The Secret of the League: The Story of a Social War

So the baronet was left alone with the still figure that counterfeited death so well, the man who would be dead before the dawn. He stepped quietly to the bed and looked down on him. The lower half of the face was free from swathing, and the lean throat and grizzled beard struck Sir John with a momentary surprise. It was the face of an elderly man; he had expected to find one not more than middle-aged as the companion of the young woman in the other room.

There was a single chair against the wall, and he sat down. There was nothing else to do but to sit and wait, to listen to the sounds of voluminous life that rose from the street beneath, the careful creaking movements in the room beyond. From the shallow wainscotting near the bed came at intervals the steady ticking of a death-watch. It was nothing, as every one knew, but the note of an insect calling for its mate, but it thrilled and grew large in the stillness of the chamber ominously.

A low tap on the door came as a relief. He found the woman standing there.

"Is there anything different?" she asked, hanging on to the door. "I kept on thinking I heard noises."

"No, there is no change," he replied. "Will you come in?"

She shrank back at the suggestion. "Gord 'elp us, no!" she cried. "It's bad enough out there."

"What are you afraid of?" he asked kindly.

She had no words for it. Self-analysis did not enter into her daily life. But, sitting there alone among the noises, real and imagined, she had reached a state of terror.

"There is nothing at all dreadful, nothing that would shock you," he said, referring to the appearance of the dying man. "You are his wife, are you not?"

The foolish look, half stubborn, half vacuous, flickered about her face. "As good as," she replied. "It's like this – "

"I see." He had no desire to hear the recital of the sordid details.

"His wife's in a mad-house. Won't never be anywhere else, and I've been with him these five years, an honest woman to him all the time," she said, bridling somewhat at the suggestion of reproach. "No one's got no better right to the things, I'm sure." Her eloquence was stirred not so much to defend her reputation as by the fear that some one might step in to claim "the things."

"There will be plenty of time to talk about that when – when it is necessary," he said. "Has he no relations about here who ought to be told?"

"Nah," she said decisively; "no one but me. Why, he didn't even have no friends – no pals of his own class, as you may say. Very close about himself he was. All he thought of was them political corkses, as they call um." She came nearer to the door again, the gossiping passion of her class stronger than her fear, now that the earlier restraint of his presence was wearing off. "It's the only thing we ever had a 'arsh word about. It's all right and well for them that make a living at it, but many and many a time my 'usband's lost 'alf a day two and three times a week to sit in the Distingwidged Strangers' Gallery. You mightn't 'ardly think it, sir, but he was hand and foot with some of the biggest men there are; he was indeed."

Hampden was looking at her curiously. He read into her "'arsh word" the ceaseless clatter of her nagging, shameless tongue when the old man brought home a few shillings less than he was wont; the aftermath of sullen silence, the unprepared meals and neglected home. He pictured him a patient, long-suffering old man, and pitied him. And now she took pride and boasted of the very things that she had upbraided him with.

"Vickers he knew," she continued complacently, "and Drugget. He's shaken hands with Mr Strummery, the Prime Minister, more than onest. Then Tubes – you've heard speak of him? – he found Mr Tubes a very pleasant gentleman. Oh, and a lot more I can't remember."

Hampden disengaged himself from further conversation with a single formal sentence, and returned to his vigil. There he was secure from her callous chatter. He saw the renewed look of terror start into her eyes when a board behind her creaked as the door was closing. He heard the startled shriek, but her squalid avarice cut off his sympathies. He sat down again and looked round at the already familiar objects in the room. The form lying on the bed had not changed a fraction of its rigid outline; but he missed something somewhere in the room, and for a minute he could not identify it. Then he remembered the ticking of the death-watch. It had ceased. He looked at his watch; it was not yet nine o'clock.

He had not been back more than ten minutes when the subdued tapping – it was rather a timid scrape, as though she feared that a louder summons might call another forth – was repeated.

"I don't see that it's no good my staying here," she gasped. "I've been sitting there till the furniture fair began to move towards me, and every bloomin' rag about the place had a face in it. It's giving me the fair horrors."

