contents the Deputy-President stayed the proceedings.
"The session," he said, "cannot be allowed to degenerate into an
exchange of international personalities."
"And why not?" inquired the Belfast voice of the delegate from Ulster.
"I'd say the Pope of Rome had some knowledge of this. I wouldn't put
it past him to have plotted the whole thing."
"Ask the Black and Tans," his Free State colleague was naturally moved
to retort.
"My God," whispered the Secretary-General to the Deputy-President. "If
the Irish are off.... We must stop this."
Fortunately, here the delegates for Paraguay eased the situation by
proposing that the question of the disappearance of delegates should
be referred to a committee to be elected for that purpose, and that
the voting for that committee should begin forthwith. (The South
American delegates always welcomed the appointment of committees, for
they always hoped to be on them.) Lord John Lester, one of the
delegates from Central Africa, who was less addicted to committees,
thinking that their methods lacked expedition, rose to protest, but
was overruled. The Assembly as a whole would obviously feel happier
about this affair if it were in committee hands, so the elections were
proceeded with at once. The delegate for Central Africa resigned
himself, only remarking that he hoped at least that the sessions of
the committee would be public, for as he had often said, publicity was
the life blood of the League.
Journalists in the Press Gallery breathed a sigh of disappointment.
"In another minute," said the _Times_ to Henry, "we should have had
the Poles accusing the Lithuanians, the Greeks the Turks, the Turks
the Armenians, and every one the Germans. Already the French are
running round with a tale about the Germans having done it out of
revenge for the Silesian decision. Probably it's quite true. Only I
back the Bolshevik refugees to have had a hand in it somewhere too.
Well, I shall go lobbying, and hear the latest."
Henry too went lobbying.
In the lobby something of a fracas was proceeding between a member of
the Russian delegation and a Bolshevik refugee. It seemed that the
latter was accusing the former of having been responsible for the
disappearance of Dr. Svensen, who had always had such a kind heart for
starving Russians, and who had irritated the Whites in old days by
sending money to the Bolshevik government for their relief. The
accusing refugee, who looked a hairy ruffian indeed, was supported by
applause from a claque of Finns, Ruthenians, Lithuanians, Esthonians,
Latvians, and others who had a dislike for the Russian Empire. M.
Kratzky's well-earned nickname, "Butcher of Odessa," was freely hurled
at him, and the Slavs present were all in an uproar, as Slavs will be
if you excite them.
Gravely, from a little way off, a group of Japanese looked on.