Mystery at Geneva Part 14

"Well, let's come along and look. We'll each take a different pa.s.sage; we'll explore every avenue, like Cabinet Ministers. I'll go straight ahead; one of you two take that right-hand road, and the other the next turning, whenever it comes. We'll each get out where and how we can. Come on."

Garth turned up to the right. Henry went on with Macdermott for some way, till another turning branched off, running left.

"Ah, there's yours," said the Ulster delegate. "I shall keep straight on, whatever alluring avenues open on either side to tempt me.

To-morrow (if we get out of this) we'll bring a gang of police down and do the thing thoroughly. Good luck, Beechtree. Don't scrag honest civil servants or good clergymen on sight. And don't let old Kratzky scrag you. Politically he's on the right side (that's why he'd want to scrag you, and quite right, too), but personally he's what you might call a trifle unprincipled, and that's why he'd do it as soon as look at you."

38

Henry walked alone again. The pa.s.sage oozed water. The silence was chilly and deep. Against it and far above it, occasional sounds beat, as the world's sounds beat downwards into graves.

Geneva was amazing. How many people knew that it was under-run by this so intricate tunnel system? Did the town authorities know? Surely yes.

And, knowing, had they not thought, when the recent troubles began, to explore these avenues? (How that horrid phrase always stuck in one's mind; one could not get away from it, as many a statesman, many an orator daily proved.) But possibly they had explored them with no result. Possibly Sub-section 4 (Organisation of Search) of Committee 9 knew all about them. What that sub-section did not yet know was that Charles Wilbraham, hand in glove with autocrat Russia, armament kings, and the Calvinist church, lurked and plotted in the avenues by night, like the spider in her web waiting for flies.

There were turnings here and there, to one side or the other, but Henry kept a straight course.

At last he was brought up sharp, nearly running his face into a rough clay wall, and above him he saw a trap-door. Here, then, was his exit.

The door was only just above his head; he pushed at it with his hands; it gave not at all.

After all, one would expect a trap-door to be bolted. He wondered if it would be of any use to knock. Did it give on to a street, a courtyard, or a house?

He rapped on it with the end of his electric torch, softly and then loudly. He went on rapping, and knew the fear that a.s.sails the a.s.saulter of impregnable, unyielding silence, the panic of him who calls aloud in an empty house and is answered only by the tiny sounds of creaking, scuffling, and whispering that cause the skin to creep, the blood to curdle, the marrow to freeze, the heart to stop, and the spirit to be poured out like water. Strange and horrid symptoms!

Curdled blood, frozen marrow, unbeating heart ... who first discovered that this is what occurs to these organs when fear a.s.saults the brain? Have physiologists said so, or is it a mere amateur guess at truth, another of the foolish things "they" say?

In these speculations Henry's mind engaged while he stood in the black bowels of the earth and beat for entry at the world's closed door.

At last he heard sounds as of advancing steps. Bolts were drawn heavily back; the trap-door was raised, and a face peered down; a brownish face with a small black moustache and a smooth skin stretched tightly over fat. A glimmer of light struggled with the darkness. "Chi c'e?" said a harsh voice, whispering.

"Sst! son'io." Henry thought this the best answer. His nerves had relaxed on hearing the Italian language, a tongue not spoken habitually by Wilbraham, M. Kratzky, Sir John Levis, or Calvinist pastors. It is a rea.s.suring tongue; one feels, but how erroneously, that those speaking it cannot be very far out of the path of human goodness. And to Henry it was partly native. The very sight of the plump, smooth, Italian face made him feel at ease.

The face peered down into the darkness, and a stump of candle burning in a saucer threw a wavering beam on to Henry's face looking up.

"Gia," the voice a.s.sented to Henry's rather obvious statement. "Voul scendere, forse?"

Henry said he did, and a stool was handed down to him. In another minute he stood on the stone floor of a largish cellar, almost completely blocked with casks and wood stacks. From it steps ran up to another floor.

The owner of the plump Italian face had a small plump figure clad in shirt, trousers, and slippers. His bright dark eyes stared at his visitor, heavy with sleep. He had obviously been roused from bed.

Surprise, however, he did not show; probably he was used to it.

He talked to Henry in Italian.

"You roused me from sleep. You have a message, perhaps? You wish something done?"

Henry, not knowing whether this Italian Swiss knew more than he ought to know, or whether he was merely a.s.sisting the police investigations, answered warily, "No message. But I have been down there on the business, and had to return this way. I must now go as quickly as possible in to the town."

He added, at a venture, glancing sideways at the other, "Signor Wilbraham was down there with his colleagues."

