BOOK II
CHAPTER I
WHILE LONDON WAS SLEEPING
IN the winter, two or three weeks before Christmas, Gortre asked Father Ripon for a ten days' holiday, and went to Walktown to spend the time with Mr. Byars and Helena. Christmas itself could be no time of vacation for him, — the duties of St. Mary's were very heavy, — so he snatched a respite from work before the actual time of festival.
Harold Spence was left alone in the chambers at Lincoln's Inn. The journalist found himself discontented, lonely, and bored. He had not realised before how much Basil's society had contributed to his happiness during the past few months. It had grown to be a necessity to him gradually, and, as is the case with all gradual processes, the lack of it surprised him with its sense of incompleteness and loss.
He had spent a hard summer and autumn over very uncongenial work. For months there had been a curious lull and calm in the news-world. Yet day by day the Daily Wire had to be filled. Not that there was any lack of material, — even in the dullest season the expert journalist will tell one that his difficulty is what to leave out of his paper, not what to put in, — but that the material was uninteresting and dull.
He felt himself that his leaders were growing rather stale, lacking in spontaneity. His style did not glitter and ring quite as usual. And Basil had helped him through this time wonderfully.
One Wednesday — he remembered the day afterwards — Spence awoke about mid-day. He had been late at the office the night before and afterwards had gone to a club, not going to bed till after four.
He heard the laundress moving about the chambers preparing his breakfast. He shouted to her, and in a minute or two she came in with his letters and a cup of tea. She went to the window and pulled up the blind, letting a dreary grey-yellow December light into the room.
"Nasty day, Mrs. Buscall," he said, sipping his tea.
"It is so, sir," the woman said, a lean, kindly-faced London drudge from a court in Drury Lane. "Gives me a frog in my throat all the time, this fog does. You'd better let me pour a drop of hot water in your bath, sir. I've got the kettle on the gas stove."
The laundress had an objection to baths, deep-rooted and a matter of principle. The daily cold tub she regarded as suicidal, and when Gortre had arrived, her pained surprise at finding him also — a clergyman too! — addicted to such adventurous and injudicious habits had been as extreme as her disappointment.
Spence agreed to humour her, and she began to prepare the bath.
"Letter from Mr. Cyril, I see, sir," she remarked. Mrs. Buscall loved the archaeologist with more strenuousness than her other two charges. The unusual and mysterious has a real fascination for a certain type of uneducated Cockney brain. Hands's rare sojourns at the chambers, the Eastern dresses and pictures in his room, his strange and perilous life — as she considered it — in the veritable Bible land, where Satan actually roamed the desert in the form of a lion seeking whom he might devour, all these stimulated her crude imagination and brought colour into the dreary purlieus of Drury Lane.
Most of the women around Mrs. Buscall drank gin. The doings of Cyril Hands were sufficient tonic for her.
Spence glanced at the bulky packet with its Turkish stamps and peculiar aroma — which the London fog had not yet killed — of ships and alien suns. Hands was a good correspondent. Sometimes he sent general articles on the work he was doing, not too technical, and Ommaney, the editor of Spence's paper, used and paid well for them.
But on this morning Spence did not feel inclined to open the packet. It could wait. He was not in the humour for it now. It would be too tantalising to read of those deep skies like a hard, hollow turquoise, of the flaming white sun, the white mosques and minarets throwing purple shadows round the cypress and olive.
"Neque enim ignari sumus," he muttered to himself, recalling the swing and freedom of his own travels, the vivid, picturesque life where, at great moments, he had been one of the eyes of England, flashing electric words to tell his countrymen of what lay before him.
And now, after the chill of his bath and the rasping torture of shaving in winter, he must light all the gas-jets as he sat down to breakfast in his sitting-room!
He opened the Wire and glanced at his own work of the night before. How lifeless it seemed to him!
"Many years ago Bagehot wrote that 'Parliament expresses the nation's opinions in words well, when it happens that words, not laws, are wanted. On foreign matters, where we cannot legislate, whatever the English nation thinks, or thinks it thinks, as to the critical events of the world, whether in Denmark, in Italy or America, and no matter whether it thinks wisely or unwisely, that same something, wise or unwise, will be thoroughly well said in Parliament.'
