Part 11

"But who laid him out?" I asked. "Is he seriously hurt?"

Leonard intervened, holding out a newspaper.

"There's an account here!" he exclaimed. "'Murderous assault in Lansdowne Passage.' They say the victim, name unknown, is in a precarious condition."

"Was that really Mr. Thomson?" Rose demanded, in a shocked tone.

"Less said, less trouble," the young man replied, embracing us all in a common farewell salute. "So long."

He took his leave, lit a cigarette on the kerb, assumed an almost horizontal position in the car, and shot like a rocket into the heart of the Piccadilly traffic. In rather less than five minutes I was ringing the bell at Number 100, John Street, and after a very brief delay was taken upstairs to a cool and pleasantly furnished bedroom. Mr. Thomson, almost undistinguishable for bandages, motioned to a chair by his bedside and the nurse departed.

"They pretty nearly got me this time, Lister," he remarked.

Curiosity mastered sympathy.

"Who did?" I asked breathlessly.

Mr. Thomson lay quite still, with his eyes fixed upon the ceiling.

"A little company of men," he said, "who are dangerous fellows to deal with--very dangerous," he repeated pensively.

"Are you badly hurt?"

He shook his head.

"I am scarcely hurt at all."

"The newspapers," I began----

"Inspired."

"You are on the side of the law this time, then!" I exclaimed triumphantly.

He smiled.

"I confess it. The newspapers which speak of my perilous condition exaggerate. Nevertheless," he went on, "I have decided to spend a week here. The surroundings are pleasant and the rest is good. During that week you will take my place."

"The devil I shall!" I murmured, gazing at his head swathed with bandages.

"One reason," Mr. Thomson condescended to explain, "for my retirement from an active pursuit of--shall we call it my hobby?--is that, notwithstanding my repeated efforts to keep it in the background, my personality has become too well known amongst the inner circle of those against whom our energies are directed. In this present instance, the scene for a very stirring little drama in the history of to-day is laid in a comparatively small manufacturing town in the heart of Yorkshire. Whatever form of disguise I might select, my presence in that place would certainly be detected. Besides, the task before us is one in which direct action is impossible. We can only bait the trap and wait, and if the quarry refuses to enter, we must choose another trap and another bait. A good deal will rest with you, Lister. If you are completely successful in the undertaking which I shall presently disclose to you, you will receive a parting gift of ten thousand pounds for division amongst the three of you."

"It is princely," I acknowledged enthusiastically.

"If you succeed," Mr. Thomson continued, "it is a flea bite. Now leave me. To-morrow you will depart for the Grand Hotel at Blackham. Before midnight to-night you will receive from me a written report which will contain all the information you require. Read it, commit it to memory and destroy it. If you need further advice or help, do not hesitate to apply to me. There is a telephone here at my elbow, and I shall never be so ill as the papers may lead you to believe. Good fortune to you!"

I left our chief and returned to Clarges Street, impressed with a conviction that we were about to enter upon the most important enterprise which had yet come our way.

* * * * *

We found Blackham hideous, uninspiring, yet not without a certain impressiveness. It was situated in the midst of a district black with coal shafts and forges which squatted upon the ground, festering sores in the daytime, like drops from a spilt hell at night, when the roar of their flames was like a fiery wind, and the red vomit of their furnaces stained the very clouds. There were never-ending electric cars, linking up a whole series of town-villages, more public houses than I had ever seen before, a plethora of libraries and a perfect plague of cinema palaces. Day and night the streets were thronged. Food and living were inordinately dear but money was plentiful, although everywhere there seemed brooding over the place the shadow of that sullen storm of industrial unrest with which in those days the whole country was agitated. The shops, the cinema palaces, the theatre itself and the smaller music halls were packed every night. We only obtained a hall for our own performance with the utmost difficulty, and for our rooms and sitting room at the so-called Grand Hotel, which was little more than a glorified public house, we had to pay as much as though we were at a West End hotel. We advanced the price of the seats, however, at the building in which our performance was given, and were rewarded by finding the place packed on the first night. The only empty places were in the cheaper seats.

Late that night, Leonard and I came across a very valuable acquaintance, Arthur Rastall, a journalist on a London paper, a man whom I had known for years and who hailed from Leonard's part of the world. He visited our sitting room for a final whisky and soda, and he helped us to understand the somewhat tense atmosphere of the place.

"What on earth are you doing here?" was almost the first question I asked him.

He filled his pipe and lit it.

"I am here," he replied, "because during the course of the next few days history will be made in this most unattractive town. I am not alone, either. Fisher is here from _The Times_, Simpson from _The Post_, and I passed the _Express_ man in the town this afternoon."

"A Labour conference?" I asked.

"Something even more than that. These devils have got something up their sleeves. They have some reason for meeting in a small place like this, and meeting privately. There's something brewing."

