The Postmaster General Page 3

  “An extraordinary thing has happened. That letter of yours has disappeared. No doubt it will be found, but as it may not be for some time or even perhaps never at all, of course the only thing is for you to write me another. You remember the terms, I am sure. I do not know when you will get this, but your secretary tells me you will be back some time to-night, and I am sure you will send me a message first thing to-morrow morning—by hand if possible. I shall be at home till ten.”

  Wilfrid Halterton re-read these simple words, was satisfied with them, and then spent another ten minutes of indecision, as to how they should be delivered. It was really imperative that J. should get them certainly, and get them as soon as possible. He was in such an anxiety that he was half inclined to take them himself, had he not feared almost any movement of which record could remain. Besides which, if he stayed at home he could spend some more time looking after that strangely truant bit of paper. He would trust to the post.

  So he went down to the street and posted off his note to McAuley with his own hand at once. Then he passed something like two hours searching over and over again, with what, in a less eminent man, might have been called fatuity, making certain and re-certain and counter-certain that the envelope was nowhere to be found.

  There was nothing on for him at the House. He had paired in anticipation of that important interview. He dined at home, and went to bed early. He read for half an hour before sleeping, but he could not remember what he read. He felt as though he had been reading the missing letter. And twice in the night when he woke he could see its contents before him with extraordinary clearness—he could have recited it by heart.

  Oddly enough, when Wilfrid Halterton sat down to his breakfast the next morning—Wednesday the 4th of March—and took up his newspaper, he made no search for an item which was to prove of more interest to him than any other. It did not occur to him that such an item would be there. He solemnly read his first leader, then his second and his third, after barely glancing at the big head-lines, which told him nothing more than he had seen in the evening papers of the night before. He went through the rest of the paper in no hurry; until he came to the financial page, and there it was that he saw what suddenly checked the wandering of his mind.

  There was a paragraph about the position of Billies. It was rumoured that the report of the Committee appointed by the Postmaster-General had been unfavourable to Billies and favourable to Reynier’s; of course, nothing certain was known, but the report would doubtless be published shortly. That was all. The rest of the paragraph was only a few lines of the usual anodyne sort, mentioning vaguely the rival companies and their claims.

  Halterton frowned. His dignity was offended. This kind of leakage could not be allowed. It was also exceedingly awkward now that J. held that signature of his. It was torturing. He wondered who had talked.

  I could have told him. It was the sharp little page boy who goes in and out during the Committee meetings announcing people and taking messages. He had talked. He had got half-a-crown from the porter, and the porter had got a sovereign from Mr. Gamble, who had received fifty pounds in five ten-pound notes in an envelope from Miss Rose Fairweather’s own dainty hands when he had called there the day before at Mr. McAuley’s flat. Mr. Gamble had gone on gaily to his newspaper, and received another twenty pounds from the Financial Editor, to whom Miss Fairweather had specially recommended him. The Financial Editor had got no money indeed, but hearty thanks when next he met his proprietor—I use that word in its fullest sense. Also the Financial Editor had promptly sold his Billies before writing a line.

  Anyhow, there the paragraph was, and after all, it could not be contradicted because it was true. There was nothing to be done now, the thing was printed, and it would be known, anyhow, when Parliament met that afternoon: so there was nothing to be done. And Wilfrid Halterton was far too much a gentleman to have words with his permanent officials, anyhow.

  He looked at his watch. It was just on ten o’clock. J. would probably be ringing him up any moment now. He waited, and waited, his nervousness increasing; no ring came. It was fully a quarter-past when he could bear the suspense no longer, and himself rang up the flat near the Marble Arch.

  Once more the clear accents of Miss Rose Fairweather, delicately balanced between the soft Glasgow and the more lapidary Edinburgh—reflecting therefore, perhaps, an origin in Whitburn—replied like chiselled silver.

