The Socialist Part 11

Still in the same even voice the ruffian concluded his address. The circle of the others had come closer and surrounded the duke on every side, while the old woman in the background peered over the shoulders of two men, looking at the bound victim with a curious, detached interest, as a naturalist might watch a cat playing with a mouse.

"Lastly," said the man, "if you go on being silly, after you've enjoyed a day or two with the pleasant little gymes I've told you of, why, I shall just come down into that 'ere cellar one morning, hold up your chin, and cut your throat like a pig! We sha'n't want to have you about if you stick to what you say, and a little cement down in that 'ere forgotten cellar--which, in fact, n.o.body knows of at all, except me and my pals here--will soon hide you away, my lord! There won't be any stately funeral and ancestral vault for the Duke of Paddington!"

For the first time a chill came into the duke's blood. He felt also a tremendous weariness, and his head throbbed unbearably. Yet there was a toughness within him, a strength of purpose and will which was not easily to be vanquished or weakened.

In a flash he reviewed the chances of the situation. They were going to put him in a cellar till the morning. Well, he could bear that, no doubt. He might have time to think the whole matter over--to decide whether he should weaken or not, whether he should yield to these menacing demands. At the present his whole soul rose up in revolt against budging an inch from what he had said. His intense pride of birth and station, so deeply ingrained within him, turned with an almost physical nausea against allowing himself to be intimidated by such carrion as these. Should the dirty sweepings of the gaols of England frighten a man in whose veins ran the blood of centuries of rulers?

He ground his teeth together and looked the spokesman full in the face.

He even smiled a little.

"I don't believe," he said in a quiet voice, "that you are fool enough to do any of these things with which you have threatened me, but I tell you that if you do you will find me exactly the same as you find me now.

You might threaten some people and frighten them successfully. You might torture some people into doing what you say, but you will neither frighten me in the first instance, nor torture me into acquiescence in the second. You have got hold of the wrong person this time, my man, and what you think is going to be such a nice thing for you and your crew of scoundrels will in the end, if you carry out your threats, mean nothing else for all of you but the gallows. You may kill me if you like. I quite realise that at present I am in your power, though I do not think it at all likely I shall be so for very long. But even if you kill me you will get nothing out of me beyond the things you have stolen already. You have a very limited knowledge of life if you imagine that anybody of my rank and breed is going to let himself be altered from his purpose by such filth as you!"

There was a low and ominous murmur from the men as the duke concluded.

The evil, snake-like faces grew more evil still.

They cl.u.s.tered together under the lamp, talking and whispering rapidly to each other, and the whimsical thought, even in that moment of extreme peril, came to the duke that there was a chamber of horrors resembling in an extraordinary degree that grisly underground room at the waxwork show in Baker Street, which, out of curiosity, he had once visited.

There were the same cold, watchful eyes, the mobile and not unintelligent lips, the abnormally low foreheads, of the waxen monsters in the museum.

There was nothing human about any of them; they were ape-like and foul.

The man called "Sidney" turned round. From a bulging side-pocket of his coat he took out the duke's valuable repeater.

"Ah," he said, "I see that this 'ere little transaction 'as only occupied 'arf an hour from the time when we found you to the present. We came out, thinking we might pick up a ticker or two or a portmanteau among the wreck. We got something a good deal better. Never mind what you say, we will find means to convince you right enough, but there is no time now. We're going to put you down in that there cellar I spoke of among the rats, and you will wait there till to-morrow morning.

Meanwhile me and my pals will all be seen in different parts of London, in a bar or talking innocent-like to each other, and we will take jolly good care we will be seen by some of the 'tecs as knows us. There won't be no connecting us with your lords.h.i.+p's disappearance. Now then, come on!"

His voice, which had been by no means so certain and confident as it was before, suddenly changed into a snarl of fury. The duke heard it without fear and with a sense of exultation. He knew that his serenity had gone home, that his contempt had stung even this wolf-pig man.

As if catching the infection of the note, the unseen ruffian behind the chair, who held his arms, gave them a sharp, painful wrench.

The men crowded round him. His legs were untied from the chair legs and then retied together. His arms were strongly secured behind him, and he was half pushed, half carried to a door at the back of the kitchen.

The leader of the gang went before, carrying a tallow candle in a battered tin holder.

Pa.s.sing through the door, they came into a small back cellar-kitchen, in which there was a sink and a tap. A large tub, apparently used for was.h.i.+ng, stood in one corner. Deft hands pulled this, half-full of greasy water as it was, away from where it originally stood.

A stone flag with an iron ring let into it was revealed.

A man pulled this up with an effort, revealing a square of yawning darkness, into which a short ladder descended. The leader went down first, and with some difficulty the helpless body of the duke was lowered down after him, though the depth could not have been more than eight feet or so.

