CHAPTER XVI
DAWSON STRIKES
It was a little past noon, and Dawson had much work to do before he could be free to speed north by the midnight train. First he skipped across to the Yard and into the private room of his firm friend the Chief. To him he showed the potent proclamation and recounted the methods of its extraction. "I thought that I was in a company of jackals," said he at the end; "but I was wrong—two of them were lions."
"We should be in a bad way if there were no lions," commented the Chief. "Those two, and another who is dead, saved South Africa; there are one or two more, but not many. What shall you do with this?"
"We will set it up on our own private press, and run off a couple of hundred placards. The secret must not leak out; I am playing for surprises."
The Chief struck a bell, the order was given, and Dawson's priceless proclamation vanished into the lower regions.
"Now?" inquired the Chief.
"Chatham," explained Dawson, "to pick up my men—and to get my uniform." When telling the story, Dawson again and again described to me his uniform, with which I happened by family association to be intimately acquainted. He did not spare me a badge or a button. I am convinced that no girl wore her first ball-dress with half the palpitating pride with which Dawson surveyed himself in his captain's kit. When I chaffed him gently, and hinted that the stars of a captain were cheaply come by in these days, he had one retort always ready, "Not in the Red Marines." He did not value his office of Chief Detective Inspector a rap beside that temporary rank of Captain of Red Marines. He had, you see, been a private in that proud exclusive Corps, and its glory for him outshone all human glories.
He flew away to Chatham as fast as a deliberate railway service permitted, and found upon arrival that an urgent telegram from the Adjutant-General had preceded him. Dawson was shown at once to the Commandant's quarters, and there explained his requirements. "Eighty men, two sergeants, and a regular lieutenant. Not one of less than five years' service. Also a sea-service kit with a captain's stars for me. The mess-sergeant will fit me out. He trades in second-hand uniforms."
"You have the advantage of me, Mr. Dawson," said the Commandant, smiling, "in your profound knowledge of the functions of a mess sergeant."