"What sort of a something?" I asked. "Is it a secret from two harmless strolling players?"

"No secret at all that I know of," our friend replied gruffly, "except from the Government, who won't believe it, and Scotland Yard, who don't know how to act. They say that Creslin is coming, and two representatives from America."

I suppose I still looked a little puzzled, although what Rastall was telling us was not altogether news. He went on after a moment's pause.

"Every country," he explained, "has been able to deal with its own Labour question more or less successfully, except Russia. The greatest danger the world might have to face would be an internationalisation of so-called Labour. Creslin is the apostle of internationalisation."

"Do you mean Creslin, the Bolshevist?" Leonard demanded--"the man whom the Prime Minister referred to as the Horror of the World?"

"The same," was the grim admission.

"But how is it that that man is free to walk the streets of any English town?" Leonard persisted. "I should have thought such a criminal could have been shot anywhere."

"I don't think there is any offence against the English law under which he could be charged," Rastall declared. "Every port was watched, and they did try to keep him out of the country. They hadn't a chance, though. He was far too clever for them."

The story of Creslin's coming was already known to me, but I asked Rastall a question which had been in my mind all the time.

"Tell me what there is against the Government putting a bold front on the matter, arresting Creslin, and deporting him as an undesirable alien?"

"Just this. The whole country just now is in a dangerously inflammatory state. The committees for settling Labour disputes worked well enough at first, but so much of this false, socialistic literature, anarchistic stuff, has made its way into the country during the last few years, that Labour, fat and well-fed and surfeited with pleasure, is more dangerous to-day than it was in the old days of starvation. Wages to-day are an enormous tax upon capital, but you know what the screaming Bolshevist is. He wants all the time to kill the goose that lays the golden egg; he wants to pull down the capitalist and reign in his stead. If ever he succeeded, as he did in Russia, England would be industrially and commercially ruined."

"Yet even with that certainty before us, you mean to tell me that the Government is going to let Creslin meet the heads of all the trades unions here and pour his filth down their throats?"

"Seems like it," was Rastall's laconic reply.

There was a knock at the door. The manager of the hotel presented himself. Behind him stood another and a slighter figure. The former glanced around the apartment and with a little bow drew me on one side.

"Can I have a word with you, Mr. Lister?"

"Get right on with it," I invited.

"I wondered if by any chance you could be induced to give up your sitting room? It happens to be the only one I have in the house, and we have a very distinguished visitor from abroad, just arrived, who objects to the public rooms."

"Sorry," I said firmly, "but I took the rooms for a week, as you know, and a sitting room is an absolute necessity to us."

The manager glanced at his companion. The latter came a little forward. He was a fair, quiet-looking man, clean-shaven, moody, with light-coloured hair brushed back from his forehead. He was at first glance almost prepossessing. He had the nervous mouth and quick smile of an artist. It was only his rather light-coloured eyes which left one a little doubtful about him.

"It is on my behalf that the manager is speaking," he said. "I have the good or evil fortune to bear a name which in an industrial neighbourhood like this is somewhat too well known. I am Paul Creslin."

Somehow or other I had already surmised the fact, and I was able to control my countenance. Rose had dropped her newspaper and was studying the newcomer with interest. He seemed to observe her for the first time, and a look crept into his eyes which stamped him at once in my mind. There is a certain type of profligacy which is self-revealing. I felt myself in a quandary. My hatred of the man was already born and the words of dismissal were quivering upon my lips. Then I remembered my mission. I remembered Thomson's words--"Success is born of the brain and wrecked by impulse." I choked back the impulse.

"I am not a politician," I said, "but your name is of course known to me. I cannot offer you our sitting room, for the simple reason that there is no other place in the hotel for the young lady, but any time you would care to take refuge here we should be very pleased, and if you happen to be a late person, it will be at your disposal after twelve o'clock."

The manager glanced anxiously at his guest. Again the latter's eyes rested for a moment upon Rose, and he seemed satisfied.

"You are most courteous," he acknowledged. "I am going to my room for a few minutes. Afterwards I shall venture to intrude."

The two men left the room, followed a few minutes later by Rastall, in hot haste for the telegraph office. Leonard's expression, as he looked at me, was almost of horror. Rose, too, seemed troubled.

"What on earth do you mean, Maurice," she exclaimed, "by asking us even to breathe the same air as that hateful person?"

I thrust Leonard into a chair by Rose's side and stood on the shabby little bit of hearth rug, close to them.

"The time has come," I said, addressing myself particularly to Rose, "for me to pass on to you the chief's instructions."

