A calm inquiry into the case rendered it inconceivable that two pillars of the Constitution should commit themselves irrevocably to a scheme of action whose true sphere was the boards of a playhouse or the pages of a lurid romance. By what lapse of the reason had they permitted themselves to drift into a position so ludicrous yet so eminently dangerous? Possibly it was right for irresponsible youth; possibly it was right for men of temperament like the heroic Fitz; but for Lieutenant-Colonel John Chalmers Coverdale, C.M.G., late of His Majesty's Carabineers, and Odo Arbuthnot, Member of Parliament for the Uppingdon Division of Middleshire, it was confessedly an egregious folly.

We were both past the age when such a scheme would have appealed to our high spirits as a superior sort of "rag." Once embarked upon it, who should say whither it might lead? It was impossible to foretell the course of such an adventure. Two such devotees of law and order did well to entertain misgivings, even with the winecup in their hands.

As far as the other side of the picture was concerned, Fitz was fully entitled to regard himself as a much-injured man. It is true that in the first instance he had taken the liberty of contracting a morganatic marriage with a princess in the direct line of succession of a reigning house. But in a country like ours, where the freedom of the subject and the right of the individual to shape his own destiny form the keystone of the arch upon which the fabric of society is raised, it was impossible not to sympathise keenly with Fitz. All freeborn Englishmen could not fail to resent the intervention of an irresponsible third party, who was recklessly determined to violate a tie that had the sanction of God.

Over our cigars, when the servants had left the room, the orders for the morrow were discussed.

"I hope, Fitzwaren," said the Chief Constable, "that you fully realise the extreme gravity of your undertaking. A single error of judgment, a single slip in your mode of procedure, and we are certain to find ourselves very badly landed indeed. Personally, I hope very much that you will leave lethal weapons out of the case. If we carry them we run up against the law; and not only will they prejudice our cause but there is no saying to what they may lead."

"I should like," said I, "to identify myself with these remarks of Coverdale's. I concur entirely."

Fitz removed the cigar from his lips and leaned back in his chair. He seemed to be pondering deeply.

"I respect the opinion of both of you," he said, speaking with a good deal of deliberation after a pause that was somewhat lengthy. "You are quite right in one sense, but in the most important sense of all I am sure you are wrong. I should like everybody who is going into this business to understand clearly that it is most likely to prove extremely serious. We must take every reasonable precaution, because the moment we enter von Arlenberg's house we carry our lives in our hands. I know these Illyrians; as soon as they understand our game they will use no ceremony. Law or no law, they will shoot us like dogs if they think it is necessary. And I can assure you they will think it is necessary, unless we get them with their hands up."

"I don't like lethal weapons," said the Chief Constable.

"I don't like them either," said Fitz, "but if we are to come through with this business, we shall be compelled to carry them." Suddenly his voice sank. "The truth is, this game is so dangerous, that I don't urge anybody to take part in it. Let any man who thinks the cause is good enough follow me with a loaded revolver in his right-hand trouser pocket; and let any man who doesn't keep out of it and I shall be the last to blame him."

In the language there may not have been persuasiveness, but there was a good deal in the tone. Fitz's manner was that of a leader of others; of one who foresaw the risks he incurred; who embraced them deliberately; who having once formed his plan stuck to it whatever it might entail.

Coverdale had seen service in Zululand, the Transvaal, and in Eygpt; Brasset and I had borne a humble share in the recent transactions in South Africa; yet in an unconscious way we were all susceptible to the play of a powerful will and a magnetic personality. Cynics may say it was the wine that turned the scale – the juice of the grape is the fount of many a hardy resolution – but I prefer to think it was the quality of Fitz himself. Retreat at the eleventh hour might have been construed as dishonourable, but men like Coverdale had no need to be fantastically nice upon the point of honour. It was, I think, that Fitz carried conviction. His was the inestimable gift of rising with his theme. Heaven knew! the enterprise was foolhardy, but the man himself was a good one to follow.

All the same, when we adjourned our meeting with the compact that we should assemble at Middleham railway station on the morrow in time to catch the 3.30 to London, I went home in a state of depression. Were I to have been hanged at cock-crow I could not have found my bed more unsympathetic. Most of the night I lay awake in a state of the most unworthy apprehension. The very intangibility of the business of the morrow seemed to make it a nightmare. Had it been a duel, or a definite pitting of one known force against another, it would have seemed less uncomfortable, less sinister. As it was, we did not know precisely to what we stood committed. The thing might prove merely farcical. On the contrary, it might involve battle, murder and sudden death.

