There was a closing sentence in Millie Splay’s letter which brought another smile to his lips.
“Linda Spavinsky is, alas, going as strong as ever. She was married last week, in violet, as you will remember, to the Funeral March of a Marionette and already she is in the throes of domestic unhappiness. Her husband, fleshy, of course, red in the face, and accustomed to sleep after dinner, simply won’t understand her.”
Here again Hillyard was able to see the smile on Millicent Splay’s face, but it was a smile rather rueful and it ended, no doubt, in a sigh of annoyance. Hillyard himself was caught away to quite another scene. He was once more in the small motor-car on the top of Duncton Hill, and looked out over the Weald of Sussex to the Blackdown and Hindhead, and the slopes of Leith Hill, imagined rather than seen, in the summer haze. He saw Joan Whitworth’s rapt face, and heard her eager cry.
“Look out over the Weald of Sussex, so that you can carry it away with you in your breast. Isn’t it worth everything — banishment, suffering — everything? Not the people so much, but the earth itself and the jolly homes upon it!”
A passage followed which disturbed him:
“There are other things too. My magnolia is still in bud. I dread a blight before the flower opens.”
It was a cry of distress — nothing less than that — uttered in some moment of intense depression. Else it would never have been allowed to escape at all.
Hillyard folded up the letter. He would be going home in any case. There were those tubes. There was B45. He had enjoyed no leave since he had left England. Yes, he would go down to Rackham Park, and take Harry Luttrell with him if he could.
Two days later the Commandant Marnier came to see him at the Ritz Hotel. They dined together in a corner of the restaurant.
“We have solved the problem of those tubes,” said Marnier. “They are nothing more nor less than time-fuses.”
“Time-fuses!” Hillyard repeated. “I don’t understand.”
“Listen!”
Marnier looked around. There was no one near enough to overhear him, if he did not raise his voice; and he was careful to speak in a whisper.
“Two things.” He ticked them off upon his fingers. “First, hydrofluoric acid when brought into contact with certain forms of explosive will create a fire. Second, hydrofluoric acid will bite its way through glass. The thicker the glass, the longer the time required to set the acid free. Do you follow?”
“Yes,” said Hillyard.
“Good! Make a glass tube of such thickness that it will take hydrofluoric acid four hours and a half to eat its way through. Then fill it with acid and seal it up. You have a time-fuse which will act precisely in four hours and a half.”
“If it comes into contact with the necessary explosive,” Hillyard added.
“Exactly. Now attend to this! Our workmen in our munition factories work three hours and a half. Then they go to their luncheon.”
“Munition factories!” said Hillyard with a start.
“Yes, my friend. Munition factories. We are short of labour as you know. Our men are in the firing line. We must get labour from some other source. And there is only one source.”
“The neutrals,” Hillyard exclaimed.
“Yes, the neutrals, and especially the neutrals who are near to us, who can come without difficulty and without much expense. We have a good many Spanish workmen in our munition factories and three of these factories have recently been burnt down. We have the proof now, thanks to you, that those little glass tubes so carefully manufactured in Berlin to last four hours and a half and no more, set the fires going.”
“Proof, you say?” Hillyard asked earnestly. “It is not probability or moral certainty? It is actual bed-rock proof?”
“Yes. For once our chemists had grasped how these tubes could be used, we knew what to look for when the workmen were searched on entering the factory. Two days ago we caught a man. He had one of these little tubes in his mouth and in the lining of his waistcoat, just a little high explosive, so little was necessary that it must escape notice unless you knew what to search for. Yes, we caught him and he, the good fellow, the good honest neutral” — it would be difficult to describe the bitterness and scorn which rang through Marnier’s words, “has been kind enough to tell me how he earned his German pay as well as his French wages.”
Hillyard leaned forward.
“Yes, tell me that!”
“On his way to the factory in the morning, he makes a call.”
“Yes.”
