Mystery at Geneva Part 16

"And where do the Sinn Feiners come in?"

"Oh, I don't know. They meet there to plot, Macdermott said. Together with Germans. Probably they've a bomb-cache in the tunnels too. He told O'Shane about it, and O'Shane said republicans would never make use of a disorderly house, not even for the best patriotic purposes.

He's rather sick that he wasn't on to this catacombs business too; he'd have found Orange plots down there. I left them at it.... What's going on within, Jefferson?"

"That d.a.m.ned little Greek holding forth on the importance of disarming Turkey. We've just had Paraguay on the beauties of a world peace and the peaceful influence of the South American republics."

"Well," said Garth, "I shall go in and hear the Greek. He always makes things hum."

Henry, too, went in and heard the Greek, whose manner of oratory he enjoyed.

41

Committee 9 met at three o'clock in the s.p.a.cious and sunny saloon known as Committee Room C. The only portion of the public admitted was the correspondent of the _British Bolshevist_, who sat behind the President's chair with a portfolio full of papers, looking pale, shabby, and tired, but exalted, like one whose great moment is at hand.

After the minutes of the last meeting had been read, the President rose to address the committee, in French. He had, he said, some fresh and important facts to communicate. A quite new line of inquiry had that day been suggested to him by one who had for some time been secretly pursuing investigations. The facts revealed were so startling, so amazing, that very substantial evidence would be necessary to persuade committee members of their truth. It could at present be only a tentative theory that was set before the committee; but let the committee remember that _magna est veritas et prevalebit_; that they were there to fulfil a great duty, and not to be deterred by any fears, any reluctances, any personal friendships, any dread of scandal, from seeking to draw out truth from her well. He asked his colleagues to listen while he told them a strange story.

The story, as he told it, gained from his more important presence, his more eloquent and yet more impartial manner, a plausibility which Henry's had lacked. His very air, of one making a painful and tentative revelation, was better than Henry's rather shrill eagerness.

Every now and then he paused and waved his hand at Henry sitting behind him, and said, "My friend Mr. Beechtree here has doc.u.mentary evidence of this, which I will lay before the committee shortly."

When, after long working up to it, he gave the suspected member of the Secretariat the name of Wilbraham, it fell on the tense attention of the whole table. Henry, looking up to watch its reception, saw surprise on many faces, incredulity on several, pleasure on more, amus.e.m.e.nt on a few. He met also the blue eyes of Mr. Macdermott fixed on him with a smile of cynical admiration. Macdermott would doubtless have something to say when the President had done. But what he was now thinking was that the correspondent of the _British Bolshevist_ had more journalistic gifts than one would have given him credit for.

"Where, you may demand of me," proceeded the President, "is M.

Wilbraham now? That I cannot tell you. He entered this system of secret pa.s.sages last night in company with those who are suspected by Mr. Beechtree of being his fellow conspirators, and he has not been seen since. Have they, possibly, escaped, their evil work done?

Whither have they gone? Who was that Protestant pastor? What doings, gentlemen, engage the attentions of M. Kratzky of Russia, that enemy of small republics, Sir John Levis of Pottle and Kett, that enemy of peace, a _soi-disant_ Protestant pastor, the presumed enemy of true religion, and M. Wilbraham of the Secretariat? Mind, gentlemen, I impute nothing. I merely inquire."

A murmur of applause broke from the Latin Americans. As it died down, Henry, looking up, saw standing by the door Charles Wilbraham, cool, immaculate, attentive, and unperturbed, and the _soi-disant_ Protestant pastor at his elbow.

42

Henry allowed himself a smile. Here, then, arrived after all the years of waiting, was the hour. The hour of reckoning; the hour in which he, brought face to face with Charles Wilbraham, should expose him before men for what he was. The hour when Charles Wilbraham should face him, reduced at last to impotent silence, deflated to limp nothingness like a gas balloon, and find no word of defence. Shamed and dishonoured, he would slink away, at long last in the wrong. In the wrong himself, after all these years of putting others there. Truly, Henry's hour had arrived.

The President, too, had seen the new-comers now. He paused in his speaking; he was for a moment at a loss. Then, "Gentlemen, excuse me, but this is a strictly private session," he said clearly across the large room, in his faultless Oxford English.

Charles Wilbraham bowed slightly and advanced.

"Forgive me, sir, but I have a card of admittance. Also for my friend here, Signor Angelo Cristofero."

"Angelo Cristofero"--the name seemed to ripple over a section of the committee like a wind on waters.

"Who is he?" asked Henry, of an Italian Swiss, and the answer came pat.

"The greatest detective at present alive. An Italian, but at home in all countries, all languages, and all disguises. Really a marvellous genius. Nothing balks him."

"We have, you see," continued Wilbraham, in his disagreeable, sneering voice, "some rather important information to communicate to the committee, if you will pardon the interruption. Presently I will ask Signor Cristofero to communicate it. But for the moment might I be allowed to ask for a little personal explanation? Since I entered the room I heard a remark or two relating to myself and various friends of mine which struck me as somewhat strange...."

M. Croza courteously bowed to him, with hostile eyes.

"You have a right to an explanation, sir. As you have entered at what I can but call such a very inopportune moment, you heard what I was saying--words uttered, need I say, in no malicious spirit, but in a sincere and public-spirited desire to discover the truth. I was accusing and do accuse, no one; I was merely laying before the committee information communicated to me this morning by Mr. Henry Beechtree."

"Mr. Henry Beechtree?"

