"Wait one minute, father," cried the girl. "Harold, did you see Lady Jenny?"
"Yes, Brenda, I have seen her. It is all right; she can manage Van Zwieten. No, I won't tell you now. She particularly wishes to do that herself."
[CHAPTER XIV.]
WHAT VAN ZWIETEN KNEW.
The clever criminal who wishes to escape the law does not seek provincial neighborhoods or foreign climes. He remains in London; for him no place is so safe. There a man can disappear from one district and reappear in another without danger of recognition by unwelcome friends. Of course the pertinacity of the police may do much to complicate matters, but the history of crime goes to show very clearly that they are by no means infallible. But about them Van Zwieten troubled himself very little. Certainly he changed his name to Jones, for his own, in those anti-Dutch times, smacked overmuch of Holland. But for the rest his disguise was slight. From St. James's he changed his address to a part of Westminster where none of his West End friends were likely to come across him; and as Mr. Jones he carried on his plotting against the Empire with every sense of security. And in such security he saw only a strong proof of John Bull's stupidity. An Englishman would have seen in it a glorious example of freedom.
In a side street Van Zwieten, alias Mr. Jones, dwelt on the first floor of a quiet house let out in lodgings by the quietest of widows. And Mrs. Hicks had a good opinion of her lodger. It is true he was somewhat erratic in his movements. For days he would go away--into the country, he said--and even when in town would be absent for many hours at a stretch. But he paid well and regularly, was not exacting about either his food or attendance, and behaved altogether in the most becoming manner. He certainly saw a great number of people, and they called on him principally at night, but Mr. Jones had kindly informed her how he was writing a great book on London, and how these people were gathering materials for him. Had Mrs. Hicks known the kind of materials they were collecting, she might or might not have been astonished. Certainly she would have been but little the wiser.
A decent, if narrow-minded little person, Mrs. Hicks knew little of politics and still less of spies. These latter--on those few occasions when they had presented themselves to her mind--she pictured as foreign persons given to meeting by candlelight with mask and cloaks and daggers. That the kind gentleman who was so polite to her and so kind to her fatherless children should be a spy assuredly never entered Mrs. Hick's head.
Van Zwieten--it is more convenient to call him so--sat in his rooms one night in the second week in October. His face wore a satisfied smile, for a great event had taken place. Free State and Transvaal, under the sapient guidance of their Presidents, had thrown down the gage of defiance to England, and the Federal armies were overrunning Natal. Scarse and his following were dreadfully shocked at this sample of simplicity on the part of their "innocent lamb." It was all out of keeping with Mr. Kruger's pacific intentions as extolled by them. Indeed, they found it necessitated a change of tactics on their part, so they right-about faced and deplored that war should thus have been forced on an honest, God-fearing man. In all sincerity they tried to divide the country on the question of the war; and in Brussels Leyds was doing his best to hound on the Continental Powers to attacking England. Altogether Van Zwieten was very well satisfied with the outlook. What with the unprepared state of the British in Natal, Leyds on the Continent, Scarse and his friends in London, it seemed as though the Boers, by treachery and cunning and the due display of armament--as formidable as it was wholly unlooked for--would come safely out of the desperate adventure to which they had committed themselves. Van Zwieten's part was to send off certain final information to Leyds for transmission to Pretoria, and then to leave England.
But Van Zwieten was not going out to fight for his adopted country. Oh, dear, no! He had ostensibly thrown up his appointment in the Transvaal--which in truth he had never held--in great indignation before the war began. Proclaiming himself as a neutral person anxious to reconcile the English and the Boers, he had solicited and obtained the post of war correspondent on a Little England newspaper called The Morning Planet. This paper, whose columns were filled with the hysterical hooting of Scarse and his friends, was only too glad to employ a foreigner instead of an Englishman, and Van Zwieten received good pay, and an order to go to the front at once.
Now he was occupied in burning a mass of papers, gathering up the loose ends of his innumerable conspiracies, and looking forward to a speedy departure. All his spies had been paid and dismissed. He had one more letter to despatch to the patriotic Leyds, and then he was free to turn his attention to his private affairs.