“The one on whom he calls fills the tube or has it just filled and gives it to the workman. The time fuse is set for four hours and a half. The workman has so arranged it that he will reach the factory half an hour after the tube is filled. He passes the searcher. At his place he takes off his waistcoat and hangs it up and in the pocket, just separated from the explosive by the lining of the waistcoat, he places, secretly, the tube. The tube has now four hours of life and the workman three and a half hours of work. When the whistle goes to knock off for luncheon, the workman leaves his waist coat still hanging up on the peg and goes out in the stream. But half an hour afterwards, half-way through the hour of luncheon, the acid reaches the explosive. There is a tiny explosion in that empty hall, not enough to make a great noise, but quite enough to start a big fire; and when the workmen return, the building is ablaze. No lives are lost, but the factory is burnt down.”
Hillyard sat for a little while in thought.
“Perhaps you can tell me,” he said at length. “I hear nothing from England or very little; and naturally. Are we obtaining Spanish workmen, too, for our munition factories?”
“Yes.”
It was clear now why B45 was especially suitable for this work. B45 was Mario Escobar, a Spaniard himself.
“And filling the tubes! That is simple?”
“A child could do it,” answered Marnier.
“Thank you,” said Martin Hillyard.
The next evening he left Paris and travelling all night to Boulogne, reached London in the early afternoon of the following day. Twenty months had passed since he had set foot there.
CHAPTER XIX
Under Grey Skies Again
HILLYARD LANDED IN England athirst for grey skies. Could he have chosen the season of the year which should greet him, he would have named October. For the ceaseless bright blue of sea and heaven had set him dreaming through many a month past, of still grey mornings sweet with the smell of earth and thick hedgerows and the cluck of pheasants. But there were at all events the fields wondrously green after the brown hill-sides and rusty grass, the little rich fields in the frames of their hedges, and the brown-roofed houses and the woods splashing their emerald branches in the sunlight. Hillyard travelled up through Kent rejoicing. He reached London in the afternoon, and leaving his luggage in his flat walked down to the house in the quiet street behind the Strand whence Commodore Graham overlooked the Thames.
But even in this backwater the changes of the war were evident. The brass plates had all gone from the door post and girls ran up and down the staircases in stockings which some Allied fairies had woven on Midsummer morning out of cobwebs of dew. They were, however, as unaware as of old of any Commodore Graham. Was he quite certain that he wanted to see Commodore Graham. And why? And, after all, was there a Commodore Graham? Gracious damsels looked blandly at one another, with every apparent desire to assist this sunburnt stranger. It seemed to Hillyard that they would get for him immediately any one else in the world whom he chose to name. It was just bitterly disappointing and contrarious that the one person he wished to see was a Commodore Graham. Oh, couldn’t he be reasonable and ask for somebody else?
“Very well,” said Hillyard with a smile. “There was a pretty girl with grey eyes, and I’ll see her.”
“The description is vague,” said the young lady demurely.
“She is Miss Cheyne.”
“Oh!” said one.
“Oh!” said another; and
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br /> “Will you follow me, please?” said a third, who at once became business-like and brisk, and led him up the stairs. The door was still unvarnished. Miss Cheyne opened it, wearing the composed expression of attention with which she had greeted Hillyard when he had sought admission first. But her face broke up into friendliness and smiles, when she recognised him, and she drew him into the room.
“The Commodore’s away for a week,” she said. “He had come to the end: no sleep, nerves all jangled. He is up in Scotland shooting grouse.”
Hillyard nodded. His news could wait a week very well, since it had waited already two years.
“And you?” he asked.
“Oh, I had a fortnight,” replied Miss Cheyne, her eyes dancing at the recollection. It was her pleasure to sail a boat in Bosham Creek and out towards the Island. “Not a day of rain during the whole time.”
“I think that I might have a month then, don’t you?” said Hillyard, and Miss Cheyne opined that there would be no objection.
“But you will come back in a week,” she stipulated, “won’t you? The Commodore will be here on Thursday, and there are things accumulating which he must see to. So will you come on Friday?”
