Read The Man Who Knew Too Much Page 7

  VII. THE TEMPLE OF SILENCE

  Harold March and the few who cultivated the friendship of HorneFisher, especially if they saw something of him in his own socialsetting, were conscious of a certain solitude in his verysociability. They seemed to be always meeting his relations andnever meeting his family. Perhaps it would be truer to say that theysaw much of his family and nothing of his home. His cousins andconnections ramified like a labyrinth all over the governing classof Great Britain, and he seemed to be on good, or at least ongood-humored, terms with most of them. For Horne Fisher wasremarkable for a curious impersonal information and interesttouching all sorts of topics, so that one could sometimes fancy thathis culture, like his colorless, fair mustache and pale, droopingfeatures, had the neutral nature of a chameleon. Anyhow, he couldalways get on with viceroys and Cabinet Ministers and all the greatmen responsible for great departments, and talk to each of them onhis own subject, on the branch of study with which he was mostseriously concerned. Thus he could converse with the Minister forWar about silkworms, with the Minister of Education about detectivestories, with the Minister of Labor about Limoges enamel, and withthe Minister of Missions and Moral Progress (if that be his correcttitle) about the pantomime boys of the last four decades. And as thefirst was his first cousin, the second his second cousin, the thirdhis brother-in-law, and the fourth his uncle by marriage, thisconversational versatility certainly served in one sense to create ahappy family. But March never seemed to get a glimpse of thatdomestic interior to which men of the middle classes are accustomedin their friendships, and which is indeed the foundation offriendship and love and everything else in any sane and stablesociety. He wondered whether Horne Fisher was both an orphan and anonly child.

  It was, therefore, with something like a start that he found thatFisher had a brother, much more prosperous and powerful thanhimself, though hardly, March thought, so entertaining. Sir HenryHarland Fisher, with half the alphabet after his name, was somethingat the Foreign Office far more tremendous than the ForeignSecretary. Apparently, it ran in the family, after all; for itseemed there was another brother, Ashton Fisher, in India, rathermore tremendous than the Viceroy. Sir Henry Fisher was a heavier,but handsomer edition of his brother, with a brow equally bald, butmuch more smooth. He was very courteous, but a shade patronizing,not only to March, but even, as March fancied, to Horne Fisher aswell. The latter gentleman, who had many intuitions about thehalf-formed thoughts of others, glanced at the topic himself as theycame away from the great house in Berkeley Square.

  "Why, don't you know," he observed quietly, "that I am the fool ofthe family?"

  "It must be a clever family," said Harold March, with a smile.

  "Very gracefully expressed," replied Fisher; "that is the best ofhaving a literary training. Well, perhaps it is an exaggeration tosay I am the fool of the family. It's enough to say I am the failureof the family."

  "It seems queer to me that you should fail especially," remarked thejournalist. "As they say in the examinations, what did you fail in?"

  "Politics," replied his friend. "I stood for Parliament when I wasquite a young man and got in by an enormous majority, with loudcheers and chairing round the town. Since then, of course, I've beenrather under a cloud."

  "I'm afraid I don't quite understand the 'of course,'" answeredMarch, laughing.

  "That part of it isn't worth understanding," said Fisher. "But as amatter of fact, old chap, the other part of it was rather odd andinteresting. Quite a detective story in its way, as well as thefirst lesson I had in what modern politics are made of. If you like,I'll tell you all about it." And the following, recast in a lessallusive and conversational manner, is the story that he told.

  Nobody privileged of late years to meet Sir Henry Harland Fisherwould believe that he had ever been called Harry. But, indeed, hehad been boyish enough when a boy, and that serenity which shone onhim through life, and which now took the form of gravity, had oncetaken the form of gayety. His friends would have said that he wasall the more ripe in his maturity for having been young in hisyouth. His enemies would have said that he was still light minded,but no longer light hearted. But in any case, the whole of the storyHorne Fisher had to tell arose out of the accident which had madeyoung Harry Fisher private secretary to Lord Saltoun. Hence hislater connection with the Foreign Office, which had, indeed, come tohim as a sort of legacy from his lordship when that great man wasthe power behind the throne. This is not the place to say much aboutSaltoun, little as was known of him and much as there was worthknowing. England has had at least three or four such secretstatesmen. An aristocratic polity produces every now and then anaristocrat who is also an accident, a man of intellectualindependence and insight, a Napoleon born in the purple. His vastwork was mostly invisible, and very little could be got out of himin private life except a crusty and rather cynical sense of humor.But it was certainly the accident of his presence at a family dinnerof the Fishers, and the unexpected opinion he expressed, whichturned what might have been a dinner-table joke into a sort of smallsensational novel.

  Save for Lord Saltoun, it was a family party of Fishers, for theonly other distinguished stranger had just departed after dinner,leaving the rest to their coffee and cigars. This had been a figureof some interest--a young Cambridge man named Eric Hughes who wasthe rising hope of the party of Reform, to which the Fisher family,along with their friend Saltoun, had long been at least formallyattached. The personality of Hughes was substantially summed up inthe fact that he talked eloquently and earnestly through the wholedinner, but left immediately after to be in time for an appointment.All his actions had something at once ambitious and conscientious;he drank no wine, but was slightly intoxicated with words. And hisface and phrases were on the front page of all the newspapers justthen, because he was contesting the safe seat of Sir Francis Vernerin the great by-election in the west. Everybody was talking aboutthe powerful speech against squirarchy which he had just delivered;even in the Fisher circle everybody talked about it except HorneFisher himself who sat in a corner, lowering over the fire.

  "We jolly well have to thank him for putting some new life into theold party," Ashton Fisher was saying. "This campaign against the oldsquires just hits the degree of democracy there is in this county.This act for extending county council control is practically hisbill; so you may say he's in the government even before he's in theHouse."

  "One's easier than the other," said Harry, carelessly. "I bet thesquire's a bigger pot than the county council in that county. Verneris pretty well rooted; all these rural places are what you callreactionary. Damning aristocrats won't alter it."

  "He damns them rather well," observed Ashton. "We never had abetter meeting than the one in Barkington, which generally goesConstitutional. And when he said, 'Sir Francis may boast of blueblood; let us show we have red blood,' and went on to talk aboutmanhood and liberty, the room simply rose at him."

  "Speaks very well," said Lord Saltoun, gruffly, making his onlycontribution to the conversation so far.

  Then the almost equally silent Horne Fisher suddenly spoke, withouttaking his brooding eyes off the fire.

  "What I can't understand," he said, "is why nobody is ever slangedfor the real reason."

  "Hullo!" remarked Harry, humorously, "you beginning to take notice?"

  "Well, take Verner," continued Horne Fisher. "If we want to attackVerner, why not attack him? Why compliment him on being a romanticreactionary aristocrat? Who is Verner? Where does he come from? Hisname sounds old, but I never heard of it before, as the man said ofthe Crucifixion. Why talk about his blue blood? His blood may begamboge yellow with green spots, for all anybody knows. All we knowis that the old squire, Hawker, somehow ran through his money (andhis second wife's, I suppose, for she was rich enough), and sold theestate to a man named Verner. What did he make his money in? Oil?Army contracts?"

  "I don't know," said Saltoun, looking at him thoughtfully.

  "First thing I ever knew you didn't know," cried the e
xuberantHarry.

  "And there's more, besides," went on Horne Fisher, who seemed tohave suddenly found his tongue. "If we want country people to votefor us, why don't we get somebody with some notion about thecountry? We don't talk to people in Threadneedle Street aboutnothing but turnips and pigsties. Why do we talk to people inSomerset about nothing but slums and socialism? Why don't we givethe squire's land to the squire's tenants, instead of dragging inthe county council?"

  "Three acres and a cow," cried Harry, emitting what theParliamentary reports call an ironical cheer.

  "Yes," replied his brother, stubbornly. "Don't you thinkagricultural laborers would rather have three acres and a cow thanthree acres of printed forms and a committee? Why doesn't somebodystart a yeoman party in politics, appealing to the old traditions ofthe small landowner? And why don't they attack men like Verner forwhat they are, which is something about as old and traditional as anAmerican oil trust?"

  "You'd better lead the yeoman party yourself," laughed Harry."Don't you think it would be a joke, Lord Saltoun, to see my brotherand his merry men, with their bows and bills, marching down toSomerset all in Lincoln green instead of Lincoln and Bennet hats?"

  "No," answered Old Saltoun, "I don't think it would be a joke. Ithink it would be an exceedingly serious and sensible idea."

  "Well, I'm jiggered!" cried Harry Fisher, staring at him. "I saidjust now it was the first fact you didn't know, and I should saythis is the first joke you didn't see."

  "I've seen a good many things in my time," said the old man, in hisrather sour fashion. "I've told a good many lies in my time, too,and perhaps I've got rather sick of them. But there are lies andlies, for all that. Gentlemen used to lie just as schoolboys lie,because they hung together and partly to help one another out. ButI'm damned if I can see why we should lie for these cosmopolitancads who only help themselves. They're not backing us up any more;they're simply crowding us out. If a man like your brother likes togo into Parliament as a yeoman or a gentleman or a Jacobite or anAncient Briton, I should say it would be a jolly good thing."

  In the rather startled silence that followed Horne Fisher sprang tohis feet and all his dreary manner dropped off him.

  "I'm ready to do it to-morrow," he cried. "I suppose none of youfellows would back me up."

  Then Harry Fisher showed the finer side of his impetuosity. He madea sudden movement as if to shake hands.

  "You're a sport," he said, "and I'll back you up, if nobody elsewill. But we can all back you up, can't we? I see what Lord Saltounmeans, and, of course, he's right. He's always right."

  "So I will go down to Somerset," said Horne Fisher.