"We have never read a finer defence of such Parliamentary discussion as the recent events in certain Continental bureaucracies have given rise to, etc., etc."
Words! words! words! that seemed to him to mean little and matter nothing. Yet as he chipped his egg he remembered that the writing of this leader had meant considerable mental strain. Oh, for a big happening abroad, when he would be sent and another would take up this routine work! He knew he was a far better correspondent than leader writer. His heart was in that work.
There were one or two invitations among his letters, two books were sent by a young publisher, a friend of his, asking if he could get them "noticed" in the Wire, and a syllabus of some winter lectures to be given at Oxford House. His name was there. He was to lecture in January on "The Sodality of the Knights of St. John"
After breakfast, the lunch time of most of the world, he found it impossible to settle down to anything. He was not due at the office that night, and the long hours, without the excitement of his work, stretched rather hopelessly before him. He thought of paying calls in the various parts of the West End, where he had friends whom he had rather neglected of late. But he dismissed that idea when it came, for he did not feel as if he could make himself very agreeable to any one.
He wanted a complete change of some sort. He half thought of running down to Brighton, fighting the cold, bracing sea winds on the lawns at Hove, and returning the next day.
He was certainly out of sorts, liverish no doubt, and the solution to his difficulties presented itself to him in the project of a Turkish bath.
He put his correspondence into the pocket of his overcoat, to be read at leisure, and drove to a hammam in Jermyn Street.
The physical warmth, the silence, the dim lights, and Oriental decorations induced a supreme sense of comfort and bien être. It brought Constantinople back to him in vague reverie.
Perhaps, he thought, the Turkish bath in London is the only easy way to obtain a sudden and absolute change of environment. Nothing else brings detachment so readily, is so instinct with change and the unusual.
In delightful langour he passed from one dim chamber to another, lying prone in the great heat which surrounded him like a cloak. Then the vigorous kneading and massage, the gradual toning and renovating of each joint and muscle, till he stood drenched in aromatic foam, a new, fresh physical personality. The swift dive under the india-rubber curtain left behind the domed, dim places of heat and silence. He plunged through the bottle-green water of the marble pool into the hall, where lounges stood about by small inlaid octagonal tables, and a thin whip of a fountain tinkled among green palms. Wrapped from head to foot in soft white towels, he lay in a dream of contentment, watching the deliciate spirals from his Cairene cigarette, and sipping the brown froth of a tiny cup of thick coffee.
At four a slippered attendant brought him a sole and a bottle of yellow wine, and after the light meal he fell once more into a placid, restorative sleep.
And all the while the letter from Jerusalem was in his overcoat pocket, forgotten, hung in the entrance-hall. The thing which was to alter the lives of thousands and ten thousands, that was to bring a cloud over England more dark and menacing than it had ever known, lay there with its stupendous message, its relentless influence, while outside the church bells all over London were tolling for Evensong.
At length, as night was falling, Spence went out into the lighted streets with their sudden roar of welcome. He was immensely refreshed in brain and body. His thoughts moved quickly and well, depression had left him, the activity of his brain was unceasing.
As a rule, especially for the last year or two, Spence was by no means a man given to casual amusements. His work was too absorbing for him to have time or inclination to follow pleasure. But to-night he felt in the humour for relaxation.
He turned into St. James Street, where his club was, intending to find some one who would go to a music-hall with him. There was no one he knew intimately in the smoking-room, but soon after he arrived Lambert, one of the deputy curators from the British Museum, came in. Spence and Lambert had been at Marlborough together.
Spence asked Lambert, who was in evening dress, to be his companion.
"Sorry I can't, old man," he answered; "I've got to dine with my uncle, Sir Michael. It's a bore, of course, but it's policy. The place will be full of High Church bishops, minor Cabinet Ministers, and people of that sort. I only hope old Ripon will be there — he's my uncle's tame vicar, you know; uncle runs an expensive church, like some men run a theatre — for he's always bright and amusing. You're not working to-night, then?"
"No, not to-night. I've been and had a Turkish bath, and I thought I'd wind up a day of mild dissipation by going to the Alhambra."
