“That is all to the good,” he said, as the detective rose to go.
“I must see the commissioner. I shall be away for less than half an hour; in the meantime I suggest that you do not leave your room,” he said.
Sir Philip followed him to the anteroom, in which sat Hamilton, the secretary.
“I have had an uncomfortable feeling,” said Falmouth, as one of his men approached with a long coat, which he proceeded to help the detective into, “a sort of instinctive feeling this last day or two, that I have been watched and followed, so that I am using a motorcar to convey me from place to place; they can’t follow that without attracting some notice.” He dipped his hand into the pocket and brought out a pair of motor-goggles; he laughed somewhat shamefacedly as he adjusted them. “This is the only disguise I ever adopt, and I might say, Sir Philip,” he added with some regret, “that this is the first time during my twenty-five years of service that I have ever played the fool like a stage detective.”
After Falmouth’s departure the foreign minister returned to his desk. He hated being alone: it frightened him. That there were twoscore detectives within call did not dispel the feeling of loneliness. The terror of the Four was ever with him, and this had so worked upon his nerves that the slightest noise irritated him. He played with the penholder that lay on the desk. He scribbled inconsequently on the blotting-pad before him, and was annoyed to find that the scribbling had taken the form of numbers of figure 4.
Was the bill worth it? Was the sacrifice called for? Was the measure of such importance as to justify the risk? These things he asked himself again and again, and then immediately, What sacrifice? What risk?
“I am taking the consequences too much for granted,” he muttered, throwing aside the pen, and half turning from the writing-table. “There is no certainty that they will keep their words; bah! it is impossible that they should—”
There was a knock at the door.
“Hullo! Superintendent,” said the foreign minister as the knocker entered. “Back again already!”
The detective, vigorously brushing the dust from his moustache with a handkerchief, drew an official-looking blue envelope from his pocket.
“I thought I had better leave this in your care,” he said, dropping his voice; “it occurred to me just after I had left; accidents happen, you know.”
The minister took the document.
“What is it?” he asked.
“It is something which would mean absolute disaster for me if by chance it was found in my possession,” said the detective, turning to go.
“What am I to do with it?”
“You would greatly oblige me by putting it in your desk until I return”; and the detective stepped into the anteroom, closed the door behind him and, acknowledging the salute of the plain-clothes officer who guarded the outer door, passed to the motorcar that waited him.
Sir Philip looked at the envelope with a puzzled frown.
It bore the superscription “Confidential” and the address, “Department A. C.I.D., Scotland Yard.”
“Some confidential report,” thought Sir Philip, and an angry doubt as to the possibility of its containing particulars of the police arrangements for his safety filled his mind. He had hit by accident upon the truth had he but known. The envelope contained those particulars.
He placed the letter in a drawer of his desk and drew some papers toward him. They were copies of the Bill for the passage of which he was daring so much. It was not a long document. The clauses were few in number, the objects, briefly described in the preamble, were tersely defined. There was no fear of this bill failing to pass on the morrow. The Government’s majority was assured. Men had been brought back to town, stragglers had been whipped in, prayers and threats alike had assisted in concentrating the rapidly dwindling strength of the administration on this one effort of legislation; and what the frantic entreaties of the whips had failed to secure, curiosity had accomplished, for members of both parties were hurrying to town to be present at a scene which might perhaps be history, and, as many feared, tragedy.
As Sir Philip conned the paper he mechanically formed in his mind the line of attack—for, tragedy or none, the bill struck at too many interests in the House to allow of its passage without a stormy debate. He was a master of dialectics, a brilliant casuist, a coiner of phrases that stuck and stung. There was nothing for him to fear in the debate. If only—. It hurt him to think of the Four Just Men, not so much because they threatened his life—he had gone past that—but the mere thought that there had come a new factor into his calculations, a new and a terrifying force, that could not be argued down or brushed aside with an acid jest, or intrigued against, or adjusted by any parliamentary method. He did not think of compromise. The possibility of making terms with his enemy never once entered his head.
“I’ll go through with it!” he cried, not once but a score of times; “I’ll go through with it!” and now, as the moment grew nearer to hand, his determination to try conclusions with this new world-force grew stronger than ever.
The telephone at his elbow purred—he was sitting at his desk with his head on his hands—and he took the receiver. The voice of his house steward reminded him that he had arranged to give instructions for the closing of the house in Portland Place. For two or three days, or until this terror had subsided, he intended that his house should be empty. He would not risk the lives of his servants. If the Four intended to carry out their plan they would run no risks of failure, and if the method they employed were a bomb, then, to make assurance doubly sure, an explosion at Downing Street might
