3
As Grayle would not come to see me, I had to go and see Grayle.
I did not want to call in Milford Square unattended,—for Grayle had said in his haste that he would thrash me out of the house with a crop, and I knew that he would only disappoint me from motives of prudence. Had he been accessible, I should have liked to have George at hand to ring the bell and, if necessary, to send for the police; and, if prudence so far triumphed over natural impulse as to allow Grayle to discuss terms, George would once more be a useful witness to balance Bannerman.
Failing George, I was at a loss to know whom to invite, for Bertrand was too old to be embroiled in such an undertaking. Beresford, of course, was in the secret and I was wondering whether he would really conduce to the harmony of debate, when his card was brought in with a request for five minutes' conversation on private business.
"I came to see if you'd had any news of Sonia," he began, as the door closed. "I've been on the look-out so far as my leg would let me. You see, in the old days, when we were together so much, I knew something of her haunts and habits. I haven't found a trace. At least, not of her."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
He pulled forward a deed-box and rested his leg on it, smiling grimly to himself.
"Do you remember the first and only time you honoured me with a call?" he asked. "It was to say that the authorities were watching my articles very closely, one night when Sonia came to see me, and you naturally assumed——"
"Appearances were against you," I said, "and it was criminally foolish, anyway."
"Well, well!" He smiled with sardonic indulgence. "We won't waste time on that. Appearances have been pretty consistently against me before and after, until the night when O'Rane tried to strangle me. Has it ever occurred to you that appearances were fabricated against me? We know that Grayle let you all think—and Sonia, too, but she'd lost her head.... I find that the thing goes much further back. I never told you about my exploits when you were in America, did I?" he went on, nursing his injured leg. "The first time they imprisoned me? There isn't much to tell, but it's illuminating. I'd been writing for weeks in the 'Watchman'—all above board and over my own name. You, no doubt, would call it pernicious stuff—or you would have then; people are coming round to my views a bit more now—I just told the truth...." His eyes suddenly flashed, reviving my sense that I was dealing with a man who might any day be certified insane. "The whole truth and nothing but the truth! The magistrate nearly choked when bits of my articles were read aloud in court.... Well, all copy has to be in by Tuesday morning, we go to press on Thursday, and the paper comes out on Friday. I had my usual two sets of proofs delivered on the Wednesday; I corrected one and sent it back, the other I tore in two and threw into the waste-paper basket. The next day——"
"Where did this take place?" I interrupted.
"At 'The Sanctuary.' Didn't I say that? The next day, when our housekeeper opened the office, he found an assortment of the police with the usual warrants to search the place and confiscate anything that took their fancy. By the time they'd taken our ledgers, our subscribers' register, our letter-books, file copies and the whole of that week's issue, there wasn't much for the delivery vans, when they turned up at nine, and literally nothing at all for the editor and me at half-past ten except two nice, kind gentlemen who put us under immediate arrest. Quick work, wasn't it? You'd have thought that not a soul outside that office could have known for certain that I was even writing that week, still less that I'd written anything stronger than the usual articles. I suspected at the time, but I couldn't bring myself to believe that Grayle would go to that length to get me out of the way; I knew it bored him to see Sonia talking to me, but he had a fair slice of her time, and I didn't think then that he was more than flirting with her. Well, that was the first step."
He paused to beg a cigarette.
"Go on," I said, as I threw over my case.
"Well, that broke down, because I did a hunger-strike, and they had to let me out. There was another misfire about the army——"
"I heard about that," I interrupted.