A dozen times in the dismal darkness the question was put, by what chain of events had a mildly egoistical hedonist, the husband of a charming lady, the father of a merry blue-eyed daughter, with a reasonable competence and an ambition to excel at golf, come to imperil all these delectable things? Merely at the beck of a wild-living profligate who felt he had been wronged.

Stated as bluntly as this in the high court of reason the whole thing seemed absurd. There was so much to lose and so little to gain. The scheme was preposterous. Nevil Fitzwaren might certainly be the victim of an injustice, but what of Miss Lucinda and her mama? True, Coverdale was also a party to the scheme; but he was by nature adventurous, a seeker after something fresh. To be sure he imperilled his billet, but he was understood to have private means.

"Odo Arbuthnot," said the thin voice of reason at three o'clock in the morning, "you must withdraw from this incredibly foolish and reprehensible proceeding."

Howbeit, the voice of reason never sways us entirely. Accordingly I made a particularly feeble breakfast, wrote a letter to my grandmother in Bolton Street, sped the Madam, looking supremely gay and engaging, on the way to her fond parents at Doughty Bridge, Yorks, read the immortal story of "The Three Bears" to Miss Lucinda for the thousand and first time, carefully overhauled the six-chambered weapon which a professional criminal had yet to put to the test, and in a miserable frame of mind sat down to luncheon in the company of my relation by marriage.

It may be that the holy state of wedlock makes cowards of us all. Joseph Jocelyn De Vere Vane-Anstruther was certainly not embarrassed by such qualms as these. He was even more serenely magnificent than usual in a suit of grey tweeds aggressively checked and a waistcoat that was conducting a violent quarrel with a Zingari necktie; while his air of hopeful enjoyment of life as it was and as it was going to be, provoked some rather pregnant reflections upon the crime of homicide.

"O'Mulligan's wired. Mad keen. A regular nut."

The well of English undefiled grows more copious with the process of ages. By what mysterious alchemy the quality of mad keenness transforms its possessor into "a regular nut" I was too low-spirited to elucidate.

"Fitz is a game bird, ain't he?" Flamboyant youth heartily poured half a bottle of Worcestershire sauce over its cutlet. "Didn't think he had it in him. Merely shows how you can be deceived."

I groaned in spirit, but plucked up the courage to take a dismal nibble at a piece of toast.

"That chap Coverdale is a bit of a funkstick. Made himself rather an ass about those firearms."

I assented feebly.

"Bet you a pony they want our photographs for the Morning Mirror."

I rose from the table and took a turn in the kitchen garden. When your heart is fairly in your boots, the society of your peers has its drawbacks.

At half-past two, punctual to the minute, the toot of the car was heard at the hall door. Miss Lucinda received a parting salute and an illicit box of chocolates which consoled her immensely for the temporary loss – permanent perhaps in the case of one – of both her parents.

I confess to being one of those weak mortals who on a journey is invariably accompanied by the consciousness of having left something undone or having omitted to pack some unremembered but quite indispensable necessary. Three-fourths of the way to the station I was haunted with this feeling in a more acute form than usual, and then quite suddenly, with a spasm of perverse joy, it occurred to me that I had left the burglar's foe in its secret receptacle.

"Thank God for that!" was the pious hyperbole which ascended to heaven.

At the station we were not the first to arrive on the scene, although there was a full quarter of an hour in hand. Fitz in a fur overcoat of some pretensions bore a look of collected importance which was quite in keeping with the rôle he had to fill.

"Tickets are taken," said he, "and carriage reserved for five."

In front of the bookstall a yellow newsbill displayed the contents of a London evening paper, issued at noon. "The Attempt on the Life of the King of Illyria. Latest Details."

"Clumsy fools," said the son-in-law of Ferdinand the Twelfth, gloomily. "They seem to have bungled the business badly, but they bungle everything in Illyria."

"His Excellency, the Ambassador, would appear to be an exception to the general rule."

Fitz bestowed upon me a murderous glower.

