He waited some time before he replied, and when he spoke his voice was low and firm.
“I shall not withdraw,” he said slowly, with a dull, dogged evenness of tone. “I shall not withdraw in any circumstance.
“I have gone too far,” he went on, raising his hand to check Falmouth’s appeal. “I have got beyond fear, I have even got beyond resentment; it is now to me a question of justice. Am I right in introducing a law that will remove from this country colonies of dangerously intelligent criminals, who, whilst enjoying immunity from arrest, urge ignorant men forward to commit acts of violence and treason? If I am right, the Four Just Men are wrong. Or are they right: is this measure an unjust thing, an act of tyranny, a piece of barbarism dropped into the very centre of twentieth-century thought, an anachronism? If these men are right, then I am wrong. So it has come to this, that I have to satisfy my mind as to the standard of right and wrong that I must accept — and I accept my own.”
He met the wondering gaze of the officers with a calm, unflinching countenance.
“You were wise to take the precautions you have,” he resumed quietly. “I have been foolish to chafe under your protective care.”
“We must take even further precautions,” the Commissioner interrupted; “between six and half past eight o’clock tonight we wish you to remain in your study, and under no circumstance to open the door to a single person — even to myself or Mr Falmouth. During that time you must keep your door locked.” He hesitated. “If you would rather have one of us with you — —”
“No, no,” was the Minister’s quick reply; “after the impersonation of yesterday I would rather be alone.”
The Commissioner nodded. “This room is anarchist-proof,” he said, waving his hand round the apartment. “During the night we have made a thorough inspection, examined the floors, the wall, the ceiling, and fixed steel shields to the shutters.”
He looked round the chamber with the scrutiny of a man to whom every visible object was familiar.
Then he noticed something new had been introduced. On the table stood a blue china bowl full of roses.
“This is new,” he said, bending his head to catch the fragrance of the beautiful flowers.
“Yes,” was Ramon’s careless reply, “they were sent from my house in Hereford this morning.”
The Commissioner plucked a leaf from one of the blooms and rolled it between his fingers. “They look so real,” he said paradoxically, “that they might even be artificial.”
As he spoke he was conscious that he associated the roses in some way with — what?
He passed slowly down the noble marble stairway — a policeman stood on every other step — and gave his views to Falmouth.
“You cannot blame the old man for his decision; in fact, I admire him today more than I have ever done before. But” — there was a sudden solemnity in his voice— “I am afraid — I am afraid.”
Falmouth said nothing.
“The notebook tells nothing,” the Commissioner continued, “save the route that Sir Philip might have taken had he been anxious to arrive at 44 Downing Street by back streets. The futility of the plan is almost alarming, for there is so much evidence of a strong subtle mind behind the seeming innocence of this list of streets that I am confident that we have not got hold of the true inwardness of its meaning.”
He passed into the streets and threaded his way between crowds of policemen. The extraordinary character of the precautions taken by the police had the natural result of keeping the general public ignorant of all that was happening in Downing Street. Reporters were prohibited within the magic circle, and newspapers, and particularly the evening newspapers, had to depend upon such information as was grudgingly offered by Scotland Yard. This was scanty, while their clues and theories, which were many, were various and wonderful.
The Megaphone, the newspaper that regarded itself as being the most directly interested in the doings of the Four Just Men, strained every nerve to obtain news of the latest developments. With the coming of the fatal day, excitement had reached an extraordinary pitch; every fresh edition of the evening newspapers was absorbed as soon as it reached the streets. There was little material to satisfy the appetite of a sensation-loving public, but such as there was, was given. Pictures of 44 Downing Street, portraits of the Minister, plans of the vicinity of the Foreign Office, with diagrams illustrating existing police precautions, stood out from columns of letterpress dealing, not for the first but for the dozenth time, with the careers of the Four as revealed by their crimes.
And with curiosity at its height, and all London, all England, the whole of the civilised world, talking of one thing and one thing only there came like a bombshell the news of Marks’ death.
Variously described as one of the detectives engaged in the case, as a foreign police officer, as Falmouth himself, the death of Marks grew from ‘Suicide in a Railway Carriage’ to its real importance. Within an hour the story of tragedy, inaccurate in detail, true in substance, filled the columns of the Press. Mystery on mystery! Who was this ill-dressed man, what part was he playing in the great game, how came he by his death? asked the world instantly; and little by little, pieced together by ubiquitous newsmen, the story was made known. On top of this news came the great police march on Whitehall. Here was evidence of the serious view the authorities were taking.
‘From my vantage place,’ wrote Smith in the Megaphone, ‘I could see the length of Whitehall. It was the most wonderful spectacle that London has ever witnessed. I saw nothing but a great sea of black helmets reaching from one end of the broad thoroughfare to the other. Police! the whole vicinity was black with police; they thronged side streets, they crowded into the Park, they formed not a cordon, but a mass through which it was impossible to penetrate.’
For the Commissioners of Police were leaving nothing to chance. If they were satisfied that cunning could be matched by cunning, craft by craft, stealth by counter-stealth, they would have been content to defend their charge on conventional lines. But they were outmanoeuvred. The stake was too high to depend upon strategy — this was a case that demanded brute force. It is difficult, writing so long after the event, to realise how the terror of the Four had so firmly fastened upon the finest police organisation in the world, to appreciate the panic that had come upon a body renowned for its clearheadedness.
The crowd that blocked the approaches to Whitehall soon began to grow as the news of Billy’s death circulated, and soon after two o’clock that afternoon, by order of the Commissioner, Westminster Bridge was closed to all traffic, vehicular or passenger. The section of the Embankment that runs between Westminster and Hungerford Bridge was next swept by the police and cleared of curious pedestrians; Northumberland Avenue was barred, and before three o’clock there was no space within five hundred yards of the official residence of Sir Philip Ramon that was not held by a representative of the law. Members of Parliament on their way to the House were escorted by mounted men, and, taking on a reflected glory, were cheered by the crowd. All that afternoon a hundred thousand people waited patiently, seeing nothing, save, towering above the heads of a host of constabulary, the spires and towers of the Mother of Parliaments, or the blank faces of the buildings — in Trafalgar Square, along the Mall as far as the police would allow them, at the lower end of Victoria Street, eight deep along the Albert Embankment, growing in volume every hour. London waited, waited in patience, orderly, content to stare steadfastly at nothing, deriving no satisfaction for their weariness but the sense of being as near as it was humanly possible to be to the scene of a tragedy. A stranger arriving in London, bewildered by this gathering, asked for the cause. A man standing on the outskirts of the Embankment throng pointed across the river with the stem of his pipe.
“We’re waiting for a man to be murdered,” he said simply, as one who describes a familiar function.