Foe-Farrell Part 16

I stepped forward to meet the Sergeant in charge of the convoy.

He would have put me aside. "Sorry, sir, but you must tell your man to take you round by the next bridge. Traffic closed here--half an hour, maybe." Then he caught sight of Farrell behind my shoulder, recognised him, and called his party to a halt. "Excuse me," he said, with a fine official manner committing him to no approval of us, "but is this the Candidate? . . . Well, you've come prompt, sir, but scarcely prompt enough. Situation's in hand, so to speak.

Still you might be useful, getting the crowd to clear off peaceable."

He pondered for a couple of seconds. "Yes, I'll step back with you to the gate, sirs, and pa.s.s you in. You, Wrightson," he spoke up to a second in command, "take over this little lot and deliver them: it's all clear ahead. Get back as fast as you can. . . . Now, sirs, if you'll follow me--there's no danger--the half of 'em no more than sightseers."

"Just a word, Sergeant," said I, catching up his stride. "I want to know how this started and how far it has gone."

He glanced at me sideways. "Not on oath, sir, nor official, eh?

What isn't hearsay is opinion, if you understand. Far as I make it out--but we was caught on the hop, more by ill luck than ill management--it started with an open-air meetin' right yonder, at the corner of the Park. Your friend--that is to say Mr. Farrell, if I make no mistake-"

"Yes, he's Mr. Farrell all right. Go on."

"Well, he was billed to attend, sir; but he didn't turn up."

"He had another engagement," I put in.

"Well, and I did hear some word, too, to that effect," allowed the Sergeant, with another professional glance, subdolent but correct.

"But, as reported to me, his absence was unfortunate. One or two of the wrong sort got hold of the mob, and there was a rush for the College gates. . . . Which the two or three constables did their best and 'phoned me up."

"Much damage?" I asked.

"Can't say, sir. I was given post at the gates, where for ten minutes my fellows was kept pretty busy bas.h.i.+ng 'em and throwing 'em out. You see, it being Sat.u.r.day, most of the students had gone home, and the porter was took of a heap and ran. . . . Or that's how it was reported. And whiles we was thus occupied, word came out that the game was over without need to call reinforcements, if we could hold the gate. We answered back sayin' if that was all we was doing it comfortably. Whereupon they began to hand us out the arrests, with word that some outbuildings had been wrecked and a considerable deal of gla.s.s broken. Lavatories, as I gathered."

"Laboratories," I suggested.

"Very like," the Sergeant agreed; "if you put it so. It struck me as sounding like the sort of place where you wash your hands. . . .

We was pretty busy just then, or up to that moment; but from information that reached me, they was trying to wreck some part of the science buildings."

"One more question," said I--for by this time we had reached the edge of the crowd. "Do you happen to know if Professor Foe was in the building at the time?"

"He was not, sir. He had locked up for the day and gone home to his private house. They fetched him by 'phone. . . . I know, sir, having received instructions to pa.s.s him in: which I did, under escort.

You needn't be anxious about him, if he's a friend of yours."

But I was.

The crowd, as the Sergeant had promised, was curious rather than vicious; much the sort of crowd that the King's coach will fetch out, or a big fire; and from this I augured hopefully (correctly, too, as it proved) that the actual rioters had been little more than a handful, excited by Sat.u.r.day's beer and park-oratory. . . .

The average Londoner takes very little truck in munic.i.p.al politics, as I'd been deploring for a fortnight on public platforms. It costs you all your time to get one in ten of him to attend a public meeting: he's cynical and sits with his back to the ring where a few earnest men and women, and a number of cranks, are putting it up against the Vested Interests and the Press.

As we came up, some few recognised Farrell, and raised a cheer. . . .

I dare say that helped: but anyhow the Sergeant worked us through with great skill, here and there addressing a man good-naturedly and advising him to go home and take his wages to the missus, because the fun was over and soon there might be pickpockets about. In thirty seconds or so we had reached the gate and were admitted.

The porter's lodge had escaped lightly. A trampled flower-bed, flowerless at this season, and a few broken window-panes, were all the evidence that the rioters had pa.s.sed. A little farther on where the broad carriage-way, that ran straight to the College portico, threw out branches right and left to the Natural Science Buildings, a number of ornamental shrubs had been mutilated, a few of the smaller uprooted. Foe's laboratory lay to the left, and we were about to take this bend when a tall man came striding across to us from the right; a short way ahead of two others, one round and pursy and of clerical aspect, the other an official in the Silversmiths' uniform.

The tall man I guessed at once to be the Princ.i.p.al, returning from a survey of the damage done: and I waited while he approached. He wore an angry frown, and his eyes interrogated us pretty sharply.

"Sir Elkin Travers?" I asked.

"At your service, sir, if you are sent to help in this business?"

Sir Elkin's eyes pa.s.sed on this question to the Police Sergeant and reverted to me. "From Whitehall?" he asked.

"No, sir," I answered. "My name is Otway--Sir Roderick Otway; and our only excuse for being here is that two of us are close friends of Professor Foe. Indeed, sir, for myself, let me say that I have for many years been his closest friend, and I am anxious about him."

