Chapter 11

Garth nodded. He, like Grattan, believed Wilbraham on this point and not Henry, but it was more comfortable to take Henry at his own valuation. After all, if the chap _was_ a woman, whose concern was it but his own? Rather a caddish trick on Wilbraham's part to have publicly accused him. Though, to be sure, he had just been by him publicly accused, so perhaps they were quits. But, poor girl (if she was a girl), she must be feeling up a tree now. She seemed a nice enough person, too; a bit of a fool, of course, but then any one who'd write for the _British Bolshevist_, that pestilential rag, would need to be either a fool or a knave, or both.

So, on the whole, Henry was not acutely uncomfortable among his colleagues of the press.

Once Wilbraham passed close to him talking to the second British delegate, and fixed him with a glassy stare. Henry, refusing to be embarrassed, put up his monocle and stared back, as if surprised at the ill-breeding of this person.

So they came to the Monet pier, as the village church clock chimed seven.

47

The scheme of action had been carefully planned and organised by Signor Cristofero, with the help of the perfidious Roumanian Baptist at the château, who now, terrified at his own treachery, only longed for his master to be removed from the scene. The ex-cardinal, this Baptist had said, meant to dine that night, as he often did when he had not company, with his prisoners in the Keep Wing. He would be there when the detective, the police, the committee, and the press arrived at the château, and the party would be conducted there at once, to surprise the host and his guests at meat.

The delegate from Costa Rica had asked the detective if they should all bring weapons, but Signor Cristofero had said no.

"Quite unnecessary. Franchi does not go armed. He does not go in for bloodshed, except for some necessary purpose. When he sees he is trapped, he will throw down his hand with resignation. After all, the penalty for the abduction without injury, even of many delegates, is not very heavy. A term of imprisonment, then he will be free again. He intended, of course, to make his escape from the neighbourhood when he released his prisoners, and so be beyond reach of capture when the truth came out. He will be mortified at the failure of his plan--in so far as it has failed--but for himself he will not very greatly care. I know Dr. Franchi of old."

So revolvers were only taken by delegates and journalists of those nations which regard these weapons as a natural part of the human equipment for facing society.

As they trailed up from the Monet pier through the village, the party had the innocuous, cheerful, plebeian, only-man-is-vile air of all large parties of pleasure in beautiful country.

They approached the château by its public drive, which turned off the road beyond the village. Signor Cristofero knocked on the front door, which was opened by a villainous looking young man whom the party presumed to be the repentant Roumanian Baptist, and whom Signor Cristofero addressed fluently in a tongue even stranger than are most tongues. The young man replied in the same.

"Dr. Franchi is in the Keep Wing, dining with the delegates," Signor Cristofero informed his companions. "This man will conduct us there and admit us. He has the pass keys."

The party, led by the scowling Baptist, trooped into the château like a party of eager tourists ciceroned by a sulky guide.

They passed through the hall, through the company of dogs who seemed to like everybody except Henry and the delegate from Haiti, and thence along a sunny, airy corridor which led up to a nail-studded, triple-locked oak door, behind an ecclesiastical leather curtain. The Roumanian produced three keys, unlocked the door, and led the way along a further passage, this time only lighted by high, small windows. Here began the Keep Wing. At the farther end of this corridor was another oak door, this time only once locked. From beyond it came the sound of cheerful voices raised in talk and laughter. The Roumanian hung back. He obviously did not desire to lead the way any farther. After a short, low-toned conversation with Signor Cristofero, he went back through the triple-locked door.

"He fears his master," the detective remarked, with a shrug. "He is going to make his escape from the château, lest the other servants execute vengeance on him. No matter. We are now arrived."

Having with a gesture summoned round him the police, he opened the door and led the way into the room beyond.

It was a large refectory, with a long table down the middle. At the near end of it sat Dr. Franchi, with lifted glass; down the sides were ranged the lost delegates. One of them--perhaps Lord Burnley, who sat on his host's right--seemed to have been telling an amusing story, for all at the near end of the table were laughing. Or rather, nearly all: for, resolute in its gravity, its air of protest, the face of Lord John Lester, the mainstay of the League, was bent sadly over a dish of salted almonds.

The ex-cardinal had barely time to look round at the noise of entry before three policemen seized him firmly and snapped handcuffs on his wrists.

48

It was a scene the like of which, it is safe to say, had never before been seen among all the strange scenes which had been enacted along the shores of that most lovely lake. A strange scene, and a strange company.

The faces of some thirty delegates, interrupted in their meal, were turned, with varying expressions, upon the new-comers. Lord John Lester sprang to his feet, with an impatient cry of "At last!" which was, however, drowned by the ecstatic croon of Mademoiselle the delegate for Roumania, "Ah! mon Dieu! Nous sommes sauvés! Un jour de plus, et nous serions deportées," and a loud cry from Miss Gina Longfellow, who sprang from her seat at the other end of the table.

