fro along the alleys that lead through balconied, leaning houses, up
and down obscure and sudden flights of stone steps, Henry wandered
under the September moon. All day he had, with the help of Charles
Wilbraham's unwitting secretary, tracked Charles Wilbraham. He knew
how Charles had begun the morning by dictating proud and ponderous
documents in his proud and ponderous voice, and talking to people who
came in and out of his room; how he had then gone to the Assembly Hall
and chatted in the lobby to every one of sufficient importance to be
worth his while, including ex-Cardinal Franchi, who had of late been
making friends with him, and with whom he had dined last night at the
Château Léman; how then Charles had lunched with two Russians, a
Greek, and a Pole, and Sir John Levis, his father-in-law, at the Café
du Nord, hatching Henry did not know what (for the Nord was much too
expensive for him) of anti-League mischief and crime; how after lunch
Charles had attended the meetings of the sub-committees on the
Disappearance of Delegates, going from one to another looking
business-like and smug and as if he were at strictly private
meetings, as indeed he was. Then up to his room for his tea (Charles
never missed this meal) and down again to see how Sub-Committee 5
("Consideration of Various Suspicions based on Reason and Common
Sense") was getting on, and then up again to do some more work. (For
there was this about Charles, as even Henry had to admit--he worked
hard. Ambition, the last infirmity of noble minds, offensive and
irritating quality as it is, has at least this one good fruit.) Then
Charles had been to a large dinner given by the Canadian delegation to
members of the Secretariat, and had made a facetious speech; and now,
at eleven-thirty, he was walking about the old city, followed at some
distance by Henry Beechtree.
Charles was not alone. He had with him M. Kratzky from Russia, Sir
John Levis, and a small, quiet Calvinist minister, whom Henry had
lately seen about Geneva.
The four gentlemen turned out of the Rue du Perron down the narrow,
ancient and curious Passage de Monnetier, and out of that into a deep
arched alley running through a house into another street. Henry,
watching from the corner of the Passage de Monnetier, did not dare to
follow nearer for some moments. When he had given them a little time,
he softly tiptoed to the mouth of the alley. It was one of those deep
cobbled passages that run through many houses in the old quarter. It
was profoundly dark; Henry could only faintly discern the three
figures half-way down it. They seemed to have stopped, and to be
bending down as if looking for something on the ground. The spark of
an electric torch gleamed suddenly, directed by the little clergyman;
its faint disc of light swam over the dirty floor of the passage, till
it came to rest on an iron ring that lay flat to the ground. The
clergyman seized this ring and jerked at it; after a moment it left
the ground in his hand, and with it the flap of a trap-door.
Whispers inaudible to Henry passed between the members of the party;
then, one by one, the three figures descended through the open trap
into the bowels of the earth, and the lid closed upon them.
Henry tiptoed forward; should he follow? On the whole--no. On the
whole he would wait until Wilbraham, his father-in-law, M. Kratzky,
and the clergyman emerged. What, after all, would be the use of
finding oneself underground with desperate, detected criminals, whose
habit it apparently was to stick at nothing? What, after all, could he
do?
Henry was shivering, less from fear than excitement. Here, indeed, was
a clue. Were they kept immured underground, these unfortunate captive
delegates? And did Wilbraham and his criminal associates visit them
from time to time with food and drink? Or without? With nothing,
perhaps, but taunts? And how many more in Geneva knew of this
trap-door and its secret? There were, every one knew, a number of
these old _trappons_ in the city, leading usually to disused cellars;
their presence excited no suspicion. Probably no one ever used the
obscure and hidden trap in this dark alley.
It was queer, how sure Henry felt that this curious nocturnal
expedition on the part of Charles, his father-in-law, M. Kratzky and
the Calvinist pastor had to do with the mystery of the delegates.
He knew it beyond a doubt. Nor was he surprised. It came as a
consummation of his suspicion and his hopes. Of Charles Wilbraham's
villainy he had long been all but sure; of the villainy of M. Kratzky
all the world knew; of the villainy of an ammunitions knight and a
Calvinist pastor there needed little to convince Henry. But he knew
that he must make sure. He must not go to the police, or to the
committee, with an unproved tale. He must wait and investigate and
prove.
He waited, in the dark archway beneath the crazy jumble of houses,
with the sudden voices and footfalls of the midnight city echoing from
time to time in the dark streets beyond. He waited and waited and
waited. Now and then a dog or a cat rushed by him, startling him.
