Читать книгу: «The Secret of the League: The Story of a Social War», страница 16
The car slowed down for a moment, but so smoothly that it was almost imperceptible, and with a clanging bell an electric tram swung into their vision and out again. Salt was taking note of every trifle in this enthralling game. Why, he asked himself, had so expert a driver slackened speed with plenty of room to pass? He saw a possible explanation. They had been meeting and overtaking trams at intervals all the way from Molesey Bridge. In another minute they would have left the high-road and the tram route, and the driver wished to hide the fact from Moeletter as long as possible. He had therefore waited to meet this tram so that the inspector might unconsciously carry in his mind the evidence of their presence to the last possible point.
They were no longer on the high-road; they had glided off somewhere without a warning note or any indication of speed or motion to betray the turn they had taken. The houses were becoming sparser, fields intervened, with here and there a strung-out colony of cottages. Soon even the scattered buildings ceased, or appeared so rarely that they only dotted long stretches of country lanes, and at every yard they trembled on the verge of detection. Nothing but the glare of light inside the vehicle and the storm and darkness beyond could have hid for a moment from even the least suspicious of men the fact that they were no longer travelling even the most secluded of suburban high-roads. And now, as if aware that the deception could not be maintained much longer, the driver began to increase the speed at every open stretch. Again nothing but his inspired skill and the perfectly-balanced excellence of the car could disguise the fact that they flew along the level road; while among the narrow winding lanes they rushed at a headlong pace, shooting down declines and breasting little hills without a pause. The horn boomed its warning every second, and from behind came the answering note of the long white motor. It had crept nearer and nearer since they left the high-road, and its brilliant head-lights now lit up the way as far as the pilot car. Little chance for Moeletter to convoy his prisoner out of those deserted lanes whatever happened now!
What means, what desperate means, he might have taken in a gallant attempt to retrieve the position if he had suspected treachery just a minute before he did, one may speculate but never know.
As it was, the uneasy instinct that everything was not right awoke too late for him to make the stand. It was less than ten minutes after meeting the last tram that he peered out into the night doubtfully, but in those ten minutes the green car had all but won its journey's end.
"Murphy," he cried imperiously, with his mouth to the tube and a startled eye on Salt, "tell me immediately where we are."
"A minute, sir," came the hasty answer, as the driver bent forward to verify some landmark. "This brake —
"Stop this instant!" roared the inspector, rising to his feet in rage and with a terrible foreboding.
There was a muffled rattle as they shot over a snow-laden bridge, a curious sense of passing into a new atmosphere, and then with easy precision the car drew round and stopped dead before the open double doors of its own house. No one spoke for a moment. There was another muffled roar outside, the sound of heavy iron doors clashing together, and the great white car reproduced their curve and drew up by their side.
From the driver's seat of the green car the Hon. Bruce Wycombe, son and heir of old Viscount Chiltern and the most skilful motorist in Europe, climbed painfully down, and, pulling off his head-gear, opened the door of the car with a bow that would have been more graceful if he had been less frozen.
"Welcome to Hanwood after your long journey, Inspector Moeletter!" he exclaimed most affably.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE MUSIC AND THE DANCE
Along the great west road, ten thousand Monmouth colliers were streaming towards London, in every stage of famine and discomfort. What they intended to do when they reached the Capital they had no clearer idea than had the fifteen thousand Midlanders at Barnet. All they knew was that they were starving at home, and they could be no worse off in London. Also in London there was to be found the Government, the Government that had betrayed them.
The conception of the march had been wild, the execution was lamentable. The leaders might have taken Napoleon's descent on Moscow as their model. Ten hand-carts exhausted their commissariat. They were to live on the land they passed through; but the land was agricultural and poor, the populace regarded the Monmouth colliers as foreigners, and the response was scanty. Only one circumstance saved the march from becoming a tragedy of hundreds instead of merely, as it was, a tragedy of scores.
