TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
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(_italics_), small capitals are represented in upper case as in SMALL
CAPS and the sign ^ before any letter or text, like ^e, represents "e"
as a superscript.
A number of words in this book have both hyphenated and non-hyphenated
variants. For the words with both variants present the one more used
has been kept.
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The original cover art has been modified by the transcriber and is
granted to the public domain.
* * * * *
A
TIME OF TERROR
The Story of a Great Revenge
(A.D., 1910)
This England never did, nor never shall
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror,
But when it first did help to wound itself.
_King John_
_SECOND EDITION_
LONDON
GREENING & CO., LTD.
1906
[_All Rights Reserved_]
_Copyright
in
The United Kingdom
of
Great Britain and Ireland
in the
Dominion of Canada
and in the
United States of America_
_Dec. 1905._
Dedicated
TO
MY FELLOW CITIZENS
IN
“THIS GREAT BABYLON,”
AND,
IN PARTICULAR,
TO MEMBERS OF THE THREE
LEARNED PROFESSIONS
_London: New Year’s Day, 1906._
_CHARACTERS_
MARCUS WHITE
SIR JOHN WESTWOOD
BOBBY HERRICK
FATHER FRANCIS
DETECTIVE-INSPECTOR HENSHAW
BILLY OF MAYFAIR
THE MARQUIS OF DOWNLAND
THE LORD MAYOR
RAGGETT THE RAVER
JOE THE STABLEMAN
P.C. DORMER
ALDWYTH WESTWOOD
MOLLY BARTER
BILLY’S GRANDMOTHER
MRS JOE
CROWNED HEADS
_Episcopate_--
THE ARCHBISHOP OF LONDON (NEW PROVINCE)
_Royal Navy_--
VICE-ADMIRAL SIR LAMBERT MEADE, K.C.B.
_Judges and Magistrates_--
LORD MALVERN, L.C.J.; MR JUSTICE BARLING;
MR HARROWDEN
_Counsel_--
MR DUFFUS JACOBS, K.C.; MR BRILL, K.C.;
MR DAWSON DALTON
_Medical Faculty_--
DR WILSON WAKE
THE LEAGUERS OF LONDON, POLICE, THE UNEMPLOYED, ETC.
[_Dramatic Rights secured_]
CONTENTS
PAGE
PROLOGUE:
PART I.--A HERITAGE OF HATE 9
PART II.--RIVALS IN LOVE 17
CHAPTERS
I. LONDON IN 1910 21
II. AT THE NEW BAILEY 29
III. THE LEAGUERS’ FIRST MOVE 36
IV. THE CASE THAT FAILED 46
V. THE LEAGUERS’ SECOND MOVE 54
VI. THE MURDER OF DR GRADY 61
VII. LOVE ON THE LEAS 69
VIII. SIR JOHN BREAKS DOWN 77
IX. FATHER FRANCIS AT FOLKESTONE 85
X. MARCUS WHITE RETURNS 97
XI. THE SIGN OF THE SPIDER 105
XII. THE “EPOCH” RUNS AMOK 115
XIII. THE STRANGE OUTBREAK AT QUEEN’S HALL 125
XIV. BILLY OF MAYFAIR 132
XV. THE SHRINE OF LUXURY AND PRIDE 142
XVI. THE MANIA THAT LAID HOLD OF LONDON 152
XVII. THE GREAT FIRE IN HYDE PARK 160
XVIII. ALDWYTH ASKS A QUESTION 171
XIX. THE LORD MAYOR READS THE RIOT ACT 178
XX. THE LEAGUERS AT THE HOME OFFICE 189
XXI. THE DEVIL’S OWN ON THE DEFENSIVE 198
XXII. THE BOMB BRIGADE 208
XXIII. THE CRANKS’ CORNER 216
XXIV. THE LOWER CRITIC 222
XXV. MARCUS WHITE GIVES ORDERS 231
XXVI. THE CAPTURE OF THE JUDGES 239
XXVII. THE BLACK CHRISTMAS 251
XXVIII. IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE 260
XXIX. BILLY’S MESSAGE 266
XXX. THE FATE OF PORTSMOUTH DOCKYARD 276
XXXI. THE NAVAL BATTLE OFF PLYMOUTH 285
XXXII. MARCUS WHITE AND THE MOB 296
XXXIII. THE FOREIGN SECRETARY 306
XXXIV. THE EAGLE IN THE LION’S JAWS 314
XXXV. THE KING AND THE KAISER 318
XXXVI. THE BROTHERHOOD OF DEATH 324
XXXVII. THE GREAT THANKSGIVING 328
A Time of Terror
PROLOGUE
(A.D. 1885)
PART I
A HERITAGE OF HATE
The Court was densely crowded, and an atmosphere already vitiated
became doubly poisonous now that the ushers had lighted the gas. The
flaring jets revealed on every side the flushed and strained faces
of those who were eagerly waiting for the verdict. A great number of
women had been present at the Old Bailey throughout the trial--women
of fashion, eager to be thrilled by the most potent sensation of the
hour, and women of the lower orders, mostly Irish. A babble of excited
conversation arose directly the judges and the jury left the Court.
