Chapter 5

"I had better say," he observed, in his temperate and calming manner, "that I believe I know to whom you allude. I have guessed, since I saw you this morning when a certain individual was speaking near you, that you took no favourable view of him. And now I perceive that you are justified. You will be doubly justified if we can prove, what I am trying to agree with you is not improbable, that he has indeed made away with this unfortunate Svensen. I am tempted to share your view of this unpleasing person. Among other things he is a Catholic convert; as to these we have already exchanged our views.... Do you know what I think? This; that Svensen's will not be the only disappearance at Geneva. For what would be the use of getting rid of one man only, however prominent? The Assembly, after the first shock, would proceed with its doings. But what if man after man were to disappear? What if the whole fabric of Assembly, Council, and Committees should be disintegrated, till no one could have thoughts for anything but the mysterious disappearances and how to solve the riddle, and how, still more, to preserve each one himself from a like fate? Could any work be continued in such circumstances, in such an atmosphere? No. The Assembly would become merely a collection of bewildered and nervous individuals turning themselves into amateur detectives, and, incidentally, the laughing-stock of the world. The League might never recover such prestige as it has, after such a disastrous session. Mark my words; there will be further attempts on the persons of prominent delegates. Whether they will be successful attempts or not is a question. Who is responsible for them is another question. You say (and I am half with you) our friend of the Secretariat, who had better be nameless until we can bring him to book. Others will say other things. Many will be suspected. Notably, no doubt, the Spanish Americans, who lend themselves readily to such suspicions; they have that air, and human life is believed not to be unduly sacred to them. Besides, they never got on with Svensen, who is reported to have alluded to them not infrequently as 'those damned Red Indians.' The Scandinavian temperament and theirs are so different. I do not even feel sure myself that they are not implicated. The initiation of the affair by our Secretariat friend would not, in fact, preclude their participation in it. I had nearly said, show me a Spanish-American, still worse a Portuguese, and I will show you a scoundrel. Nearly, but not quite, for it is a mistake to say such things of one's brothers in the League. Besides, I like them. They are pleasing, amusing fellows, and do not rasp one's nerves like the Germans and many others. One can forgive them much; indeed, one has to. Many people, again, would be glad to put responsibility on the Germans. An unfortunate race, for nothing is so unfortunate as to be unloved. We must discover the truth, Mr. Beechtree. You have a line of inquiry to follow?"

"I am making friends with the fellow's secretary," said Henry. "She likes me, I may say. And she talks quite a lot. She would not consciously betray her chief's confidence, though she does not like him; but all the same I get many clues from her.... Oh, my God----!"

The ejaculation, which was made under his breath, was shocked involuntarily out of him by the sight of Dr. Franchi's Persian cat extracting with its paw from a bowl that stood on the terrace balustrade a large gold-fish and devouring it.

After the first glance Henry looked away, leaning back in his chair, momentarily overcome with a feeling of nausea, which made his face glisten white and damp, and caused the sweat to break hotly on his brow, while the lake swayed and darkened before his eyes. It was a feeling to which he was unfortunately subject when he saw the smaller of God's creatures suffering these mischances at the hands of their larger brethren. His nerves were not strong, and he had an excessive dislike of witnessing unpleasant sights.

"You don't feel well?" Dr. Franchi solicitously inquired.

"The gold-fish," his guest murmured. "Eaten alive ... what an end!"

Dr. Franchi's delicate, dark Latin brows rose.

"The gold-fish? Ah, my wicked Pellico.... I cannot keep him from the bowl, the rascal. I regret that he so upset you. But the sensibility of gold-fish is not great, surely? As the peasants say, non son chretiani loro!"

"Forgive me. To see a live fish devoured ... it took me unawares.... I shall be all right soon...."

As from a great distance Henry, still fighting the sensation of nausea, was half aware of the ex-cardinal's piercing eyes fixed on him with extraordinary intensity.

"I am all right now," said Henry. "A momentary faintness--quite absurd.... I expect gold-fish do not really feel either emotion or pain. They say that fish do not feel hooks. Or worms, either.... They say all sorts of comforting things about this distressing world, don't they. One should try to believe them all...."

