Thorne Guy
The Socialist

He was hustled along an evil-smelling passage, down a flight of uneven stone stairs and into a room, a room much warmer than the cold passages which he had traversed, a room in which there were several people, and where a fire was burning.

The cruel grip which had held him like a vice in its strength and ingenuity was a little relaxed.

He was pushed down upon a chair. The air of the room was stifling, his body was wet with perspiration, owing to the sudden transition from cold to heat, the restricted breathing, and the extreme rapidity of his progress.

A hand rested on his cheek for a moment and then plucked the filthy handkerchief from his mouth.

The duke took a deep breath. Foul as the air was in this place it seemed at this moment balmy as those breezes laden with cassia and nard which blow through the Gardens of the Hesperides.

Then a voice spoke: "You will be all right, guv'nor. Sorry to 'ave 'ad to treat you a bit rough like, but, 'pon my sivvey, we wasn't goin' to lose a bit-of-orl-right like this. Just for precaution's sake, as you might sye, we'll – "

The sentence was not concluded, but the duke felt his legs were being tied to the legs of the chair. His arms were suddenly caught up and pressed behind him. He was perfectly helpless.

Then the bandage was removed from his eyes.

He found himself in a place which, in his experience, was utterly unlike anything that he had seen before, or even imagined. As a matter of fact, he was sitting trussed upon a windsor chair in an underground thieves' cellar-kitchen.

A large fire of coal and coke glowed in the white-washed fire-place. There were shelves with crockery and other utensils on each side of the fire. An ancient armchair, covered with torn and dirty chintz, was drawn to the fire, and in it sat a very large fat woman of middle age. She wore heavy gold earrings, bracelets were upon her wrists, and a glinting flash from her fat and dirty fingers showed that the diamonds in her rings were real. No one could have mistaken her for an instant for anything else than a Jewess.

There were five or six men in the room.

As the duke became accustomed to the light of the big paraffin lamp which hung from the ceiling he saw that all these men were singularly alike. They were all clean shaven, for one thing, and they all seemed to have the same expression. Their mouths were one and all intelligent and slightly deferential. Their eyes flickered a good deal hither and thither and were curiously and quietly watchful. There was a precision about their movements.

"Could they all be brothers?" he wondered idly, for his brain was still weakened by shock, "and could that fat woman with the filthy clothes and the rings be their mother?"

"Now, then, guv'nor," said one of the men with perfect politeness, but with a curious under-note of menace in his voice, "we know who your lordship is. It is a fair cop. We've got you 'ere, and of course you are not going away from 'ere unless you makes it nice and heasy for all parties."

The man spoke in a hoarse voice, but, again, a singularly quiet voice. Menace was there, it is true, but there was something cringing also.

Who could these men be? the duke thought idly and as if in a dream. They looked like actors. Yes, they were very much like actors. Was it that he had —

The true explanation burst in upon him. He remembered a certain magazine article he had once read with a curious mixture of disgust and pity, a magazine article which was illustrated by many photographs. These men were alike for a very sufficient reason. A terrible discipline had pressed them into its irremediable mould.

They were all old convicts. They were men who had "done time."

CHAPTER VIII
"IN CELLAR COOL!"

The duke knew perfectly well that he had fallen into the hands of as rascally and evil a gang of ruffians as London could produce. He made no answer to the words of the man who had addressed him.

"You will be better off if you listen to Sidney reasonable, dearie," said the horrible old woman. The words dropped from her lips like gouts of oil. "You will be all the better for listening to Sidney! I'm sure nobody wants to do anything unpleasant to you, but folks must live, and you've reely walked in most convenient, as you might sye."

"What do you want?" the duke said at last.