"Dio mio! We sure are copped!"

"Arrest the lady also, as an accomplice," remarked Signor Cristofero quietly.

Dr. Franchi suddenly began to struggle violently, thus engaging the attention of the police. As suddenly, he ceased to struggle, and said calmly, "Ebbene. E scappata," and it was apparent that Miss Longfellow had vanished.

"You will not find her now," said her uncle. "She knows where to hide. Besides, what has she done, the innocent?"

"The passages are guarded," Signor Cristofero remarked.

"Not, I think, my dear Angelo," said Dr. Franchi, looking at him for the first time, "the passage she will take.... So, Angelo, this is your work. I might have guessed. Gentlemen, my only and distinguished brother."

With a bow he introduced Signor Cristofero to his guests.

The detective smiled grimly at him, and addressed him in the Italian of the Lombardy Alps.

"This point is mine, I think, Silvio. It is a long war between us, in which you often score, but this point is mine."

"I grant it you, my dear Angelo, without rancour. Your abilities have always been so near the level of my own that I can take defeat at your hands without mortification. You will at least pay me the tribute of acknowledging the ingenuity and partial success of my scheme."

"That tribute I always pay you, Silvio. But, as has occasionally happened before, your ingenuity broke down at one point. You yielded to a whimsical impulse, and sent to the officials of the League a certain telegram couched in the words of the English version of a Hebrew psalm. When I heard this, I, remembering your addiction to the English translation of the psalms, identified you at once.... But this is no time for conversation. Later, a statement will be demanded of you. At present my business is to deliver you over to the law, and to give these gentlemen their liberty."

"You will find no difficulty in either, my dear brother.... This, then, gentlemen and ladies, is good-bye. I must apologise for any inconvenience that may have been caused by your detention, either to yourselves or to the society which you represent, and I must thank you for the great pleasure you have afforded me by your company. I think that, at least, you will be able to report that you have suffered no great discomforts while my guests."

"We have been most excellently entertained," Lord Burnley replied, and a murmur of assent ran round the table.

The Albanian Bishop rose to his feet, lifting his glass.

"Your health, sir," he said, and the other delegates drank the toast. (All except Lord John Lester, who impatiently muttered "Pshaw!")

"Indeed," said Mlle. Binesco, "Dr. Franchi has been more than kind. Another few days, and we might have fallen into the hands of the iniquitous traffickers behind him and been deported overseas--but he personally has been most good to us. _All_ we could want...."

Fergus Macdermott had pushed to the front of the interested onlookers.

"I'd like to ask you one question, sir. Why didn't your people finish the job they began on myself--if it was your people, and not, as I suspect, some Sinn Fein scoundrels?"

The ex-cardinal gave his kindly smile.

"It was certainly my people, Mr. Macdermott. But, in attacking you, they made a mistake. When they perceived who you were, they desisted. They had, you see, orders not to remove certain delegates, of whom you and your colleague from South Ireland were two, from the scene. It was considered that the Irish delegates would serve the cause I have the honour to represent better by their presence at the Assembly than by their absence from it."

"Enough talk," Signor Cristofero put in. "It is time we went."

"Brief and to the point as ever, dear brother. Good-bye, then, gentlemen and ladies. I regret, Lord Burnley, not to have had time in which to finish the interesting conversation we began last night on the subject of my present book. It will have to keep for happier days. Meanwhile, I hope to have a quiet little time in which to meditate on and complete the book."

As he passed Henry Beechtree on his way to the door, he stopped.

"Ah, my dear young man. Luck did not favour our little plan, did it?"

"That person," said the disagreeable voice of Charles Wilbraham, "is, if I may be allowed to mention it, a young woman, Dr. Franchi."

The ex-cardinal turned to him a cold face.

"I have known that, Mr. Wilbraham, a good deal longer than you have." He smiled sweetly at Henry.

"Yes, my young friend. There was an incident, you may recollect, of a goldfish.... I have several--er--nephews and nieces--and have watched them grow up. Never yet have I seen the boys disturbed by such episodes. Masculine nerves are, as a rule, more robust. You should remember this in future.... You will pardon my having noticed the incident. I would never have referred to it had not the subject been raised. Some day you shall dine with me again, if you will.... But my good brother grows impatient. Good-bye again, my friends. A rivederci."

He was led away. He would be taken to Geneva in a police launch, with the detective, the police, and the arrested servants. The delegates and press were to follow in the steamer.

