“I have no defence to offer,” said Manfred, “therefore no defence to prepare.”
The governor seemed vexed.
“Isn’t life sufficiently sweet to you—to urge you to make an effort to save it?” he asked roughly, “or are you going to give it up without a struggle?”
“I shall escape,” said Manfred again; “aren’t you tired of hearing me tell you why I make no effort to save myself?”
“When the newspapers start the ‘mad’ theory again,” said the exasperated prison official, “I shall feel most inclined to break the regulations and write a letter in support of the speculation.”
“Do,” said Manfred cheerfully, “and tell them that I run round my cell on all fours biting visitors’ legs.”
The next day the books arrived. The mysteries of the Ituri Forest remained mysteries, but Three Months in Morocco (big print, wide margins, 12s. 6d.) he read with avidity from cover to cover, notwithstanding the fact that the reviewers to a man condemned it as being the dullest book of the season. Which was an unkindly reflection upon the literary merits of its author, Leon Gonsalez, who had worked early and late to prepare the book for the press, writing far into the night, whilst Poiccart, sitting at the other side of the table, corrected the damp proofs as they came from the printer.
XIII
The “Rational Faithers”
In the handsomely furnished sitting-room of a West Kensington flat, Gonsalez and Poiccart sat over their postprandial cigars, each busy with his own thoughts. Poiccart tossed his cigar into the fireplace and pulled out his polished briar and slowly charged it from a gigantic pouch. Leon watched him under half-closed lids, piecing together the scraps of information he had collected from his persistent observation.
“You are getting sentimental, my friend,” he said.
Poiccart looked up inquiringly.
“You were smoking one of George’s cigars without realizing it. Halfway through the smoke you noticed the band had not been removed, so you go to tear it off. By the band you are informed that it is one of George’s favourite cigars, and that starts a train of thought that makes the cigar distasteful to you, and you toss it away.”
Poiccart lit his pipe before replying.
“Spoken like a cheap little magazine detective,” he said frankly. “If you would know I was aware that it was George’s, and from excess of loyalty I was trying to smoke it; halfway through I reluctantly concluded that friendship had its limits; it is you who are sentimental.”
Gonsalez closed his eyes and smiled. “There’s another review of your book in the Evening Mirror tonight,” Poiccart went on maliciously; “have you seen it?”
The recumbent figure shook its head.
“It says,” the merciless Poiccart continued, “that an author who can make Morocco as dull as you have done, would make—”
“Spare me,” murmured Gonsalez half asleep.
They sat for ten minutes, the tick-tick of the little clock on the mantelpiece and the regular puffs from Poiccart’s pipe breaking the silence.
“It would seem to me,” said Gonsalez, speaking with closed eyes, “that George is in the position of a master who has set his two pupils a difficult problem to solve, quite confident that, difficult as it is, they will surmount all obstacles and supply the solution.”
“I thought you were asleep,” said Poiccart.
“I was never more awake,” said Gonsalez calmly. “I am only marshalling details. Do you know Mr. Peter Sweeney?”
“No,” said Poiccart.
“He’s a member of the Borough Council of Chelmsford. A great and a good man.”
Poiccart made no response.
“He is also the head and front of the ‘Rational Faith’ movement, of which you may have heard.”
“I haven’t,” admitted Poiccart, stolid but interested.
“The ‘Rational Faithers,’ ” Gonsalez explained sleepily, “are an off shoot of the New Unitarians, and the New Unitarians are a hotch-potch people with grievances.”
Poiccart yawned.
“The ‘Rational Faithers’ ” Gonsalez went on, “have a mission in life, they have also a brass band, and a collection of drivelling songs, composed, printed and gratuitously distributed by Mr. Peter Sweeney, who is a man of substance.”
He was silent after this for quite a minute.
“A mission in life, and a nice loud brassy band—the members of which are paid monthly salaries—by Peter.”
Poiccart turned his head and regarded his friend curiously.
“What is all this about?” he asked.
“The ‘Rational Faithers,’ ” the monotonous Gonsalez continued, “are the sort of people who for all time have been in the eternal minority. They are against things, against public-houses, against music-halls, against meat eating, and vaccination—and capital punishment,” he repeated softly.
Poiccart waited.
“Years ago they were regarded as a nuisance—rowdies broke up their meetings; the police prosecuted them for obstruction, and some of them were sent to prison and came out again, being presented with newly furbished haloes at meat breakfasts—Peter presiding.
“Now they have lived down their persecutions—martyrdom is not to be so cheaply bought—they are an institution like the mechanical spinning jenny and fashionable socialism—which proves that if you go on doing things often enough and persistently, saying with a loud voice, ‘Pro bono publico,’ people will take you at your own valuation, and will tolerate you.”
Poiccart was listening intently now.
“These people demonstrate—Peter is really well off, with heaps of slum property, and he has lured other wealthy ladies and gentlemen into the movement. They demonstrate on all occasions. They have chants—Peter calls them ‘chants,’ and it is a nice distinction, stamping them as it does with the stamp of semi-secularity—for these festive moments, chants for the confusion of vaccinators, and eaters of beasts, and such. But of all their ‘Services of Protest’ none is more thorough, more beautifully complete, than that which is specially arranged to express their horror and abhorrence of capital punishment.”
His pause was so long that Poiccart interjected an impatient—
“Well?”
“I was trying to think of the chant,” said Leon thoughtfully. “If I remember right one verse goes—
Come fight the gallant fight,
This horror to undo;
Two blacks will never make a white,
Nor legal murder too.”
“The last line,” said Gonsalez tolerantly, “is a trifle vague, but it conveys with delicate suggestion
