"You amaze me," he said. "Take a note, Alvarez, if you please."
"Some years ago," said Henry, gratified by the delegate's attention
and the secretary's poised pencil, "before the League of Nations,
so-called----"
"It _is_ the League of Nations," said the delegate, with a little
frown.
"To be sure it is," Henry recollected himself. He had merely used
"so-called" as a term indicative of contempt, like "sic," forgetting
that he was not addressing the readers of the _British Bolshevist_.
"Well, before the League of Nations existed--to be exact, in the year
1919--I had occasion, by chance, to discover some things about this
individual. I learnt that his wife was the daughter of an armaments
knight, and that he himself had a great deal of money in the business.
There was no great harm in this, from his point of view; he never, in
those days, professed to be a pacifist, for, though he wielded
throughout the war a pen in preference to a sword, he truly believed
it to be mightier; he was, in fact, in the Ministry of Information. He
was not inconsistent in those days, though he was, I imagine, never
easy in his mind about this money he had, and held his shares under
his wife's name only. But when the League Secretariat was formed, he
was one of the first to receive an appointment on it. It was not
generally known where he got his income from, and he found himself in
a prominent position on the staff of a League, one of whose objects,
if only one among many, is to end war. So there he was, his fortune
dependent on the continuation of the very thing he was officially
working to suppress. It wasn't to be expected that he should be
pleased at the prospect of the disarmament question coming up before
the Assembly; or at the prospect of the various disputes going on now
in the world being discussed in the Assembly and referred to judicial
arbitration. Much better for him if the rumours and threats of war
should continue."
"Continue," stated the delegate, "they always will. That, Mr.
Beechtree, we may take as certain, in this imperfect world. Yes....
He's an Englishman, I assume, this friend of yours?"
"An Englishman, yes. Intensely an Englishman." Henry paused a moment.
"I had better tell you at once; he is Charles Wilbraham."
"Wilbraham!" M. Croza was startled. He felt no love for Wilbraham,
who, for his part, felt and showed little for the Latin American
republics. M. Croza bitterly remembered various sneers which had been
repeated to him.... Besides, it was Wilbraham who had cast suspicion
on Paraguay. Further, he had been at Oxford with Wilbraham, and had
disliked him there.
"Go on, sir," he said gravely and yet ardently.
"So," said Henry, "Wilbraham hatches a scheme. Or, possibly it is
hatched by his father-in-law, Sir John Levis (he's one of the
directors of Pottle & Kett's, the great armament firm), and Wilbraham
is persuaded to carry it out; it doesn't matter which. Levis has been
in Geneva now for some days. He has lain rather low and has not been
staying at Wilbraham's house, but I've evidence from his secretary
that they have been constantly together. They cast around to find
convenient colleagues, unscrupulous enough to do desperate things, and
with their own reasons for wishing to nullify the work of the League
and to hold up discussion of international affairs while disturbances
come to a head."
"Such colleagues," mused M. Croza, "would not be hard to find."
"Whom do they pitch on? There are a number of possibly suitable
helpers, and I can't say how many of them are involved. But what I
have evidence of is that they brought in the Russian delegate to their
councils--Kratzky, who is a byword even among Russians for sticking at
nothing. If Kratzky could stave off discussion of European politics
and paralyse the Assembly until Russia should be ready and able to
pounce on and hold by force the new Russian republics--well, naturally
monarchist Russia would be pleased. I have evidence that Wilbraham and
Levis have been continually meeting and conferring with Kratzky since
the Assembly began. Kratzky, that bloody butcher...."
M. Croza, whose sympathy was all with small republics against major
powers, agreed about Kratzky.
"You haven't," he suggested, "notes of what has actually passed
between Wilbraham and Kratzky on the subject?"
"I regret that I have not. I could never get near enough.... But
I have evidence of continual meetings, continual lunches and
conferences. This I have obtained from Wilbraham's secretary. She has
to keep his engagements for him. I have obtained possession of the
little pocket-book in which she notes them. I have it here. See:
'Saturday, Lunch, Café du Nord, Kratzky and Sir John. Sunday, Up
Salève, with Kratzky. Monday, 8 a.m., Bathe, Kra----' No, that can't
be Kratzky; he wouldn't bathe; that must be some one else. And so on,
and so on. Now, I ask you, what would one talk about to Kratzky all
that time except some iniquitous intrigue? It's all Kratzky knows
about. So, you see, when I began to suspect all this, I took to
tracking Wilbraham, following him about. It's been, I can tell you,
a most tiring job. Wilbraham is such a very tedious man. A most
frightful bore. His very voice makes me sick.... But I followed him.