  "Yes, it is on the way to Westminster," said Lord Saltoun, with asmile.

  And so it happened that Horne Fisher arrived some days later at thelittle station of a rather remote market town in the west,accompanied by a light suitcase and a lively brother. It must not besupposed, however, that the brother's cheerful tone consistedentirely of chaff. He supported the new candidate with hope as wellas hilarity; and at the back of his boisterous partnership there wasan increasing sympathy and encouragement. Harry Fisher had alwayshad an affection for his more quiet and eccentric brother, and wasnow coming more and more to have a respect for him. As the campaignproceeded the respect increased to ardent admiration. For Harry wasstill young, and could feel the sort of enthusiasm for his captainin electioneering that a schoolboy can feel for his captain incricket.

  Nor was the admiration undeserved. As the new three-corneredcontest developed it became apparent to others besides his devotedkinsman that there was more in Horne Fisher than had ever met theeye. It was clear that his outbreak by the family fireside had beenbut the culmination of a long course of brooding and studying on thequestion. The talent he retained through life for studying hissubject, and even somebody else's subject, had long beenconcentrated on this idea of championing a new peasantry against anew plutocracy. He spoke to a crowd with eloquence and replied to anindividual with humor, two political arts that seemed to come to himnaturally. He certainly knew much more about rural problems thaneither Hughes, the Reform candidate, or Verner, the Constitutionalcandidate. And he probed those problems with a human curiosity, andwent below the surface in a way that neither of them dreamed ofdoing. He soon became the voice of popular feelings that are neverfound in the popular press. New angles of criticism, arguments thathad never before been uttered by an educated voice, tests andcomparisons that had been made only in dialect by men drinking inthe little local public houses, crafts half forgotten that had comedown by sign of hand and tongue from remote ages when their fatherswere free--all this created a curious and double excitement. Itstartled the well informed by being a new and fantastic idea theyhad never encountered. It startled the ignorant by being an old andfamiliar idea they never thought to have seen revived. Men sawthings in a new light, and knew not even whether it was the sunsetor the dawn.

  Practical grievances were there to make the movement formidable. AsFisher went to and fro among the cottages and country inns, it wasborne in on him without difficulty that Sir Francis Verner was avery bad landlord. Nor was the story of his acquisition of the landany more ancient and dignified than he had supposed; the story waswell known in the county and in most respects was obvious enough.Hawker, the old squire, had been a loose, unsatisfactory sort ofperson, had been on bad terms with his first wife (who died, as somesaid, of neglect), and had then married a flashy South AmericanJewess with a fortune. But he must have worked his way through thisfortune also with marvelous rapidity, for he had been compelled tosell the estate to Verner and had gone to live in South America,possibly on his wife's estates. But Fisher noticed that the laxityof the old squire was far less hated than the efficiency of the newsquire. Verner's history seemed to be full of smart bargains andfinancial flutters that left other people short of money and temper.But though he heard a great deal about Verner, there was one thingthat continually eluded him; something that nobody knew, that evenSaltoun had not known. He could not find out how Verner hadoriginally made his money.

  "He must have kept it specially dark," said Horne Fisher to himself."It must be something he's really ashamed of. Hang it all! what _is_a man ashamed of nowadays?"

  And as he pondered on the possibilities they grew darker and moredistorted in his mind; he thought vaguely of things remote andrepulsive, strange forms of slavery or sorcery, and then of uglythings yet more unnatural but nearer home. The figure of Vernerseemed to be blackened and transfigured in his imagination, and tostand against varied backgrounds and strange skies.

  As he strode up a village street, brooding thus, his eyesencountered a complete contrast in the face of his other rival, theReform candidate. Eric Hughes, with his blown blond hair and eagerundergraduate face, was just getting into his motor car and saying afew final words to his agent, a sturdy, grizzled man named Gryce.Eric Hughes waved his hand in a friendly fashion; but Gryce eyed himwith some hostility. Eric Hughes was a young man with genuinepolitical enthusiasms, but he knew that political opponents arepeople with whom one may have to dine any day. But Mr. Gryce was agrim little local Radical, a champion of the chapel, and one ofthose happy people whose work is also their hobby. He turned hisback as the motor car drove away, and walked briskly up the sunlithigh street of the little town, whistling, with political paperssticking out of his pocket.

  Fisher looked pensively after the resolute figure for a moment, andthen, as if by an impulse, began to follow it. Through the busymarket place, amid the baskets and barrows of market day, under thepainted wooden sign of the Green Dragon, up a dark side entry, underan arch, and through a tangle of crooked cobbled streets the twothreaded their way, the square, strutting figure in front and thelean, lounging figure behind him, like his shadow in the sunshine.At length they came to a brown brick house with a brass plate, onwhich was Mr. Gryce's name, and that individual turned and beheldhis pursuer with a stare.

  "Could I have a word with you, sir?" asked Horne Fisher, politely
.The agent stared still more, but assented civilly, and led the otherinto an office littered with leaflets and hung all round with highlycolored posters which linked the name of Hughes with all the higherinterests of humanity.

  "Mr. Horne Fisher, I believe," said Mr. Gryce. "Much honored by thecall, of course. Can't pretend to congratulate you on entering thecontest, I'm afraid; you won't expect that. Here we've been keepingthe old flag flying for freedom and reform, and you come in andbreak the battle line."

  For Mr. Elijah Gryce abounded in military metaphors and indenunciations of militarism. He was a square-jawed, blunt-featuredman with a pugnacious cock of the eyebrow. He had been pickled inthe politics of that countryside from boyhood, he knew everybody'ssecrets, and electioneering was the romance of his life.

  "I suppose you think I'm devoured with ambition," said Horne Fisher,in his rather listless voice, "aiming at a dictatorship and allthat. Well, I think I can clear myself of the charge of mere selfishambition. I only want certain things done. I don't want to do them.I very seldom want to do anything. And I've come here to say thatI'm quite willing to retire from the contest if you can convince methat we really want to do the same thing."

  The agent of the Reform party looked at him with an odd and slightlypuzzled expression, and before he could reply, Fisher went on in thesame level tones:

  "You'd hardly believe it, but I keep a conscience concealed aboutme; and I am in doubt about several things. For instance, we bothwant to turn Verner out of Parliament, but what weapon are we touse? I've heard a lot of gossip against him, but is it right to acton mere gossip? Just as I want to be fair to you, so I want to befair to him. If some of the things I've heard are true he ought tobe turned out of Parliament and every other club in London. But Idon't want to turn him out of Parliament if they aren't true."

  At this point the light of battle sprang into Mr. Gryce's eyes andhe became voluble, not to say violent. He, at any rate, had no doubtthat the stories were true; he could testify, to his own knowledge,that they were true. Verner was not only a hard landlord, but a meanlandlord, a robber as well as a rackrenter; any gentleman would bejustified in hounding him out. He had cheated old Wilkins out of hisfreehold by a trick fit for a pickpocket; he had driven old MotherBiddle to the workhouse; he had stretched the law against Long Adam,the poacher, till all the magistrates were ashamed of him.

  "So if you'll serve under the old banner," concluded Mr. Gryce, moregenially, "and turn out a swindling tyrant like that, I'm sureyou'll never regret it."

  "And if that is the truth," said Horne Fisher, "are you going totell it?"

  "What do you mean? Tell the truth?" demanded Gryce.

  "I mean you are going to tell the truth as you have just told it,"replied Fisher. "You are going to placard this town with thewickedness done to old Wilkins. You are going to fill the newspaperswith the infamous story of Mrs. Biddle. You are going to denounceVerner from a public platform, naming him for what he did and namingthe poacher he did it to. And you're going to find out by what tradethis man made the money with which he bought the estate; and whenyou know the truth, as I said before, of course you are going totell it. Upon those terms I come under the old flag, as you call it,and haul down my little pennon."

  The agent was eying him with a curious expression, surly but notentirely unsympathetic. "Well," he said, slowly, "you have to dothese things in a regular way, you know, or people don't understand.I've had a lot of experience, and I'm afraid what you say wouldn'tdo. People understand slanging squires in a general way, but thosepersonalities aren't considered fair play. Looks like hitting belowthe belt."

  "Old Wilkins hasn't got a belt, I suppose," replied Horne Fisher."Verner can hit him anyhow, and nobody must say a word. It'sevidently very important to have a belt. But apparently you have tobe rather high up in society to have one. Possibly," he added,thoughtfully--"possibly the explanation of the phrase 'a beltedearl,' the meaning of which has always escaped me."

  "I mean those personalities won't do," returned Gryce, frowning atthe table.

  "And Mother Biddle and Long Adam, the poacher, are notpersonalities," said Fisher, "and suppose we mustn't ask how Vernermade all the money that enabled him to become--a personality."

  Gryce was still looking at him under lowering brows, but thesingular light in his eyes had brightened. At last he said, inanother and much quieter voice:

  "Look here, sir. I like you, if you don't mind my saying so. Ithink you are really on the side of the people and I'm sure you're abrave man. A lot braver than you know, perhaps. We daren't touchwhat you propose with a barge pole; and so far from wanting you inthe old party, we'd rather you ran your own risk by yourself. Butbecause I like you and respect your pluck, I'll do you a good turnbefore we part. I don't want you to waste time barking up the wrongtree. You talk about how the new squire got the money to buy, andthe ruin of the old squire, and all the rest of it. Well, I'll giveyou a hint about that, a hint about something precious few peopleknow."

  "I am very grateful," said Fisher, gravely. "What is it?"

  "It's in two words," said the other. "The new squire was quite poorwhen he bought. The old squire was quite rich when he sold."

  Horne Fisher looked at him thoughtfully as he turned away abruptlyand busied himself with the papers on his desk. Then Fisher uttereda short phrase of thanks and farewell, and went out into the street,still very thoughtful.

