Tales of Mystery & Suspense: 25+ Thrillers in One Edition. E. Phillips OppenheimЧитать онлайн книгу.
if he wants to hit you, and you drag in your conscience, and prate about all men being brothers, and that sort of twaddle. A full-blooded Englishman don’t like it, because we are all of us out to protect what we’ve got, any way and anyhow. But that doesn’t alter the fact that there’s something wrong in the world when we’re driven to do this protecting business wholesale and being forced into murdering on a scale which only devils could have thought out and imagined. It’s the men at the top that are responsible for this war, and when people come to reckon up, they’ll say that there was blame up at the top in the Government of every Power that’s fighting, but there was a damned sight more blame amongst the Germans than any of the others, and that’s why many a hundred thousand of our young men who’ve loathed the war and felt about it as I do have gone and done their bit and kept their mouths shut.”
“You cannot deny,” Fenn argued, “that war is contrary to Christianity.”
“I dunno, lad,” Cross replied, winking across the table at Julian. “Seems to me there was a powerful lot of fighting in the Old Testament, and the Lord was generally on one side or the other. But you and I ain’t going to bicker, Mr. Fenn. The first decision this Council came to, when it embraced more than a dozen of us of very opposite ways of thinking, was to keep our mouths shut about our own ideas and stick to business. So give me a fill of baccy from your pipe, and we’ll have a cup of coffee together.”
Julian’s pouch was first upon the table, and the Northumbrian filled his pipe in leisurely fashion.
“Good stuff, sir,” he declared approvingly, as he passed it back. “After dinner I am mostly a man of peace—even when Fenn comes yapping around,” he added, looking after the disappearing figure of the secretary. “But I make no secret of this. I tumbled to it from the first that this was a great proposition, this amalgamation of Labour. It makes a power of us, even though it may, as you, Mr. Orden, said in one of your articles, bring us to the gates of revolution. But it was all I could do to bring myself to sit down at the same table with Penn and his friend Bright. You see,” he explained, “there may be times when you are forced into doing a thing that fundamentally you disapprove of and you know is wrong. I disapprove of this war, and I know it’s wrong—it’s a foul mess that we’ve been got into by those who should have known better—but I ain’t like Fenn about it. We’re in it, and we’ve got to get out of it, not like cowards but like Englishmen, and if fighting had been the only way through, then I should have been for fighting to the last gasp. Fortunately, we’ve got into touch with the sensible folk on the other side. If we hadn’t—well, I’ll say no more but that I’ve got two boys fighting and one buried at Ypres, and I’ve another, though he’s over young, doing his drill.”
“Mr. Cross,” Julian said, “you’ve done me more good than any one I’ve talked to since the war began.”
“That’s right, lad,” Cross replied. “You get straight words from one; and not only that, you get the words of another million behind me, who feel as I do. But,” he added, glancing across the room and lowering his voice, “keep your eye on that artful devil, Fenn. He doesn’t bear you any particular good will.”
“He wasn’t exactly a hospitable gaoler,” Julian reminiscently observed.
“I’m not speaking of that only,” Cross went on. “There wasn’t one of us who didn’t vote for squeezing that document out of you one way or the other, and if it had been necessary to screw your neck off for it, I don’t know as one of us would have hesitated, for you were standing between us and the big thing. But he and that little skunk Bright ain’t to be trusted, in my mind, and it seems to me they’ve got a down on you. Fenn counted on being heart of this Council, for one thing, and there’s a matter of a young woman, eh, for another?”
“A young woman?” Julian repeated.
Cross nodded.
“The Russian young person—Miss Abbeway, she calls herself. Fenn’s been her lap-dog round here—takes her out to dine and that. It’s just a word of warning, that’s all. You’re new amongst us, Mr. Orden, and you might think us all honest men. Well, we ain’t; that’s all there is to it.”
Julian recovered from a momentary fit of astonishment.
“I am much obliged to you for your candour, Mr. Cross,” he said.
“And never you mind about the ‘Mr.’, sir,” the Northumbrian begged.
“Nor you about the `sir’,” Julian retorted, with a smile.
“Middle stump,” Cross acknowledged. “And since we are on the subject, my new friend, let me tell you this. To feel perfectly happy about this Council, there’s just three as I should like to see out of it—Fenn, Bright—and the young lady.”
“Why the young lady?” Julian asked quickly.
“You might as well ask me, `Why Fenn and Bright?’” the other replied. “I shouldn’t make no answer. We’re superstitious, you know, we north country folk, and we are all for instincts. All I can say to you is that there isn’t one of those three I’d trust around the corner.”
“Miss Abbeway is surely above suspicion?” Julian protested. “She has given up a great position and devoted the greater part of her fortune towards the causes which you and I and all of us are working for.”
“There’d be plenty of work for her in Russia just now,” Cross observed.
“No person of noble birth,” Julian reminded him, “has the slightest chance of working effectively in Russia to-day. Besides, Miss Abbeway is half English. Failing Russia, she would naturally select this as the country in which she could do most good.”
Some retort seemed to fade away upon the other’s lips. His shaggy eyebrows were drawn a little closer together as he glanced towards the door. Julian followed the direction of his gaze. Catherine had entered and was looking around as though in search of some one.
Catherine was more heavily veiled than usual. Her dress and hat were of sombre black, and her manner nervous and disturbed. She came slowly to-wards their end of the table, although she was obviously in search of some one else.
“Do you happen to know where Mr. Fenn is?” she enquired.
Julian raised his eyebrows.
“Fenn was here a few minutes ago,” he replied, “but he left us abruptly. I fancy that he rather disapproved of our conversation.”
“He has gone to his room perhaps,” she said. “I will go upstairs.”
She turned away. Julian, however, followed her to the door.
“Shall I see you again before you leave?” he asked.
“Of course—if you wish to.”
There was a moment’s perceptible pause.
“Won’t you come upstairs with me to Mr. Fenn’s room?” she continued.
“Not if your business is in any way private.”
She began to ascend the stairs.
“It isn’t private,” she said, “but I particularly want Mr. Fenn to tell me something, and as you know, he is peculiar. Perhaps, if you don’t mind, it would be better if you waited for me downstairs.”
Julian’s response was a little vague. She left him, however, without appearing to notice his reluctance and knocked at the door of Fenn’s room. She found him seated behind a desk, dictating some letters to a stenographer, whom he waved away at her entrance.
“Delighted to see you, Miss Abbeway,” he declared impressively, “delighted! Come and sit down, please, and talk to me. We have had a tremendous morning. Even though the machine is all ready to start, it needs a watchful hand all the time.”
She sank into the chair from which he had swept a pile of papers and raised her veil.
“Mr. Fenn,” she confessed. “I came to you