There were three judges, for this was an alleged case of treason
felony. In technical language the four prisoners were indicted for
having feloniously compassed, devised, and intended to depose our Lady
the Queen from the style, honour, and royal name of the Imperial Crown
of the United Kingdom, and further that they, with divers other persons
unknown, did manifest such intent by certain overt acts; all of which
was set out with the customary amount of verbiage in the indictment.
Reduced to plain English, the actual charge was that the accused had
purchased arms and ammunition for distribution amongst a revolutionary
brotherhood; that they had been concerned in storing gunpowder and
other explosive materials for the purpose of wrecking public buildings
and overthrowing the Government of the Queen. Chester Castle, with its
great store of arms, was to be seized. Arms were to be transmitted in
piano packing-cases by the mail train from Euston, and the express was
to be held up on the route to Holyhead. Thereafter the rails were to be
torn up, the telegraph wires cut, and an armed band of two thousand men
was to take forcible possession of the mail boat and land in due course
on the Irish coast.
None of these things, beyond the purchase of a limited quantity of
arms and ammunition, had really come to pass; but, as usual, the
inevitable informer had revealed the alleged plot to the Government.
Four arrests had been made, but the principal efforts of the
prosecution were vigorously employed to obtain the conviction of one
prisoner in particular--Michael White.
This prisoner was a journalist, hitherto living in one of the suburbs
of London, and acting as correspondent for certain journals in Ireland
and in America. Under a search warrant the police had ransacked every
corner of his house. They found what purported to be an incriminatory
letter written in invisible ink, also a glass tube containing a liquid
which, when tested by the Government analyst, was proved to contain
crystals. These crystals, if dissolved in water, could be used for the
purpose of making impressions on paper, and such impressions would be
invisible until copperas or certain other chemicals had been applied.
Beyond these discoveries and the evidence of the informers, there was
but little to connect Michael White with the alleged conspiracy.
The prisoner was a handsome, middle-aged man, whose intellectual face
was in striking contrast with those of the two shifty-eyed and cringing
informers, on whom from time to time he bent looks of infinite
disgust and scorn. The sympathy of not a few was with the accused; but
so strenuous was the conduct of the prosecution, and so adverse the
judicial summing up, that only one result could be expected from the
trial.
One member of White’s family was present through the long and agonising
trial--the prisoner’s only son, and there was a double bitterness in
the young man’s heart as hour by hour he saw the net being weaved about
his father, for he, himself, had his own personal reason for hating
Westwood, the zealous junior counsel for the Crown. When the fierce
eyes of young Marcus White met the barrister’s, the latter shifted
his gaze, fumbled with his papers, or made a show of entering into
conversation with other counsel. The prisoner’s son watched these poor
devices with a contemptuous smile. A complex, burning sense of wrong
filled his breast. The private wrong which he believed had been done
to himself by Westwood, blended, as it were, with the wrong that he
conceived was being done to his father; and this in turn was interwoven
with the sense of wholesale wrong inflicted during centuries upon
prisoners and captives who had come within the iron grip of English
criminal law.