  Yes, Mr. McAuley had been in for a time that morning, and had worked with her for an hour; but he had gone out again, saying that he would walk to his office, in the City, because he wanted the exercise. He would hardly be there till well after eleven, he had one or two things to do on the way.

  At eleven-thirty Wilfrid Halterton, now slightly feverish, took the risk of ringing up the Imperial Durrant’s crowd by the number of their palatial building. It was not very regular, the Postmaster-General was not supposed to do that sort of thing—but after all, it was most unlikely anyone would know his voice, and if by a miracle they did, why—everybody knew that he was a friend of McAuley’s, and that McAuley was a brother of his colleague the Attorney-General. He might be ringing up about anything.

  Anyhow, he need not have been in such a stew, for the answer was simple enough.

  Yes. … Mr. McAuley had been in, and had attended to a little business. … No, he had gone out again. … He wouldn’t be back till after lunch. They did not know where he had gone to. They couldn’t say when.

  Once more did the sorely harassed Wilfrid Halterton challenge the gods—once more, before he went down to his own office at noon. And this time it was again the flat near the Marble Arch which he attacked. And once more did the pellucid, sweetly-divided syllables of Rose Fairweather inform him that Mr. McAuley had indeed rung up his flat, from the Carlton Hotel, where he had happened to be for a moment in the course of the morning, but that it was only about some papers he wanted sent on to him there by messenger, and that he would have left the hotel long ago.

  The Postmaster-General had no desire to increase this stream of records, or to emphasize his tracks. He must possess his soul in patience until McAuley should come to him in his rooms at the House, or until in some other way they should meet again. It could not be long. And if he did not see McAuley after a sufficient delay he would write him another letter. But all that day there was no sign of McAuley.

  What did happen that day, and what the Postmaster-General himself discovered from the evening papers, and from the tape, and also, to his no small annoyance, from a certain amount of conversation around him, was a smart little fall in Billies. They had opened well below yesterday’s level, at 21s.—22s. They had sunk to 20s.—21s., rallied again to 22s. and closed at 221/2s. The rally, it may interest my readers to know, was due to the purchase of a fairly large block in the interest of a Mr. Charles Marry—a relative of Miss Rose Fairweather’s, whom she had herself introduced to James McAuley, and who was now devoted to the interests of that great man.

  A whole day having thus passed without news having reached the Postmaster-General from his good and intimate friend James McAuley, it was necessary to take action.

  There are situations which act marvellously as a spur to the intelligence, and Wilfrid Halterton that very evening acted as he had never acted before in his life. He did what is called, “taking steps”; he “cast about,” in half-a-dozen quite indirect, discreet, indifferent remarks dropped here and there, in the dining-room of the House and in the lobbies, and succeeded by half-past eight in getting hold of J.’s momentary whereabouts.

  “Who’s dining at Mary’s to-night?”

  “Do you know whether Johnny’s at Angela’s to-night?”

  “Hullo, I thought you were dining with McAuley?”

  And so on; with such phrases he traced McAuley to his lair. He heard at last that the financier was dining with the Balcombes. At that time of night which Victor Hugo so finely calls the desert hour when lions gather to drink, that is, at a quarter to nine, when the lions li
ft the first cup of champagne to their lips in the houses of our great democracy, Wilfrid Halterton caused J. to be summoned to the telephone: he used a ruse: he summoned J. in the name of his secretary — “Say Miss Fairweather wants him—urgently.” James McAuley, who had but just sat down and exchanged his first words with his hostess, Lady Caroline, in the very ugly grand new house of the Balcombes in Hill Street, cursed under his breath, left the dinner, went out and sat down to the telephone in Balcombe’s private room, with the thick door carefully shut. He lifted the receiver and said, rather testily:

  “Well, Miss Fairweather?”

  But it was not Miss Rose Fairweather’s voice that he heard in reply. It was the voice of Wilfrid Halterton.

  “I’m sorry to trouble you, J. …”

  “What d’ye mean? They told me ‘twas my secretary.”

