A Time of terror E-Book

Douglas Morey Ford

• Herausgeber: epubli
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 317

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

An Englishman returning to his native land after an absence of twenty-five years, might not at first discover much difference in the look of London. There stood the old familiar landmarks—Buckingham Palace, St James's, the Marble Arch, Apsley House, Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament, the National Gallery, the British Museum, St Paul's, the Tower, the Monument, and many another well-remembered building. There were new hotels, new theatres, new buildings of all sorts, and at least one notable new thoroughfare. In the great arteries of business the old familiar thunder of the traffic rose louder than ever, with the modern addition of a new smell and a new noise—the smell and the whir of the motor-car. The mean streets were as mean as ever; the contrast between this and that locality more than ever noticeable. And the people, save for the scarcely perceptible change in fashion of dress, at first looked pretty much the same. There were more loafers, more wastrels, more sprawling scarecrows of humanity in the parks, and along the Embankment. The richest city in the world still had thousands and more thousands of homeless, miserable creatures in its midst, thousands whom the State knew not how to save for their own sake, or for the service of England.

Leseprobe

Douglas Morey Ford

A TIME OF TERROR

The Story of a Great Revenge

(A.D., 1910)

This England never did, nor never shall Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror, But when it first did help to wound itself.

King John

CHARACTERS

Marcus WhiteSir John WestwoodBobby HerrickFather FrancisDetective-Inspector HenshawBilly of MayfairThe Marquis of DownlandThe Lord MayorRaggett the RaverJoe the StablemanP.C. Dormer

Aldwyth WestwoodMolly BarterBilly’s GrandmotherMrs Joe

Crowned Heads

Episcopate—

The Archbishop of London (New Province)Royal Navy—Vice-Admiral Sir Lambert Meade, K.C.B.

Judges and Magistrates—

Lord Malvern, L.C.J.; Mr Justice Barling;Mr Harrowden

Counsel—

Mr Duffus Jacobs, K.C.; Mr Brill, K.C.;Mr Dawson Dalton

Medical Faculty—

Dr Wilson WakeThe Leaguers of London, Police, The Unemployed, ETC.

CONTENTS

A TIME OF TERROR

PROLOGUE (A.D. 1885)

