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

"Yes," assented Salt thoughtfully, "I think it was. There is one other thing, Miss Lisle. You could scarcely know with whom he was negotiating on the other side?"

"No," she admitted regretfully; "I had not sufficient time. That was why I did not wish to go away just now."

"I do not think that you need hesitate to leave it now. I am not taking it out of your hands, only carrying on another phase that you have made possible. It will simplify matters if I have the office to myself. Could you find an opportunity for telling Tantroy casually that you are taking a fortnight's holiday?"

Her answer hung just a moment. Had he known Tantroy better he might have guessed. "Yes, certainly," she replied hastily, with a little stumble in her speech.

Perhaps he guessed. "No," he corrected himself. "On second thoughts, it does not matter."

"I do not mind," she protested loyally.

"If it were necessary I should not hesitate to ask you," he replied half brusquely. "It is not."

"Very well. I will go to-morrow."

That evening, when he was alone. Salt unlocked the typewriter case to which Miss Lisle had alluded, took out the machine, and seating himself before it proceeded to compose a letter upon which he seemed to spend much consideration. As his fingers struck the keys, upon the sheet of paper in the carrier there appeared the following mystifying composition:

kbeljsl wopmjvsjxkivslilscalkwespljkjscwecsspssp

fxfejsloxmjcneoeqjdncs —

It was, in fact, as Miss Lisle had said, a code typewriter. The letters which appeared on the paper did not correspond with the letters on the keys. According to the keyboard the writing should have been:

mydrstr

nwhvsltscmpltrprtbfrmndthrsmstbndbtthtth

prpslhvfrmltdsfsblndth —

and signified, to resolve it into its ultimate form:

My Dear Estair, – I now have Salt's complete report before me, and there seems to be no doubt that the proposal I have formulated is feasible, and the —

Written without vowels, stops, capitals, or spaces, this gave a very serviceable cryptograph, but there was an added safeguard. After completing the first line the writer moved a shift-key and brought another set of symbols into play – or, rather, the same symbols under a different arrangement. The process was repeated for the third line, and then the fourth line returned to the system of the first. Thus three codes were really in operation, and the danger of the key being found by the frequent recurrence of certain symbols (the most fruitful cause of detection) was almost overcome. Six identical machines were in existence. One has been accounted for; Sir John Hampden had another; and a third was in the possession of Robert Estair, the venerable titular head of the combined Imperial party. A sociable young publican, who had a very snug house in the neighbourhood of Westminster Abbey, could have put his hand upon the fourth; the fifth was in the office of a super-phosphate company carrying on an unostentatious business down a quiet little lane about ten or a dozen miles out of London; and the sixth had fallen to the lot of a busy journalist, who seemed to have the happy knack of getting political articles and paragraphs accepted without demur by all the leading newspapers by the simple expedient of scribbling "Urgent" and some one else's initials across the envelopes he sent them in. Communications of the highest importance never reached the stage of ink and paper, but the six machines were in frequent use. In bonâ fide communications the customary phraseology with which letters begin and end was not used, it is perhaps unnecessary to say. So obvious a clue as the short line "kbeljsl" at the head of a letter addressed to Estair would be as fatal to the secrecy of any code as the cartouched "Cleopatra" and "Ptolemy" were to the mystery of Egyptian hieroglyphics. That Salt wrote it may be taken as an indication that he had another end in view; and it is sometimes a mistake to overrate the intelligence of your opponents. When the letter was finished he put it away in his pocket-book, arranged the fastenings of both safe and desk so that he could tell if they had been disturbed, and then went home.

