A QUESTION OF GUILT

'Do you suppose the whole plan's a fantastic dream of those two men?' Nancy suggested more cheerfully. 'My father gets threats against his life every month. Nothing happens. He just passes them along to Pinkerton's.'

'I shall emulate Gilbert's admirably sagatious Duke of Plaza-Toro in similar circumstances,' Eliot decided. 'I shall send my resignation in, the first of all his corps, O!'

'Go to the police,' she suggested eagerly. 'You know enough about Ruston and Wince.'

'Enough to get them both hanged on the same morning. But I can hardly denounce them without incriminating myself.'

They decided the safest plan was an anonymous letter to Scotland Yard, warning of an attempt upon the Kaiser during his train journey to London. Eliot calculated it would line the railway with policemen, to scare away the two unlettered assassins. They must move house instantly, Nancy insisted. Eliot recalled Crippen's remark about leaving Hilldrop Crescent. He suggested they bought the fag-end of the lease. Nancy agreed. Scrubbed and stripped of its pink hangings, the house was tolerable. 'At least, there's no dynamite in the cellar,' Eliot told her.

Preparing the anonymous letter on Sunday morning was a fresh experience as alarming to Eliot as preparing to blow up the royal train. He tore a sheet from a cheap exercise-book, wrote in pencilled capitals, and took the Metropolitan Railway to post it in the City. That afternoon he walked with Nancy up Camden Road to Hilldrop Crescent. A dark girl about sixteen in a brown dress and an apron opened the door. The antipathy to servants had died with Belle.

Eliot gave their names. The girl shrugged, and called into the house, 'Madame!' Ethel appeared, smiling. 'I read about you in the paper,' she said admiringly, remembering Nancy. 'This is Mademoiselle Valentine, the doctor and I brought her over from Boulogne last week.'

Eliot brought a smile from the girl by addressing her in French. 'Oh, I do wish I could speak like that!' Ethel clasped her hands together. 'Valentine is living with us _au pair,_ as the French say.'

On starvation wages, as the English say, Eliot thought.

'I hope she'll improve my French conversation. The doctor speaks the language perfectly, of course. He's out, seeing Mr Marr at Aural Remedies,' Ethel apologized. 'Even on a Sunday, would you believe it? But Mr Marr's very useful to the doctor. Do come in.'

She led them into the parlour, with comfortable assurance as mistress of the house. The room was still pink, but the bows had gone from the picture-frames, the photographs were cleared away. It was full of clothes-a fur coat, overcoats in brown, black and cream, a feather boa, jackets and skirts, an armchair Filled with lace-edged silk blouses and coloured underskirts, another with pink nightgowns, stockings and stays. Eliot counted seven pairs of shoes lined across the carpet, black, blue, black-and-white and pink. The card table was piled with hats. A square wicker basket used by performers 'on the road' stood empty, its side stencilled in thick black letters BELLE ELMORE. Before the fireplace was a dark, middle-aged woman in a brand-new heliotrope costume made for someone shorter and fatter.

'This is Emily Jackson.' Ethel's voice was fond. 'She was my landlady at Constantine Road. I was giving her some of poor Belle's clothes. It seems such a shame, just having them eaten by moths, doesn't it?'

Nancy made a sympathetic remark about Belle dying so far from home. 'It was a great shock,' said Ethel solemnly. She looked quickly from Eliot to Nancy. 'Mrs Jackson was more of a mother to me than a landlady. She knows all about me and the doctor before…before…'

'The doctor's one of the nicest men I ever met,' asserted Mrs Jackson warmly.

'And now the poor King too has gone to his rest,' sighed Ethel.

As this seemed to raise death from a personal to general subject, Eliot mentioned his interest in the house.

'Yes, the doctor did give notice, for sure,' Ethel said. 'But now we're thinking of staying till September. It's so difficult, finding somewhere nice. And the doctor's getting a bit more cheery now. A few days in Boulogne did him the world of good, even though somebody stole his luggage going across. Would you believe it! It was his leather hatbox, one moment it was there, the next it had vanished. I told him to inform the French police, but he said they'd never lift a finger to help an Englishman. If you're looking for a place, why not ask the house agents we pay the rent to? They're Lown amp; Sons, 12 Ashbrook Road, at the bottom of Highgate Hill.'

