“What does he call himself?” said Lindsay. “English?”
“I believe he was born in England, so he may claim a British nationality. One grandfather was American, the other French. The American was married to a German, and the French grandfather to an Irish woman. Amongst his great-grandparents there figure, I believe, a Levantine Greek, a Turk, a Balkan princess, a Dutch planter, and a Spanish grandee—the descent from the latter illegitimate of course. I don’t know what country will claim him ultimately. If he succeeds in plunging the world into another war, they may none of them be very anxious to own him.” He paused, and then went on in his gentle, dreamy manner.
“It is a singular commentary on our civilization that there is no law to restrain a man from planning such a thing. If you and I conspire together to bring a single Brown, Müller, or Leblanc to a violent death, the law has a gallows or a guillotine most conveniently ready for us; but you may conspire with perfect impunity to precipitate a war in which a million or so of Browns, Leblancs, and Müllers will kill each other.”
He paused again.
“And that is where the weakness of our position comes in,” he said. “Restow may be doing this thing, and yet be keeping comfortably on the respectable side of the law. On the other hand”—he made a very slight gesture—“he may not. People who have a great deal of wealth and a great deal of power get careless. Also we might be able to bring public opinion to bear. As I read it, he would look for support to four classes of people—politicians and public men; business men with an axe to grind; discontented minorities in the countries which have changed their system of government; and the avowed enemies of society as at present constituted. The politicians hope to shift the balance of power to their own advantage. The business men are for profiteering. The minorities are tired of being underdogs. And the Communists want to smash everyone. Besides these four classes, there is the, criminal underworld, which is hard hit by international agreements which limit their activities. Of these classes the first two are intensely susceptible to public opinion, and if they withdraw, the bottom falls out. Do you see why you are going to be Restow’s secretary?”
Lindsay walked the length of the room and back. He saw. What he did not see was how it was going to be done. Yet he was quite sure that under a gentle, almost imperceptible pressure from Mr Smith it would be done. He pushed what had been said away into the back of his mind and concentrated on the details.
He came back to the hearth.
“May I ask a few questions?”
“Yes,” said Mr Smith.
“Well then, I am Restow’s secretary—that’s settled. What happens to Froth? It won’t do to have two of us knocking about.”
“Froth,” said Mr Smith, “is—er—arranged for. He disappears.”
“May I ask now?”
Mr Smith waved his hands.
“A private yacht as far as Madeira—a liner to the Cape—a different one on to Australia. He disappears. He is I may say, passionately anxious to disappear.”
“That disposes of Froth. But what about me? What is Lindsay Trevor supposed to be doing when I’ve dyed my hair red and am typing Restow’s letters?”
Mr Smith smiled pleasantly.
“Oh, you’ll be dead,” he said.
“Dead?”—
“You will remember that I asked you whether you would like to die for your country.”
CHAPTER VII
IT WAS LATE WHEN Lindsay came back into his flat and saw the proofs which he had been correcting in a neat pile on his writing-table. It was strange to see them lying just as he had left them. It seemed so long ago.
It was three nights since he had slept, but to-night no sooner had he put out the light than he plunged headlong into sleep. It was sleep, not unconsciousness.
His first step in the dark took him into a rioting tangle of adventure. He strode from dream to dream, and with each new dream he forgot the last. After what seemed like a lapse of time so great that he could not measure it, he was riding a must elephant down the main staircase of Buckingham Palace, whilst the King and Queen, the Lord Mayor, three Aldermen, and the Archbishop of Canterbury sat on graded golden thrones in the hall below, watching the performance with a good deal of human interest. The elephant was fully caparisoned, but he himself was attired in no more than a pair of bathing drawers. They had reached the hall, and he was trying to make the elephant bow to Royalty, when Mr Smith’s parrot Ananias came flapping slowly down from some unseen height. He had a red wig in his claws, and he was swearing horribly in Spanish. The Archbishop of Canterbury said, “Eight o’clock.”
Lindsay opened his eyes—and it wasn’t the Archbishop; it was Poole.
Of course it is very indiscreet to write down what anyone has dreamed nowadays, because anything that does not mean something bad is an indication of something still worse, and so on down to the bottomless pit. However, this is what Lindsay dreamed.
He spent an extremely busy day. His untimely decease was to take place on Monday, and, this being Saturday, there was a good deal to do, and it was only once or twice that he had time to remember that this was to have been his wedding day. He told Poole that he was going abroad on Monday morning. He also told him to catch the next reporter who came to ask for the whole story of why his engagement had been broken off, and to tell him that Mr Trevor was flying to Algiers with his friend Mr Peel Anderson, and that they were leaving Croydon aerodrome at eight a.m. on Monday, weather permitting. He got three reporters in the course of the morning, which seemed quite good for a start. There would be nice little paragraphs in quite a number of papers, all leading up to, “Shocking Flying Accident,” “Fatality to Bridegroom,” and “Death of Author-Publisher.”