PART I A HERITAGE OF HATE

PART II RIVALS IN LOVE

CHAPTER I LONDON IN 1910

CHAPTER II AT THE NEW BAILEY

CHAPTER III THE LEAGUERS’ FIRST MOVE

CHAPTER IV THE CASE THAT FAILED

CHAPTER V THE LEAGUERS’ SECOND MOVE

CHAPTER VI THE MURDER OF DR GRADY

CHAPTER VII LOVE ON THE LEAS

CHAPTER VIII SIR JOHN BREAKS DOWN

CHAPTER IX FATHER FRANCIS AT FOLKESTONE

CHAPTER X MARCUS WHITE RETURNS

CHAPTER XI THE SIGN OF THE SPIDER

CHAPTER XII THE “EPOCH” RUNS AMOK

CHAPTER XIII THE STRANGE OUTBREAK AT QUEEN’S HALL

CHAPTER XIV BILLY OF MAYFAIR

CHAPTER XV THE SHRINE OF LUXURY AND PRIDE

CHAPTER XVI THE MANIA THAT LAID HOLD OF LONDON

CHAPTER XVII THE GREAT FIRE IN HYDE PARK

CHAPTER XVIII ALDWYTH ASKS A QUESTION

CHAPTER XIX THE LORD MAYOR READS THE RIOT ACT

CHAPTER XX THE LEAGUERS AT THE HOME OFFICE

CHAPTER XXI THE DEVIL’S OWN ON THE DEFENSIVE

CHAPTER XXII THE BOMB BRIGADE

CHAPTER XXIII THE CRANKS’ CORNER

CHAPTER XXIV THE LOWER CRITIC

CHAPTER XXV MARCUS WHITE GIVES ORDERS

CHAPTER XXVI THE CAPTURE OF THE JUDGES

CHAPTER XXVII THE BLACK CHRISTMAS

CHAPTER XXVIII IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE

CHAPTER XXIX BILLY’S MESSAGE

CHAPTER XXX THE FATE OF PORTSMOUTH DOCKYARD

CHAPTER XXXI THE NAVAL BATTLE OFF PLYMOUTH

CHAPTER XXXII MARCUS WHITE AND THE MOB

CHAPTER XXXIII THE FOREIGN SECRETARY

CHAPTER XXXIV THE EAGLE IN THE LION’S JAWS

CHAPTER XXXV THE KING AND THE KAISER

CHAPTER XXXVI THE BROTHERHOOD OF DEATH

CHAPTER XXXVII THE GREAT THANKSGIVING

A Time of Terror

PROLOGUE(A.D. 1885)

PART I A HERITAGE OF HATE

The Court was densely crowded, and an atmosphere already vitiated became doubly poisonous now that the ushers had lighted the gas. The flaring jets revealed on every side the flushed and strained faces of those who were eagerly waiting for the verdict. A great number of women had been present at the Old Bailey throughout the trial—women of fashion, eager to be thrilled by the most potent sensation of the hour, and women of the lower orders, mostly Irish. A babble of excited conversation arose directly the judges and the jury left the Court. There were three judges, for this was an alleged case of treason felony. In technical language the four prisoners were indicted for having feloniously compassed, devised, and intended to depose our Lady the Queen from the style, honour, and royal name of the Imperial Crown of the United Kingdom, and further that they, with divers other persons unknown, did manifest such intent by certain overt acts; all of which was set out with the customary amount of verbiage in the indictment.

Reduced to plain English, the actual charge was that the accused had purchased arms and ammunition for distribution amongst a revolutionary brotherhood; that they had been concerned in storing gunpowder and other explosive materials for the purpose of wrecking public buildings and overthrowing the Government of the Queen. Chester Castle, with its great store of arms, was to be seized. Arms were to be transmitted in piano packing-cases by the mail train from Euston, and the express was to be held up on the route to Holyhead. Thereafter the rails were to be torn up, the telegraph wires cut, and an armed band of two thousand men was to take forcible possession of the mail boat and land in due course on the Irish coast.

None of these things, beyond the purchase of a limited quantity of arms and ammunition, had really come to pass; but, as usual, the inevitable informer had revealed the alleged plot to the Government. Four arrests had been made, but the principal efforts of the prosecution were vigorously employed to obtain the conviction of one prisoner in particular—Michael White.

This prisoner was a journalist, hitherto living in one of the suburbs of London, and acting as correspondent for certain journals in Ireland and in America. Under a search warrant the police had ransacked every corner of his house. They found what purported to be an incriminatory letter written in invisible ink, also a glass tube containing a liquid which, when tested by the Government analyst, was proved to contain crystals. These crystals, if dissolved in water, could be used for the purpose of making impressions on paper, and such impressions would be invisible until copperas or certain other chemicals had been applied. Beyond these discoveries and the evidence of the informers, there was but little to connect Michael White with the alleged conspiracy.

The prisoner was a handsome, middle-aged man, whose intellectual face was in striking contrast with those of the two shifty-eyed and cringing informers, on whom from time to time he bent looks of infinite disgust and scorn. The sympathy of not a few was with the accused; but so strenuous was the conduct of the prosecution, and so adverse the judicial summing up, that only one result could be expected from the trial.

One member of White’s family was present through the long and agonising trial—the prisoner’s only son, and there was a double bitterness in the young man’s heart as hour by hour he saw the net being weaved about his father, for he, himself, had his own personal reason for hating Westwood, the zealous junior counsel for the Crown. When the fierce eyes of young Marcus White met the barrister’s, the latter shifted his gaze, fumbled with his papers, or made a show of entering into conversation with other counsel. The prisoner’s son watched these poor devices with a contemptuous smile. A complex, burning sense of wrong filled his breast. The private wrong which he believed had been done to himself by Westwood, blended, as it were, with the wrong that he conceived was being done to his father; and this in turn was interwoven with the sense of wholesale wrong inflicted during centuries upon prisoners and captives who had come within the iron grip of English criminal law.