"Well, sir," the man addressed as "Sidney" replied, "we have got you fair. Nobody saw us take you away. You've disappeared from the accident without leaving a trace like." As he spoke, the man's servile, wolfish face was a sheer wedge of greed and cunning. His tongue moistened his lips as if in anticipation of something. "You see, nobody can't possibly know where you've come. They will think you were smashed up, or got up and went away, out of your mind, after the shock. People'll hunt all over London for you, no doubt, but they won't never think of us. Now, we've got your very 'ansom ticker and a few quids, and the gold purse that 'eld them, and there was a matter of forty or fifty pound in notes in the pocket-book when we opened it. It was that, by the wye, as told us who you was. Now, our contention is that them as 'as as much money as you must contribute to them as 'asn't."

He grinned as if pleased with his own wit, and a horrid little uncertain chuckle went round the room, a chuckle with something not quite human in it.

"Now, wot I says," the man continued, "is this. We will return you the ticker because it won't be of much use to us, except the gold case. We'll keep the chain and the quid box and the quids, and we'll also keep the fi-pun notes. Then, my lord, you'll sit down and write a little note to your bankers and enclose a cheque. I see you have got the cheque-book with you, or I've got it at least. Now, the question is what the amount of this 'ere cheque shall be. You, being a rich man, we cannot put it low, and we hold all the cards. Let's say three thousand pounds. In addition to that you'll give us your word of honour as a gentleman to take no proceedings about this 'ere little matter and say nothing about it to nobody. When that's done, by to-morrow morning, mid-day, say, you can go, and I am sure," he concluded, "with an 'earty hand-shake from yours truly, being a gentleman, as I am sure you will prove, and a lord, too."

The duke considered.

Three thousand pounds is a large sum of money, though to him it meant little or nothing. At the same time his whole manhood rose up within him – the stubbornness of his race steeled him against granting these miscreants their demand. A flood of anger mounted to his brain. His upper lip stiffened and his eyes glinted ominously.

At last he answered the man.

"I'll see you d – d," he said, "before I give you a single halfpenny! And let me tell you this, that, as sure as you stand here now, you are bringing upon yourselves a sure and speedy punishment. You think, because I am wealthy and you know who I am, you have got a big haul. If you were just a little cleverer than you are you would understand that the Duke of Paddington cannot disappear, even for a few hours, without urgent inquiry being made for him. You will infallibly be discovered, and you know what the result of that will be."

"Not quite so fast," said the man called Sidney, in a smooth, quiet voice. "It is all very well to talk like this 'ere, but you don't know what you are a-saying of. You don't know in whose hands you are. People like us don't stick at nothing. As sure as eggs is eggs, unless you do as we are asking, you will never be seen or heard of any more. You think we run a risk? Well, I'll tell you this – I've had a good deal of professional experience – this is one of the easiest jobs to keep out of sight that I've ever 'ad. Now, supposing there 'ad been a little high-class job in the West End – matter of a jeweller's shop, say – or a house in Park Lyne. In that case we should be pretty certain to have some 'tecs nosing round this quarter, finding out where I or some other of my pals had been the night before. We should be watched, and the fences would be watched, until they could prove something against us. But in this case the police won't have a single idea wot will connect us with your disappearance."

"I am not going to argue with you, my man," the duke answered calmly. "I am not accustomed to bandy words with anybody, much less a filthy criminal ruffian like you! You can go to blazes, the whole lot of you! I won't give any of you a farthing!"

Even now the man who was the spokesman of that furtive, evil crew did not lose his temper. He smiled and nodded to himself, as if marking what the duke had said and weighing it over in his mind.

"All right," he answered at length. "That is what you say now. You will say different soon. I am not going to make any bones about it, but I'll tell you the programme, and that is this: To-night we are going to tie you up and take you down into a cellar. There's another one below this, and it ain't got no light nor fire, neither. It is simply a hole in the foundations of the house, that is wot it is. And the rats are all-alive-oh down there, I can tell you! Nice, warm, little furry rats with pink 'ands. You will stay down there to-night, and to-morrow morning I'll come and ask you this question again. I should like to get the business settled and over by mid-day. No use wasting time when there's work to be done. I am a business man, I am. Then, if your blooming lordship is fool enough not to agree to our little proposals by that time – well, then, I can only say that – much as I should regret 'aving to do it – we should 'ave to try what a little physical persuasion means – some 'ot sealing-wax upon the bare stomach, or a splinter or two of wood 'ammered between the nail and the finger, or even a good deal worse than that. Well, it'll all depend on you."