When he had been pushed into this noisome hole the duke saw by the light of the candle which "Sidney" carried that he was in an underground chamber, perhaps some ten feet by ten. The walls were damp and oozing with saltpetre. The floor was of clay.

Looking up in the flickering light of the dip he could see where the ancient brick foundations of the house had been built into the ground.

He was now, in fact, below the lowest cellar, in an unsuspected and forgotten chamber, left by the builders two hundred years ago.

"Now, this 'ere comfortable little detached residence, dook," said the man, "is where we generally puts our swag when it's convenient to keep it for a bit. n.o.body knows of it. n.o.body has ever learned of it. We discovered it quite by chance like. That man wot comes round and collects the rents ain't an idea of its existence. This 'ere is Rat Villa, this is. Now, good-night! 'Ope to see your lords.h.i.+p 'appy and 'ealthy in the morning! You will observe we have left you your right arm free to brush the vermin off."

The duke lay down upon his back, looking up at the sinister ruffian with the candle and the dark stone ceiling of his prison.

Then, with an impudent, derisive chuckle Sidney climbed the ladder, and immediately afterwards the stone slab fell into its place with a soft thud.

The duke was alone in the dark!

CHAPTER IX

MARY MARRIOTT'S INITIATION

The morning was not so foggy as the last three terrible days had been.

Dull it was even yet--the skies were dark and lowering--but the acrid, choking fog had mercifully disappeared.

But Mary Marriott thought nothing of this change in the weather as she drove down in a hansom cab to the house of James Fabian Rose in the little quiet street behind Westminster Abbey. It was half-past twelve.

The great expedition to the slums of the West End was now to start.

Since that extraordinary day upon which her prospects had seemed so hopeless and so forlorn Mary had been in a state of suspended expectation. Suddenly, without any indication of what was to happen, she had been caught out of her drab monotony and taken into the very centre of a great, new pulsating movement. The conclusion of the day upon which she had again failed to achieve a theatrical engagement was incredibly splendid, incredibly wonderful!

She had had twenty-four hours to think it over, and during the whole of that quiet time in her little Bloomsbury flat, she had lived as if in a dream.

Was it possible, she asked herself over and over again--could it be true that the man with the mustard-coloured beard--the great James Fabian Rose--had indeed called upon her, had found her preparing her simple evening meal, and had taken her away through the fog to the brilliant little house in Westminster?

And was it true that she was really destined to be a leader upon the stage of the great propaganda of the Socialist party? Was it true that she out of all the actresses--the thousands of actresses unknown to fame--had been picked and chosen for this role--to be the star of a huge and organised social movement.

As the cab rolled down the grey streets of London towards Westminster, Mary found that she was asking herself these questions again and again.

When she arrived at Rose's house she knew that that was no delusion. The maid who opened the door ushered her in at once, and Mrs. Rose was waiting in the hall.

"Oh, my dear," Mrs. Rose said; "here you are at last! Do you know, when Fabian captured you the other night in the fog and brought you here we all knew that you were just the very person we wanted. We were so afraid--at least I was, n.o.body else was--that you would vanish away and we should not see you any more. Now, here you are! You have come to fulfil your destiny, and make your first great study in the environment, and among the scenes, of what you will afterwards present to the world with all your tragic power. My dear, they are all upstairs; they are all waiting. Two or three motor-cars will be round in about half an hour to take you right away into Dante's Inferno! Come along! Come along!"

As she concluded Mrs. Rose led Mary up the stairs to the drawing-room and shouted out in her sweet, high-pitched voice: "Fabian! Mr. Goodrick!

Peter! She has come! Here she is! Now we're all complete."

Mary followed her hostess into the drawing-room.

There she found her friends of the first wonderful night, augmented by various people whom she did not know.

James Fabian Rose, pallid of face, and with his strange eyes burning with a curious intensity, came forward to greet her. He took her little hand in his and shook it heartily. Aubrey Flood was there also, wearing a grey overcoat, and he also had the intent expression of one who waits.

Peter Conrad, the clergyman, was not in clerical clothes. He wore a lounge suit of pepper-and-salt colour, and held a very heavy blackthorn stick in his right hand. The famous editor of the _Daily Wire_, Charles Goodrick, was almost incognito beneath the thick tweed overcoat with a high collar, from which his insignificant face and straw-coloured moustache looked out with a certain pathetic appeal.

Mary's welcome was extraordinarily cordial. She felt again as she had felt upon that astonis.h.i.+ng night when she had first met all these people. She felt as if they all thought that an enormous deal depended upon her, that they were awaiting her with real anxiety.

On that chill mid-day the beautiful drawing-room, with its decorations by William Morris and Walter Crane, had little of its appeal. It seemed bare and colourless to Mary at least. It was a mere ante-room of some imminent experience.

She said as much to Fabian Rose. "Mr. Rose," she said, "I have come, and here I am. Now, what are you going to do with me? Where are you going to take me? What am I going to see? I am all excitement! I am all anxiousness!"