“You know that there is to be a debate on the adjournment this evening?”
“Ah, yes. West managed to have it postponed from last Thursday. But it will be possible to make a non-committal statement, especially in view of the fact that the inquest is to be on Thursday. In that sense the affair is really sub judice, so I doubt whether it is in order to raise the question at all.”
“What the Labour Party will raise may be only too much in order,” said the Premier looking at his colleague sternly.
“Indeed,” replied the Home Secretary, apparently unimpressed.
The Prime Minister leaned forward. “Will you please tell me what part you have played in this affair.”
The Home Secretary did not meet his eyes. “I have told you, unless you want me to go over the whole circumstances of the dinner once again. You have had my statement about that.”
That shifted glance decided the other man. The Home Secretary had something to hide. His self-assurance could be punctured. The man-who-was-never-quite-sure-of-himself was going to get considerable joy from doing it.
“Some further information has been brought to my notice since you left London,” he said suavely.
“I shall be interested to hear it.” A slight mist seemed to pass across the other’s face.
The Premier kept silence for a few seconds. Intensely sensitive to atmosphere, he could feel the rising uneasiness of this man whom he had always secretly hated even while they worked together as colleagues and friends. It was an exquisite moment. Then, because he was a fine actor who never held a pose a second too long, he changed from Caesar Borgia to the practical man of affairs. It was these lightning changes of attitude that made him so formidable an antagonist, so distrusted a colleague.
“Perhaps I had better just tell you what has been put before me. I have no doubt at all that the explanation is a perfectly satisfactory one, but I must know where we are before I meet the House.”
“Certainly,” said the Home Secretary. His face was a little grey.
“The information that I have is this—that your confidential man, Edward Jenks, who was in attendance on Oissel, was found with Oissel’s private notebook in his pocket—the notebook in which he kept the details of his most confidential transactions. It has been ascertained that during the time Oissel was dining with you at the House of Commons, Jenks had been out of the flat and had had the written pages of the notebook secretly photographed. It has been further discovered that a copy of Oissel’s memoranda relating to our loan negotiations is in your private file, in your own handwriting, and with the notes decoded.”
The Home Secretary sprang to his feet. “This is intolerable. Do you mean to tell me that the police have been given access to my private file of Cabinet papers?”
The Prime Minister was rather taken aback by this fury of indignation where he had expected collapse. He did not want to bring in West’s name, or not at present. “That has been discovered by accident,” he temporized, “an accident which may prove very fortunate for the Government and for you. But do you admit that these are substantially the facts?”
The Home Secretary sat down again in the armchair. From habit he assumed the same pose, but he did not tweak his trousers at the knees. The Prime Minister felt master of the situation. Forgotten for the moment was the crisis into which the whole Government was likely to be precipitated. He was enjoying the sense of power, of mastery over this representative of the old families which had flouted him, over the man who had assumed the rôle of his special adviser in the Cabinet, over all the old order which he hated even while he led it. In the rich voice of a professional evangelist leaning over a penitent he said: “Won’t you tell me exactly what you have done, so that I can help to put things right?”
He overdid it. His tone stung the pride of the man before him. The Home Secretary rose to his feet, a little unsteadily. He addressed his Prime Minister as he would have addressed a meeting of company directors.
“My action,” he said slowly, but deliberately, as a man choosing his words for an important pronouncement, “may seem somewhat unusual. It may even be misinterpreted. I shall take effective steps to relieve the Government of any responsibility for it. But my conscience is clear. I did not act without thought. I did what I considered my country’s best interest demanded. I…”
The Premier came off his own pose, irritated beyond bearing by the elaborate posing of the other.
“Sit down, man,” he said, “and tell me what you have done. There will be plenty of opportunity for justificatory speeches afterwards.”
The Premier’s businesslike tone completely punctured the Home Secretary. He sat down hurriedly, and looked at his colleague like the muddle-headed elderly gentleman he really was.
“I am afraid I have blundered very badly,” he said pathetically.
By no artistry could he have done a better thing for himself than by this revelation of his utter helplessness. The Prime Minister was no bully. It was strength he hated, not weakness. No living thing that placed itself at his mercy had ever cause to regret it.
“Now, don’t get worried,” he said in his more usual friendly tone. “There’s nothing so bad that there isn’t some way out. If you will tell me everything, without keeping anything back, then we can consider what is to be done.”
The Home Secretary evidently found some difficulty in beginning. He moistened his lips with his tongue. The Premier noticed this. Himself almost a teetotaller, it hardly ever occurred to him to offer drinks except at meals. Now in his real desire to help the Home Secretary he remembered his omission. “Have a drink? I believe Mortimer keeps some whisky in the cupboard here.”
His guest accepted gratefully, and helped himself to a generous supply. Comforted by the familiar feel of the glass he began: “It is difficult to explain, and I fear it will sound incredible, but I do want to assure you that I didn’t plan all this. It just seemed to happen, and then this atrocious murder upset everything.” He paused.
