The Vultures Part 34

"Princess," he said, "my sister begs to be excused. She is unable to take tea this afternoon. Last night she considered herself called upon to make a demonstration in the cause that she has at heart. She smoked two cigarettes towards the emanc.i.p.ation of your s.e.x, princess. Just to show her independence--to show, I surmise, that she didn't care a--that she did not care. She cares this afternoon. She had a headache."

And he bowed with a courtesy with which some old-fashioned men still attempt to oppose the progress of women.

XXIV

IN THE WEST INDIA DOCK ROAD

It is not only in name that this great thoroughfare has the sound of the sea, the suggestion of a tarry atmosphere, and that mystery which hangs about the lives of simple sailor men. To thousands and thousands of foreigners the word London means the West India Dock Road, and nothing more. There are sailors sailing on every sea who cherish the delusion that they have seen life and London when they have pa.s.sed the portals of one of the large public-houses of the West India Dock Road.

There are others who are not sailors, speaking one of the half-dozen tongues of eastern Europe, of which the average educated Briton does not even know the name, whose lives are bounded on the west by Aldgate Pump, on the east by the Dock Gates, on the north by Houndsditch, and on the south by St. Katherine's Dock and Tower Hill. A man who would wish to knock at any door in this district, and speak to him who opened it in his native tongue, would have to pa.s.s five years of his life between the Baltic and the Black Sea, the Carpathians and the Caucasus. Galician, Ruthenian, Polish, Magyar would be required as a linguistic basis, while variations of the same added to Russian and German for those who have served in one army or another, would probably be useful.

There are many odd trades in the West India Dock Road, and none of them, it would seem, so profitable as the fleecing of sailors. But by a queer coincidence the callings mostly savor of the same painful process. They run to leather for the most part, and the manufacture of those _articles de luxe_ which are chiefly composed of colored morocco and gum. There is also a trade in furs. Half-way down the West India Dock Road, where the shops are most sordid, and the bird-fanciers congregate, there is quite a large fur store, of which the window, clad in faded red, is adorned by a white rabbit-skin, laid flat upon a fly-blown newspaper, and a stuffed sea-gull with a singularly knowing squint.

There was once a name above the shop, but the owner of it, for reasons of his own, or so soon, perhaps, as he realized that he was in a country where no one wants to know your name, or cares about your business, had carelessly painted it out with a pot of black paint and a defective brush, which had last been used for red.

On each side of the shop-window is a door, one leading to the warehouse and workshop at the back. Through this door there pa.s.ses quite a respectable commerce. The skin of the domestic cat, drawn hither on coster carts from the remoter suburbs, pa.s.ses in to this door to emerge from it later in neat wooden cases addressed to enterprising merchants in Trondhjem, Bergen, Berlin, and other northern cities from which tourists are in the habit of carrying home mementoes in the shape of the fur and feather of the country. There is also a small importation of American fur to be dressed and treated and re-despatched to the Siberian fur dealers from whom the American globe-trotter prefers to buy. A number of unhealthy work-people--men, women, and ancient children--also use this door, entering by it in the morning, and only coming into the air again after dark. They have yellow faces and dusty clothes. A long companionship with fur has made them hirsute; for the men are unshaven, and the women's heads are burdened with heavy coils of black hair.

The other door, which is little used, seems to be the entrance to the dwelling-house of the nameless foreigner. On the left-hand door-post is nailed a small tin tablet, whereon are inscribed in the Russian character three words, which, being translated, read: "The Brothers of Liberty." As no one of importance in the West India Dock Road reads the Russian characters, there is no harm done, or else some disappointment would necessarily be experienced by the pa.s.ser-by to think that any one so nearly related to liberty should choose to live in that spot. Neither would the Trafalgar Square agitator be pleased were he called upon to suppose that the siren whom he pursues with such ardor on rainy Sunday afternoons could ever take refuge behind the dingy Turkey-red curtain that hides the inner parts of the furrier's store from vulgar gaze.

"That's their lingo," said Captain Cable to himself, with considerable emphasis, one dull winter afternoon when, after much study of the numbers over the shop doors, he finally came to a stand opposite the furrier's shop.

He stepped back into the road to look up at the house, thereby imperilling his life amid the traffic. A costermonger taking cabbages from the Borough Market to Limehouse gave the captain a little piece of his mind in the choicest terms then current in his daily intercourse with man, and received in turn winged words of such a forcible and original nature as to send him thoughtfully eastward behind his cart.

"That's their lingo, right enough," said the captain, examining the tin tablet a second time. "That's Polish, or I'm a Dutchman."

He was, as a matter of fact, wrong, for it was Russian, but this was, nevertheless, the house he sought. He looked at the dingy building critically, shrugged his shoulders, and, tilting forward his high-crowned hat, he scratched his head with a grimace indicative of disappointment. It was not to come to such a house as this that he had put on what he called his "suit"; a coat and trousers of solid pilot-cloth designed to be worn as best in all climates and at all times. It was not in order to impress such people as must undoubtedly live behind those faded red curtains that he had unpacked from the state-room locker his sh.o.r.e-going hat, high, and of fair, round shape, such as is only to be bought in the shadow of Limehouse steeple.

The house was uninviting. It had a furtive, dishonest look about it.

Captain Cable saw this. He was a man who studied weather and the outward signs of a man. He rang the bell all the louder, and stood squarely on the threshold until the door was opened by a dirty man in a dirty ap.r.o.n, who looked at him in lugubrious silence.

"Name of Cable," said the captain, turning to expectorate on the pavement, after the manner of far-sighted sailors who are about to find themselves on carpet. The man made a slight grimace, and craned forwards with an interrogative ear held ready for a repet.i.tion.