Brasset arrived full five minutes in advance of the London express. Pink and cherubic, his recent perplexity had yielded to an omnipresent look of peace. His well-groomed air suggested that he took a simple pleasure in being alive.

The question, however, for the four conspirators assembled on the Middleham platform was, what had happened to the Chief Constable? Was it conceivable that the noble Brutus had left us in the lurch? Remembering my own travail of the spirit, which still endured, it seemed most natural and becoming to my partial judgment, that one so wise had repented of his folly at the eleventh hour.

Howbeit, my lips were sealed upon these illicit thoughts. Fitz himself suspected no treachery. He ushered us into the reserved compartment with immense dignity, and retained the left-hand corner seat, with the back to the engine, for the missing warrior.

"Coverdale is cutting it fine," I ventured to remark.

"There is a minute yet," said Fitz, with an insouciance which, to use a much-abused expression, was Napoleonic.

A porter who suffered from rickets put in his head.

"All London, gentlemen?"

"Yes," said Fitz, introducing a shilling to a grimy but willing palm. "And just see that the station-master keeps the train a few minutes for Colonel Coverdale."

"Agen the regulations, you know, sir," said the porter, with polite misgiving.

"Against what regulations?" said the undefeated Fitz.

"The Company's."

"Against the Company's regulations! Who the devil are the Company that they should have regulations?"

This was a poser for the porter, who made a rather ineffectual apology for such a piece of assumption on the part of the Company. But the station-master's bell was ringing, and I, peering wildly through the window, in the vain hope that my mentor, my hope, my stand-by might after all appear, could see never a sign of Lieutenant-Colonel John Chalmers Coverdale, C.M.G., late of His Majesty's Carabineers.

CHAPTER X
ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS

But what is that? A commotion away up the platform, under the clock. Yes, it is he, the faithful and the valiant! At least it is not he, but one Baguley, a superannuated police-sergeant, bereft of an eye in the service of the public peace. He staggers along under the oppressive burden of a kit bag of portentous dimensions, and twenty paces behind, sauntering along the platform with the most leisurely nonchalance in the world, blandly indifferent to the fact that the London express is due out, is the impressive and slightly pompous bulk of the fifth conspirator, the great Chief Constable.

There is a tremendous touching of hats along the platform. Even that true Olympian, the guard of the London express, contrives to dissemble his legitimate impatience, while Coverdale and his kit bag come aboard the reserved compartment.

"Cutting it rather fine, weren't you?" said I, with a tremor of relief in my voice.

"Time enough," said the Chief Constable, subsiding with a growl and a glower into the left-hand corner.

A shrill blast from the guard, a whistle and a snort from the engine, and we were irrevocably committed to the untender hands of destiny.

We were an ill-assorted party enough. Fitz the embodiment of masterful determination, with his black eyes glowing with their inward fire; Brasset and Jodey as cheerful and almost as blasé as two undergraduates on their way to attend a point-to-point race meeting; Coverdale and the humble individual responsible for this narrative, silent, saturnine and profoundly uncomfortable.

It is true that I was favoured with one fragment of the Chief Constable's discourse. It was communicated with pregnant brevity ten miles from Bedford.

"You old fool!" was its context.

"It was Fitz who kept the train for you," I countered weakly.

Whoever was to blame we were fairly in for it now; and to repine was vain.

"I am glad about your friend O'What's-his-name," said Fitz to Jodey. "A man of his hands, hey? By the way, I believe you did mention a revolver."

My relation by marriage grinned an almost disgustingly effusive affirmative.

"I suppose you fellows have all remembered to bring one?"

Somehow my looks betrayed me.

"You've brought one, Arbuthnot?"

I began to perspire.

"The fact is," said I, "I had a capital .38 Webley, but it appears to be mislaid."

"That can be easily remedied. I have brought three in case of emergency."

"How lucky," said I, with insincerity.

We were converging upon the metropolis all too soon.

"I have engaged six bedrooms at Long's Hotel," said Fitz.

"Only five will be necessary," said I, "as O'Mulligan lives in Jermyn Street."

"You have forgotten Sonia."

It is true that for the moment I had forgotten the cause of all our woes. Fitz had not, however; indeed, he had forgotten nothing. Not only did he appear to have everything arranged, but he seemed to have taken cognisance of the smallest detail.