Marcus White, like his father, was a man of no small intellectual power. A journalist who is to write anything worth reading must read much before he writes, and the prisoner’s son had read much. At one time it had been intended that he should join the army of advocates, but he turned away with repugnance after a preliminary survey of the law. Later, his father, to whom he was devotedly attached, gave him some training in his own profession, the profession of the pen. The elder White had long had in hand a book on the subject of barbarous punishments, and his son diligently assisted him in looking up and collating ancient records of the shocking violence in times past done to humanity under the sanction of the law. He knew that the English Criminal Code included at one time nearly two hundred offences punishable with death; he knew that this dreadful catalogue comprised innumerable offences of the most trifling character, while it omitted enormities of the utmost atrocity.

A study of these penal statutes and their ruthless application had shattered his instinctive reverence for the law and its administration. He had learnt to see in the sanguinary monuments of so-called justice the oppression of the strong, the cruelty of the cowardly, a terrible revelation of “man’s inhumanity to man.” His mind revolted at the idea of a divine right in kings to hang, draw, and quarter any one who criticised their conduct or advocated another form of government. It was, he held, only the Lex talionis, supported by force, and all the traps and complexities of criminal pleading were but the miserable devices of lawyers ever ready to prostitute a calling that in itself was noble. History proved it—history of which nearly every page was stained with judgments of expediency or the dark crime of judicial murder. “The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” was supposed to have come from the poisonous lips of such creatures as Titus Oates. The judge—he might be a Jeffreys or a Scroggs—was but the Government in wig and ermine. The Crown counsel were paid pleaders for the party in power. The docile jury, ruled by the judge, were in effect the most obedient servants of the Government. This, then, was human justice—which in its true essence was supernal and divine. This was the Western Baal that men were called on to revere!

Rightly or wrongly, thus he reasoned. From such thoughts there had sprung up and still was growing and destined to grow in the mind of Marcus White a loathing for the law and a desire for vengeance on all who followed it as servitors. Such were the feelings with which he had seen his own father caught in these dreadful toils; practised advocates, perjured witnesses, and crafty detectives, all combining to bring about the climax that was imminent.

There was a cry of “Silence!” The jury were stumbling back into the box; the judges returned to the bench. Amid a breathless stillness the Clerk of Arraigns put the accustomed questions: “Do you find the prisoner, Patrick Desmond, guilty or not guilty?”—“Not guilty.”

“Do you find the prisoner, John O’Leary, guilty or not guilty?”—“Not guilty.”

“Do you find the prisoner, Robert Dale, guilty or not guilty?”—“Not guilty.”

Then, last of all, “Do you find the prisoner, Michael White, guilty or not guilty?” The pale face of the foreman twitched; there was a momentary hesitation in his manner. Every ear was strained to catch the verdict. Then, in a low voice, it came,—“Guilty.”

There was a swift scratching of pens. The Clerk of Arraigns was recording the verdict on the parchment of the long indictment, the judge was noting it, the counsel were indorsing the result upon their briefs, but the eyes of all others were on the face of the prisoner at the bar.

“Michael White,” said the Clerk of Arraigns, “you stand convicted upon this indictment. Have you any cause to show why the Court should not pass judgment upon you?”

“I have to say,” answered the prisoner, in a clear, strong voice, “that I had no hand in this so-called plot. My conviction has been brought about by perjured evidence and trickery; but, my lord, do not suppose that I shall whine for mercy. I am not the first man to suffer for a cause. I love my native land, and I hate those who oppress it. If my life could be the price of justice to Ireland and the Irish I would gladly lay it down; if the hand that I now raise to heaven could bring vengeance on those who have wronged us I should rejoice; and though death or prison-house make me powerless, with my last breath I would whisper to my son to carry on the work.”

For a moment the prisoner’s face was turned towards his son’s, and there were those in Court who saw and afterwards recalled the answering look.

Then Michael White received, unmoved, his sentence.

Penal servitude for life.

PART II RIVALS IN LOVE

“Stand aside,” said Westwood, in a voice which he vainly strove to steady.

“Not yet,” was the savage answer; “you’ve got to listen!”

