Chapter 8

Meanwhile Central Europe rumbled, as usual, indeed as always, with disputes that might at any moment become blows. Affairs in Jugo-Slavia, in Hungary, in Greece, in Albania, in Czecho-Slovakia, in Poland, and in Russia, were not quiet. Greece and Turkey were hideously at war. Nor were the South and Central American republics free from unrest. Russia was reaching out its evil White hands to grasp and weld again into a vast unhappy whole its former constituent republics of Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Esthonia, Tauride, and White Russia. There seemed every chance that it would shortly succeed in doing so. The nations growled everywhere like sullen dogs on fragile chains. Never had the League of Nations, in all its brief career, been more necessary, never less available. Not a grievance could be given that public airing from what is called a world platform, which is so beneficial to the airers, so apt at promoting fraternal feeling, so harmless to all concerned. Instead, grievances festered and went bad, and blood-poisoning was rapidly setting in. Not a voice could be raised, as many voices would have been raised, from that world-platform, to urge contending parties to refer their differences to the Court of International Justice, so ready and eager to adjudicate, to apply international conventions, whether general or particular, international custom as evidence for a general practice accepted as law, and teachings of the most highly qualified publicists as subsidiary means for the determination of rules of law. For all this is what these aged and wise judges sitting at the Hague were equipped and ready to do, if only the nations would ask them to do it. But it was not to be expected that the nations should make use of such a strange procedure for themselves, unless prompted and even urged thereto by the weight of opinion in the Assembly.

Yes, Europe, and indeed the world, was, as always, in a parlous state, rushing on ruin with no hand raised to give it pause, even as in the evil old days before the conception and foundation of the League. The journalists were as busy as, and more profoundly happy than, they would have been had the Assembly been running its appointed course. They ran about picking up clues, Marconi-graphing messages to their papers about the latest disappearances, the latest theories, the newest rumours. Each became a private detective, pursuing a lone trail. Other journalists flocked to the scene; where they had come in their tens, they now came in their hundreds, for here was News. The Assembly of the League of Nations is not News, until it stumbles on mystery and disaster, becoming material for a shocker. The meeting together of organisations for the betterment of the world is not News, in the sense that their failure is. Deeply Henry, going about his secret and private business, intent and absorbed, pondered this question of News, what it is and what it is not. Crime is News; divorce is News; girl mothers are News; fabric gloves and dolls' eyes are, for some unaccountable reason, News; centenaries of famous men are, for some still stranger reason, News; railway accidents are News; the wrong-doing of clergymen is News; strangest of all, women are, inherently and with no activities on their part, News, in a way that men are not. Henry had often thought this very singular. He had read in accounts of public gatherings (such as criminal trials, tennis tournaments, boxing matches, etc.), such statements as "There were many well-dressed women present." These women had done nothing to deserve their fame; they were merely present, just as men were. But never had Henry read, "There were many well-dressed men present," for men were not News. To be News in oneself, without taking any preliminary action--that was very exciting for women. A further question arose: were women News to their own sex, or only to men? And were men perhaps News to women? "There were many well-dressed men present." ... Ah, that would be exciting reading for women, and perhaps a woman reporter would thrill to it and set it down. But men do not care how many men were present, or how well they were dressed, or what colour their hats and suits were. All sorts of articles and letters appear in the papers about women. Profound questions are raised concerning them. Should they smoke? Should they work? Vote? Take Orders? Marry? Exist? Are not their skirts too short, or their sleeves? Have they a sense of humour, of honour, of direction? Are spinsters superfluous? But how seldom similar inquiries are propounded about men. How few persons discuss superfluous bachelors, or whether the male arm or leg is an immodest sight, or whether men should vote. For men are not News.

Anyhow, thought Henry, anyhow delegates became News the moment they disappeared. If you do wrong you are News, and if you have a bad accident, you are News, but if you mysteriously disappear, you are doubly and trebly News. To be News once in one's life--that is something for a man. Though sometimes it comes too late to be enjoyed.