"You are," said Dr. Franchi quietly, "if I may say so, a decidedly unusual young man."

"Indeed, no," said Henry. "But I have encroached on you long enough. I must go."

18

The motor-launch churned its foaming path down the moonlit lake. Henry sat in the stern, trailing his fingers in cool, phosphorescent water, happy, drowsy, and well fed. What a delightful evening! What a charming old man! What a divine way of being taken home! And now he had the warm, encouraged feeling of not pursuing a lone trail, for the ex-cardinal's last words to him had been: "Coraggio! Follow every clue; push home every piece of evidence. Between us we will yet lay this enemy of the public good by the heel."

The very thought that they would yet do that flushed Henry's cheek and kindled his eye.

Assuredly the wicked should not always flourish like the bay tree. "I went by, and lo he was not," thought Henry, quoting the queer message received by the President before the first session of the Assembly.

The launch dashed up to the Quai du Seujet, and Henry presented a franc to the pilot, and stepped off, trying to emulate this gentleman's air of never having visited such a low wharf before. "You have brought me rather too far," he said. "But I will walk back."

But, now he came to think of it, Dr. Franchi's man must obviously know where he lived, so camouflage was unavailing. He had intended (only, lost in thought, he had let the moment pass) to be set down at the Paquis, as if he had been staying on the Quai du Mont Blanc or thereabouts. But he had said nothing, and, without doubt or hesitation, this disagreeable chauffeur (or whatever an electric launch man was called) had made for the Quai du Seujet and drawn up at it, as if he knew, as doubtless he did, that Henry's lodging was in one of the squalid alleys off it.

It could not be helped. Things do get about; Henry knew that of old. However, to maintain the effect of his words to the man, he started to walk away from the St. Gervais quarter towards the Mont Blanc bridge, until the launch was foaming on its homeward way. Then he retraced his steps.

As he passed the end of the bridge, he saw a well-known and characteristic figure, small, trim, elegant, the colour of ivory, clad in faultless evening dress, beneath an equally faultless light coat, standing by the parapet. Some one was with him, talking to him--an equally characteristic figure, less well known to the world at large, but not less well known to Henry.

Henry stopped abruptly, and stood in the shadow of a newspaper kiosk. He was not in the least surprised. Any hour of the day or night did for Charles Wilbraham to talk to the great. He would leave a dinner at the same time as the most important person present, in order to accompany him on his way. He would waylay cabinet ministers in streets, bishops (though himself not of their faith) in closes, and royal personages incognito. He would impede their progress, or walk delicately beside them, talking softly, respectfully, with that perfect propriety of diction and address which he had always at command.

"Soapy Sam," muttered Henry from behind the kiosk.

The two on the bridge moved on. They came towards Henry, strolling slowly and talking. The well-known personage was apparently telling an amusing story, for Charles was all attention and all smiles.

"As Chang was saying to me the other night," Henry prospectively and unctuously quoted Charles.

They left the bridge, and turned along the Quai du Mont Blanc. Charles's rather high laugh sounded above the current of their talk.

They paused at the Hotel des Bergues. The eminent person mounted its steps; Charles accompanied him up the steps and inside. Probably the eminent person wished, by calling on some one there, to shake off Charles before going to his own hotel. But he had not shaken off Charles, who was of a tenacious habit.

"Calling on the Latin Americans," Henry commented. "Wants to have a drink and a chat without Charles. Won't get it, poor chap. Well, I shall sleuth around till they come out. I'm going to trail Charles home to his bed, if it takes all night."

He settled himself on the parapet of the Quai and watched the hotel entrance. He did not have to wait long. In some minutes Charles came out alone. He looked, thought Henry, observing him furtively from under his pulled down hat brim, a little less elated than he had appeared five minutes earlier. His self-esteem had suffered some blow, thought Henry, who knew Charles's mentality. Mentality: that was the word one used about Charles, as if he had been a German during the late war (Germans having, as all readers of newspapers will remember, mentalities).

