Chapter 7

"The 8th," he replied, "is a day we keep in Ulster."

"Do you? How?"

"By throwing stones," said Mr. Macdermott, simply and fervently. "At processions, you know. It's a great Catholic day--like August 15th--I forget why. Some Catholic foolery. The birthday of the Virgin Mary, I fancy. Anyhow we throw stones.... I wonder will there be any processions here?"

"You can't throw stones if there are," his more discreet friend admonished him. "Pull yourself together, Fergus, and don't look so fell. These things simply aren't done outside your maniac country, you know. Remember where and what you are."

The wild blue fire still leapt in Mr. Macdermott's Celtic eyes. His mind obviously still hovered round processions.

"Of course," he explained, "one couldn't throw stones. Not abroad. But one might go and look on...."

"Certainly not. Not if I can prevent you. You'll disgrace the League by shouting: 'To hell with the Pope.' I know you. If a procession is anywhere in the offing, it will make you feel so at home that you'll lose your head entirely. Go and find O'Shane and punch his head if you want to let off steam. He'll be game, particularly as it's one of his home festivals too. You're neither of you safe to have loose on the Nativity of the B.V.M., if that's what it is."

Macdermott gazed at the lake with eyes that dreamed of home.

"It'd be a queer thing," he murmured, "if there wouldn't be a procession somewhere to-day, even in this godly Protestant city...."

"Well, in case there should, and to keep you safe, you'd better come and dine with me at eight at my inn. Don't dress. I must go and send off my stuff now. See you later, then."

Fergus Macdermott, left alone, strolled along towards his own hotel, but when he was half-way to it a clashing of bells struck on his ear, and reminded him that the Catholic Church of Notre Dame was only a few streets away. No harm to walk that way, and see if anything was doing. He did so. On the door of the church a notice announced that the procession in honour of the Nativity of Our Lady would leave the church at eight o'clock and pursue a route, which was given in detail.

"Well, I can't see it," said Fergus Macdermott. "I shall be having dinner." He went back to his hotel and typed out a manifesto, or petition, as he called it, for presentation to the Assembly when quieter times should supervene and make the consideration of general problems possible again. The manifesto was on the subject of the tyranny exercised over Ulster by the Southern Free State Government. At the same moment, in his room at the same hotel, Denis O'Shane, the Free State delegate, was typing _his_ manifesto, which was about the tyranny exercised over South Ireland by Ulster.

At 7.45 Macdermott finished his document, read it through with satisfaction and remembered that he had to go and dine with Garth. He left his hotel with this intention, and could not have said at what point his more profound, his indeed innate intention, which was to go to the Church of Notre Dame, asserted itself. Anyhow, at eight o'clock, there he was in the Place Cornavin, arriving at the outskirts of the crowd which was watching the white-robed crucifer and acolytes leading the procession out of the open church doors and down the steps.

Macdermott, blocked by the crowd, could hardly see. He felt in an inferior position towards this procession, barred from it by a kindly and reverent crowd of onlookers. In his native city things were different. He had here no moral support for his just contempt of Popish flummery. He did not want to do anything to the procession, merely to stare it down with the disgust it deserved, but this was difficult when he could only see it above bared heads.

A voice just above him said, in French: "Monsieur cannot see. He would get a better view from this window here. I beg of you to come in, monsieur."

Looking up, Macdermott saw the face of a kindly old woman looking down at him from the first-floor window of the high house behind him. Certainly, he admitted, he could not see, and he would rather like to. He entered the hospitable open door, which led into a shop, and ascended a flight of stone steps.

On the top step, in the darkness of a narrow passage, a chloroformed towel was flung and held tight over his head and face, and he was borne to the ground.

30

Thus this young Irishman's strong religious convictions, which did him credit, betrayed him to his doom. But, incomprehensibly, doom in the sense (whatever sense that was) in which it had overtaken his fellow-delegates, was after all averted. He did not disappear into silence as they had. On the contrary, the kindly old woman who had rushed from the front window and bent over him as he lay unconscious on the stair-head, saw him presently open his eyes and stir, and heard the faint, bewildered murmur of "to hell with the Pope," which is what Orangemen say mechanically when they come to, as others may say, "Where am I?"

Very soon he sat up, dizzily.

"I was chloroformed," he said, "by some damned Republican. Where is the chap? Don't let him make off."

But he was informed that this person had already disappeared. When the old lady of the house, hearing him fall, had come out and found him, there had been no trace of either his assaulter or of the chloroformed towel. The kindly old lady was almost inclined to think that monsieur must have fainted, and fancied the Republican, the chloroform, and the attack.

Fergus Macdermott, who never either fainted or fancied, assured her that this was by no means the case.