36

In and out of the maze of ancient streets that are Old Geneva, to and fro along the alleys that lead through balconied, leaning houses, up and down obscure and sudden flights of stone steps, Henry wandered under the September moon. All day he had, with the help of Charles Wilbraham's unwitting secretary, tracked Charles Wilbraham. He knew how Charles had begun the morning by dictating proud and ponderous documents in his proud and ponderous voice, and talking to people who came in and out of his room; how he had then gone to the Assembly Hall and chatted in the lobby to every one of sufficient importance to be worth his while, including ex-Cardinal Franchi, who had of late been making friends with him, and with whom he had dined last night at the Château Léman; how then Charles had lunched with two Russians, a Greek, and a Pole, and Sir John Levis, his father-in-law, at the Café du Nord, hatching Henry did not know what (for the Nord was much too expensive for him) of anti-League mischief and crime; how after lunch Charles had attended the meetings of the sub-committees on the Disappearance of Delegates, going from one to another looking business-like and smug and as if he were at strictly private meetings, as indeed he was. Then up to his room for his tea (Charles never missed this meal) and down again to see how Sub-Committee 5 ("Consideration of Various Suspicions based on Reason and Common Sense") was getting on, and then up again to do some more work. (For there was this about Charles, as even Henry had to admit--he worked hard. Ambition, the last infirmity of noble minds, offensive and irritating quality as it is, has at least this one good fruit.) Then Charles had been to a large dinner given by the Canadian delegation to members of the Secretariat, and had made a facetious speech; and now, at eleven-thirty, he was walking about the old city, followed at some distance by Henry Beechtree.

Charles was not alone. He had with him M. Kratzky from Russia, Sir John Levis, and a small, quiet Calvinist minister, whom Henry had lately seen about Geneva.

The four gentlemen turned out of the Rue du Perron down the narrow, ancient and curious Passage de Monnetier, and out of that into a deep arched alley running through a house into another street. Henry, watching from the corner of the Passage de Monnetier, did not dare to follow nearer for some moments. When he had given them a little time, he softly tiptoed to the mouth of the alley. It was one of those deep cobbled passages that run through many houses in the old quarter. It was profoundly dark; Henry could only faintly discern the three figures half-way down it. They seemed to have stopped, and to be bending down as if looking for something on the ground. The spark of an electric torch gleamed suddenly, directed by the little clergyman; its faint disc of light swam over the dirty floor of the passage, till it came to rest on an iron ring that lay flat to the ground. The clergyman seized this ring and jerked at it; after a moment it left the ground in his hand, and with it the flap of a trap-door.

Whispers inaudible to Henry passed between the members of the party; then, one by one, the three figures descended through the open trap into the bowels of the earth, and the lid closed upon them.

Henry tiptoed forward; should he follow? On the whole--no. On the whole he would wait until Wilbraham, his father-in-law, M. Kratzky, and the clergyman emerged. What, after all, would be the use of finding oneself underground with desperate, detected criminals, whose habit it apparently was to stick at nothing? What, after all, could he do?

Henry was shivering, less from fear than excitement. Here, indeed, was a clue. Were they kept immured underground, these unfortunate captive delegates? And did Wilbraham and his criminal associates visit them from time to time with food and drink? Or without? With nothing, perhaps, but taunts? And how many more in Geneva knew of this trap-door and its secret? There were, every one knew, a number of these old _trappons_ in the city, leading usually to disused cellars; their presence excited no suspicion. Probably no one ever used the obscure and hidden trap in this dark alley.

It was queer, how sure Henry felt that this curious nocturnal expedition on the part of Charles, his father-in-law, M. Kratzky and the Calvinist pastor had to do with the mystery of the delegates. He knew it beyond a doubt. Nor was he surprised. It came as a consummation of his suspicion and his hopes. Of Charles Wilbraham's villainy he had long been all but sure; of the villainy of M. Kratzky all the world knew; of the villainy of an ammunitions knight and a Calvinist pastor there needed little to convince Henry. But he knew that he must make sure. He must not go to the police, or to the committee, with an unproved tale. He must wait and investigate and prove.

