A QUESTION OF GUILT

feathered hats at Victoria. That'll be announced in advance by the newspapers as well.'

Wince held a match over his pipe-bowl with one hand. 'Bin spyin' out the land for just this chance the past three years. Sheppey itself we can ferget. It's a military area, see? Barracks up there, at Garrison Point.' He indicated with a stubby finger of his free hand. 'Railway runs straight sahth for three and a 'alf miles, crosses the water at King's Ferry Bridge. It's all marshland, flat as yer 'and. They'll station a platoon up 'ere on Barrows 'ill ter keep a sharp lookout on anyone moving abaht.'

Wince seemed to Eliot an unlikely military man. Then he recalled some remark by Ruston of Wince in Dusseldorf on a month's training 'for active service.' Perhaps Wince's shambling personality was a careful disguise. Eliot knew that he spoke fluent German and French, and had a quicker head for figures than himself.

'The branch line joins the main London, Chatham and Dover tracks just 'ere, another three miles further sahth. It's still flat an' covered with orchards-as you'd expect in Kent-so you can't see far. Then it runs west for five miles, nearly all in cuttin's, 'ard against the old Roman road ter London. See that curved cuttin' there, ahtside a village called Cold 'arbour?' Puffing clouds of smoke, Wince tapped the map decisively. 'That's where we're going to do it.'

'Do what?' asked Eliot.

'You're being deliberately obtuse,' said Ruston irritably. 'Blow up the Kaiser.'

'You're mad.'

'What do you mean, Eliot?' he demanded angrily. 'Are you with us, or aren't you? You've known perfectly well that's our plan, since January. You chose to live here cheaply and in comfort, and now you're asked to do something in return you're showing up as a coward.'

'I'm not a coward. It's just that I'm not interested in murdering people.'

'Oh, damn you!' Ruston banged the table. 'We're going to change the history of the world. And you're no more serious about it than a cricket match.'

'I don't see why you should pick me to do your dirty work.'

'Let me explain our plan.' Wince seemed unconcerned with the argument. 'We've got a couple of blokes 'oo'll be in the firin'-line. Railwaymen, from the Great Northern.'

'Members for ten years, utterly reliable, both been to Dusseldorf and trained with explosives,' said Ruston warmly.

'There won't be nobody watchin' the line most o' the way. Stands to reason, don't it? They'd need 'arf the army. An' wot's the point? The Kaiser's a popular chap, the King's cousin. They'll send a tank engine ahead of the royal special, so if anyone's provided a rather generous detonator, or removed a rail or two on the sly, the driver and fireman'll get it in the eye, not 'is Imperial Majesty. Our men will set orf the charge as the train goes across, then run for it.'

'They won't run far,' Eliot said.

Wince continued calmly, 'There'll be a carriage an' pair with another of our blokes, getting them to Chatham along the main road in less than an hour. In Chatham, we've an 'ahse they can lie low in, as long as they like.'

'Where'll you get the dynamite from?' Eliot asked. 'You can't buy it at the Army and Navy Stores.'

Ruston smiled smugly. 'It's under your feet.'

'So far, there seems nothing for me to do, anyway,' Eliot pointed out. 'I don't care going along just for the excitement.'

'You are the hub of the operation, Eliot. Your orders are to take a room in the _Bull and Mouth_ inn at Sittingbourne for the week of the funeral. Sittingbourne is exactly where the two railway lines join. Our two railwaymen are heroes of the people, but they are unschooled. They can barely read and write. We need an intelligent man to pass messages, to free the snags, to extemporize should anything go wrong. A well-spoken fellow like you will create not a breath of suspicion. You won't use your own name, of course. Choose any you like,' Ruston ended generously.

'Lenin?' suggested Eliot.

'You must take this seriously,' Ruston repeated angrily.

'I take extremely seriously the certainty that I shall be arrested and hanged, as colonel of a regiment of two illiterates.'

'Then you will be a martyr,' Ruston assured him solemnly.

'Why not go instead? Wouldn't you like to be a martyr, too?'

'To be frank, I am too important to risk.'

'I've thought of another objection.'

'What's that?'

'My father will undoubtedly be sacked by the Duke.'

Ruston glared. He checked what he was about to say. 'I interpret this foolish attitude as embarrassment at having to perform your duty, when you had every intention of avoiding it. We shall be back tomorrow.' Wince began folding his map. 'I have important things to accomplish tonight.'

'And I am becoming late for my dinner.'

Eliot was evasive about the visit until sitting in the corner of a narrow French restaurant in Soho. It was one of the few open, the evening after the King's death. The tables were crude, the floor sawdusted, the walls lined with scrolled mirrors, the ceiling over the gas-globes thick with dead flies. Eliot said it served the best veal in London.

'They wish to change my duties from pushing political tracts through clergymen's letter boxes to blowing up the German Emperor,' he announced.

Nancy stared, mouth agape. 'Oh, God save us,' she muttered. 'But it's crazy.'

'I know. The only effect of the plan will be the locking up of its perpetrators.'

'There's a lot about this movement you've never told me of, isn't there?' She was more frightened than reproachful.

'There's a lot I don't know myself. You must have guessed the house is a staging-post for comrades from the Continent? Scotland Yard certainly has our address, but as we're doing nothing illegal I don't give a tinker's cuss. There's German money behind it, which probably accounts for the Kaiser's privilege as the target. Communism's a German phenomenon. Marx and Engels were Rhinelanders, remember. Over there, it's a voice demanding to govern. Here it's just a voice, to which the British workers are as deaf as to the street-corner evangelists.'

Eliot reached for her hand across the zinc-topped table with paper cloth. 'I can't forgive myself for getting you mixed in this, dearest. I should have told you at the beginning, but of course I was scared you'd just fly off.'

She was concerned only at his being mixed in it. He said ruefully, 'When I joined, I suppose I'd have blown up the Duke and my father with him. Now my ideas upon the British revolution are as gentlemanly as Carlyle's on the French one. I still want a revolution, but only in the abstract.'

The fat proprietor in his tight alpaca coat presented the burgundy. Eliot sniffed, sipped and nodded. 'Ruston's probably as appalled at the scheme as I am, but too frightened to admit it. I've the idea that Wince is the boss, really. Everything is so devious in a revolutionary body, I suspect for the fun of it.'

'We must leave the house at once,' Nancy said firmly.

'You must. You're going home to New York by the next boat.'

'Of course I'm not.'

'Nancy, my darling-love is sweet but life is sweeter.'

She looked scared. 'You mean we're in danger?'

'If they're ruthless enough to kill the Kaiser, they certainly are to kill me.'

The proprietor served their _blanquette de veau a l'ancienne._ 'Ruston tried to scare me about one of our comrades who was found shot,' Eliot resumed. 'Though I doubt for ratting on the movement. He was a young man afflicted with the same malady as Oscar Wilde. He had strange business with important men who would have mourned him by cracking a bottle of champagne.'

'I'll go to New York if you come too. That'll solve everything.'

'I can't leave overnight, like Mrs Crippen. No more than Dr Crippen could. I've patients depending on me.'

'They can go down the road to the Royal Free Hospital. They survived before your surgery was there.'

'They'd think poorly of me. And I don't care to run away. It would blow a hole in my political career.'

'Why not stay in New York? There'd be no trouble, Fixing you a licence to practice.'

He was silent for some time. 'No,' he said.