The agent came back with the substance, though not with the expletives of this reply, and the secretary of the Anglo-Saxon Exchange, pulling out his watch, said briefly:
"Well, there's no help for it. We must send in the workmen at once, and if he wants to sue he can sue."
In an hour a considerable body of healthy but somnolent men slouched into the building, their chief showed his written orders, and the remainder of the afternoon was spent in removing benches, opening up the floor, barricading the door, cutting off the electric light from the main (nothing is more dangerous than to leave such connections during repairs), digging a deep trench in front of the back entrance, and in other ways setting about improvements that were doubtless necessary, but that would make it highly inconvenient for any considerable body to gather within for political or for any other purposes.
The agent, after repeated conversations with Mr. Bailey, each more conciliatory than the last, promised and despatched a cheque for £25 on the distinct understanding that no proceedings should follow; and when the agent had recovered this sum (as he did with difficulty) from the Anglo-Saxon Exchange, the expenses of that great financial corporation, in labour and in compensation, were, I regret to say, considerably over £100.
Mr. Bailey, seated by his lonely but warm and brilliant hearth, held the cheque for £25 daintily between his finger and thumb. For a moment it seemed as though he would have put it in the fire, then with the subtle smile of the fanatic, he thought better of the business; he endorsed the cheque and sent it, with a Latin motto pinned on, to a Jew-baiting organisation in Vienna; a foul gang of which he knew nothing whatsoever save that he had read its address in one of those vile Continental rags from which he derived so many of his prejudices, and whose authority was the origin of his repeated falsehoods.
It had been arranged that Mr. Clutterbuck should pick up Mr. Bailey on the way, just upon eight o'clock, and drive him to the hall.
He had been late so often that Mr. Bailey was expecting some delay, but when the quarter had struck, he grew anxious; and at twenty past he would wait no longer. He had the good luck to get a taxi at the corner of the square, but even so he would be late. He began to have doubts, and as he dashed up northwards to Mickleton those doubts in that diseased brain of his rapidly became certainties. Mr. Clutterbuck had been nobbled: Mr. Clutterbuck would not appear. Asleep or ill, or overturned in some ditch, or accidentally locked up in some room, the ex-Member for Mickleton would not be in Mickleton that night. Such were the wild fancies which formed in the fanatic's imagination. The truth was simple and needed no such extravaganza of melodrama as William Bailey concocted within himself.
Charlie Fitzgerald had had the curiosity to stroll into the old constituency that morning; he had come back to the centre of town from Mickleton by two. He had had lunch, of course, with the Duke of Battersea, who depended every day more and more upon the young fellow's conversation and wit. Mr. Bailey's latest insanity, which Charlie Fitzgerald happened to have heard of during his visit to Mickleton in the morning, was naturally touched upon in their conversation; they laughed at the cunning which had hired Mr. Clay's shed, and they discussed the chances of the extempore meeting, but the happy young Irishman was not without a sense of duty; he would not leave his employer unaided, nor did the Duke of Battersea press him too eagerly to remain.
By half-past four, therefore, he was back at The Plâs, ready with his cheery voice to give Mr. Clutterbuck energy for the evening's business. He suggested a run round in one of the motors before going straight into town; there was a fine heartening wind from the south-west, with heavy clouds; it was just the afternoon to take an hour or two of the air before turning in after dark to London and duty. The suggestion was excellent, as were most of Charlie's suggestions, and Mr. Clutterbuck, carefully rolling up the speech that Mr. Bailey had written for him, and thrusting it into his breast pocket, put on his great fur coat and gloves, and ordered one of the smaller cars to come round.