The two men faced each other in the calm starlight of the April evening. The Embankment was almost deserted save for the huddled, heedless outcasts on the benches. A few hansoms rattled westward; a few small vessels, with sails spread, moved ghostly and silent on the swirling river. Nature’s placidity was in strange contrast with the fiery passion that flamed in the eyes of Marcus White and found expression in his threatening gestures. Both men were pale; their facial muscles tense. But the pallor of the one was begotten of anger and hatred. With Westwood it was the outcome of nervous apprehension, if not of actual fear.

“This is folly,” he said, with a better effort at self-command. “So far as I am concerned you have nothing to complain of——”

“Nothing to complain of,” exclaimed White. “What! You steal the girl who was mine. Yes, mine,—until you sneaked in between us——”

“That is not true, White.”

“I say you stole her—she was beguiled away from me. I was poor, and likely to be poorer. You had your profession, your respectability, and your prospects. Curse you! You’re not fit to touch her hand. Nor am I. I know that well enough; but I love her, and always shall. She was everything to me—my strength, my hope—till you stepped in; and to-night I’d think no more of taking you by the throat and ending your mean life than I would of crushing a beetle or any other filthy thing beneath my heel.

“I’m sorry if you think——” began Westwood. Then he paused, half ashamed of his own propitiatory tone, but debating how he could appease the fury of his enemy and escape from a situation which had become so threatening.

“And not content with taking her from me,” the other went on, drawing a step nearer and speaking with increased intensity, “you stood up in Court to prosecute my father. You and the others have helped to send him into slavery for life. The prosecution was a lie, I say, and you lied as much as any of the witnesses. Not on oath; that wasn’t wanted. You saw your chances, and you laid hold of them. You got the advertisement you wanted. There was deviltry in your pretended moderation. But you know the tricks of your trade—your looks and gestures to the jury said what you dared not put in words. He was in the dock and you were at the bar, with all its privileges and all its honourable traditions! Faugh! You sickened me. Yours was the face I watched; not the judge’s; not the foreman’s when he stood up and gave the verdict——”

“Let me pass, man; you’re acting like a madman,” said the barrister.

“Ah! You’re afraid of me. Coward! coward! You daren’t deny it.”

Westwood glanced round. He had been kept late at his chambers in Paper Buildings, and near the corner of Temple Avenue had come suddenly upon this enemy whom, of all men, he least desired to meet. The stream of wheeled traffic came steadily across Blackfriars Bridge and branched off right and left, but on the footway of the Embankment still scarcely a creature was to be seen. Westwood spoke again.

“I only did my duty. The brief came to me because of the illness of another man, and I was bound to take it. You ought to understand that legal etiquette——”

“Legal etiquette!” exclaimed White scornfully, “etiquette that allows you lawyers to libel other men and twist and turn the truth to suit your case. Etiquette that justifies your taking fees you don’t earn, and neglecting cases when it suits you. For you and your brood there is no sort of penalty. You pose as good citizens. You talk yourselves into Parliament, and fawn on the Government when there are places to be given away. You sit on the Bench and draw a year’s salary for little more than half a year’s work, and send to penal servitude men in whose presence you ought to stand bare-headed.”

“I can’t stay here and listen to your raving,” said Westwood angrily.

“You’ve got the best of it at present. You’ve had us every way,” persisted White. “There’s nothing left for me in England. That suits your purpose, too. But, mark my words, Westwood, I haven’t done with you. Sooner or later the tables shall be turned. I swear by heaven they shall! Some day you’ll hear of me again!”

Ending, he spat on him. Then, with a contemptuous gesture, turned away. Westwood, with a movement of disgust and anger, took two steps as if to follow him; then hesitated, stopped.

Marcus White did not even condescend to turn his head, but, striding eastward, passed into the shadows of the London night.

END OF PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ILONDON IN 1910

An Englishman returning to his native land after an absence of twenty-five years, might not at first discover much difference in the look of London. There stood the old familiar landmarks—Buckingham Palace, St James’s, the Marble Arch, Apsley House, Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament, the National Gallery, the British Museum, St Paul’s, the Tower, the Monument, and many another well-remembered building. There were new hotels, new theatres, new buildings of all sorts, and at least one notable new thoroughfare. In the great arteries of business the old familiar thunder of the traffic rose louder than ever, with the modern addition of a new smell and a new noise—the smell and the whir of the motor-car. The mean streets were as mean as ever; the contrast between this and that locality more than ever noticeable.