Then, after twenty minutes or so, he wearied of waiting. Weariness and
curiosity defeated caution; he pulled up the trap-door by its ring and
peered down into blackness. Blackness, stillness, emptiness, and a
queer, mouldy smell. Henry sat on the hole's edge for a full minute,
dangling his legs. Then, catching his breath a little (it may or may
not have been mentioned that Henry was not very brave), he swung
himself down on to a hard, earthy floor.
It was a tunnel he was in; a passage about six feet high and four feet
wide. How many feet or yards long was a more difficult and a much more
interesting question. Feet? Yards? It might be miles. Henry's
imagination bored through the impenetrable dark in front of the little
moon thrown by his electric torch; through and along, through and
along, towards what? The horrid four who had preceded him--where were
they? Did they lurk, planning some evil, farther along the tunnel,
just out of earshot? Or had they emerged by some other exit? Or were
they even now returning, to meet Henry in a moment face to face, to
brush by him as he pressed against the damp brick wall, to turn on him
suddenly that swimming moon of light ... and then what?
Charles Wilbraham was no taker of human life, Henry felt assured. He
was too prudent, too respectable, too much the civil servant. M.
Kratzky, on the other hand, _was_ a taker of human life--he did it as
naturally as others would slay midges; while he breathed he slew. If
Henry should be discovered spying, M. Kratzky's counsels would be all
for making forthwith an end of Henry. Sir John Levis was an armament
knight: members of the staff of the _British Bolshevist_ needed not to
know more of him than that: the Calvinist minister was either a
Calvinist minister, and that was bad, or a master-criminal of the
underworld disguised as a Calvinist minister, and that was worse. Or
both of these. Four master-criminals of the underworld--these
intriguing, appalling creatures, so common in the best fiction, so
rare even in the worst life--if one were to meet four of them together
in a subterranean passage.... Could human flesh and nerves endure it?
Henry, with his shuddering dislike of seeing even a goldfish injured
or slain, shrank far more shudderingly from being injured or slain
himself. The horrid wrench that physical assault was--and then, perhaps,
the sharp break with life, the plunge into a blank unknown--and never
to see again on this earth the person whom one very greatly loved....
As has been said, Henry was not brave. But he was, after all, a
journalist on the scent of a story, and that takes one far; he was
also a hunter in pursuit of a hated quarry, and that takes one
farther.
Henry crossed himself, muttered a prayer and advanced down the
passage, his torch a lantern before his feet, his nerves shivering
like telegraph wires in a winter wind, but fortunately not making the
same sound.
37
On and on and on. It was cold down there, like death, and bitter like
death, and dark. Rats scuffled and leaped. Once Henry trod on one of
them; it squeaked and fled, leaving him sick and cold. His imagination
was held and haunted by the small quiet pastor; he seemed, on the
whole, the worst of the four miscreants. A sinister air of deadly
badness there had been about him.... Lines ran in and out of Henry's
memory like cold mice. Something about "a grim Genevan minister walked
by with anxious scowl." ... Horrid.... It made you sweat to think of
him. Then on the passage there opened another passage, running sharply
into it from the right. That was odd. Which should be followed?
Henry swung his flashlight up each in turn, and both seemed the same
narrow blackness. He advanced a few steps, and on his left yet another
turning struck out from the main tunnel.
"My God," Henry reflected, "the place is a regular catacomb."
If one should lose oneself therein, one might wander for days, as one
did in catacombs.... Having no tallow candle, but only an electric
torch, one might eat one's boots ... the very rats....
Not repressing a shudder, Henry stood hesitating at the cross-roads,
looking this way and that, his ears strained to listen for sounds.
And presently, turning a corner, he perceived that there were
sounds--footsteps and low voices, advancing down the left-hand passage
towards him. Quickly shutting his light, he stepped back till he came
to the right-hand turning, and went a little way up it, to where it
sharply bent. Just round the corner he stopped, and stood hidden. He
was gambling on the chance that whoever was coming would advance, back
or forward, along the main tunnel when they struck into it. If, on the
other hand, they crossed this and turned up his passage, he could
hastily recede before them until perhaps another turning came, or
possibly some exit, or until they turned on him that horrid moon of
light and caught him....
Well, life is a gamble at all times, and more particularly to those
who play the spy.
Henry listened. The steps came nearer. They had a queer, hollow sound
on the earthy floor. Low voices murmured.
It came to Henry suddenly that these were not the voices of Charles
Wilbraham, of Sir John Levis, of M. Kratzky, or, presumably then, of
the little pastor. These were voices more human, less deadly.