Marcus White, like his father, was a man of no small intellectual
power. A journalist who is to write anything worth reading must read
much before he writes, and the prisoner’s son had read much. At one
time it had been intended that he should join the army of advocates,
but he turned away with repugnance after a preliminary survey of the
law. Later, his father, to whom he was devotedly attached, gave him
some training in his own profession, the profession of the pen. The
elder White had long had in hand a book on the subject of barbarous
punishments, and his son diligently assisted him in looking up and
collating ancient records of the shocking violence in times past
done to humanity under the sanction of the law. He knew that the
English Criminal Code included at one time nearly two hundred offences
punishable with death; he knew that this dreadful catalogue comprised
innumerable offences of the most trifling character, while it omitted
enormities of the utmost atrocity.
A study of these penal statutes and their ruthless application had
shattered his instinctive reverence for the law and its administration.
He had learnt to see in the sanguinary monuments of so-called justice
the oppression of the strong, the cruelty of the cowardly, a terrible
revelation of “man’s inhumanity to man.” His mind revolted at the
idea of a divine right in kings to hang, draw, and quarter any one
who criticised their conduct or advocated another form of government.
It was, he held, only the _Lex talionis_, supported by force, and all
the traps and complexities of criminal pleading were but the miserable
devices of lawyers ever ready to prostitute a calling that in itself
was noble. History proved it--history of which nearly every page was
stained with judgments of expediency or the dark crime of judicial
murder. “The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” was
supposed to have come from the poisonous lips of such creatures as
Titus Oates. The judge--he might be a Jeffreys or a Scroggs--was but
the Government in wig and ermine. The Crown counsel were paid pleaders
for the party in power. The docile jury, ruled by the judge, were in
effect the most obedient servants of the Government. This, then, was
human justice--which in its true essence was supernal and divine. This
was the Western Baal that men were called on to revere!
Rightly or wrongly, thus he reasoned. From such thoughts there had
sprung up and still was growing and destined to grow in the mind of
Marcus White a loathing for the law and a desire for vengeance on
all who followed it as servitors. Such were the feelings with which
he had seen his own father caught in these dreadful toils; practised
advocates, perjured witnesses, and crafty detectives, all combining to
bring about the climax that was imminent.
* * * * *
There was a cry of “Silence!” The jury were stumbling back into the
box; the judges returned to the bench. Amid a breathless stillness
the Clerk of Arraigns put the accustomed questions: “Do you find the
prisoner, Patrick Desmond, guilty or not guilty?”--“Not guilty.”
“Do you find the prisoner, John O’Leary, guilty or not guilty?”--“Not
guilty.”
“Do you find the prisoner, Robert Dale, guilty or not guilty?”--“Not
guilty.”
Then, last of all, “Do you find the prisoner, Michael White, guilty
or not guilty?” The pale face of the foreman twitched; there was a
momentary hesitation in his manner. Every ear was strained to catch the
verdict. Then, in a low voice, it came,--“Guilty.”
There was a swift scratching of pens. The Clerk of Arraigns was
recording the verdict on the parchment of the long indictment, the
judge was noting it, the counsel were indorsing the result upon their
briefs, but the eyes of all others were on the face of the prisoner at
the bar.
“Michael White,” said the Clerk of Arraigns, “you stand convicted upon
this indictment. Have you any cause to show why the Court should not
pass judgment upon you?”
“I have to say,” answered the prisoner, in a clear, strong voice, “that
I had no hand in this so-called plot. My conviction has been brought
about by perjured evidence and trickery; but, my lord, do not suppose
that I shall whine for mercy. I am not the first man to suffer for a
cause. I love my native land, and I hate those who oppress it. If my
life could be the price of justice to Ireland and the Irish I would
gladly lay it down; if the hand that I now raise to heaven could bring
vengeance on those who have wronged us I should rejoice; and though
death or prison-house make me powerless, with my last breath I would
whisper to my son to carry on the work.”
