Six Against the Yard Page 5

  I do not propose to weary the reader with a full account of the speech. If he is in the habit of ‘trying to get foreign stations,’ he will before now have intercepted a torrent of Magnolian eloquence, from Gamba, from Almeda, or from the irrepressible Dr. Lunaro, very much in the same vein. Whenever Magnolian statesmen find themselves in front of a microphone they tell us how badly their country was governed before the Liberation, what peace and what blessings it has enjoyed ever since, and how little reliance can be put in the tendentious despatches sent from San Taddeo by correspondents of foreign newspapers—by what they mean, principally, the Daily Shout.

  The Magnolians, however, are a simple people; they are really rather glad to have a government of any kind, and a relentless propaganda has hypnotised them into an attitude of ferocious nationalism, which deceives nobody except themselves into admiration of their rulers. On the present occasion they applauded the usual rhetoric with the usual vociferousness, whooped, and sang patriotic hymns, when the sheet was let down and the bronze effigy stood unveiled before them—the Inspirer, standing at the salute in answer to all the thousands of salutes that would greet him from all the thousands of patriotic folk who would pass by. Then they gave three more cheers for General Almeda as he drove off in his car to join Gamba in his house, and streamed away to let off fireworks and drink healths, while the regiment of soldiers that had tempestuously wooed and won the sculptress? A girl fresh from the University had been charged with perpetuating, for all time, in unaging bronze, the features of the Inspirer: that hawklike nose, that resolute chin, those rugged eyebrows. It was as the Señora Almeda that she was present to-day; and you may be sure that it thrilled her to listen to the man she was in love with—for she was really in love with him, not with his power or with his uniform—praising her own art, while he praised the man who had united beyond all precedent the people of Magnolia, abolished the national debt, and exchanged a flood of telegrams with the League of Nations.

  Almeda himself was a genuine soldier; although he was a giant of a man, he did not look the part of national hero quite so well as Gamba. In the recent coup d’état—I beg its pardon, the recent Liberation—he had appeared for a time to be playing a lone hand, with the army at his back; then, quite unexpectedly, he had joined hands with the rising movement of Gamba, which had all the publicity and all the gunmen at its disposal. This coalition shattered the constitutional parties, and left Gamba supreme ruler of Magnolia, with Almeda as his right-hand man. Naturally enough there were wiseacres who whispered (you never spoke above a whisper in San Taddeo, if you could help it) that Almeda was not best pleased with a position which forced him to play second fiddle. But no outward sign of disagreement showed itself between the two men; and certainly it would have been impossible to speak of Gamba’s achievements in more glowing terms the police, and had reason to suppose that the police were looking.

  The statue of Enrique Gamba was not to be unveiled by Enrique Gamba himself. Not that he suffered from the kind of modesty which would have made it hard for him to deliver an oration in his own honour; indeed, it had been understood until yesterday that he was to be the principal speaker. But yesterday afternoon word had gone round that the Inspirer was suffering from a slight cold in the throat; he would not be present at the unveiling, which took place at nine o’clock in the evening, but would content himself with taking the salute of the troops on their way back, and, immediately afterwards, broadcasting a few words to the nation. These autumn evenings were chilly, and the doctors insisted that he should not leave his house. Broadcasting, it hardly needs to be explained, involved no necessity of leaving the house. There was a specially designed microphone in a soundproof room in his suite from which, after pressing a button to silence all the programmes from all stations, he could gate-crash the hearing of every listener in Magnolia. His second in command, General Almeda, was provided with a similar convenience, for he made almost as many speeches as the Inspirer himself. No other such contrivance, it was said, existed in the world.

  Naturally it was General Almeda who stepped into the breach on the present occasion, and unveiled the statue. And who had a better right? For had not General Almeda, while the sittings were in progress, altar-tomb which enclosed it, should be removed from the private chapel and lodged in the Cathedral. Gamba did not take much interest in anybody as long as he was dead. He let the Archbishop have his altar, and commissioned Señora Almeda to carve him a new altar in its place, on the model of the old one. It was necessary for him, you see, to be a patron of the arts, and the chapel of the Archbishop’s was full of valuable, sometimes interesting stuff. He left it as it was, although Mass was never said there, and it served no useful purpose. The rest of the house suited him admirably, when he had sent a gang of masons through it to make sure there were no secret passages. (With archbishops, you never knew.) He himself lived on the top floor, in a suite of rooms which was cut off from the rest of the building, except for a single staircase with a stout oak door at the bottom of it. Outside this door sentries were posted, day and night; not soldiers, but gunmen of his own following, who had been raised to a kind of brevet military rank.

