The Socialist

"Lastly," said the man, "if you go on being silly, after you've enjoyed a day or two with the pleasant little gymes I've told you of, why, I shall just come down into that 'ere cellar one morning, hold up your chin, and cut your throat like a pig! We sha'n't want to have you about if you stick to what you say, and a little cement down in that 'ere forgotten cellar – which, in fact, nobody knows of at all, except me and my pals here – will soon hide you away, my lord! There won't be any stately funeral and ancestral vault for the Duke of Paddington!"

For the first time a chill came into the duke's blood. He felt also a tremendous weariness, and his head throbbed unbearably. Yet there was a toughness within him, a strength of purpose and will which was not easily to be vanquished or weakened.

In a flash he reviewed the chances of the situation. They were going to put him in a cellar till the morning. Well, he could bear that, no doubt. He might have time to think the whole matter over – to decide whether he should weaken or not, whether he should yield to these menacing demands. At the present his whole soul rose up in revolt against budging an inch from what he had said. His intense pride of birth and station, so deeply ingrained within him, turned with an almost physical nausea against allowing himself to be intimidated by such carrion as these. Should the dirty sweepings of the gaols of England frighten a man in whose veins ran the blood of centuries of rulers?

He ground his teeth together and looked the spokesman full in the face. He even smiled a little.

"I don't believe," he said in a quiet voice, "that you are fool enough to do any of these things with which you have threatened me, but I tell you that if you do you will find me exactly the same as you find me now. You might threaten some people and frighten them successfully. You might torture some people into doing what you say, but you will neither frighten me in the first instance, nor torture me into acquiescence in the second. You have got hold of the wrong person this time, my man, and what you think is going to be such a nice thing for you and your crew of scoundrels will in the end, if you carry out your threats, mean nothing else for all of you but the gallows. You may kill me if you like. I quite realise that at present I am in your power, though I do not think it at all likely I shall be so for very long. But even if you kill me you will get nothing out of me beyond the things you have stolen already. You have a very limited knowledge of life if you imagine that anybody of my rank and breed is going to let himself be altered from his purpose by such filth as you!"

There was a low and ominous murmur from the men as the duke concluded. The evil, snake-like faces grew more evil still.

They clustered together under the lamp, talking and whispering rapidly to each other, and the whimsical thought, even in that moment of extreme peril, came to the duke that there was a chamber of horrors resembling in an extraordinary degree that grisly underground room at the waxwork show in Baker Street, which, out of curiosity, he had once visited. There were the same cold, watchful eyes, the mobile and not unintelligent lips, the abnormally low foreheads, of the waxen monsters in the museum.

There was nothing human about any of them; they were ape-like and foul.

The man called "Sidney" turned round. From a bulging side-pocket of his coat he took out the duke's valuable repeater.

"Ah," he said, "I see that this 'ere little transaction 'as only occupied 'arf an hour from the time when we found you to the present. We came out, thinking we might pick up a ticker or two or a portmanteau among the wreck. We got something a good deal better. Never mind what you say, we will find means to convince you right enough, but there is no time now. We're going to put you down in that there cellar I spoke of among the rats, and you will wait there till to-morrow morning. Meanwhile me and my pals will all be seen in different parts of London, in a bar or talking innocent-like to each other, and we will take jolly good care we will be seen by some of the 'tecs as knows us. There won't be no connecting us with your lordship's disappearance. Now then, come on!"

His voice, which had been by no means so certain and confident as it was before, suddenly changed into a snarl of fury. The duke heard it without fear and with a sense of exultation. He knew that his serenity had gone home, that his contempt had stung even this wolf-pig man.

As if catching the infection of the note, the unseen ruffian behind the chair, who held his arms, gave them a sharp, painful wrench.

The men crowded round him. His legs were untied from the chair legs and then retied together. His arms were strongly secured behind him, and he was half pushed, half carried to a door at the back of the kitchen.

The leader of the gang went before, carrying a tallow candle in a battered tin holder.

Passing through the door, they came into a small back cellar-kitchen, in which there was a sink and a tap. A large tub, apparently used for washing, stood in one corner. Deft hands pulled this, half-full of greasy water as it was, away from where it originally stood.

