Foe-Farrell Part 8

_(To-night before resuming his story Otway had laid on the table beside him a small but bulging letter-case, from the contents of which he now selected a newspaper cutting.)_

PUBLIC ENDOWMENT OF RESEARCH

To the Editor of _The Times_:--

Sir,

A Memorial, influentially signed by a number of ladies and gentlemen variously eminent in Society, Politics, Literature and Art but united in their friends.h.i.+p for the dumb creation, was recently addressed to the Princ.i.p.al of the South London ("Silversmiths'") University College, situated in the const.i.tuency for which I am offering myself as representative in the next London County Council. In this Memorial the Princ.i.p.al was invited to ease the public mind with respect to rumours (widely prevalent) concerning certain practices in the laboratories under his charge, either by denying them or inviting a public inquiry. I was not aware of this doc.u.ment--to which I should have been happy to add my signature--until last night, when a copy of it was put into my hands, with an additional list of signatures by more than a hundred local residents. This morning I have had an opportunity to peruse the answer sent by the Princ.i.p.al (Sir Elkin Travers) to the Hon. Secretary of the Memorialists.

I cannot consider this answer satisfactory. Sir Elkin is content to meet the allegation with a flat denial, and rejects the reasonable request for a public inquiry in language none too courteous. Unfortunately a body of testimony by residents in the close vicinity of the College, as to the noises and outcries heard proceeding from the laboratories from time to time, if not in direct conflict with the denial, at least suggests that, with the growing numbers of his professors and students, Sir Elkin cannot know what is going on, at all times, in every department of the Inst.i.tution: while his peremptory rejection of an investigation which he might have welcomed as an opportunity for allaying public suspicion will be far from having that effect.

If all is well inside his laboratories, why should Sir Elkin fear the light?

May I point out that considerable sums of public money are spent on these University Colleges, and even, indirectly, in promoting the very researches incriminated by the Memorialists. We should insist on knowing what we are paying for and whether it is consistent with the consciences of those among us who look upon dumb animals as the friends and servants of man.

I am, Sir, Your obedient servant,

P. FARRELL.

The Acacias, Wimbledon, Thursday, March 7, 1907.

I dressed and breakfasted in some haste. I heard Jimmy splas.h.i.+ng and carolling in his tub, and for one moment had a mind to knock in and read him the letter, which worried me. But I didn't. . . . It really wasn't Jimmy's business. . . . Good Lord! if I'd only acted on that one little impulse, which seemed at the time not to matter two straws!--

I took a taxi to Chelsea, carting the newspapers with me and rooting Farrell's truffles out of a dozen or so on the way. It was just as bad as I feared. The man had used a type-copier and snowed his screed all over Fleet Street. There were one or two small leaders, too, and editorial notes: nasty ones.

I caught Foe on his very doorstep. "Hallo!" said he. "What's wrong?

. . . Looks as if you were suddenly reduced to selling newspapers.

I'm not buying any, my good man."

"You'll come upstairs and read a few, anyway," said I; and took him upstairs and showed him the _Times_. He frowned as he read Farrell's letter. I expected him to break out into strong language at least.

But he finished his reading and tossed the paper on to the table with no more than a short laugh--a rather grim short laugh.

"Silly little bounder," was his comment.

"You didn't treat him quite so apathetically, the night before last,"

said I. "It might be better for you if you had. Look, here's the _Morning Post, Standard, Daily News, Mail, Chronicle, Express_. . . .

He has plastered it into them all."

"I don't read newspapers," was his answer.

"Other people do," was mine; for I was nettled a bit. "Here are some of the editors asking questions already, and I'll bet the evening papers will be like dogs about a bone. This man may be a d.a.m.ned fool, but he's dangerous: that's to say he has started mischief."

"Oh, surely--not dangerous?" Foe queried, with an odd lift of his eyebrows.

"If I were you, at all events, I'd go straight and consult your man-- what's his name? Travers?--at once. My taxi is waiting, and I'll run across in time to interview him before you start your morning's work. Did he show you his answer to these precious Memorialists before he posted it?"