"About the misfire? I wonder if you did—the early part, I mean. Do you know that I attested in the old voluntary days? Ah, I thought not. I kept that to myself—for fear of seeming patriotic," he added with a sneer. "Well, when the Derby recruiting scheme came on, there was enough hanky-panky to sicken you. I don't need to tell you that I'm not in love with war or the idea of driving people out like sheep to be slaughtered, but, if you have it, let it hit all classes alike. From the very first, anyone who was strong enough to resist could be sure of getting off. The miners said they'd strike, if anyone tried to conscribe them; the Civil Service decided for itself that no one could get on without it. Well, I thought this wanted shewing up, so I went along to Great Scotland Yard to collect evidence at first hand. I got it right enough. The first men I saw were a hulking lot with a crowd of papers in their hands to declare that they were indispensable to the satisfactory working of their departments—people like that young sot Maitland;—they'd been forbidden even to attest till that day, but the numbers weren't keeping up, so they were turned on to keep things going. (I believe the police and the Merchant Marine were dragged in, too, just to give the thing a fillip.) The doctors hardly troubled to look at me before I was rejected; which was a pity, because I wanted copy about the medical examination; but rejected I was, fair and square, with a certificate and, I suppose, some record on their books. In time the Military Service Bill was passed, and I found myself called up. Now, it may have been an honest blunder.... It's certainly a damned odd coincidence."
As he paused to laugh, I was more than ever struck by his likeness to a grinning skull with a wig on it.
"But the coincidences were only just beginning," he went on. "It was a coincidence that someone should have been nosing round among my papers—I don't know who it was, I hardly ever lock anything, least of all my own front door. But I thought one night that things looked unusual. I have my own taste in untidiness. Then someone let out to O'Rane that I was being watched once more. (If I didn't seem grateful that night, it was because you were devilishly in the way and weren't telling me anything I didn't know before.) Then came another warrant, another search and another arrest. By one of these curious coincidences it was all on the day when O'Rane was due back at Melton, the day when, by one last coincidence, Grayle got back from France earlier than he'd been expected." Beresford raised his hand and brought it resoundingly down on the table. "I can prove nothing!" he cried. "I only say that this succession of coincidences—it's queer. And, if I was a nuisance to Grayle in the early days, he found me very useful later on. My God! what would I not do to get level with that man! Thank the Lord! there's no Christian forgiveness about me. I'll leave that to people with more time on their hands. I've a great deal to get through in a very short space and I'd like to do him in once for myself and three times for Sonia. Is O'Rane taking any steps?"
"There are limits to his powers of forgiveness," I answered reassuringly. "I'm calling on Grayle to-night to suggest that he should retire from the House."
The same light of fanatical hatred came into Beresford's eyes.
"I'd give something to be there!" he cried.
I looked at him and resumed the train of thought which his entrance had interrupted. I knew that he could control himself, if he tried, but I did not know whether he would try.
"I was thinking of asking you, when you came in," I said. "You're in the secret, and I don't want to admit anyone else. You know what happens! Everyone tells everyone else on condition that it doesn't go any farther. But can you be trusted to behave yourself? I want you as a witness, and you may have to call for help, if Grayle tries to fulfil his promise of thrashing me out of the house. But you're not to speak, you're not to attempt any violence, you're not to bring even an umbrella with you. Frankly, you see, I'm not inviting you for your amusement, but for my convenience."
I could see his teeth grating.
"I expect I shall get my amusement out of it," he answered.
"Of course, we may not be able to get into the house, but we'll go together. But you promise not to open your mouth or raise a finger?"
Beresford pushed away the deed-box and held out his hand.
"I promise," he said.
It was a wet, starless night when we arrived in Milford Square at ten o'clock. I dismissed my taxi, rang the bell and waited. There was no answer, and I rang again. It was inconceivable that, to keep me out of the house, Grayle had disconnected the front door bell or given instructions that it was to be disregarded on principle.
"I'm afraid I've brought you on a fool's errand," I said to Beresford, as I rang a third time.
We looked to right and left for a second bell, an area door or any other promise of admission. Two interested maids from a neighbouring house joined our search-party, and a constable flashed his bull's-eye impartially on us all and asked if we had lost anything.
"I'm trying to get into this house," I said, pointing to Grayle's door, "and I can't make anyone hear."
He pondered for a moment and then led us into the Brompton Road.
"There was a light in the studio, when I came on duty. You may be able to get in that way."
We groped through a narrow passage to a wooden door set in a high brick wall. Over our heads I could see the outline of two windows, securely curtained but with a phosphorescent border. There was neither bell nor knocker to the door, but I battered resonantly on the thick, blistered panels with my umbrella. For perhaps two minutes there was no answering sound, and I banged again. This time I was rewarded by the slam of a door, the noise of feet on a stone passage and the rasp of a heavy key. The door opened, and my eyes, which were grown used by now to the darkness, recognised the massive outlines of Guy Bannerman.