“Friday morning,” Hillyard suggested.
Thursday was the day on which he should have travelled down to Rackham Park, but if he could finish his business on Friday morning, he would only lose one day.
“Friday morning then,” said Miss Cheyne, and made a note of it.
Hillyard had thus a week in which to resume his friendships, arrange to write, at some distant time, a play, revisit his club and his tailor, and revel, as at a pageant, in the fresh beauty, the summer clothes, the white skin and clean-limbed boyishness of English girls. He went through, in a word, the first experiences of most men returned from a long sojourn in other climes; and they were ordinary enough. But the week was made notable for him by one small incident.
It was on the Monday and about five o’clock in the afternoon. He was walking from the Charing Cross Road towards Leicester Square, when, from a doorway ahead of him, a couple emerged. They did not turn his way but preceded him, so that he only saw their backs. But he had no doubt who one of the couple was. The fair hair, the tall, slim, long-limbed figure, the perverse sloppiness of dress which could not quite obscure her grace of youth, betrayed the disdainful prodigy of Rackham Park. The creator of Linda Spavinsky swam ahead of him. Had he doubted her identity, a glance at the door from which she had emerged would have dispelled the doubt. It was the entrance to a picture gallery, where, cubes and curves having served their turn and gone, the rotundists were having an innings. Everybody and everything was in rounds, palaces and gardens and ships and Westminster Bridge, and men and women were all in circles. The circle was the principle of life and art. Joan Whitworth would be drawn to the exhibition as a filing to a magnet. Undoubtedly Joan Whitworth was ahead of Hillyard and he began to hurry after her. But he checked himself after a few paces. Or rather the aspect of her companion checked him. His appearance was vaguely familiar, but that was all. It was not certainly Sir Chichester Splay, for the all-sufficient reason that the Private View had long gone by; since the very last week of the exhibition was announced in the window. Moreover, the man in front of him was younger than Sir Chichester.
The couple, however, crossed the road to the Square Garden, and Hillyard saw the man in profile. He stopped so suddenly that a man walking behind him banged heavily against his back. The man walked on and turned round after he had passed to stare at Hillyard. For Hillyard stood stock still, he was unaware that any one had run into him, in all his body his lips alone moved.
“Mario,” he whispered. “Mario Escobar!”
The man who had been so far the foremost in his thoughts during the last weeks that he never thought that he could have failed to recognise him. Mario Escobar! And with Joan Whitworth. Millicent Splay’s letter flashed back into his memory. The distress which he had seemed to hear loud behind the written words — was this its meaning and explanation? Joan Whitworth and Mario Escobar! Certainly Joan knew him! He was sitting next to her on the night when “The Dark Tower” was produced, sitting next to her, and talking to her. Sir Charles Hardiman had used some phrase to describe that conversation. Hillyard was strangely anxious to recapture the phrase. Escobar was talking to her with an air of intimacy a little excessive in a public place. Yes, that was the sentence.
Hillyard walked on quickly to his club.
“Is Sir Charles Hardiman here?” he asked of the hall porter.
“He is in the card-room, sir.”
Martin Hillyard went up the stairs with a sense of relief. His position was becoming a little complicated. Mario Escobar was B45, and a friend of Joan Whitworth, and a friend of the Splays. There was one point upon which Martin Hillyard greatly needed information.
Hardiman, a little heavier and broader and more obese than when Hillyard had last seen him, was sitting by a bridge table overlooking the players. He never played himself, nor did he ever bet upon the game, but he took a curious pleasure in looking on, and would sit in the card-room by the hour engrossed in the fall of the cards. The sight of Hillyard, however, plucked him out of his occupation.
“So you’re back!” he cried, heaving himself heavily out of his chair and shaking hands with Martin.
“For a month.”
“I hear you have done very well,” Sir Charles continued. “Have a whisky-and-soda.”
“Thanks.”