The next morning his preparations advanced another step. He brought with him a new letter copying-book, a silver cigarette-case with a plain polished surface, and a small jar of some oily preparation. With a little of the substance from the jar he smeared the cigarette-case all over, wiped away the greater part again until nothing but an almost imperceptible trace remained, and then placed it carefully within his desk. The next detail was to write a dozen letters with dates extending over the last few days. All were short; all were quite unimportant; they were chiefly concerned with appointments, references to future League meetings, and the like. Some few were written in cipher, but the majority were plain reading, and Salt signed them all in Sir John's name, appending his own initials. To sign the long letter which he had already written he cut off from a note in the baronet's own handwriting the signature "John Hampden," fastened it lightly at the foot of the typewritten sheet, and then proceeded to copy all the letters into the new book. The effect was patent: one letter and one alone stood out among the rest as of pre-eminent importance. The completion was reached by gumming upon the back of the book a label inscribed "Hampden. Private," treating the leather binding with a coating of the preparation from the jar, and finally substituting it in the safe in place of the genuine volume. Then he burned his originals of all the fictitious letters and turned to other matters.

It was not until two days later that Mr Tantroy paid Salt a passing visit. He dropped in in a friendly way with the plea that the burden of his own society in his own room, where he apparently spent two hours daily in thinking deeply, had grown intolerable.

"You are always such a jolly busy, energetic chap, Salt, that it quite bucks me up to watch you," he explained.

Salt, however, was not busy that afternoon. He only excused himself to ring for a note, which was lying before him already addressed, to be taken out, and then gave his visitor an undivided attention. He was positively entertaining over his recent journeyings. Freddy Tantroy had never thought that the chap had so much in him before.

"Jolly quaint set of beggars you must have had to do with," he remarked. "Thought that you were having gilded flutter Monte Carlo, or Margate, or some of those places where crowds people go."

Salt looked across at him with a smile. "I think that there was an impression of that sort given out," he replied. "But, between ourselves, it was strictly on a matter of business."

"We League Johnnies do get most frightfully rushed," said Freddy sympathetically. "Bring it off?"

"Better than I had expected. I don't think it will be long before we begin to move now. You would be surprised if I could tell you of the unexpected form it will take."

"Don't see why you shouldn't," dropped Tantroy negligently.

Salt allowed the moment to pass on a note of indecision.

"Perhaps I am speaking prematurely," he qualified. "Things are only evolving at the moment, and I don't suppose that there will be anything at all doing during the next few weeks. I have even sent Miss Lisle off on a holiday."

"Noticed the fair Irene's empty chair," said Freddy. "For long?"

"I told her to take a fortnight. She can have longer if she wants."

"Wish Sir John could spare me; but simply won't hear of it. Don't fancy you find girl much good, though."

"Oh, she is painstaking," put in her employer tolerantly.

"No initiative," declared Tantroy solemnly. "No idea of rising to the occasion or of making use of her opportunities."

"You noticed that?" To Freddy's imagination it seemed as though Salt was regarding him with open admiration.

He wagged his head judicially. "I knew you'd like me to keep eye on things while you were away," he said, "so I looked in here occasionally as I passed. Don't believe she had any idea what to do. Invariably found her sitting here in gilded idleness at every hour of the day. If I were you, should sack her while she is away."

Salt thought it as well to change the subject.

"By the way," he remarked, "I came across what seemed to me a rather good thing in cigarettes at Cardiff, and I wanted to ask your opinion about them. It's a new leaf – Bolivian with a Virginian blend, not on the market yet. I wish you'd try one now."

There was nothing Freddy Tantroy liked better than being asked to give his opinion on tobacco from the standpoint of an expert. He took the case held out to him, selected a cigarette with grave deliberation, and leaned back in his chair with a critical air, preparing to deliver judgment. Salt returned the case to its compartment in the desk.

"It has a very distinctive aroma," announced Freddy sagely, after he had drawn a few whiffs, held the cigarette under his nose, waved it slowly in the air before him, and resorted to several other devices of connoisseurship.

"I thought so too," agreed Salt. He had bought a suitable packet of some obscure brand in a side street, as he walked to the office two days before.

"Cardiff," mused Tantroy. "Variety grotesque holes you seem to have explored, Salt."

