Manfred nodded, and as he stepped into the train he said:
“That lady—if you see her, tell her I am gone.”
“I will—but I’m afraid I may not tell her where.”
“That is at your discretion,” said Manfred as the train moved off. The warders drew down the blinds, and Manfred composed himself to sleep.
He woke with the chief warder’s hand on his arm and stepped out on to the platform as the day was breaking. His quick eye searched the advertisement boards on the station. He would have done this ordinarily, because they would tell him where he was, supposing for some reason the authorities had wished to keep his destination a secret from him. But he had a particular interest in advertising just then. The station was smothered with the bills of a travelling cheap jack—an unusual class of advertisement for the austere notice boards of a railway station. Huge flaming posters that said “Everything is Right,” and in smaller type underneath “Up to-date.” Little bills that said, “Write to your cousin in London … and tell her that Gipsy Jack’s bargain,” etc. “Go by the book!” said another. Marching down the stairs he observed opposite the station yet further evidence of this extravagant cheap jack’s caprice, for there were big illuminated signs in evidence, all to the same effect. In the shuttered darkness of the cab, Manfred smiled broadly. There was really no limit to the ingenuity of Leon Gonsalez. Next morning when the governor of Chelmsford Gaol visited him, Manfred expressed his intention of writing a letter to his cousin—in London.
“Did you see him?” asked Poiccart.
“Just a glimpse,” said Leon. He walked over to the window of the room and looked out. Right in front of him rose the grim façade of the gaol. He walked back to the table and poured himself out a cup of tea. It was not yet six o’clock, but he had been up the greater part of the night.
“The Home Secretary,” he said between gasps as he drank the scalding hot liquid, “is indiscreet in his correspondence and is generally a most careless man.”
It was apropos of Manfred’s coming.
“I have made two visits to the right honourable gentleman’s house in this past fortnight, and I am bursting with startling intelligence. Do you know that Willington, the President of the Board of Trade, has had an ‘affair,’ and that a junior Lord of the Admiralty drinks like a sponge, and the Chancellor hates the War Secretary, who will talk all the time, and—”
“Keeps a diary?” asked Poiccart, and the other nodded.
“A diary full of thousands of pounds’ worth of gossip, locked with a sixpenny-ha’penny lock. His house is fitted with the Magno-Sellie system of burglar alarms, and he keeps three servants.”
“You are almost encyclopaedic,” said Poiccart.
“My dear Poiccart,” said Leon resentfully, “you have got a trick of accepting the most wonderful information from me without paying me the due of adopting the following flattering attitudes: primary, incredulous surprise; secondary, ecstatic wonder; tertiary, admiration blended with awe.”
Poiccart laughed outright: an unusual circumstance.
“I have ceased to wonder at your cleverness, illustrious,” he said, speaking in Spanish, the language these two men invariably used when alone.
“All these things are beyond me,” Poiccart went on, “yet no man can say for all my slow brain that I am a sluggard in action.”
Leon smiled.
The work of the last few weeks had fallen heavily on them both. It was no light task, the preparation of Three Months in Morocco. The first word of every seventh paragraph formed the message that he had to convey to Manfred—and it was a long message. There was the task of printing it, arranging the immediate publication, the placing of the book in the list, and generally thrusting it under the noses of an unappreciative public. As sailors store lifebelts for possible contingencies, so, in every country had the Four Just Men stored the equipment of rescue against their need. Poiccart, paying many flying visits to the Midlands, brought back with him from time to time strange parts of machinery. The lighter he carried with his luggage, the heavier parts he smuggled into Chelmsford in a strongly-built motorcar.
The detached house facing the prison was fortunately for sale, and the agent who conducted the rapid negotiations that resulted in its transfer had let fall the information that the clients hoped to establish a garage on the Colchester Road that would secure a sensible proportion of the Essex motor traffic. The arrival of two rough-painted chassis supported this view of the new owners’ business. They were enterprising people, these new arrivals, and it was an open secret “on the road,” that Gipsy Jack, whose caravan was under distress, and in the hands of the bailiff, had found financial support at their hands. Albeit Jack protested vigorously at the ridiculous suggestion that he should open in Chelmsford at an unpropitious season, and sniffed contemptuously at the extravagant billing of the town. Nor did he approve of the wording of the posters, which struck him as being milder than the hilarious character of his business-entertainment called for.
“Them Heckfords are going to make a failure,” said Mr. Peter Sweeney in the bosom of his family. He occupied “Faith Home,” an ornate villa on the Colchester Road. Before his momentous conception of the “Rational Faithers,” it had borne the more imposing title of “Palace Lodge,” this by the way.
“They’ve got no business ability, and they’re a bit gone on the sherbet.” For a high-priest of a new cult, Peter’s language was neither pure nor refined. “And they haven’t got the common politeness of pigs,” he added ambiguously. “I took the petition there today,” Peter went on indignantly, “and the chap that come to the door! Oh, what a sight! Looked as if he’d been up all night, eyes red, face white, and all