  His reflection seemed to end in resolution, and, falling into a morerapid stride, he passed out of the little town along a road leadingtoward the gate of the great park, the country seat of Sir FrancisVerner. A glitter of sunlight made the early winter more like a lateautumn, and the dark woods were touched here and there with red andgolden leaves, like the last rays of a lost sunset. From a higherpart of the road he had seen the long, classical facade of the greathouse with its many windows, almost immediately beneath him, butwhen the road ran down under the wall of the estate, topped withtowering trees behind, he realized that it was half a mile round tothe lodge gates. After walking for a few minutes along the lane,however, he came to a place where the wall had cracked and was inprocess of repair. As it was, there was a great gap in the graymasonry that looked at first as black as a cavern and only showed ata second glance the twilight of the twinkling trees. There wassomething fascinating about that unexpected gate, like the openingof a fairy tale.

  Horne Fisher had in him something of the aristocrat, which is verynear to the anarchist. It was characteristic of him that he turnedinto this dark and irregular entry as casually as into his own frontdoor, merely thinking that it would be a short cut to the house. Hemade his way through the dim wood for some distance and with somedifficulty, until there began to shine through the trees a levellight, in lines of silver, which he did not at first understand. Thenext moment he had come out into the daylight at the top of a steepbank, at the bottom of which a path ran round the rim of a largeornamental lake. The sheet of water which he had seen shimmeringthrough the trees was of considerable extent, but was walled in onevery side with woods which were not only dark, but decidedlydismal. At one end of the path was a classical statue of somenameless nymph, and at the other end it was flanked by two classicalurns; but the marble was weather-stained and streaked with green andgray. A hundred other signs, smaller but more significant, told himthat he had come on some outlying corner of the grounds neglectedand seldom visited. In the middle of the lake was what appeared tobe an island, and on the island what appeared to be meant for aclassical temple, not open like a temple of the winds, but with ablank wall between its Doric pillars. We may say it only seemed likean island, because a second glance revealed a low causeway of flatstones running up to it from the shore and turning it into apeninsula. And certainly it only seemed like a temple, for nobodyknew better than Horne Fisher that no god had ever dwelt in thatshrine.

  "That's what makes all this classical landscape gardening sodesolate," he said to himself. "More desolate than Stonehenge or thePyramids. We don't believe in Egypti
an mythology, but the Egyptiansdid; and I suppose even the Druids believed in Druidism. But theeighteenth-century gentleman who built these temples didn't believein Venus or Mercury any more than we do; that's why the reflectionof those pale pillars in the lake is truly only the shadow of ashade. They were men of the age of Reason; they, who filled theirgardens with these stone nymphs, had less hope than any men in allhistory of really meeting a nymph in the forest."

  His monologue stopped abruptly with a sharp noise like a thundercrackthat rolled in dreary echoes round the dismal mere. He knew at oncewhat it was--somebody had fired off a gun. But as to the meaning ofit he was momentarily staggered, and strange thoughts thronged intohis mind. The next moment he laughed; for he saw lying a little wayalong the path below him the dead bird that the shot had broughtdown.

  At the same moment, however, he saw something else, which interestedhim more. A ring of dense trees ran round the back of the islandtemple, framing the facade of it in dark foliage, and he could havesworn he saw a stir as of something moving among the leaves. Thenext moment his suspicion was confirmed, for a rather ragged figurecame from under the shadow of the temple and began to move along thecauseway that led to the bank. Even at that distance the figure wasconspicuous by its great height and Fisher could see that the mancarried a gun under his arm. There came back into his memory at oncethe name Long Adam, the poacher.

  With a rapid sense of strategy he sometimes showed, Fisher sprangfrom the bank and raced round the lake to the head of the littlepier of stones. If once a man reached the mainland he could easilyvanish into the woods. But when Fisher began to advance along thestones toward the island, the man was cornered in a blind alley andcould only back toward the temple. Putting his broad shouldersagainst it, he stood as if at bay; he was a comparatively young man,with fine lines in his lean face and figure and a mop of ragged redhair. The look in his eyes might well have been disquieting toanyone left alone with him on an island in the middle of a lake.

  "Good morning," said Horne Fisher, pleasantly. "I thought at firstyou were a murderer. But it seems unlikely, somehow, that thepartridge rushed between us and died for love of me, like theheroines in the romances; so I suppose you are a poacher."

  "I suppose you would call me a poacher," answered the man; and hisvoice was something of a surprise coming from such a scarecrow; ithad that hard fastidiousness to be found in those who have made afight for their own refinement among rough surroundings. "I considerI have a perfect right to shoot game in this place. But I am wellaware that people of your sort take me for a thief, and I supposeyou will try to land me in jail."

  "There are preliminary difficulties," replied Fisher. "To beginwith, the mistake is flattering, but I am not a gamekeeper. Stillless am I three gamekeepers, who would be, I imagine, about yourfighting weight. But I confess I have another reason for not wantingto jail you."

  "And what is that?" asked the other.

  "Only that I quite agree with you," answered Fisher. "I don'texactly say you have a right to poach, but I never could see that itwas as wrong as being a thief. It seems to me against the wholenormal notion of property that a man should own something because itflies across his garden. He might as well own the wind, or think hecould write his name on a morning cloud. Besides, if we want poorpeople to respect property we must give them some property torespect. You ought to have land of your own; and I'm going to giveyou some if I can."

  "Going to give me some land!" repeated Long Adam.

  "I apologize for addressing you as if you were a public meeting,"said Fisher, "but I am an entirely new kind of public man who saysthe same thing in public and in private. I've said this to a hundredhuge meetings throughout the country, and I say it to you on thisqueer little island in this dismal pond. I would cut up a big estatelike this into small estates for everybody, even for poachers. Iwould do in England as they did in Ireland--buy the big men out, ifpossible; get them out, anyhow. A man like you ought to have alittle place of his own. I don't say you could keep pheasants, butyou might keep chickens."

  The man stiffened suddenly and he seemed at once to blanch and flameat the promise as if it were a threat.

  "Chickens!" he repeated, with a passion of contempt.

  "Why do you object?" asked the placid candidate. "Because keepinghens is rather a mild amusement for a poacher? What about poachingeggs?"

  "Because I am not a poacher," cried Adam, in a rending voice thatrang round the hollow shrines and urns like the echoes of his gun."Because the partridge lying dead over there is my partridge.Because the land you are standing on is my land. Because my own landwas only taken from me by a crime, and a worse crime than poaching.This has been a single estate for hundreds and hundreds of years,and if you or any meddlesome mountebank comes here and talks ofcutting it up like a cake, if I ever hear a word more of you andyour leveling lies--"

  "You seem to be a rather turbulent public," observed Horne Fisher,"but do go on. What will happen if I try to divide this estatedecently among decent people?"

  The poacher had recovered a grim composure as he replied. "Therewill be no partridge to rush in between."

  With that he turned his back, evidently resolved to say no more, andwalked past the temple to the extreme end of the islet, where hestood staring into the water. Fisher followed him, but, when hisrepeated questions evoked no answer, turned back toward the shore.In doing so he took a second and closer look at the artificialtemple, and noted some curious things about it. Most of thesetheatrical things were as thin as theatrical scenery, and heexpected the classic shrine to be a shallow thing, a mere shell ormask. But there was some substantial bulk of it behind, buried inthe trees, which had a gray, labyrinthian look, like serpents ofstone, and lifted a load of leafy towers to the sky. But whatarrested Fisher's eye was that in this bulk of gray-white stonebehind there was a single door with great, rusty bolts outside; thebolts, however, were not shot across so as to secure it. Then hewalked round the small building, and found no other opening exceptone small grating like a ventilator, high up in the wall. Heretraced his steps thoughtfully along the causeway to the banks ofthe lake, and sat down on the stone steps between the two sculpturedfuneral urns. Then he lit a cigarette and smoked it in ruminantmanner; eventually he took out a notebook and wrote down variousphrases, numbering and renumbering them till they stood in thefollowing order: "(1) Squire Hawker disliked his first wife. (2) Hemarried his second wife for her money. (3) Long Adam says the estateis really his. (4) Long Adam hangs round the island temple, whichlooks like a prison. (5) Squire Hawker was not poor when he gave upthe estate. (6) Verner was poor when he got the estate."

  He gazed at these notes with a gravity which gradually turned to ahard smile, threw away his cigarette, and resumed his search for ashort cut to the great house. He soon picked up the path which,winding among clipped hedges and flower beds, brought him in frontof its long Palladian facade. It had the usual appearance of being,not a private house, but a sort of public building sent into exilein the provinces.

  He first found himself in the presence of the butler, who reallylooked much older than the building, for the architecture was datedas Georgian; but the man's face, under a highly unnatural brown wig,was wrinkled with what might have been centuries. Only his prominenteyes were alive and alert, as if with protest. Fisher glanced athim, and then stopped and said:

  "Excuse me. Weren't you with the late squire, Mr. Hawker?"

  "Yes, sir," said the man, gravely. "Usher is my name. What can I dofor you?"

  "Only take me into Sir Francis Verner," replied the visitor.

  Sir Francis Verner was sitting in an easy chair beside a small tablein a large room hung with tapestries. On the table were a smallflask and glass, with the green glimmer of a liqueur and a cup ofblack coffee. He was clad in a quiet gray suit with a moderatelyharmonious purple tie; but Fisher saw something about the turn ofhis fair mustache and the lie of his flat hair--it suddenly revealedthat his name was Franz Werner.

  "You are Mr. Horn
e Fisher," he said. "Won't you sit down?"