I tracked him. All over the shop I tracked him. And last night he
trapesed round the town with Levis and Kratzky and a horrid little
Calvinist clergyman who must be in it too. I hate Calvinists, don't
you?"
"Intolerable persons," agreed the delegate from Paraguay.
"Well, at last they hared down a trap-door in an archway into the
bowels of the earth. I saw them into it. After some time I went down
too. I couldn't find them, but I found an extraordinary system of
tunnelling--a regular catacomb. You get in and out of it all over the
town, through _trappons_, mostly in old houses, I think. I didn't
discover where half the tunnels ended. But obviously Wilbraham and his
friends know all about it. And that's what they've done with the
delegates. Either hidden them somewhere alive down there, or killed
them. When Kratzky's in an affair, the people up against him don't, as
a rule, come out alive.... I don't know how much the police know about
this tunnel business, but they must make a complete investigation, of
course."
"Obviously, without delay.... A singular story, Mr. Beechtree; very
singular."
"Life is singular," said Henry.
"There you are very right." ... But M. Croza, used to the political
life of South American republics, found no stories of plots and
intrigues really singular. "You have reason," he added, "to think
badly of Mr. Wilbraham, I infer?"
"Grave reasons. I know him for a very ugly character. It is high time
he was exposed."
M. Croza thought so too. As has been said, he did not care for Charles
Wilbraham. And what a counter-charge to Wilbraham's accusations again
the residents at the Hotel des Bergues!
"One of these Catholic converts," he reflectively commented. "I do not
like them. To be born a Catholic, that is one thing, and who can help
it? After all, it is the true faith. To become a Catholic--that is
quite another thing, and seems to us in Paraguay to denote either
feebleness of intellect or a dishonest mind. In a man, that is. Women,
of course, are different, not having intellect, and being naturally
_dévotes_. So, anyhow, we believe in Paraguay. But perhaps one is
unfair."
"It is difficult not to be unfair to these," Henry agreed. "But it is
more than difficult, it is impossible, to be unfair to Wilbraham.
Nothing we think or say of him can be in excess of the truth. Such is
Wilbraham. He always has been.... Now, if you will, sir, I will show
you the documents I have with me which corroborate my story."
The delegate beckoned to his secretary.
"Go through Mr. Beechtree's papers, Alvarez. I must be getting to the
Assembly. It is past the hour.... At this afternoon's meeting of
Committee 9, Mr. Beechtree, I will lay these suggestions of yours
before my colleagues, and we will consider what action shall be taken.
You will be present. Meanwhile, Alvarez, have orders taken to the
police to explore the subterranean passages. Mr. Beechtree, you will
be able to direct them to the means of entry, will you not."
"I shouldn't wonder," said Henry, "if they are being explored.
Macdermott, from Ulster, and Garth of the _Morning Post_, were down
there last night. I don't know if they ever got out or not, but if
they did they'll be doing something about it this morning. They take a
different view from mine, I may say. Macdermott suspects Sinn Feiners
(Ulster has only one idea, you know), and Garth agrees with him, but
adds Bolsheviks and Germans. Neither of them would suspect either
Wilbraham or Kratzky without absolute proof. They do not like
Wilbraham. No one does. But they are obsessed with their pet ideas."
"To every man his own scapegoat; it's the law of life. Now, Mr.
Beechtree, I must leave you. We meet again at three o'clock. Here is a
card of entry to the committee meeting. Till then I shall say nothing
to any one. I will lay your story before the committee for what it is
worth, but I do not, you must remember, commit myself to it. It is
merely a basis for inquiry, and the committee shall undoubtedly have
the facts before them. But care and discretion are advisable.... Your
paper, I think, is not celebrated for its love either for the League
of Nations and its Secretariat, or of monarchist Russia, or of
armament princes? We must be prepared for the imputation to you of
prejudice."
