The Devil's Paw Part 25

She pa.s.sed it around. They studied it, one by one. They were all a little stunned.

"Julian!" Furley exclaimed, in blank amazement. "Why, he's been pulling my leg for more than a year!"

"The son of an Earl!" Cross gasped.

"Never mind about that. He is a democrat and honest to the backbone,"

Catherine declared. "The Bishop will tell you so. He has known him all his life. Think! Julian Orden has no purpose to serve, no selfish interest to further. He has nothing to gain, everything to lose. If he were not sincere, if those words of his, which we all remember, did not come from his heart, where could be the excuse, the reason, for what he stands for? Think what it means to us!"

"He is the man, isn't he," Sands asked mysteriously, "whom they are looking after down yonder?"

"I don't know where 'down yonder' is," Catherine replied, "but you have him in your power somewhere. He left his rooms last Thursday at about a quarter past six, to take that packet to the Foreign Office, or to make arrangements for its being received there. He never reached the Foreign Office. He hasn't been heard of since. Some of you know where he is. The Bishop and I want to go and find him at once."

"Fenn and Bright know," Cross declared. "It's Bright's job."

"Why is Bright in it?" Catherine asked impatiently.

Cross frowned and puckered up his lips, an odd trick of his when he was displeased.

"Bright represents the workers in chemical factories," he explained.

"They say that there isn't a poison in liquid, solid or gas form, that he doesn't know all about. Chap who gives me kind of shivers whenever he comes near. He and Fenn run the secret service branch of the Council."

"If he knows where Mr. Orden is, couldn't we send for him at once?"

Catherine suggested.

"I'll go," Furley volunteered.

He was back in a few minutes.

"Fenn and Bright are both out," he announced, "and their rooms locked up. I rang up Fenn's house, but he hasn't been back."

Catherine stamped her foot. She was on fire with impatience.

"Doesn't it seem too bad!" she exclaimed. "If we could only get hold of Julian Orden to-night, if the Bishop and I could talk to him for five minutes, we could have this message for which we have been waiting so long."

The door was suddenly opened. Fenn entered and received a little chorus of welcome. He was wearing a rough black overcoat over his evening clothes, and a black bowler hat. He advanced to the table with a little familiar swagger.

"Mr. Fenn," the Bishop said, "we have been awaiting your arrival anxiously. Tell us, please, where we can find Mr. Julian Orden."

Fenn gave vent to a half-choked, ironical laugh.

"If you'd asked me an hour ago," he said, "I should have told you to try Iris Villa, Acacia Road, Hampstead. I have just come from there."

"You saw him?" the Bishop enquired.

"That's just what I did not," Fenn replied.

"Why not?" Catherine demanded.

"Because he wasn't there hasn't been since three o'clock this afternoon."

"You've moved him?" Furley asked eagerly.

"He's moved himself," was the grim reply. "He's escaped."

During the brief, spellbound silence which followed his announcement, Fenn advanced slowly into the room. It chanced that during their informal discussion, the chair at the head of the table had been left unoccupied. The newcomer hesitated for a single second, then removed his hat, laid it on the floor by his side, and sank into the vacant seat.

He glanced somewhat defiantly towards Catherine. He seemed to know quite well from whence the challenge of his words would come.

"You tell us," Catherine said, mastering her emotion with an effort, "that Julian Orden, whom we now know to be 'Paul Fiske', has escaped.

Just what do you mean?"

"I can scarcely reduce my statement to plainer words," Fenn replied, "but I will try. The danger in which we stood through the miscarriage of that packet was appreciated by every one of the Council. Discretionary powers were handed to the small secret service branch which is controlled by Bright and myself. Orden was prevented from reaching the Foreign Office and was rendered for a time incapable. The consideration of our further action with regard to him was to depend upon his att.i.tude. Owing, no doubt, to some slight error in Bright's treatment.

Orden has escaped from the place of safety in which he had been placed.

He is now at large, and his story, together with the packet, will probably be in the hands of the Foreign Office some time to-night."

"Giving them," Cross remarked grimly, "the chance to get in the first blow--warrants for high treason, eh, against the twenty-three of us?"

"I don't fear that," Fenn a.s.serted, "not if we behave like sensible men. My proposal is that we antic.i.p.ate, that one of us sees the Prime Minister to-morrow morning and lays the whole position before him."

"Without the terms," Furley observed.

"I know exactly what they will be," Fenn pointed out. "The trouble, of course, is that the missing packet contains the signature of the three guarantors. The packet, no doubt, will be in the hands of the Foreign Office by to-morrow. The Prime Minister can verify our statements. We present our ultimatum a little sooner than we intended, but we get our blow in first and we are ready."

The Bishop leaned forward in his place.

"Forgive me if I intervene for one moment," he begged. "You say that Julian Orden has escaped. Are we to understand that he is absolutely at liberty and in a normal state of health?"

Fenn hesitated for a single second.

"I have no reason to believe the contrary," he said.

"Still, it is possible," the Bishop persisted, "that Julian Orden may not be in a position to forward that doc.u.ment to the Foreign Office for the present? If that is so, I am inclined to think that the Prime Minister would consider your visit a bluff. Certainly, you would have no argument weighty enough to induce him to propose the armistice. No man could act upon your word alone. He would want to see these wonderful proposals in writing, even if he were convinced of the justice of your arguments."

There was a little murmur of approval. Fenn leaned forward.

"You drive me to a further disclosure," he declared, after a moment's hesitation, "one, perhaps, which I ought already to have made. I have arranged for a duplicate of that packet to be prepared and forwarded.

I set this matter on foot the moment we heard from Miss Abbeway here of her mishap. The duplicate may reach us at any moment."

"Then I propose," the Bishop said, "that we postpone our decision until those papers be received. Remember that up to the present moment the Council have not pledged themselves to take action until they have perused that doc.u.ment."

"And supposing," Fenn objected, "that to-morrow morning at eight o'clock, twenty-three of us are marched off to the Tower! Our whole cause may be paralysed, all that we have worked for all these months will be in vain, and this accursed and b.l.o.o.d.y war may be dragged on until our politicians see fit to make a peace of words."

"I know Mr. Stenson well," the Bishop declared, "and I am perfectly convinced that he is too sane-minded a man to dream of taking such a step as you suggest. He, at any rate, if others in his Cabinet are not so prescient, knows what Labour means."

"I agree with the Bishop, for many reasons," Furley p.r.o.nounced.

"And I," Cross echoed.

The sense of the meeting was obvious. Fenn's unpleasant looking teeth flashed for a moment, and his mouth came together with a little snap.