The men were being fed from London. By whom, and why, not even their leaders knew, but each night a railway truck full of provisions was awaiting their arrival at a station on their route, and each day the men's leader-in-chief was informed where the next supply would be. It influenced them to continue their journey pacifically when they must otherwise, sooner or later, have abandoned all restraint and marched through anarchy. It enabled them to reach London. It added another element to the Government's distraction in their day of reckoning. It was a Detail.
But at Windsor there were no provisions waiting. No one knew why. The station authorities had nothing to suggest. After a week's regular supply the leaders had come to expect their daily truck-load, had come to rely implicitly upon it, and had made no other arrangements. They conferred together anxiously; it was all there was for them to do. Windsor was not sympathetic towards them. They had not expected it to be, but they had expected to be independent of Windsor's friendship. Two thousand special constables escorted them in and shepherded them assiduously. Otherwise there might have been disturbances, for a Castle guard comprised the extent of Windsor's military resources then. As it was, the miners reached the Royal Borough hungry, and left it famished. A rumour spread along the ranks as they set out that an unfortunate mistake had been made, but that supplies would be awaiting them in Hyde Park.
If that was a detail, as it might well have been, it was not wholly successful. The men were hungry and dispirited, but London was not their immediate goal. For weeks they had been telling the vacillating Cabinet what ought to be done with the oil at Hanwood, and as they set out they had boasted to their brothers across the Rhymney that before they returned they would show them how to fire a beacon that would singe the hair of five million Leaguers. Midway between Windsor and London they proceeded to turn off from the highway under the direction of their leaders, and debouching from the narrow lanes on to the fields beyond, they began to advance across the country in a straggling, far-flung wave.
On the previous day both the Home Office and the War Office had received applications for protection from the Company at Hanwood, backed by evidence which left no possible doubt that the Monmouth unemployed contemplated an organised attack on the oil store. The two departments replied distantly, that in view of the existing conditions within the Metropolis and the forces at their disposal, it was impossible to despatch either troops or constabulary to protect private property in isolated districts. Hanwood acknowledged these replies, and gave notice with equal punctilio that they would take the best means within their power for safeguarding their interests, and at the same time formally notified the Government that they held them responsible, through their failure to carry out the obligations of their office, for all the developments that the situation might lead to – an exchange of civilities which in private life is sometimes attained much more simply by two disputants consigning each other to the society of the Prince of Darkness in four words.
Whatever there might be behind the intimation, there was little to indicate it at dusk that afternoon. The stranger or the native passing along Miss Lisle's secluded lane would have noticed only two circumstances to suggest anything unusual in the air.
A few hundred feet above the trees within the wall, a box-kite was straining at its rope in the rising gale. From the basket car a man watched every movement of the countryside through his field-glasses, and conversed from time to time through a telephone with the kite section down below. A second wire ran from the field telephone to a room of the offices where Salt was engaged with half a dozen of the chiefs of the Council of the League. Sir John Hampden was not present. He was remaining in London to afford the Government every facility for negotiating a settlement whenever they might desire it.
In the lane, a group of men with tickets in their hats were loitering about the bridge. They comprised a Peaceful Picket within the meaning of the Act. They had been there since daybreak, and so far no one had shown any wish to dispute their position.
The war-kite and the picket in the lane were the "eyes" of the opposing belligerents.
The League had nothing to gain by submitting the issue to the arbitrament of lead and fire. No one had anything to gain by it, but after a bout at fisticuffs a defeated child will sometimes pick up a dangerous stone and fling it. The League had accepted the challenge of those who marched beneath the red banner for war on constitutional lines. Some of those who marched beneath the red banner were now disposed to try the effect of beating their ploughshares into swords, and however much the League might have preferred them to keep to their bargain, the most effective retort was to turn their own pacific sickles into bayonets.
In the staff room Salt was addressing his associates – half military, half political – who now represented the innermost Council of the League. Some of them had been members of former Ministries, others soldiers who had worn the insignia of generals, but they rendered to this unknown man among them an unquestioning allegiance, because of what he had already done, because he inspired them with absolute reliance in what he would yet succeed in doing, and, not least, because he had the air that fitted the position.