So far, so good; but he was feeling distinctly unhappy about Poole. Those paragraphs were going to hit Poole hard. At first sight Lindsay had been unable to see why this spectacular decease should be necessary. It seemed as if it would be so much simpler just to change places with Froth. Whilst Lindsay Trevor became Trevor Fothering and Restow’s secretary, what was there to prevent Trevor Fothering from pushing off to Madeira as Lindsay Trevor? It wouldn’t be the first time he had worn a brown wig. This simple plan was, however, unworkable by reason of the state of Froth’s nerves. He had apparently got the wind up to such an extent that he could not be relied upon.
Mr Smith’s idea was to dye Froth’s hair brown, call him William Jones, and let him sink unnoticed into the general mass of Joneses. In a way this was an undoubted relief to Lindsay. He did not particularly care about posing as Froth, but the idea of Froth going all round the world as Lindsay Trevor fairly put his back up. He rang up
Hamilton Raeburn and asked if he could take a month’s leave. He did not write a lot of letters, because he thought that least said was soonest mended. The thought of Poole worried him a good deal. It was going to hit him hard, and Lindsay would have liked to take him into his confidence. As he could not get Mr Smith’s consent to this, he had to make the best of a bad job.
He told Poole that he would be away for about a month. He wanted to tell him what to do in case he failed to return, but could not get it out with that solemn, reproachful eye upon him; so in the end he put twenty five-pound notes into an envelope with a few lines to say that he wanted Poole to have them in case of anything happening. He left it at that, but not very happily.
His private affairs would probably get into the most horrible mess, but that couldn’t be helped. He hoped that he would not find his flat let to somebody else and most of his furniture sold if and when it suited Mr Benbow Collingwood Horatio Smith for him to come to life again.
Peel Anderson came round on Sunday. Lindsay had been thinking it would be awkward if he did not know him by sight when he arrived at Croydon. He was a quiet, pleasant fellow, and he had had his instructions, for whilst Poole was still in the room he alluded very naturally to a mythical last meeting.
When Poole had gone away and shut the door, he kept up this pose of the old acquaintance. Lindsay gathered that they had met six years ago at winter sports and had foregathered at intervals ever since. There was some good corroborative detail. Lindsay met him half way, and when Poole came in with drinks he was provided with enough to satisfy the reporters, who would certainly be coming round to pick up anything they could on Tuesday.—
With Lindsay it went against the grain, for he would have trusted Poole with anything.
CHAPTER VIII
MONDAY GOT UP IN a fog. Lindsay looked at the blurred outline of the houses opposite and wondered if Peel Anderson would start, but when he reached Croydon it was clearer and the Channel report gave visibility as fair.
Poole had insisted on coming to see him off. He looked more wooden than usual. He held on to Lindsay’s suit-case till the last moment. Lindsay could very well have done without his presence. He had to make a fuss about being strapped in, lose his temper, and make a fool of himself. Poole made him self-conscious. In the end Lindsay of course gave way.
They pushed off, and he carried with him an uncomfortable feeling that Poole must have thought he was making an ass of himself. It was about eight years since he had flown. To be candid, he had always disliked it extremely, and could have wished that a flying accident were not so much the simplest and most convincing way of killing him off.
Mr Smith’s plan was simple in the extreme. Peel Anderson would discard him at an agreed spot. Subsequently—for publication—while passing over the Channel he would look round and find his passenger gone. It would be conjectured that he had unstrapped himself and come to grief. Lindsay hoped that it would pass as an accident; he did not want to be a suicide if it could be avoided. But that was one of the things that had to be chanced.
They came out of fog into mist, and out of mist into haze. Presently there was just a white coverlet lying close down over the countryside with trees and church spires sticking up out of it. Peel Anderson was steering for a place where he had made a forced landing a few months before. The sun was out, and the sky blue overhead as they came down in a wide meadow where the last of the mist lay on the grass like rime.
Lindsay stood and watched the plane rise and take the air again. A high, thin sunlight caught the wings, the roaring beat in his ears and droned away. He watched till what had been an aeroplane was a distant bird, a speck of flying dust, and then just nothing at all.
He turned and walked across three fields, and came to the road. The whole thing had gone very well. He had left his leather coat behind, and presently Peel Anderson would drop it into the sea. Instead, he had over his arm the Burberry provided for him to change into. He put it on, drew a muffler up round his chin, climbed through a hedge, and walked down the road at a brisk pace. He was glad enough to walk, for there is nothing quite so cold as fog. He walked for four miles and hardly saw a soul. A car or two went by, and he passed a man ploughing; he looked as small as a doll in the middle of the immense brown empty field.
Lindsay soon got warm, and just as he could see by a straggle of cottages and a church spire that he was coming to a village, a car ran out of it going dead slow. It passed Lindsay by about half a dozen yards and then stopped. He turned round and went back.
“I wonder if you can tell me the time,” he said.
The driver was a youngish man with a bright, hard eye and a tight mouth. He said,
“You’ve made quite good time;” and then, “Would you care about a lift?”
This was according to plan, and Lindsay had his answer ready.
“To Notting Hill?”
“Righto!” said the driver; after which Lindsay got in at the back and slammed the door.
The car was a saloon. He leaned back in the corner. So that was that. He had stopped being Lindsay Trevor, but he had not yet begun to be Trevor Fothering. It felt queer to be nobody. A couple of lines of Matthew Arnold’s floated through his head:
“Two worlds—one dead, the other powerless to be born.”