"Sorry I can't go too — awful bore. I've had a tiring day, too, and a ballet would be refreshing. The governor's been in a state of filthy irritation and nerves for the last fortnight."
"Sir Robert Llwellyn, isn't it?"
"Yes, he's my chief, and a very good fellow too, as a rule. He went away for several months, you know — travelled abroad for his health. When he first came back, three months ago, he looked as fit as a fiddle, and seemed awfully pleased with himself all round. But lately he's been decidedly off colour. He seems worried about something, does hardly any work, and always seems waiting and looking out for a coming event. He bothers me out of my life, always coming into my room and talking about nothing, or speculating upon the possibility of all sorts of new discoveries which will upset every one's theories."
"I met him in Dieppe in the spring. He seemed all right then, just at the beginning of his leave."
"Well, he's certainly not that now, worse luck, and confound him. He interferes with my work no end. Good-bye; sorry I must go."
He passed softly over the heavy carpet of the smoking-room, and Spence was left alone once more.
It was after seven o'clock.
Spence wasn't hungry yet. The light meal in the hammam had satisfied him. He resolved to go to the Empire alone, not because the idea of going seemed very attractive, but because he had planned it and could substitute no other way of spending the evening for the first determination.
So, about nine o'clock, he strolled into the huge, garish music-hall.
He went into the Empire, and already his contentment was beginning to die away again. The day seemed a day of trivialities, a sordid, uneventful day of London gloom, which he had vainly tried to disperse with little futile rockets of amusement.
He sat down in a stall and watched a clever juggler doing wonderful things with billiard balls. After the juggler a coarsely handsome Spanish girl came upon the stage — he remembered her at La Scala, in Paris. She was said to be one of the beauties of Europe, and a king's favourite.
After the Spanish woman there were two men, "brothers" some one. One was disguised as a donkey — a veritable peau de chagrin! — the other as a tramp, and together they did laughable things.
With a sigh he went up-stairs and moved slowly through the thronged promenade. The hard faces of the men and women repelled him. One elderly Jewish-looking person reminded him of a great grey slug. He turned into the American bar at one extremity of the horse-shoe. It was early yet, and the big room, pleasantly cool, was quite empty. A man brought him a long, parti-coloured drink.
He felt the pressure of a packet in his pocket. It was Cyril Hands's letter, he found as he took it out. He thought of young Lambert at the club, a friend of Hands and fellow-worker in the same field, and languidly opened the letter:
Two women came in and sat at a table not far from him as he began to read. He was the only man in the place, and they regarded him with a tense, conscious interest.
They saw him open a bulky envelope with a careless manner. He would look up soon, they expected.
But as they watched they saw a sudden, swift contraction of the brows, a momentous convulsion of every feature. His head bent lower towards the manuscript. They saw that he became very pale.
In a minute or two what had at first seemed a singular paleness became a frightful ashen colour.
"That Johnny's going to be ill," one of the women said to the other.
As she spoke they saw the face change. A lurid excitement burst upon it like a flame. The eyes glowed, the mouth settled into swift purpose.
Spence took up his hat and left the room with quick, decided steps. He threaded his way through the crowd round the circle — like a bed of orchids, surrounded by heavy, poisonous scents — and almost ran into the street.
A cab was waiting. He got into it, and, inspired by his words and appearance, the man drove furiously down dark Garrick Street, and the blazing Strand towards the offices of the Daily Wire.
The great building of dressed stone which stood in the middle of Fleet Street was dark. The advertisement halls and business offices were closed.
Spence paid his man and dived down a long, narrow passage, paved, and with high walls on either side. At the end of the passage he pushed open some battered swing-doors. A commissionaire in a little hutch touched his cap as Spence ran up a broad flight of stone stairs.
The journalist turned down a long corridor with doors on either side. The glass fanlights over the doors showed that all the rooms were brilliantly lit within. The place was very quiet, save for the distant clicking of a typewriter and the thud of a "column-printer" tape machine as the wheel carrier shot back for a new line.
He opened a door with his own name painted on it and went inside. At a very large writing-table, on which stood two shaded electric lights, an elderly man, heavily built and bearded, was writing on small slips of paper. There was another table in the room, a great many books on shelves upon the walls, and a thick carpet. The big man looked up as Spence came in, lifted a cup of tea which was standing by him, and drank a little. He nodded without speaking, and went on with his leading article.