  The commander of these, Captain Vareos, saluted the General and shook hands with Dr. Lunaro, who had accompanied him in his car. ‘The Inspirer, as you know, has given orders that he was not to be disturbed,’ he said. ‘You, General, were to be shown up, because you also, I think, are taking the salute from the balcony. There was nothing said about Dr. Lunaro, but––––’

  ‘That is all right,’ said the doctor, ‘I will wait down here and smoke a cheroot with you, Captain. I do not wear uniforms and take salutes; I am growing stout already, and these things do not become my appearance. You will not be long, General?’

  ‘Just while the troops march past; that will only be a quarter of an hour or less. And then the Inspirer will be broadcasting, but only for one or two minutes, I expect. I will be down as soon as that is over. You heard the unveiling speech, Captain?’

  ‘All of us. But it is a bad instrument, this; I wish we had a set like the one the Inspirer has upstairs. Then we should miss nothing. Au revoir, General.’ However this age compares with its predecessors, it is certain that we have developed a higher standard of theatrical effect. Those who admire the beastly habit of floodlighting ancient buildings will do well to pay a visit to Magnolia; a country, in earlier times, of superb architectural achievement; a country, today, of quite execrable taste. As the regiment advanced down the main street of San Taddeo, nothing was visible of the old archiépiscopal residence except the ground floor, where the shaded street lamps caught it. But, as the ‘Eyes right’ was given, a sudden glare of flashlights played over the whole towering façade; threw into relief the intricate mouldings, the deep embrasures; concentrated its effect on an upper balcony, where the familiar figures of Gamba and the General stood at the salute. This balcony opened out of the old chapel; and the archbishops used it formerly when, on state occasions, they gave Benediction to the crowd beneath. Now it was a framework for political puppet-shows, of the kind that is needed to keep the Gambas of the world in power. For ten minutes or so, while the troops were passing, this familiar tableau was presented to the public view; then, abruptly, the flares were extinguished, and the Street of April the First (named, of course, after the date of the Liberation) resumed its normal appearance.

  It is our modern habit to gratify the senses one at a time. San Taddeo, after being allowed for ten minutes to contemplate the Inspirer’s features in perfect silence, was allowed for ten minutes to listen to the Inspirer’s voice without seeing him. The speech came through well enough; the utterance, always a trifle raucous, was not much altered by traces of catarrh. Dr. Lunaro, smoking his cheroot with Captain Varcos on the top floor but one of Gamba’s won residence, vetoed the idea of tuning-in. He was a privileged person; and it is likely that Varcos and his sentries welcomed the rare opportunity of not listening when the Inspirer was at the microphone. Lunaro was j
ust grinding out the stub of his cheroot when the oak door opened from within and Almeda appeared, calling out as he did so, ‘Good night, my Inspirer!’

  ‘Good night, my friends!’ The oak door shut, and the idol of a nation’s worship was left to isolated glory.

  Captain Varcos is not the sort of man I should care to meet on a dark night, supposing him to have any reason for dissatisfaction with my conduct. But there is no doubt that he waited on Gamba as a dog waits on its master; and those who knew the routine of that household were sometimes heard to speculate whether he ever got any sleep. He had been on duty that day since eight in the morning; but that exchange of good nights was not, to him, a signal for bed. He threw a cloak over his shoulders and went down into the street, to make sure that the sentries at the main door were duly at their posts. Then, passing up a little side alley, he made his way to the back of the house, where it abutted on a side street, faced by ugly office buildings. There was no entrance to the house from this direction; the back door had been bricked up, and the ground floor windows were separated from the street by a deep area, behind railings. As if such precautions had been insufficient, three sentries were on guard here too; their only business was to keep a watch on the windows of the upper storey—assassins, before now, have climbed up drainpipes. A light showed in the two windows of the room which Gamba used as his study.