For a moment the prisoner’s face was turned towards his son’s, and
there were those in Court who saw and afterwards recalled the answering
look.
Then Michael White received, unmoved, his sentence.
Penal servitude for life.
PART II
RIVALS IN LOVE
“Stand aside,” said Westwood, in a voice which he vainly strove to
steady.
“Not yet,” was the savage answer; “you’ve got to listen!”
The two men faced each other in the calm starlight of the April
evening. The Embankment was almost deserted save for the huddled,
heedless outcasts on the benches. A few hansoms rattled westward; a
few small vessels, with sails spread, moved ghostly and silent on
the swirling river. Nature’s placidity was in strange contrast with
the fiery passion that flamed in the eyes of Marcus White and found
expression in his threatening gestures. Both men were pale; their
facial muscles tense. But the pallor of the one was begotten of anger
and hatred. With Westwood it was the outcome of nervous apprehension,
if not of actual fear.
“This is folly,” he said, with a better effort at self-command. “So far
as I am concerned you have nothing to complain of----”
“Nothing to complain of,” exclaimed White. “What! You steal the girl
who was mine. Yes, mine,--until you sneaked in between us----”
“That is not true, White.”
“I say you stole her--she was beguiled away from me. I was poor, and
likely to be poorer. You had your profession, your respectability,
and your prospects. Curse you! You’re not fit to touch her hand. Nor
am I. I know that well enough; but I love her, and always shall. She
was everything to me--my strength, my hope--till you stepped in; and
to-night I’d think no more of taking you by the throat and ending your
mean life than I would of crushing a beetle or any other filthy thing
beneath my heel.
“I’m sorry if you think----” began Westwood. Then he paused, half
ashamed of his own propitiatory tone, but debating how he could appease
the fury of his enemy and escape from a situation which had become so
threatening.
“And not content with taking her from me,” the other went on, drawing
a step nearer and speaking with increased intensity, “you stood up
in Court to prosecute my father. You and the others have helped to
send him into slavery for life. The prosecution was a lie, I say, and
you lied as much as any of the witnesses. Not on oath; that wasn’t
wanted. You saw your chances, and you laid hold of them. You got
the advertisement you wanted. There was deviltry in your pretended
moderation. But you know the tricks of your trade--your looks and
gestures to the jury said what you dared not put in words. He was in
the dock and you were at the bar, with all its privileges and all its
honourable traditions! Faugh! You sickened me. Yours was the face I
watched; not the judge’s; not the foreman’s when he stood up and gave
the verdict----”
“Let me pass, man; you’re acting like a madman,” said the barrister.
“Ah! You’re afraid of me. Coward! coward! You daren’t deny it.”
Westwood glanced round. He had been kept late at his chambers in Paper
Buildings, and near the corner of Temple Avenue had come suddenly upon
this enemy whom, of all men, he least desired to meet. The stream of
wheeled traffic came steadily across Blackfriars Bridge and branched
off right and left, but on the footway of the Embankment still scarcely
a creature was to be seen. Westwood spoke again.
“I only did my duty. The brief came to me because of the illness of
another man, and I was bound to take it. You ought to understand that
legal etiquette----”
“Legal etiquette!” exclaimed White scornfully, “etiquette that allows
you lawyers to libel other men and twist and turn the truth to suit
your case. Etiquette that justifies your taking fees you don’t earn,
and neglecting cases when it suits you. For you and your brood there
is no sort of penalty. You pose as good citizens. You talk yourselves
into Parliament, and fawn on the Government when there are places to be
given away. You sit on the Bench and draw a year’s salary for little
more than half a year’s work, and send to penal servitude men in whose
presence you ought to stand bare-headed.”
“I can’t stay here and listen to your raving,” said Westwood angrily.
“You’ve got the best of it at present. You’ve had us every way,”
persisted White. “There’s nothing left for me in England. That suits
your purpose, too. But, mark my words, Westwood, I haven’t done with
you. Sooner or later the tables shall be turned. I swear by heaven they
shall! Some day you’ll hear of me again!”
Ending, he spat on him. Then, with a contemptuous gesture, turned away.