He waited, in the dark archway beneath the crazy jumble of houses, with the sudden voices and footfalls of the midnight city echoing from time to time in the dark streets beyond. He waited and waited and waited. Now and then a dog or a cat rushed by him, startling him. Then, after twenty minutes or so, he wearied of waiting. Weariness and curiosity defeated caution; he pulled up the trap-door by its ring and peered down into blackness. Blackness, stillness, emptiness, and a queer, mouldy smell. Henry sat on the hole's edge for a full minute, dangling his legs. Then, catching his breath a little (it may or may not have been mentioned that Henry was not very brave), he swung himself down on to a hard, earthy floor.

It was a tunnel he was in; a passage about six feet high and four feet wide. How many feet or yards long was a more difficult and a much more interesting question. Feet? Yards? It might be miles. Henry's imagination bored through the impenetrable dark in front of the little moon thrown by his electric torch; through and along, through and along, towards what? The horrid four who had preceded him--where were they? Did they lurk, planning some evil, farther along the tunnel, just out of earshot? Or had they emerged by some other exit? Or were they even now returning, to meet Henry in a moment face to face, to brush by him as he pressed against the damp brick wall, to turn on him suddenly that swimming moon of light ... and then what?

Charles Wilbraham was no taker of human life, Henry felt assured. He was too prudent, too respectable, too much the civil servant. M. Kratzky, on the other hand, _was_ a taker of human life--he did it as naturally as others would slay midges; while he breathed he slew. If Henry should be discovered spying, M. Kratzky's counsels would be all for making forthwith an end of Henry. Sir John Levis was an armament knight: members of the staff of the _British Bolshevist_ needed not to know more of him than that: the Calvinist minister was either a Calvinist minister, and that was bad, or a master-criminal of the underworld disguised as a Calvinist minister, and that was worse. Or both of these. Four master-criminals of the underworld--these intriguing, appalling creatures, so common in the best fiction, so rare even in the worst life--if one were to meet four of them together in a subterranean passage.... Could human flesh and nerves endure it?

Henry, with his shuddering dislike of seeing even a goldfish injured or slain, shrank far more shudderingly from being injured or slain himself. The horrid wrench that physical assault was--and then, perhaps, the sharp break with life, the plunge into a blank unknown--and never to see again on this earth the person whom one very greatly loved....

As has been said, Henry was not brave. But he was, after all, a journalist on the scent of a story, and that takes one far; he was also a hunter in pursuit of a hated quarry, and that takes one farther.

Henry crossed himself, muttered a prayer and advanced down the passage, his torch a lantern before his feet, his nerves shivering like telegraph wires in a winter wind, but fortunately not making the same sound.

37

On and on and on. It was cold down there, like death, and bitter like death, and dark. Rats scuffled and leaped. Once Henry trod on one of them; it squeaked and fled, leaving him sick and cold. His imagination was held and haunted by the small quiet pastor; he seemed, on the whole, the worst of the four miscreants. A sinister air of deadly badness there had been about him.... Lines ran in and out of Henry's memory like cold mice. Something about "a grim Genevan minister walked by with anxious scowl." ... Horrid.... It made you sweat to think of him. Then on the passage there opened another passage, running sharply into it from the right. That was odd. Which should be followed?

Henry swung his flashlight up each in turn, and both seemed the same narrow blackness. He advanced a few steps, and on his left yet another turning struck out from the main tunnel.

"My God," Henry reflected, "the place is a regular catacomb."

If one should lose oneself therein, one might wander for days, as one did in catacombs.... Having no tallow candle, but only an electric torch, one might eat one's boots ... the very rats....

Not repressing a shudder, Henry stood hesitating at the cross-roads, looking this way and that, his ears strained to listen for sounds.