He felt rather like that.
The man who drove the car had not got that tight mouth for nothing. He did not utter a single word during the whole run. After passing Notting Hill station he turned off to the left and presently stopped at a neat, inconspicuous house in an inconspicuous street. He did not speak then, but as soon as Lindsay was out of the car he turned and drove away.
Lindsay rang the bell. He was to ask for Miss Agnes, and when the door opened he guessed at once that it was she who had opened it. She had grey hair and grey eyes, and a tall buxom figure in a rather old-fashioned grey dress. She looked like somebody’s nicest aunt, and when Lindsay said, “I was to ask for Miss Agnes,” she smiled one of the pleasantest smiles that he had ever seen. He found her a very pleasant person.
After producing bacon and hot coffee, she showed him to a comfortable room with a fire, and said she was afraid it would be rather dull, but she thought he had better stay there.
About an hour later she fetched him upstairs to the bathroom and dyed his hair in the most efficient manner. She used a double henna shampoo, left it on for half an hour, and then rinsed it in soda to set the colour. It came out a flaring ginger, which she compared with a clipping of Trevor Fothering’s hair, to her satisfaction and Lindsay’s disgust. She did his eyebrows too, and altered their shape very slightly. By tweezing out some of the hairs she gave them an upward twist.
Lindsay looked at himself in the glass and felt that she had been almost too successful. He would not have believed that anything could have so robbed him of his own identity. He certainly wasn’t himself any more, and he was quite willing to take her word for it that this was what Froth looked like now.
Miss Agnes appeared to be very much pleased with her handiwork.
“But you must remember to let your lower lip hang down a little on the left. And you mustn’t look too cheerful—not at first at all events. When everyone is quite used to you, you won’t need to be so particular, but at first you will have to remember all the time. You mustn’t look too intelligent, you know. Mr Fothering is not a very intelligent person. He can be sharp, but he is not intelligent.”
Lindsay laughed.
“You must keep your voice high,” said Miss Agnes, turning on the cold tap to rinse out the bath. “And remember your cousin only knows the amount of French that a boy brings away from his public school. He doesn’t know any German, or any other language at all.”
Lindsay spent the rest of the day in this odd niche between his two worlds getting used to a codfish mouth and carroty hair. At half past seven he and Miss Agnes sallied out together on foot. He wore the Burberry, a soft hat rammed well down, and a scarf pulled well up. The evening was damp and misty. It was warmer. By and by the mist would probably turn to rain.
Lindsay bought a paper, and stood for a moment under a street lamp to find the headlines he was looking for. They stared him in the face:
SHOCKING AIR FATALITY. DEATH OF PROMISING YOUNG AUTHOR. BRIDEGROOM WHO WAS TO HAVE BEEN MARRIED ON SATURDAY.
He ran his eye down the column. Peel Anderson seemed to have played up all right. His statement was according to plan. He had looked back in mid Channel and had been horrified to find his passenger gone. Mr Trevor had objected to being strapped in, and had only given way under protest. He was afraid etc. etc. He had seen Mr Trevor after passing the coast-line. He had not noticed whether he was strapped in then—and so forth and so on.
“I don’t think you’d better stand under the light,” said Miss Agnes.
They proceeded on their way and presently arrived at the nursing home which had been sheltering Trevor Fothering for the last ten days. They were expected, for Mr Fothering’s nurse opened the door at the first touch of the knocker. She had bright hair, a blue dress that matched her eyes, and an air of clean efficiency. She put them in a little room on the right, took Lind
say’s Burberry, scarf and hat, and went out again, shutting the door. She had not spoken a word.
They heard her run upstairs, and in two or three minutes footsteps came down again—the steps of more than one person. When she heard them, Miss Agnes got up, took Lindsay’s hand in a nice strong clasp, said “Good luck!” and went out. Through the open door he caught a glimpse of his late Burberry—just that and nothing more. His intelligence supplied him with the information that Froth was inside it. No, not Froth—William Jones—William. Jones who was going to Madeira. From now on he himself was Froth. His new world had been born, and it lay around him to explore.
He heard the front door shut on Miss Agnes and William Jones. Then his door opened and the nurse beckoned him. She did not wait for him, but ran lightly up the stairs and into a room on the left of the landing.
Lindsay followed her into what was quite evidently Trevor Fothering’s empty room. Afterwards he thought that was the oddest moment in the whole change over. There were all Froth’s things lying about—a suit-case half packed on the chair at the foot of the bed; an open drawer, with letters and cigarettes; some loose coins on the dressing-table; his brushes—sponge—pyjamas. Lindsay had, as it were, to assimilate all this, to be able to think of these things as his own. And Lord—how it went against the grain!
He had forgotten to shut the door, and the nurse came over and pushed it to. Then she took a good look at him from not more than a yard away. Lindsay returned the compliment. She was undeniably pretty, and was undeniably capable; but somehow he did not think he would have wanted to be nursed by her if he were really ill.
“Well,” she said, “she’s made a pretty good job of you.”
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