Charles walked rapidly across the bridge, towards the road that led to his own châlet, a mile out of the town. Henry, keeping his distance, hurried after him, through the steep, silent, sleeping city, up on to the dusty, tram-lined, residential road above it, till Charles stopped at a villa gate and let himself in.

Then Henry turned back, and tramped drowsily down the dusty road beneath the moonless sky, and down through the steep, sleeping city, and across the Pont des Bergues, and so to the Quai du Seujet and the Allée Petit Chat, which lay dense and black and warm in shadow, and was full of miawling cats, strange sounds, and queer acrid smells. The drainage system of the St. Gervais quarter was crude.

In the stifling bedroom of his crazy tenement, Henry undressed and sleepily tumbled into bed as the city clock struck two.

In the dawn, below the miawling of lean cats and the yelping of dogs, he heard the lapping and shuffling of water, and thought of boats and beating oars.

19

To what cold seas of inchoate regret, of passionate agnosticism as to the world's meanings, if any, does one too often wake, and know not why! Henry, on some mornings, would wake humming (as the queer phrase goes) with prosperity, and spring, warm and alive, to welcome the new day. On other mornings it would be as if he shivered perplexed on the brink of a fathomless abyss, and life engulfed him like chill waters, and he would strive, defensively, to divest himself of himself and be but as one of millions of the ant-like creatures that scurry over the earth's face, of no more significance to himself than were the myriad others. He could just achieve this state of impersonality while he lay in bed. But when he got up, stood on the floor, looked at the world no longer from beyond its rim but from within its coils, he became again enmeshed, a creature crying "I, I, I," a child wanting Pears' soap and never getting it, a pilgrim here on earth and stranger. Then the seas of desolation would swamp him and he would sink and sink, tumbled in their bitter waves.

In such a mood of causeless sorrow he woke late on the morning after he had dined with Dr. Franchi. To keep it at arms' length he lay and stared at his crazy, broken shutters, off which the old paint flaked, and thought of the infinite strangeness of all life, a pastime which very often engaged him. Then he thought of some one whom he very greatly loved, and was refreshed by that thought; and, indeed, to love and be loved very greatly is the one stake to cling to in these troubled seas, the one unfailing life-buoy. Then, turning his mind into practical channels, he thought of hate, and of Charles Wilbraham, and of how best to strive that day to compass him about with ruin.

So meditating, he splashed himself from head to foot with cold water, dressed, and sallied forth from his squalid abode to the nearest café. Coffee and rolls and the Swiss morning papers and the clear jolly air of the September morning put heart into him, as he sat outside the café by the lake. Opening his paper, he read of "Femme coupée en morceaux" and "L'Affaire Svensen," and then a large heading, "Disparition de Lord Burnley." Henry started. Here was news indeed. And he had failed to get hold of it for his paper. Lord Burnley, it seemed, had been strolling alone about the city in the late afternoon; many people had seen him in the Rue de la Cité and the neighbourhood. He had even been observed to enter a bookshop. The rest was silence. From that bookshop he had not been seen to emerge. The bookseller affirmed that he had left after spending a few minutes in the shop. No further information was to hand.

"_Cherchez la femme_," one comic paper had the audacity to remark, à propos l'affaire Svensen and Burnley. Even Svensen and Burnley, so pure-hearted, so public-spirited, so League-minded, were not immune from such ill-bred aspersions.

20

The elegant and scholarly Spaniard, Luiz Vaga, strolled by. He wore a canary-coloured waistcoat and walked like a fastidious and graceful bullfinch. He stopped beside Henry's breakfast-table, cocked his head on one side, and said, "Hallo. Good-morning. Heard the latest news?"

Henry admitted that he had heard no news later than that in the morning press.

"Chang's gone now," said Vaga. "Gone to join Svensen and Burnley. I regret to say that he was last seen, late last night, paying a call on my fellow-countrymen from South America at Les Bergues hotel. Serious suspicion rests on these gentlemen, for poor Chang has not been heard of since."

"Somehow," Henry said thoughtfully, "I am not surprised. L'addition, s'il vous plaît. No, I cannot say I am surprised. I rather thought that there would be more disappearances very shortly. Burnley and Chang. A good haul.... Who saw him going into the Bergues?"