And presently, turning a corner, he perceived that there were sounds--footsteps and low voices, advancing down the left-hand passage towards him. Quickly shutting his light, he stepped back till he came to the right-hand turning, and went a little way up it, to where it sharply bent. Just round the corner he stopped, and stood hidden. He was gambling on the chance that whoever was coming would advance, back or forward, along the main tunnel when they struck into it. If, on the other hand, they crossed this and turned up his passage, he could hastily recede before them until perhaps another turning came, or possibly some exit, or until they turned on him that horrid moon of light and caught him....

Well, life is a gamble at all times, and more particularly to those who play the spy.

Henry listened. The steps came nearer. They had a queer, hollow sound on the earthy floor. Low voices murmured.

It came to Henry suddenly that these were not the voices of Charles Wilbraham, of Sir John Levis, of M. Kratzky, or, presumably then, of the little pastor. These were voices more human, less deadly.

The footsteps reached the main passage, and then halted.

"Here's a puzzle," said a voice. "Which way, then? Will we divide, or take the one road?"

And then Henry, though he loved not Ulster, thanked God and came forward.

At the sound of his advance a flashlight was swung upon him, and the Ulster voice said, "Put them up!"

Henry put them up.

"It's all right, man. It's only Beechtree," said another voice, after a moment's inspection, and Henry, though he loved not the _Morning Post_, blessed its correspondent.

"Good Lord, you're right.... What are you doing here, Beechtree? Is your paper in this damned Republican plot, as well as Sinn Fein, Bolsheviks, Germans, and the Pope? I wouldn't put it past the _British Bolshevist_ to have a finger in it----"

"Indeed, no," said Henry. "You are quite mistaken, Macdermott. This plot is being run by armament profiteers, White Russia, and Protestant ministers. They're all down here doing it now. I am tracking them. And His Holiness, you remember, sent an encouraging message to the Assembly----"

"The sort of flummery he _would_ encourage.... I beg your pardon, Beechtree. We will not discuss religion: not to-night. Time is short. How did _you_ get into this rat-trap? And whom, precisely, are you tracking?"

"Through a _trappon_ in an archway off the Passage de Monnetier. And I am tracking Wilbraham, Sir John Levis, M. Kratzky, and a Protestant clergyman, who all preceded me through it. But I don't know in the least where they have got to. There are so many ramifications in this affair. I took it for a single tunnel, but it seems to be a regular system."

"It is," said Garth. "It extends on the other side of the water too. We got into it this evening through that house in the Place Cornavin where Macdermott was bilked by a Sinn Feiner."

"We had our suspicions of that house ever since," Macdermott went on; "so we went exploring this evening, and by the luck of God they'd gone out and left the door on the latch, so we slipped in and searched around, and found a trap-door in a cupboard--where they'd have shoved me down if they hadn't given up the idea half-way. It lets you down into a passage just like this, that runs down to the water and comes out in the courtyard of one of those tumble-down old pigeon-cotes by the Quai du Seujet. We came out there, and then tried over this side, through a trap by the Molard jetty I'd noticed before, and it led us here. There are dozens of these _trappons_ on both sides. Lots of them are inside houses. I always thought they led only to cellars.... As to your four chaps, wherever they've got to, no doubt they're exploring too. Wilbraham in a plot! Likely."

"It is," said Henry. "Very likely indeed. There are plenty of facts about Wilbraham you don't know. I've been finding them out for several years. I shall lay them before Committee 9 to-morrow."

The other two looked at him with the good-natured pity due to the correspondent of the _British Bolshevist_.

"Your lunatic paper has turned your brain, my son," Garth said.

"Well, let's be getting on," Macdermott impatiently urged. "Which way did your plotters take, Beechtree? We may as well be getting after them, anyhow."

"I don't know. I've lost them. I didn't follow at once, you see; I waited, thinking they would come out presently. When they didn't, I came down too. But by that time they'd got a long start. And, as there are other exits, they may have got out anywhere."

"Well, let's come along and look. We'll each take a different passage; we'll explore every avenue, like Cabinet Ministers. I'll go straight ahead; one of you two take that right-hand road, and the other the next turning, whenever it comes. We'll each get out where and how we can. Come on."

