The Secret Of The League Part 18

"No, I am in no pain. But I have a terrible anxiety that weighs me down."

There was nothing to be gained by further questioning. Sir John returned to the other room. The fire was low and the grate choked with ashes; he had begun to replenish it when a curious sound startled him. He only heard it between the raspings of the poker as he raked the ashes out, but it was not to be mistaken. It was the sharp, dry, clock-like whirring that had been the first indication of life and speech beyond the bedroom door more than an hour before.

A board creaked behind him, and he turned with an exclamation to see the dreadful child standing in the middle of the room. Barefooted, she had slipped noiselessly in from the hall at the first tremor of that unusual sound, and now, with her dilated eyes fixed fearfully on the door, her shrinking form bent forward, she slowly crept nearer step by step. Her face quivered with terror, her whole body shook, but she went on as surely as though a magnet drew her.

"What are you doing?" cried Hampden sharply. "Why did you not stay where I told you?"

She turned her face, but not her eyes, towards him. "Yer heard it, didn't yer?" she whispered. "Ain't that what they call the death-rattle what comes?"

He took her by the shoulder and swung her impatiently round. "Go back, you imp," he commanded. "Back and stay there, or you shall go out."

She crept back, looking fearfully over her shoulder all the way.

Something else was happening to engage Hampden's attention. In the next room the man was speaking, speaking spontaneously, as he had done once before, but beyond all doubt the voice was weaker now. The momentary interruption of the child's presence had drowned the first part of the sentence, but Hampden caught a word that strung up every faculty he possessed--"League."

"----League will then suddenly issue a notice to all its members, putting an embargo--a boycott, if you will--on----"

The voice trailed off, and, although he sprang to the door, Sir John could not distinguish another word. But that fragment alone was sufficiently startling. To the President of the Unity League it could only have one meaning; for it was true! Some--how much?--of their plan lay open. And to how many was it known? The terrible anxiety of this poor, battered wreck, unconsciously loyal to his cla.s.s in death, to give the warning before he pa.s.sed away, seemed to indicate that nothing but the frayed thread of one existence stood in the League's path yet.

Was there anything to be done? That was Hampden's first thought. There was plainly one thing: to learn, if possible, before Mr Tubes's arrival, how much was known.

Nothing was changed; only the death-watch ticked again. He leaned over the bed in his eagerness, and, stilling the throbbing excitement of his blood, tried to speak in a tone of commonplace indifference.

"Yes, continue."

There was no response.

"Repeat the sentence," he commanded, concentrating his voice in his desperation, and endeavouring by mere force of will to impose its authority on the indefinite consciousness.

Just as well might he have commanded the man to get up and walk.

Had that last elusive thread that held him to mortality been broken?

Hampden bent still lower. The pallid face was no more pallid than before, but before it could scarcely have been more death-like. The acutest test could not have found a trace of breath. He put together the gradual failing of the voice that little more than an hour ago had been as full and vigorous as his own, the unfinished sentence, the silence----

Suddenly he straightened himself by the bedside with a sense of guilt that struck him like a blow. What was he thinking--hoping? Who was he--Sir John Hampden, President of the Unity League? Not in that room!

The man who watched by the bedside stood there even as the humblest servant of the Order of St. Martin, pledged while in that service to succour in "trouble, sorrow, need, sickness, or any other adversity."

It did not occur to him to debate the point. His way seemed very straight and clear. His plain duty to the dying man was to try by every means in his power to carry out his one overwhelming desire. Its successful accomplishment might aim a more formidable blow at his own ambition than almost anything else that could happen. It could not ward off the attack upon which the League was now concentrating--nothing could do that--but an intimate knowledge of the details of that scheme of retaliation might act in a hundred adverse ways. Hampden did not stop to consider what might happen on the one side and on the other. A thousand years of argument and sophistries could not alter the one great fact of his present duty. He had a very simple conscience, and he followed it.

If he could have speeded Mr Tubes's arrival he would have done so now.

He went into the hall to listen. The street child was still there, sitting on the coal, as sharp-eyed and wakefully alert as ever. He had forgotten her.

"Come, little imp," he said kindly, "I ought to have packed you off long ago." It was, in point of fact, nearly eleven o'clock.

"Ain't doin' no aharm to the coal," she muttered.

"That's not the question. You ought to have been at home and in bed by this time of night."

She looked up at him sharply with a suspicion that such innocence in a grown-up man could not be una.s.sumed.

"Ain't got no bed," she said contemptuously. "Ain't got no 'ome."

A sentence rang through his mind: "The birds of the air have nests."

"Where do you sleep?" he asked.

"Anywhere," she replied.

"And how do you live?"

"Anyhow."

The lowest depths of human poverty had not been abolished by Act of Parliament after all.

A knock at the door interrupted the reflection. The child had already heard the step and sought to efface herself in the darkest corner.

Hampden had not noticed the significance of the knock. He opened the door, prepared to admit the Home Secretary. So thoroughly had he dissociated his own personality from the issue, that he felt the keenest interest that the man should arrive before it was too late. He opened the door to admit him, and experienced an actual pang of disappointment when he saw who stood outside.

He had sent a telegram instead. Whatever the telegram said did not matter very much. Hampden instinctively guessed that he was not coming then--was not on his way. Anything less than that would be too late.

He took the orange envelope and opened it beneath the flaring gas that piped and whistled at the stairhead.

"There is no reply," he said quietly, folding the paper slowly and putting it away in his pocket-book. Were it not that the gain to Hampden of the League was so immense one might have thought, to see him at that moment, that he felt ashamed of something in life.

Members of Parliament had every department of the postal system freely at their service. The statement may not be out of place, for this was what the telegram contained:

"Deeply regret to hear of Comrade Flak's accident, and will have it fully enquired into. Was it while he was engaged at work? Cannot, however, recall any business upon which he could wish to see me. Probably a mental hallucination caused by shock. Have been terribly busy all day, and am engaged at this moment with important State papers which _must_ be finished before I go to bed. If it is thought desirable I will, on receiving another wire, come first thing in the morning, but before deciding to take this course I beg you to consider incessant calls made on my time. Let everything possible be done for the poor fellow.

"JAMES TUBES."

The burden of failure pressed on Hampden as he walked slowly to the bedroom. In that environment of death his own gain did not touch him at all, so completely had he succeeded in eliminating for the time every consideration except an almost fanatical sense of duty to the articles of the Order. It would be better, he felt, if the shadowy consciousness that hovered around the bed could have sunk finally into its eternal sleep, without suffering the pang of being recalled only to hear _this_, but something in the atmosphere of the room, a brooding tension of expectancy that seemed to quicken in the silence, warned him that this was not to be.

"A reply has been received from Mr Tubes in answer to our telegram."

"He is here?" There was no delay this time; there was an intense eagerness that for a brief minute overcame the growing weakness.

"No. He cannot come. He regrets, but he is engaged on matters of national importance."

Silence. Painful silence. In it Hampden seemed to share the cruel frustration of so great a hope deferred.

"There is this," he continued, more for the sake of making any suggestion than from a belief in its practicability; "I might go and compel him to come. If he understood the urgency----"

"It is too late.... A little time ago there was a thin white mist; now it is a solid wall of dense rolling fog. It is nearer--relentless, unevadable...."

"I can still write down what you have to say. Consider, it is the only hope."

"I cannot judge.... I had a settled conviction that no other ear....

Stay, quick; there are the notes! Incomplete, but they will put him on the track.... Swear, swear that you will place them in his hand unread."