He could not ignore her half-frenzied state. "What do you want to do?" he asked.

"I want to go out for a bit," she replied, licking her thin feline lips. "You don't know what it's like. I want to hear real people talk and not see things move. I'll come back soon; before Gord, I will."

"Yes, how will you came back?"

"I won't. May it strike me dead if I touch a drop. I'll go straight into Mrs Rugg's across the street, and she's almost what you might call a teetotaler."

"The man you call your husband is dying in there, and he may need your help at any minute," he said sternly. It needed no gift of divination to prophesy that if the woman once left the place she would be hopelessly drunk before an hour had passed. "Don't sit down doing nothing but imagining things," he continued. "Make yourself some tea, and then when one of your friends comes round to see you, you can let her stay. But only one, mind."

He saw the more sullen of her looks settle darkly about her face as he closed the door. He waited to hear the sound of the kettle being moved, the tea-cup clinking, but they never came. An unnatural, uncreaking silence reigned instead. He opened the door quietly and looked out. That room was empty, and, as he stood there, a current of cooler air fell across his cheek. Half a dozen steps brought him to the entrance to the little hall – the only other room there was. It also was empty, and the front door stood widely open. There was only one possible inference: "Mrs Flak" had fled.

Sir John had confessed to possessing nerves, and to few men the situation would have been an inviting one. Still, there was only one possible thing to do, and he closed the door again, noticing, as he did so, that the action locked it. As he stood there a moment before returning to the bedroom and its tranquil occupant lying in his rigid, unbreathing sleep, a slight but continuous sound caught his ear. It was the most closely comparable (to attempt to define it) with the whirring of a clock as the flying pinion is released before it strikes. Or it might be that the doctor's simile prompted the comparison. It was not loud, but the room beyond seemed very, very still.

It was not a time to temporise with the emotions. Hampden stepped into the next room and stood listening. He judged – nay, he was sure – that the sound came from the bedroom, but it was not repeated. Instead, something very different happened, something that was either terrifying or natural, according to the conditions that provoked it. Quite without warning there came a voice from the next room, a full, level, healthy voice, even strong, and speaking in the ordinary manner of conversation.

"Will you please tell Mr Tubes that I am waiting here to see him?"

CHAPTER XI

MAN BETWEEN TWO MASTERS

There was something in the situation that was more than gruesome, something that was peculiarly unnerving.

In his anticipation of this moment as he had sat almost by the bedside, Hampden had conjectured that the dying man would perhaps lift a hand or move his head uneasily with the first instinct of returning consciousness. A sigh, a groan, might escape him, incoherent words follow, then broken but rational expressions of his suffering, and entreaties that something might be done to ease the pain. Or perhaps, after realising his position, he would nerve himself to betray no unmanly weakness, and, in the words of the significant old phrase, "turning his face to the wall," endure in stoical silence to the end. It would be painful, perhaps acutely distressing, but it would not be unnatural.

There had been no groan, no sigh or broken words, no indication of weakness or suffering behind that half-closed door, nothing but the curious clock-like sound that had gone before the voice. And that voice! It was as full and strong, as vibrant and as ordinary as his own could ever be. Standing in the middle of the living-room Sir John could not deceive himself. It came from the other room where a minute before he had left the dying – yes, the almost dead – man lying with stark outline on the bed. There was no alternative: it was from those pallid lips that the words had come, it was by that still, inanimate man that they were spoken.

The suddenness of the whole incident was shocking in itself, but that was not all; the mere contrast to what he had looked for was disconcerting, but there was something more; the curious unexpected nature of the request, if request it was, was not without its element of mystery, but above and beyond all else was the thought – the thought that for a dreadful moment held his heart and soul in icy bonds – what sight when he returned to the inner room, as return at once he must, what gruesome sight would meet his eyes?

What phantoms his misgivings raised, every man may conjecture for himself. Follow, then, another step in imagination, and having given a somewhat free and ghastly fancy rein, push the chamber door cautiously and inch by inch, or fling it boldly open as you will; then pause upon the threshold, as Hampden did, in sharp surprise.