There was something so repulsively insolent in the man's voice that the duke's sense of outrage and anger was even greater than his fear.

He could not, did not, believe that these men would do anything of what they had threatened. His whole upbringing and training had made it almost impossible for him to believe that such a thing could happen to him. It was incredible – perfectly astounding and incredible – that he had even met with this misfortune, that he was where he was. But that the results of his capture would be pushed so far as the man said he was absolutely sceptical. His fierce and lambent sense of anger mastered everything.

"Don't try and frighten me, you scoundrel!" he said. "I won't give you a penny!"

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, nobody 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 clustered 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 lordship'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.

Passing 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 washing, 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. Nobody knows of it. Nobody 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 lordship '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, nobody 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 astonishing 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!"

"My dear girl," Rose answered, "it is so charming of you to say that. That is just the attitude in which I want you to be – all excitement and anxiousness!"

They crowded round her, regarding her, as she could not but feel, as the centre of the picture, and her trepidation and excitement grew with the occasion. She was becoming, indeed, rather overstrained, when Mrs. Rose took her by the arm.

"My dear," she said, "don't get excited until it is absolutely necessary. Remember that you are here to-day simply to receive certain impressions, which are to germinate in your brain; seeds to be sown in your temperament, which shall blossom out in your heart. Therefore do not waste nervous force before the occasion arises. I am not going, you will be the only woman upon this expedition."

Mary looked round in a rather helpless way.

"Oh!" she said, "am I to be all alone?"

There came a sudden, sharp cackle of laughter from the famous editor.

"My dear Miss Marriott," he said, "all alone?"

Looking round upon the group of people who were indicated by the sweep of the little man's hand, Mary realised that she would be by no means alone.

Then she noticed, as she had not done before, that in the back recesses of the drawing-room were three or four other men, who, somehow or other, did not seem to belong to the world of her companions.

Rose caught the glance.

"Oh," he said, "I must introduce you to the bodyguard!"

He took her by the arm, and led her to the other end of the drawing-room.

There were four people standing there. One was clean-shaven, and wore a uniform of dark blue, braided with black braid, and held a peaked hat in his hand. Two of the others were bearded, very tall, strong and alert. They were dressed in ordinary dark clothes, and Mary felt – your experienced actress has always an eye for costume, and the necessity of it – that these two also suggested uniform.

The fourth person, who stood a little in the background of the other three, was a man with a heavy black moustache, hair cut short, except for a curious, shining wave over the forehead, and was obviously a strong and lusty constable in plain clothes.

"This is Miss Marriott, gentlemen," Rose said.

The three men in the foreground bowed. The man at the back automatically raised his right arm in military salute.

"These gentlemen, Miss Marriott," Rose said, "are going to take us into the places where we have to go. They are going to protect us. Inspector Brown and Inspector Smith, of Scotland Yard, and Inspector Green, of the County Council."

Mary bowed and smiled.

Then the tallest of the bearded men said: "Excuse me, miss, where we are going it would be quite inadvisable for you to wear the clothes you are wearing now."

He spoke quite politely, but with a certain decision and sharpness, at which Mary wondered.

"I don't quite understand," she said.

"Well, Miss Marriott," the inspector answered, "you see we are going into some very queer places indeed, and as you will be the only lady with us, you had better wear – "

"Oh, I quite forgot," Fabian Rose said. "Of course, you told me that before, Mr. Brown. We have got a nurse's costume for you, Miss Marriott. You see, a nurse can go anywhere in these places where no other woman can go. By the way," he added, as a sort of after-thought, "this must seem rather terrible to you. I hope you are not frightened?"