"You have need to be, I fear," said Sir Elkin, speaking slowly.

"I was going back to him at this moment. Will you come with me. . . . This, by the way, is Mr. Michelmore, our College Bursar."

"With your leave, gentleman," put in the Sergeant, "I'll be going back now. They've collared most of the ringleaders; but by the sound of it they're beating the shrubberies for the stray birds . . ."

"Certainly, Sergeant--certainly. . . . Your men have been most prompt." Sir Elkin dismissed him, and again bent his attention on us. "You are all friends of the Professor's?" he asked.

"Two of us," said I. "This third is Mr. Farrell, who has come to express his sincere regret."

The Princ.i.p.al's eyes, which had been softening, hardened again suddenly with anger and suspicion. What must that a.s.s Farrell do but hold out his hand effusively? "Pleased to make your acquaintance, Sir Elkin," he began. "a.s.sure you--innocent--slightest intention-- quite without my approval--outrage--deplorable--last thing in the world--"

He stammered, wagging a hand at vacancy; for the hand it reached to grasp had swiftly withdrawn itself behind Sir Elkin's back, and remained there.

"We will discuss your innocence later on, sir. Be very sure you will be given occasion to establish it, if you can." Sir Elkin's glare, under his iron-grey eyebrows, promised No Quarter. "Since you have pushed your way in with these gentlemen, it may interest you to follow us and see the results of your ignorant incitement."

He shook Farrell off--as it were--with a hunching movement of the shoulder, and turned to me.

"Come, sir," he said, courteously enough. "I warn you it is a tragedy."

"But my friend is unhurt?" I asked anxiously. "The Sergeant told me--"

"Doctor Foe had left the building--whether fortunately or unfortunately you shall judge--half an hour before the mob arrived. Sat.u.r.day is, for lecturing, a _dies non_ with him, though he often spends the whole day here at his work." Sir Elkin paused.

"By the way, did I catch your name aright, just now? You are Sir Roderick Otway? . . . Then I ought to have thanked you, before this.

It was you who sent me a message yesterday. Foe himself made light of it--"

"I wish I had come with him," said I, with something like a groan.

"I wish to Heaven you had," he agreed very seriously. "For I have a confession to make. . . . I was a fool. I contented myself with warning a few of the teaching staff to be on their guard, and with setting an extra round of night-watchers. But I neglected to see to it that Foe removed his papers to the College strong-room. I did suggest it; but when he pointed out that it would involve an afternoon's work at least, and went on to grumble that it would probably cost him a month to re-sort them--that he hated all meddling with his records--"

"My G.o.d!" I cried. "You don't tell me his records--eight years'

close work, as I know--"

"Eight years," repeated the Princ.i.p.al in grave echo as my words failed. "Eight years' work: that would have cost a few hours to secure--a week, perhaps, to rearrange; and in twenty minutes or so--"

He broke off. "You see that smoke?" he asked. "Over there by the two tall Wellingtonias? . . . There, sir, goes up the last trace of those eight years of our friend's devotion. Patience amounting to genius, loyalty to truth for truth's sake so absolute that one careless moment is dishonour, records calculated to a hair, tested, retested, worked over, brooded over--there's what in twenty minutes your Hun and your Goth can make of it in this world!"

"But, sir," I broke in, "books and packed paper don't burn in that way! Foe's Regent-Park notes alone ran to thirty-two letter-cases when I saw them last. He brought home two bullock-trunks from Uganda, stuffed solid--"

Sir Elkin wheeled about sharply. "Mr. Farrell," said he, "you had a letter in yesterday's _Times_."

"If it had crossed my mind, Sir Elkin," pleaded Farrell with a wagging movement of his whole body, propitiatory, such as dogs make when they see the whip. "I do a.s.sure you--"

"I seem to recollect," interrupted Sir Elkin, "your saying that considerable sums of public money were spent on our laboratories.

The grant allocated to this College for research was so munificent that, after building a physiological laboratory with a small lecture-theatre, we had to house the professor himself in a match-boarded room covered with corrugated iron. Between them"-- he turned to me in swift explanation--"they made a furnace. . . .

Yes, Mr. Farrell, and you asked why, if all is well inside my laboratories, I should fear the light. You would insist on knowing what you were paying for. . . . Well, here is the answer, sir--if it meet your demand."

In the clearing where Jack's laboratory stood surrounded by turf and a ring of conifers, a dozen firemen were busy coiling and packing lengths of hose. The fire had been beaten; its last gasp was out; and the main building stood, smoke-stained, water-stained, with gaping sockets for windows, but with its roof apparently intact.

The trees were scorched to leeward, and the turf was a trampled mora.s.s. Charred benches and desks, broken bottles, retorts, and gla.s.s cases, bestrewed it. But of Jack's sanctum--of the room in which I had been allowed to sit while he worked, because, as he put it, "I made no noise with my pipe"--nothing remained save a mound of ashes and a few sheets of iron roofing, buckled and contorted.

A thin wisp of smoke coiled up from the ruin.