"More than two years ago," he was saying, "the first draft of the formation and operations of the League contained a section much to the following effect:
"'It is an essential feature of the plan that the League should work on constitutional lines from beginning to end and in contemplation of bringing about the desired reforms without firing a solitary shot or violating a single law.
"'Nevertheless, it is inevitable that when the position becomes acute civil disorders will arise out of the involved situation, and demonstrations of the affected people will threaten the Government of the day on the one hand and the proposed League on the other.
"'In these circumstances it will be prudent to contemplate, as a last phase of the struggle, an organised military attack on the property of the League, masked under the form of a popular riot, but instigated or connived at by responsible authorities. I propose, therefore, to establish the League stores in a position naturally suited for defence, and to adopt such further precautions as will render them secure against ordinary attack.'
"We have now reached that closing phase of the struggle," continued Salt. "On the evidence of this report from Sir John Hampden we may assume that within twenty-four hours our aggressive work will be over. Will our opponents, in the language of the street, 'go quietly'?"
"It has fallen to my lot to read the Riot Act on three occasions," said one of the company, "and I have seen disturbances in Ireland; but I have never before known an unorganised mob to surround a position completely and then to sit down to wait for night."
"Lieutenant Vivash wishes to speak to Mr Salt personally," said a subordinate, appearing at the door.
Salt stepped into the ante-room, and spoke through the telephone.
"Yes, Vivash," he said to the man in the kite a quarter of a mile away. "What is it?"
"Two general service wagons with bridge-making tackle have just been brought up, and are waiting in Welland Wood," reported Vivash. "There is a movement among the colliers over Barfold Rise. With them are about two hundred men carrying rifles. They are not in uniform, but they march."
Salt turned to another instrument and jerked the switch rapidly from plate to plate as he distributed his orders.
"Captain Norris, strengthen the Territorials at the outer wire North."
"Send up two star rockets to recall the motor-cycle scouts."
"Tell Disturnal to have the searchlights in immediate readiness."
"Fire brigade, full strength, turn out with chemical engine, and stand under earthwork cover at central tank."
He turned again to the kite telephone to ask Vivash a detail. There was no response.
"Get on with Lieutenant Vivash as soon as you can, and let me know at once," he said to the one who was in charge, as he returned to the staff room.
In less than a minute the operator was at the door again.
"I am afraid there is something the matter, sir," he explained. "I can get no reply either from Lieutenant Vivash or from the kite section."
"Ring up the despatch room. Let some one go at once to Mr Moore and return here with report."
"Yes, sir." He turned to go. "Here is Mr Moore," he exclaimed, standing aside from the door.
They all read some disaster in his face as he entered.
"I am deeply sorry to say that Lieutenant Vivash has been shot."
"Is he seriously hurt?" asked some one.
"He is dead. He was shot through the head by a marksman in Welland Wood."
Salt broke the shocked silence.
"We have lost a brave comrade," he said simply. "Come, General Trench, let us visit the walls."
It was dark when they returned. Salt passed through the room, calling to his side the man with whom he had been most closely associated at Hanwood, and traversing some passages led the way up a winding staircase into the lantern of the tower. Here, under the direction of an ex-officer of Royal Engineers, two powerful searchlights were playing on every inch of doubtful ground that lay within their radius beyond the entanglement that marked the outer line of the defences.
Nothing had been seen; not a solitary invader had yet shown himself within the zone of light. The officer in charge was explaining a technical detail of the land when, without the faintest warning, a fulgent blaze of light suddenly ran along the edge of a coppice half a mile away, and a noise like the crackling of a hundred new-lit fires drifted on the wind. With the echo, a thick hedge to the east and a wood lying on the west joined in the vicious challenge. A few bullets splashed harmlessly against the steel shield that ingeniously protected the lantern.
The searchlights oscillated uncertainly from sky to earth under the shock of the surprise, and then settled down to stream unwinkingly into the eyes of the enemy, while in the double darkness the defenders hugged the earth behind the wire and began to reply with cool deliberation to the opening volleys.