  “The servant must have made a mistake—it’s me.”

  “Yes, I can hear that. What about it? What do ye want?”

  “You got my letter?”

  “Yes, I got your letter. But I didn’t understand it. I think ye’d better explain when I see ye.”

  “How do you mean, you didn’t understand it? I told you I’d lost the letter you gave me last night, and asked you whether you could send me another.”

  There was a pause, and Wilfrid Halterton at the other end of the wire wondered why there should be a pause. He was not left long in doubt. There came at the end of that pause, in strong virile accents, Scots in timbre, the following words:

  “I can’t understand what ye mean! I never gave ye a letter. You gave me a letter. I’m sorry. I can’t wait now. I’ve had to come away from the dinner table. I must get me back. Try and see ye to-morrow.”

  And the wire went dead.

  Chapter III

  There is a row of semi-detached villas in the suburb of Streatham known (I know not why) as Eliza Grove. Of these semi-detached villas, one (known officially and to the gods as Number 5, but to mortals and on the front gate in white letters on a green ground, as Myrtle View) is the dear home of a small building contractor, by name Nicholas Clarke. As he has nothing whatever to do with this story and, for all his efforts, will not be allowed to appear upon these pages again, we may leave it at that. But the other villa of this Siamese twin, tied on to it, rib to rib, Number 7, also with a green door, has no particular name; for its owner has discovered in his social advance that the giving of names to small suburban houses is not done. It is plain Number 7, to gods and men alike.

  Here resides that strong, humorous, kindly, thoroughly efficient, healthy man, just on sixty years of age, known to the world as Jack Williams, for the moment Home Secretary—but there, he might be anything he pleased. The ball is at his feet. He had been offered the Presidency of the Council and had refused it; partly because the opportunities were insufficient —no contracts—partly because it was not a leg up. As like as not he would have the Dominions before the end of the year, for the present Secretary of State for the Dominions, like others before him, found his job a very thankless one.

  Anyhow, Jack Williams is for the moment Home Secretary, pleased with his work, as he has been pleased with everything he ever had to do, and doing it well, as he has done well everything he ever had to do.

  You would notice him anywhere, for though he was but a rather short man, with heavy, undistinguished features, and those rendered common by an undignified small moustache, his carriage and still more his expression would have struck you. His twinkling steel grey eyes, intermittently narrowed as he gazed sharply at you in conversation, had a sort of fire in them: they saw everything that was going on about him. His big shoulders had strength and endurance, his deep chest vitality, and his step was solid. Also there was this about him, that when he spoke he spoke with zest, entertainingly, full of life, and yet said nothing which could betray what was in his mind. The very man for politics!

  He was an early riser, and this Thursday, March 5th, at 8 o’clock, he was sitting at his breakfast table, with his admirable wife opposite him, in the little front room of Number 7.

  It was the morning after that strange, abrupt conversation which had passed on the telephone during the dinner between James Haggismuir McAuley and the distracted Halterton. Jack Williams was reading his newspaper, propped up against the coffee pot, and anyone who had seen him would have said: “Here is a man who has risen from very small beginnings to a modest, but, for his station, prosperous middle age. This little semi-detached villa with its spare bedroom, its parlour and its dining-room, and its one neat servant—this humble suburban home—is for him comfort and even luxury. He contrasts it in his own mind with his origins in that miserable muddy slum up North where he passed his starved childhood under a mother broken with child-bearing and a father alternately drunk and sober, and bringing in, as luck served him, about a pound a week, in the old old days before the Great War when the poor were really poor.”

  Anyone who had passed such a judgement would have been right. Jack Williams did feel exactly like that. He had risen, he had prospered. Indeed, he had prospered more than the observer would have imagined. He was worth about a quarter of a million pounds.