Spence took off his hat and coat, drew the sheets of Hands's letter from his pocket, and went out into the passage. At the extreme end he opened a door, and passing round a red baize screen found himself in Ommaney's room, the centre of the great web of brains and machinery which daily gave the Wire to the world.
Ommaney's room was very large, warm, and bright. It was also extremely tidy. The writing-table had little on it save a great blotting-pad and an inkstand. The books on chairs and shelves were neatly arranged.
The editor sat at a table in the centre of the room, facing several doors which led into various departments of the staff. The chief sub-editor, a short, alert person, spectacled and Jewish in aspect, stood by Ommaney's side as Spence came in. He had proof of page three in his hand — that portion of the paper which consisted of news which had accumulated through the day. He was submitting it to the editor, so that the whole sheet might be finally "passed for press" and "go to the foundry," where the type would be pressed into papier-mâché moulds, from which the final curved plates for the roller machines would be cast.
"Not at all a bad make-up, Levita," Ommaney said, as he initialled the margin in blue pencil. The subeditor hurried from the room.
Ommaney was slim and pale, carefully dressed, and of medium height. He did not look very old. His moustache was golden and carefully tended, his pale, honey-coloured hair waved over a high, white forehead.
"I shall want an hour," Spence said. "I've just got what may be the most stupendous news any newspaper has ever published."
The editor looked up quickly. A flash of interest passed over his pale, immobile face and was gone. He knew that if Spence spoke like this the occasion was momentous.
He looked at his watch. "Is it news for to-night's paper?" he said.
"No," answered Spence. "I'm the only man in England, I think, who has it yet. We shall gain nothing by printing to-night. But we must settle on a course of action at once. That won't wait. You'll understand when I explain."
Ommaney nodded. On the writing-table was a mahogany stand about a foot square. A circle was described on it, and all round the circle, like the figures on the face of a clock, were little ivory tablets an inch long, with a name printed on each. In the centre of the circle a vulcanite handle moved a steel bar working on a pivot. Ommaney turned the handle till the end of the bar rested over the tablet marked
COMPOSING ROOM
He picked up the receiver and transmitter of a portable telephone and asked one or two questions.
When he had communicated with several other rooms in this way Ommaney turned to Spence.
"All right," he said, "I can give you an hour now. Things are fairly easy to-night."
He got up from the writing-table and sat down by the fire. Spence took a chair opposite.
He seemed dazed. He was trembling with excitement, his face was pale with it, yet, above and beyond this agitation, there was almost fear in his eyes.
"It's a discovery in Palestine — at Jerusalem," he said in a low, vibrating voice, spreading out the thin, crackling sheets of foreign note-paper on his knee and arranging them in order.
"You know Cyril Hands, the agent of the Palestine Exploring Fund?"
"Yes, quite well by reputation," said Ommaney, "and I've met him once or twice. Very sound man."
"These papers are from him. They seem to be of tremendous importance, of a significance that I can hardly grasp yet."
"What is the nature of them?" asked the editor, rising from his chair, powerfully affected in his turn by Spence's manner.
Harold put his hand up to his throat, pulling at his collar; the apple moved up and down convulsively.
"The Tomb!" Spence gasped. "The Holy Tomb!"
"What do you mean?" asked Ommaney. "Another supposed burial-place of Christ — like the Times business, when they found the Gordon Tomb, and Canon MacColl wrote such a lot?"
His face fell a little. This, though interesting enough, and fine "news copy," was less than he hoped.
"No, no," cried Spence, getting his voice back at last and speaking like a man in acute physical pain. "A new tomb has been found. There is an inscription in Greek, written by Joseph of Arimathæa, and there are other traces."
His voice failed him.
"Go on, man, go on!" said the editor.
"The inscription — tells that Joseph — took the body of Jesus — from his own garden tomb — he hid it in this place — the disciples never knew — it is a confession —"
Ommaney was as white as Spence now.
"There are other contributory proofs," Spence continued. "Hands says it is certain. All the details are here, read—"
Ommaney stared fixedly at his lieutenant.