"I have ordered quite a decent little dinner at Ward's," said he. "You can always depend upon good plain, solid, old-fashioned English cooking. They give you the best mulligatawny in London. I must say myself, that if I have to do a man's work, I like to have a man's meal. And I think we can depend on some very decent madeira."

"It is very satisfactory to know that," said Coverdale, with his deepest growl.

"There is nothing like madeira in my opinion," said Fitz, "if you are going to be busy and you want to keep cool."

"That is something to know," said the Chief Constable, without enthusiasm.

"I should think it was," said Fitz. "Do you know who gave me the tip?"

The Chief Constable gave a growl in the negative.

"Ferdinand himself. And what that old swine don't know of most things is not much in the way of knowledge. He once told me he practically lived on madeira throughout the Austrian campaign; and the night before Rodova he drank six bottles. He says nothing keeps you so cool and sharp as madeira."

"Umph," the Chief Constable grunted.

Brasset and Jodey, however, two extremely zealous subalterns in the Middleshire Yeomanry, were much impressed.

In three taxis we converged upon Long's Hotel; Brasset and Jodey in the first; the Chief Constable and his kit bag in the second; Fitz and myself in the third. A very respectable blizzard was raging; the streets of the metropolis were in a truly horrid condition, wholly unfit for man or beast; and the atmosphere had the peculiar raw chill of a thoroughly disagreeable winter's night in London. But at every yard we slopped precariously through the half-melted slush of the streets, Fitz seemed to wax more Napoleonic. He was not in any sense aggressive; there was not a trace of undue mental or moral elevation, yet he was the possessor of a subtle quality that seemed to render him equal to any occasion.

"There is just one thing may undo us," he confessed to me.

"Fate?"

"No; to my mind fate is never your master, if you really mean to be master of it. But there may be a spy. Von Arlenberg is as cunning as a fox. And if he thinks I may have something to say in the matter, he will take care that nothing is done without his knowledge. Probably we are being followed."

To test his grounds for this suspicion, Fitz suddenly ordered the driver to stop. He thrust his head out of the window, and then an instant later told our Jehu to drive on.

"Just as I thought," he said. "There is another taxi behind."

My companion became silent.

"Something will have to be done," he said. "It won't do for von Arlenberg to know too much."

During the remainder of the journey Fitz found not a word to say.

When we came to the quiet family hotel in Bond Street our leader seemed still preoccupied. Certainly he had grounds for his foreboding. A fourth taxi drew up behind the three vehicles we had chartered; and I observed that a man got out of it and, discharging his taxi, entered the hotel. As he passed me I was careful to note his appearance. He was a short, sallow, foreign-looking individual, with the collar of his overcoat turned up; a commonplace creature enough, who on most occasions would pass without remark.

While we inquired for our rooms, he sat in the lounge unobtrusively. Save for Fitz's own conviction upon the point, it would never have occurred to me that we were undergoing a process of espionage.

No sooner had Fitz secured his room, than he said, in a tone considerably louder than he used as a rule, that he had some business to see after, and that he would be back in an hour.

The man seated in the lounge could not fail to hear this announcement. And sure enough, hardly had Fitz passed out of the hotel, when the fellow rose and also took his leave.

"What is Fitzwaren's game now?" inquired Coverdale.

I refrained from advancing any theory as to the nature of Fitz's game. For that matter, I had no theory to advance. It was clear enough that the leader of our enterprise was fully justified in his suspicion, but what his sagacity would profit him, I was wholly at a loss to divine. I was convinced that the business that had called him so suddenly into the sleet-laden darkness of the streets had to do with the man who had passed out of the hotel upon his heels; yet precisely what that business was, it was futile to conjecture.

Prior to our departure for Ward's the time hung upon our hands somewhat heavily. Brasset and Jodey utilised some of it in bestowing even more pains than usual upon their appearance. In these days it is not necessary to don powder, ruffles and a brocaded waistcoat for the purpose of dining at Ward's, but there is an unwritten law which expects you to wear a white vest at least with your evening clothes. Even Coverdale and I thought well to comply with this sumptuary law. We were both past the age when one's tailor is omnipotent; but when in Rome, those who would be thought men of the world are careful to do like the Romans.

