The Devil's Paw

CHAPTER XII

Catherine, notwithstanding her own excitement, found genuine pleasure in the bewildered enthusiasm with which the Bishop received her astounding news. She found him alone in the great, gloomy house which he usually inhabited when in London, at work in a dreary library to which she was admitted after a few minutes’ delay. Naturally, he received her tidings at first almost with incredulity. A heartfelt joy, however, followed upon conviction.

“I always liked Julian,” he declared. “I always believed that he had capacity. Dear me, though,” he went on, with a whimsical little smile, “what a blow for the Earl!”

Catherine laughed.

“Do you remember the evening we all talked about the Labour question? Time seems to have moved so rapidly lately, but it was scarcely a week ago.”

“I remember,” the Bishop acknowledged. “And, my dear young lady,” he went on warmly, “now indeed I feel that I can offer you congratulations which come from my heart.”

She turned a little away.

“Don’t,” she begged. “You would have known very soon, in any case—my engagement to Julian Orden was only a pretence.”

“A pretence?”

“I was desperate,” she explained. “I felt I must have that packet back at any price. I went to his rooms to try and steal it. Well, I was found there. He invented our engagement to help me out.”

“But you went off to London together, the neat day?” the Bishop reminded her.

“It was all part of the game,” she sighed. “What a fool he must have thought me! However, I am glad. I am riotously, madly glad. I am glad for the cause, I am glad for all our sakes. We have a great recruit, Bishop, the greatest we could have. And think! When he knows the truth, there will be no more trouble. He will hand us over the packet. We shall know just where we stand. We shall know at once whether we dare to strike the great blow.”

“I was down at Westminster this afternoon,” the Bishop told her. “The whole mechanism of the Council of Labour seems to be complete. Twenty men control industrial England. They have absolute power. They are waiting only for the missing word. And fancy,” he went on, “to-morrow I was to have visited Julian. I was to have used my persuasions.”

“But we must go to-night!” Catherine exclaimed. “There is no reason why we should waste a single second.”

“I shall be only too pleased,” he assented gladly. “Where is, he?”

Catherine’s face fell.

“I haven’t the least idea,” she confessed. “Don’t you know?”

The Bishop shook his head.

“They were going to send some one with me tomorrow,” he replied, “but in any case Fenn knows. We can get at him.”

She made a little wry face.

“I do not like Mr. Fenn,” she said slowly. “I have disagreed with him. But that does not matter. Perhaps we had better go to the Council rooms. We shall find some of them there, and probably Fenn. I have a taxi waiting.”

They drove presently to Westminster. The ground floor of the great building, which was wholly occupied now by the offices of the different Labour men, was mostly in darkness, but on the top floor was a big room used as a club and restaurant, and also for informal meetings. Six or seven of the twenty-three were there, but not Fenn. Cross, a great brawny Northumbrian, was playing a game of chess with Furley. Others were writing letters. They all turned around at Catherine’s entrance. She held out her hands to them.

“Great news, my friends!” she exclaimed. “Light up the committee room. I want to talk to you.”

Those who were entitled to followed her into the room across the passage. One or two secretaries and a visitor remained outside. Six of them seated themselves at the long table—Phineas Cross, the Northumbrian pitman, Miles Furley, David Sands, representative of a million Yorkshire mill-hands, Thomas Evans, the South Wales miner.

“We got a message from you, Miss Abbeway, a little time ago,” Furley remarked. “It was countermanded, though, just as we were ready to start.”

“Yes!” she assented. “I am sorry. I telephoned from Julian Orden’s rooms. It was there we made the great discovery. Listen, all of you! I have discovered the identity of Paul Fiske.”