"Then, if this is true," he whispered, "it means ?—"
"That christ never rose from the dead, that christianity is all a lie."
Spence slipped back in his chair a little and fainted.
With the assistance of two men from one of the other rooms they brought him back to consciousness before very long. Then while Ommaney read the papers Spence sat nervously in his chair, sipping some brandy-and-water they had brought him and trying to smoke a cigarette with a palsied hand.
The editor finished at last. "Pull yourself together, Spence," he said sharply. "This is no time for sentiment. I know your beliefs, though I do not share them, and I can sympathise with you. But keep yourself off all private thoughts now. We must be extremely careful what we are doing. Now listen carefully to me."
The keen voice roused Spence. He made a tremendous effort at self-control.
"It seems," Ommaney went on, "that we alone know of this discovery. The secretary of the Palestine Exploring Society will not receive the news for another week. Hands says. He seems stunned, and no wonder. In about a fortnight his detailed papers will probably be published. I see he has already telegraphed privately for Dr. Schmöulder, the German expert. Of course you and I are hardly competent to judge of the value of this communication. To me — speaking as a layman — it seems extremely clear. But we must of course see a specialist before publishing anything. If this news is true — and I would give all I am worth if it were not, though I am no Christian — of course you realise that the future history of the world is changed? I hold in my hand something that will come to millions and millions of people as an utter extinction of hope and light. It's impossible to say what will happen. Moral law will be abrogated for a time. The whole moral fabric of Society will fall into ruin at once until it can adjust itself to the new state of things. There will be war all over the world; crime will cover England like a cloud —"
His voice faltered as the terrible picture grew in his brain.
Both of them felt that mere words were utterly unable to express the horrors which they saw dawning.
"We don't know the truth yet," said Spence, at length.
"No," answered Ommaney. "I am not going to speculate on it either. I am beginning to realise what we are dealing with. One man's brain cannot hold all this. So let me ask you to regard this matter for the present simply from the standpoint of the paper, and through it, of course, from the standpoint of public policy —"
He broke off suddenly, for there was a knock at the door. A commissionaire entered with a telegram. It was for Spence. He opened the envelope, read the contents with a groan, and passed it to the editor.
The telegram was from Hands:
"Schmöulder entirely confirms discovery, is communicating first instance with Kaiser privately, fuller details in mail, confer Ommaney, make statement to Secretary Society, use Wire medium publicity, leave all to you, see Prime Minister, send out Llwellyn behalf Government immediately, meanwhile suggest attitude suspended decision, personally fear little doubt. —
Hands."
"We must act at once," said Ommaney. "We have a fearful responsibility now. It's not too much to say that everything depends on us. Have you got any of that brandy left? My head throbs like an engine."
A sub-editor who came in and was briefly dismissed told his colleagues that something was going on in the editor's room of an extraordinary nature. "The chief was actually drinking a peg, and his hand shook like a leaf."
Ommaney drank the spirits — he was an absolute teetotaler as a rule, though not pledged in any way to abstinence — and it revived him.
"Now let us try and think," he said, lighting a cigarette and walking up and down the room.
Spence lit a cigarette also. As he did so he gave a sudden, sharp, unnatural chuckle. He was smoking when the Light of the World — the whole great world! — was flickering into darkness.
Ommaney saw him and interpreted the thought. He pulled him up at once with a few sharp words, for he knew that Spence was close upon hysteria.
"From a news point of view," he continued, "we hold all the cards. No one else knows what we know. I am certain that the German papers will publish nothing for a day or two. The Emperor will tell them nothing, and they can have no other source of information; so I gather from this telegram. Dr. Schmöulder will not say anything until he has instructions from Potsdam. That means I need not publish anything in to-morrow's paper. It will relieve me of a great responsibility. We shall be first in the field, but I shall still have a few hours to consult with others."
He pressed a bell on the table. "Tell Mr. Jones I wish to see him," he told the boy who answered the summons.
A young man came in, the editor of the "personal" column.
"Is the Prime Minister in town, Mr. Jones?" he asked.
"Yes, sir; he's here for three more days."