A stone flag with an iron ring let into it was revealed.

A man pulled this up with an effort, revealing a square of yawning darkness, into which a short ladder descended. The leader went down first, and with some difficulty the helpless body of the duke was lowered down after him, though the depth could not have been more than eight feet or so.

When he had been pushed into this noisome hole the duke saw by the light of the candle which "Sidney" carried that he was in an underground chamber, perhaps some ten feet by ten. The walls were damp and oozing with saltpetre. The floor was of clay.

Looking up in the flickering light of the dip he could see where the ancient brick foundations of the house had been built into the ground. He was now, in fact, below the lowest cellar, in an unsuspected and forgotten chamber, left by the builders two hundred years ago.

"Now, this 'ere comfortable little detached residence, dook," said the man, "is where we generally puts our swag when it's convenient to keep it for a bit. Nobody knows of it. Nobody has ever learned of it. We discovered it quite by chance like. That man wot comes round and collects the rents ain't an idea of its existence. This 'ere is Rat Villa, this is. Now, good-night! 'Ope to see your lordship 'appy and 'ealthy in the morning! You will observe we have left you your right arm free to brush the vermin off."

The duke lay down upon his back, looking up at the sinister ruffian with the candle and the dark stone ceiling of his prison.

Then, with an impudent, derisive chuckle Sidney climbed the ladder, and immediately afterwards the stone slab fell into its place with a soft thud.

The duke was alone in the dark!

CHAPTER IX

MARY MARRIOTT'S INITIATION

The morning was not so foggy as the last three terrible days had been.

Dull it was even yet – the skies were dark and lowering – but the acrid, choking fog had mercifully disappeared.

But Mary Marriott thought nothing of this change in the weather as she drove down in a hansom cab to the house of James Fabian Rose in the little quiet street behind Westminster Abbey. It was half-past twelve. The great expedition to the slums of the West End was now to start.

Since that extraordinary day upon which her prospects had seemed so hopeless and so forlorn Mary had been in a state of suspended expectation. Suddenly, without any indication of what was to happen, she had been caught out of her drab monotony and taken into the very centre of a great, new pulsating movement. The conclusion of the day upon which she had again failed to achieve a theatrical engagement was incredibly splendid, incredibly wonderful!

She had had twenty-four hours to think it over, and during the whole of that quiet time in her little Bloomsbury flat, she had lived as if in a dream.

Was it possible, she asked herself over and over again – could it be true that the man with the mustard-coloured beard – the great James Fabian Rose – had indeed called upon her, had found her preparing her simple evening meal, and had taken her away through the fog to the brilliant little house in Westminster?

And was it true that she was really destined to be a leader upon the stage of the great propaganda of the Socialist party? Was it true that she out of all the actresses – the thousands of actresses unknown to fame – had been picked and chosen for this role – to be the star of a huge and organised social movement.

As the cab rolled down the grey streets of London towards Westminster, Mary found that she was asking herself these questions again and again.

When she arrived at Rose's house she knew that that was no delusion. The maid who opened the door ushered her in at once, and Mrs. Rose was waiting in the hall.

"Oh, my dear," Mrs. Rose said; "here you are at last! Do you know, when Fabian captured you the other night in the fog and brought you here we all knew that you were just the very person we wanted. We were so afraid – at least I was, nobody else was – that you would vanish away and we should not see you any more. Now, here you are! You have come to fulfil your destiny, and make your first great study in the environment, and among the scenes, of what you will afterwards present to the world with all your tragic power. My dear, they are all upstairs; they are all waiting. Two or three motor-cars will be round in about half an hour to take you right away into Dante's Inferno! Come along! Come along!"

As she concluded Mrs. Rose led Mary up the stairs to the drawing-room and shouted out in her sweet, high-pitched voice: "Fabian! Mr. Goodrick! Peter! She has come! Here she is! Now we're all complete."

Mary followed her hostess into the drawing-room.

There she found her friends of the first wonderful night, augmented by various people whom she did not know.