The footsteps reached the main passage, and then halted.
"Here's a puzzle," said a voice. "Which way, then? Will we divide, or
take the one road?"
And then Henry, though he loved not Ulster, thanked God and came
forward.
At the sound of his advance a flashlight was swung upon him, and the
Ulster voice said, "Put them up!"
Henry put them up.
"It's all right, man. It's only Beechtree," said another voice, after
a moment's inspection, and Henry, though he loved not the _Morning
Post_, blessed its correspondent.
"Good Lord, you're right.... What are you doing here, Beechtree? Is
your paper in this damned Republican plot, as well as Sinn Fein,
Bolsheviks, Germans, and the Pope? I wouldn't put it past the _British
Bolshevist_ to have a finger in it----"
"Indeed, no," said Henry. "You are quite mistaken, Macdermott. This
plot is being run by armament profiteers, White Russia, and Protestant
ministers. They're all down here doing it now. I am tracking them. And
His Holiness, you remember, sent an encouraging message to the
Assembly----"
"The sort of flummery he _would_ encourage.... I beg your pardon,
Beechtree. We will not discuss religion: not to-night. Time is short.
How did _you_ get into this rat-trap? And whom, precisely, are you
tracking?"
"Through a _trappon_ in an archway off the Passage de Monnetier. And I
am tracking Wilbraham, Sir John Levis, M. Kratzky, and a Protestant
clergyman, who all preceded me through it. But I don't know in the
least where they have got to. There are so many ramifications in this
affair. I took it for a single tunnel, but it seems to be a regular
system."
"It is," said Garth. "It extends on the other side of the water too.
We got into it this evening through that house in the Place Cornavin
where Macdermott was bilked by a Sinn Feiner."
"We had our suspicions of that house ever since," Macdermott went on;
"so we went exploring this evening, and by the luck of God they'd gone
out and left the door on the latch, so we slipped in and searched
around, and found a trap-door in a cupboard--where they'd have shoved
me down if they hadn't given up the idea half-way. It lets you down
into a passage just like this, that runs down to the water and comes
out in the courtyard of one of those tumble-down old pigeon-cotes by
the Quai du Seujet. We came out there, and then tried over this side,
through a trap by the Molard jetty I'd noticed before, and it led us
here. There are dozens of these _trappons_ on both sides. Lots of
them are inside houses. I always thought they led only to cellars....
As to your four chaps, wherever they've got to, no doubt they're
exploring too. Wilbraham in a plot! Likely."
"It is," said Henry. "Very likely indeed. There are plenty of facts
about Wilbraham you don't know. I've been finding them out for several
years. I shall lay them before Committee 9 to-morrow."
The other two looked at him with the good-natured pity due to the
correspondent of the _British Bolshevist_.
"Your lunatic paper has turned your brain, my son," Garth said.
"Well, let's be getting on," Macdermott impatiently urged. "Which way
did your plotters take, Beechtree? We may as well be getting after
them, anyhow."
"I don't know. I've lost them. I didn't follow at once, you see; I
waited, thinking they would come out presently. When they didn't, I
came down too. But by that time they'd got a long start. And, as there
are other exits, they may have got out anywhere."
"Well, let's come along and look. We'll each take a different passage;
we'll explore every avenue, like Cabinet Ministers. I'll go straight
ahead; one of you two take that right-hand road, and the other the
next turning, whenever it comes. We'll each get out where and how we
can. Come on."
Garth turned up to the right. Henry went on with Macdermott for some
way, till another turning branched off, running left.
"Ah, there's yours," said the Ulster delegate. "I shall keep straight
on, whatever alluring avenues open on either side to tempt me.
To-morrow (if we get out of this) we'll bring a gang of police down
and do the thing thoroughly. Good luck, Beechtree. Don't scrag honest
civil servants or good clergymen on sight. And don't let old Kratzky
scrag you. Politically he's on the right side (that's why he'd want to
scrag you, and quite right, too), but personally he's what you might
call a trifle unprincipled, and that's why he'd do it as soon as look
at you."
38
Henry walked alone again. The passage oozed water. The silence was
chilly and deep. Against it and far above it, occasional sounds beat,
as the world's sounds beat downwards into graves.
Geneva was amazing. How many people knew that it was under-run by this
so intricate tunnel system? Did the town authorities know? Surely yes.