“Yes, go on,” said the Premier, who had got himself well under control.
“I did not think of anything else when I lent Jenks to Georges Oissel, except of keeping him in a good temper when he refused to have a Scotland Yard man, and when Gleeson insisted he must have some protection. Gleeson thought it a good idea when I suggested Jenks. You do realize that, don’t you?”
“Perfectly. It seemed to me an admirable arrangement when you told me about it.”
“Well, then,” continued the Home Secretary, gaining encouragement, “you remember—let me see, it was a week last Thursday, how terribly time flies!—you remember the meeting with Oissel when we were at an absolute deadlock, when we couldn’t make out whether the provisos he insisted on putting into the loan agreement were bluff to force better terms out of the Government or whether they were meant seriously by his group. And you suggested that I might meet him in some informal way, and see if I could find out what were his real minimum terms.”
“Yes, I remember,” said the Premier, beginning to wonder to what extent he was to be involved in this fantastic affair.
“Well, it was then that I decided to ask him to dinner at the House the following Monday. As you know, it was very difficult to persuade him to come. He declared he never left his rooms at night, but I assured him everything would be all right with Jenks there.”
“Good Lord, man, you actually said that to him, and then used Jenks to steal his papers. What could you have been thinking about?”
“My country,” said the Home Secretary simply. He was not posing now. “I assure you that the thought never entered my head when I persuaded Oissel to come to dinner and told young West to make all the arrangements. But when I began to think of how I should talk to him—he was not an easy customer as you know—my mind kept coming back to that notebook to which he was always referring. I remembered that Georges always had an atrocious memory. Had t
o make notes of everything, and he always made them in code. We had worked a code out one summer when we were logging together. I wondered whether he used the same one still.” The Home Secretary paused and took another sip, looking at the Prime Minister as an apologetic schoolboy might look at his headmaster.
“And then?” asked the Prime Minister. His tone was even, and betrayed nothing of what he was thinking.
“Well, I can’t quite explain how, but it suddenly occurred to me that if I could have that notebook for a few minutes we should probably find in it all we wanted to know—that is, if he was still using the same code, which I thought quite likely. Georges never altered things he had grown used to.”
“So you brought in Jenks?”
“I did not like doing that, but it could not have been managed without. Of course there was the possibility that Oissel might have the notebook on him when he came to dinner, but Jenks told me that he usually locked it in his desk with his other papers.”
“Didn’t Jenks seem surprised at the Home Secretary, of all people, making such a proposition to him as that he should steal papers he had been sent to guard?”
Even a worm would have turned at the iciness of that tone, and the Home Secretary was not a worm. By the mere act of confession he was beginning to regain his usual self-assurance.
“My dear Prime Minister,” he said with a suspicion of a smile, “you and I have been responsible for the administration of Secret Service funds for a long time. Is all this so much worse than many things that you, and I, and every other occupant of our offices have been responsible for at some time or other?”
“But you yourself, you, a Cabinet Minister, to be directly involved! It was incredibly stupid.”
“Perhaps—unwise, certainly—but it is an interesting question whether the acts we vicariously sanction are the more moral because we do not directly participate in them.”
The Prime Minister began to feel that his colleague was gaining the advantage again, the last thing he intended should happen.
“We cannot have a philosophical discussion about the virtues at this moment. Jenks was apparently quite willing to help in these proceedings.”
“Jenks was at one time a valued member of our Secret Service staff. When I explained that the information contained in that notebook would save his country many millions of pounds he merely regarded the matter as an ordinary piece of the Secret Service work he had done for years. I left all the details to him, of course. It was he who suggested having the pages photographed. And, of course, but for the burglary the plan would have worked perfectly. We should have had the information which would have given us the whip hand with Oissel, and no one would have been any the wiser. I trust that those burglars, when the police find them, will get the punishment they so richly deserve.”
The Prime Minister threw back his head and laughed. “Flossie” was priceless. He had committed the most unpardonable piece of folly, he had outraged every official British tradition. If the facts were suspected not only the Government, but the Party, were irretrievably ruined, and there he sat, a pillar of the Established Church and the Established Everything Else, shocked at the wickedness of the unknown burglars.
“I am glad you take it like that,” said the Home Secretary, partly offended, partly relieved.
“How am I to take it? I hope I shall soon wake up and find that it is all a nightmare. I have never heard of anything so fantastic. And what do you imagine is to be done now?”
“My duty is perfectly plain. I shall go into the witness-box at the adjourned inquest and simply tell the whole truth, taking the whole blame myself, and completely exonerating the Government. Naturally, I will place my resignation in your hands before I leave you this morning.”