And the people, save for the scarcely perceptible change in fashion of dress, at first looked pretty much the same. There were more loafers, more wastrels, more sprawling scarecrows of humanity in the parks, and along the Embankment. The richest city in the world still had thousands and more thousands of homeless, miserable creatures in its midst, thousands whom the State knew not how to save for their own sake, or for the service of England.

It would be obvious to the returned native that the old country must long since have ceased to be a “merry England.” The look on the faces of the people was enough to settle that. The intent gaze, the joyless expression, told a convincing tale. Here and there might be seen a flower of beauty in the gigantic garden of weeds—a stalwart, handsome man, a “perfect woman, nobly plann’d.” Eyes of youth, looking eagerly upon the page of life, still shone with the glow of hope and happiness; young girls and young children, in their freshness and charm, still reminded the wayfarer that in the great design human beings were meant to be even more beautiful than the flowers of the field. But the vast crowd—what had come to it, and what was coming? Was the English race, as a race, growing not only plain, but positively ugly?

When the home-comer found time to move about a little, he would discover that in many respects the changes wrought in twenty-five years were greater than he had supposed. There were, in outlying districts, certain new or enlarged buildings of formidable aspect. These were the lunatic asylums of the capital. The inquirer had to learn that insanity had been advancing by leaps and bounds. Five years ago the number of London lunatics was nearly 27,000, and now there were nearly 100,000 certified lunatics in London. The workhouses also were larger and fuller than ever; and in the City, the scene of the trial of Michael White in 1885, the old court-house, haunted with the horrors of centuries, had given place to a new and imposing building, with greater accommodation for criminals. Solid, handsome, stony, the New Bailey frowned down on the new generation of Londoners. The City Fathers were justly proud of their modern palace of justice, though the question of what motto should be inscribed over its portal gave rise to some difference of opinion. A very reverend dean suggested, “Defend the children of the poor, and punish the wrong-doer,” or words to that effect. In what way the New Bailey was going to fulfil the first part of the text did not seem to be quite obvious but certainly the massive sessions-house looked quite equal to punishing the evil-doer. It did not occur to any one to recommend a text from the Koran, which declares that to endure and forgive is the highest achievement for humanity. Probably the City Fathers did not read the Koran. Besides, though in the interval we had allied ourselves with worshippers of Buddha, England as yet had no treaty with the unspeakable Turk. A quotation from the sacred book of Islam might have been considered out of place in a nominally Christian country.

Such were some of the changes brought about in a quarter of a century. A person of cynical mind might well doubt whether they were changes for the better. For the rest, the people crowded hither and thither—underground, by tubes in all directions; above ground, on foot, and by vehicles of every description—mostly “motors.” By means of the latter insignificant persons tore through the streets, bound on errands of no importance. The private “motors,” of course, were owned by the pleasure-seekers of the age, who, for all their hurry, probably had nothing more urgent to do than to order luncheon at a fashionable restaurant, or purchase a box of cigarettes.

Postal deliveries had been multiplied; telephone facilities increased. Everything was essentially modern; the great thing was to be up to date. But all the new facilities for saving time and trouble seemed to have resulted in leaving very little time for anything. Certainly there was no time for studying the past of England and of the British race; and as to the future, a great many persons believed that, for individuals, it was as mythical as Mrs Harris.

The so-called educated classes, when not following the compulsory routine of their daily lives, were primarily engaged, as to the young men, in the frenzied pursuit of sport; and as to the young women, in the vital study of dress, varied by a steady perusal of their favourite authoresses in the domain of fiction.

Newspapers, of course, were scanned—by the male population, at any rate; but people were not equal to the intellectual exertion of reading an unbroken column. News and notes had to be administered on the homœopathic principle, in scraps and snippets. And as the Bible had not yet been abridged, it necessarily followed that that was the very last book that up-to-date people could find time or interest to study.