49

The return journey of the rescuers and the rescued was a happy one indeed. If fraternity had prevailed on the outward voyage, now far more were all (or most) hearts knit together. What happy greetings were exchanged, what stories related, what mysteries made clear! The happy press were told the tale of each captured delegate; they learnt of the pursuit after vice of the two public-spirited ladies, and their consequent entrapment, of the decoy of Lord John Lester through his devotion to the Union of the League, of how Professor Inglis had been betrayed through his pity for the poor Greek woman, of how Dr. Chang, leaving the Bergues hotel at midnight, had taken a walk through the Saint Gervais quarter, and been led by the smell of opium to investigate a mysterious opium den whose floor had failed beneath his feet and dropped him into an underground passage, along which he had been conducted to an exit close to the Seujet Wharf, hustled into a covered boat, and carried up the lake. Many such strange tales the released captives told, and the journalists took down breathlessly on their writing-pads. Geneva, one perceived, must be full of the paid agents of the ex-cardinal and the society which employed him. Not that Dr. Franchi had told his captives anything of this society; he had merely said that he was anxious for good company, and had therefore taken the liberty of capturing the pick of the eminent persons present at Geneva and entertaining them as his guests.

"If you knew, gentlemen," he had said, "how one wearies for a little intelligence, a little wit, a little _bonhomie_, in this dour country!"

Naturally, they had not believed him, but some of them had been, all the same, a little flattered at their own selection.

They had had, it seemed, a delightful time. Books, newspapers, delicate food and wines, games, conversation, everything except liberty, had been provided for their delectation.

"One can't help, in some ways, being even a little sorry it is at an end," Lord Burnley murmured, as he watched the lights of the château recede, and thought of the dusty days of labour which were to follow.

"If only it's not too late--if only irretrievable damage has not been done," muttered Lord John Lester, frowning at the same lights, thinking of the vast agenda for the session, and of the growling nations of the world.

"I think," the voice of Charles Wilbraham came, high and conceited, to Henry Beechtree as he lurked disgraced in a corner and listened and watched, "I think we may say we have put a spoke in the wheel of these scoundrels this time. Yes; _I_ think we may say that...."

50

Henry that night packed his things. He was leaving next day. He was not going to wait to be dismissed by his paper. He knew that, if he did not go, he would with ignominy be removed.

So he packed, in his small hot room after dinner, with the cats and dogs uttering their cries in the courtyard below, and beyond them the small whispering cry of water beating and shuffling against the wharf.

His adventure was over. In fact, Henry must now be called Miss Montana, for such was, in truth, her name, and such, as Charles Wilbraham had truly said, her sex.

How superciliously had he said it, how superciliously staring her down the while. As, long ago, he had superciliously stared her down when he had said to his secretary, "This cannot go on, Miss Montana. I must make another arrangement. Particularly in view of Paris...."

Particularly in view of Paris. Ah, yes, that was the sting. Who would have wanted to go on being Charles Wilbraham's secretary but for Paris? For to that heaven of secretaries, the Paris Peace Conference, Charles had been called, and was going that month, January, 1919. She had been going with him. What delight! What a world of joy had opened before her when she heard it! What a peace! It would make up for all the weary years of war, all the desolating months of servitude to Charles Wilbraham. And now, within a fortnight of starting, Charles said he must make another arrangement. For his secretary had shown gross carelessness, hopeless incompetence: she had done a frightful thing. She had put a Foreign Office letter into an envelope addressed to the Archbishop of Westminster, and vice versa, and so despatched them. It was the climax, so Charles told her, of a long series of misdeeds. Also, she was slow on the typewriter, spelt Parliament with a small p, and used the eraser too frequently, and you could, said Charles, see the smudge made by that a mile off. So--in fine, Charles must make another arrangement and must in fact, in point of fact, he unctuously told her, ask her forthwith to take a minute to the establishment, bidding them obtain for him another secretary. The bitterness of that moment swept back to Henry now across the years. She remembered how, wordless, sullen, and fighting that dizziness that attacked her in moments of stress, she had stood before him, loathing his smooth voice, his lofty choice of words, his whole arrogant, pompous presence. Then he had dictated the minute.

"_From_ Mr. Wilbraham.

"_To_ the Establishment Branch.

"I find I have to make other arrangements about a secretary. I shall be glad if you will transfer Miss Montana to other work, and send some one to me more thoroughly efficient. It would be well if I could have a selection up for interview and make a choice, preferably after a preliminary trial. The work will be responsible, as I am going out to the Peace Conference in a fortnight.

"8.1.1919."

"Kindly see," Charles had ordered her, "that that is typed and goes down immediately. I shall be glad to have it for initialing in not more than five minutes from now."

That had been the way Charles had always addressed his secretaries; Charles was like that. Courtesy to a subordinate was, in his view, wholly wasted. He kept all he had of it for his superiors. "The only really rude man in the Ministry," Henry had heard him called by the typists, and typists always know.