"Oh, I had to see a lot of men all over the place. I got a few packets of these from a docker who had them from a South American merchant in a roundabout way. Smuggled, of course." All along, his conversation had touched upon labourers, mill-hands, miners, and other sons of toil. Apparently, as Tantroy noted, he had scarcely associated with any other class. He was lying deliberately, and in a manner calculated to alienate the sympathy of many excellent people; for there is a worthy and not inconsiderable class with an ineradicable conviction that although in a just cause the sixth commandment may be suspended, as it were by Act of Parliament, and the killing of your enemy become an active virtue, yet in no case is it permissible to tell him a falsehood. If it is necessary to deceive him the end must be gained by leading him to it by inference. But Salt belonged to a hard-grained school which believed in doing things thoroughly, and when on active service he swept the sophistries away. He had to mislead a man whose very existence he believed to be steeped in treachery and falsehood, and, as the most effectual way, he lied deliberately to him.

"Frantic adventure," drawled Tantroy. "Didn't know League dealt in people that kind."

"Of course, I saw all sorts," corrected Salt hastily, as though he feared that he had indicated too closely the trend of his business; "only it happened that those were the most amusing," and to emphasise the fact he launched into another anecdote. At an out-of-the-way village there was neither hotel nor inn. His business was unfinished, and it was desirable that he should stay the night there. At last he heard of a small farm-house where apartments were occasionally let, and, making his way there, he asked if he could have a room. The woman seemed doubtful. "Of course, as I am a stranger, I should wish to pay you in advance," said Salt. "It isn't that, sir," replied the hostess, "but I like to be sure of making people comfortable." "I don't think that we shall disagree about that," he urged. "Perhaps not," she admitted, "but the last gentleman was very hard to please. Everything I got him he'd had better somewhere else till he was sick of it. But," she added in a burst of confidence, "look what a swell he was! I knew that nothing would satisfy him when I saw him come in a motor-car puffed out with rheumatic tyres, and wearing a pair of them blasé kid boots."

Tantroy contributed an appreciative cackle, and Salt, leaning back in his chair, pressed against a pile of books standing on his desk so that they fell to the ground with a crash.

By the time he had picked them up again a telegram was waiting at his elbow. He took it, opened it with a word of apology, and with a sharp exclamation pulled out his watch. Before Tantroy could realise what was happening, Salt had caught up his hat and gloves, slammed down his self-locking desk, and, after a single hasty glance round the room, was standing at the door.

"Excuse me, won't you?" he called back. "Most important. Can just catch a train. Pull my door to after you, please," and the next minute he was gone.

Left to himself, Tantroy's first action was not an unnatural one in the circumstance. He picked up the telegram which Salt had left in his wild hurry and read it. "Come at once, if you wish to see Vernon alive," was the imperative message, and it appeared to have been handed in at Croydon half an hour before. He stepped to the window, and from behind the curtains he saw Salt run down the steps into the road, call a hansom from the rank near at hand, and disappear in the direction of Victoria at a gallop.

Mr Tantroy sat down again, and his eyes ran over the various objects in the room in quick succession. The code typewriter. He had all he wanted from that. Salt's desk. Locked, of course. The girl's desk. Locked, and, as he knew, not worth the trouble of unlocking with his duplicate key. The safe – His heart gave a bound, his eyes stood wide in incredulous surprise, and he sprang to his feet and stealthily crossed the room to make sure of his astounding luck. The safe was unlocked! The door stood just an inch or so ajar, and Salt, having failed to notice it in his hurried glance, was on his way to Croydon!

Living in a pretentious, breathless age, drawn into a social circle beside whose feverish artificiality the natural artificiality inseparable from any phase of civilisation stood comparable to a sturdy, healthy tree, badly brought up, neglected, petted, the Honourable Frederick Tantroy had grown to the form of the vacuous pose which he had adopted. Beneath it lay his real character. A moderately honest man would not have played his part, but an utterly weak one could not have played it. It demanded certain qualities not contemptible. There were risks to be taken, and he was prepared to take them, and in their presence his face took on a stronger, even better, look. He bolted the door on the inside, picked up a few sheets of paper from the desk-top, and without any sign of nervousness or haste began to do his work.

It was fully three hours later when Salt returned; for with that extreme passion for covering every possible contingency that marked his career, he had been to Croydon. Many a better scheme has failed through the neglect of a smaller detail. The room, when he entered it and secured the door, looked exactly as when he left, three hours before. For all the disarrangement he had caused, Tantroy might have melted out of it.