Nothing was altered, no single detail had undergone the slightest change! On the bed, rigid and very sharp beneath the single unclean sheet, lay the body of the mangled man. Not a fold of his shroud-like wrapping differed from its former line, it did not seem possible that a breath had stirred him.

Had the voice been a trick of the imagination? Hampden knew, as far as mortal man can be sure of any mortal sense, that the voice had been as real as his life itself. Then – ? It occurred to him in a flash: here was the stage of under-consciousness of which Dr Stone had spoken. Of his pain, the accident, where he at that moment lay, and all his real surroundings, the sufferer knew nothing, and never would know. But out of the shock and shattering, some of the delicate machinery of the brain still kept its balance, and would continue to exercise its functions to the end.

It was an ordeal, but it had to be done. It was the purpose for which he had been summoned. Sir John moved to the bedside, nerved himself to watch the ashen face, and said slowly and distinctly: "Mr Tubes is not here. Do you wish to see him?"

There was just a perceptible pause, and then the bloodless lips replied. But not the faintest tremor of a movement stirred the body otherwise from head to foot, and in the chilling absence of expression the simile occurred to Hampden of bubbles rising from some unseen working to the surface of an inky pool.

"I have come on purpose. Let him be told that it is most important."

Hampden had to feel his way. The woman had mentioned that Flak was at least on terms of acquaintanceship with Mr Tubes. The doctor had surmised that the man had something he must say before he died. But was this the one true line, or a mere vagary of the sub-conscious state – a twist in the tortuous labyrinth that would lead to nothing?

"He is not here at present," he said. "If you will tell me what you wish to say I will write it down, so that it cannot fail to reach him."

"No. I cannot tell any one else. I must see him."

"Mr Tubes is a very busy man. You know that he is the Home Secretary. Is it of sufficient importance to telegraph for him?"

This time the answer followed on his last word with startling rapidity. Until the last phase that was the only variation in the delivery of the sentences – that sometimes there was a pause as though the working of the mind had to make a revolution before it reached the point of the mental clutch, at others it dropped into its gear at once.

"It is important enough to send a coach and four for him," was the reply.

Hampden might not be convinced of this but he was satisfied of one thing: the coherence of idea was being regularly maintained. How long would it last? It occurred to him to put the question.

"I shall have to go out either to send the telegram myself or to find some one who will take it," he explained. "Until Mr Tubes comes or sends his reply will you remain here?"

It was rather eerie to be holding conversation with the fragment of a man's brain with the man himself for all practical purposes eliminated. But he seemed to have arrived at a practical understanding with the centre of sub-consciousness.

"I will remain," was the unhesitating reply, and Hampden felt assured that the line would not be lost.

He had not definitely settled in his mind what to do when he opened the door leading on to the common stairs. A small child who had been loitering outside in a crouching position staggered back in momentary alarm at his sudden appearance. It was a ragged girl, perhaps ten or twelve years old, with cruelly unwieldy boots upon her stockingless feet, matted hair, and a precocious face full of unchildish knowledge. The inference that she had been applying either an eye or an ear to the keyhole was overwhelming.

Her fear – it was only the slum child's instinct of flight – died out when she saw the gentleman. Toffs (so ran her experience) do not hit you for nothing.

"Ee's in there yet, ain't ee?" she whispered, coming back boldly and looking up confidentially to his face. "I 'eard yer talking, but I couldn't tell what yer said. 'Ow long d'yer think 'e'll last?"

Sir John looked down at the child, the child who had never been young, in shuddering pity.

"It was me what picked 'is 'at up, but they wouldn't let me go in," she continued, as though the fact gave her a standing in the case. "Did yer see it in there?" She looked proudly at her right hand with horrid significance.

"Come in here," he said, after considering. "Can you run an errand?"

Her face reflected gloating eagerness as she entered, her attitude had just a tinge of pleasurable awe. He did not permit her to go further than the hall.