"Our friend Wilbraham, who was out late with him last night. And the Bergues people don't deny it. But they say he left again, soon after midnight. The hall porter, who has, it is presumed, been corrupted, confirms this. But he never returned to his hotel. Poor Burnley and Chang! Two good talkers, scholars, and charming fellows. There are few such, in this vulgar age. It is taking the best, this unseen hand that strikes down our delegates in their prime. So many could be spared.... But God's will must be done. These South Americans are its very fitting tools, for they don't care what they do, reckless fellows. Mind you, I don't accuse them. Personally I should be more inclined to suspect the Zionists, or the Bolshevik refugees, or your Irishmen, or some of the Unprotected Minorities, or the Poles, or the Anti-Vivisection League, who are very fierce. But, for choice, the Poles; anyhow as regards Burnley. There were certain words once publicly spoken by Burnley to the Polish delegation about General Zeligowsky which have rankled ever since. Zeligowsky has many wild disbanded soldiers at his command.... However--Chang, anyhow, went to see the South Americans, and has not emerged. There we are."

"There we are," Henry thoughtfully agreed, as they strolled over the Pont du Mont Blanc. "And what, then, is Wilbraham's explanation of the affair Chang?"

Vaga shrugged his shoulders.

"Our friend Wilbraham is too discreet to make allegations. He merely states the fact--that he saw Chang into the Bergues between twelve and one and left him there.... I gather that he accompanied him into the hotel, but did not stay there long himself. I can detect a slight acrimony in his manner on the subject, and deduce from it that he was not perhaps encouraged by Dr. Chang or his hosts to linger. I flatter myself I know Wilbraham's mentality fairly well--if one may be permitted that rather opprobrious word."

"Yes, indeed," Henry said. "It is precisely what Wilbraham has. I know it well."

"In that case, I believe if you had heard Wilbraham on this matter of his call at Les Bergues that you would agree with me that his importance suffered there some trifling eclipse."

"There may be other reasons," said Henry, "in this case, for the manner you speak of.... But I won't say any more now." He bit off the stream of libel that had risen to his lips and armed himself in a careful silence, while the Spaniard cocked an inquiring dark eye at his brooding profile.

In the Jardin Anglais they overtook Dr. Franchi and his niece, making their way to the Assembly Hall. The ex-cardinal was greatly moved. "Poor Dr. Chang," he lamented, "and Burnley too, of all men! A wit, a scholar, a philosopher, a metaphysician, a theologian, a man of affairs. In fine, a man one could talk to. What a mind! I am greatly attached to Lord Burnley. They must be found, gentlemen. Alive or (unthinkable thought) dead, they must be found. The Assembly must do nothing else until this sinister mystery is unravelled. We must employ detectives. We must follow every clue."

Miss Longfellow said, "My! Isn't it all quite too terribly sinister! Don't you think so, Mr. Beechtree?"

Henry said he did.

21

They reached the Assembly Hall. The lobby, buzzing with delegates, Secretariat, journalists, Genevan syndics, and excitement, was like a startled hive. The delegates from Cuba, Chili, Bolivia, and Paraguay, temporarily at one, were informing the eager throng who crowded round them that Dr. Chang had left the Bergues hotel, after a chat and a whisky with the delegate from Paraguay, at twelve-thirty precisely. The delegate from Paraguay had gone out with him and had left him on the Pont des Bergues. He had said that he was going to cross this bridge and stroll round the old _cité_ before going to bed, as he greatly admired the picturesque night aspect of these ancient streets and houses that clustered round the cathedral. He had then, presumably, made his way to this old, tortuous and unsafe maze of streets, so full of dark archways, trap-doors, cellars, winding stairways, evil smells, and obscure alleys. ("These alleys," as a local guide-book coldly puts it, "are not well inhabited, but the visitor may safely go through those of houses 5 and 17." Had Dr. Chang, perhaps, been through, part of the way through, numbers 4 or 16 instead?)