Miss Montana had been subsequently transferred to the Establishment Branch, where she had spent her time typing chits about other people's salaries and appointments. Finally, when the staff was reduced, she was the first to be dismissed. She had never been to Paris; never seen the Peace Conference. Charles, with first one bullied secretary, now another, had moved on his triumphant way from conference to conference, a tour unbroken by his appointment to the staff of the League of Nations Secretariat. Miss Montana had never been to a conference in her life.

In her loafing, idle and poor, about London, with her idle and poor brother and her Irish journalist lover, bitterness had grown more bitter. No money, no prospects, no career. Only chance bits of freelance journalism, not enough to pay the rent of decent rooms. She had vowed to be revenged on Charles, but no way presented itself. She had prayed God to send her to some bright continental place with a sunny climate and if possible with some sort of conference going on, but no ladder thereto reared itself for her climbing. Her lover, a young man from Dublin, who wrote for, among other papers, the _British Bolshevist_, went out to represent this journal at the League Assembly at Geneva one year. He fell foul there of Charles Wilbraham, who objected to his messages, which, indeed, were not in the best of taste; but, as he said, if you write for vulgar papers you must send vulgar messages sometimes or they won't print you. Charles had him boycotted from public dinners, and otherwise annoyed. Hearing of it, Miss Montana consecrated afresh her vow to be revenged on Charles. The next year this journalist was to have gone to Geneva again, but instead he encountered an Orange bullet while reporting a riot in Belfast on August 15th, and was still laid up with the effects at the beginning of September. Then Miss Montana had conceived her brilliant idea. She would take his place. She would get back on Charles. She would disguise herself so that he would not know her if they met, and somehow she would be avenged. Incidentally, she would have a conference, in a bright continental climate, and earn some money.

Eventually she had persuaded the young man to write to the _Bolshevist_ telling them that he had a journalist friend already in Geneva, one Henry Beechtree, who might safely be entrusted with the not onerous job of reporting the proceedings of the Assembly for them. The _Bolshevist_ did not really much care who did this job, or how it was done, so they accepted the services of this Mr. Beechtree.

Thus, for Miss Montana, opened out at once an entertaining adventure, a temporary and scanty means of livelihood, and a chance of revenge. Surely now, knowing what she knew of Charles (for she had worked hard to collect injurious facts), she could somehow bring him to indignity and disgrace. How she had worked for this end! How patiently she had schemed, waited, watched, prayed, made friends with a dull girl, followed Charles about.... Let him wait, she had said; only let Charles wait. And now had come her hour, and it had, after all, turned on her and proved to be, as always, the hour not of herself, but of Charles. Charles was in the right; she was in the wrong. Charles (she might have known it) had done nothing so unseemly as to retain armament shares while entering the staff of the League; Charles had transferred his money to beer. Charles had not conspired against the League. Rather had Charles conceived the clever idea of engaging a famous detective to solve the mystery, and triumphantly he had had it solved. Charles emerged from this business, as always from every business, with credit; Charles was triumphantly in the right.

It came to Miss Montana afresh, what she had really always known, that the Charleses of this world always are in the right. You cannot put them in the wrong. They put you in the wrong, for ever and ever. They may be all wrong, within and without, but they cannot be in the wrong. The wrong is in them, not they in it. However false, selfish, complacent, arrogant, and abominable a life Charles might have led, one would know that at the Judgment Day he would somehow be in the right.... Right with God, Charles would be, and contemptuously and without surprise he would watch his neighbours' condemnation. Had he not joined the True Church to make sure of this ultimate rightness, and because it was fashionable just now? Much Charles cared for religion! If Catholics were once more to be persecuted instead of admired, how soon would Charles leave them! Yes, Charles would always be in the right with the best people....

The heart and soul of Miss Montana went out passionately across land and sea to her wild journalist lover in Dublin, that poor and reckless failure, with whom nothing went right, who had scarcely a shilling to his name nor an ounce of health in his body. He was more than all the Charles Wilbrahams of the world together; infinitely more brilliant, more valuable, more alive; but never did he succeed, for life was not on his side. And now he would lose his job on the _British Bolshevist_ (not that that mattered much), and be further discredited, for perpetrating this fraud which had been so unfortunately exposed. He would go under, deeper and deeper under, and so would she. The underworld, that vague and fearful place, would receive them. His generous and trusting love for her had joined with his love of a joke to sink him. Together they would sink, and over their bodies Charles Wilbraham would climb, as on stepping-stones, to higher things. Higher and higher, plumping with prosperity like a filbert in the sun, while his eyes dropped fatness, and his corn and wine and oil increased....

Thus bitterly mused Miss Montana, sitting in her grimy room by her shabby gladstone bag, throwing therein her pyjamas, her socks, her collars, her safety razor, her passport (the passport was about Denis O'Neill, but it had served Henry Beechtree well enough; there is one advantage about passports: the nonsensical story on them is seldom read, nor the foolish portrait glanced at).