Hardiman touched the bell and led the way over to a sofa.
“Lucky man! The doctor’s read the Riot Act to me! I met Luttrell in the Mall this morning, on his way back from Buckingham Palace. He had just been given his D.S.O.”
Hardiman began to sit down, but the couch was low, and though he began the movement lazily, it went suddenly with a run, so that the springs of the couch jumped and twanged and his feet flew from beneath him.
“Yes, he has done splendidly,” said Martin. “His battalion too. That’s what he cares about.”
Sir Charles needed a moment or two after he had set down to recover his equipoise. He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief.
“Luttrell told me you were both off to Rackham Park this week for Gatwick.”
“That’s right! But I shan’t get down until Friday afternoon,” said Hillyard.
The waiter put the glass of whisky-and-soda at his side, and he took a drink from it.
“Perhaps you are going too,” he suggested.
Hardiman shook his head.
Hillyard was silent for a minute. Then he asked another question.
“Do you know who is going to be there beside Luttrell and myself?”
Sir Charles smiled.
“I don’t know, but I fancy that you won’t find him amongst the guests.”
Hillyard was a little startled by the answer, but he did not betray the least sign of surprise. He pursued his questions.
“You know whom I have in my mind?”
“I drew a bow at a venture,” answered Sir Charles.
“Shall I name him?” asked Hillyard.
“I will,” returned Sir Charles. “Mario Escobar.”
Hillyard nodded. He took another pull at his whisky-and-soda. Then he lit a cigarette and leaned forward, with his elbows upon his knees; and all the while Sir Charles Hardiman, his body in a majestic repose, contemplated him placidly. Hardiman had this great advantage in any little matter of debate; he never wished to move. Place him in a chair, and he remained, singularly immobile.
“Since you were so quick to guess at once the reason of my question,” continued Hillyard, “I can draw an inference. Mario Escobar has been at Rackham Park a good deal?”
Sir Charles Hardiman’s smile broadened.
“Even now you don’t express your inference,” he retorted. “You mean that Mario Escobar has been at Rackham Park too much.” He paused whilst he drew out his cigarette-case and selected a cigarette from it. “And I agree,” he added. �
��Mario Escobar is too picturesque a person for these primitive days.”
Hillyard was not sure what Sir Charles Hardiman precisely meant. But on the other hand he was anxious to ask no direct questions concerning Escobar. He sought to enter in by another gate.
“Primitive?” he said.
“Yes. We have become rather primitive, especially the women. They have lost a deal of self-consciousness. They exact less. They give more — oh, superbly more! It’s the effect of war, of course. They have jumped down off their little pinnacles. Let me put it coarsely. They are saved from rape by the fighting man, and they know it. Consequently all men benefit and not least,” Sir Charles lit his cigarette, “that beast of abomination, the professional manipulator of women, the man who lives by them and on them, who cajoles them first and blackmails them afterwards, who has the little attentions, the appealing voice, in fact all the tricks of his trade ready at his fingers’ ends. However, Millie Splay’s awake to the danger now.”
“Danger!” Hillyard sharply exclaimed.
“Quite right. It’s too strong a word. I take it back,” Hardiman agreed at once. But he was not in the habit of using words wildly. He had said exactly what he meant to say, and having aroused the attention which he meant to arouse, he calmly withdrew the word. “I rubbed it into Chichester’s thick head that Escobar was overmuch at Rackham Park, and in the end — it percolated.”
Much the same account of Escobar, with this instance of Rackham Park omitted, was given to Hillyard by Commodore Graham on the Friday morning.
“He is the kind of man whom men loathe and women like. He runs about London, gets a foot in here and there. You know what London is, even now in the midst of this war, with its inability to be surprised, and its indifference to strange things. You might walk down Regent Street dressed up as a Cherokee Indian, feathers and tomahawk and all, and how many Cockneys would take the trouble to turn round and look at you twice? It was pretty easy for Escobar to slip about unnoticed.”
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 550