  He had risen simply and naturally, as such men do, something of a hero among his fellow boys in his teens in the mill, finding he had facility with his tongue, joining in debates, as a young man, when he was shop steward: then advancing in his Union, then secretary to it: then elected to Parliament, when he was thirty years of age, not long after the Great War. All the regular routine, the cursus honorum which is happily still the public life of England in 1960, and which blends so well with the remains of our old aristocratic policy.

  He had been cordially received as he rose. He had made his mark in the House of Commons. He had first had office of a minor sort before he was fifty. He had entered the Ministry in Mrs. Boulger’s first administration. He had used his opportunities well, investing shrewdly, getting to know all he could about men, and using all that he knew, to their praise or shame, making the right friendships with rich men—real friendships upon all sides. It was a point with the young bloods to boast that they knew him. There was competition among the great hostesses to get him into their houses—and he went.

  Among his many talents were two which just fitted such a position: he played billiards admirably—he had discovered his ability therein before he was twenty years of age in the dingy billiard-room of the “Percy Arms,” whilst he was yet a lad in the mills, but already earning good money. And he had a quick, racy sort of repartee. He never tried to lose the accent of his native town and province. If anything he exaggerated it, though whether consciously or not I cannot say.

  There he sat, reading his newspaper. But he was not one of those men who read their newspapers to the discomfort of their wives. If she had helped to make him, as she had, it was not only because she was a woman of such capacity (he had married her when he was still a very young man—they both worked in the same mill and earned between them less than four pounds a week), but because he had always respected her, always cherished her, and always depended upon her judgement in a way which she could feel and be proud of. She was a woman much after his own mould in features as in bearing, equally resolute though more demure: not provided of course with the small moustache: and I am afraid, not humorous about the eyes, but steady in her gaze. Upon business affairs she had never advised him. She never interfered with any decision of his to do this or that, as he went up in his career, save now and then quietly and at critical moments, but she gave judgements usually negative, against what might have been a false move. He was careful of her, and he was right. Their one child had died while they were still poor in the North, in the old days. That grave had strengthened the bond between them, and no man and woman in England were to-day less lonely.

  So he was reading his paper this morning, not selfishly to himself, but with a running commentary to her as he read, telling her the news.

  “Sammy’s been at it again. He talks too much.
… Hullo! Jack’s got a letter. … All about the currency, and saying nothing.”

  “That Lord John never does say anything worth hearing,” commented Mrs. Williams.

  “Oh, but he thinks a lot,” answered her husband; and he added, “That’s how he’s got where he is.”

  “And where is he?” said Mrs. Williams superciliously. “In the soup!”

  “He may be now,” answered the master of the house, nodding sagaciously, “but he’s one as crawls out of the tureen. Don’t you forget that, Martha. Now, you be kind to him!”

  “Oh, I’ll be kind to him, Mr. Williams; I’ll be kind to him,” said Martha, a little ruffled.

  “Yes, my dear, you always were. You always know what to do.”

  There was a pause. And during that pause the husband turned over the paper and looked towards the back pages. His wife knew what that meant. He was glancing at certain high matters in stocks and shares, with which she was far too wise to interfere.

  He had done admirably at that game, and she knew her limitations. Always in her heart when she heard (for he sometimes blundered) of such and such a big thing brought off, or when he told her in a general way (for he did that also) how they stood before the world, how he would cut up, she remembered that there might have been a son to which all this should have gone. But she never spoke of that. She knew well enough what would happen if she survived him. It would all be at her disposal. And if he survived her, why, she knew well enough that what time might be left to him would not then matter to him much. She had a vague feeling, which people often have when they have had so close a companionship for so many years, that somehow neither would survive the other. It does not exactly happen like that; but it often happens nearly like that. …

  And even as Honest Jack Williams (Secretary of State for Home Affairs) looked at those stocks and shares, and even as the eyes which she could just see above the propped-up paper got a look of concentration in them, while he fastened on the figures he was following, she admired him more for his excellent judgement of the market, which she well knew to be the chief glory of a public man.