James Fabian Rose, pallid of face, and with his strange eyes burning with a curious intensity, came forward to greet her. He took her little hand in his and shook it heartily. Aubrey Flood was there also, wearing a grey overcoat, and he also had the intent expression of one who waits.

Peter Conrad, the clergyman, was not in clerical clothes. He wore a lounge suit of pepper-and-salt colour, and held a very heavy blackthorn stick in his right hand. The famous editor of the Daily Wire, Charles Goodrick, was almost incognito beneath the thick tweed overcoat with a high collar, from which his insignificant face and straw-coloured moustache looked out with a certain pathetic appeal.

Mary's welcome was extraordinarily cordial. She felt again as she had felt upon that astonishing night when she had first met all these people. She felt as if they all thought that an enormous deal depended upon her, that they were awaiting her with real anxiety.

On that chill mid-day the beautiful drawing-room, with its decorations by William Morris and Walter Crane, had little of its appeal. It seemed bare and colourless to Mary at least. It was a mere ante-room of some imminent experience.

She said as much to Fabian Rose. "Mr. Rose," she said, "I have come, and here I am. Now, what are you going to do with me? Where are you going to take me? What am I going to see? I am all excitement! I am all anxiousness!"

"My dear girl," Rose answered, "it is so charming of you to say that. That is just the attitude in which I want you to be – all excitement and anxiousness!"

They crowded round her, regarding her, as she could not but feel, as the centre of the picture, and her trepidation and excitement grew with the occasion. She was becoming, indeed, rather overstrained, when Mrs. Rose took her by the arm.

"My dear," she said, "don't get excited until it is absolutely necessary. Remember that you are here to-day simply to receive certain impressions, which are to germinate in your brain; seeds to be sown in your temperament, which shall blossom out in your heart. Therefore do not waste nervous force before the occasion arises. I am not going, you will be the only woman upon this expedition."

Mary looked round in a rather helpless way.

"Oh!" she said, "am I to be all alone?"

There came a sudden, sharp cackle of laughter from the famous editor.

"My dear Miss Marriott," he said, "all alone?"

Looking round upon the group of people who were indicated by the sweep of the little man's hand, Mary realised that she would be by no means alone.

Then she noticed, as she had not done before, that in the back recesses of the drawing-room were three or four other men, who, somehow or other, did not seem to belong to the world of her companions.

Rose caught the glance.

"Oh," he said, "I must introduce you to the bodyguard!"

He took her by the arm, and led her to the other end of the drawing-room.

There were four people standing there. One was clean-shaven, and wore a uniform of dark blue, braided with black braid, and held a peaked hat in his hand. Two of the others were bearded, very tall, strong and alert. They were dressed in ordinary dark clothes, and Mary felt – your experienced actress has always an eye for costume, and the necessity of it – that these two also suggested uniform.

The fourth person, who stood a little in the background of the other three, was a man with a heavy black moustache, hair cut short, except for a curious, shining wave over the forehead, and was obviously a strong and lusty constable in plain clothes.

"This is Miss Marriott, gentlemen," Rose said.

The three men in the foreground bowed. The man at the back automatically raised his right arm in military salute.

"These gentlemen, Miss Marriott," Rose said, "are going to take us into the places where we have to go. They are going to protect us. Inspector Brown and Inspector Smith, of Scotland Yard, and Inspector Green, of the County Council."

Mary bowed and smiled.

Then the tallest of the bearded men said: "Excuse me, miss, where we are going it would be quite inadvisable for you to wear the clothes you are wearing now."

He spoke quite politely, but with a certain decision and sharpness, at which Mary wondered.

"I don't quite understand," she said.

"Well, Miss Marriott," the inspector answered, "you see we are going into some very queer places indeed, and as you will be the only lady with us, you had better wear – "

"Oh, I quite forgot," Fabian Rose said. "Of course, you told me that before, Mr. Brown. We have got a nurse's costume for you, Miss Marriott. You see, a nurse can go anywhere in these places where no other woman can go. By the way," he added, as a sort of after-thought, "this must seem rather terrible to you. I hope you are not frightened?"