"It's part, no doubt," he said, "of this Sinn Fein plot against delegates. Why they didn't put it through in my case I can't say. I suppose they heard you coming.... But what on earth did they _mean_ to do with me? Now, madame, we must promptly descend and make inquiries as to who was seen to leave your front door just now. There is no time to be lost.... Only I feel so infernally giddy...."

The inquiries he made resulted in little. Some standers-by had seen two men leave the house a few minutes since, but had observed nothing, neither what they were like nor where they went. No, it had not been observed that they were of South Irish aspect.

It seemed hopeless to track them. The old lady said that she lived there alone with her husband, above the shop; but that, of course, any scoundrel might stray into it while the door stood open, and lurk in ambush.

"How did they guess that the old lady was going to invite me in?" Macdermott wondered. "If they did guess, that is, and if it was really part of the anti-delegate campaign. Of course, if not, they may merely have guessed she should ask some one (it may be her habit), and hidden in ambush to rob whoever it might be. But they didn't rob me.... It could be that this good old lady was in the plot herself, no less, for all she speaks so civil. But who is to prove that, I ask you? It's queer and strange...."

Thus pondering, Fergus Macdermott took a cab and drove to the hotel where he was to dine with Garth, the representative of the _Morning Post_. He would be doing Garth a good turn to let him get in with the tale before the other papers; he would be able to wire it home straight away. The _Morning Post_ deserved that: a sound paper it was, and at times the only one in England that got hold of and stated the Truth. This attack on Macdermott proved conclusively to his mind, what he and the _Morning Post_ had from the first suspected and said, that the Irish Republicans were at the back of the whole business, helped, as usual, by German and Bolshevik money.

"Ah, this proves it," said Macdermott, his blue eyes very bright in his white face as he drove along.

As to the procession, he had forgotten all about it.

31

Mademoiselle Bjornsen, substitute delegate for one of the Scandinavian countries, a doctor of medicine, and a woman of high purpose and degree, of the type which used to be called, in the old days when it flourished in Great Britain, _feminist_, often walked out in the evening for a purpose which did her great credit. She was of those good and disinterested women who care greatly for the troubles of their less fortunate, less well-educated and less well-principled sisters, and who often patrol streets in whatever city they happen to find themselves, with a view to extending the hand of succour to those of their sex who appear to be in error or in need.

On this evening of the 8th of September, Mlle. Bjornsen was starting out, after her dinner at the Hôtel Richemond, on her nightly patrol, when she was joined by Mlle. Binesco from Roumania, a lady whose rich and exuberant personality was not, perhaps, wholly in accord with her own more austere temperament, but whom she acknowledged to abound in good intentions and sisterly pity for the unfortunate of her sex. For her part, Mlle. Binesco did not regard Mlle. Bjornsen as a very womanly woman, but respected her integrity and business-like methods, and felt her to be, perhaps, an effective foil to herself. It may be observed that there are in this world mental females, mental males, and mental neutrals. You may know them by their conversation. The mental females, or womanly women, are apt to talk about clothes, children, domestics, the prices of household commodities, love affairs, or personal gossip. Theirs is rather a difficult type of conversation to join in, as it is above one's head. Mental males, or manly men, talk about sport, finance, business, animals, crops, or how things are made. Theirs is also a difficult type of conversation to join in, being also above one's head. Male men as a rule, like female women, and vice versa; they do not converse, but each supplies the other with something they lack, so they gravitate together and make happy marriages. In between these is the No-Man's Land, filled with mental neutrals of both sexes. They talk about all the other things, such as books, jokes, politics, love (as distinct from love affairs), people, places, religion (in which, though they talk more about it, they do not, as a rule, believe so unquestioningly as do the males and the females, who have never thought about it and are rather shocked if it is mentioned), plays, music, current fads and scandals, public persons and events, newspapers, life, and anything else which turns up. Their conversation is easy to join in, as it is not above one's head. They gravitate together, and often marry each other, and are very happy. If one of them makes a mistake and marries a mental male or a mental female, the marriage is not happy, for they demand conversation and interest in things in general, and are answered only by sex; they tell what they think is a funny story, and meet the absent eye and mechanical smile of one who is thinking how to turn a heel or a wheel, how to sew a frock or a field, how most cheaply to buy shoes or shares. And they themselves are thought tiresome, queer, unsympathetic, unwomanly or unmanly, by the more fully sexed partner they have been betrayed by love's blindness into taking unto themselves.

This is one of life's more frequent tragedies, but had not affected either Mlle. Binesco, who was womanly, and had always married (so to speak) manly men, or Mlle. Bjornsen, who was neutral, and had not married any one, having been much too busy.