  "No, thank you," replied Fisher. "I fear this is not a friendlyoccasion, and I shall remain standing. Possibly you know that I amalready standing--standing for Parliament, in fact--"

  "I am aware we are political opponents," replied Verner, raising hiseyebrows. "But I think it would be better if we fought in a sportingspirit; in a spirit of English fair play."

  "Much better," assented Fisher. "It would be much better if youwere English and very much better if you had ever played fair. Butwhat I've come to say can be said very shortly. I don't quite knowhow we stand with the law about that old Hawker story, but my chiefobject is to prevent England being entirely ruled by people likeyou. So whatever the law would say, I will say no more if you willretire from the election at once."

  "You are evidently a lunatic," said Verner.

  "My psychology may be a little abnormal," replied Horne Fisher, in arather hazy manner. "I am subject to dreams, especially day-dreams.Sometimes what is happening to me grows vivid in a curious doubleway, as if it had happened before. Have you ever had that mysticalfeeling that things have happened before?"

  "I hope you are a harmless lunatic," said Verner.

  But Fisher was still staring in an absent fashion at the goldengigantic figures and traceries of brown and red in the tapestries onthe walls; then he looked again at Verner and resumed: "I have afeeling that this interview has happened before, here in thistapestried room, and we are two ghosts revisiting a haunted chamber.But it was Squire Hawker who sat where you sit and it was you whostood where I stand." He paused a moment and then added, withsimplicity, "I suppose I am a blackmailer, too."

  "If you are," said Sir Francis, "I promise you you shall go tojail." But his face had a shade on it that looked like thereflection of the green wine gleaming on the table. Horne Fisherregarded him steadily and answered, quietly enough:

  "Blackmailers do not always go to jail. Sometimes they go toParliament. But, though Parliament is rotten enough already, youshall not go there if I can help it. I am not so criminal as youwere in bargaining with crime. You made a squire give up his countryseat. I only ask you to give up your Parliamentary seat."

  Sir Francis Verner sprang to his feet and looked about for one ofthe bell ropes of the old-fashioned, curtained room.

  "Where is Usher?" he cried, with a livid face.

  "And who is Usher?" said Fisher, softly. "I wonder how much Usherknows of the truth."

  Verner's hand fell from the bell rope and, after standing for amoment with rolling eyes, he strode abruptly from the room. Fisherwent but by the other door, by which he had entered, and, seeing nosign of Usher, let himself out and betook himself again toward thetown.

  That night he put an electric torch in his pocket and set out alonein the darkness to add the last links to his argument. There wasmuch that he did not know yet; but he thought he knew where he couldfind the knowledge. The night closed dark and stormy and the blackgap in the wall looked blacker than ever; the wood seemed to havegrown thicker and darker in a day. If the deserted lake with itsblack woods and gray urns and images looked desolate even bydaylight, under the night and the growing storm it seemed still morelike the pool of Acheron in the land of lost souls. As he steppedcarefully along the jetty stones he seemed to be traveling fartherand farther into the abyss of night, and to have left behind him thelast points from which it would be possible to signal to the land ofthe living. The lake seemed to have grown larger than a sea, but asea of black and slimy waters that slept with abominable serenity,as if they had washed out the world. There was so much of thisnightmare sense of extension and expansion that he was strangelysurprised to come to his desert island so soon. But he knew it for aplace of inhuman silence and solitude; and he felt as if he had beenwalking for years.

  Nerving himself to a more normal mood, he paused under one of thedark dragon trees that branched out above him, and, taking out historch, turned in the direction of the door at the back of thetemple. It was unbolted as before, and the thought stirred faintlyin him that it was slightly open, though only by a crack. The morehe thought of it, however, the more certain he grew that this wasbut one of the common illusions of light coming from a differentangle. He studied in a more scientific spirit the details of thedoor, with its rusty bolts and hinges, when he became conscious ofsomething very near him--indeed, nearly above his head. Somethingwas dangling from the tree that was not a broken branch. For someseconds he stood as still as a stone, and as cold. What he saw abovehim were the legs of a man hanging, presumably a dead man hanged.But the next moment he knew better. The man was literally alive andkicking; and an instant after he had dropped to the ground andturned on the intruder. Simultaneously three or four other treesseemed to come to life in the same fashion. Five or six otherfigures had fallen on their feet from these unnatural nests. It wasas if the place were an island of monkeys. But a moment after theyhad made a stampede toward him, and when they laid their hands onhim he knew that they were men.

  With the electric torch in his hand he struck the foremost of themso furiously in the face that the man stumbled and rolled over onthe slimy grass; but the torch was broken and extinguished, leavingeverything in a denser obscurity. He flung another man flat againstthe temple wall, so that he slid to the ground; but a third andfourth carried Fisher off his feet and began to bear him,struggling, toward the doorway. Even in the bewilderment of thebattle he was conscious that the door was standing open. Somebodywas summoning the roughs from inside.

  The moment they were within they hurled him upon a sort of bench orbed with violence, but no damage; for the settee, or whatever itwas, seemed to be comfortably cushioned for his reception. Theirviolence had in it a great element of haste, and before he couldrise they had all rushed for the door to escape. Whatever banditsthey were that infested this desert island, they were obviouslyuneasy about their job and very anxious to be quit of it. He had theflying fancy that regular criminals would hardly be in such a panic.The next moment the great door crashed to and he could hear thebolts shriek as they shot into their place, and the feet of theretreating men scampering and stumbling along the causeway. Butrapidly as it happened, it did not happen before Fisher had donesomething that he wanted to do. Unable to rise from his sprawlingattitude in that flash of time, he had shot out one of his long legsand hooked it round the ankle of the last man disappearing throughthe door. The man swayed and toppled over inside the prison chamber,and the door closed between him and his fleeing companions. Clearlythey were in too much haste to realize that they had left one oftheir company behind.

  The man sprang to his feet again and hammered and kicked furiouslyat the door. Fisher's sense of humor began to recover from thestruggle and he sat up on his sofa with something of his nativenonchalance. But as he listened to the captive captor beating on thedoor of the prison, a new and curious reflection came to him.

  The natural course for a man thus wishing to attract his friends'attention would be to call out, to shout as well as kick. This manwas making as much noise as he could with his feet and hands, butnot a sound came from his throat. Why couldn't he speak? At first hethought the man might be gagged, which was manifestly absurd. Thenhis fancy fell back on the ugly idea that the man was dumb. Hehardly knew why it was so ugly an idea, but it affected hisimagination in a dark and disproportionate fashion. There seemed tobe something creepy about the idea of being left in a dark room witha deaf mute. It was almost as if such a defect were a deformity. Itwas almost as if it went with other and worse deformities. It was asif the shape he could not trace in the darkness were some shape thatshould not see the sun.

  Then he had a flash of sanity and also of insight. The explanationwas very simple, but rather interesting. Obviously the man did notuse his voice because he did not wish his voice to be recognized. Hehoped to escape from that dark place before Fisher found out who hewas. And who was he? One thing at least was clear. He was one orother of the four or five men with whom Fisher had already talked inth
ese parts, and in the development of that strange story.

  "Now I wonder who you are," he said, aloud, with all his old lazyurbanity. "I suppose it's no use trying to throttle you in order tofind out; it would be displeasing to pass the night with a corpse.Besides I might be the corpse. I've got no matches and I've smashedmy torch, so I can only speculate. Who could you be, now? Let usthink."

  The man thus genially addressed had desisted from drumming on thedoor and retreated sullenly into a corner as Fisher continued toaddress him in a flowing monologue.

  "Probably you are the poacher who says he isn't a poacher. He sayshe's a landed proprietor; but he will permit me to inform him that,whatever he is, he's a fool. What hope can there ever be of a freepeasantry in England if the peasants themselves are such snobs as towant to be gentlemen? How can we make a democracy with no democrats?As it is, you want to be a landlord and so you consent to be acriminal. And in that, you know, you are rather like somebody else.And, now I think of it, perhaps you are somebody else."

  There was a silence broken by breathing from the corner and themurmur of the rising storm, that came in through the small gratingabove the man's head. Horne Fisher continued:

  "Are you only a servant, perhaps, that rather sinister old servantwho was butler to Hawker and Verner? If so, you are certainly theonly link between the two periods. But if so, why do you degradeyourself to serve this dirty foreigner, when you at least saw thelast of a genuine national gentry? People like you are generally atleast patriotic. Doesn't England mean anything to you, Mr. Usher?All of which eloquence is possibly wasted, as perhaps you are notMr. Usher.

  "More likely you are Verner himself; and it's no good wastingeloquence to make you ashamed of yourself. Nor is it any good tocurse you for corrupting England; nor are you the right person tocurse. It is the English who deserve to be cursed, and are cursed,because they allowed such vermin to crawl into the high places oftheir heroes and their kings. I won't dwell on the idea that you'reVerner, or the throttling might begin, after all. Is there anyoneelse you could be? Surely you're not some servant of the other rivalorganization. I can't believe you're Gryce, the agent; and yet Grycehad a spark of the fanatic in his eye, too; and men will doextraordinary things in these paltry feuds of politics. Or if notthe servant, is it the . . . No, I can't believe it . . . not thered blood of manhood and liberty . . . not the democratic ideal . . ."

  He sprang up in excitement, and at the same moment a growl ofthunder came through the grating beyond. The storm had broken, andwith it a new light broke on his mind. There was something else thatmight happen in a moment.

  "Do you know what that means?" he cried. "It means that God himselfmay hold a candle to show me your infernal face."

  Then next moment came a crash of thunder; but before the thunder awhite light had filled the whole room for a single split second.

  Fisher had seen two things in front of him. One was theblack-and-white pattern of the iron grating against the sky; theother was the face in the corner. It was the face of his brother.

