“But why?” said William earnestly. “I’m int’rested. I’d like to go canvassing too. I know a lot ’bout the rackshunaries—you know, the ole Conservies—I’d like to go callin’ ’em names, too. I’d like——”
“You may not attend the Liberal canvassers’ meeting, William,” said William’s uncle firmly.
From that moment William’s sole aim in life was to attend the Liberal canvassers’ meeting. He and Ginger discussed ways and means. They made an honest and determined effort to impart to William an adult appearance, making a frown with burnt cork, and adding whiskers of matting which adhered to his cheeks by means of glue. Optimists though they were, they were both agreed that the chances of William’s admittance, thus disguised, into the meeting of the Liberal canvassers was but a faint one.
So William evolved another plan.
*****
The dining-room in which William’s uncle was to hold his meeting was an old-fashioned room. A hatch, never used, opened from it on to an old stone passage.
The meeting began.
William’s uncle arrived and took his seat at the head of the table with his back to the hatch. William’s uncle was rather short-sighted and rather deaf. The other Liberal canvassers filed in and took their places round the table.
William’s uncle bent over his papers. The other Liberal canvassers were gazing with widening eyes at the wall behind William’s uncle. The hatch slowly opened. A dirty oval gilt frame appeared, and was by no means soundlessly attached to the top of the open hatch. Through the aperture of the frame appeared a snub-nosed, freckled, rough-haired boy with a dirty face and a forbidding expression.
William didn’t read sensational fiction for nothing. In “The Sign of Death,” which he had finished by the light of a candle at 11.30 the previous evening, Rupert the Sinister, the international spy, had watched a meeting of masked secret service agents by the means of concealing himself in a hidden chamber in the wall, cutting out the eye of a portrait and applying his own eye to the hole. William had determined to make the best of slightly less favourable circumstances.