"It's no good thinking that we can settle it off-hand with a few thousand pounds of strike pay, Strummery," said the Home Secretary impatiently, "because we can't. You have to know the conditions to see how that is. If there's a strike, the article has to be supplied from somewhere else at more money, and every one except those who want to strike keep on very much as before. But here, by God, they have us all along the line! Anything from fifty to a hundred thousand miners less required at one end, and anything from five to ten thousand coal carters at the other. And between? And dependent on each lot all through?" His ever-ready arm emphasised the situation by a comprehensive sweep. "You've heard say that coal is the life-blood of the country, happen?" he added. "Well, we're the heart."
"What do you suggest, then?"
"It's all a matter of money. If it can be done we must make up the difference; buy it, pay for it, and store it. There are the dockyards, the barracks, and we could open depôts here and in all the big towns. In that way we could spread it over as long a period as we liked. Then there's export. I think that has touched its limit for the time, but we might find it cheaper in the end to stimulate it more."
"Yes; but what about this French business? Are you allowing for that in your estimate?"
"What French business?"
"The French tax," said the Premier impatiently, pointing to the open Scythe. "You've seen about it, haven't you?"
He had not. He snatched up the paper, muttering as he read the first few lines that he had glanced through The Tocsin before he came out, and that had been all. His voice became inaudible as he read on. When he had finished he was very pale. He flung the paper down and walked to the window, and stood there looking out without a word. The declaration of the coal war had filled him with smouldering rage; the Paris telegram had effectually chilled it. Before, he had felt anger; now he felt something that, expressed in words, was undistinguishable from fear.
The men whom he had asked to meet him there were beginning to arrive. They had already heard Vossit and Chadwing pass upstairs talking. There was a step in the hall outside that could only belong to Tirrel. He had not been summoned, but, as Mr Tubes had anticipated, a few others were beginning to drop in. Guppling and two men whom he had met on the doorstep came in as Mr Tubes was finishing the Paris news.
"It's not much good talking about it now," he said, turning from the window, "but if I had known of this, or even that the other would be out, I should have come here myself without bringing all these chaps down too. Not but what they'd have come, though. But when I wrote to them I'd just got the information, you understand, and it was thought that Hampden wouldn't be doing anything for a week at least."
"He was too clever for you again?" said Strummery vindictively, as he rose to go upstairs.