‘But these we can still get at,’ Logan asked: ‘how are you to be sure that they are—vaccinated?’
‘The inquiry is delicate,’ Merton admitted, ‘but the fact may be almost taken for granted. We must give a dinner (a preliminary expense) to promising collaborators, and champagne is a great promoter of success in delicate inquiries. In vino veritas.’
‘I don’t know if there is money in it, but there is a kind of larkiness,’ Logan admitted.
‘Yes, I think there will be larks.’
‘About the dinner? We are not to have Johnnies disguised as hansom cabbies driving about, and picking up men and women that look the right sort, in the streets, and compelling them to come in?’
‘Oh no, that expense we can cut. It would not do with the women, obviously: heavens, what queer fishes that net would catch! The flag of the Disentanglers shall never be stained by—anything. You know some likely agents: I know some likely agents. They will suggest others, as our field of usefulness widens. Of course there is the oath of secrecy: we shall administer that after dinner to each guest apart.’
‘Jolly difficult for those that are mixed up with the press to keep an oath of secrecy!’ Logan spoke as a press man.
‘We shall only have to do with gentlemen and ladies. The oath is not going to sanction itself with religious terrors. Good form—we shall appeal to a “sense of form”—now so widely diffused by University Extension Lectures on the Beautiful, the Fitting, the—’
‘Oh shut up!’ cried Logan. ‘You always haver after midnight. For, look here, here is an objection; this precious plan of yours, parents and others could work it for themselves. I dare say they do. When they see the affections of a son, or a daughter, or a bereaved father beginning to stray towards A., they probably invite B. to come and stay and act as a lightning conductor. They don’t need us.’
‘Oh, don’t they? They seldom have an eligible and satisfactory lightning conductor at hand, somebody to whom they can trust their dear one. Or, if they have, the dear one has already been bored with the intended lightning conductor (who is old, or plain, or stupid, or familiar, at best), and they won’t look at him or her. Now our Disentanglers are not going to be plain, or dull, or old, or stale, or commonplace—we’ll take care of that. My dear fellow, don’t you know how dismal the parti selected for a man or girl invariably is? Now we provide a different and superior article, a fresh article too, not a familiar bore or a neighbour.’
‘Well, there is a good deal in that, as you say,’ Logan admitted. ‘But decent people will think the whole speculation shady. How are you to get round that? There is something you have forgotten.’
‘What?’ Merton asked.
‘Why it stares you in the face. References. Unexceptionable references; people will expect them all round.’
‘Please don’t say “unexceptionable”; say “references beyond the reach of cavil.” ’ Merton was a purist. ‘It costs more in advertisements, but my phrase at once enlists the sympathy of every liberal and elegant mind. But as to references (and I am glad that you have some common sense, Logan), there is, let me see, there is the Dowager.’
‘The divine Althæa—Marchioness of Bowton?’
‘The same,’ said Merton. ‘The oldest woman, and the most recklessly up-to-date in London. She has seen bien d’autres, and wants to see more.’
‘She will do; and my aunt,’ Logan said.
‘Not, oh, of course not, the one who left her money to the Armenians?’ Merton asked.
‘No, another. And there’s old Lochmaben’s young wife, my cousin, widely removed, by marriage. She is American, you know, and perhaps you know her book, Social Experiments?’
‘Yes, it is not half bad,’ Merton conceded, ‘and her heart will be in what I fear she will call “the new departure.” And she is pretty, and highly respected in the parish.’
‘And there’s my aunt I spoke of, or great aunt, Miss Nicky Maxwell. The best old thing: a beautiful monument of old gentility, and she would give her left hand to help any one of the clan.’
‘She will do. And there’s Mrs. Brown-Smith, Lord Yarrow’s daughter, who married the patent soap man. Elle est capable de tout. A real good woman, but full of her fun.’
‘That will do for the lady patronesses. We must secure them at once.’
‘But won’t the clients blab?’ Logan suggested.
‘They can’t,’ Merton said. ‘They would be laughed at consumedly. It will be their interest to hold their tongues.’
‘Well, let us hope that they will see it in that light.’ Logan was not too sanguine.
Merton had a better opinion of his enterprise.
‘People, if they come to us at all for assistance in these very delicate and intimate affairs, will have too much to lose by talking about them. They may not come, we can only try, but if they come they will be silent as the grave usually is.’
‘Well, it is late, and the whisky is low,’ said Logan in mournful tones. ‘May the morrow’s reflections justify the inspiration of—the whisky. Good night!’
‘Good night,’ said Merton absently.
He sat down when Logan had gone, and wrote a few notes on large sheets of paper. He was elaborating the scheme. ‘If collaboration consists in making objections, as the French novelist said, Logan is a rare collaborator,’ Merton muttered as he turned out the pallid lamp and went to bed.
Next morning, before dressing, he revolved the scheme. It bore the change of light and survived the inspiration of alcohol. Logan looked in after breakfast. He had no new objections. They proceeded to action.
II. FROM THE HIGHWAYS AND HEDGES
The first step towards Merton’s scheme was taken at once. The lady patronesses were approached. The divine Althæa instantly came in. She had enjoyed few things more since the Duchess of Richmond’s ball on the eve of Waterloo. Miss Nicky Maxwell at first professed a desire to open her coffers, ‘only anticipating,’ she said, ‘an event’—which Logan declined in any sense to anticipate. Lady Lochmaben said that they would have a lovely time as experimental students of society. Mrs. Brown-Smith instantly offered her own services as a Disentangler, her lord being then absent in America studying the negro market for detergents.
‘I think,’ she said, ‘he expects Brown-Smith’s brand to make an Ethiopian change his skin, and then means to exhibit him as an advertisement.’
‘And settle the negro question by making them all white men,’ said Logan, as he gracefully declined the generous but compromising proposal of the lady. ‘Yet, after all,’ thought he, ‘is she not right? The prophylactic precautions would certainly be increased, morally speaking, if the Disentanglers