There was a knock upon the door of the little lantern room, and a telescribe message was placed before Salt. It bore a sign showing that it had come over the private system which the League maintained between Hanwood and the head office. He read it through twice, and for almost the first time since he had left his youth behind, he stood in absolute indecision.
"It is necessary for me to go at once to London," he said, turning to his companion, when he had made an irrevocable choice. "You will take command in my absence, Evelyn, under the guidance of the Council."
"May I venture to remind you, sir, that we are completely surrounded?" said Orr-Evelyn through his blank surprise.
"I have not overlooked it. You will – "
There was a sullen roar away in the north, a mile behind the coppice that had first spoken. Something whistled overhead, not unmelodiously, and away to the south a shell burst harmlessly among the ridges of a ploughed field. The nearer searchlight elevated its angle a fraction and centred upon a cloud of smoke that hung for a moment until the gale whirled it to disintegration. The army, like the navy, had reverted to black powder. It was Economy; and as it was not intended ever to go to war again, it scarcely mattered.
"Marsham will engage that gun from both platforms D and E. Make every effort to silence it with the least delay; it is the only real menace there is. Hold the entanglement, but not at too heavy a cost. If it should be carried – Come to my room."
"You have considered the possible effect of your withdrawal at this moment, Salt?" said Orr-Evelyn in a low voice, as they hastened together along the passages.
"I can leave the outcome in your hands with absolute reliance," replied Salt. "If Hanwood is successfully held until to-morrow, it will devolve upon Sir John Hampden to dictate terms to the Government. The end is safely in sight independent of my personality… My reputation – !" He dismissed that phase with a shrug.
He threw open the door of his private office. A shallow mahogany case, about a foot square, locked and sealed, was sunk into the opposite wall. Salt knocked off the wax and opened the case with a key which he took off the ring and gave to Orr-Evelyn as he spoke. Inside the case were a dozen rows of little ivory studs, each engraved with a red number. Fastened to the inside of the lid was a scale map of the land lying between the outer wall and the wire fence. Every stud had its corresponding number, surrounded by a crimson circle, indicated on the plan.
"If the entanglement should be carried you will take no further risk," continued Salt. "Captain Ford will give you the general indication of the attack from the lantern. There are two men detailed to each block of mines who will signal you the exact moment for firing each mine. Those are the numbered indicators above the box. Good-bye."
He paused at the door; time was more than life to him, but he had an ordered thought for everything.
"If you hear no more of me, and what might be imagined really troubles you, Evelyn, you can make use of this," he remarked, and laid the telescript he had received upon a table.
It was not the time for words, written or spoken, beyond those of the sheerest necessity. Half an hour passed before Orr-Evelyn had an opportunity of glancing through the letter that had called Salt from his post. When he had finished it he took it down, and read it aloud to the headquarter staff amidst the profoundest silence, in passionate vindication of his friend and leader. This was what they heard:
"Unity League, Trafalgar Chambers.
"The building is surrounded by mob. Seaton Street, Pantile Passage, and Pall Mall and the Haymarket, as far as I can see, densely packed with frantic men. All others in building had left earlier. I shall remain. Wires cut, and fear that you may not receive this, as other telescribe messages for help unanswered. Mob howling continuously for Sir John Hampden and Mr Salt; dare not look out again, stoned. Shall delay advance, doors and stairs, as long as possible, and burn all important League books and papers last resource.
"Good-bye all, my dear friends.
"Irene Lisle."
CHAPTER XIX
THE "FINIS" MESSAGE
The storm had not decreased its violence when, three minutes later, Salt stood unperceived on the broad coping outside an upper storey of the tower, and, sinking forward into the teeth of the gale, was borne upwards with rigid wings as a kite ascends.