The man started, and the saucer wavered in his hand. Signor Wilbraham was obviously either to him a suspect name, or else his master and leader in intrigue. He was frightened of Wilbraham.

"Where is he now?" he asked. "Will he come here?"

"I think not. Be at ease. He has disappeared in another direction.

Have the kindness to show me the way out."

The man led the way to the steps and up them, into a tiny ground-floor bedroom, and through that into a pa.s.sage. As he unbolted a side door, Henry said to him, "You know something about Signor Wilbraham, then?"

The plump little figure shrugged.

"A good deal too much, certainly."

"Good," said Henry. "Later you shall tell what you know. Don't be afraid. He can't hurt you."

As to that the raised eyebrows showed doubt. Wilbraham, it was apparent, inspired a deep mistrust. The fat little man was shivering, either from fear or cold or thwarted sleep, as he opened the door for Henry to pa.s.s out.

"The will of G.o.d will be done," was what he regretfully said, "unless his dear Mother can by any means avert it. For me, I escape, if necessary, where they cannot find me. Good-night, Signore."

He shut the door softly behind Henry, who found himself outside a block of old houses at the lake end of the Rue Muzy, under a setting moon, as the city clocks struck two. The night, which had seemed to Henry already so long, was yet, as nights of action go, young.

Henry, as he walked homewards by the lake's edge, wondered where and in what manner Macdermott and Garth had emerged, or would emerge, to the earth's face.

The earth's face! Never, on any of the lovely nights in that most lovely place, had it seemed to Henry fairer than it seemed this night, as he walked along the Quai des Eaux Vives, the clean, cool air filling his lungs and gently fanning his damp forehead, the dark and shining water lapping softly against its stone bounds. How far better was the earth's face than its inside!

Henry, tired and chilled, had now no thought but sleep. To-morrow early he would go to the President of Committee 9 with his report.

Also he would wire the story early to his paper. As he lay in bed, too much excited, after all, to sleep (for Henry suffered from nervous excitement in excess) he composed his press story. Anti-disarmament, anti-peace fiends, plotting with Russian Monarchists to wreck the League ... all this had the _British Bolshevist_ many a time suggested, but now it could speak with no uncertain voice. Names might even be given.... Then, in the evening, when the police had explored the avenues, investigated the mystery, and proved the facts, a second telegram, more detailed, could be despatched. What a scoop! After all, thought Henry, tossing wakeful and wide-eyed in the warm dawn, after all he was proving himself a good journalist. No one could say after this that he was not a good journalist.

39

M. Fernandez Croza, delegate from Paraguay, and President of the Committee on the Disappearance of Delegates, sat after breakfast with his private secretary and his stenographer in his sitting-room at the Hotel des Bergues, dictating a speech he meant to deliver at that morning's session of the a.s.sembly on the beauties of a world peace. It was a very creditable and n.o.ble speech, and he meant to deliver it in Spanish, as a protest, though his English and French were faultless.

M. Croza was a graceful person, young for a delegate, slightly built, aquiline, brown skinned, black haired, shaved clean in the English and American manner, which Latins seldom use, and which he had picked up, among other things, in the course of an Oxford education. The private secretary and the stenographer were a swarthy young man and woman with full lips and small moustaches.

M. Croza was clever, determined, and patriotic; he believed firmly in the future of the Latin American republics, and particularly in that of Paraguay; in the necessity of imbuing into the staff of the League of Nations more Latin American blood, and in the desirability of making Spanish a third official language in the a.s.sembly. He disliked the Secretariat as at present const.i.tuted, thinking it European, narrow, and conceited, and he could, when orating on topics less n.o.ble and more imminent than a world peace, make a very relevant and acute speech.

To him, already thus busy at ten o'clock in the morning, entered a hotel messenger with a card bearing the name of the correspondent of the _British Bolshevist_, and the words "Urgent and private business."

"I suppose he wants a statement on the Paraguay att.i.tude towards Argentine meat," M. Croza commented. "I had better see him."

He turned to his stenographer, and said (in Spanish, in which tongue, it may be observed, it sounded even better than in the English rendering): "And so the gentle doves of peace comma pursued down stormy skies by the hawks of war comma shall find at length ... shall find at length.... Alvarez, please finish that sentence later on. That will do for the present, senorita.... Admit Mr. Beechtree, messenger."

Mr. Beechtree was admitted. The slim, pale, shabby and yet somehow elegant young man, with his monocle, so useless, so foppish, dangling on its black ribbon, pleased, on the whole, M. Croza's fastidious taste.

After introductions, courtesies, apologies, and seatings, Mr.