For the moment Foe ignored my question. "Dangerous?" he repeated in a musing, questioning way. "Do you really think . . . I beg your pardon, Roddy . . . Eh? You were asking about Travers. Yes, he showed me his answer. Very good answer, I thought. It just told them to mind their own business."

"Did he say that, in so many words?" I asked.

"Let me think. . . . So far as I remember he put it rather neatly.

. . . Yes, he wrote that he was not prepared to worry his staff with vague charges, or to invite an inquiry on the strength of representations which--so far as he could attach a meaning to them-- meant what was false. But he added that if the Memorialists would kindly put these charges into writing, defining the practices complained of, and naming the persons accused, they should be dealt with in the proper way which (he understood) the law provided."

"Capital," said I. "Your Princ.i.p.al is no fool. Go off straight and consult him. Take these papers--the whole bundle--"

Foe took them up and pushed them into the pockets of his great-coat.

"_You_ think he's dangerous?" he asked again, in an absent-minded way.

"Eh? . . . Oh, you're talking of Farrell?" said I. "Farrell's a fool, and fools are always dangerous."

Thereupon Jack Foe did and said that which I had afterwards some cause to remember. He pa.s.sed his hand over his forehead, much as a man might brush away a cobweb flung across his evening walk between hedges. "That man makes me tired," he said; "extraordinarily tired.

For two nights I've been trying not to dream about him. It was very good of you to come, Roddy. You shall run me over in your taxi and I'll speak to Travers. If the man is a fool--"

"A dangerous fool," I corrected.

"Coward, too, I should judge. Yes, certainly, I'll speak to Travers."

I put down Foe at the gates of his College and speeded home.

Jimmy had breakfasted and gone forth to take the air. I sat down to open my letters and answer them. In the middle of this my agent arrived. We lunched together and spent the afternoon canva.s.sing. This lasted until dinner, for which I returned to my Club. Thence a taxi took me East again to Bethnal Green for a meeting. The importance of these details is that they kept me from having word with Jimmy, or seeing fur or feather of him, for more than twenty-four hours.

Nor did I find him in my chambers when I got home, soon after eleven.

He was a youth of many engagements. So I mixed myself a drink and whiled away three-quarters of an hour with a solitary pipe and the bundle of evening papers set out for me by Jephson, who lived out with his wife and family and retired to domestic joys at 9.30.

The evening papers had let down the Silversmiths' College pretty easily on the whole. But one of them--an opposition rag which specialised in the politics, especially gutter politics, of South London and was owned by a ring of contractors--had come out with a virulent attack, headed "Vivisection in Our Midst." The article set me hoping that Travers was a strong man and would use the law of libel: it deserved the horsewhip. It left a taste in the mouth that required a second whisky-and-apollinaris before I sought my bed, sleepily promising myself that I would call on Farrell in the morning, however inconvenient it might be, and help to put an end to this nonsense. . . . I would, if the worst came to the worst, even drag the fool to Jack's laboratory and convince him of his folly.

And this promise, as will be seen, I carried out to the very last letter.

A rapping on my bedroom door fetched me out of my beauty sleep.

I started up in bed and switched on the electric light.

"That you, Jimmy?" I called. "Come in, you a.s.s, and say what you want. If it's the corkscrew--"

"If you please, Sir Roderick--sorry to disturb you--" said a voice outside which I recognised as the night-porter's.

"Smithers?" I called. "What's wrong? . . . Open the door, man. . . .

Is the place on fire?"

The door opened and showed me Smithers with a tall policeman looming behind him.

"Hallo!" said I, sitting up straighter and rubbing my eyes.

"Constable, sir," explained Smithers, "with a message for you.

Says he must see you personally."

The constable spoke while I stared at him, my eyes blinking under the bed-light. "It's a dream," I was telling myself. "Silly kind of dream--"

"Gentleman in the Ensor Street Police Court, sir. Requires bail till to-morrow--till ten-thirty this morning, I should have said.