* * * * *

In the days that followed, we seemed to have caught up into our own apparently uneventful lives something of that spirit of waiting drama which pervaded the teeming town and the smoke-stained countryside. The people all seemed to be waiting for something. We, too, waited, and in the meantime Creslin made free use of our sitting room, drove out with us in the car which I had hired for a week, and never failed to attend our performances. Our sitting room was almost a bower of roses and orchids, flowers which arrived in mysterious parcels from London and which must have cost a small fortune. I ventured to protest on the grounds of political economy, but Creslin only smiled.

"Every man is allowed one extravagance in life," he said. "You and your friend, for instance, drink wine and whisky and soda and smoke cigars. I do neither. My weakness lies elsewhere."

He glanced across at Rose as he spoke, and at the expression in his eyes, the slow, amorous, calculating expression, I had to grip the sides of my chair and look down at the carpet towards some spilt tobacco ash, to hide my fury. Creslin, who had been strolling uneasily around the room, seated himself on the sofa by Rose's side.

"You love flowers, Miss Mindel?" he asked softly, following the direction of her eyes, which were resting upon a bowl of red roses.

"I adore them," she acknowledged, "for their own sake--and sometimes, too," she went on, meeting his gaze with a coquetry for which I could never have given her credit, "sometimes, too, for the sake of those from whom they come."

He glanced almost imperceptibly towards Leonard and myself, one of those slow, inimical glances which seemed yet to betray some evil purpose. Bearing in mind the stories which one had been told of this man's cold-blooded and indiscriminate cruelty, it was easy to believe that if a word from him could have wiped us off the face of the earth at that moment, it would certainly have been spoken. Making the best of our presence, however, he continued his conversation in a low tone. Once I saw Rose flinch and glance up as though in distress. I came across the room, making a pretence at filling my pipe from a jar which stood upon a table near them. Creslin looked at me through his half-closed eyes.

"Miss Mindel does not approve of the coming emancipation of her sex," he observed. "I suppose the doctrines of the new world must sound strange at first to those who have counted the hard and fast chastity of the Puritan amongst the virtues."

"What are the doctrines of the new world?" I enquired.

"They include, at any rate," he replied, in his quiet, sibilant voice, "a complete reconstruction of the relations between man and woman."

"That sounds like Bolshevism, pure and simple," Leonard remarked bluntly.

"The actual principles of Bolshevism," Creslin asserted, "contain more than a germ of the truth."

"I should be sorry," I declared, "for the man who made a serious attempt to wipe out the marriage laws of this country."

He looked at me with a cynical turn of his thin lips.

"There was never a race of people in the world," he pronounced, "who hugged their chains like the British. In their hearts they love the lash of authority. Think. For generations their leaders, their prophets and their preachers have been drawn from one class only, the class which they are accustomed to obey. The people have never found their Rienzi in politics, in literature or in sociology. That is because of the age-long snobbishness of the Englishman. During the last ten years, for the first time, the people have kicked over the traces so far as regards their material prosperity. They are being fed with doles and pittances but they are moving forward. Soon they will begin to think. Then, just as they have asserted themselves in material ways, they will begin to demand an active voice in the reconstruction of Society."

"What is your substitute for the marriage laws?" Rose asked him bluntly.

To do him justice, I must say that he spoke with the conviction of one who enunciates the most obvious truths, truths which did not even admit of argument.

"Union between man and woman," he explained, "is intended for the production of children. The only sane restraint which common sense should place upon this connection is the presence of human affection. That is the only restraint there should be."

"I see," Leonard murmured. "And what would become of the children?"

"They are for the State--children of the State," was the almost wondering reply. "Every household should have its nursery. For every child born, a State grant should be given."

"Is there any literature," I enquired, "setting out these altruistic views?"

"There is," Creslin replied, after a moment's pause. "The time is scarcely ripe, however, for its dissemination. If you would care to possess a text book, drawn up by myself and embodying the principles which I desire sooner or later to be accepted by the whole world, I will present you with one."

Before we went to bed that night, the precious pamphlet was in our possession.

The presence of Creslin in the country was now universally admitted by the Press, although his exact whereabouts did not once appear in print. The day fixed for the Congress of Labour leaders, to be held at Blackham, drew near. Meanwhile, Creslin was watched by detectives and press men alike. It occurred to us more than once that he almost expected and certainly hoped for arrest. I spoke on this matter to Rastall.

"There is nothing Creslin desires so much," he pointed out, "as to pose as a martyr over here. Until he begins to preach his abominable doctrines or disseminate his literature, he is on the side of the law. The sociology he preaches, apart from its sexual side, is reasonable and even finely conceived."

"Supposing he were to be arrested?" I asked.

"The police would never get him out of town," Rastall replied. "There are a million of his followers within a radius of twenty miles from here. I think we should see a riot that would approach almost to a revolution. The man is as cunning as a fox. He will preach his idealistic sociology first. The rest will creep in by degrees."