And, knowing, had they not thought, when the recent troubles began, to
explore these avenues? (How that horrid phrase always stuck in one's
mind; one could not get away from it, as many a statesman, many an
orator daily proved.) But possibly they had explored them with no
result. Possibly Sub-section 4 (Organisation of Search) of Committee 9
knew all about them. What that sub-section did not yet know was that
Charles Wilbraham, hand in glove with autocrat Russia, armament kings,
and the Calvinist church, lurked and plotted in the avenues by night,
like the spider in her web waiting for flies.
There were turnings here and there, to one side or the other, but
Henry kept a straight course.
At last he was brought up sharp, nearly running his face into a rough
clay wall, and above him he saw a trap-door. Here, then, was his exit.
The door was only just above his head; he pushed at it with his hands;
it gave not at all.
After all, one would expect a trap-door to be bolted. He wondered if
it would be of any use to knock. Did it give on to a street, a
courtyard, or a house?
He rapped on it with the end of his electric torch, softly and then
loudly. He went on rapping, and knew the fear that assails the
assaulter of impregnable, unyielding silence, the panic of him who
calls aloud in an empty house and is answered only by the tiny sounds
of creaking, scuffling, and whispering that cause the skin to creep,
the blood to curdle, the marrow to freeze, the heart to stop, and the
spirit to be poured out like water. Strange and horrid symptoms!
Curdled blood, frozen marrow, unbeating heart ... who first discovered
that this is what occurs to these organs when fear assaults the
brain? Have physiologists said so, or is it a mere amateur guess at
truth, another of the foolish things "they" say?
In these speculations Henry's mind engaged while he stood in the black
bowels of the earth and beat for entry at the world's closed door.
At last he heard sounds as of advancing steps. Bolts were drawn
heavily back; the trap-door was raised, and a face peered down; a
brownish face with a small black moustache and a smooth skin stretched
tightly over fat. A glimmer of light struggled with the darkness. "Chi
c'è?" said a harsh voice, whispering.
"Sst! son'io." Henry thought this the best answer. His nerves had
relaxed on hearing the Italian language, a tongue not spoken
habitually by Wilbraham, M. Kratzky, Sir John Levis, or Calvinist
pastors. It is a reassuring tongue; one feels, but how erroneously,
that those speaking it cannot be very far out of the path of human
goodness. And to Henry it was partly native. The very sight of the
plump, smooth, Italian face made him feel at ease.
The face peered down into the darkness, and a stump of candle burning
in a saucer threw a wavering beam on to Henry's face looking up.
"Già," the voice assented to Henry's rather obvious statement. "Voul
scendere, forse?"
Henry said he did, and a stool was handed down to him. In another
minute he stood on the stone floor of a largish cellar, almost
completely blocked with casks and wood stacks. From it steps ran up to
another floor.
The owner of the plump Italian face had a small plump figure clad in
shirt, trousers, and slippers. His bright dark eyes stared at his
visitor, heavy with sleep. He had obviously been roused from bed.
Surprise, however, he did not show; probably he was used to it.
He talked to Henry in Italian.
"You roused me from sleep. You have a message, perhaps? You wish
something done?"
Henry, not knowing whether this Italian Swiss knew more than he ought
to know, or whether he was merely assisting the police investigations,
answered warily, "No message. But I have been down there on the
business, and had to return this way. I must now go as quickly as
possible in to the town."
He added, at a venture, glancing sideways at the other, "Signor
Wilbraham was down there with his colleagues."
The man started, and the saucer wavered in his hand. Signor Wilbraham
was obviously either to him a suspect name, or else his master and
leader in intrigue. He was frightened of Wilbraham.
"Where is he now?" he asked. "Will he come here?"
"I think not. Be at ease. He has disappeared in another direction.
Have the kindness to show me the way out."
The man led the way to the steps and up them, into a tiny ground-floor
bedroom, and through that into a passage. As he unbolted a side door,
Henry said to him, "You know something about Signor Wilbraham, then?"
The plump little figure shrugged.
"A good deal too much, certainly."
"Good," said Henry. "Later you shall tell what you know. Don't be
afraid. He can't hurt you."
As to that the raised eyebrows showed doubt. Wilbraham, it was
apparent, inspired a deep mistrust. The fat little man was shivering,
either from fear or cold or thwarted sleep, as he opened the door for
Henry to pass out.
"The will of God will be done," was what he regretfully said, "unless
his dear Mother can by any means avert it. For me, I escape, if
necessary, where they cannot find me. Good-night, Signore."