Lives of great men were still available to remind the moderns to make their lives sublime. But, then, the moderns could not find time or inclination to read the ancients. The sublime, in their view, was not only close to, but identical with, the ridiculous. Certainly they could not concern themselves with any nonsense about leaving footprints on the sands of time. Everybody, however, found time to read lengthy law reports arising from scandals in high life.

A considerate aristocracy had of late done more and more to gratify public taste in that respect. The “upper classes” quarrelled about their children, about their heirlooms, about the “other man,” or the “secret woman,” about anything and everything. But, in spite of all, the average Briton, with inborn snobbishness, dearly loved a lord. Kind hearts were at a discount; but coronets fetched heavy premiums, especially in the American market. Broadly speaking, “simple faith” was non-existent; but Norman blood, however vitiated, covered in a double sense the multitude of sins. The Divorce Court had virtually become a public laundry, in which judge, counsel, and witnesses were constantly engaged in washing the soiled linen of the British peerage, a task varied, however, by similar operations on behalf of the ladies and gentlemen of the stage.

The business classes, still solid, stolid, and worried, were mostly occupied in efforts to put money in the purse to an extent sufficient to meet the ever-growing expenses of modern life in England. By reason of this problem, there were fewer marriages than of yore; and, yet more significant, the birth-rate fell and fell. There was still great wealth in England, but it was in fewer hands. The Jew syndicates, the drink-sellers, the drapers, and the betting agents largely absorbed the nation’s gold. But the poor in pocket were by no means poor in spirit. Pampered and petted by political parties, the British working-man had realised the uses of the weapons placed at his disposal. He had a vote, and he used it, whereas the middle-class man did not. He had the weight of numbers behind him, and he meant to use that too. Yet, notwithstanding all these indications of decay, there was still in every rank a goodly leaven; the problem was, whether there was enough of it to leaven the whole lump, and resuscitate the nation. If, instead of the return of the native after only twenty-five years, the boy-poet, Keats, could have come back (from that bourn whence no traveller returns), after nearer a hundred years, it is to be feared he still would have found an “inhuman dearth of noble natures,” and still gloomier signs—

“Of all the unhealthy and o’er-darkened ways Made for our searching.”

It was a covetous age, but it did not covet earnestly the best of gifts:

“Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance, These are the seals of that most firm assurance, Which bars the pit over Destruction’s strength.”

But Shelley, like Keats, was forgotten, or unknown. The age of mediocrity had no concern with intellectual giants; the period of small men, with parochial ideas, nothing in common with great conceptions of—

“Love from its awful throne of patient power,”

looking down upon humanity; or of humanity ready—

“To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; To defy Power, which seems omnipotent; To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates.”

It was “Everyone for himself,” but not “devil take the hindmost”; because belief in the Prince of Darkness, like belief in many other things, had largely been discarded.

The signs and the sounds of the times were many and various; but, not in England only—perhaps less in England than abroad—the most arresting was the diapason note of a steady march. The rolling rhythm of a mighty organ; the tramp, tramp, tramp of the many millions, drawing nearer and nearer.

CHAPTER IIAT THE NEW BAILEY

For three days public attention had been riveted on another sensational trial that had packed the New Bailey with an excited audience, and filled the report columns of the London papers. It was alleged that a daring and gigantic fraud had been practised on charitable persons, and, what was worse, not merely on persons, but on personages, highly placed in Church and State. Many distinguished victims had gone into the witness-box, and told their tale; and therein, for the time being, lay the main interest of the trial. Again, ladies of social celebrity, eager for a new sensation, had importuned city officials and the Judge himself for the equivalent of stalls to see the show. The Society journals gushingly described their excellent taste—in the matter of dress.

Lord Malvern, the Chief Justice, had come down to try the case, and his counterfeit presentment in various attitudes of wisdom or weariness had figured in the Daily Graphic, with those of the prisoners, witnesses, and counsel. In this instance the prisoners themselves were persons of little interest or importance; for it was well understood that they were practically dummies, put forward, and, it was said, well paid for running the risk of capture. There was what the papers call a brilliant array of counsel. For the Crown, Sir John Westwood, Solicitor-General, led three other learned gentlemen, of whom “Bobby” Herrick was the least of juniors; and on the other side were ranged five advocates, the best the Bar could produce or money retain—the leaders being the well-known K.C.’s—Mr Duffus Jacobs, Mr Brill, and Mr Dawson Dalton.

