The Red Planet Part 9

A way that'll knock all you great people of Wellingsford off your high horses. If you drive me to it, you'll see. I'll bide my time and I don't care whether it breaks me."

He stamped his foot and tugged at the bridle. Two or three pa.s.sers-by halted wonderingly and Prettilove, the hairdresser, moved across the pavement from his shop door where he had been taking the air.

"My good fellow," said I, "you have lost your temper and are talking drivel. Kindly unhand my donkey."

Prettilove, who has a sycophantic sense of humour, burst into a loud guffaw. Gedge swung angrily away, and Hosea and I continued our interrupted progress down the High Street. Although I had called his dark menaces drivel, I could not help wondering what it meant. Was he going to guide a German Army to Wellingsford? Was he, a modern Guy Fawkes, plotting to blow up the Town Hall while Mayor and Corporation sat in council? He was not the man to utter purely idle threats. What the d.i.c.kens was he going to do? Something mean and dirty and underhand.

I knew his ways, He was always getting the better of somebody. The wise never let him put in a pane of gla.s.s without a specification and estimate, and if he had not been by far the most competent builder in the town--perhaps the only one who thoroughly knew his business in all its branches--no one would have employed him.

When I next saw Betty, it was in one of the corridors of the hospital, after a committee meeting; she stopped by my chair to pa.s.s the time of day. Through the open doorway of a ward I perceived a well-known figure in nurse's uniform.

"Why," said I, "there's Phyllis Gedge."

Betty nodded. "She has just come in as a probationer."

"I thought her father wouldn't let her. I've heard--Heaven knows whether it's true, but it sounds likely--that he said if men were such fools as to get shot he didn't see why his daughter should help to mend them."

"He has consented now," said Betty, "and Phyllis is delighted."

"No doubt it's a bid for popular favour," said I. And I told her of his dwindling business and of my encounter with him. When I came to his threat Betty's brows darkened.

"I don't like that at all," she said.

"Why? What do you think he means?"

"Mischief." She lowered her voice, for, it being visiting day at the hospital, people were pa.s.sing up and down the corridor. "Suppose he has some of the people here in his power?"

"Blackmail--?" I glanced up at her sharply. "What do you know about it?"

"Nothing," she replied abruptly. Then she looked down and fingered her wedding-ring. "I only said 'suppose.'"

A Sister appeared at the door of the ward and seeing us together paused hoveringly.

"I rather think you're wanted," said I.

I left the hospital somewhat disturbed in mind. Summons to duty had cut our conversation short; but I knew that no matter how long I had cross-questioned Betty I should have got nothing further out of her.

She was a remarkably outspoken young woman. What she said she meant, and what she didn't want to say all the cripples in the British Army could not have dragged out of her.

I tried her again a few days later. A slight cold, aided and abetted by a dear exaggerating idiot of a tyrannical doctor, confined me to the house and she came flying in, expecting to find me in extremis. When she saw me clothed and in my right mind and smoking a big cigar, she called me a fraud.

"Look here," said I, after a while. "About Gedge--" again her brow darkened and her lips set stiffly--"do you think he has his knife into young Randall Holmes?"

I had worried about the boy. Naturally, if Gedge found the relations between his daughter and Randall unsatisfactory, no one could blame him for any outbreak of parental indignation. But he ought to break out openly, while there was yet time--before any harm was done--not nurse some diabolical scheme of subterraneous vengeance. Betty's brow cleared, and she laughed. I saw at once that I was on a wrong track.

"Why should he have his knife into Randall? I suppose you've got Phyllis in your mind."

"I have. How did you guess?"

She laughed again.

"What other reason could he have? But how did you come to hear of Randall and Phyllis?"

"Never mind," said I, "I did. And if Gedge is angry, I can to some extent sympathize with him."

"But he's not. Not the least little bit in the world," she declared, lighting a cigarette. "Gedge and Randall are as thick as thieves, and Phyllis won't have anything to do with either of them."

"Now, my dear," said I. "Now that you're married, become a real womanly woman and fill my empty soul with gossip."

"There's no gossip at all about it," she replied serenely. "It's all sordid and romantic fact. The two men hold long discussions together at Gedge's house, Gedge talking anti-patriotism and Randall talking rot which he calls philosophy. You can hear them, can't you? Their meeting-ground is the absurdity of Randall joining the army."

"And Phyllis?"

"She is a loyal little soul and as miserable as can be. She's deplorably in love with Randall. She has told me so. And because she's in love with a man whom she knows to be a slacker she's eaten up with shame. Now she won't speak to him To avoid meeting him she lives entirely at the hospital--a paying probationer."

"That must be since the last Committee Meeting," I said.

"Yes."

"And Daniel Gedge pays a guinea a week?"

"He doesn't," said Betty. "I do."

I accepted the information with a motion of the head. She went on after a minute or so. "I have always been fond of the child"--there were only three or four years difference between them!--"and so I want to protect her. The time may come when she'll need protection. She has told me things--not now--but long ago--which frightened her. She came to me for advice. Since then I've kept an eye on her--as far as I could. Her coming into the hospital helps me considerably."

"When you say 'things which frightened her,' do you mean in connection with her father?"

Again the dark look in Betty's eyes.

"Yes," she said. "He's an evil, dangerous man."

That was all I could get out of her. If she had meant me to know the character of Gedge's turpitude, she would have told me of her own accord. But in our talk at the hospital she had hinted at blackmail--and blackmailers are evil, dangerous men.

I went to see Sir Anthony about it. Beyond calling him a d.a.m.ned scoundrel, a term which he applied to all pro-Germans, pacifists and half the Cabinet, he did not concern himself about Gedge. Young Randall Holmes's intimacy with the scoundrel seemed to him a matter of far greater importance. He strode up and down his library, choleric and gesticulating.

"A gentleman and a scholar to hob-n.o.b with a traitorous beast like that! I know that he writes for a filthy weekly paper. Somebody sent me a copy a few days ago. It's rot--but not actually poisonous like that he must hear from Gedge. That's the reason, I suppose, he's not in the King's uniform. I've had my eye on him for some time. That's why I've not asked him to the house."

I told Sir Anthony of my interview with the young man. He waxed wroth.

In a country with a backbone every Randall Holmes in the land would have been chucked w.i.l.l.y-nilly into the army. But the country had spinal disorders. It had locomotor ataxy. The result of sloth and self-indulgence. We had the Government we deserved ... I need not quote further. You can imagine a fine old fox-hunting Tory gentleman, with England filling all the s.p.a.ces of his soul, blowing off the steam of his indignation.

When he had ended, "What," said I, "is to be done?"

"I'll lay my horsewhip across the young beggar's shoulders the next time I meet him."

"Capital," said I. "If I were you I should never ride abroad except in my mayor's gown and chain, so that you can give an official character to the thrashing."

He glanced swiftly at me in his bird-like fashion, his brow creased into a thousand tiny horizontal lines--it always took him a fraction of a second to get clear of the literal significance of words--and then he laughed. Personal violence was out of the question. Why, the young beggar might summon him for a.s.sault. No; he had a better idea. He would put in a word at the proper quarter, so that every recruiting sergeant in the district should have orders to stop him at every opportunity.

"I shouldn't do that," said I.

"Then, I don't know what the deuce I can do," said Sir Anthony.