Tales of Mystery & Suspense: 25+ Thrillers in One Edition. E. Phillips Oppenheim
down a hand to the one who has climbed the highest, they pull him up into the Government, and after that Labour is well quit of him. He has found his place with the gods. Perhaps they will make him a `Sir’ and his wife a `Lady,’ but for him it is all over with the Cause. And so another ten years is wasted, while another man grows up to take his place.”
“She’s right enough,” Furley confessed gloomily. “There is something about the atmosphere of the inner life of politics which has proved fatal to every Labour man who has ever climbed. Paul Fiske wrote the same thing only a few weeks ago. He thought that it was the social atmosphere which we still preserve around our politics. We no sooner catch a clever man, born of the people, than we dress him up like a mummy and put him down at dinner parties and garden parties, to do things he’s not accustomed to, and expect him to hold his own amongst people who are not his people. There is something poisonous about it.”
“Aren’t you all rather assuming,” Stenson suggested drily, “that the Labour Party is the only party in politics worth considering?”
“If they knew their own strength,” Catherine declared, “they would be the predominant party. Should you like to go to the polls to-day and fight for your seats against them?”
“Heaven forbid!” Mr. Stenson exclaimed. “But then we’ve made up our mind to one thing—no general election during the war. Afterwards, I shouldn’t be at all surprised if Unionists and Liberals and even Radicals didn’t amalgamate and make one party.”
“To fight Labour,” Furley said grimly.
“To keep England great,” Mr. Stenson replied. “You must remember that so far as any scheme or program which the Labour Party has yet disclosed, in this country or any other, they are preeminently selfish. England has mighty interests across the seas. A parish-council form of government would very soon bring disaster.”
Julian glanced at the clock and rose to his feet.
“I don’t want to hurry any one,” he said, “but my father is rather a martinet about luncheon.”
They all rose. Mr. Stenson turned to Julian.
“Will you go on with Miss Abbeway?” he begged. “I will catch up with you on the marshes. I want to have just a word with Furley.”
Julian and his companion crossed the country road and passed through the gate opposite on to the rude track which led down almost to the sea.
“You are very interested in English labour questions, Miss Abbeway,” he remarked, “considering that you are only half an Englishwoman.”
“It isn’t only the English labouring classes in whom I am interested,” she replied impatiently. “It is the cause of the people throughout the whole of the world which in my small way I preach.”
“Your own country,” he continued, a little diffidently, “is scarcely a good advertisement for the cause of social reform.”
Her tone trembled with indignation as she answered him.
“My own country,” she said, “has suffered for so many centuries from such terrible oppression that the reaction was bound, in its first stages, to produce nothing but chaos. Automatically, all that seems to you unreasonable, wicked even, in a way, horrible—will in the course of time disappear. Russia will find herself. In twenty years’ time her democracy will have solved the great problem, and Russia be the foremost republic of the world.”
“Meanwhile,” he remarked, “she is letting us down pretty badly.”
“But you are selfish, you English!” she exclaimed. “You see one of the greatest nations in the world going through its hour of agony, and you think nothing but how you yourselves will be affected! Every thinking person in Russia regrets that this thing should have come to pass at such a time. Yet it is best for you English to look the truth in the face. It wasn’t the Russian people who were pledged to you, with whom you were bound in alliance. It was that accursed trick all European politicians have of making secret treaties and secret understandings, building up buffer States, trying to whittle away a piece of the map for yourselves, trying all the time to be dishonest under the shadow of what is called diplomacy. That is what brought the war about. It was never the will of the people. It was the Hohenzollerns and the Romanoffs, the firebrands of the French Cabinet, and your own clumsy, thick-headed efforts to get the best of everybody and yet keep your Nonconformist conscience. The people did not make this war, but it is the people who are going to end it.”
They walked in silence for some minutes, he apparently pondering over her last words, she with the cloud passing from her face as, with her head a little thrown back and her eyes half-closed, she sniffed the strong, salty air with an almost voluptuous expression of content. She was perfectly dressed for the country, from her square-toed shoes, which still seemed to maintain some distinction of shape, the perfectly tailored coat and skirt, to the smart little felt hat with its single quill. She walked with the free grace of an athlete, unembarrassed with the difficulties of the way or the gusts which swept across the marshy places, yet not even the strengthening breeze, which as they reached the sea line became almost a gale, seemed to have power to bring even the faintest flush of colour to her cheeks. They reached the long headland and stood looking out at the sea before she spoke again.
“You were very kind to me last night, Mr. Orden,” she said, a little abruptly.
“I paid a debt,” he reminded her.
“I suppose there is something in that,” she admitted. “I really believe that that exceedingly unpleasant person with whom I was brought into temporary association would have killed you if I had allowed it.”
“I am inclined to agree with you,” he assented. “I saw him very hazily, but a more criminal type of countenance I never beheld.”
“So that we are quits,” she ventured.
“With a little debt on my side still to be paid.”
“Well, there is no telling what demands I may make upon our acquaintance.”
“Acquaintance?” he protested.
“Would you like to call it friendship?”
“A very short time ago;” he said deliberately, “even friendship would not have satisfied me.”
“And now?”
“I dislike mysteries.”
“Poor me!” she sighed. “However, you can rid yourself of the shadow of one as soon as you like after luncheon. It would be quite safe now, I think, for me to take back that packet.”
“Yes,” he assented slowly, “I suppose that it would.”
She looked up into his face. Something that she saw there brought her own delicate eyebrows together in a slight frown.
“You will give it me after lunch?” she proposed.
“I think not,” was the quiet reply.
“You were only entrusted with it for a time,” she reminded him, with ominous calm. “It belongs to me.”
“A document received in this surreptitious fashion,” he pronounced, “is presumably a treasonable document. I have no intention of returning it to you.”
She walked by his side for a few moments in silence. Glancing down into her face, Julian was almost startled. There were none of the ordinary signs of anger there, but an intense white passion, the control of which was obviously costing her a prodigious effort. She touched his fingers with her ungloved hand as she stepped over a stile, and he found them icy cold. All the joy of that unexpectedly sunny morning seemed to have passed.
“I am sorry, Miss Abbeway,” he said almost humbly, “that you take my decision so hardly. I ask you to remember that I am just an ordinary, typical Englishman, and that I have already lied for your sake. Will you put yourself in my place?”
They had climbed the little ridge of grass-grown