“We shall win, Mr. Latter, I tell you. That,” with a lean forefinger he pointed to the man outside, “is going on all over England, Scotland, and Ireland. And the fools in London prate of economic laws and inflated currencies. What does an abstract cause matter to those men; they want food.”
He had glanced at Delmorlick, to find the eyes of the other man fixed on him gravely. He had hardly noticed it at the time—he had been too anxious to get away; now, as he sat at dinner, he found strangely enough that it was the other man’s face which seemed to have made the biggest impression on his mind. A new arrival in the place, so Delmorlick had told him—but red-hot for the cause of freedom and anarchy.
He made some vague remark to his neighbour and once more relapsed into moody silence. So far, so good; his job was done—he could leave tomorrow. He would have left that afternoon but for the fact that he had sent his baggage up to Drayton House, and it would have looked strange. But he had already arranged for a wire to be sent to him from London the following morning, and for the night—well, there were Drummond and the police. Decidedly, on points he appeared to be in a winning position—quite a comfortable position. And yet—that unknown factor … Still, there was always Drummond; the only trouble was that he couldn’t quite place him. What on earth had he meant before dinner? He glanced across the table at him now: he was eating salted almonds and making love to his hostess.
“A fool,” reflected Mr. Latter, “but a powerful fool. If it was necessary, he’d swallow anything I told him.”
And so, towards the end of dinner, aided possibly by his host’s very excellent vintage port, Mr. Charles Latter had more or less soothed his fears. Surely he was safe in the house, and nothing would induce him to leave it until he went to the station next morning. No thought of the abominable crime he had planned only that afternoon disturbed his equanimity; as has been said, he was not a pleasant specimen of humanity.
Charles Latter was unmoral rather than immoral: he was a constitutional coward with a strong liking for underhand intrigue, and he was utterly and entirely selfish. In his way he was ambitious: he wanted power, but, though in many respects he was distinctly able, he lacked that essential factor—the ability to work for it. He hated work: he wanted easy results. And to obtain lasting results is not easy, as Mr. Latter gradually discovered. A capability for making flashy speeches covered with a veneer of cleverness is an undoubted asset, but it is an asset the value of which has been gauged to a nicety by the men who count. And so as time went on, and the epoch-making day when he had been returned to Parliament faded into the past, Mr. Latter realized himself for what he was—a thing of no account. And the realization was as gall and wormwood to his soul. It is a realization which comes to many men, and it takes them different ways. Some become resigned—some make new and even more futile efforts: some see the humour of it, and some don’t. Mr. Latter didn’t: he became spiteful. And a spiteful coward is a nasty thing.
It was just about that time that he met Count Zadowa. It was at dinner at a friend’s house, and after the ladies had left he found himself sitting next to the hunchback with the strange, piercing eyes. He wasn’t conscious of having said very much: he would have been amazed had he been told that within ten minutes this charming foreigner had read his unpleasant little mind like a book, and had reached a certain and quite definite decision. In fact, looking back on the past few months, Mr. Latter was at a loss to account as to how things had reached their present pass. Had he been told when he stood for Parliament, flaunting all the old hackneyed formulae, that within two years he would be secretly engaged in red-hot Communist work, he would have laughed the idea to scorn. Anarchy, too: a nasty word, but the only one that fitted the bomb outrage in Manchester, which he had himself organized. Sometimes in the night, he used to wake and lie sweating as he thought of that episode …
And gradually it had become worse and worse. Little by little the charming Count Zadowa, realizing that Mr. Latter possessed just those gifts which he could utilize to advantage, had ceased to be charming. There were many advantages in having a Member of Parliament as chief liaison officer.
There had been that first small slip when he signed a receipt for money paid him to address a revolutionary meeting in South Wales during the coal strike. And the receipt specified the service rendered. An unpleasant document in view of the fact that his principal supporters in his constituency were coal-owners. And after that the descent had been rapid.
Not that even now Mr. Latter felt any twinges of conscience: all he felt was occasional twinges of fear that he might be found out. He was running with the hare and hunting with the hounds with a vengeance, and at times his cowardly little soul grew sick within him. And then, like a dreaded bolt from the blue, had come the letter of warning from the Black Gang.
Anyway, he reflected, as he turned out his light after getting into bed that night, the police knew nothing of his double life. They were all round him, and there was this big fool in the house … For a moment his heart stopped beating: was it his imagination or was that the figure of a man standing at the foot of the bed?
The sweat poured off his forehead as he tried to speak: then he sat up in