"Name of Cable," repeated the captain. "Dirty!" he added, just by way of inviting his hearer's attention, and adding that personal note without which even the shortest conversation is apt to lose interest.

This direct address seemed to have the desired effect, for the man stood aside.

"Heave ahead!" he said, pointing to an open door. For the only English he knew was the English they speak in the Baltic. The captain c.o.c.ked his bright blue eye at him, his attention caught by the familiar note. And he stumped along the pa.s.sage into the dim room at the end. It was a small, square room, with a window opening upon some leads, where discarded bottles and blackened moss surrounded the remains of a sparrow. The room was full of men--six or seven foreign faces were turned towards the new-comer. Only one, however, of these faces was familiar to Captain Cable. It was the face of the man known on the Vistula as Kosmaroff.

The captain nodded to him. He had a large nodding acquaintance. It will be remembered that he claimed for his hands a cleanliness which their appearance seemed to define as purely moral. In his way he was a proud man, and stand-offish at that. He looked slowly round, and found no other face to recognize. But he looked a second time at a small, dark man with gentle eyes, whose individuality must have had something magnetic in it. Captain Cable was accustomed to judge from outward things. He picked out the ruling mind in that room, and looked again at its possessor as if measuring himself against him.

"Take a chair, captain," said Kosmaroff, who himself happened to be standing. He was leaning against the high, old-fashioned mantel-piece, which had seen better days--and company--and smoking a cigarette. He was clad in a cheap, ready-made suit; for his heart was in his business, and he sc.r.a.ped and saved every kopeck. But the cheap clothing could not hide that ease of movement which bespeaks a long descent, or conceal the slim strength of limb which is begotten of the fine, clean, hard bone of a fighting race.

The captain looked round, and sought his pocket-handkerchief, with which to dust the proffered seat, mindful of his "suit."

"Do you speak German, captain?" inquired Kosmaroff.

And Captain Cable snorted at the suggestion.

"Sailed with a crew of Germans," he answered; "I understand a bit, and I know a few words. I know the German for d--n your eyes, and handy words like that."

"Then," said Kosmaroff, addressing the gentle-eyed man, "we had better continue our talk in German. Captain Cable is a man who likes plain dealing."

He himself spoke in the language of the Fatherland, and Captain Cable stiffened at the sound of it, as all good Britons should.

"We have not much to say to Captain Cable," replied the man who seemed to be a leader of the Brothers of Liberty. He spoke in a thin tenor voice, and was what the French call _chetif_ in appearance--a weak man, fighting against physical disabilities and an indifferent digestion.

"It is essential in the first place," he continued, "that we should understand each other; we the conquerors and you the conquered."

With a gesture he divided the party a.s.sembled into two groups, the smaller of which consisted only of Kosmaroff and another. And then he looked out of the window with his woman-like, reflective smile.

"We the Russians, and you the Poles. I fear I have not made myself quite clear. I understand, however, that we are to trust the last comer entirely, which I do with the more confidence that I perceive that he understands very little of what we are saying."

Captain Cable's solid, weather-beaten face remained rigid like a figure-head. He looked at the speaker with an ill-concealed pity for one who could not express himself in plain English and be done with it.

"Our circ.u.mstances are such that no correspondence is possible,"

continued the speaker. "Any agreement, therefore, must be verbal, and verbal agreements should be quite clear--the human memory is so liable to be affected by circ.u.mstances--and should be repeated several times in the hearing of several persons. I understand, therefore, that, after a period of nearly twenty years, Poland--is ready again."

There was a short silence in that dim and quiet room.

"Yes," said Kosmaroff, deliberately, at length.

"And is only awaiting her opportunity."

"Yes."

One of the Brothers of Liberty, possibly the secretary of that body, which owned its inability to put anything in writing, had provided a penny bottle of ink and a sticky-looking, red pen-holder. The speaker took up the pen suspiciously, and laid it down again. He rubbed his finger and thumb together. His suspicions had apparently been justifiable. It was a sticky one! Then he lapsed into thought. Perhaps he was thinking of the pen-holder, or perhaps of the history of the two nations represented in that room. He had a thoughtful face, and history is a fascinating study, especially for those who make it. And this quiet man had made a little in his day.

"An opportunity is not an easy thing to define," he said at length.

"Any event may turn out to be one. But, so far as we can judge, Poland's opportunity must lie in two or three possible events at the most. One would be a war with England. That, I am afraid, I cannot bring about just yet."

He spoke quite seriously, and he had not the air of a man subject to the worst of blindness--the blindness of vanity.

"We have all waited long enough for that. We have done our best out on the frontier and in the English press, but cannot bring it about. It is useless to wait any longer. The English are fiery enough--in print--and ready enough to fight--in Fleet Street. In Russia we have too little journalism--in England they have too much."

Captain Cable yawned at this juncture with a maritime frankness.

"Another opportunity would be a social upheaval," said the Russian, drumming on the table with his slim fingers. "The time has not come for that yet. A third alternative is a mishap to a crowned head--and that we can offer to you."

Kosmaroff moved impatiently.

"Is that all?" he exclaimed. "I have heard that talk for the last ten years. Have you brought me across Europe to talk of that?"

The Russian looked at him calmly, stroking his thin, black mustache, and waited till he had finished speaking.

"Yes--that is all I have to propose to you--but this time it is more than talk. You may take my word for that. This time we shall all succeed. But, of course, we want money, as usual. Ah! what a different world this would be if the poor could only be rich for one hour. We want five thousand roubles. I understand you have control of ten times that amount. If Poland will advance us five thousand roubles she shall have her opportunity--and a good one--in a month from now."