There was a little clamour of voices. The interest was indescribable. Paul Fiske was their cult, their master, their undeniable prophet. It was he who had set down in letters of fire the truths which had been struggling for imperfect expression in these men’s minds. It was Paul Fiske who had fired them with enthusiasm for the cause which at first had been very much like a matter of bread and cheese to them. It was Paul Fiske who had formed their minds, who had put the great arguments into their brains, who had armed them from head to foot with potent reasonings. Four very ordinary men, of varying types, sincere men, all of plebeian extraction, all with their faults, yet all united in one purpose, were animated by that same fire of excitement. They hung over the table towards her. She might have been the croupier and they the gamblers who had thrown upon the table their last stake.

“In Julian Orden’s rooms,” she said, “I found a letter from the editor of the British Review, warning him that his anonymity could not be preserved much longer—that before many weeks had passed the world would know that he was Paul Fiske. Here is the letter.”

She passed it around. They studied it, one by one. They were all a little stunned.

“Julian!” Furley exclaimed, in blank amazement. “Why, he’s been pulling my leg for more than a year!”

“The son of an Earl!” Cross gasped.

“Never mind about that. He is a democrat and honest to the backbone,” Catherine declared. “The Bishop will tell you so. He has known him all his life. Think! Julian Orden has no purpose to serve, no selfish interest to further. He has nothing to gain, everything to lose. If he were not sincere, if those words of his, which we all remember, did not come from his heart, where could be the excuse, the reason, for what he stands for? Think what it means to us!”

“He is the man, isn’t he,” Sands asked mysteriously, “whom they are looking after down yonder?”

“I don’t know where ‘down yonder’ is,” Catherine replied, “but you have him in your power somewhere. He left his rooms last Thursday at about a quarter past six, to take that packet to the Foreign Office, or to make arrangements for its being received there. He never reached the Foreign Office. He hasn’t been heard of since. Some of you know where he is. The Bishop and I want to go and find him at once.”

“Fenn and Bright know,” Cross declared. “It’s Bright’s job.”

“Why is Bright in it?” Catherine asked impatiently.

Cross frowned and puckered up his lips, an odd trick of his when he was displeased.

“Bright represents the workers in chemical factories,” he explained. “They say that there isn’t a poison in liquid, solid or gas form, that he doesn’t know all about. Chap who gives me kind of shivers whenever he comes near. He and Fenn run the secret service branch of the Council.”

“If he knows where Mr. Orden is, couldn’t we send for him at once?” Catherine suggested.

“I’ll go,” Furley volunteered.

He was back in a few minutes.

“Fenn and Bright are both out,” he announced, “and their rooms locked up. I rang up Fenn’s house, but he hasn’t been back.”

Catherine stamped her foot. She was on fire with impatience.

“Doesn’t it seem too bad!” she exclaimed. “If we could only get hold of Julian Orden to-night, if the Bishop and I could talk to him for five minutes, we could have this message for which we have been waiting so long.”

The door was suddenly opened. Fenn entered and received a little chorus of welcome. He was wearing a rough black overcoat over his evening clothes, and a black bowler hat. He advanced to the table with a little familiar swagger.

“Mr. Fenn,” the Bishop said, “we have been awaiting your arrival anxiously. Tell us, please, where we can find Mr. Julian Orden.”

Fenn gave vent to a half-choked, ironical laugh.

“If you’d asked me an hour ago,” he said, “I should have told you to try Iris Villa, Acacia Road, Hampstead. I have just come from there.”

“You saw him?” the Bishop enquired.

“That’s just what I did not,” Fenn replied.

“Why not?” Catherine demanded.

“Because he wasn’t there, hasn’t been since three o’clock this afternoon.”

“You’ve moved him?” Furley asked eagerly.

“He’s moved himself,” was the grim reply. “He’s escaped.”

During the brief, spellbound silence which followed his announcement, Fenn advanced slowly into the room. It chanced that during their informal discussion, the chair at the head of the table had been left unoccupied. The newcomer hesitated for a single second, then removed his hat, laid it on the floor by his side, and sank into the vacant seat. He glanced somewhat defiantly towards Catherine. He seemed to know quite well from whence the challenge of his words would come.

“You tell us,” Catherine said, mastering her emotion with an effort, “that Julian Orden, whom we now know to be ‘Paul Fiske’, has escaped. Just what do you mean?”