"That's right; put it on the _cité_," muttered Grattan, who was fond of this part of Geneva, for he often dined there, and who admired the representatives of the South American states as hopeful agents of crime and mystery.

No evidence, it seemed, was forthcoming that any one had seen Dr. Chang in the _cité_, but then, as the delegate from Paraguay remarked, even the inhabitants of the _cité_ must sleep sometimes.

Police and detectives had early been put to work to search the cathedral quarter. Systematically they were making inquiries in it, street by street, house by house. Systematically, too, others were making inquiries in the old St. Gervais quarter.

"But police detective work is never any good," as Henry, a well-read person in some respects, remarked. "It is well known that one requires non-constabulary talent."

22

The bell rang, and a shaken and disorganised Assembly assembled in the hall. The Deputy-President, in an impassioned speech, lamented the sinister disappearance of his three so eminent colleagues. As he remarked, this would not do. Some evil forces were at work, assaulting the very life of the League, for it must now be apparent that these disappearances were not coincidences, but links in a connected chain of crime. What and whose was the unseen hand behind these dastardly deeds? What secret enemies of the League were so cunningly and assiduously at work? Was murder their object, or merely abduction? Whose turn would it be next? (At this last inquiry a shudder rippled over the already agitated assembly.) But MM. les Délégués might rest assured that what could be done was being done, both for the discovery of their eminent colleagues, the detection of the assaulters, and the aversion of such disasters in future.

At this point the delegate for Greece leapt to his feet.

"_What_," he demanded, "is being done with this last object? What provision is being made for the safety of our persons?"

His question was vigorously applauded, while the English interpreter, quite unheard, explained it to those in the hall who lacked adequate knowledge of the French language.

The Deputy-President was understood to reply that it was uncertain as yet what effective steps could be taken, but that all the forces of law and order in Geneva had been invoked, and that MM. les Délégués were hereby warned not to go about alone by night, or, indeed, much by day, and not to venture into obscure streets or doubtful-looking shops.

Mademoiselle the delegate from Roumania demanded the word. Mademoiselle the delegate for Roumania was a large and buxom lady with a soft, mellifluous voice that cooed like a turtle-dove's when she spoke eloquently from platforms of the wrongs of unhappy women and poor children. This delegate was female indeed. Not hers the blue-stocking sexlessness of the Scandinavian lady delegates, with their university degrees, their benign, bumpy foreheads, and their committee manners. She had been a mistress of kings; she was a very woman, full of the _élan_ of sex. When she swam on to the platform and turned her eyes to the ceiling, it was seen that they brimmed with tears.

"Mon Dieu, M. le Vice-Président," she ejaculated. "Mon Dieu!" And proceeded in her rich, voluptuous voice to dwell on the iniquities of the traffic in women and children all over the world. The nets of these traffickers were spread even in Geneva--that city of good works--and who would more greatly desire to make away with the good men of the League of Nations than these wicked traffickers? How well it was known among them that Lord Burnley, Dr. Svensen, and Dr. Chang held strong opinions on this subject....

At this point a French delegate leaped to his feet and made strong and rapid objection to these accusations. No one more strongly than his pure and humane nation disliked this iniquitous traffic in flesh and blood, but the devil should have his due, and there was no proof that the traffickers were guilty of the crimes now under discussion. Much might be allowed a lady speaker in the height of her womanly indignation, which did credit to her heart and sex, but scarcely so much as that.

For a moment it looked like a general squabble, for other delegates sprang to their feet and called out, and the interpreters, dashing round the hall with notebooks, could scarcely keep pace, and every one was excited except the Japanese, who sat solemnly in rows and watched. For the hold, usually so firm, exercised by the chair over the Assembly, had given way under the stress of these strange events, and in vain did the Deputy-President knock on the table with his hammer and cry "Messieurs! Messieurs! La parole est à Mademoiselle la Déléguée de la Roumanie!"

But he could not repress those who called out vehemently that "Il ne s'agit pas à present de la traite des femmes; il s'agit seulement de la disparition de Messieurs les Délégués!" And something unconsidered was added about those states more recently admitted to the League, which had to be hastily suppressed.