Garth turned up to the right. Henry went on with Macdermott for some way, till another turning branched off, running left.

"Ah, there's yours," said the Ulster delegate. "I shall keep straight on, whatever alluring avenues open on either side to tempt me. To-morrow (if we get out of this) we'll bring a gang of police down and do the thing thoroughly. Good luck, Beechtree. Don't scrag honest civil servants or good clergymen on sight. And don't let old Kratzky scrag you. Politically he's on the right side (that's why he'd want to scrag you, and quite right, too), but personally he's what you might call a trifle unprincipled, and that's why he'd do it as soon as look at you."

38

Henry walked alone again. The passage oozed water. The silence was chilly and deep. Against it and far above it, occasional sounds beat, as the world's sounds beat downwards into graves.

Geneva was amazing. How many people knew that it was under-run by this so intricate tunnel system? Did the town authorities know? Surely yes. And, knowing, had they not thought, when the recent troubles began, to explore these avenues? (How that horrid phrase always stuck in one's mind; one could not get away from it, as many a statesman, many an orator daily proved.) But possibly they had explored them with no result. Possibly Sub-section 4 (Organisation of Search) of Committee 9 knew all about them. What that sub-section did not yet know was that Charles Wilbraham, hand in glove with autocrat Russia, armament kings, and the Calvinist church, lurked and plotted in the avenues by night, like the spider in her web waiting for flies.

There were turnings here and there, to one side or the other, but Henry kept a straight course.

At last he was brought up sharp, nearly running his face into a rough clay wall, and above him he saw a trap-door. Here, then, was his exit. The door was only just above his head; he pushed at it with his hands; it gave not at all.

After all, one would expect a trap-door to be bolted. He wondered if it would be of any use to knock. Did it give on to a street, a courtyard, or a house?

He rapped on it with the end of his electric torch, softly and then loudly. He went on rapping, and knew the fear that assails the assaulter of impregnable, unyielding silence, the panic of him who calls aloud in an empty house and is answered only by the tiny sounds of creaking, scuffling, and whispering that cause the skin to creep, the blood to curdle, the marrow to freeze, the heart to stop, and the spirit to be poured out like water. Strange and horrid symptoms! Curdled blood, frozen marrow, unbeating heart ... who first discovered that this is what occurs to these organs when fear assaults the brain? Have physiologists said so, or is it a mere amateur guess at truth, another of the foolish things "they" say?

In these speculations Henry's mind engaged while he stood in the black bowels of the earth and beat for entry at the world's closed door.

At last he heard sounds as of advancing steps. Bolts were drawn heavily back; the trap-door was raised, and a face peered down; a brownish face with a small black moustache and a smooth skin stretched tightly over fat. A glimmer of light struggled with the darkness. "Chi c'è?" said a harsh voice, whispering.

"Sst! son'io." Henry thought this the best answer. His nerves had relaxed on hearing the Italian language, a tongue not spoken habitually by Wilbraham, M. Kratzky, Sir John Levis, or Calvinist pastors. It is a reassuring tongue; one feels, but how erroneously, that those speaking it cannot be very far out of the path of human goodness. And to Henry it was partly native. The very sight of the plump, smooth, Italian face made him feel at ease.

The face peered down into the darkness, and a stump of candle burning in a saucer threw a wavering beam on to Henry's face looking up.

"Già," the voice assented to Henry's rather obvious statement. "Voul scendere, forse?"

Henry said he did, and a stool was handed down to him. In another minute he stood on the stone floor of a largish cellar, almost completely blocked with casks and wood stacks. From it steps ran up to another floor.

The owner of the plump Italian face had a small plump figure clad in shirt, trousers, and slippers. His bright dark eyes stared at his visitor, heavy with sleep. He had obviously been roused from bed. Surprise, however, he did not show; probably he was used to it.

He talked to Henry in Italian.

"You roused me from sleep. You have a message, perhaps? You wish something done?"