“I can scarcely reduce my statement to plainer words,” Fenn replied, “but I will try. The danger in which we stood through the miscarriage of that packet was appreciated by every one of the Council. Discretionary powers were handed to the small secret service branch which is controlled by Bright and myself. Orden was prevented from reaching the Foreign Office and was rendered for a time incapable. The consideration of our further action with regard to him was to depend upon his attitude. Owing, no doubt, to some slight error in Bright’s treatment. Orden has escaped from the place of safety in which he had been placed. He is now at large, and his story, together with the packet, will probably be in the hands of the Foreign Office some time to-night.”

“Giving them,” Cross remarked grimly, “the chance to get in the first blow—warrants for high treason, eh, against the twenty-three of us?”

“I don’t fear that,” Fenn asserted, “not if we behave like sensible men. My proposal is that we anticipate, that one of us sees the Prime Minister to-morrow morning and lays the whole position before him.”

“Without the terms,” Furley observed.

“I know exactly what they will be,” Fenn pointed out. “The trouble, of course, is that the missing packet contains the signature of the three guarantors. The packet, no doubt, will be in the hands of the Foreign Office by to-morrow. The Prime Minister can verify our statements. We present our ultimatum a little sooner than we intended, but we get our blow in first and we are ready.”

The Bishop leaned forward in his place.

“Forgive me if I intervene for one moment,” he begged. “You say that Julian Orden has escaped. Are we to understand that he is absolutely at liberty and in a normal state of health?”

Fenn hesitated for a single second.

“I have no reason to believe the contrary,” he said.

“Still, it is possible,” the Bishop persisted, “that Julian Orden may not be in a position to forward that document to the Foreign Office for the present? If that is so, I am inclined to think that the Prime Minister would consider your visit a bluff. Certainly, you would have no argument weighty enough to induce him to propose the armistice. No man could act upon your word alone. He would want to see these wonderful proposals in writing, even if he were convinced of the justice of your arguments.”

There was a little murmur of approval. Fenn leaned forward.

“You drive me to a further disclosure,” he declared, after a moment’s hesitation, “one, perhaps, which I ought already to have made. I have arranged for a duplicate of that packet to be prepared and forwarded. I set this matter on foot the moment we heard from Miss Abbeway here of her mishap. The duplicate may reach us at any moment.”

“Then I propose,” the Bishop said, “that we postpone our decision until those papers be received. Remember that up to the present moment the Council have not pledged themselves to take action until they have perused that document.”

“And supposing,” Fenn objected, “that to-morrow morning at eight o’clock, twenty-three of us are marched off to the Tower! Our whole cause may be paralysed, all that we have worked for all these months will be in vain, and this accursed and bloody war may be dragged on until our politicians see fit to make a peace of words.”

“I know Mr. Stenson well,” the Bishop declared, “and I am perfectly convinced that he is too sane-minded a man to dream of taking such a step as you suggest. He, at any rate, if others in his Cabinet are not so prescient, knows what Labour means.”

“I agree with the Bishop, for many reasons,” Furley pronounced.

“And I,” Cross echoed.

The sense of the meeting was obvious. Fenn’s unpleasant looking teeth flashed for a moment, and his mouth came together with a little snap.

“This is entirely an informal gathering,” he said. “I shall summon the Council to come together tomorrow at midday.”

“I think that we may sleep in our beds to-night without fear of molestation,” the Bishop remarked, “although if it had been the wish of the meeting, I would have broached the matter to Mr. Stenson.”

“You are an honorary member of the Council,” Fenn declared rudely. “We don’t wish interference. This is a national and international Labour movement.”

“I am a member of the Labour Party of Christ,” the Bishop said quietly.

“And an honoured member of this Executive Council,” Cross intervened. “You’re a bit too glib with your tongue to-night, Fenn.”