"I shall send a message now," said Ommaney, "asking for an interview in an hour's time. I know he will see me. He knows that I would not come at this hour unless the matter were of national importance. As you know, we are very much in the confidence of the Cabinet just now. I dare not wait till to-morrow." He rapidly wrote a note and sent for Mr. Folliott Farmer.
The big-bearded man from Spence's room entered, smoking a briar pipe.
"Mr. Farmer," said Ommaney, "I suppose you've done your leader?"
"Sent it up-stairs ten minutes ago," said the big man.
"Then I want you to do me a favour. The matter is so important that I do not like to trust any one else. I want you to drive to Downing Street at once as hard as you can go. Take this letter for Lord —. It is making an appointment for me in an hour's time. He must see it himself at once — take my card. One of the secretaries will try and put you off, of course. This is irregular, but it is of international importance. When I tell you this you will realise that Lord — must see the note. Bring me back the answer as rapidly as you can."
The elderly man — his name was a household word as a political writer all over England and the Continent — nodded without speaking, took the letter, and left the room. He knew Ommaney, and realised that if he made a messenger boy of him, Folliott Farmer, the matter was of supreme importance.
"That is the only thing to do," said Ommaney. "No one else would be possible. The Archbishop would laugh. We must go to the real head. I only want to put myself on the safe side before publishing. If they meet me properly, then for the next few days we can control public opinion. If not, then it is my duty to publish, and if I'm not officially backed up there may be war in a week. Macedonia would be flaming, Turkish fanatics would embroil Europe. But that will be seen at once in Downing Street, unless I'm very much mistaken."
"It's an awful, horrible risk we are running," said Spence. He was forgetting all personal impressions in the excitement of the work; the journalist was alive in him. "Hands's letter and diagrams seem so flawless; he has exhausted every means of disproving what he says; but still supposing that it is all untrue!"
"I look at it this way," said Ommaney. "It's perfectly obvious, at any rate, that the discovery is of the first importance, regarded as news. Hands has the reputation of being a thoroughly safe man, and now he is supported by Schmöulder. Schmöulder is, of course, a man of world-wide reputation. As these two are certain, even if later opinion or discovery proves the thing to be untrue, the paper can't suffer. Our attitude will, of course, be non-committal, until certainty one way or the other comes. At any rate, it seems to me that you have brought in the greatest newspaper 'scoop' that has ever been known or thought of. For my part, I have little doubt of the truth of this. Can't go into it now, but it seems so very, very probable. It explains and even corroborates, and that's the wonderful thing, so much of the Gospel narrative. We shall see what Llwellyn says. I've more to go into, but, meanwhile, I must make arrangements for setting up Hands's papers. Then there are the inscriptions, too. Of course they must be reproduced in facsimile. As we can't print in half-tone, I must have the photograph turned into an absolutely correct line drawing, and have line blocks made. I shall have pulls of the whole thing prepared and sent by post to-morrow at midnight to the editors of all the dailies in London and Paris, and to the heads of the Churches. I shall also prepare a statement, showing exactly how the documents have come into our possession and what steps we are taking. I shall write the thing to-night, after I have seen the Prime Minister."
He went to his writing-table once more, moved the telephone indicator, and summoned the foreman printer.
In a few moments a lean Scotchman in his shirt sleeves — one of the most autocratic and important people connected with the paper — came into the room.
"I want an absolutely reliable linotype operator, Burness," said Ommaney. "He will have to set up some special copy for me after the paper 's gone to press. It'll take him till breakfast-time. I want a man who will not talk. The thing is private and important. And it must be a man who can set up from the Greek font by hand also. There are some quotations in Greek included in the text."
"Well, sirr," said the man, with a strong Scotch accent, "I can find ye a guid operrator to stay till morning, but aboot his silence — if it's of great moment — I wouldn't say, and aboot his aptitude for setting up Greek type I hae nae doot whatever. There's no a lino operrator in the building wha can do it. Some of the men at the case might, but that'll be keeping two men. Is it verra important, Mr. Ommaney?"
"More important than anything I have ever dealt with."
"Then ye'll please jist give the copy into my own hands, sirr. I'll do the lino and the case warrk mysel' and pull a galley proof for ye too. No one shall see the copy but me."