  ‘The Inspirer works early and late,’ said Varcos. ‘Keep your eyes on that light, my friends; it is the star of Magnolia’s fortunes.’ And he went back to his post on the upstairs landing.

  It must have been about ten minutes later that his meditations were interrupted by confused cries from the street; then a policeman came rushing upstairs, with a little mob of citizens following, irrepressible, at his heels. ‘Fire!’ he cried. ‘Up there, in the Inspirer’s suite! The keys!’ ‘Keys!’ replied Varcos, with a string of oaths, ‘there is no key. We must rush the door—or rather, you, Felipe, run for an axe; we will try rushing the door in the meanwhile. Now, citizens, your shoulders, all together! Here, boy, you are not strong enough for this; run downstairs and telephone for the fire brigade. It has been summoned already? Then telephone for His Excellency General Almeda; he will be back at his house by now. Citizens, your shoulders!’

  After three united efforts the upper hinge of the door gave; and, as it fell in, half a dozen men ran upstairs with the same impetus, not heeding the protests of the police official. A cordon had, however, been drawn by now across the main entrance to the building, so that the remainder of the crowd had to content themselves with watching from the street. It was evident that the fire had broken out in or near the chapel; the flames were already wreathed about the balcony from which the soldiers’ salute had been returned, scarce, half an hour earlier. By the time Almeda arrived in his car the mob in the street was so packed that it was almost impossible to pass. He turned up a side street, and parked his car at the back, where the sentries had stood, but stood no longer—they had been swept away in the general eagerness to help in fighting the flames. From the back, down the alley already mentioned, Almeda returned to the main street, and fought his way through the crowd, shouting his own name to secure himself a passage.

  Half-way up the stairs he was met by Varcos himself, and asked eagerly whether they had got the fire under. ‘The fire—that is out,’ replied Varcos. ‘But the Inspirer—we have searched high and low without finding him. I’m going to the back, to see if he can have been cut off somewhere, trying to escape. For God’s sake, General, imprison all the fellows who broke in with us; trust nobody except the guards. If there has been foul play’—and he shook his hands in the air, with clenched teeth, as if to invoke some kind of infernal retribution.

  Almeda gave a hasty order to the police at the door; every man who had been upstairs, except the firemen and the guards, was to be sent off at once in a prison van, to await interrogation. Then he took the stairs at a run, to find that, after all, the fire had done comparatively little damage. It must have broken out in the chapel, which was now blackened and gutted—everywhere the smell of blistered paint, and the gutterings of candles. The deputy altar his wife had carved, that had been set up only yesterday, was charred almost beyond recognition; plaster statues and plaster mouldings had cracked and splintered all over the floor; windows had fallen in, and carpets had burned to an ash. But the rest of the suite, although thick wreaths of smoke still hung about it, had remained untouched. The lights had fused, and the firemen were working by the glare of their own torches.

  Nobody ever believes a place has been searched until he has searched it himself. General Almeda went from room to room, from cupboard to cupboard, as if he still hoped to find some trace of the missing man. He was so engaged when one of the sentries plucked him by the sleeve and told him, almost in a whisper, that Captain Varcos wanted to see him downstairs, at once; it was a matter of life and death.

  He was ushered into a waiting-room, where Varcos and Dr. Lunaro sat in conclave, their brows heavy with disconcerting news. Lunaro was just saying, ‘That much, anyhow, they must be told’; and he added, almost before Almeda had had time to ask how much, ‘that the Inspirer is no more. That he has fallen from a window to his death.’

  ‘And they must not know, Doctor? Or not yet, at least?’

  ‘That he had a bullet-wound through the back of his head.’

  ‘Who found him?’

  ‘I,’ said Varcos. ‘The moment after I left you. I found the street at the back of the house empty; the dogs had joined with the crowd rushing in, and left their posts. I went close, to shine my torch against the back of the house, and immediately I noticed something dark lying in the area, beyond the railings, you know. I told one of my men to get a ladder, and we went down and found him.’

