Mystery at Geneva Part 10

"You're _too_ good, Lord John! _How_ grateful we shall all be! You shall tell us _all_ about how we ought to do it, and give us some really _good_ mottoes!... I remember helping with branches of the National Service League before the war, and they had such a nice motto--'The path of duty is the way to safety.' ... _That_ would be a good Union motto, don't you think? Or '_Festina lente_'--for we mustn't be impatient, must we? Or, 'Hands across the sea!' For _nothing_ is so important as keeping our _entente_ with France intact, is it.... The people of this country will not stand any weakening ... _you_ know.... My husband reads me that out of the paper at breakfast.... There he is ... Frederick, isn't this good of Lord John...."

24

Professor Arnold Inglis, that most gentle, high-minded and engaging of scholars, who most unfittingly represented part of a wild, hot, uncultured, tropical continent on the League, strolled out after lunch before the meeting of Committee 9 to see the flowers and fruit in the market-place. He was sad, because, like his fellow-delegate and friend, Lord John Lester, he hated this sort of disturbance. Like Lord John, he resented this violence which was a.s.saulting the calm and useful progress of the a.s.sembly, and was torn with anxiety for the fate of the three delegates. He wished he had Lord John with him this afternoon, that they might discuss the situation, but he had not seen him since he had left the a.s.sembly that morning, so characteristically impatient at the prospect of the appointment of Committee 9.

Professor Inglis stood by a fruit-stall and looked down absently at the lovely ma.s.s of brilliant fruit and vegetables that lay on it.

Presently he became aware that some one at his side was pouring forth a stream of not unbeautiful language in a low, frightened voice.

Looking round, he saw a small, ugly, malaria-yellow woman, gazing at him with frightened black eyes and clasped hands, and talking rapidly in a curious blend of ancient and modern Greek. What she appeared to be saying was:--

"I am persecuted by Turks; I beg you to succour me!"

"But what," said Professor Inglis, also speaking in a blend, but with more of the ancient tongue in it that had hers, for he was more at home in cla.s.sical than in modern Greek, "can I do? Can you not appeal to the police?"

"I dare not," she replied. "I am in a minority in my house; I am an unprotected serving-woman, and there are three Turks in the same house who leave me no peace. Even now one of them is waiting for me with a stick because I had a misfortune and broke his hookah."

"It is certainly," said the Professor, "a case for the police. If you do not like to inform them, I will do so myself. Tell me where you live."

"Just round the corner here, in a house in that pa.s.sage," she said.

"Come with me and see for yourself, sir, if you doubt my word as to my sufferings."

Professor Inglis hesitated for a moment, not wishing to be drawn into city brawls, but when she added, "I appealed to you, sir, because I have been told how you are always on the side of the unprotected, and also love the Greeks," his heart melted in him, and he forgot that, though he did indeed love the ancient Greeks, he did not very much care for the moderns of that race (such, for example, as M. Lapoulis, the Greek delegate), and only remembered that here did indeed seem to be a very Unprotected Minority (towards which persons his heart was always soft), and that the Minority was a woman, poor, ill-favoured, and malarial, talking a Greek more ancient than was customary with her race, and persecuted by Turks, which nation Professor Inglis, in spite of his League mind, could not induce himself to like. All these things he recollected as he stood hesitating by the fruit stall, and he reflected also that, until he had in some degree verified the woman's tale, he would not care to trouble the already much burdened police with it; so, with a little sigh, he turned to the poor woman and told her he would come with her to her house and see for himself, and would then a.s.sist her to take steps to protect herself. She thanked him profusely, and led the way to the pa.s.sage which she had mentioned.

25

Chivalry, pity for the unprotected, love of the Greek tongue, dislike of Turks--by all these quite creditable emotions was Professor Inglis betrayed, as you may imagine, to his fate.

26

Henry Beechtree, when he left the a.s.sembly Hall, had, for his part, fish to fry in the Secretariat, and thither he made his rapid way. He had arranged to meet Miss Doris Wembley, the secretary of Charles Wilbraham, that morning in her chief's room, and then to lunch with her.

Henry was getting to know Miss Wembley very well. It seemed to him as if he had always known her, as, indeed, he had. He knew the things she would say before she said them. He knew which were the subjects she would expand on, and which would land her, puzzled and uninterested, in inward non-comprehension and verbal a.s.sent. She was a nice girl, a jolly girl, an efficient girl, and a very pretty girl. She liked Henry, whom she thought amusing, shabby, and queer.

They began, of course, by talking of the fresh disappearances.

"We've got bets in the Secretariat on who will be the next," she told him. "I've put my money on Branting. I don't know why, but I somehow feel he'll go soon. But some people say it'll be the S.G. himself....