"Thank you, Burness," said the editor. "I'm very much obliged. I shall be here till morning. I shall go out in an hour and be back by the time the machines are running down-stairs. Then the composing-room will be empty and you can get to work."
"I'll start directly the plates have gone down to the foundry and the men are off, just keeping one hand to see to the gas-engine."
"And, Burness, lock up the galley safely when you come down with the proof."
"I'll do it, sir," and the great man — indispensable, and earning his six hundred a year — went away with the precious papers.
"That is perfectly safe with Burness," said Spence, as the foreman compositor retired. "He will make no mistakes either. He is a capital Greek scholar, corrects the proof-readers themselves often."
"Yes," answered Ommaney, "I know. I shall leave everything in his hands. Then late to-morrow night, just before the forms go to the foundry, I shall shove the whole thing in before any one knows anything about it, and nothing can get round to any other office. Burness will know about it beforehand, and he'll be ready to break up a whole page for this stuff. Of course, as far as leaders go and comment, I shall be guided very much by the result of my interview to-night and others to-morrow morning. I shall send off several cables before dawn to Palestine and elsewhere."
Once more the editor began to pace up and down the room, thinking rapidly, decisively, deeply. The slim, fragile body was informed with power by the splendid brain which animated it.
The rather languid, silent man was utterly changed. Here one could see the strength and force of the personality which directed and controlled the second, perhaps the first, most powerful engine of public opinion in the world. The millionaires who paid this frail-looking, youthful man an enormous sum to direct their paper for them knew what they were about. They had bought one of the finest living executive brains and made it a potentate among its fellows. This man who, when he was not at the office, or holding some hurried colloquy with one of the rulers of the world, was asleep in a solitary flat at Kensington, knew that he had an accepted right to send a message to Downing Street, such as he had lately done. No one knew his face — no one of the great outside public; his was hardly even a name to be recognised in passing, yet he, and Spence, and Folliott Farmer could shake a continent with their words. And though all knew it, or would at least have realised it had they ever given it a thought, the absolute self-effacement of journalism made it a matter of no moment to any of them.
While Englishmen read their dicta, and unconsciously incorporated them into their own pronouncements, mouthing them in street, market, and forum, these men slept till the busy day was over, and once more with the setting of the sun stole out to their almost furtive and yet tremendous task.
Every now and then Ommaney strode to the writing-table and made a rapid note on a sheet of paper.
At last he turned to Spence.
"I am beginning to have our line of action well marked out in my brain," he said. "The thing is grouping itself very well. I am beginning to see my way. Now about you, Spence. Of course this thing is yours. At any rate you brought it here. Later on, of course, we shall show our gratitude in some substantial way. That will depend upon the upshot of the whole thing. Meanwhile, you will be quite wasted in London. I and Farmer and Wilson can deal with anything and everything here. Of course I would rather have you on the spot, but I can use you far better elsewhere."
"Then?" said Spence.
"You must go to Jerusalem at once. Start for Paris to-morrow morning at nine; you'd better go round to your chambers and pack up now and then come back here till it's time to start. You can sleep en route, I shall be here till breakfast-time, and I can give you final instructions."
He used the telephone once more and his secretary came in.
"Mr. Spence starts for Palestine to-morrow morning, Marriott," he said. "He is going straight through to Jerusalem as fast as may be. Oblige me by getting out a route for him at once, marking all the times for steamers and trains, etc., in a clear scheme for Mr. Spence to take with him. Be very careful with the Continental timetables indeed. If you can see any delay anywhere which will be likely to occur, go down to Cook's early in the morning and make full inquiries. If it is necessary, arrange for any special trains that may be necessary. Mr. Spence must not be delayed a day. Also map out various points on the journey, with the proper times, where we can telegraph instructions to Mr. Spence. Go down to Mr. Woolford and ask him for a hundred pounds in notes and give them to Mr. Spence. You will arrange about the usual letter of credit during the day and wire Mr. Spence at Paris after lunch."
The young man went out to do his part in the great organisation which Ommaney controlled.
"Then you'll be back between three and four?" Ommaney said.
"Yes, I'll go and pack at once," Spence answered. "My passport from the Foreign Office is all right now."