Westwood, with a movement of disgust and anger, took two steps as if to
follow him; then hesitated, stopped.
Marcus White did not even condescend to turn his head, but, striding
eastward, passed into the shadows of the London night.
END OF PROLOGUE
CHAPTER I
LONDON IN 1910
An Englishman returning to his native land after an absence of
twenty-five years, might not at first discover much difference in the
look of London. There stood the old familiar landmarks--Buckingham
Palace, St James’s, the Marble Arch, Apsley House, Westminster Abbey,
the Houses of Parliament, the National Gallery, the British Museum,
St Paul’s, the Tower, the Monument, and many another well-remembered
building. There were new hotels, new theatres, new buildings of all
sorts, and at least one notable new thoroughfare. In the great arteries
of business the old familiar thunder of the traffic rose louder than
ever, with the modern addition of a new smell and a new noise--the
smell and the whir of the motor-car. The mean streets were as mean
as ever; the contrast between this and that locality more than ever
noticeable.
And the people, save for the scarcely perceptible change in fashion of
dress, at first looked pretty much the same. There were more loafers,
more wastrels, more sprawling scarecrows of humanity in the parks, and
along the Embankment. The richest city in the world still had thousands
and more thousands of homeless, miserable creatures in its midst,
thousands whom the State knew not how to save for their own sake, or
for the service of England.
It would be obvious to the returned native that the old country must
long since have ceased to be a “merry England.” The look on the faces
of the people was enough to settle that. The intent gaze, the joyless
expression, told a convincing tale. Here and there might be seen a
flower of beauty in the gigantic garden of weeds--a stalwart, handsome
man, a “perfect woman, nobly plann’d.” Eyes of youth, looking eagerly
upon the page of life, still shone with the glow of hope and happiness;
young girls and young children, in their freshness and charm, still
reminded the wayfarer that in the great design human beings were meant
to be even more beautiful than the flowers of the field. But the vast
crowd--what had come to it, and what was coming? Was the English race,
as a race, growing not only plain, but positively ugly?
When the home-comer found time to move about a little, he would
discover that in many respects the changes wrought in twenty-five
years were greater than he had supposed. There were, in outlying
districts, certain new or enlarged buildings of formidable aspect.
These were the lunatic asylums of the capital. The inquirer had to
learn that insanity had been advancing by leaps and bounds. Five years
ago the number of London lunatics was nearly 27,000, and now there
were nearly 100,000 certified lunatics in London. The workhouses also
were larger and fuller than ever; and in the City, the scene of the
trial of Michael White in 1885, the old court-house, haunted with the
horrors of centuries, had given place to a new and imposing building,
with greater accommodation for criminals. Solid, handsome, stony, the
New Bailey frowned down on the new generation of Londoners. The City
Fathers were justly proud of their modern palace of justice, though the
question of what motto should be inscribed over its portal gave rise
to some difference of opinion. A very reverend dean suggested, “Defend
the children of the poor, and punish the wrong-doer,” or words to that
effect. In what way the New Bailey was going to fulfil the first part
of the text did not seem to be quite obvious but certainly the massive
sessions-house looked quite equal to punishing the evil-doer. It did
not occur to any one to recommend a text from the Koran, which declares
that to endure and forgive is the highest achievement for humanity.
Probably the City Fathers did not read the Koran. Besides, though
in the interval we had allied ourselves with worshippers of Buddha,
England as yet had no treaty with the unspeakable Turk. A quotation
from the sacred book of Islam might have been considered out of place
in a nominally Christian country.
Such were some of the changes brought about in a quarter of a
century. A person of cynical mind might well doubt whether they were
changes for the better. For the rest, the people crowded hither and
thither--underground, by tubes in all directions; above ground, on
foot, and by vehicles of every description--mostly “motors.” By means
of the latter insignificant persons tore through the streets, bound on
errands of no importance. The private “motors,” of course, were owned
by the pleasure-seekers of the age, who, for all their hurry, probably
had nothing more urgent to do than to order luncheon at a fashionable
restaurant, or purchase a box of cigarettes.
