The Devil's Paw Part 24

"I don't wonder you're surprised," Fenn observed. "Fourteen guineas for a dress suit, and he thinks he understands the working man!"

She turned her head slowly and looked at him. There was a strange, repressed fire in her eyes. "You are a very foolish person," she said.

"Your parents, I suppose, were small shopkeepers, or something of the sort, and you were brought up at a board-school and Julian Orden at Eton and Oxford, and yet he understands, and you do not. You see, heart counts, and sympathy, and the flair for understanding. I doubt whether these things are really found where you come from."

He caught up his hat. His face was very white. His tone shook with anger.

"This is our own fault," he exclaimed angrily, "for having ever permitted an aristocrat to hold any place in our counsels! Before we move a step further, we'll purge them of such helpers as you and such false friends as Julian Orden."

"You very foolish person," she repeated. "Stop, though. Why all this mystery? Why did you try to keep that letter from me?"

"I conceived it to be for the benefit of our cause," he said didactically, "that the anonymity--of 'Paul Fiske' should be preserved."

"Rubbish!" she scoffed. "You were afraid of him. Why, what fools we are!

We will tell him the whole truth. We will tell him of our great scheme.

We will tell him what we have been working for, these many months. The Bishop shall tell him, and you and I, and Miles Furley, and Cross. He shall hear all about it. He is with us! He must be with us! You shall put him on the Council. Why, there is your great difficulty solved,"

she went on, in growing excitement. "There is not a working man in the country who would not rally under 'Paul Fiske's' banner. There you have your leader. It is he who shall deliver your ultimatum."

"I'm d.a.m.ned if it is!" Fenn declared, suddenly throwing his hat down and coming towards her furiously. "I'm--"

The door opened. Robert stood there.

"The message, madam," he began--and then stopped short. She crossed the room towards him.

"Robert," she said, "I think I have found the way to bring your master back to you. Will you take me downstairs, please, and fetch me a taxi?"

"Certainly, madam!"

She looked back from the threshold.

"I shall telephone to Westminster in a few minutes, Mr. Fenn," she said.

"I hope I shall be in time to stop the others from coming. Perhaps you had better wait here, in case they have already started."

He made no reply. To Catherine the world had become so wonderful that his existence scarcely counted.

CHAPTER XII

Catherine, notwithstanding her own excitement, found genuine pleasure in the bewildered enthusiasm with which the Bishop received her astounding news. She found him alone in the great, gloomy house which he usually inhabited when in London, at work in a dreary library to which she was admitted after a few minutes' delay. Naturally, he received her tidings at first almost with incredulity. A heartfelt joy, however, followed upon conviction.

"I always liked Julian," he declared. "I always believed that he had capacity. Dear me, though," he went on, with a whimsical little smile, "what a blow for the Earl!"

Catherine laughed.

"Do you remember the evening we all talked about the Labour question?

Time seems to have moved so rapidly lately, but it was scarcely a week ago."

"I remember," the Bishop acknowledged. "And, my dear young lady," he went on warmly, "now indeed I feel that I can offer you congratulations which come from my heart."

She turned a little away.

"Don't," she begged. "You would have known very soon, in any case--my engagement to Julian Orden was only a pretence."

"A pretence?"

"I was desperate," she explained. "I felt I must have that packet back at any price. I went to his rooms to try and steal it. Well, I was found there. He invented our engagement to help me out."

"But you went off to London together, the neat day?" the Bishop reminded her.

"It was all part of the game," she sighed. "What a fool he must have thought me! However, I am glad. I am riotously, madly glad. I am glad for the cause, I am glad for all our sakes. We have a great recruit, Bishop, the greatest we could have. And think! When he knows the truth, there will be no more trouble. He will hand us over the packet. We shall know just where we stand. We shall know at once whether we dare to strike the great blow."

"I was down at Westminster this afternoon," the Bishop told her. "The whole mechanism of the Council of Labour seems to be complete. Twenty men control industrial England. They have absolute power. They are waiting only for the missing word. And fancy," he went on, "to-morrow I was to have visited Julian. I was to have used my persuasions."

"But we must go to-night!" Catherine exclaimed. "There is no reason why we should waste a single second."

"I shall be only too pleased," he a.s.sented gladly. "Where is, he?"

Catherine's face fell.

"I haven't the least idea," she confessed. "Don't you know?"

The Bishop shook his head.

"They were going to send some one with me tomorrow," he replied, "but in any case Fenn knows. We can get at him."

She made a little wry face.

"I do not like Mr. Fenn," she said slowly. "I have disagreed with him.

But that does not matter. Perhaps we had better go to the Council rooms.

We shall find some of them there, and probably Fenn. I have a taxi waiting."

They drove presently to Westminster. The ground floor of the great building, which was wholly occupied now by the offices of the different Labour men, was mostly in darkness, but on the top floor was a big room used as a club and restaurant, and also for informal meetings. Six or seven of the twenty-three were there, but not Fenn. Cross, a great brawny Northumbrian, was playing a game of chess with Furley. Others were writing letters. They all turned around at Catherine's entrance.

She held out her hands to them.

"Great news, my friends!" she exclaimed. "Light up the committee room. I want to talk to you."

Those who were ent.i.tled to followed her into the room across the pa.s.sage. One or two secretaries and a visitor remained outside. Six of them seated themselves at the long table--Phineas Cross, the Northumbrian pitman, Miles Furley, David Sands, representative of a million Yorkshire mill-hands, Thomas Evans, the South Wales miner.

"We got a message from you, Miss Abbeway, a little time ago," Furley remarked. "It was countermanded, though, just as we were ready to start."

"Yes!" she a.s.sented. "I am sorry. I telephoned from Julian Orden's rooms. It was there we made the great discovery. Listen, all of you! I have discovered the ident.i.ty of Paul Fiske."

There was a little clamour of voices. The interest was indescribable.

Paul Fiske was their cult, their master, their undeniable prophet. It was he who had set down in letters of fire the truths which had been struggling for imperfect expression in these men's minds. It was Paul Fiske who had fired them with enthusiasm for the cause which at first had been very much like a matter of bread and cheese to them. It was Paul Fiske who had formed their minds, who had put the great arguments into their brains, who had armed them from head to foot with potent reasonings. Four very ordinary men, of varying types, sincere men, all of plebeian extraction, all with their faults, yet all united in one purpose, were animated by that same fire of excitement. They hung over the table towards her. She might have been the croupier and they the gamblers who had thrown upon the table their last stake.

"In Julian Orden's rooms," she said, "I found a letter from the editor of the British Review, warning him that his anonymity could not be preserved much longer--that before many weeks had pa.s.sed the world would know that he was Paul Fiske. Here is the letter."