He rose to go, vigorous, and with an inexpressible sense of relief at the active prospect before him. There would be no time for haunting thought, for personal fears yet. He was going, himself, to the very heart of things, to see and to gain personal knowledge of these events which were shadowing the world.
The door opened as he rose and Folliott Farmer strode in. With him was a tall, distinguished man of about five-and-thirty; he was in evening dress and rather bald.
It was Lord Trelyon, the Prime Minister's private secretary.
"I thought I would come myself with Mr. Farmer, Mr. Ommaney," he said, shaking hands cordially. "Lord — will see you. He tells me to say that if it is absolutely imperative he will see you. I suppose there is no doubt of that?"
"None whatever, I'm sorry to say. Lord Trelyon," the editor answered. "Farmer, will you take charge till I return?"
He slipped on his overcoat and a felt hat and left the room with the secretary without looking back. Spence followed the two down the stairs — the tall, athletic young fellow and the slim, nervous journalist. These were just driving furiously towards the Law Courts as Spence turned into Fleet Street on his way to Lincoln's Inn.
Fleet Street was brilliantly lit and almost silent. A few cabs hovered about and that was all. Presently all the air would be filled with the dull roar and hum of the great printing machines in their underground halls, but the press hour was hardly yet.
The porter let him into the Inn, and in a few moments he was striking matches and lighting the gas. Mrs. Buscall had cleared away the breakfast things, but the fire had long since gone out. The big rooms looked very bare and solitary, unfamiliar almost, as the gas-jets hissed in the silence.
One or two letters were in the box. One envelope bore the Manchester post-mark. It was from Basil Gortre. A curious pang, half wonder and anticipation, half fear, passed through his mind as he saw the familiar handwriting of his friend. But it was a pang for Gortre, not for himself. He himself was wholly detached now that the time for action had arrived. Personal consideration would come later. At present he was starting out on the old trail — "The old trail, the long trail, the trail that is always new."
He felt a man again, with a fierce joy and exultation throbbing in all his veins after the torpor of the last few weeks.
He sat down at the table, first getting some bread and cheese from a cupboard, for he was hungry, and opening a bottle of beer. The beer tasted wonderfully good. He laughed exultingly in the flow of his high spirits.
He wrote a note to Mrs. Buscall, long since inured to these sudden midnight departures, and another to Gortre. To him he said that some great and momentous discoveries were made at Jerusalem by Hands, and that he himself was starting at once for the Holy City as special correspondent for the Wire. He would write en route, he explained, there was no time for any details now.
"Poor chap," he said to himself, "he'll know soon enough now. I hope he won't take it very badly."
Then he went into his bedroom and hauled down the great pig-skin kit-bag, covered with foreign labels, which had accompanied him half over the world.
He packed quickly and completely, the result of long practice. The pads of paper, the stylographic pens, with the special ink for hot countries which would not dry up or corrode, his revolvers, riding-breeches, boots and spurs, the kodak, with spare films and light-tight zinc cases, the old sun helmet — he forgot nothing.
When he had finished, and the big bag, with a small Gladstone also, was strapped and locked, he changed joyously from the black coat of cities into his travelling tweeds of tough cloth. At length everything seemed prepared. He sat on the bed and looked round him, willing to be gone.
His eye fell on the opposite wall. A crucifix hung there, carved in ebony and ivory. During his short holiday at Dieppe, nearly nine months ago now, he had gone into the famous little shop there where carved work of all kinds is sold. Basil and Helena were with him and they had all bought mementoes. Helena had given him that.
And as he looked at it now he wondered what his journey would bring forth. Was he, indeed, chosen out of men to go to this far country to tear Christ from that awful and holy eminence of the Cross? Was it to be his mission to extinguish the Lux Mundi?
As he gazed at the sacred emblem he felt that this could not be.
No, no! a thousand times no. Jesus had risen to save him and all other sinners. It was so, must be so, should be so.
The Holy Name was in itself enough. He whispered it to himself. No, that was eternally, gloriously true.
Humbly, faithfully, gladly he knelt among the litter of the room and said the Lord's Prayer, said it in Latin as he had said it at school —
Pater noster!