"Hullo? Who are you? What d'you want?" he demanded sharply.
I slipped the end of my umbrella into the doorway.
"Is Grayle at home, Guy?" I asked. "I'm Raymond Stornaway, if you don't recognise my voice. I have to see him on very important business."
There can be few minor humiliations so disconcerting as to slam a door and find that it will not close.
"You'll only ruin a good umbrella, Guy," I said. "Listen to reason, man. You remember our talk the last time I was here? You know that Grayle's by way of being cited as a co-respondent?"
"Take your umbrella out!" Guy whispered angrily, feeling for it with his foot, but not daring to detach either hand from the door.
"I've come with a proposal from O'Rane," I said.
The energetic foot relaxed its industry.
"Grayle's given orders that you're not to be admitted," he said.
"I know. And you're enough in his confidence to say whether he's likely to be interested by hearing O'Rane's proposal. I sent him a note this morning, but he didn't see fit to acknowledge it. If he's going to take the same line now, tell me at once, and I'll go away. If, on the other hand, he'll let us in and behave himself, we'll come. I may tell you, as I've already told Grayle, that I don't come to see him for any morbid pleasure which I may derive from our meetings!"
Discretion and discipline did battle within Guy's spirit, and at length he asked, "Who's 'us'?"
"I have Beresford with me," I said.
"I can't let him in," was the prompt reply.
"Then we'll go home, Beresford," I said. "Good-night, Guy. Open the door a fraction of an inch so that I can get my umbrella out, there's a good fellow."
He did as I asked him, though guardedly. I pulled at the umbrella, turned my back and started down the passage, followed reluctantly by Beresford. I walked briskly for fear of spoiling the effect, and, before I had gone ten yards, Guy was running heavily after me.
"If you care to leave a message," he began, bringing a massive hand to rest on my shoulder.
"I don't," I interrupted.
"But, look here, Stornaway——!"
I walked on and, omitting certain obvious intermediate stages, found Beresford and myself shortly afterwards ensconced in arm-chairs before the fire in Bannerman's match-boarded, paper-strewn work-room over the garage at the end of Grayle's garden. Our surroundings were serviceable rather than sybaritic. Oil-cloth, a fur hearth-rug and a couple of Japanese mats covered the floor; the walls were concealed, half by stout blue volumes of the Parliamentary Debates, half by a map of Canada, another of British South Africa and a third of the Western Front. A double writing-table stood in the middle of the room with a sloping desk, an oil reading-lamp and three numbered deed-boxes. There was a reek of petrol from a private and probably illegitimate pyramid of leaking tins, which had projected themselves upstairs from the garage.
Guy produced some cigars and left us to take care of ourselves while he reconnoitred the house.
"I've let you in on my own responsibility," he said, as he opened the door leading into the garden. "Whether he'll see you or not I can't tell."
"I think he will see us," I murmured to Beresford, when we were alone.
I for one had satisfied my intellectual cravings for Canadian geography, when we heard steps approaching on the gravel. A moment later Grayle was framed, though he had to stoop for it, in the doorway. He looked at me with a frown which deepened at sight of Beresford.
"Well?" he demanded.
"Good evening, Grayle," I said. "I've come with a message from O'Rane."
"What are you doing here?" he asked Beresford.
The promise was honourably observed, and there was no answer.
"I brought him as a witness in case you shewed any tendency to be violent," I said. "Grayle, O'Rane thinks that, the sooner you give up your seat in the House, the better. For what it's worth, I agree with him."
He was still standing in the doorway with his fingers on the handle. Clearly he expected something more.
"Is that all?" he asked.
"All," I said, as I got up from my chair.
"Then what the hell d'you want to come here for, wasting my time?" he thundered. "You told Bannerman you'd got a proposal to make!"
"O'Rane proposes that you should retire from public life," I explained. "I always think it's better to do a thing voluntarily than under compulsion."
On that he left the doorway and came into the room.
"This is a threat, is it?" he asked, looking down on me with arms akimbo.