On the top of his desk, at the side nearest to the safe, lay a packet of octavo scribbling paper. He took out the sheets and twice counted them. Thirty-one, and he had left thirty-four. His face betrayed no emotion. Satisfaction at having outwitted a spy was merged in regret that there must need be one, and pain on Hampden's account that his nephew should be the traitor. He unlocked his desk and carefully lifted out the cigarette-case, pulled open the safe door, and took up the fictitious letter-book. To the naked eye the finger-prints on each were scarcely discernible, but under the magnifying lenses of the superimposing glass all doubt was finally dispelled. They were there, they corresponded, they were identical. Thumb to thumb, finger to finger, and line to line they fitted over one another without a blur or fault. It was, as it often proved to be in those days, hanging evidence.

Salt relocked the safe, tore out the used pages of the letter-book, and reduced them to ashes on the spot. The less important remains of the book he took with him to his chambers, and there burned them from cover to cover before he went to bed.

It had served its purpose, and not a legitimate trace remained. Around the stolen copy the policy of the coming strife might crystallise, and towards any issue it might raise Salt could look with confidence. Finally, if the unforeseen arose, the way was clear for Sir John to denounce a shameless forgery, and who could contradict his indignant word?

CHAPTER IX

SECRET HISTORY

Under succeeding administrations, each pledged to a larger policy to themselves and a smaller one towards every one else, most of the traditional outward forms of government had continued to be observed. Thus there was a Minister for the Colonies, though the Colonies themselves had shamefacedly one by one dropped off into the troubled waters of weak independence, or else clung on with pathetic loyalty in spite of rebuff after rebuff, and the disintegration of all mutual interests, until nothing but the most shadowy bond remained. There was a Secretary of State for War in spite of the fact that the flag which the Government nailed to the mast when it entered into negotiations with an aggrieved and aggressive Power, bore the legend, "Peace at any Price. None but a Coward Strikes the Weak." There had been more than one First Lord of the Admiralty whose maritime experience had begun and ended on the familiar deck of the Koh-I-Noor. There were practically all the usual officers of ministerial rank – and the recipients of ministerial salaries.

Apart from the enjoyment of the title and the salary, however, there were a few members of the Cabinet who exercised no real authority. Lord Henry Stokes had been the last of upper class politicians of standing to accept office under the new régime. Largely in sympathy with the democratic tendency of the age, optimistic as to the growth of moderation and restraint in the ranks of the mushroom party, and actuated by the most sterling patriotism, Lord Henry had essayed the superhuman task of premiership. Superhuman it was, because no mortal could have combined the qualities necessary for success in the face of the fierce distrust and jealousy which his rank and social position excited in the minds of the rawer recruits of his own party; superhuman, because no man possessing his convictions could have long reconciled with them the growing and not diminishing illiberality of those whom he was to lead. There were dissensions, suspicions, and recriminations from the first. The end came in a tragic scene, unparalleled among the many historic spectacles which the House has witnessed. A trivial point in the naval estimates was under discussion, and Lord Henry, totally out of sympathy with the bulk of his nominal following, had risen to patch up the situation on the best terms he could. At the end of a studiously moderate speech, which had provoked cheers from the opposition and murmurs of dissent from his own party throughout, he had wound up his plea for unity, toleration, and patriotism, with the following words: "It is true that here no Government measure is at stake, no crisis is involved, and honourable members on this side of the House are free of party trammels and at liberty to vote as seems best to each. But if the motion should be persisted in, an inevitable conclusion must be faced, an irretrievable step will have been taken, and of the moral outcome of that act who dare trace the end?"

There was just a perceptible pause of sullen silence, then from among the compact mass that sat behind their leader rose a coarse voice, charged with a squiggling laugh.

"We give it up, 'Enry. If it's a riddle about morals, suppose you ask little Flo?"

