we are dealing with moral imbeciles. When they find themselves cornered they won’t play for safety. They’ll use their hostages, and when we refuse to bargain they’ll take their last revenge on them.’
I suppose I stared unbelievingly, for he went on: ‘Yes. They’ll murder them in cold blood—three innocent people—and then swing themselves with a lighter mind I know the type. They’ve done it before.’ He mentioned one or two recent instances.
‘Good God I’ I cried. ‘It’s a horrible thought! The only thing for you is to go canny, and not strike till you have got the victims out of their clutches.’
‘We can’t,’ he said solemnly. That is precisely the tragedy of the business. We must strike early in June. I won’t trouble you with the reasons, but believe me, they are final. There is just a chance of a settlement in Ireland, and there are certain events of the first importance impending in Italy and America, and all depend upon the activities of the gang being at an end by midsummer. Do you grasp that? By midsummer we must stretch out our hand. By midsummer, unless they are released, the three’ hostages will be doomed. It is, a ghastly dilemma, but in the public interest there is only one way out. I ought to say that Victor and the Duke and Warcliff are aware of this fact, and accept the situation. They are big men, and will do their duty even if it breaks their hearts.’
There was silence for a minute or two, for I did not know what to say. The whole story seemed to me incredible, and yet I could not doubt a syllable of it when I looked at Macgillivray’s earnest face. I felt the horror of the business none the less because it ‘seemed also partly unreal; it had the fantastic grimness of a nightmare. But most of all I realised that I was utterly incompetent to help, and as I understood that I could honestly base my refusal on incapacity and not on disinclination I began to feel more comfortable.
‘Well,’ said Macgillivray, after a pause, ‘are you going to help us?’
‘There’s nothing doing with that Sunday-paper anagram you showed me. That’s the sort of riddle that’s not meant to be guessed. I suppose you are going to try to work up from the information you have about the combine towards a clue to the hostages.’
He nodded.
‘Now, look here,’ I said; ‘you’ve got fifty of the quickest brains in Britain working at the job., They’ve found out enough to put a lasso round the enemy which you can draw tight whenever you like. They’re trained to the work and I’m not. What on earth would be the use of an amateur like me butting in? I wouldn’t be half as good as any one of the fifty. I’m not an expert, I’m not quick-witted, I’m a slow patient fellow, and this job, as you admit, is one that has to be done against time.
If you think it over, you’ll see that its sheer nonsense, my dear chap.’
‘You’re succeeded before with worse material.’
‘That was pure luck, and it was in the War when, as I tell you, my mind was morbidly active. Besides, anything I did then I did in the field, and what you want me to do now is office-work. You know I’m no good at office-work—Blenkiron always said so, and Bullivant never used me on it. It isn’t because I don’t want to help, but because I can’t.’
‘I believe you can. And the thing is so grave that I daren’t leave any chance unexplored. Won’t you come?’
‘No. Because I could do nothing.’
‘Because you haven’t a mind for it.’
‘Because I haven’t the right kind of mind for it.’
He looked at his watch and got up, smiling rather ruefully.
‘I’ve had my say, and now you know what, I want of you. I’m not going to take your answer as final. Think over what I’ve said, and let me hear from you within the next day or two.’
But I had lost all my doubts, for it was very clear to me that on every ground I was doing the right thing.
‘Don’t delude yourself with thinking that I’ll change my mind,’ I said, as I saw him into his car. ‘Honestly, old fellow, if I could be an atom of use I’d join you, but for your own sake you’ve got to count me out this time.’
Then I went for a walk, feeling pretty cheerful. I settled the question of the pheasants’ eggs with the keeper, and went down to the stream to see if there was any hatch of fly. It had cleared up to a fine evening, and I thanked my stars that I was out of a troublesome business with an easy conscience, and could enjoy my peaceful life again. I say ‘with an easy conscience,’ for though there were little dregs of disquiet still lurking about the bottom of my mind, I had only to review the facts squarely to approve my decision. I put the whole thing out of my thoughts and came back with a fine appetite for tea.
There was a stranger in the drawing-room with Mary, a slim oldish man, very straight and erect, with ‘one of those faces on which life has written so much that to look at them is like reading a good book. At first I didn’t recognizee him when he rose to greet me, but the smile that wrinkled the corners of his eyes and the slow deep voice brought back the two occasions in the past when I had run across Sir Arthur. Warcliff… My heart sank as I shook hands, the more as I saw how solemn was Mary’s face. She had been hearing the story which I hoped she would never hear.
I thought it best to be very frank with him. ‘I can guess your errand, Sir Arthur,’ I said, ‘and I’m extremely sorry that you should have come this long journey to no purpose. Then I told him of the visits of Mr Julius Victor and Macgillivray, and what they had said, and what had been my answer. I think I made it as clear as day that I could do nothing, and he seemed to assent. Mary, I remember, never lifted her eyes.
Sir Arthur had also looked at the ground while I was speaking, and now he turned his wise old face to me, and I saw what ravages his new anxiety had made in it. He could not have been much over sixty and he looked a hundred.
‘I do not dispute your decision, Sir Richard, he said, ‘I know that you would have helped me if it had been possible. But I confess I am sorely disappointed, for you were my last hope. You see—you see—I had nothing left in the world but Davie. If he had died I think I could have borne it, but to know nothing about him and to imagine terrible things is almost too much for. my fortitude.’
I have never been through a more painful experience. To hear a voice falter that had been used to command, to see tears in the steadfastest eyes that ever looked on the world, made me want to howl like a dog. I would have given a thousand pounds to be able to bolt into the library and lock the door.
Mary appeared to me to be behaving very oddly. She seemed to have the deliberate purpose of probing the wound, for she encouraged Sir Arthur to speak of his boy.. He showed us a miniature he carried with him—an extraordinarily handsome child with wide grey eyes and his head most nobly set upon his shoulders. A grave little boy, with the look of utter trust which belongs to children who have never in their lives been unfairly treated. Mary said something about the gentleness of the face.
‘Yes, Davie was very gentle,’ his father said. ‘I think he was the gentlest thing I have ever known. That little boy was the very flower of courtesy; But he was curiously stoical, too. When. he was distressed, he only shut his lips tight, and never cried. I used often to feel rebuked by him.
And then he told us about Davie’s performances at school, where he was not distinguished, except as showing a certain talent for cricket. ‘I am very much afraid of precocity,’ Sir Arthur said with the ghost of a smile. ‘But he was always educating himself in the right