The Prime Minister looked at his colleague with a return of his former respect. He was not whining for secrecy. “Flossie” would face public execration as he had faced and conquered angry election crowds. Could he pull it off? For a passing moment the Premier wondered whether after all that might not be the best way out. Then his own instinct, which was always against publicity, reinforced his conviction that not even “Flossie” could get away with a story like this. No one would believe that he, as Premier, had not known something about it. Then there was this awkward business of the murder. How was that to be explained? No, the utmost secrecy must be maintained, but that might be difficult if the Home Secretary suddenly developed one of his mulish fits.
“Whatever may have to be done finally,” he said slowly, “you must do nothing in a hurry, and nothing without consulting me. I want you to promise me that now.”
“Certainly I promise to consult you. That is the least I can offer.”
“Then before we decide anything I propose to consult Dalbeattie, telling him what you have told me.”
“Lord Dalbeattie! What has he to do with it?”
“Dalbeattie knows everything except what you have told me of your own part in the affair. And he suspects something of that. He is absolutely to be trusted, and has been in some tight corners himself. Frankly he is my one hope.”
“But if he knows, how many other people do?”
“No one. Not even the police know anything about it. But you must leave this to me now, otherwise the Party will be dragged through the mud. No protestation by you could save our prestige if all this became public. Think of the headlines in the Opposition Press.”
The Home Secretary dropped his head into his hands. “I never thought that I should reach the stage when a revolver offered the only way out,” he said brokenly.
“For God’s sake, man,” said the Premier, gripping his shoulder in real panic. “You must not do anything of the kind. I shall not allow you out of this room until you give me your word not to do that. We should be in a worse mess than ever.”
“Very well. I will do what you think best.”
The Premier was touched by the weary tone of the older man. “Dalbeattie is here,” he said. “I asked him to come along for consultation. I will see him in my sitting-room. Why not lie down on the sofa here for a bit and rest? All this strain after an all-night journey is no joke.” With that charm he knew so well how to use, the Premier put his guest on the couch and went in search of Dalbeattie.
CHAPTER XVII
While the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary were having their interview in the Cabinet office, Robert West, who had been asked to come to Downing Street at half-past ten, was shown into the Premier’s sitting-room, where Lord Dalbeattie was sitting writing at the big desk.
“Ah, that you, West? Good morning. Have a chair and the morning papers. The Home Secretary is still with the Premier.”
“He arrived, then?” said Robert. “I wondered if he would alter his arrangements. He hates doing that more than anything.”
“You did not see the telegram,” was Dalbeattie’s dry remark as he turned back to his work.
The little room was very still. The wonderful view across the Horse Guards Parade was softened by summer rain. A small bright fire burned in the hearth. A quiet English interior that except for the view from the windows could be paralleled by thousands of similar comfortable homes. But Lord Dalbeattie did not seem to fit into this restful comfort. Bob took the opportunity of studying him. Quietly dressed in a blue lounge suit with a black silk tie, reading documents and occasionally making notes upon them, the man seemed to radiate energy though his body hardly made a movement. Robert felt the intensity of his concentration.
Sitting back in the armchair, quietly smoking, Bob speculated about the forces of which Dalbeattie was one of the central and directing powers, as colossal a figure in his own financial sphere as Georges Oissel had been in his.
What were the men like Oissel and Dalbeattie going to make of this England, which Robert through school and university had been trained to think was the centre of the universe, governing itself by its own elected Par
liament. Dalbeatties and Oissels held the power now. To them and their like, whatever their nationality, England was but an incident, a set of statistics. The scope of their interests was international. Yet if they were in politics at all they belonged to the same party as Colonel Stuart-Orford, though what was their common interest with that pathetic survival, with his D.S.O., his Croix de Guerre, tributes to a personal valour for which there seemed to be little room in the world that the Oissels and the Dalbeatties were creating?
Dalbeattie was a whole man, he exhaled virility, but poor emasculated cripples like Georges Oissel had as much power. The new world they were creating, the world of bonds, and debts, and mortgages, massive industry, and wild speculation, was bringing with it a new set of traditions, a new standard of values, as it had brought new art and music, the jazz band, the mass-production cinema.
Dalbeattie had finished his work. He put the documents into a large envelope, sealed it, rang for an attendant, and ordered the package to be taken immediately to his private office in Victoria.
“Sorry to have been so occupied,” he said as he took the armchair opposite Bob, and lit a cigarette. “It is an old habit of mine. I never go out without some work that I have on hand. I earn my leisure that way. Now tell me what you were thinking about when you were looking at me so solemnly.”
Robert was rather startled that he had been noticed, but why waste words in conventional excuses when there was a chance of talking to a man like Dalbeattie?
“I was thinking that you and Oissel were the real revolutionaries. I saw that unemployed march which was being broken up by the police last week. And then our dear old frightened middle classes think that those poor chaps are the revolutionaries to be afraid of. And you, who can skin us by a simple inflationary operation, are regarded as the really safe and respectable people.”
The Division Bell Mystery Page 16