"It would be," Henry admitted, "not unjustified. My paper is
prejudiced. So am I. To be prejudiced is the privilege of the thinking
human being. After all, we are not animals, to judge everything by its
smell and taste as it comes before us, irrespective of preconceived
theories. The open mind is the empty mind. The pre-judgment is often
the deliberate and considered judgment, based on reason, whereas the
post-judgment is a hasty makeshift affair, based on the impressions of
the moment. Fortunately, however, the two are apt, in the same mind,
to concur----"
"Quite so, quite so." M. Croza, who was in a hurry, nodded affably but
decidedly, and Henry, who was apt, in the interests of discussion, to
forget himself, left him.
40
Henry despatched straightway a long message to the _British
Bolshevist_, guarded in language but sinister in implication, and
hinting that further developments and more definite revelations were
imminent. In the journalists' lobby he encountered Garth, who had also
been sending a message.
"Oh, hallo," said Garth, "so you got out all right. So did Macdermott.
I had the devil of a time. I tried one exit that didn't work; must
have been bolted on the outside, I suppose. Anyhow, I hammered away
and nothing happened. Then I struck another avenue and came to another
trap which gave after mighty efforts on my part, and I came up into
that book-shop which Burnley disappeared into, and which told the
police so firmly that he left again in a few minutes. The trap was
hidden away under the counter. I didn't stop; I thought it probably
wasn't healthy, so I unbolted the front door and crept off home to
bed. First thing this morning I put the police on the track, and
they're getting busy now asking the bookseller questions and sending
gangs to work the catacombs. One thing I've discovered; that book-shop
is a meeting-place for Bolshie refugees and German anarchists. They
meet in the old chap's back parlour and do their plotting there and
send gold to the trade-unions."
"How do you know?" Henry asked, interested.
"Well, it's quite obvious. Too busy to go into the evidence now. I
must look in at the Assembly and see what's doing...."
Henry perceived that the correspondent of the _Morning Post_ was
actuated, in the matter of Bolshevists, Germans, trade-unions, and
gold, rather by a deliberate and considered pre-judgment than by the
hasty and makeshift impressions of the moment, or, anyhow, that the
two had in his mind concurred. He asked after Macdermott.
"Oh, Macdermott found Sinn Fein plots all over the place. He had a
hair-raising time. He went miles and miles, he says, and came up at
last against a wall. There was no trap-door: it was merely a
cul-de-sac. So he retraced his steps and took a by-path, and emerged
finally in a brothel close to the cathedral. Of course, the advantage
of a brothel is that it's alive and humming even at dead of night;
anyhow it was morning by that time, so he had no difficulty in making
himself heard. He couldn't get anything out of the people; they were
German Swiss, and pretended to be merely stupid. But they're being
sorted by the police this morning."
"And where do the Sinn Feiners come in?"
"Oh, I don't know. They meet there to plot, Macdermott said. Together
with Germans. Probably they've a bomb-cache in the tunnels too. He
told O'Shane about it, and O'Shane said republicans would never make
use of a disorderly house, not even for the best patriotic purposes.
He's rather sick that he wasn't on to this catacombs business too;
he'd have found Orange plots down there. I left them at it.... What's
going on within, Jefferson?"
"That damned little Greek holding forth on the importance of disarming
Turkey. We've just had Paraguay on the beauties of a world peace and
the peaceful influence of the South American republics."
"Well," said Garth, "I shall go in and hear the Greek. He always makes
things hum."
Henry, too, went in and heard the Greek, whose manner of oratory he
enjoyed.
41
Committee 9 met at three o'clock in the spacious and sunny saloon
known as Committee Room C. The only portion of the public admitted was
the correspondent of the _British Bolshevist_, who sat behind the
President's chair with a portfolio full of papers, looking pale,
shabby, and tired, but exalted, like one whose great moment is at
hand.