In accordance with his instructions the two searchlights had turned their beams steadily earthward for the time, and in the absolute blackness of the upper air he could pass over the firing lines of friends and foes in comparative safety. As he rose higher and higher before turning to scud before the wind, he saw, as on a plan, the whole field of operations, just distinguishable in its masses of grey and black, with the points of interest revealing themselves by an occasional flash. Immediately beneath him, beneath him at first, but every second drawing away to the south-west as he drifted in the gale he breasted, lay Hanwood, with its three outer lines of defence. From above it seemed as though a very bright needle was every now and then thrust out from the walls into the dark night and drawn back again. On each of the platforms D and E two 4.7-inch quick-firing guns appeared to be rocking slightly in the wind. By all the indication there was of smoke or noise, or even flame, the gunners might have been standing idly behind their shields; but over the steep scarp of the little hill, a mile and a half away, shells were being planted every ten yards or so, with the methodical regularity of a farmer dropping potatoes along a furrow.
Salt might not have quite expected that there would be the necessity to fire those guns when, a year before, he had obtained for Hanwood its complement of the finest artillery that the world produced, but when the necessity did arise, there was no need for the League gunners to use black powder.
When he had reached the height he required, simply leaning against the wind, Salt moved a pinion slightly and bore heavily towards the right. It was the supreme moment for the trial of skill, as the long flight that followed it was the trial of endurance. If his nerve had failed, if a limb had lost its tension for the fraction of a second, his brain reeled amidst that tearing fury of the element, or a single ring or swivel not answered to its work, he would have been crumpled up hopelessly, beyond the chance of recovery, and flung headlong to the earth. As it was, the wind swept him round in a great half circle, but it was the wind his servant, not his master, and he turned its lusty violence to serve his ends. He caught a passing glimpse of the coppice whence the attack had first been opened; he saw beneath him the line of guns ensconced behind the hill, one already overturned and centred in confusion; and then the sweeping arc reached its limit, and he came, as it seemed, to anchor in mid-air, with the earth slipping away beneath him as the banks glide past a smoothly-moving train, and a thousand weights and forces dragging at his aching arms.
He had nothing to do but to maintain a perfect balance among the conflicting cross winds that shot in from above and below, and from north and south, and to point his course towards the glow in the sky that marked the Capital. A dozen words could express it, but it required the skill of the practised wingman, the highest development of every virile quality, and the spur of a necessity not less than life and death, to dignify the attempt above the foolhardy. Whether beyond all that the accomplishment lay within the bounds of human endurance was a further step. It would at that time have been impossible to pronounce either way with any authority, for not only had the attempt never been made, but nothing approaching the attempt had been made. A breeze that ran five miles an hour was considered enough for any purpose; to take to the air when the anemometer indicated fifteen miles an hour was not allowed at the practice grounds, and the record in this direction lay with an expert who had accomplished a straight flight in a wind that travelled a little less than thirty miles an hour. The storm on the night of the 15th of January tore across the face of the land with a general velocity of fifty or sixty miles an hour, rising at times even higher.
Under the racking agony of every straining tendon and the heady pressure of the wind, a sense of mundane unreality began to settle upon the flier. He saw the earth and its landmarks being drawn smoothly and swiftly from beneath him with the detachment of a half-conscious dream. He saw – for he remembered afterwards – the Thames lying before him like a whip flicked carelessly across the plain. A town loomed up, black and inchoate, on his right, developed into streets and terraces, and slid away into the past. It was Richmond. The river, never far away, now slipped beneath him at right angles, reappeared to hold a parallel course upon his left, and flung a horse-shoe coil two miles ahead. A colony of strange shining roofs and domes next challenged recognition. They were the conservatories at Kew, looking little more than garden frames, and they were scarcely lost to view before he was over the winding line of Brentford's quaint old High Street, now, as it appeared, packed with a dense, moving crowd. The irresistible pounding of the gale was edging the glow of London further and further to his right. Instinctively he threw more weight into the lighter scale, and slowly and certainly the point of his destination swung round before his face again.