  Nothing came from Horne Fisher's lips except a Christian name, whichwas followed by a silence more dreadful than the dark. At last theother figure stirred and sprang up, and the voice of Harry Fisherwas heard for the first time in that horrible room.

  "You've seen me, I suppose," he said, "and we may as well have alight now. You could have turned it on at any time, if you'd foundthe switch."

  He pressed a button in the wall and all the details of that roomsprang into something stronger than daylight. Indeed, the detailswere so unexpected that for a moment they turned the captive'srocking mind from the last personal revelation. The room, so farfrom being a dungeon cell, was more like a drawing-room, even alady's drawing-room, except for some boxes of cigars and bottles ofwine that were stacked with books and magazines on a side table. Asecond glance showed him that the more masculine fittings were quiterecent, and that the more feminine background was quite old. His eyecaught a strip of faded tapestry, which startled him into speech, tothe momentary oblivion of bigger matters.

  "This place was furnished from the great house," he said.

  "Yes," replied the other, "and I think you know why."

  "I think I do," said Horne Fisher, "and before I go on to moreextraordinary things I will, say what I think. Squire Hawker playedboth the bigamist and the bandit. His first wife was not dead whenhe married the Jewess; she was imprisoned on this island. She borehim a child here, who now haunts his birthplace under the name ofLong Adam. A bankruptcy company promoter named Werner discovered thesecret and blackmailed the squire into surrendering the estate.That's all quite clear and very easy. And now let me go on tosomething more difficult. And that is for you to explain what thedevil you are doing kidnaping your born brother."

  After a pause Henry Fisher answered:

  "I suppose you didn't expect to see me," he said. "But, after all,what could you expect?"'

  "I'm afraid I don't follow," said Horne Fisher.

  "I mean what else could you expect, after making such a muck of it?"said his brother, sulkily. "We all thought you were so clever. Howcould we know you were going to be--well, really, such a rottenfailure?"

  "This is rather curious," said the candidate, frowning. "Withoutvanity, I was not under the impression that my candidature was afailure. All the big meetings were successful and crowds of peoplehave promised me votes."

  "I should jolly well think they had," said Henry, grimly. "You'vemade a landslide with your confounded acres and a cow, and Vernercan hardly get a vote anywhere. Oh, it's too rotten for anything!"

  "What on earth do you mean?"

  "Why, you lunatic," cried Henry, in tones of ringing sincerity, "youdon't suppose you were meant to _win_ the seat, did you? Oh, it'stoo childish! I tell you Verner's got to get in. Of course he's gotto get in. He's to have the Exchequer next session, and there's theEgyptian loan and Lord knows what else. We only wanted you to splitthe Reform vote because accidents might happen after Hughes had madea score at Barkington."

  "I see," said Fisher, "and you, I think, are a pillar and ornamentof the Reform party. As you say, I am not clever."

  The appeal to party loyalty fell on deaf ears; for the pillar ofReform was brooding on other things. At last he said, in a moretroubled voice:

  "I didn't want you to catch me; I knew it would be a shock. But Itell you what, you never would have caught me if I hadn't come heremyself, to see they didn't ill treat you and to make sure everythingwas as comfortable as it could be." There was even a sort of breakin his voice as he added, "I got those cigars because I knew youliked them."

  Emotions are queer things, and the idiocy of this concessionsuddenly softened Horne Fisher like an unfathomable pathos.

  "Never mind, old chap," he said; "we'll say no more about it. I'lladmit that you're really as kind-hearted and affectionate ascoundrel and hypocrite as ever sold himself to ruin his country.There, I can't say handsomer than that. Thank you for the cigars,old man. I'll have one if you don't mind."

  By the time that Horne Fisher had ended his telling of this story toHarold March they had come out into one of the public parks andtaken a seat on a rise of ground overlooking wide green spaces undera blue and empty sky; and there was something incongruous in thewords with which the narration ended.

  "I have been in that room ever since," said Horne Fisher. "I am init now. I won the election, but I never went to the House. My lifehas been a life in that little room on that lonely island. Plenty ofbooks and cigars and luxuries, plenty of knowledge and interest andinformation, but never a voice out of that tomb to reach the worldoutside. I shall probably die there." And he smiled as he lookedacross the vast green park to the gray horizon.

  VIII. THE VENGEANCE OF THE STATUE

  It was on the sunny veranda of a seaside hotel, overlooking apattern of flower beds and a strip of blue sea, that Horne Fisherand Harold March had their final explanation, which might be calledan explosion.

  Harold March had come to th
e little table and sat down at it with asubdued excitement smoldering in his somewhat cloudy and dreamy blueeyes. In the newspapers which he tossed from him on to the tablethere was enough to explain some if not all of his emotion. Publicaffairs in every department had reached a crisis. The governmentwhich had stood so long that men were used to it, as they are usedto a hereditary despotism, had begun to be accused of blunders andeven of financial abuses. Some said that the experiment ofattempting to establish a peasantry in the west of England, on thelines of an early fancy of Horne Fisher's, had resulted in nothingbut dangerous quarrels with more industrial neighbors. There hadbeen particular complaints of the ill treatment of harmlessforeigners, chiefly Asiatics, who happened to be employed in the newscientific works constructed on the coast. Indeed, the new Powerwhich had arisen in Siberia, backed by Japan and other powerfulallies, was inclined to take the matter up in the interests of itsexiled subjects; and there had been wild talk about ambassadors andultimatums. But something much more serious, in its personalinterest for March himself, seemed to fill his meeting with hisfriend with a mixture of embarrassment and indignation.

  Perhaps it increased his annoyance that there was a certain unusualliveliness about the usually languid figure of Fisher. The ordinaryimage of him in March's mind was that of a pallid and bald-browedgentleman, who seemed to be prematurely old as well as prematurelybald. He was remembered as a man who expressed the opinions of apessimist in the language of a lounger. Even now March could not becertain whether the change was merely a sort of masquerade ofsunshine, or that effect of clear colors and clean-cut outlines thatis always visible on the parade of a marine resort, relieved againstthe blue dado of the sea. But Fisher had a flower in his buttonhole,and his friend could have sworn he carried his cane with somethingalmost like the swagger of a fighter. With such clouds gatheringover England, the pessimist seemed to be the only man who carriedhis own sunshine.

  "Look here," said Harold March, abruptly, "you've been no end of afriend to me, and I never was so proud of a friendship before; butthere's something I must get off my chest. The more I found out, theless I understood how you could stand it. And I tell you I'm goingto stand it no longer."

  Horne Fisher gazed across at him gravely and attentively, but ratheras if he were a long way off.

  "You know I always liked you," said Fisher, quietly, "but I alsorespect you, which is not always the same thing. You may possiblyguess that I like a good many people I don't respect. Perhaps it ismy tragedy, perhaps it is my fault. But you are very different, andI promise you this: that I will never try to keep you as somebody tobe liked, at the price of your not being respected."

  "I know you are magnanimous," said March after a silence, "and yetyou tolerate and perpetuate everything that is mean." Then afteranother silence he added: "Do you remember when we first met, whenyou were fishing in that brook in the affair of the target? And doyou remember you said that, after all, it might do no harm if Icould blow the whole tangle of this society to hell with dynamite."

  "Yes, and what of that?" asked Fisher.

  "Only that I'm going to blow it to hell with dynamite," said HaroldMarch, "and I think it right to give you fair warning. For a longtime I didn't believe things were as bad as you said they were. ButI never felt as if I could have bottled up what you knew, supposingyou really knew it. Well, the long and the short of it is that I'vegot a conscience; and now, at last, I've also got a chance. I'vebeen put in charge of a big independent paper, with a free hand, andwe're going to open a cannonade on corruption."

  "That will be--Attwood, I suppose," said Fisher, reflectively."Timber merchant. Knows a lot about China."

  "He knows a lot about England," said March, doggedly, "and now Iknow it, too, we're not going to hush it up any longer. The peopleof this country have a right to know how they're ruled--or, rather,ruined. The Chancellor is in the pocket of the money lenders and hasto do as he is told; otherwise he's bankrupt, and a bad sort ofbankruptcy, too, with nothing but cards and actresses behind it. ThePrime Minister was in the petrol-contract business; and deep in it,too. The Foreign Minister is a wreck of drink and drugs. When yousay that plainly about a man who may send thousands of Englishmen todie for nothing, you're called personal. If a poor engine drivergets drunk and sends thirty or forty people to death, nobodycomplains of the exposure being personal. The engine driver is not aperson."

  "I quite agree with you," said Fisher, calmly. "You are perfectlyright."

  "If you agree with us, why the devil don't you act with us?"demanded his friend. "If you think it's right, why don't you dowhat's right? It's awful to think of a man of your abilities simplyblocking the road to reform."

  "We have often talked about that," replied Fisher, with the samecomposure. "The Prime Minister is my father's friend. The ForeignMinister married my sister. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is myfirst cousin. I mention the genealogy in some detail just now for aparticular reason. The truth is I have a curious kind ofcheerfulness at the moment. It isn't altogether the sun and the sea,sir. I am enjoying an emotion that is entirely new to me; a happysensation I never remember having had before."

  "What the devil do you mean?"

  "I am feeling proud of my family," said Horne Fisher.

  Harold March stared at him with round blue eyes, and seemed too muchmystified even to ask a question. Fisher leaned back in his chair inhis lazy fashion, and smiled as he continued.

  "Look here, my dear fellow. Let me ask a question in turn. Youimply that I have always known these things about my unfortunatekinsmen. So I have. Do you suppose that Attwood hasn't always knownthem? Do you suppose he hasn't always known you as an honest man whowould say these things when he got a chance? Why does Attwoodunmuzzle you like a dog at this moment, after all these years? Iknow why he does; I know a good many things, far too many things.And therefore, as I have the honor to remark, I am proud of myfamily at last."