After the minutes of the last meeting had been read, the President
rose to address the committee, in French. He had, he said, some fresh
and important facts to communicate. A quite new line of inquiry had
that day been suggested to him by one who had for some time been
secretly pursuing investigations. The facts revealed were so
startling, so amazing, that very substantial evidence would be
necessary to persuade committee members of their truth. It could at
present be only a tentative theory that was set before the committee;
but let the committee remember that _magna est veritas et prevalebit_;
that they were there to fulfil a great duty, and not to be deterred by
any fears, any reluctances, any personal friendships, any dread of
scandal, from seeking to draw out truth from her well. He asked his
colleagues to listen while he told them a strange story.
The story, as he told it, gained from his more important presence, his
more eloquent and yet more impartial manner, a plausibility which
Henry's had lacked. His very air, of one making a painful and
tentative revelation, was better than Henry's rather shrill eagerness.
Every now and then he paused and waved his hand at Henry sitting
behind him, and said, "My friend Mr. Beechtree here has documentary
evidence of this, which I will lay before the committee shortly."
When, after long working up to it, he gave the suspected member of the
Secretariat the name of Wilbraham, it fell on the tense attention of
the whole table. Henry, looking up to watch its reception, saw
surprise on many faces, incredulity on several, pleasure on more,
amusement on a few. He met also the blue eyes of Mr. Macdermott fixed
on him with a smile of cynical admiration. Macdermott would doubtless
have something to say when the President had done. But what he was now
thinking was that the correspondent of the _British Bolshevist_ had
more journalistic gifts than one would have given him credit for.
"Where, you may demand of me," proceeded the President, "is M.
Wilbraham now? That I cannot tell you. He entered this system of
secret passages last night in company with those who are suspected by
Mr. Beechtree of being his fellow conspirators, and he has not been
seen since. Have they, possibly, escaped, their evil work done?
Whither have they gone? Who was that Protestant pastor? What doings,
gentlemen, engage the attentions of M. Kratzky of Russia, that enemy
of small republics, Sir John Levis of Pottle and Kett, that enemy of
peace, a _soi-disant_ Protestant pastor, the presumed enemy of true
religion, and M. Wilbraham of the Secretariat? Mind, gentlemen, I
impute nothing. I merely inquire."
A murmur of applause broke from the Latin Americans. As it died down,
Henry, looking up, saw standing by the door Charles Wilbraham, cool,
immaculate, attentive, and unperturbed, and the _soi-disant_
Protestant pastor at his elbow.
42
Henry allowed himself a smile. Here, then, arrived after all the years
of waiting, was the hour. The hour of reckoning; the hour in which he,
brought face to face with Charles Wilbraham, should expose him before
men for what he was. The hour when Charles Wilbraham should face him,
reduced at last to impotent silence, deflated to limp nothingness like
a gas balloon, and find no word of defence. Shamed and dishonoured, he
would slink away, at long last in the wrong. In the wrong himself,
after all these years of putting others there. Truly, Henry's hour had
arrived.
The President, too, had seen the new-comers now. He paused in his
speaking; he was for a moment at a loss. Then, "Gentlemen, excuse me,
but this is a strictly private session," he said clearly across the
large room, in his faultless Oxford English.
Charles Wilbraham bowed slightly and advanced.
"Forgive me, sir, but I have a card of admittance. Also for my friend
here, Signor Angelo Cristofero."
"Angelo Cristofero"--the name seemed to ripple over a section of the
committee like a wind on waters.
"Who is he?" asked Henry, of an Italian Swiss, and the answer came
pat.
"The greatest detective at present alive. An Italian, but at home in
all countries, all languages, and all disguises. Really a marvellous
genius. Nothing balks him."
"We have, you see," continued Wilbraham, in his disagreeable, sneering
voice, "some rather important information to communicate to the
committee, if you will pardon the interruption. Presently I will ask
Signor Cristofero to communicate it. But for the moment might I be
allowed to ask for a little personal explanation? Since I entered the
room I heard a remark or two relating to myself and various friends of
mine which struck me as somewhat strange...."
M. Croza courteously bowed to him, with hostile eyes.
"You have a right to an explanation, sir. As you have entered at what
I can but call such a very inopportune moment, you heard what I was
saying--words uttered, need I say, in no malicious spirit, but in a
sincere and public-spirited desire to discover the truth. I was
accusing and do accuse, no one; I was merely laying before the
committee information communicated to me this morning by Mr. Henry
Beechtree."