Thenceforward it was all town. Gunnersbury became Chiswick, Chiswick merged into Hammersmith, Kensington succeeded, in ceaseless waves of houses that ran north and south, and long vistas of roofs that stretched east and west. It was a kaleidoscope of contrasts. Scenes of saturnalian gaiety, where ant-like beings danced in mad abandonment round fires that blocked the road, or seemed to gyrate by companies in meaningless confusion, bounded districts plunged into an unnatural gloom and solitude, where for street after street neither the footstep of a wayfarer nor the light of a public lamp broke the uncanny spell. Immediately beyond, by the glare of the flambeaux which they carried, an orderly concourse might be marching eastward, and fringing on their route a garish gutter mart, where busy costermongers drove their roaring trade and frugal housewives did their marketing with less outward concern than if the crisis in the State had been a crisis in the price of butter.
The multitudinous sounds beat on his ears through the plunging gale like a babel of revelry heard between the intermittent swinging of an unlatched door. The sights in their grotesque perspective began to melt together lazily. The upper air grew very cold. The weights hung heavier every mile, the contending forces pulled more resistlessly. Strange fancies began to assail him as the brain shrank beneath the strain; doubts and despairs to gather round like dark birds of the night with hopeless foreboding in the dull measure of their funereal wings. In that moment mind and body almost failed to contend against the crushing odds; nothing but his unconquerable heart flogged on his dying limbs.
It was scarcely more than half an hour after she had written her despairing message that from her post at the head of the broad stone staircase Irene Lisle heard a noise in the garret storey above that sent her flying back to her stronghold. It was the last point from which she had expected an attack. Through the keyhole of the door behind which she had taken refuge, she saw a strangely outlined figure groping his way cumbrously down the stairs, and then, without a word or cry, but with a face whiter than the paper that had summoned him, she threw open the door to admit Salt.
He walked heavily along the corridor and turned into his own room, while she relocked the door and followed him. There was mute enquiry in her eyes, but she did not speak.
A powerful oil-stove stood upon the hearth-stone, throwing its beams across the room. He stood over it while the beaded ice melted from his hair and fell hissing on the iron. He opened his mouth, and the sound of his voice was like the thin piping of a reed. She caught a word, and began to unbuckle the frozen straps of his gear. When he was free he tried to raise his hand to a pocket of his coat, but the effort was beyond the power of the cramped limb. Irene interpreted the action, and, finding there a flask, filled the cup and held it to his lips.
She got a blue, half-frozen smile of thanks over the edge of the cup. "Ah," he said, beginning to find his voice again, and stamping about the room, "we owe Wynchley Slocombe a monument, you and I, Miss Lisle. Now you must write a telescript for me, please; for I cannot."
"If you will remain here, where it is warmer, I will bring the materials," she suggested.
He thanked her and allowed her to go, watching her with thoughtful eyes that were coming back to life. She paused a moment at the top of the stairs to listen down the shaft, and then sped quickly through the smoke to the instrument room on the floor beneath.
Salt glanced round the office. On and about his desk all the books and papers that might be turned to a hostile purpose had been stacked in readiness, and by them stood the can of oil that was to ensure their complete destruction. He stepped up to the window and looked out cautiously. Every pane of glass was broken – every pane of glass in Trafalgar Chambers was broken, for that matter – but it was not easy for an unprepared mob to force an entrance. When the Unity League had taken over the whole block of building in its expansion many alterations had been carried out, and among these had been to fix railings that sprang from the street and formed an arch, not only over the basement, but over the ground floor windows also. If the shutters on the windows had been closed in time, the assailants would have been baffled at another point, but the shutters had been overlooked, and the mob, after lighting great fires in the street, was now flinging the blazing billets through the lower windows.
In a very brief minute Irene was back again with the telescribe accessories. She seated herself at a table, dipped her pen into the ink, and looked up without a word.
"Trafalgar Chambers.
"6.25 P.M.," dictated Salt. "Most of the miners drawn off and passing through Brentford. Over Barfold Rise half battery of 18-pounders, one out of action. In Spring Coppice and Welland Wood about four companies regulars each. Reconnoitre third position assuming same proportion. Act."
He stood considering whether there was anything more to add usefully. The sound of Irene's agate pen tapping persistently against the table caught his ear.
