I have a weak heart, I have never had so much as a single ache. What death will be, what pangs or peace it may bring, I have no conception. I argue with Epictetus that the fear of death is by way of being an impertinent assumption of a knowledge of the hereafter, and that we have no reason to believe it is any worse condition than our present. I am not afraid to die — but I am afraid of dying.”
“Quite so, sir,” murmured the sympathetic but wholly uncomprehending detective, who had no mind for nice distinctions.
“But,” resumed the Minister — he was sitting in his study in Portland Place— “if I cannot imagine the exact process of dissolution, I can imagine and have experienced the result of breaking faith with the chancellories, and I have certainly no intention of laying up a store of future embarrassments for fear of something that may after all be comparatively trifling.”
Which piece of reasoning will be sufficient to indicate what the Opposition of the hour was pleased to term ‘the tortuous mind of the right honourable gentleman’.
And Superintendent Falmouth, listening with every indication of attention, yawned inwardly and wondered who Epictetus was.
“I have taken all possible precautions, sir,” said the detective in the pause that followed the recital of this creed. “I hope you won’t mind for a week or two being followed about by some of my men. I want you to allow two or three officers to remain in the house whilst you are here, and of course there will be quite a number on duty at the Foreign Office.”
Sir Philip expressed his approval, and later, when he and the detective drove down to the House in a closed brougham, he understood why cyclists rode before and on either side of the carriage, and why two cabs followed the brougham into Palace Yard.
At Notice Time, with a House sparsely filled, Sir Philip rose in his place and gave notice that he would move the second reading of the Aliens Extradition (Political Offences) Bill, on Tuesday week, or, to be exact, in ten days.
That evening Manfred met Gonsalez in North Tower Gardens and remarked on the fairylike splendour of the Crystal Palace grounds by night.
A Guards’ band was playing the overture to Tannhäuser, and the men talked music.
Then —
“What of Thery?” asked Manfred.
“Poiccart has him today; he is showing him the sights.” They both laughed.
“And you?” asked Gonsalez.
“I have had an interesting day; I met that delightfully naive detective in Green Park, who asked me what I thought of ourselves!”
Gonsalez commented on the movement in G minor, and Manfred nodded his head, keeping time with the music.
“Are we prepared?” asked Leon quietly.
Manfred still nodded and softly whistled the number. He stopped with the final crash of the band, and joined in the applause that greeted the musicians.
“I have taken a place,” he said, clapping his hands. “We had better come together.”
“Is everything there?”
Manfred looked at his companion with a twinkle in his eye.
“Almost everything.”
The band broke into the National Anthem, and the two men rose and uncovered.
The throng about the bandstand melted away in the gloom, and Manfred and his companion turned to go.
Thousands of fairy lamps gleamed in the grounds, and there was a strong smell of gas in the air.
“Not that way this time?” questioned, rather than asserted, Gonsalez.
“Most certainly not that way,” replied Manfred decidedly.
Chapter IV
Preparations
When an advertisement appeared in the Newspaper Proprietor announcing that there was —
For sale: An old-established zinco-engraver’s business with a splendid new plant and a stock of chemicals.
Everybody in the printing world said “That’s Etherington’s.” To the uninitiated a photo-engraver’s is a place of buzzing saws, and lead shavings, and noisy lathes, and big bright arc lamps.
To the initiated a photo-engraver’s is a place where works of art are reproduced by photography on zinc plates, and consequently used for printing purposes.
To the very knowing people of the printing world, Etherington’s was the worst of its kind, producing the least presentable of pictures at a price slightly above the average.
Etherington’s had been in the market (by order of the trustees) for three months, but partly owing to its remoteness from Fleet Street (it was in Carnaby Street), and partly to the dilapidated condition of the machinery (which shows that even an official receiver has no moral sense when he starts advertising), there had been no bids.
Manfred, who interviewed the trustee in Carey Street, learnt that the business could be either leased or purchased; that immediate possession in either circumstances was to be had; that there were premises at the top of the house which had served as a dwelling-place to generations of caretakers, and that a banker’s reference was all that was necessary in the way of guarantee.
“Rather a crank,” said the trustee at a meeting of creditors, “thinks that he is going to make a fortune turning out photogravures of Murillo at a price within reach of the inartistic. He tells me that he is forming a small company to carry on the business, and that so soon as it is formed he will buy the plant outright.”
And sure enough that very day Thomas Brown, merchant; Arthur W. Knight, gentleman; James Selkirk, artist; Andrew Cohen, financial agent; and James Leech, artist, wrote to the Registrar of Joint Stock Companies, asking to be formed into a company, limited by shares, with the object of carrying on business as photo-engravers, with which object they had severally subscribed for the shares set against their names.
(In parenthesis, Manfred was a great artist.)
And five days before the second reading of the Aliens Extradition Act, the company had entered into occupation of their new premises in preparation to starting business.
“Years ago, when I first came to London,” said Manfred, “I learned the easiest way to conceal one’s identity was to disguise oneself as a public enemy. There’s a wealth of respectability behind the word ‘limited’, and the pomp and circumstance of a company directorship diverts suspicion, even as it attracts attention.”
Gonsalez printed a neat notice to the effect that the Fine Arts Reproduction Syndicate would commence business on October 1, and a further neat label that ‘no hands were wanted’, and a further terse announcement that travellers and others could only be seen by appointment, and that all letters must be addressed to the Manager.
It was a plain-fronted shop, with a deep basement crowded with the dilapidated plant left by the liquidated engraver. The ground floor had been used as offices, and neglected furniture and grimy files predominated.
There were pigeonholes filled with old plates, pigeonholes filled with dusty invoices, pigeonholes in which all the debris that is accumulated in an office by a clerk with salary in arrear was deposited.
The first floor had been a workshop, the second had been a store, and the third and most interesting floor of all was that on which were the huge cameras and the powerful arc lamps that were so necessary an adjunct to the business.
In the rear of the house on this floor were the three small rooms that had served the purpose of the bygone caretaker.
In one of these, two days after the