Mary smiled. She looked round at the group of big men in the drawing-room, and made a pretty little gesture with her hands.

"Frightened!" she said, and smiled.

"Come along," Rose said, "my wife will fit you up."

In half an hour a curious party had left Westminster in two closed motor-cars, and were rolling up Park Lane. When Oxford Street was reached the car in which the party sat went two or three hundred yards eastward. The car in which the other half were bestowed moved as far to the west.

Every one alighted, and the cars disappeared.

In half an hour after that the whole party, by devious routes carefully planned beforehand, met in a centre of the strange network of slums which are in the vicinity of the Great Western Station of Paddington.

These slums the ordinary wayfarer knows nothing of.

A man may ride down some main thoroughfare to reach the great railway gate of the West and realise nothing of the fact that, between some gin palace and large lodging-house, a little alley-entry may conduct the curious or the unwary into an inferno as sordid, as terrible, and even more dangerous than any lost quarter of Stepney or Whitechapel.

London, indeed, West End London, is quite unaware that among its stateliest houses, in the very middle of its thoroughfares, there are modern caves in which the troglodytes still dwell which are sinister and dark as anything can be in modern life.

Inspector Brown took the lead.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I am going to take you now through some streets which none of you have probably ever seen before, to a certain district about a quarter of a mile beyond Paddington Station, and where I shall show you exactly what I am instructed to show you. I am sorry to have to make you walk so far, and especially as we have a lady with us, but there is no alternative. We cannot take a cab, or several cabs, to where we are going. A cab has never been seen in the quarter which you are entering with me. Even as we go we shall be known and marked. We shall not be interfered with in any dangerous way because you are with me and my colleagues, but, at the same time, the noise of our arrival will spread through the whole quarter, and I shall only be able to show you the place somewhat dulled of its activities, and, as it were, frightened by our arrival."

"I see," Aubrey Flood answered. "I see, inspector. What you mean is that the rabbits will all be terrorised by the arrival of the ferret!"

"Well, sir," the inspector answered, "I am sure that is not a bad way of putting it."

"Is that a policeman? Do you mean to say he is a detective?" Mary asked James Fabian Rose. "I thought those people were so illiterate and stupid."

The great Socialist laughed.

"My dear," he answered, "you have so much, so very much to learn. Inspector Brown is one of the most intelligent men you could meet with anywhere. He speaks three languages perfectly. He reads Shakespeare. He understands social economics almost as well as I do myself. If he had had better chances he would have been a leader at the bar or an archdeacon. As it is he protects society without réclame, or without acknowledgment, and his emolument for exercising his extreme talents in this direction is, I believe, something under £250 a year."

Mary said nothing. It seemed, indeed, the only thing to do, but very many new thoughts were born within her as she listened to the pleasant, cultured voice of the bearded man, who looked as if he ought to be in uniform, and who led the party with so confident and so blithe a certainty.

They walked through streets of squalor. They progressed through by-ways, ill-smelling and garbage-laden. The very spawn of London squealed and rolled in the gutters, while grey, evil-faced men and women peered at them from doorways and spat a curse as they went by.

They wound in and out of the horrid labyrinth of the West End slums until the great roar of London's traffic died away and became an indistinct hum, until they were all conscious of the fact that they were in another and different sphere.

They had arrived at the underworld.

They were come at last to grip with facts that stank and bit and gripped.

Mary turned a white face to Fabian Rose.

"Mr. Rose," she said, "I had no idea that anything could be quite so sordid and horrible as this. Why! the very air is different!"

"My child," the great Socialist answered, his hand upon her shoulder, the pale face and mustard-coloured beard curiously merged into something very eager, and yet full of pity. "My child, you are as yet only upon the threshold of what we are bringing you to see. We have brought you to-day to these terrible places so that you may drink in all their horrors, all their hideousness, and all their misery, and transform them – through the alchemy of your art – into a great and splendid appeal, which shall convulse the indifferent, the cruel, and the rich."

"Let us go on!" Mary said in a very quiet voice.

They went on.