Four carefully groomed specimens of British manhood greeted Fitz in the hotel foyer upon his return. It was then five minutes to seven, and our mentor entered in a perfectly cool and collected manner. He apologised, perhaps a thought elaborately, for the necessity which had deprived us of his society. Twenty minutes later he was looking as spick and span as the rest of us.

While the hotel porter was whistling up the necessary means for our conveyance to Saint James's Street, I found Fitz at my elbow.

"By the way," said he in a casual undertone, "did you mention to the others about the fellow who followed us in the taxi?"

The answer was in the negative.

"I'm glad of that. I think it will be wise if you don't. It might worry them, you know. And there is no need to worry about him now."

"Have you thrown him off the scent?"

"Yes," said Fitz, quietly. "We shall have no more trouble from that sportsman."

I forbore to allow my curiosity any further rein upon this subject. Beneath Fitz's cool and cordial tone was a suggestion that he would thank me to dismiss it. Howbeit, I had no hint as to what had happened outside in the street, and I was burning to know.

It was a minute past the half-hour when we arrived at Ward's, but the punctual O'Mulligan was there already. He rejoiced in the name of Alexander; his freckles were many and he had a shock of red hair. His nose was of the snub variety; his ears stuck out at right angles; his eyes were light green; and his jaw was square and massive and the most magnificently aggressive the mind of man can conceive. Regarded from the purely æsthetic standpoint, Alexander O'Mulligan might be a subject for discussion, yet he was as full of "points" as a prize bulldog. He was not so tall as Coverdale, but every ounce of him was solid muscle; his chest was deep and spreading, his hands were corded, and he had the grip of a garotter.

Alexander O'Mulligan shook hands all round with the greatest comprehensiveness. As he did so he grinned from ear to ear in the sheer joy of acquaintanceship. Fitz was his first victim and I was his last, but each of us would as lief shake hands with a gibbon as with our friend O'Mulligan. The fellow was so abominably hearty. He shook hands as though it was the thing of all others he loved doing best in the world.

The dinner was admirable. Whether it was force of example, or the magnetic presence of Alexander O'Mulligan, I am not prepared to say, but certainly we did ourselves very well. Upon first entering the hallowed precincts of Ward's, I had been in no mood to appreciate "really good old-fashioned English cooking." One would have thought that only the most recherché of dinners would have tempted us in our present state of mind. But somehow our new friend O'Mulligan dispensed an atmosphere of Gargantuan good humour.

Hardly had we come to close quarters with the far-famed mulligatawny, which was quite appropriate to the conditions prevailing without, when our latest recruit insisted that one and all must dine with him on the morrow, and then adjourn to the National Sporting Club, for the purpose of witnessing "Burns's do with the 'Gunner.'"

If I live to the age of a hundred and twenty, I shall not forget our little dinner at Ward's. Six commonplace specimens of les hommes moyens sensuels with lethal weapons in their pockets and anything from pitch and toss to manslaughter in their hearts! Really, it was the incongruous carried to the verge of the bizarre.

Fitz at the head of the table was gracious to a degree. The fellow was revealing a whole gamut of unsuspected qualities. His composure, his half-gay, half-sinister insouciance, his alertness, his knowledge, his faculty for action, which seemed to grow in proportion with the demands that were made upon it – such an array of qualities was curiously inconsistent with the heedless waster the world had always judged him to be.

Now that he had come to grips with fate the real Nevil Fitzwaren was emerging with considerable potency. As far as "the married man, the father of the family, and the county member" was concerned, the fellow's dæmonic power was the cause of his dining quite reasonably well. As for Coverdale, after swallowing his plate of mulligatawny, his glance ceased to reproach me. His habitual philosophy and the old-fashioned English cooking began to walk hand in hand. The evening's business was quite likely to cost him his billet, but at least it was sure to be excellent fun. Besides, when he stood fairly committed to a thing, it was his habit to see it through.

Dinner was conducted in the spirit of leisurely harmony which is due to the traditions accruing to the shade of John Ward, who left this vale of tears in 1720. Fitz assured us that there was no hurry. If we got a move on about nine we should have plenty of time to do our business with his Excellency.

"You haven't quite explained the orders for the day, my dear fellow," said Coverdale, taking a reverential sip of the famous old brandy.