The elaborate nature of the conspiracy had only gradually been unfolded. It was amazing in its audacity; and yet in the minds of those who were specially qualified to read between the lines, there was a strong conviction that something much more serious lay behind. It was proved, indeed, that many thousands of pounds had passed into the coffers of the London Emigration League, but it was whispered that not one-tenth of the plunder had been brought to light or traced. The actual figures were believed to run into scores of thousands, systematically collected under false pretences during a period of ten months and more. Dukes and lesser peers, with bishops, deans, prominent canons of the Church, and City magnates, had been made the puppets of the wire-pullers. As patrons they gave their names as well as their money to this well-sounding scheme, which professed to have for its object the sending of the loafers, wastrels, hooligans, and gaol-birds of the homeland to Canada, Australia, and South Africa. The project found favour, to some extent because it appealed indirectly to self-interest. The growing turbulence of the unemployed and unemployable seriously menaced social order, and the annual expenditure on prisons and workhouses had brought about an enormous increase in the rates.

The scheme of the League, appealing thus to a spurious philanthropy, when once launched, was urged forward day by day under the auspices of illustrious names, and boldly pushed by means of page advertisements in the leading London newspapers. At the Mansion House the Lord Mayor presided over an enthusiastic meeting in support of the League. A resolution, moved by a member of the Royal Family, was received with plaudits and carried with acclamation. Thereafter, from leading assurance offices, and banking houses, and from City men of wealth and influence, munificent donations flowed in thick and fast. These gifts were freely advertised. The first list drew another list, and so forth. The snowball rolled and rolled.

Doubt and suspicion, whispered here and there, were silenced or pooh-poohed. The League stood out boldly in the light of day. Its huge offices on Holborn Viaduct were filled with an army of clerks and typists by day; and by night its name was flashed ceaselessly, like that of a catchpenny soap or tobacco, before the eyes of wondering passers-by. Reports were issued to subscribers throughout the kingdom, who were given to understand that the colonial branches of the League were being steadily developed into working order, and that soon the farms and industries designed to provide honest labour for the outcasts of the crowded mother country would be available for the eager emigrants.

The various colonies indicated were not quite keen in their appreciation of the project. Colonial journals protested against an influx of ex-convicts. Canada wanted population, but it must be population of the right sort; and Australia saw in the scheme a dangerous likeness to the old transportation system, with all the attendant evils of a penal settlement.

An officer of the League complained strongly in the Times of the misunderstanding and obstruction that thus hindered the fulfilment of their meritorious aims. Influential deputations of patrons and vice-presidents went to the Colonial Office, and waited also on the Prime Minister. The Crown agents of the Colonies were interviewed; and, the League, remaining prominently in evidence day by day, drew in, though more slowly as the months went by, additional subscriptions from all classes of society.

Then, suddenly, a bolt fell from the blue. Mr Vandelaire, the owner-editor of the Detector, published an article in which he declared in round terms that the whole scheme was an imposture, a colossal fraud in root and branch. He boldly named the leading officials of the League as participators in a nefarious project, and politely informed them that if they considered the article was libellous, his solicitors (the much-paragraphed Messrs Ely & Ely) would be ready to accept service of legal process. Other articles followed, and were eagerly read and quoted. They suggested that there was a rich and reckless man behind the League, the prime mover in a mammoth project of deception; that the officials in question were, for the most part, figureheads; and finally, that robbery was not the real object of this daring and dangerous organisation.

Questions were asked in Parliament, and evaded in the usual Governmental manner. The Daily Telephone devoted columns to the letters of correspondents, some of whom—guileless “constant readers” and others—angrily protested against “malicious attacks upon a great and meritorious scheme,” while, on the other hand, a few vehemently invoked the criminal law and declared that the Treasury Solicitor was a useless functionary unless, in such circumstances, he set the law in motion. Even the law officers of the Crown, sadly injured men who only wanted to draw their enormous salaries in peace and quietness, came in for criticism. Presumptuous persons actually wanted to know what they did for the money. It became quite manifest that the public demanded a prosecution of the League, and meant to have it. Ultimately, and, as it were with infinite reluctance, warrants were applied for and granted.