“I think of those whom I represent,” was the curt reply. “They are toilers, and they want the toilers to show their power. They don’t want help from the Church. I’ll go even so far,” he added, “as to say that they don’t want help from literature. It’s their own job. They’ve begun it, and they want to finish it.”

“To-morrow’s meeting,” Furley observed, “will show how far you are right in your views. I consider my position, and the Bishop’s, as members of the Labour Party, on a par with your own. I will go further and say that the very soul of our Council is embodied in the teachings and the writings of Paul Fiske, or, as we now know him to be, Julian Orden.”

Fenn rose to his feet. He was trembling with passion.

“This informal meeting is adjourned,” he announced harshly.

Cross himself did not move.

“Adjourned or not it may be, Mr. Fenn,” he said, “but it’s no place of yours to speak for it. You’ve thrust yourself into that chair, but that don’t make you chairman, now or at any other time.”

Fenn choked down the words which had seemed to tremble on his lips. His enemies he knew, but there were others here who might yet be neutral.

“If I have assumed more than I should have done, I am sorry,” he said. “I brought you news which I was in a hurry to deliver. The rest followed.”

The little company rose to their feet and moved towards the door, exchanging whispered comments concerning the news which Catherine had brought. She herself crossed the room and confronted Fenn.

“There is still something to be said about that news,” she declared.

Fenn’s attempt at complete candour was only partially convincing.

“There is not the slightest reason,” he declared, “why anything concerning Julian Orden should be concealed from any member of the Council who desires information. If you will follow me into my private room, Miss Abbeway, and you, Furley, I shall be glad to tell you our exact position. And if the Bishop will accompany you,” he added, turning to the latter, “I shall be honoured.”

Furley made no reply, but, whispering something in Catherine’s ear, took up his hat and left the room. The other two, however, took Fenn at his word, followed him into his room, accepted the chairs which he placed for them, and waited while he spoke through a telephone to the private exchange situated in the building.

“They tell me,” he announced, as he laid down the instrument, “that Bright has this moment returned and is now on his way upstairs.”

Catherine shivered.

“Is Mr. Bright that awful-looking person who came to the last Council meeting?”

“He is probably the person you mean,” Fenn assented. “He takes very little interest in our executive work, but he is one of the most brilliant scientists of this or any other generation. The Government has already given him three laboratories for his experiments, and nearly every gas that is being used at the Front has been prepared according to his formula.”

“A master of horrors,” the Bishop murmured.

“He looks it,” Catherine whispered under her breath.

There was a knock at the door, a moment or two later, and Bright entered. He was a little over medium height, with long and lanky figure, a pronounced stoop, and black, curly hair of coarse quality. His head, which was thrust a little forward, perhaps owing to his short-sightedness, was long, his forehead narrow, his complexion a sort of olive-green. He wore huge, disfiguring spectacles, and he had the protuberant lips of a negro. He greeted Catherine and the Bishop absently and seemed to have a grievance against Fenn.

“What is it you want, Nicholas?” he asked impatiently. “I have some experiments going on in the country and can only spare a minute.”

“The Council has rescinded its instructions with regard to Julian Orden,” Fenn announced, “and is anxious to have him brought before them at once. As you know, we are for the moment powerless in the matter. Will you please explain to Miss Abbeway and the Bishop here just what has been done?”

“It seems a waste of time,” Bright replied ill-naturedly, “but here is the story. Julian Orden left his rooms at a quarter to six on Thursday evening. He walked down to St. James’s Street and turned into the Park. Just as he passed the side door of Marlborough House he was attacked by a sudden faintness.”

“For which, I suppose,” the Bishop interrupted, “you were responsible.”

“I or my deputy,” Bright replied. “It doesn’t matter which. He was fortunate enough to be able to hail a passing taxicab and was driven to my house in Hampstead. He has spent the intervening period, until three o’clock this afternoon, in a small laboratory attached to the premises.”

“A compulsory stay, I presume?” the Bishop ventured.

