“Except Germany,” interrupted Scott, MP, wisely.
“Oh, leave Germany out of it for goodness’ sake,” begged the first speaker tartly. “I do wish, Scott, we could discuss a subject in which the superiority of German institutions could not be introduced.”
“Impossible,” said the cheerful Scott, flinging loose the reins of his hobby horse: “remember that in steel and iron alone the production per head of the employee has increased 43 per cent., that her shipping — —”
“Do you think Ramon will withdraw the bill?” asked the senior member for Aldgate East, disentangling his attention from the babble of statistics.
“Ramon? Not he — he’d sooner die.”
“It’s a most unusual circumstance,” said Aldgate East; and three boroughs, a London suburb, and a midland town nodded and ‘thought it was’.
“In the old days, when old Bascoe was a young member” — Aldgate East indicated an aged senator bent and white of beard and hair, who was walking painfully toward a seat— “in the old days — —”
“Thought old Bascoe had paired?” remarked an irrelevant listener.
“In the old days,” continued the member for the East End, “before the Fenian trouble — —”
“ —— talk of civilisation,” went on the enthusiastic Scott. “Rheinbaken said last month in the Lower House, ‘Germany had reached that point where — —’”
“If I were Ramon,” resumed Aldgate East profoundly, “I know exactly what I should do. I should go to the police and say ‘Look here — —’”
A bell rang furiously and continuously, and the members went scampering along the corridor. “Division—’vision.”
Clause Nine of the Medway Improvement Bill having been satisfactorily settled and the words ‘Or as may hereafter be determined’ added by a triumphant majority of twentyfour, the faithful Commons returned to the interrupted discussion.
“What I say, and what I’ve always said about a man in the Cabinet,” maintained an important individual, “is that he must, if he is a true statesman, drop all consideration for his own personal feelings.”
“Hear!” applauded somebody.
“His own personal feelings,” repeated the orator. “He must put his duty to the state before all other — er — considerations. You remember what I said to Barrington the other night when we were talking out the Estimates? I said, ‘The right honourable gentleman has not, cannot have, allowed for the strong and almost unanimous desires of the great body of the electorate. The action of a Minister of the Crown must primarily be governed by the intelligent judgment of the great body of the electorate, whose fine, feelings’ — no—’whose higher instincts’ — no — that wasn’t it — at any rate I made it very clear what the duty of a Minister was,” concluded the oracle lamely.
“Now I — —” commenced Aldgate East, when an attendant approached with a tray on which lay a greenish-grey envelope.
“Has any gentleman dropped this?” he inquired, and, picking up the letter, the member fumbled for his eyeglasses.
“To the Members of the House of Commons,” he read, and looked over his pince-nez at the circle of men about him.
“Company prospectus,” said the stout member for West Brondesbury, who had joined the party; “I get hundreds. Only the other day — —”
“Too thin for a prospectus,” said Aldgate East, weighing the letter in his hand.
“Patent medicine, then,” persisted the light of Brondesbury. “I get one every morning—’Don’t burn the candle at both ends’, and all that sort of rot. Last week a feller sent me — —”
“Open it,” someone suggested, and the member obeyed. He read a few lines and turned red.
“Well, I’m damned!” he gasped, and read aloud:
Citizens,
The Government is about to pass into law a measure which will place in the hands of the most evil Government of modern times men who are patriots and who are destined to be the saviours of their countries. We have informed the Minister in charge of this measure, the title of which appears in the margin, that unless he withdraws this Bill we will surely slay him.
We are loath to take this extreme step, knowing that otherwise he is an honest and brave gentleman, and it is with a desire to avoid fulfilling our promise that we ask the members of the Mother of Parliaments to use their every influence to force the withdrawal of this Bill.
Were we common murderers or clumsy anarchists we could with ease wreak a blind and indiscriminate vengeance on the members of this assembly, and in proof thereof, and as an earnest that our threat is no idle one, we beg you to search beneath the table near the recess in this room. There you will find a machine sufficiently charged to destroy the greater portion of this building.
(Signed) Four Just Men
Postscript. — We have not placed either detonator or fuse in the machine, which may therefore be handled with impunity.
As the reading of the letter proceeded the faces of the listeners grew pallid.
There was something very convincing about the tone of the letter, and instinctively all eyes sought the table near the recess.
Yes, there was something, a square black something, and the crowd of legislators shrank back. For a moment they stood spellbound — and then there was a mad rush for the door.
“Was it a hoax?” asked the Prime Minister anxiously, but the hastily summoned expert from Scotland Yard shook his head.
“Just as the letter described it,” he said gravely, “even to the absence of fuses.”
“Was it really — —”
“Enough to wreck the House, sir,” was the reply.
The Premier, with a troubled face, paced the floor of his private room.
He stopped once to look moodily through the window that gave a view of a crowded terrace and a mass of excited politicians gesticulating and evidently all speaking at once.
“Very, very serious — very, very serious,” he muttered. Then aloud, “We said so much we might as well continue. Give the newspapers as full an account of this afternoon’s happenings as they think necessary — give them the text of the letter.” He pushed a button and his secretary entered noiselessly.
“Write to the Commissioner telling him to offer a reward of a thousand pounds for the arrest of the man who left this thing and a free pardon and the reward to any accomplice.”
The Secretary withdrew and the Scotland Yard expert waited.
“Have your people found how the machine was introduced?”
“No, sir; the police have all been relieved and been subjected to separate interrogation. They remember seeing no stranger either entering or leaving the House.”
The Premier pursed his lips in thought.
“Thank you,” he said simply, and the expert withdrew.
On the terrace Aldgate East and the oratorical member divided honours.
“I must have been standing quite close to it,” said the latter impressively; “‘pon my word it makes me go cold all over to think about it. You remember, Mellin? I was saying about the duty of the Ministry — —”
“I asked the waiter,” said the member for Aldgate to an interested circle, “when he brought the letter: ‘Where did you find it?’
“On