A prolonged magisterial enquiry resulted, after endless remands, in the committal of the secretary and chief cashier of the League to take their trial at the Bailey. Such was the stage that had now been reached in this amazing drama of the day.

On a certain Saturday in April—five-and-twenty years after Michael White went down into the silence of imprisonment, soon to pass into the greater silence of a yet narrower cell; five-and-twenty years after his son had uttered his savage warning to John Westwood, the sequel was beginning to take shape.

As yet it was a little cloud, no bigger than a man’s hand; but the cloud was destined to grow to vast proportions, blacker and more threatening as time went on, shadowing London with a great terror of darkness, and begetting fear throughout the length and breadth of England.

CHAPTER IIITHE LEAGUERS’ FIRST MOVE

In the Solicitor-General’s chambers, in Paper Buildings, Bobby Herrick was fuming, and looking at his watch. At intervals Wilson, the head-clerk, fussed in and out with briefs and papers. All the bundles were tied together with the inevitable tape; well may it blush red for the unholy and mendacious things it has enfolded! Westwood’s clerk, however, never blushed. For one thing, he had bargained so remorselessly for heavier fees at moments critical for his employer’s clients that he had lost the power of feeling shame. For another, he had a thick and doughy skin which preserved the same unhealthy hue at all times and in all places. He was a prosperous man, belonging, it was said, to the ranks of “gigmanity,” for he kept his pony chaise at Brixton. There were some who said that Josiah Wilson would sell his little soul for gold if only Mephistopheles would care to make a bid. He certainly had investments, and his average income from “clerk’s fees” (which immemorial usage extracts from the client, instead of from the advocate) was quite substantial. Many a struggling junior at the Bar would have been thankful to earn a third of that average income. Wilson really earned nothing except in the manner indicated; but he wore a silk-fronted frock-coat and a massive watch-chain. Nature, in its abhorrence of a straight line, had taken care that there should be no straight line in the waistcoat which that gleaming chain adorned.

“Sir John’s late this morning,” said Wilson.

“Yes, I know he is,” agreed Herrick impatiently.

“Something wrong, I expect,” suggested Wilson, with a shifty look.

“Good heavens! I hope not.” Herrick started up. “Why, everything depends on his being in Court. He’s going to claim his privilege and reply on the whole case for the Crown.”

“He can’t if he isn’t there,” said Wilson. “He was a bit queer yesterday. Liver—that’s what it is,” he added hesitatingly.

“Confound his liver!” Herrick muttered, under the slight cover of his fair moustache. “Look here,” he said aloud, “why don’t you ring him up?”

“I might do that,” assented Wilson, but not with enthusiasm.

“He seemed all right in Court yesterday; a bit fagged, nothing more. It’s the House that knocks him up.”

“He wasn’t all right last night when I took down that last report from Scotland Yard.”

“Well, go and ring them up, man. There’s hardly time to get there before the Court sits, and the Lord Chief won’t wait for anyone.”

In a few moments he heard Wilson’s “Are you there?”—the feeble stereotyped inquiry of the telephonist—and presently the tinkle of the bell in the outer room in answer. Herrick felt nervous and excited—moved by an unaccountable apprehension of sinister happenings. So far as he knew at the moment, he had nothing to do but prompt his leader in regard to dates and details, if Westwood’s memory or private notes should fail him. The case had been a professional and financial godsend to the young barrister. Of course he knew perfectly well that the brief had not come to him as the just due of his talents. He was young, untried, and inexperienced—except in his capacity as one of the lesser “devils” in the Solicitor-General’s forensic Hades. The Treasury Solicitor gave him brief No. 4 because it was officially known that it would suit Sir John Westwood to have him in the case. He also happened to be a young fellow of good family, with a not very remote chance of succeeding to an earldom; finally, he was engaged to be married to Sir John Westwood’s only daughter.