Anyhow, these two ladies were at one in their quest to-night. Both, whatever their minds might be like, had warm feminine hearts. Geneva, that godly Calvinist city, was a poor hunting-ground on the whole for them. But they turned their steps to the old _cité_, rightly believing that among those ancient and narrow streets vice might, if anywhere, flit by night.

"These wicked traffickers in human flesh and blood," observed Mlle. Binesco sighing (for she was rather stout), as they ascended the Rue de la Cité; "do not tell me they are not somehow behind the mysterious assaults on our unhappy comrades of the League. Never tell me so, for I will not believe it."

"I will not tell you so," Mlle. Bjornsen, an accurate person, replied, "for I know nothing at all about it, nor does any one else. But to me it seems improbable, I sometimes think, mademoiselle, that there is some danger that the preoccupation which women like ourselves naturally feel with the suppression of this cruel trade and the rescue of its victims, may at times lead us into obsession or exaggeration. I try to guard myself against that. Moderation and exactitude are important."

"Ah, there speaks the north. For me, mademoiselle, I cannot be moderate; it is a quality alien to my perhaps over-impetuous temperament. I have never been cautious--neither in love, hate, nor in the taking of risks. You will realise, Mademoiselle, that the risk you and I are taking to-night is considerable. Have we not been warned not to penetrate into the more squalid parts of the city by night? And we are not only delegates, but women. At any moment we might be attacked and carried off to some dwelling of infamy, there to wait deportation to another land."

"I do not expect it," replied the Scandinavian lady, who had a sense of humour.

A shrill giggle broke on their ears from a side street. Glancing down it, they saw a young girl, wearing like flags the paint and manner of her profession, and uttering at intervals its peculiar cry--that shrill, harsh laugh which had drawn the ladies' attention.

"Ah!" a coo of satisfaction came from Mlle. Binesco. "_Voilà une pauvre petite!_"

As the girl saw them, she darted away from them down the alley, obviously suspicious of their intentions. Quickly they followed; here, obviously, was a case for assistance and rescue.

The kind mouth of Mlle. Bjornsen set in determination; her intelligent eyes beamed behind their glasses.

The girl fluttered in front of them, still uttering the peculiar cry of her species, which to the good ladies was a desperate appeal for help, till she suddenly bolted beneath a low, dark archway.

The ladies hesitated. Then, "I must follow her, poor girl," Mlle. Bjornsen remarked simply, for the courage of a thousand Scandinavian heroes beat in her blood.

"And where you adventure, my dear friend," cried Mlle. Binesco, "I, a Roumanian woman and a friend of kings, will not be behind! We advance, then, in the name of humanity and of our unhappy sex!"

32

Humanity, compassion, womanly sympathy, and devotion to the cause of virtue--by these noble qualities these two poor ladies were lured to their fate. For it should be by now superfluous to say that, though they entered that archway, they did not emerge from it.

33

There also disappeared that night the good Albanian bishop, betrayed by who knew what of episcopal charity and response to appeals for succour from his fellow-countrymen, the helpless sheep of his flock, threatened by the wolfish atrocities of the ineffable Serb-Croat-Slovenes.

It did indeed seem that this unseen hand was taking the highest types of delegate for its purposes so mysterious and presumably so fell.

34

Every one turned next morning with interest to the day's issue of "Press Opinions" to discover what the world's newspapers were saying of the tragic and extraordinary state of affairs in Geneva. They were saying, it seemed, on the whole, very much what might be expected of them. The American press, for instance, observed that the League, without the support of the United States, was obviously falling into the state of disruption and disintegration which had long since been prophesied. What was to be expected, when the Monroe Doctrine was being threatened continually by the bringing before the League of disputes between the South and Central American republics, disputes which, being purely American, could not possibly be settled by European intervention in any shape or form? On this question of the Monroe Doctrine, the security and utility of the whole League rested.... It was rumoured that it was the shaky attitude of the League on this point that was responsible for its present collapse....

("Seems very like saying that America is behind the whole game," commented many readers.)

The French press commented on the fact that no one had yet dared to lay a hand on the French delegates. "Whatever," it said, "may be thought of the other delegates, the whole world has agreed to see in France a nation so strong, so beneficent, and so humane, that it merits the confidence of humanity at large. Without it, no affairs could flourish. The tribute to the prestige of France evinced by this notable omission of assault cannot but be gratifying to all who love France. With the tragic disappearance of several English-speaking delegates, it might perhaps be natural to dispense with the tedious use of two languages where only one is necessary. No one listens to the interpretations into English of French speakers; the general chatter of voices and movement which immediately starts when the English interpreter begins, is surely sign enough of the general feeling on this point...."