  "But why?" repeated March, rather feebly.

  "I am proud of the Chancellor because he gambled and the ForeignMinister because he drank and the Prime Minister because he took acommission on a contract," said Fisher, firmly. "I am proud of thembecause they did these things, and can be denounced for them, andknow they can be denounced for them, and are _standing firm for allthat_. I take off my hat to them because they are defying blackmail,and refusing to smash their country to save themselves. I salutethem as if they were going to die on the battlefield."

  After a pause he continued: "And it will be a battlefield, too, andnot a metaphorical one. We have yielded to foreign financiers solong that now it is war or ruin, Even the people, even the countrypeople, are beginning to suspect that they are being ruined. That isthe meaning of the regrettable incidents in the newspapers."

  "The meaning of the outrages on Orientals?" asked March.

  "The meaning of the outrages on Orientals," replied Fisher, "is thatthe financiers have introduced Chinese labor into this country withthe deliberate intention of reducing workmen and peasants tostarvation. Our unhappy politicians have made concession afterconcession; and now they are asking concessions which amount to ourordering a massacre of our own poor. If we do not fight now we shallnever fight again. They will have put England in an economicposition of starving in a week. But we are going to fight now; Ishouldn't wonder if there were an ultimatum in a week and aninvasion in a fortnight. All the past corruption and cowardice ishampering us, of course; the West country is pretty stormy anddoubtful even in a military sense; and the Irish regiments there,that are supposed to support us by the new treaty, are pretty wellin mutiny; for, of course, this infernal coolie capitalism is beingpushed in Ireland, too. But it's to stop now; and if the governmentmessage of reassurance gets through to them in time, they may turnup after all by the time the enemy lands. For my poor old gang isgoing to stand to its guns at last. Of course it's only natural thatwhen they have been whitewashed for half a century as paragons,their sins should come back on them at the very moment when they arebehaving like men for the
first time in their lives. Well, I tellyou, March, I know them inside out; and I know they are behavinglike heroes. Every man of them ought to have a statue, and on thepedestal words like those of the noblest ruffian of the Revolution:'Que mon nom soit fletri; que la France soit libre.'"

  "Good God!" cried March, "shall we never get to the bottom of yourmines and countermines?"

  After a silence Fisher answered in a lower voice, looking his friendin the eyes.

  "Did you think there was nothing but evil at the bottom of them?" heasked, gently. "Did you think I had found nothing but filth in thedeep seas into which fate has thrown me? Believe me, you never knowthe best about men till you know the worst about them. It does notdispose of their strange human souls to know that they wereexhibited to the world as impossibly impeccable wax works, who neverlooked after a woman or knew the meaning of a bribe. Even in apalace, life can be lived well; and even in a Parliament, life canbe lived with occasional efforts to live it well. I tell you it isas true of these rich fools and rascals as it is true of every poorfootpad and pickpocket; that only God knows how good they have triedto be. God alone knows what the conscience can survive, or how a manwho has lost his honor will still try to save his soul."

  There was another silence, and March sat staring at the table andFisher at the sea. Then Fisher suddenly sprang to his feet andcaught up his hat and stick with all his new alertness and evenpugnacity.

  "Look here, old fellow," he cried, "let us make a bargain. Beforeyou open your campaign for Attwood come down and stay with us forone week, to hear what we're really doing. I mean with the FaithfulFew, formerly known as the Old Gang, occasionally to be described asthe Low Lot. There are really only five of us that are quite fixed,and organizing the national defense; and we're living like agarrison in a sort of broken-down hotel in Kent. Come and see whatwe're really doing and what there is to be done, and do us justice.And after that, with unalterable love and affection for you, publishand be damned."

  Thus it came about that in the last week before war, when eventsmoved most rapidly, Harold March found himself one of a sort ofsmall house party of the people he was proposing to denounce. Theywere living simply enough, for people with their tastes, in an oldbrown-brick inn faced with ivy and surrounded by rather dismalgardens. At the back of the building the garden ran up very steeplyto a road along the ridge above; and a zigzag path scaled the slopein sharp angles, turning to and fro amid evergreens so somber thatthey might rather be called everblack. Here and there up the slopewere statues having all the cold monstrosity of such minor ornamentsof the eighteenth century; and a whole row of them ran as on aterrace along the last bank at the bottom, opposite the back door.This detail fixed itself first in March's mind merely because itfigured in the first conversation he had with one of the cabinetministers.

  The cabinet ministers were rather older than he had expected to findthem. The Prime Minister no longer looked like a boy, though hestill looked a little like a baby. But it was one of those old andvenerable babies, and the baby had soft gray hair. Everything abouthim was soft, to his speech and his way of walking; but over andabove that his chief function seemed to be sleep. People left alonewith him got so used to his eyes being closed that they were almoststartled when they realized in the stillness that the eyes were wideopen, and even watching. One thing at least would always make theold gentleman open his eyes. The one thing he really cared for inthis world was his hobby of armored weapons, especially Easternweapons, and he would talk for hours about Damascus blades and Arabswordmanship. Lord James Herries, the Chancellor of the Exchequer,was a short, dark, sturdy man with a very sallow face and a verysullen manner, which contrasted with the gorgeous flower in hisbuttonhole and his festive trick of being always slightlyoverdressed. It was something of a euphemism to call him awell-known man about town. There was perhaps more mystery in thequestion of how a man who lived for pleasure seemed to get so littlepleasure out of it. Sir David Archer, the Foreign Secretary, was theonly one of them who was a self-made man, and the only one of themwho looked like an aristocrat. He was tall and thin and veryhandsome, with a grizzled beard; his gray hair was very curly, andeven rose in front in two rebellious ringlets that seemed to thefanciful to tremble like the antennae of some giant insect, or tostir sympathetically with the restless tufted eyebrows over hisrather haggard eyes. For the Foreign Secretary made no secret of hissomewhat nervous condition, whatever might be the cause of it.

  "Do you know that mood when one could scream because a mat iscrooked?" he said to March, as they walked up and down in the backgarden below the line of dingy statues. "Women get into it whenthey've worked too hard; and I've been working pretty hard lately,of course. It drives me mad when Herries will wear his hat a littlecrooked--habit of looking like a gay dog. Sometime I swear I'llknock it off. That statue of Britannia over there isn't quitestraight; it sticks forward a bit as if the lady were going totopple over. The damned thing is that it doesn't topple over and bedone with it. See, it's clamped with an iron prop. Don't besurprised if I get up in the middle of the night to hike it down."

  They paced the path for a few moments in silence and then hecontinued. "It's odd those little things seem specially big whenthere are bigger things to worry about. We'd better go in and dosome work."

  Horne Fisher evidently allowed for all the neurotic possibilities ofArcher and the dissipated habits of Herries; and whatever his faithin their present firmness, did not unduly tax their time andattention, even in the case of the Prime Minister. He had got theconsent of the latter finally to the committing of the importantdocuments, with the orders to the Western armies, to the care of aless conspicuous and more solid person--an uncle of his named HorneHewitt, a rather colorless country squire who had been a goodsoldier, and was the military adviser of the committee. He wascharged with expediting the government pledge, along with theconcerted military plans, to the half-mutinous command in the west;and the still more urgent task of seeing that it did not fall intothe hands of the enemy, who might appear at any moment from theeast. Over and above this military official, the only other personpresent was a police official, a certain Doctor Prince, originally apolice surgeon and now a distinguished detective, sent to be abodyguard to the group. He was a square-faced man with bigspectacles and a grimace that expressed the intention of keeping hismouth shut. Nobody else shared their captivity except the hotelproprietor, a crusty Kentish man with a crab-apple face, one or twoof his servants, and another servant privately attached to LordJames Herries. He was a young Scotchman named Campbell, who lookedmuch more distinguished than his bilious-looking master, havingchestnut hair and a long saturnine face with large but finefeatures. He was probably the one really efficient person in thehouse.

  After about four days of the informal council, March had come tofeel a sort of grotesque sublimity about these dubious figures,defiant in the twilight of danger, as if they were hunchbacks andcripples left alone to defend a town. All were working hard; and hehimself looked up from writing a page of memoranda in a private roomto see Horne Fisher standing in the doorway, accoutered as if fortravel. He fancied that Fisher looked a little pale; and after amoment that gentleman shut the door behind him and said, quietly:

  "Well, the worst has happened. Or nearly the worst."

  "The enemy has landed," cried March, and sprang erect out of hischair.

  "Oh, I knew the enemy would land," said Fisher, with composure."Yes, he's landed; but that's not the worst that could happen. Theworst is that there's a leak of some sort, even from this fortressof ours. It's been a bit of a shock to me, I can tell you; though Isuppose it's illogical. After all, I was full of admiration atfinding three honest men in politics. I ought not to be full ofastonishment if I find only two."

  He ruminated a moment and then said, in such a fashion that Marchcould hardly tell if he were changing the subject or no:

  "It's hard at first to believe that a fellow like Herries, who hadpickled himself in vice like vinegar, can have any scruple left. Butabout
that I've noticed a curious thing. Patriotism is not the firstvirtue. Patriotism rots into Prussianism when you pretend it is thefirst virtue. But patriotism is sometimes the last virtue. A manwill swindle or seduce who will not sell his country. But whoknows?"

  "But what is to be done?" cried March, indignantly.

  "My uncle has the papers safe enough," replied Fisher, "and issending them west to-night; but somebody is trying to get at themfrom outside, I fear with the assistance of somebody inside. AllI can do at present is to try to head off the man outside; and Imust get away now and do it. I shall be back in about twenty-fourhours. While I'm away I want you to keep an eye on these people andfind out what you can. Au revoir." He vanished down the stairs; andfrom the window March could see him mount a motor cycle and trailaway toward the neighboring town.

