“A liner,” described the editor wearily, thereby revealing that even the newer journalism had not driven the promiscuous contributor from his hard-fought field; “he does police-courts, fires, inquests, and things. Lately he’; taken to literature and writes Picturesque-Bits-of-Old London and Famous Tombstones-of-Hornsey epics …”
Throughout the offices of the newspapers the same thing was happening. Every cable that arrived, every piece of information that reached the sub-editor’s basket was coloured with the impending tragedy uppermost ii men’s minds. Even the police-court reports contained some allusion to the Four. It was the overnight drunk an disorderly’s justification for his indiscretion.
“The lad has always been honest,” said the boy’s tearful mother; “it’s reading these horrible stories about the Four Foreigners that’s made him turn out like this”; and the magistrate took a lenient view o the offence.
To all outward showing, Sir Philip Ramon, the man mostly interested in the development of the plot, was the least concerned.
He refused to be interviewed any further; he declined to discuss the possibilities of assassination, even with the premier, and his answer to letters of appreciation that came to him from all parts of the country was an announcement in the Morning Post asking his correspondents to be good enough to refrain from persecuting him with picture postcards, which found no other repository than his waste-paper basket.
He had thought of adding an announcement of his intention of carrying the Bill through Parliament at whatever cost, and was only deterred by the fear of theatricality.
To Falmouth, upon whom had naturally devolved the duty of protecting the Foreign Secretary from harm, Sir Philip was unusually gracious, and incidentally permitted that astute officer to get a glimpse of the terror in which a threatened man lives.
“Do you think there’s any danger, Superintendent?” he asked, not once but a score of times; and the officer, stout defender of an infallible police force, was very reassuring.
“For,” as he argued to himself, “what is the use of frightening a man who is half scared of death already? If nothing happens, he will see I have spoken the truth, and if—if—well, he won’t be able to call me a liar.”
Sir Philip was a constant source of interest to the detective, who must have shown his thoughts once or twice. For the foreign secretary, who was a remarkably shrewd man, intercepting a curious glance of the police officer, said sharply, “You wonder why I still go on with the Bill knowing the danger? Well, it will surprise you to learn that I do not know the danger, nor can I imagine it! I have never been conscious of physical pain in my life, and in spite of the fact that 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 fairy-like 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 naïve 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 V 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