The more nationalist section of the Italian press--the _Popolo d'Italia_, for instance--prophesied, with tragic accuracy, that the Albanian delegate would very soon be among the victims of this criminal plot, in which it was not, surely, malicious to detect Yugo-Slav agency. It also spoke with admiration of the poet Dante.

The Swiss press, in much distress, urged the clearing up of this tragic mystery, which so foully stained the records of the noble city of Geneva, so beautiful in structure, so chaste in habits, so idealistic in outlook, the centre of the intellectual thought of Europe, and, above all, so cheap to live in. For their part (so said _La Suisse_), they attributed these outrages to criminal agents from the hotels and shops of Brussels, Vienna, and other cities which might be mentioned, who had been sent to discredit Geneva as a safe and suitable home for the League. Fortunately, however, such discrediting was impossible: on the contrary, the cities discredited were the above-mentioned, which had hatched and put into execution such a wicked plot.

The extracts selected from the British press spoke with various voices. The _Morning Post_ commented, without much distress, on the obvious disintegration and collapse of the League, which had always had within itself the seeds of ruin and now was meeting its expected Nemesis. Such preposterous houses of cards, said the _Morning Post_, cannot expect to last long in a world which is, in the main, a sensible place. It did not now seem probable that, as some said, Bolshevists were behind these outrages; on further consideration it was not even likely to be Irish traitors; for these sections of the public would doubtless approve the League, typical as it was of the folly which so strongly actuated themselves. Far more likely was it that their assaults were the work, misguided but surely excusable, of the Plain Man, irritated at last to execute judgment on these frenzied and incompetent efforts after that unprofitable dream of the visionary, a world peace. It was well known that the question of disarmament was imminent....

The _British Bolshevist_ (its leader, not its correspondent, who seldom got quoted by the _Press Bulletin_) agreed with the _Morning Post_ that the house of cards was collapsing because of its inherent vices, but was inclined to think that the special vice for which it was suffering retribution was its failure to deal faithfully with Article 18 of the Covenant, which concerned the publicity of treaties. The _British Bolshevist_ always had Article 18 a good deal on its mind.

The _Times_ said that these strange happenings showed the importance of keeping on frank and friendly terms (the _Times_ often used these two incompatible adjectives as if they were synonymous) with France. They served to emphasise and confirm that _entente_ of which the British people were resolved to suffer no infringement.

The _Daily News_ thought that the enemies of disarmament and of the various humanitarian efforts of the League were responsible for these assaults.

The _Manchester Guardian_ correspondent said that at last the Assembly, formerly a little dull, had taken on all the interest of a blood and thunder melodrama....

35

The days went by, and the nights. Why dwell on them, or, in detail, on the strange--or rather the now familiar, but none the less sinister--events which marked each? One could tell of the disappearance, one after another, of the prominent members of the Council--of the decoy of Signor Nelli, the chief Italian delegate, by messengers as from Fiume with strange rumours of Jugo-Slav misdeeds; of the sudden disappearance of Latin Americans from the Casino, whither they had gone to chat, to drink, and to play; of the silent stealing away of rows upon rows of Japanese, none knew how or why; of how Kristna, the distinguished Indian, was lured to meet a supposed revealer of a Ghandi anti-League plot.

As full-juiced apples, waxing over-mellow, drop in a silent autumn night, so dropped these unhappy persons, delegate by delegate, to their unguessed at doom. And it would indeed appear as if there were some carefully deliberated design against the welfare of the League, for gradually it appeared that those taken had, on the whole, this welfare more at heart than those left; their ideals were more pacific, their hearts more single, their minds more League.

The Turkish delegation, for example, did not disappear. Nor the Russian, nor the German, nor the Greek, nor the Serb-Croat-Slovene.

In the hands of those left, the Assembly and its committees were less dangerous to the wars of the world than they had been before. The best, from a League stand-point, were gone. What, for instance, would happen to the disarmament question should it be brought up, with the most ardent members of the disarmament committee thus removed from the scene? But, indeed, how could that or any other question be brought up, in the present state of agitation, when all minds were set on the one problem, on how to solve this appalling mystery that spread its tentacles further every day? The only committee which sat, or attempted any business, was Committee 9, on the Disappearance of Delegates--and that was signally impotent to do more than meet, pass resolutions, and report on unavailing measures taken.

The other committees, on humanitarian questions, on intellectual, financial, economic, political, and transit questions, were struck helpless. Not a frontier dispute, not an epidemic, not a drug, not so much as a White Slave, could be discussed. Truly the very League itself seemed struck to the heart. All the Assembly could do was meet, vote, pass resolutions, and make speeches about the horrors of the next war and the necessity of thwarting the foul plot against the wellbeing of the League.