And now the houses seemed to grow closer together, the fœtid atmosphere became more difficult for unaccustomed lungs to breathe, the roads became more difficult to walk upon, the faces which watched and gibbered round their progress were menacing, more awful, more hopeless.

They walked in a compact body, and then suddenly Inspector Brown turned round to his little battalion.

He addressed Fabian Rose.

"Sir," he said, "I think we have arrived at the starting point. Shall we begin now?"

Mary heard the words, and turned to Fabian Rose.

"Oh, Mr. Rose!" she said, "what terrible places, what dreadful places these are! I had no idea, though I have lived in London all my life, that such places existed. Why, I – oh, I don't know what I mean exactly – but why should such places be?"

"Because, my dear Miss Marriott," Rose answered – and she saw that his face was lit up with excitement and interest – "because of the curse of capitalism, because of the curse of modern life which we are endeavouring to remove."

Mary stamped her little foot upon the ground.

"I see," she said. "Why, I would hang the man who was responsible for all this! Who is he? Tell me!"

Rose looked gravely at her.

"My dear," he answered, "the man who is responsible for all this that immediately surrounds us is the man whom we hope to hold up to the whole of England as a type of menace and danger to the Commonwealth. It is the Duke of Paddington!"

CHAPTER X

NEWS ARRIVES AT OXFORD

On the afternoon when the Bishop of Carlton, Lord Hayle and Lady Constance Camborne had left the Duke of Paddington's rooms in St. Paul's College, Oxford, they went back to the Randolph Hotel, where the bishop and his daughter were staying.

Lord Hayle accompanied them, and the father, his son and daughter, went up to the private sitting-room which the bishop occupied.

The fog – the nasty, damp river mist, rather, which takes the place of fog in Oxford – was now thicker than ever, but a bright fire burnt upon the hearth of the comfortable sitting-room in the hotel, and one of the servants had drawn down the blinds and made the place cheery and home-like.

The Cambornes had only been three days in Oxford, but Lady Constance had already transformed the somewhat bare sitting-room into something of wont and use; the place was full of flowers, all the little personalia that a cultured and wealthy girl carries about with her, showed it. A piano had been brought in, photographs of friends stood about, and the huge writing-table, specially put there for the use of the bishop, stood near the fireplace covered with papers.

The three sat down and some tea was brought.

"Well, Connie dear," Lord Hayle said, "and what do you think of John? You have often heard me talk about him. He is the best friend I have got in the world, and he is one of the finest chaps I know. What do you think of him, Connie?"

"I thought he was charming, Gerald," Lady Constance answered, "far more charming than I had expected. Of course, I have known that you and he have been friends all the time you have been up, but I confess I did not expect to see anybody quite so pleasant and sympathetic."

"My dear girl," Lord Hayle answered, "you don't suppose I should be intimate friends with anybody who was not pleasant and sympathetic?"

"Oh, no, I don't mean that, Gerald," the girl replied; "but, after all, the duke is in quite a special position, isn't he?"

"How do you mean?" said Lord Hayle.

"Well, Gerald, he is not quite like all the other young men one meets of our own class. Of course he is, in a way, but what I mean is that one expected a boy who was so stupendously rich and important to be a little more conscious of it than the duke was. He seemed quite nice and natural."

The bishop, who was sipping his tea and stretching out his shapely, gaitered feet to the fire, gave a little chuckle of satisfaction.

"My dear Constance," he said, "the duke is all you say, of course, in the way of importance and so on, but at the same time, he is just the simple gentleman that one would expect to meet. I also thought him a charming fellow, and I congratulate Gerald upon his friendship."

The bishop sipped his tea and said nothing more. He was gazing dreamily into the fire, while his son and daughter talked together. All was going very well. There was no doubt that the two young people had been mutually pleased with each other. Rich as the Earl of Camborne and Bishop of Carlton was, celebrated as he was, sure as he was of the Archbishopric when dear old Doctor Arbuthnot – now very shaky – should be translated to heaven, Lord Camborne was, nevertheless, not insensible of the fact that a marriage between his daughter and the Duke of Paddington would crown a long and distinguished career with a befitting finis.