"Go carefully," urged Bertrand. "I suggested you for an interpretership in France or Russia, whichever they wanted."
"I wonder how long they'll take to make up their minds?" O'Rane asked, with a touch of impatience. "I applied for a commission before I left England. I—I can't wait, sir."
"My dear boy ...!"
"Oh, I know it's very childish, sir," O'Rane answered, with a laugh. "But I'm desperate."
Bertrand, who knew of his financial troubles, raised his eyebrows and said nothing. The next evening we had our informal recruiting committee-meeting and divided the home counties into twelve districts, pledging each member to gather in five hundred recruits within a week. The Government machinery was slow to gather motion, and patriotism and restlessness combined to make of every man an amateur Napoleon. As I looked round my uncle's dining-room, one feature of O'Rane's committee was noticeable as illustrating a simple philosophy he had held in boyhood. On his right sat Sinclair, whose adherence had been won more than fifteen years ago in the matter of a forged copy of Greek Alcaics for the Shelton Prize; on his left I recognized Brent, elected to an All Souls' Fellowship shortly after O'Rane had retired from the contest; at the foot of the table was James Morris of Ennismore Gardens, Mexico City Gaol and elsewhere. The others I had not met before, but their sole common characteristic seemed to be that at some period of their careers David O'Rane had made himself indispensable to them all.
"I want a week of your undivided time," said the Chairman. "Each one will have a district, a car and a doctor. I want each to raise five hundred men, and you'll find it easiest to borrow a system, which Mr. Sinclair can explain to you, of getting hold of the enthusiasts and making each one bring in another, snowball fashion. You're on strong ground if you're in first yourselves. Is there anybody here who won't help me?"
The house—at full strength—went into committee. With what he described as poetic justice and I preferred to call malice, O'Rane gave me the town of Easterly, which is known to history for its anti-Government riots in the South African War and to the Disarmament League for the flattering reception accorded to five years of peace propaganda. As I could only address evening meetings, when my work at the Admiralty was over, Bertrand undertook to canvass the district by day in such time as he could spare from turning Princes Gardens into a hospital.
"How soon do we start, Raney?" I asked, when the committee was dispersed, and we were walking upstairs to bed.
"To-morrow," he answered. "Five hundred multiplied by twelve, six thousand. Most of them will take a bullet in their brain; you can't begin that sort of thing too soon."
"You're in a cheerful mood," I observed.