It was an aside – it was afterwards claimed that it was a drunken whisper – but it was heard, as it was meant to be heard, throughout the crowded Chamber. From the opposition ranks there was torn a cry, almost of horror, at the enormity of the insult, at the direful profanation of the House. Responsible members of the Government turned angrily, imploringly, frantically upon their followers. At least half of these, sitting pained and scandalised, needed no restraint, but from the malcontents and extreme wings came shriek upon shriek of boisterous mirth, as they rocked with laughter about their seats. As for Lord Henry, sitting immobile as he scanned a paper in his hand, he did not appear to have heard at first, nor even to have noticed that anything unusual was taking place. But the next minute he turned deadly pale, began to tremble violently, and with a low and hurried, "Your help, Meadowsweet!" he stumbled from the Hall.

For twenty years he had been a member of the House, years of full-blooded politics when party strife ran strong, but never before had the vaguest innuendo from that deep-seared, unforgotten past dropped from an opponent's lips. It had been reserved for his own party to achieve that distinction and to exact the crowning phase of penance in nature's inexorable cycle.

Apologists afterwards claimed that too much had been made of the incident – that much worse things were often said, and passed, at the meetings of Boards of Guardians and Borough Councils. It was as true as it was biting: worse things were said at Borough Councils, and the Mother of Parliaments had sunk to the rhetorical level of a Borough Council.

Stokes never took his seat again, and with him there passed out of that arena the last of a hopeful patriotic group, whose only failure was that they tried to reconcile two irreconcilable forces of their times.

It did not result, however, that no men of social position were to be found among the Labour benches. There was a demand, and there followed the supply. Rank, mediocrity, and moral obsequiousness were the essentials for their posts. There were no more Stokeses to be had, so obliging creatures were obtained who were willing for a consideration to be paraded as the successors to his patriotic mantle. They were plainly made to understand their position, and if they ventured to show individuality they soon resigned. Nominally occupying high offices, they had neither influence, power, nor respect; like Marlborough in compliance they had "to do it for their bread." They were ruled by their junior lords, assistants, and underlings in various degrees. Many of these men, too strong to be ignored, were frankly recognised to be impossible in the chief offices of State. As a consequence the Cabinet soon became an empty form. Its councils were still held, but the proceedings were cut and dried in advance. The real assembly that dictated the policy of the Government was the Expediency Council, held informally as the necessity arose.

The gathering which was taking place at the Premier's house on this occasion had been convened for the purpose of clearing the air with regard to the policy to be pursued at home. The Government had come into power with very liberal ideas on the question of what ought to be done for the working classes. They had made good their promises, and still that free and enlightened body, having found by experience that they only had to ask often enough and loudly enough to be met in their demands, were already clamouring for more. The most moderate section of the Government was of opinion that the limit had been reached; others thought that the limit lay yet a little further on; the irresponsibles denied that any limit could be fixed at all. That had been the experience of every administration for a long time past, and each one in turn had been succeeded by its malcontents.

Mr Strummery, the Premier, did not occupy the official residence provided for him. Mrs Strummery, an excellent lady who had once been heard to remark that she could never understand why her husband was called Prime Minister when he was not a minister at all, flatly declared that the work of cleaning the windows alone of the house in Downing Street put it out of the question. Even Mr Strummery, who, among his political associates, was reported to have rather exalted ideas of the dignity of his position, came to the conclusion, after fully considering the residence from every standpoint, that he might not feel really at home there. It was therefore let, furnished, to an American lady who engineered wealthy débutantes from her native land into "the best" English society, and the Strummerys found more congenial surroundings in Brandenburg Place. There, within a convenient distance of the Hampstead Road and other choice shopping centres, Mrs Strummery, like the wife of another eminent statesman whose statue stood almost within sight of her bedroom windows, was able to indulge in her amiable foible for cheap marketing. And if the two ladies had this in common, the points of resemblance between their respective lords (the moral side excluded) might be multiplied many-fold, for no phrase put into Mr Strummery's mouth could epigrammatise his point of view more concisely than Fox's inopportune toast, "Our Sovereign: the People." History's dispassionate comment was that the sentiment which lost the abler man his Privy Councillorship in his day, gained for the other a Premiership a century later.