He shut the door softly behind Henry, who found himself outside a
block of old houses at the lake end of the Rue Muzy, under a setting
moon, as the city clocks struck two. The night, which had seemed to
Henry already so long, was yet, as nights of action go, young.
Henry, as he walked homewards by the lake's edge, wondered where and
in what manner Macdermott and Garth had emerged, or would emerge, to
the earth's face.
The earth's face! Never, on any of the lovely nights in that most
lovely place, had it seemed to Henry fairer than it seemed this night,
as he walked along the Quai des Eaux Vives, the clean, cool air
filling his lungs and gently fanning his damp forehead, the dark and
shining water lapping softly against its stone bounds. How far better
was the earth's face than its inside!
Henry, tired and chilled, had now no thought but sleep. To-morrow
early he would go to the President of Committee 9 with his report.
Also he would wire the story early to his paper. As he lay in bed, too
much excited, after all, to sleep (for Henry suffered from nervous
excitement in excess) he composed his press story. Anti-disarmament,
anti-peace fiends, plotting with Russian Monarchists to wreck the
League ... all this had the _British Bolshevist_ many a time
suggested, but now it could speak with no uncertain voice. Names might
even be given.... Then, in the evening, when the police had explored
the avenues, investigated the mystery, and proved the facts, a second
telegram, more detailed, could be despatched. What a scoop! After all,
thought Henry, tossing wakeful and wide-eyed in the warm dawn, after
all he was proving himself a good journalist. No one could say after
this that he was not a good journalist.
39
M. Fernandez Croza, delegate from Paraguay, and President of the
Committee on the Disappearance of Delegates, sat after breakfast with
his private secretary and his stenographer in his sitting-room at the
Hotel des Bergues, dictating a speech he meant to deliver at that
morning's session of the Assembly on the beauties of a world peace. It
was a very creditable and noble speech, and he meant to deliver it in
Spanish, as a protest, though his English and French were faultless.
M. Croza was a graceful person, young for a delegate, slightly built,
aquiline, brown skinned, black haired, shaved clean in the English
and American manner, which Latins seldom use, and which he had picked
up, among other things, in the course of an Oxford education. The
private secretary and the stenographer were a swarthy young man and
woman with full lips and small moustaches.
M. Croza was clever, determined, and patriotic; he believed firmly in
the future of the Latin American republics, and particularly in that
of Paraguay; in the necessity of imbuing into the staff of the League
of Nations more Latin American blood, and in the desirability of
making Spanish a third official language in the Assembly. He disliked
the Secretariat as at present constituted, thinking it European,
narrow, and conceited, and he could, when orating on topics less noble
and more imminent than a world peace, make a very relevant and acute
speech.
To him, already thus busy at ten o'clock in the morning, entered a
hotel messenger with a card bearing the name of the correspondent of
the _British Bolshevist_, and the words "Urgent and private
business."
"I suppose he wants a statement on the Paraguay attitude towards
Argentine meat," M. Croza commented. "I had better see him."
He turned to his stenographer, and said (in Spanish, in which tongue,
it may be observed, it sounded even better than in the English
rendering): "And so the gentle doves of peace comma pursued down
stormy skies by the hawks of war comma shall find at length ... shall
find at length.... Alvarez, please finish that sentence later on. That
will do for the present, señorita.... Admit Mr. Beechtree, messenger."
Mr. Beechtree was admitted. The slim, pale, shabby and yet somehow
elegant young man, with his monocle, so useless, so foppish, dangling
on its black ribbon, pleased, on the whole, M. Croza's fastidious
taste.
After introductions, courtesies, apologies, and seatings, Mr.
Beechtree got to business.
"I have," he began, in his soft, light, tired voice, "a curious story
to tell. I am in a position, after much search, to throw a good deal
of light on the recent mysterious disappearances. I have evidence of
a very serious nature indeed...."
M. Croza, in his capacity of President of Committee 9, had become used
to such evidence of late. But he always welcomed it, and did so now,
with an encouraging nod.
Perhaps the nod, though encouraging, had an air of habit, for Mr.
Beechtree added quickly, "What I have to tell you is most unusual. It
implicates persons not usually implicated. Indeed, never before. I am
not here to hurl random accusations against persons for whom I happen
to feel a distaste. I am here with solid, documentary evidence. I have
it in this case." He opened his shabby dispatch case, and showed it
full of papers.
"It implicates," he continued, "an individual who holds a
distinguished position on the staff of the Secretariat."