  ‘He was dead, of course?’

  ‘My dear General, a man does not survive a fall from that height, bullet or no bullet. We covered him up, and brought him in to a room on the ground floor, which we have locked for the present.’

  ‘Who knows, as yet?’

  ‘Only the sentry—one of the three who should have been on guard. He can be shot, if necessary, for deserting his post.’ Varcos shrugged his shoulders, as if to imply that shooting was, perhaps, not so good as formerly, since the deliverer of his country lay there clay-cold.

  ‘I can answer for the Army,’ said Almeda, uttering, with almost brutal abruptness, the thought which was in all their minds. ‘What about the Free Youth?’ This was the movement which had brought Gamba into power; and since he was dead, Varcos must be presumed to be at the head of it.

  ‘The Free Youth,’ replied Varcos evasively, ‘will take action in conformity with the situation. But they will want to know who was responsible for to-night’s work. They will want to see what the Avenger looks like, General.’ Almeda flushed, for he had sworn several times, ineffectively, to hunt out this lingering enemy of the State.

  ‘Be reasonable, Captain,’ urged Lunaro. ‘It is the police who have failed; it is the police who must find him. Meanwhile, it will do no good for us to quarrel. The Party had better meet—that is what I was saying—before anything is given out in public. At what hour, General?’

  ‘At eleven. I must have the full police report first, and go through it with Weinberg. He should be here by now—why is he not here?’ Colonel Weinberg was the Chief of Police.

  ‘He is waiting outside,’ explained Varcos. ‘I will make my own report to him as soon as he is at liberty; you, gentlemen, will hardly be interested in the details at present, since you have, so much else to consider. Shall I make my report to the meeting of the Party also?’

  ‘That will be best,’ agreed Almeda. The Junta which ruled in Magnolia was a very small body; and Varcos, although a trusted servant of Gamba’s, did not belong to it. ‘At eleven, then, Captain?’

  ‘At eleven to-morrow. And you will see Colonel Weinberg now?’

  ‘It will be better if you ask him to come round to my house early to-morrow. It is ur
gent that I should, make an announcement by wireless, for there will be all sorts of rumours flying about the city. For the present, then, I announce the disastrous news, explain that the Inspirer is thought to have met his death accidentally in trying to escape from the burning premises, pay the shortest of tributes to his memory, appeal for quiet behaviour and calm judgment—is there anything else, Doctor?’

  ‘Nothing, General. Unless you care to anticipate rumour by adding that if the police find any reason to suspect foul play the Government will know where to fix the blame. That kind of announcement does no harm; and it causes panic among the enemies of the State.’

  ‘True; I will make that allusion; it is excellently thought of Pray heaven we may know! I will hold the troops in readiness, in case of any disturbance; and you, Doctor, will attend to the Press reports; that is understood? Gentlemen, there will be little rest for any of us; but I wish you good night!’

  Dispassionate critics are agreed that General Almeda’s broadcast, which he made from his own house as soon as he reached it, was a considerable improvement on most of his utterances. He spoke very simply, in tones of dignified emotion; and there was little or nothing of the fire-eating stuff which he was accustomed to talk. He announced that he would make himself responsible for keeping order in the country until the will of the people should have been expressed as to the future government of it, and warned his hearers that, until the Party had made its decision on the morrow, all public expressions of opinion would be regarded as unpatriotic activities. Then he switched off the microphone, and the city of San Taddeo industriously assumed an appearance of complete calm.

  Colonel Weinberg, the Chief of Police, was one of the few officials who had been left over from the old régime. His reputation for detecting plots and laying criminals by the heels was really remarkable; and although his political sympathies were doubtful, Chief of Police he was still called—there was a Prefect of the City who dealt with rioting, and a Prefect of National Discipline who had charge of the prisons, so that his power was shorn while his usefulness remained unimpaired. He was a small, grizzled man, with an eye that fixed you only to disconcert you with a twinkle, and a sardonic habit of speech. When he came round to Almeda’s house next morning he carried a vast jacket of official papers with him, the result of the researches he had made during the midnight hours. So brisk was he, so fully master of the situation, that you would never take him for a man robbed of his night’s sleep.