“A compulsory stay, arranged for under instructions from the Council,” Bright assented, in his hard, rasping voice. “He has been most of the time under the influence of some new form of anaesthetic gas with which I have been experimenting. To-night, however, I must have made a mistake in my calculations. Instead of remaining in a state of coma until midnight, he recovered during my absence and appears to have walked out of the place.”

“You have no idea where he is at the present moment, then?” Catherine asked.

“Not the slightest,” Bright assured her. “I only know that he left the place without hat, gloves, or walking stick. Otherwise, he was fully dressed, and no doubt had plenty of money in his pocket.”

“Is he likely to have any return of the indisposition from which, owing to your efforts, he has been suffering?” the Bishop enquired.

“I should say not,” was the curt answer. “He may find his memory somewhat affected temporarily. He ought to be able to find his way home, though. If not, I suppose you’ll hear of him through the police courts or a hospital. Nothing that we have done,” he added, after a moment’s pause, “is likely to affect his health permanently in the slightest degree.”

“You now know all that there is to be known, Miss Abbeway,” Fenn said. “I agree with you that it is highly desirable that Mr. Orden should be found at once, and if you can suggest any way in which I might be of assistance in discovering his present whereabouts, I shall be only too glad to help. For instance, would you like me to telephone to his rooms?”

Catherine rose to her feet.

“Thank you, Mr. Fenn,” she said, “I don’t think that we will trouble you. Mr. Furley is making enquiries both at Mr. Orden’s rooms and at his clubs.”

“You are perfectly satisfied, so far as I am concerned, I trust?” he persisted, as he opened the door for them.

“Perfectly satisfied,” Catherine replied, looking him in the face, “that you have told us as much as you choose to for the present.”

Fenn closed the door behind Catherine and the Bishop and turned back into the room. Bright laughed at him unpleasantly.

“Love affair not going so strong, eh?”

Fenn threw himself into his chair, took a cigarette from a paper packet, and lit it.

“Blast Julian Orden!” he muttered.

“No objection,” his friend yawned. “What’s wrong now?”

“Haven’t you heard the news? It seems he’s the fellow who has been writing those articles on Socialism and Labour, signing them ‘Paul Fiske.’ Idealistic rubbish, but of course the Bishop and his lot are raving about him.”

“I’ve read some of his stuff,” Bright admitted, himself lighting a cigarette; “good in its way, but old-fashioned. I’m out for something a little more than that.”

“Stick to the point,” Fenn enjoined morosely. “Now they’ve found out who Julian Orden is, they want him produced. They want to elect him on the Council, make him chairman over all our heads, let him reap the reward of the scheme which our brains have conceived.”

“They want him, eh? That’s awkward.”

“Awkward for us,” Fenn muttered.

“They’d better have him, I suppose,” Bright said, with slow and evil emphasis. “Yes, they’d better have him. We’ll take off our hats, and assure him that it was a mistake.”

“Too late. I’ve told Miss Abbeway and the Bishop that he is at large. You backed me up.”

Bright thrust his long, unpleasant, knobby fingers into his pocket, and produced a crumpled cigarette, which he lit from the end of his companion’s.

“Well,” he demanded, “what do you want?”

“I have come to the conclusion,” Fenn decided, “that it is not in the interests of our cause that Orden should become associated with it in any way.”

“We’ve a good deal of power,” Bright ruminated, “but it seems to me you’re inclined to stretch it. I gather that the others want him delivered up. We can’t act against them.”

“Not if they know,” Fenn answered significantly.

Bright came over to the mantelpiece, leaned his elbow upon it, and hung his extraordinarily unattractive face down towards his companion’s.

“Nicholas,” he said, “I don’t blame you for fencing, but I like plain words. You’ve done well out of this new Party. I haven’t. You’ve no hobby except saving your money. I have. My last two experiments, notwithstanding the Government allowance, have left me drained. I need money as you others need bread. I can live without food or drink, but I can’t be without the means to keep my laboratories going. Do you understand me?”

“I do,” Fenn assented, taking up his hat. “Come, I’ll drive towards Bermondsey with you. We’ll talk on the way.”