"Is it to do with 'im?" she asked keenly. "Yehs!"

"It is to go to the post office in Fleet Street," he explained. "You must go as fast as ever you can."

"I can go anywhere as well as any boy, and as fast if I take my boots off. When that there Italian knifed her man – him what took up with Shiny Sal – in the Lane a year ago, it was me what fetched the police."

He left her standing there – her face to the chink of the door before he had turned away – and went into the next room to write the message. He desired to make it neither too insistent nor too immaterial. "John Flak, of 45 Paradise Buildings, Paradise Street, Drury Lane, has met with fatal accident, and earnestly desires to see you on important business," was the form it took. He had sufficient stamps in his pocket for the payment, and to these he added another for a receipt.

"You can read?" he asked, returning to her.

"Yehs!" she replied with her curious accent of lofty scorn at so ingenuous a question. "I read all the murders and sewercides to Blind Mike every Sunday morning."

"Well, go as fast as you can to the post office in Fleet Street, and give them this paper where you see 'Telegrams' written up. Then wait for another piece of paper which they will give you, and bring it back to me. Here is sixpence for you now, and you shall have another shilling when you come back." He was making it more profitable for her to be honest than to be dishonest, which is perhaps the safest way in an emergency.

It was nearly ten o'clock when he looked at his watch on her departure; it was not ten minutes past when she returned. She was panting but exultant, and watched his face for commendation as she gave him the receipt, as a probationary imp might watch the face of the Prince of Darkness on bringing in his first human soul. One boot she had dropped in her wild career, but so far from stopping to look for it, she had thrown away the other then as useless.

Leaving the ghoul-child seated on the coal to thrill delightfully at every unknown sound, Hampden returned to the bedside. Much of the first, the absolutely cold horror of the situation, was gone. He judged it better not to allow too long an interval of silence in which that dim consciousness might slip back into the outer space of trackless darkness. Now that he knew what to expect it was not very unlike speaking to one who slept and held converse in his sleep.

"I have sent for Mr Tubes, but, making due allowance, he can scarcely get here in less than an hour," he said. "If in the meantime there is anything that you wish to tell me, to make doubly sure, it will be received as a most sacred confidence."

There was a longer pause than any before, so long that the watcher by the bedside was preparing to speak again; then the lips slowly opened, and the same full, substantial voice made reply.

"I will wait. But he must be quick – quick!"

The words seemed to disclose a fear, but there was no outward sign of failing power. Hampden ventured on another point.

"Are you in pain?" he asked.

The reply came more quickly this time, and, perhaps because he was looking for some such indication, the listener fancied that he caught the faintest stumbling, a little blurring of the outline here and there.

"No, I am in no pain. But I have a terrible anxiety that weighs me down."

There was nothing to be gained by further questioning. Sir John returned to the other room. The fire was low and the grate choked with ashes; he had begun to replenish it when a curious sound startled him. He only heard it between the raspings of the poker as he raked the ashes out, but it was not to be mistaken. It was the sharp, dry, clock-like whirring that had been the first indication of life and speech beyond the bedroom door more than an hour before.

A board creaked behind him, and he turned with an exclamation to see the dreadful child standing in the middle of the room. Barefooted, she had slipped noiselessly in from the hall at the first tremor of that unusual sound, and now, with her dilated eyes fixed fearfully on the door, her shrinking form bent forward, she slowly crept nearer step by step. Her face quivered with terror, her whole body shook, but she went on as surely as though a magnet drew her.

"What are you doing?" cried Hampden sharply. "Why did you not stay where I told you?"

She turned her face, but not her eyes, towards him. "Yer heard it, didn't yer?" she whispered. "Ain't that what they call the death-rattle what comes?"

He took her by the shoulder and swung her impatiently round. "Go back, you imp," he commanded. "Back and stay there, or you shall go out."

