Henry put them up.
“It's all right, man. It's only Beechtree,” said another voice, after a moment's inspection, and Henry, though he loved not the Morning Post, blessed its correspondent.
“Good Lord, you're right.... What are you doing here, Beechtree? Is your paper in this damned Republican plot, as well as Sinn Fein, Bolsheviks, Germans, and the Pope? I wouldn't put it past the British Bolshevist to have a finger in it——”
“Indeed, no,” said Henry. “You are quite mistaken, Macdermott. This plot is being run by armament profiteers, White Russia, and Protestant ministers. They're all down here doing it now. I am tracking them. And His Holiness, you remember, sent an encouraging message to the Assembly——”
“The sort of flummery he would encourage.... I beg your pardon, Beechtree. We will not discuss religion: not to-night. Time is short. How did you get into this rat-trap? And whom, precisely, are you tracking?”
“Through a trappon in an archway off the Passage de Monnetier. And I am tracking Wilbraham, Sir John Levis, M. Kratzky, and a Protestant clergyman, who all preceded me through it. But I don't know in the least where they have got to. There are so many ramifications in this affair. I took it for a single tunnel, but it seems to be a regular system.”
“It is,” said Garth. “It extends on the other side of the water too. We got into it this evening through that house in the Place Cornavin where Macdermott was bilked by a Sinn Feiner.”
“We had our suspicions of that house ever since,” Macdermott went on; “so we went exploring this evening, and by the luck of God they'd gone out and left the door on the latch, so we slipped in and searched around, and found a trap-door in a cupboard—where they'd have shoved me down if they hadn't given up the idea half-way. It lets you down into a passage just like this, that runs down to the water and comes out in the courtyard of one of those tumble-down old pigeon-cotes by the Quai du Seujet. We came out there, and then tried over this side, through a trap by the Molard jetty I'd noticed before, and it led us here. There are dozens of these trappons on both sides. Lots of them are inside houses. I always thought they led only to cellars.... As to your four chaps, wherever they've got to, no doubt they're exploring too. Wilbraham in a plot! Likely.”
“It is,” said Henry. “Very likely indeed. There are plenty of facts about Wilbraham you don't know. I've been finding them out for several years. I shall lay them before Committee 9 to-morrow.”
The other two looked at him with the good-natured pity due to the correspondent of the British Bolshevist.