Charles Wilbraham turned on this gentleman the indifferent and contemptuous regard with which one might look at and dismiss some small and irrelevant insect.

"And who, if I may ask, is Mr. Henry Beechtree?"

"The correspondent, sir, of one of the newspapers of your country--the _British Bolshevist_."

Charles laughed. "Indeed? Hardly, perhaps, an organ which commands much influence. However, by all means let me hear Mr. Beechtree's information. I am, I infer, from what I overheard, engaged in some kind of conspiracy, together with my friends M. Kratzky, Sir John Levis, and this gentleman here. May I know further details, or are they for the private edification of the committee only?"

Charles heavily sarcastic, ponderously ironic--how well Henry remembered it.

"Are we," he went on, "supposed to have spirited away, or even murdered, the missing delegates, may I ask?"

"That," said M. Croza politely, "was Mr. Beechtree's suggestion--only, of course, a suggestion, based on various facts which had come to his knowledge. You can, doubtless, disprove these facts, sir, or account for them in some other way. No one will be more delighted than the committee over which I preside."

"Might I hear these sinister facts?" Charles was getting smoother, more unctuous, more happy, all the time. It was the little curl of his lip, so hateful, so familiar, with which he said these words, which seemed to snap something in Henry's brain. He pushed back his chair and sprang to his feet, breathless and dizzy and hot. He regarded not the cries of "Order," from the chair and the table; order or not, he must speak now to Charles.

"You shall hear them, sir," he said, and his voice rang shrilly up and up to a high and quivering note. "There is one, at least which you will not be able to deny. That is that you have shares, large and numerous, in the armaments firm of Pottle and Kett, of which Sir John Levis, your father-in-law, is chief director."

Charles fixed on him a surprised stare. He put on his pince-nez, the better to look.

"I do not think," he said, in his calm, smooth voice, "that I am called upon to discuss with you the sources of my income. In fact, I'm afraid I don't quite see how you come into this affair at all--er--Mr.

Beechtree. But, since your statement has been made in public, perhaps I may inform the committee that it is wholly erroneous. I had once such shares as this--er--gentleman mentioned. It ought to be unnecessary to inform this committee that I sold them all on my appointment to the Secretariat of the League, since to hold them would, I thought, be obviously inconsistent with League principles. If it interests the committee to know, such money that I possess is now mostly in beer. Mr.--er--Beechtree's information, Mr. President, is just a little behind the times. Such a stirring organ as the _British Bolshevist_ should, perhaps, have a more up-to-date correspondent.

Will you, Mr. President, request Mr. Beechtree to be seated? I fear I find myself unable to discuss my affairs with--er--him personally."

Charles's eyes, staring at Henry through his pince-nez, became like blue gla.s.s. For a moment silence held the room. Henry flushed, paled, wilted, wavered as he stood. Thrusting desperately his monocle into his eye, he strove to return stare for stare. After a moment Charles's high complacent laugh sounded disagreeably. He had made quite sure.

"How do you do, Miss Montana? We haven't, I think, met since January, 1919." He turned to the puzzled committee. "Miss Montana, a former lady secretary of mine in the Ministry of Information, Mr. President.

Dismissed by me for incompetence. What she is doing here in this disguise I do not know; that is between her and the newspaper which, so she says, employs her. May Signor Cristofero now be permitted to lay his rather important information before the committee? We waste time, and time is precious at this juncture."

43

The situation was of an unprecedented unusualness. The President of Committee 9 hardly knew how to deal with it. All eyes gazed at Henry, who said quietly, "That is a d.a.m.ned lie," felt giddy, and sat down, leaning back in his chair and turning paler. The monocle dropped from his eye and hung limply from its ribbon. Henry literally could not, after his tiring night, his exhausting day, the emotional strain of the last hour, stand up to Charles Wilbraham any more. If he could have a dose of sal volatile--a c.o.c.ktail--anything ... as it was, he wilted, all but crumpled up; all he was able for was to sit, as composed as might be, under a deadly fire of eyes.

The pause was ended by Fergus Macdermott, who heaved largely from his chair and remarked, "I would like to second Mr. Wilbraham's suggestion that we will hear Mr. Cristofero's communication. May I also suggest that the income of Mr. Wilbraham is between himself and his bankers, and the s.e.x of Mr. Beechtree between him and his G.o.d, and that both are irrelevant to the business before this committee and need not be discussed." The committee applauded this, though they felt a keen interest in both the irrelevant topics. The President called on Signor Cristofero to address the committee, and beckoned Mr. Wilbraham to a chair.

The little _soi-disant_ pastor stepped forward. He was a spare, small, elderly man, with a white face and gentian-blue eyes and a mouth that could make up as anything. During the last few days it had been a prim and rather smug b.u.t.ton. Now it had relaxed in shrewder, wider lines.

He showed to Committee 9 the face not of the Calvinist pastor but of the great detective. He spoke the Italian of the Lombardy Alps, the French of Ma.r.s.eilles, the English of New York, the German of Alsace, the Russian of Odessa, the Yiddish of the Roman Ghetto, the Serbian of Dalmatia, the Turkish of the Levant, the Greek of the Dodacenese, and many other of the world's useful tongues. He addressed the committee in French, speaking rapidly and clearly, ill.u.s.trating his story with those gestures of the hands which in reality (though it is not commonly admitted) make nothing clearer, but are merely a luxury indulged in by speakers, who thus elucidate and emphasise their meaning to themselves and to no one else. However, Signor Cristofero's words were so admirably clear that his confusing gestures did not matter.