"Mr. Henry Beechtree?"
Charles Wilbraham turned on this gentleman the indifferent and
contemptuous regard with which one might look at and dismiss some
small and irrelevant insect.
"And who, if I may ask, is Mr. Henry Beechtree?"
"The correspondent, sir, of one of the newspapers of your country--the
_British Bolshevist_."
Charles laughed. "Indeed? Hardly, perhaps, an organ which commands
much influence. However, by all means let me hear Mr. Beechtree's
information. I am, I infer, from what I overheard, engaged in some
kind of conspiracy, together with my friends M. Kratzky, Sir John
Levis, and this gentleman here. May I know further details, or are
they for the private edification of the committee only?"
Charles heavily sarcastic, ponderously ironic--how well Henry
remembered it.
"Are we," he went on, "supposed to have spirited away, or even
murdered, the missing delegates, may I ask?"
"That," said M. Croza politely, "was Mr. Beechtree's suggestion--only,
of course, a suggestion, based on various facts which had come to his
knowledge. You can, doubtless, disprove these facts, sir, or account
for them in some other way. No one will be more delighted than the
committee over which I preside."
"Might I hear these sinister facts?" Charles was getting smoother,
more unctuous, more happy, all the time. It was the little curl of his
lip, so hateful, so familiar, with which he said these words, which
seemed to snap something in Henry's brain. He pushed back his chair
and sprang to his feet, breathless and dizzy and hot. He regarded not
the cries of "Order," from the chair and the table; order or not, he
must speak now to Charles.
"You shall hear them, sir," he said, and his voice rang shrilly up and
up to a high and quivering note. "There is one, at least which you
will not be able to deny. That is that you have shares, large and
numerous, in the armaments firm of Pottle and Kett, of which Sir John
Levis, your father-in-law, is chief director."
Charles fixed on him a surprised stare. He put on his pince-nez, the
better to look.
"I do not think," he said, in his calm, smooth voice, "that I am
called upon to discuss with you the sources of my income. In fact, I'm
afraid I don't quite see how you come into this affair at all--er--Mr.
Beechtree. But, since your statement has been made in public, perhaps
I may inform the committee that it is wholly erroneous. I had once
such shares as this--er--gentleman mentioned. It ought to be
unnecessary to inform this committee that I sold them all on my
appointment to the Secretariat of the League, since to hold them
would, I thought, be obviously inconsistent with League principles. If
it interests the committee to know, such money that I possess is now
mostly in beer. Mr.--er--Beechtree's information, Mr. President, is
just a little behind the times. Such a stirring organ as the _British
Bolshevist_ should, perhaps, have a more up-to-date correspondent.
Will you, Mr. President, request Mr. Beechtree to be seated? I fear I
find myself unable to discuss my affairs with--er--him personally."
Charles's eyes, staring at Henry through his pince-nez, became like
blue glass. For a moment silence held the room. Henry flushed, paled,
wilted, wavered as he stood. Thrusting desperately his monocle into
his eye, he strove to return stare for stare. After a moment Charles's
high complacent laugh sounded disagreeably. He had made quite sure.
"How do you do, Miss Montana? We haven't, I think, met since January,
1919." He turned to the puzzled committee. "Miss Montana, a former
lady secretary of mine in the Ministry of Information, Mr. President.
Dismissed by me for incompetence. What she is doing here in this
disguise I do not know; that is between her and the newspaper which,
so she says, employs her. May Signor Cristofero now be permitted to
lay his rather important information before the committee? We waste
time, and time is precious at this juncture."
43
The situation was of an unprecedented unusualness. The President of
Committee 9 hardly knew how to deal with it. All eyes gazed at Henry,
who said quietly, "That is a damned lie," felt giddy, and sat down,
leaning back in his chair and turning paler. The monocle dropped from
his eye and hung limply from its ribbon. Henry literally could not,
after his tiring night, his exhausting day, the emotional strain of
the last hour, stand up to Charles Wilbraham any more. If he could
have a dose of sal volatile--a cocktail--anything ... as it was, he
wilted, all but crumpled up; all he was able for was to sit, as
composed as might be, under a deadly fire of eyes.