She crept back, looking fearfully over her shoulder all the way. Something else was happening to engage Hampden's attention. In the next room the man was speaking, speaking spontaneously, as he had done once before, but beyond all doubt the voice was weaker now. The momentary interruption of the child's presence had drowned the first part of the sentence, but Hampden caught a word that strung up every faculty he possessed – "League."

" – League will then suddenly issue a notice to all its members, putting an embargo – a boycott, if you will – on – "

The voice trailed off, and, although he sprang to the door, Sir John could not distinguish another word. But that fragment alone was sufficiently startling. To the President of the Unity League it could only have one meaning; for it was true! Some – how much? – of their plan lay open. And to how many was it known? The terrible anxiety of this poor, battered wreck, unconsciously loyal to his class in death, to give the warning before he passed away, seemed to indicate that nothing but the frayed thread of one existence stood in the League's path yet.

Was there anything to be done? That was Hampden's first thought. There was plainly one thing: to learn, if possible, before Mr Tubes's arrival, how much was known.

Nothing was changed; only the death-watch ticked again. He leaned over the bed in his eagerness, and, stilling the throbbing excitement of his blood, tried to speak in a tone of commonplace indifference.

"Yes, continue."

There was no response.

"Repeat the sentence," he commanded, concentrating his voice in his desperation, and endeavouring by mere force of will to impose its authority on the indefinite consciousness.

Just as well might he have commanded the man to get up and walk.

Had that last elusive thread that held him to mortality been broken? Hampden bent still lower. The pallid face was no more pallid than before, but before it could scarcely have been more death-like. The acutest test could not have found a trace of breath. He put together the gradual failing of the voice that little more than an hour ago had been as full and vigorous as his own, the unfinished sentence, the silence —

Suddenly he straightened himself by the bedside with a sense of guilt that struck him like a blow. What was he thinking – hoping? Who was he – Sir John Hampden, President of the Unity League? Not in that room! The man who watched by the bedside stood there even as the humblest servant of the Order of St. Martin, pledged while in that service to succour in "trouble, sorrow, need, sickness, or any other adversity."

It did not occur to him to debate the point. His way seemed very straight and clear. His plain duty to the dying man was to try by every means in his power to carry out his one overwhelming desire. Its successful accomplishment might aim a more formidable blow at his own ambition than almost anything else that could happen. It could not ward off the attack upon which the League was now concentrating – nothing could do that – but an intimate knowledge of the details of that scheme of retaliation might act in a hundred adverse ways. Hampden did not stop to consider what might happen on the one side and on the other. A thousand years of argument and sophistries could not alter the one great fact of his present duty. He had a very simple conscience, and he followed it.

If he could have speeded Mr Tubes's arrival he would have done so now. He went into the hall to listen. The street child was still there, sitting on the coal, as sharp-eyed and wakefully alert as ever. He had forgotten her.

"Come, little imp," he said kindly, "I ought to have packed you off long ago." It was, in point of fact, nearly eleven o'clock.

"Ain't doin' no aharm to the coal," she muttered.

"That's not the question. You ought to have been at home and in bed by this time of night."

She looked up at him sharply with a suspicion that such innocence in a grown-up man could not be unassumed.

"Ain't got no bed," she said contemptuously. "Ain't got no 'ome."

A sentence rang through his mind: "The birds of the air have nests."

"Where do you sleep?" he asked.

"Anywhere," she replied.

"And how do you live?"

"Anyhow."

The lowest depths of human poverty had not been abolished by Act of Parliament after all.

A knock at the door interrupted the reflection. The child had already heard the step and sought to efface herself in the darkest corner.

Hampden had not noticed the significance of the knock. He opened the door, prepared to admit the Home Secretary. So thoroughly had he dissociated his own personality from the issue, that he felt the keenest interest that the man should arrive before it was too late. He opened the door to admit him, and experienced an actual pang of disappointment when he saw who stood outside.

He had sent a telegram instead. Whatever the telegram said did not matter very much. Hampden instinctively guessed that he was not coming then – was not on his way. Anything less than that would be too late.

He took the orange envelope and opened it beneath the flaring gas that piped and whistled at the stairhead.