Meanwhile, Creslin spent the greater part of his spare time in our sitting room. He scarcely now made a pretence of taking any particular interest in either Leonard or myself. His whole attention was directed towards Rose. To do him justice, he was a man of considerable culture and fine perceptions on many subjects. There were times when Rose's face seemed to light up, when she seemed to find a genuine pleasure in his conversation. There were others when I saw her cold and wooden, parrying the unspoken pleadings of his meretricious philosophy with a skill for which I should never have given her credit. It was evident that Creslin was very much in earnest indeed. He was continually inviting her to lunch, to motor, to leave the hotel alone with him, all of which invitations she contrived to evade. In the end, he even had the effrontery to appeal to me.

"I gather," he said, one morning, "that Miss Rose Mindel is nothing to either of you who are her companions."

"She is nothing to us," I replied, "except a very dear sister who has a claim upon our joint protection."

"I will not conceal from you," he continued, "that I have the greatest admiration for Miss Mindel--I might even venture to say affection."

I received the confession in silence. He seemed much less at his ease than usual.

"I have met with no woman," he went on, "in whose companionship I could find more joy."

"Then why don't you ask her to marry you?" I demanded.

He looked at me with his narrow eyes almost wide open.

"You are a little ignorant of the way things are moving in the world," he said quietly. "You are wrapped up, perhaps--in your art. I am Creslin. To-morrow, if I chose, I could be dictator of Russia or Germany, Hungary or Austria. It pleases me instead to be the spokesman of my class in every country of the world. I do not understand the word 'marriage'."

I had never harder work in controlling my temper, but I knew that the time had not yet come. I answered him a little abruptly.

"I am afraid you will find some of us a little insular. Miss Mindel is of course free to make her own decisions in life, but it is as well, perhaps, to impress upon you the fact that whilst she is travelling with us we consider ourselves, Mr. Cotton and I, her guardians. We should resent forcibly any offer to her which was not in accordance with the established conventions."

He smiled in maddening fashion.

"You speak like the hero of one of those melodramas in which I used to revel when I was a youthful student in London. What I choose to say to Miss Mindel I shall say. It will be a strange thing to me if she refuses to listen. Be sensible, my young friend, and remember."

"Remember what?" I demanded.

"Who I am," he answered, with cool and splendid assurance. "I carry the burden of the new world upon my shoulders. I am the future dictator of all human Society."

That finished my scruples. I went off with Leonard and discussed our plans. Creslin, with all the priceless imperturbability of his sublime conceit, remained in our sitting room, waiting for Rose.

On the day before the great Conference, Creslin was a busy man. All the time he was back and forth between the temporary offices arranged for the reception of the delegates and the hotel. When we returned to the sitting room after our evening performance, he was still absent. The three of us held a little consultation. We were all of one mind.

"On general principles," Rose agreed, "I think that Creslin is a detestable person, and I should like to see him publicly disgraced for ever. On the other hand, I don't think," she went on, with a little grimace, "that I was cut out for a Delilah. So far, my conscience is clear enough. I have never given him a word of encouragement, and if he were to insult me he would deserve any punishment my guardians might choose to inflict. But what does make me unhappy is the idea that I might have to deceive him even by my silence if----"

"But listen," Leonard interrupted eagerly, "I heard him distinctly whispering to you that to-morrow was to be his great day; all that he needed was inspiration, that he must carry with him on to the platform memories and hopes--and a lot of slush of that sort."

Rose nodded.

"Quite right," she assented. "I promised that I would not go to bed to-night until I had seen him. I am sure he will be here presently."

"Very well, then," I decided, "he shall have his chance. If he is just ordinarily offensive, he shall get the hiding he deserves, as publicly as possible, and the chief must be satisfied with that. If he attempts anything else--well, we are prepared."

Leonard was out of the room for a few minutes, and Rose held out a hand to me a little tremulously.

"Maurice," she said, and there was a look of trouble in her dear eyes, "I don't like this. I hate that man near me. I hate the idea that I may have to listen to horrible things from him."

"And I hate the thought of your doing it," I answered firmly. "Say the word, Rose, and we'll finish here. The pamphlet's enough. Any reasonable Englishman would be justified in giving him a thrashing for that."

She shook her head regretfully.

"The other is better, of course; only swear that you will not leave me alone for five seconds."

"I can promise that," I told her grimly.

After all, we need not have troubled ourselves with scruples. Creslin had made his own plans and made them with devilish cunning. At midnight, as we had seen nothing of him, I sent down an enquiry and was told that he had come in quite exhausted and gone at once to his room. To Leonard and me the news sounded natural enough. Rose's instinct, however, was not to be denied.

"I know that he meant what he said about to-night," she assured us uneasily. "Swear that you will be near, Maurice."