"A forecast," I substituted. "I see from the papers that you may be invited to join the Government. You will never join the Government, Grayle, or, if you do, you'll leave it before you have time to find out where your office is. If you retire voluntarily, you may live to an honoured old age; if you force O'Rane to go through with his petition, I'm afraid you'll have a very ugly fall."
Grayle loosened his belt, though with too much deliberate preoccupation to suggest that he was about to use it as an argument in favour of our retirement; then he unbuttoned his tunic, removed a bundle of papers from a woollen khaki waistcoat and transferred them to one of his outside breast-pockets.
"Do you know? your forecast does not strike me as exhaustive," he observed, as he settled his belt in place once more. "As a preliminary, however, does O'Rane propose to go on with the divorce?"
"Frankly, I can't tell you," I said. "He would like to consult his wife's wishes. I make no bones about telling you, Grayle, that you get very little out of any proposed arrangement. If she wants a divorce, your—fair name, shall we call it?—is smirched, whatever you do; but I fancy, unless you find your parliamentary duties too exacting for your enfeebled health—and that within one week from to-night,—your fair name will be smirched whether she wants a divorce or not. I can't say what's in her mind, of course, but, if you accept defeat at once, there's a fifty per cent. chance that you'll escape a scandal in which, when all's said and done, you don't cut a very gallant figure. By the way, I have to have your answer to-night."
"My answer's 'no.'"
It was given without hesitation and, so far as I could see, without bluff. I have been connected with large commercial enterprises long enough to be a tolerable judge.
"I'll let O'Rane know at once," I said, getting up again and motioning Beresford to do the same. "It will be an unsavoury case, Grayle."
"Which is presumably the reason he's so unwilling to go on with it," Grayle sneered. "But make no mistake who comes out of it worst. He hasn't bothered to think. Your—proposal I reject with thanks, but I'll make another. You're quite right in thinking that I would sooner not be mixed up in these proceedings any more; if O'Rane will give me a written undertaking to drop them here—and—now and never to revive them, we can let it rest at that."
Beresford had not promised to refrain from laughter, and I excused it as the only possible comment on the offer.
"Come along," I said to him. "We're wasting the nation's time; and the nation won't have the benefit of it much longer."
Grayle shrugged his shoulders and led the way to the door on the lane.
"So be it!" he said. "Yet mine was a fairer bargain than yours. There was at least a quid pro quo."
"I'm afraid I don't see it."
"Then I'm afraid your principals haven't instructed you very thoroughly," he answered impatiently. "From your general tone to me, you evidently think that I've behaved very badly, that it was my fault, that the sympathy of the court will be entirely with O'Rane and his wife. It may be with O'Rane," he added meaningly. "I'll tell you at once that I propose to defend the action and, though it's only guess-work, I shall be very much surprised if O'Rane gets a decree.... If he likes washing his wife's dirty linen in public, that's his affair, but what seems to have been overlooked is the attitude of Mrs. O'Rane throughout. To begin with, I can call witnesses to prove that O'Rane repeatedly proclaimed that he wouldn't raise a finger to keep his wife, if she preferred to risk her happiness with another man. She used to say she wouldn't stay with him, if she was unhappy; I can produce witnesses who'll testify to that, too. Any pretence, therefore, that I burst in on a happily married couple and forced them apart is historically untrue. And this will come out in court. But what matters more from the point of view of Mrs. O'Rane's reputation is the evidence—I think you were with me, Stornaway, when she rang me up one night at the House. What you've overlooked in your haste to condemn me, what O'Rane's overlooked in his haste to save his wife's reputation is the part played by his wife. I'll accept full responsibility for my share of whatever's happened, but I'm afraid you'll find it won't ease your position. Mrs. O'Rane's letters to me, which will, of course, be read in court, prove that it was she and she alone——"
It was not difficult to imagine the end of the sentence. Grayle spoke with the bored indifference of a man who has had unwelcome attentions thrust upon him, who has tolerated them as long as he can, but who at last and at the risk of wounding an importunate mistress.... I never heard it, though, because Beresford, unpardonably if excusably forgetting his promise of silence and immobility, had twitched my umbrella from my grasp and whirled it backhanded into Grayle's face with a cry of,
"You cad! you cad! you bloody cad!"