Postal deliveries had been multiplied; telephone facilities increased.
Everything was essentially modern; the great thing was to be up to
date. But all the new facilities for saving time and trouble seemed
to have resulted in leaving very little time for anything. Certainly
there was no time for studying the past of England and of the British
race; and as to the future, a great many persons believed that, for
individuals, it was as mythical as Mrs Harris.
The so-called educated classes, when not following the compulsory
routine of their daily lives, were primarily engaged, as to the young
men, in the frenzied pursuit of sport; and as to the young women, in
the vital study of dress, varied by a steady perusal of their favourite
authoresses in the domain of fiction.
Newspapers, of course, were scanned--by the male population, at any
rate; but people were not equal to the intellectual exertion of reading
an unbroken column. News and notes had to be administered on the
homœopathic principle, in scraps and snippets. And as the Bible had not
yet been abridged, it necessarily followed that that was the very last
book that up-to-date people could find time or interest to study.
Lives of great men were still available to remind the moderns to make
their lives sublime. But, then, the moderns could not find time or
inclination to read the ancients. The sublime, in their view, was not
only close to, but identical with, the ridiculous. Certainly they could
not concern themselves with any nonsense about leaving footprints on
the sands of time. Everybody, however, found time to read lengthy law
reports arising from scandals in high life.
A considerate aristocracy had of late done more and more to gratify
public taste in that respect. The “upper classes” quarrelled about
their children, about their heirlooms, about the “other man,” or the
“secret woman,” about anything and everything. But, in spite of all,
the average Briton, with inborn snobbishness, dearly loved a lord.
Kind hearts were at a discount; but coronets fetched heavy premiums,
especially in the American market. Broadly speaking, “simple faith” was
non-existent; but Norman blood, however vitiated, covered in a double
sense the multitude of sins. The Divorce Court had virtually become a
public laundry, in which judge, counsel, and witnesses were constantly
engaged in washing the soiled linen of the British peerage, a task
varied, however, by similar operations on behalf of the ladies and
gentlemen of the stage.
The business classes, still solid, stolid, and worried, were mostly
occupied in efforts to put money in the purse to an extent sufficient
to meet the ever-growing expenses of modern life in England. By reason
of this problem, there were fewer marriages than of yore; and, yet
more significant, the birth-rate fell and fell. There was still great
wealth in England, but it was in fewer hands. The Jew syndicates, the
drink-sellers, the drapers, and the betting agents largely absorbed the
nation’s gold. But the poor in pocket were by no means poor in spirit.
Pampered and petted by political parties, the British working-man
had realised the uses of the weapons placed at his disposal. He had
a vote, and he used it, whereas the middle-class man did not. He
had the weight of numbers behind him, and he meant to use that too.
Yet, notwithstanding all these indications of decay, there was still
in every rank a goodly leaven; the problem was, whether there was
enough of it to leaven the whole lump, and resuscitate the nation.
If, instead of the return of the native after only twenty-five years,
the boy-poet, Keats, could have come back (from that bourn whence no
traveller returns), after nearer a hundred years, it is to be feared he
still would have found an “inhuman dearth of noble natures,” and still
gloomier signs--
“Of all the unhealthy and o’er-darkened ways
Made for our searching.”
It was a covetous age, but it did not covet earnestly the best of gifts:
“Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance,
These are the seals of that most firm assurance,
Which bars the pit over Destruction’s strength.”
But Shelley, like Keats, was forgotten, or unknown. The age of
mediocrity had no concern with intellectual giants; the period of small
men, with parochial ideas, nothing in common with great conceptions of--
“Love from its awful throne of patient power,”
looking down upon humanity; or of humanity ready--
“To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates.”
It was “Everyone for himself,” but not “devil take the hindmost”;
because belief in the Prince of Darkness, like belief in many other
things, had largely been discarded.
The signs and the sounds of the times were many and various; but,
not in England only--perhaps less in England than abroad--the most
arresting was the diapason note of a steady march. The rolling rhythm
of a mighty organ; the tramp, tramp, tramp of the many millions,
drawing nearer and nearer.