  On the following morning, March was sitting in the window seat ofthe old inn parlor, which was oak-paneled and ordinarily ratherdark; but on that occasion it was full of the white light of acuriously clear morning--the moon had shone brilliantly for thelast two or three nights. He was himself somewhat in shadow in thecorner of the window seat; and Lord James Herries, coming in hastilyfrom the garden behind, did not see him. Lord James clutched theback of a chair, as if to steady himself, and, sitting down abruptlyat the table, littered with the last meal, poured himself out atumbler of brandy and drank it. He sat with his back to March, buthis yellow face appeared in a round mirror beyond and the tinge of itwas like that of some horrible malady. As March moved he startedviolently and faced round.

  "My God!" he cried, "have you seen what's outside?"

  "Outside?" repeated the other, glancing over his shoulder at thegarden.

  "Oh, go and look for yourself," cried Herries in a sort of fury."Hewitt's murdered and his papers stolen, that's all."

  He turned his back again and sat down with a thud; his squareshoulders were shaking. Harold March darted out of the doorway intothe back garden with its steep slope of statues.

  The first thing he saw was Doctor Prince, the detective, peeringthrough his spectacles at something on the ground; the second wasthe thing he was peering at. Even after the sensational news he hadheard inside, the sight was something of a sensation.

  The monstrous stone image of Britannia was lying prone and facedownward on the garden path; and there stuck out at random fromunderneath it, like the legs of a smashed fly, an arm clad in awhite shirt sleeve and a leg clad in a khaki trouser, and hair ofthe unmistakable sandy gray that belonged to Horne Fisher'sunfortunate uncle. There were pools of blood and the limbs werequite stiff in death.

  "Couldn't this have been an accident?" said March, finding words atlast.

  "Look for yourself, I say," repeated the harsh voice of Herries, whohad followed him with restless movements out of the door. "Thepapers are gone, I tell you. The fellow tore the coat off the corpseand cut the papers out of the inner pocket. There's the coat overthere on the bank, with the great slash in it."

  "But wait a minute," said the detective, Prince, quietly. "In thatcase there seems to be something of a mystery. A murderer mightsomehow have managed to throw the statue down on him, as he seems tohave done. But I bet he couldn't easily have lifted it up again.I've tried; and I'm sure it would want three men at least. Yet wemust suppose, on that theory, that the murderer first knocked himdown as he walked past, using the statue as a stone club, thenlifted it up again, took him out and deprived him of his coat, thenput him back again in the posture of death and neatly replaced thestatue. I tell you it's physically impossible. And how else could hehave unclothed a man covered with that stone monument? It's worsethan the conjurer's trick, when a man shuffles a coat off with hiswrists tied."

  "Could he have thrown down the statue after he'd stripped thecorpse?" asked March.

  "And why?" asked Prince, sharply. "If he'd killed his man and gothis papers, he'd be away like the wind. He wouldn't potter about ina garden excavating the pedestals of statues. Besides--Hullo, who'sthat up there?"

  High on the ridge above them, drawn in dark thin lines against thesky, was a figure looking so long and lean as to be almost spidery.The dark silhouette of the head showed two small tufts like horns;and they could almost have sworn that the horns moved.

  "Archer!" shouted Herries, with sudden passion, and called to himwith curses to come down. The figure drew back at the first cry,with an agitated movement so abrupt as almost to be called an antic.The next moment the man seemed to reconsider and collect himself,and began to come down the zigzag garden path, but with obviousreluctance, his feet falling in slower and slower rhythm. ThroughMarch's mind were throbbing the phrases that this man himself hadused, about going mad in the middle of the night and wrecking thestone figure. Just so, he could fancy, the maniac who had done sucha thing might climb the crest of the hill, in that feverish dancingfashion, and look down on the wreck he had made. But the wreck hehad made here was not only a wreck of stone.

  When the man emerged at last on to the garden path, with the fulllight on his face and figure, he was walking slowly indeed, buteasily, and with no appearance of fear.

  "This is a terrible thing," he said. "I saw it from above; I wastaking a stroll along the ridge."

  "Do you mean that you saw the murder?" demanded March, "or theaccident? I mean did you see the statue fall?"

  "No," said Archer, "I mean I saw the statue fallen."

  Prince seemed to be paying but little attention; his eye was rivetedon an object lying on the path a yard or two from the corpse. Itseemed to be a rusty iron bar bent crooked at one end.

  "One thing I don't understand," he said, "is all this blood. Thepoor fellow's skull isn't smashed; most likely his neck is broken;but blood seems to have spouted as if all his arteries were severed.I was wondering if some other instrument . . . that iron thing, forinstance; but I don't see that even that is sharp enough. I supposenobody knows what it is."

  "I know what it is," said Archer in his deep but somewhat shakyvoice. "I've seen it in my nightmares. It was the iron clamp or propon the pedestal, stuck on to keep the wretched image upright when itbegan to wobble, I suppose. Anyhow, it was always stuck in thestonework there; and I suppose it came out when the thingcollapsed."

  Doctor Prince nodded, but he continued to look down at the pools ofblood and the bar of iron.

  "I'm certain there's something more underneath all this," he said atlast. "Perhaps something more underneath the statue. I have a hugesort of hunch that there is. We are four men now and between us wecan lift that great tombstone there."

  They all bent their strength to the business; there was a silencesave for heavy breathing; and then, after an instant of thetottering and staggering of eight legs, the great carven column ofrock was rolled away, and the body lying in its shirt and trouserswas fully revealed. The spectacles of Doctor Prince seemed almost toenlarge with a restrained radiance like great eyes; for other thingswere revealed also. One was that the unfortunate Hewitt had a deepgash across the jugular, which the triumphant doctor instantlyidentified as having been made with a sharp steel edge like a razor.The other was that immediately under the bank lay littered threeshining scraps of steel, each nearly a foot long, one pointed andanother fitted into a gorgeously jeweled hilt or handle. It wasevidently a sort of long Oriental knife, long enough to be called asword, but with a curious wavy edge; and there was a touch or two ofblood on the point.

  "I should have expected more blood, hardly on the point," observedDoctor Prince, thoughtfully, "but this is certainly the instrument.The slash was certainly made with a weapon shaped like this, andprobably the slashing of the pocket as well. I suppose the brutethrew in the statue, by way of giving him a public funeral."

  March did not answer; he was mesmerized by the strange stones thatglittered on the strange sword hilt; and their possible significancewas broadening upon him like a dreadful dawn. It was a curiousAsiatic weapon. He knew what name was connected in his memory withcurious Asiatic weapons. Lord James spoke his secret thought forhim, a
nd yet it startled him like an irrelevance.

  "Where is the Prime Minister?" Herries had cried, suddenly, andsomehow like the bark of a dog at some discovery.

  Doctor Prince turned on him his goggles and his grim face; and itwas grimmer than ever.

  "I cannot find him anywhere," he said. "I looked for him at once,as soon as I found the papers were gone. That servant of yours,Campbell, made a most efficient search, but there are no traces."

  There was a long silence, at the end of which Herries utteredanother cry, but upon an entirely new note.

  "Well, you needn't look for him any longer," he said, "for here hecomes, along with your friend Fisher. They look as if they'd beenfor a little walking tour."

  The two figures approaching up the path were indeed those of Fisher,splashed with the mire of travel and carrying a scratch like that ofa bramble across one side of his bald forehead, and of the great andgray-haired statesman who looked like a baby and was interested inEastern swords and swordmanship. But beyond this bodily recognition,March could make neither head nor tail of their presence ordemeanor, which seemed to give a final touch of nonsense to thewhole nightmare. The more closely he watched them, as they stoodlistening to the revelations of the detective, the more puzzled hewas by their attitude--Fisher seemed grieved by the death of hisuncle, but hardly shocked at it; the older man seemed almost openlythinking about something else, and neither had anything to suggestabout a further pursuit of the fugitive spy and murderer, in spiteof the prodigious importance of the documents he had stolen. Whenthe detective had gone off to busy himself with that department ofthe business, to telephone and write his report, when Herries hadgone back, probably to the brandy bottle, and the Prime Minister hadblandly sauntered away toward a comfortable armchair in another partof the garden, Horne Fisher spoke directly to Harold March.

  "My friend," he said, "I want you to come with me at once; there isno one else I can trust so much as that. The journey will take usmost of the day, and the chief business cannot be done tillnightfall. So we can talk things over thoroughly on the way. But Iwant you to be with me; for I rather think it is my hour."

  March and Fisher both had motor bicycles; and the first half oftheir day's journey consisted in coasting eastward amid theunconversational noise of those uncomfortable engines. But when theycame out beyond Canterbury into the flats of eastern Kent, Fisherstopped at a pleasant little public house beside a sleepy stream;and they sat down to eat and to drink and to speak almost for thefirst time. It was a brilliant afternoon, birds were singing in thewood behind, and the sun shone full on their ale bench and table;but the face of Fisher in the strong sunlight had a gravity neverseen on it before.

  "Before we go any farther," he said, "there is something you oughtto know. You and I have seen some mysterious things and got to thebottom of them before now; and it's only right that you should getto the bottom of this one. But in dealing with the death of my uncleI must begin at the other end from where our old detective yarnsbegan. I will give you the steps of deduction presently, if you wantto listen to them; but I did not reach the truth of this by steps ofdeduction. I will first of all tell you the truth itself, because Iknew the truth from the first. The other cases I approached from theoutside, but in this case I was inside. I myself was the very coreand center of everything."