Mary smiled. She looked round at the group of big men in the drawing-room, and made a pretty little gesture with her hands.

"Frightened!" she said, and smiled.

"Come along," Rose said, "my wife will fit you up."

In half an hour a curious party had left Westminster in two closed motor-cars, and were rolling up Park Lane. When Oxford Street was reached the car in which the party sat went two or three hundred yards eastward. The car in which the other half were bestowed moved as far to the west.

Every one alighted, and the cars disappeared.

In half an hour after that the whole party, by devious routes carefully planned beforehand, met in a centre of the strange network of slums which are in the vicinity of the Great Western Station of Paddington.

These slums the ordinary wayfarer knows nothing of.

A man may ride down some main thoroughfare to reach the great railway gate of the West and realise nothing of the fact that, between some gin palace and large lodging-house, a little alley-entry may conduct the curious or the unwary into an inferno as sordid, as terrible, and even more dangerous than any lost quarter of Stepney or Whitechapel.

London, indeed, West End London, is quite unaware that among its stateliest houses, in the very middle of its thoroughfares, there are modern caves in which the troglodytes still dwell which are sinister and dark as anything can be in modern life.

Inspector Brown took the lead.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I am going to take you now through some streets which none of you have probably ever seen before, to a certain district about a quarter of a mile beyond Paddington Station, and where I shall show you exactly what I am instructed to show you. I am sorry to have to make you walk so far, and especially as we have a lady with us, but there is no alternative. We cannot take a cab, or several cabs, to where we are going. A cab has never been seen in the quarter which you are entering with me. Even as we go we shall be known and marked. We shall not be interfered with in any dangerous way because you are with me and my colleagues, but, at the same time, the noise of our arrival will spread through the whole quarter, and I shall only be able to show you the place somewhat dulled of its activities, and, as it were, frightened by our arrival."

"I see," Aubrey Flood answered. "I see, inspector. What you mean is that the rabbits will all be terrorised by the arrival of the ferret!"

"Well, sir," the inspector answered, "I am sure that is not a bad way of putting it."

"Is that a policeman? Do you mean to say he is a detective?" Mary asked James Fabian Rose. "I thought those people were so illiterate and stupid."

The great Socialist laughed.

"My dear," he answered, "you have so much, so very much to learn. Inspector Brown is one of the most intelligent men you could meet with anywhere. He speaks three languages perfectly. He reads Shakespeare. He understands social economics almost as well as I do myself. If he had had better chances he would have been a leader at the bar or an archdeacon. As it is he protects society without réclame, or without acknowledgment, and his emolument for exercising his extreme talents in this direction is, I believe, something under £250 a year."

Mary said nothing. It seemed, indeed, the only thing to do, but very many new thoughts were born within her as she listened to the pleasant, cultured voice of the bearded man, who looked as if he ought to be in uniform, and who led the party with so confident and so blithe a certainty.

They walked through streets of squalor. They progressed through by-ways, ill-smelling and garbage-laden. The very spawn of London squealed and rolled in the gutters, while grey, evil-faced men and women peered at them from doorways and spat a curse as they went by.

They wound in and out of the horrid labyrinth of the West End slums until the great roar of London's traffic died away and became an indistinct hum, until they were all conscious of the fact that they were in another and different sphere.

They had arrived at the underworld.

They were come at last to grip with facts that stank and bit and gripped.

Mary turned a white face to Fabian Rose.

"Mr. Rose," she said, "I had no idea that anything could be quite so sordid and horrible as this. Why! the very air is different!"

"My child," the great Socialist answered, his hand upon her shoulder, the pale face and mustard-coloured beard curiously merged into something very eager, and yet full of pity. "My child, you are as yet only upon the threshold of what we are bringing you to see. We have brought you to-day to these terrible places so that you may drink in all their horrors, all their hideousness, and all their misery, and transform them – through the alchemy of your art – into a great and splendid appeal, which shall convulse the indifferent, the cruel, and the rich."