Eliot thanked her. 'They haven't wasted much time, dividing the spoils,' he remarked, as they walked back to Camden Road.

'Do you suppose he'll marry her?'

'Oh, yes. He's dreadfully sentimental.'

They left Camden Road two days later, a moonlight flit with a couple of cabs, one full of Nancy's luggage. Lown and Sons had found them a furnished terraced house opposite the Postmen's Office with the Royal Arms over the gate, in the road running east from Hilldrop Crescent to Kentish Town railway station. Nancy immediately engaged two servant girls and a cook. Eliot knew Ruston could find him any morning at the surgery, but had grown a shell of indifference. He did not somehow feel the sort who ended up on Hackney Marshes.

'This ghastly plot has disillusioned me about anything done in the name of 'The People',' he confessed to Nancy, in their new living-room with the green-striped wallpaper and plants in brass-pots. 'Who are 'The People'? The humans I treat every day in the surgery. Not very worldly, not lettered, full of prejudice and superstitions, stupid but shrewd. Often noble-a man will crack a joke rather than infect his family with his terror of coming death. Our democracy is the benevolent management of their organized misapprehensions, that's all. They need leadership for their own survival, not the survival of their leaders. But Ruston talks about, 'The People' in the arrogant abstract, and seeks an easy ride to political power on their backs. I'll always support the underdog, but not one only ambitious to be the top dog.'

At seven in the evening of Wednesday, May 18, the Hohenzollen anchored off Sheerness. She had been escorted from Flushing by the cruiser Kцnisberg and the despatch-boat _Sleiper, _by four British destroyers from the Shivering Sands buoy. The Kaiser travelled with Dr Neider his personal physician, Count Eulenburg his Master of Ceremonies, General von Plessen and Vice-Admiral von Muller, and Baron von Reischach his Master of Horse. Reading this roll-call in _The Times,_ Eliot wondered if all six would shortly be shot in fragments into the Kentish air. The newspaper mentioned to his discouragement that Scotland Yard had received a hundred anonymous warnings of assassination attempts against the Kaiser, which they took as malicious hoaxes.

On Friday, Eliot's paper told him the Kaiser would leave Sheerness at ten, to be met at noon by King George at Victoria station. Eliot walked down Brecknock Road for his usual morning's work. At eleven, he abandoned the struggle. Nancy had returned from her rounds. He left her the patients, found a cab in York Road and directed the driver to Victoria.

The crowd in the triangular station forecourt would reassure the Kaiser that his popularity exceeded that of his country-if he arrived, Eliot thought. The newspapers had laid cosy emphasis on the rulers of Prussia and Britain being cousins for the first time since George II and Frederick-William I. Eliot pushed his way towards the scarlet- tunicked guardsmen, their officers with black crepe armbands, drawn behind the cordon of policemen. He nervously imagined the stir among the officials in gleaming top hats and morning coats beyond. He already heard the whisper through the crowd which swelled into the horrified cry, 'The Kaiser-killed!' He saw himself tortured with remorse, agonized with fear for Nancy, awaiting the knock on the door for policemen to bundle him into the black Maria, to join Ruston and Wince in the dock of the Old Bailey, and with luck breaking stones on Dartmoor for the rest of his natural life.

King George arrived in a landau, with an escort of Household Cavalry. He entered the station. Ten minutes later he reappeared with the Kaiser in a black overcoat. Eliot cheered so loudly that people started looking at him.

The funeral was the spectacle Eliot had promised Nancy. The silent crowds were so thick in St James's that fainting ladies were succoured on the pavement by vinegar-soaked sponges suspended from the balconies of White's club, ladies not being allowed inside in any condition. The Kaiser rode on King George's right, immediately after the gun-carriage. Behind the monarchs of Europe and Mr Theodore Roosevelt, King Edward's favourite terrier Caesar was led by a gillie in Highland dress, a white Scottie interloper joining them in Piccadilly all the way to Paddington Station, where the coffin was slid into the white-domed mortuary saloon of the Royal train, last used for Queen Victoria, on No 2 platform for Windsor.

The Kaiser left after the weekend. His farewell lunch at Buckingham Palace continued with earnest talk to his host in Victoria Station waiting-room, though twice informed his train was ready to leave. Next morning's