  Something in the speaker's pendent eyelids and grave gray eyessuddenly shook March to his foundations; and he cried, distractedly,"I don't understand!" as men do when they fear that they dounderstand. There was no sound for a space but the happy chatter ofthe birds, and then Horne Fisher said, calmly:

  "It was I who killed my uncle. If you particularly want more, itwas I who stole the state papers from him."

  "Fisher!" cried his friend in a strangled voice.

  "Let me tell you the whole thing before we part," continued theother, "and let me put it, for the sake of clearness, as we used toput our old problems. Now there are two things that are puzzlingpeople about that problem, aren't there? The first is how themurderer managed to slip off the dead man's coat, when he wasalready pinned to the ground with that stone incubus. The other,which is much smaller and less puzzling, is the fact of the swordthat cut his throat being slightly stained at the point, instead ofa good deal more stained at the edge. Well, I can dispose of thefirst question easily. Horne Hewitt took off his own coat before hewas killed. I might say he took off his coat to be killed."

  "Do you call that an explanation?" exclaimed March. "The words seemmore meaningless, than the facts."

  "Well, let us go on to the other facts," continued Fisher, equably."The reason that particular sword is not stained at the edge withHewitt's blood is that it was not used to kill Hewitt."

  "But the doctor," protested March, "declared distinctly that thewound was made by that particular sword."

  "I beg your pardon," replied Fisher. "He did not declare that itwas made by that particular sword. He declared it was made by asword of that particular pattern."

  "But it was quite a queer and exceptional pattern," argued March;"surely it is far too fantastic a coincidence to imagine--"

  "It was a fantastic coincidence," reflected Horne Fisher. "It'sextraordinary what coincidences do sometimes occur. By the oddestchance in the world, by one chance in a million, it so happened thatanother sword of exactly the same shape was in the same garden atthe same time. It may be partly explained, by the fact that Ibrought them both into the garden myself . . . come, my dear fellow;surely you can see now what it means. Put those two things together;there were two duplicate swords and he took off his coat forhimself. It may assist your speculations to recall the fact that Iam not exactly an assassin."

  "A duel!" exclaimed March, recovering himself. "Of course I oughtto have thought of that. But who was the spy who stole the papers?"

  "My uncle was the spy who stole the papers," replied Fisher, "or whotried to steal the papers when I stopped him--in the only way Icould. The papers, that should have gone west to reassure ourfriends and give them the plans for repelling the invasion, would ina few hours have been in the hands of the invader. What could I do?To have denounced one of our friends at this moment would have beento play into the hands of your friend Attwood, and all the party ofpanic and slavery. Besides, it may be that a man over forty has asubconscious desire to die as he has lived, and that I wanted, in asense, to carry my secrets to the grave. Perhaps a hobby hardenswith age; and my hobby has been silence. Perhaps I feel that I havekilled my mother's brother, but I have saved my mother's name.Anyhow, I chose a time when I knew you were all asleep, and he waswalking alone in the garden. I saw all the stone statues standing inthe moonlight; and I myself was like one of those stone statueswalking. In a voice that was not my own, I told him of his treasonand demanded the papers; and when he refused, I forced him to takeone of the two swords. The swords were among some specimens sentdown here for the Prime Minister's inspection; he is a collector,you know; they were the only equal weapons I could find. To cut anugly tale short, we fought there on the path in front of theBritannia statue; he was a man of great strength, but I had somewhatthe advantage in skill. His sword grazed my forehead almost at themoment when mine sank into the joint in his neck. He fell againstthe statue, like Caesar against Pompey's, hanging on to the ironrail; his sword was already broken. When I saw the blood from thatdeadly wound, everything else went from me; I dropped my sword andran as if to lift him up. As I bent toward him something happenedtoo quick for me to follow. I do not know whether the iron bar wasrotted with rust and came away in his hand, or whether he rent itout of the rock with his apelike strength; but the thing was in hishand, and with his dying energies he swung it over my head, as Iknelt there unarmed beside him. I looked up wildly to avoid theblow, and saw above us the great bulk of Britannia leaning outwardlike the figurehead of a ship. The next instant I saw it was leaningan inch or two more than usual, and all the skies with theiroutstanding stars seemed to be leaning with it. For the third secondit was as if the skies fell;
and in the fourth I was standing in thequiet garden, looking down on that flat ruin of stone and bone atwhich you were looking to-day. He had plucked out the last prop thatheld up the British goddess, and she had fallen and crushed thetraitor in her fall. I turned and darted for the coat which I knewto contain the package, ripped it up with my sword, and raced awayup the garden path to where my motor bike was waiting on the roadabove. I had every reason for haste; but I fled without looking backat the statue and the body; and I think the thing I fled from wasthe sight of that appalling allegory.

  "Then I did the rest of what I had to do. All through the night andinto the daybreak and the daylight I went humming through thevillages and markets of South England like a traveling bullet, tillI came to the headquarters in the West where the trouble was. I wasjust in time. I was able to placard the place, so to speak, with thenews that the government had not betrayed them, and that they wouldfind supports if they would push eastward against the enemy. There'sno time to tell you all that happened; but I tell you it was the dayof my life. A triumph like a torchlight procession, with torchlightsthat might have been firebrands. The mutinies simmered down; the menof Somerset and the western counties came pouring into the marketplaces; the men who died with Arthur and stood firm with Alfred. TheIrish regiments rallied to them, after a scene like a riot, andmarched eastward out of the town singing Fenian songs. There was allthat is not understood, about the dark laughter of that people, inthe delight with which, even when marching with the English to thedefense of England, they shouted at the top of their voices, 'Highupon the gallows tree stood the noble-hearted three . . . WithEngland's cruel cord about them cast.' However, the chorus was 'Godsave Ireland,' and we could all have sung that just then, in onesense or another.

  "But there was another side to my mission. I carried the plans ofthe defense; and to a great extent, luckily, the plans of theinvasion also. I won't worry you with strategics; but we knew wherethe enemy had pushed forward the great battery that covered all hismovements; and though our friends from the West could hardly arrivein time to intercept the main movement, they might get within longartillery range of the battery and shell it, if they only knewexactly where it was. They could hardly tell that unless somebodyround about here sent up some sort of signal. But, somehow, I ratherfancy that somebody will."

  With that he got up from the table, and they remounted theirmachines and went eastward into the advancing twilight of evening.The levels of the landscape were repeated in flat strips of floatingcloud and the last colors of day clung to the circle of the horizon.Receding farther and farther behind them was the semicircle of thelast hills; and it was quite suddenly that they saw afar off the dimline of the sea. It was not a strip of bright blue as they had seenit from the sunny veranda, but of a sinister and smoky violet, atint that seemed ominous and dark. Here Horne Fisher dismounted oncemore.

  "We must walk the rest of the way," he said, "and the last bit ofall I must walk alone."

  He bent down and began to unstrap something from his bicycle. It wassomething that had puzzled his companion all the way in spite ofwhat held him to more interesting riddles; it appeared to be severallengths of pole strapped together and wrapped up in paper. Fishertook it under his arm and began to pick his way across the turf. Theground was growing more tumbled and irregular and he was walkingtoward a mass of thickets and small woods; night grew darker everymoment. "We must not talk any more," said Fisher. "I shall whisperto you when you are to halt. Don't try to follow me then, for itwill only spoil the show; one man can barely crawl safely to thespot, and two would certainly be caught."

  "I would follow you anywhere," replied March, "but I would halt,too, if that is better."

  "I know you would," said his friend in a low voice. "Perhaps you'rethe only man I ever quite trusted in this world."

  A few paces farther on they came to the end of a great ridge ormound looking monstrous against the dim sky; and Fisher stopped witha gesture. He caught his companion's hand and wrung it with aviolent tenderness, and then darted forward into the darkness. Marchcould faintly see his figure crawling along under the shadow of theridge, then he lost sight of it, and then he saw it again standingon another mound two hundred yards away. Beside him stood a singularerection made apparently of two rods. He bent over it and there wasthe flare of a light; all March's schoolboy memories woke in him,and he knew what it was. It was the stand of a rocket. The confused,incongruous memories still possessed him up to the very moment of afierce but familiar sound; and an instant after the rocket left itsperch and went up into endless space like a starry arrow aimed atthe stars. March thought suddenly of the signs of the last days andknew he was looking at the apocalyptic meteor of something like aDay of judgment.

  Far up in the infinite heavens the rocket drooped and sprang intoscarlet stars. For a moment the whole landscape out to the sea andback to the crescent of the wooded hills was like a lake of rubylight, of a red strangely rich and glorious, as if the world weresteeped in wine rather than blood, or the earth were an earthlyparadise, over which paused forever the sanguine moment of morning.

  "God save England!" cried Fisher, with a tongue like the peal of atrumpet. "And now it is for God to save."

  As darkness sank again over land and sea, there came another sound;far away in the passes of the hills behind them the guns spoke likethe baying of great hounds. Something that was not a rocket, thatcame not hissing but screaming, went over Harold March's head andexpanded beyond the mound into light and deafening din, staggeringthe brain with unbearable brutalities of noise. Another came, andthen another, and the world was full of uproar and volcanic vaporand chaotic light. The artillery of the West country and the Irishhad located the great enemy battery, and were pounding it to pieces.

  In the mad excitement of that moment March peered through the storm,looking again for the long lean figure that stood beside the standof the rocket. Then another flash lit up the whole ridge. The figurewas not there.

  Before the fires of the rocket had faded from the sky, long beforethe first gun had sounded from the distant hills, a splutter ofrifle fire had flashed and flickered all around from the hiddentrenches of the enemy. Something lay in the shadow at the foot ofthe ridge, as stiff as the stick of the fallen rocket; and the manwho knew too much knew what is worth knowing.

 
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