Isn't it too awful for their wives, poor things? Poor little Madame Chang! They say she's being simply wonderful."

"Wonderful," repeated Henry. "That's what widows are, isn't it? But is it, I wonder, enough to make one wonderful that one's husband should disappear alive? You see, they may not be dead, these poor delegates; they may exist, hidden away somewhere."

"Oh, dear, yes, I hope so. Isn't it all too weird? Have you _any_ theories, Mr. Beechtree?"

Henry looked non-committal and said that doubtless every one in Geneva had their private suspicions (often, for that matter, made public), and that he was no exception. He then turned the conversation on to Wilbraham's father-in-law, who was staying so privately in Geneva, and they had much fruitful talk on this and other subjects.

27

The a.s.sembly, having elected the committee, and listened to a long speech from a Persian prince about the horrors of modern warfare, and a poem of praise from an eminent Italian Swiss on the beauties of the poet Dante, whose birthday was approaching, broke up for lunch.

The committee (which was to be called Committee 9) was to meet at the Secretariat that afternoon and consider what steps should next be taken. It was a rather large committee, because nearly every one had been anxious to be on it. It consisted of delegates from France, Great Britain, Italy, Norway, Central Africa, Sweden, Belgium, Holland, Spain, Albania, Serbia, Brazil, Chili, Bolivia, Panama, Paraguay, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Greece, Poland, Lithuania, and Haiti.

Its sessions were to be in private, in spite of the strongly expressed contrary desire of Lord John Lester. The chairman was the delegate for Paraguay. It was expected that he would carefully and skilfully guide the lines on which the committee should work so that the regrettable suspicions which had accidentally fallen on certain Latin Americans should be diverted into other and more deserving channels.

28

The proceedings of the first meeting of Committee No. 9 can be best reported in the words of the a.s.sembly Journal for the following day.

This journal, with its terse and yet detailed accounts of current happenings, its polite yet lucid style, and its red-hot topicality (for it is truly a journal), makes admirable reading for those who like their literature up-to-date. Those who attend the meetings of the a.s.sembly are, as a matter of fact, excellently well-provided by the enterprise of the Secretariat with literature. A delegated or a journalist's pigeon-hole is far better than a circulating library.

New every morning is the supply, and those who, in their spare hours, like a nice lie down and a nice read (all in two languages) shall have for their entertainment the a.s.sembly Journal for the day, the Verbatim Record of the last meetings of the a.s.sembly and Committees, selected press opinions of the affair (these are often very entertaining, and journalists approach them with the additional interest engendered by the hope that the comments they themselves have sent home to their papers may have been selected for quotation: in pa.s.sing it may be observed that Henry Beechtree had, in this matter, no luck), and all kinds of doc.u.ments dealing with every kind of matter--the Traffic in Women, Children, and Opium, the admission of a new State to the League, international disputes, disagreeable telegrams from one country about another, the cost of living in Geneva, the organisation of International Statistics, International Health, or International Education, the Economic Weapon of the League, the status or the frontiers of a Central European state, the desirability of a greater or a less great publicity, messages from the Esperanto Congress, and so on and so forth; every kind of taste is, in fact, catered for.

To quote, then, the Journal for the day after the first meeting of the Committee for Dealing with the Disappearance of Delegates:--

"Committee No. IX. met yesterday, Wednesday, Sept. 8th, at 3.30 p.m., under the chairmanship of M. Croza (Paraguay).

"The Chairman pointed out that the agenda before the Committee fell under several heads:--

"1. Deprecation of baseless suspicions and malicious aspersions.

"2. Investigation into possible or probable motives for the a.s.saults.

"3. Consideration of the adoption of precautionary measures to safeguard in future the persons of delegates.

"4. Organisation of complete house to house search of the city of Geneva by police.

"5. Consideration of various suspicions based on reason and common sense.

"In order to carry on these lines of inquiry, five sub-committees were appointed, each of which would report to the plenary committee day by day.

"All the sittings of the sub-committees would be in private, as the publicity which had been demanded by one of the delegates from Central Africa would vitiate, in this case, the effectiveness of the inquiry.

"Before the sub-committees separated, several members addressed the committee. M. Gomez (Panama) proposed that special attention should be given to the fact that Geneva at all times, but particularly during the sessions of the a.s.sembly, was a centre of pestilential societies, among whom were to be found in large numbers Socialists, Bolshevists, Freemasons, and Jews.

In his opinion, the headquarters of all these societies should be raided. Above all, it should be remembered that the delegates were all brothers in friendship, and as such were above the suspicion of any but the basest minds.