Richard Gordon - A QUESTION OF GUILT

'Do what?' asked Eliot.

'You're being deliberately obtuse,' said Ruston irritably. 'Blow up the Kaiser.'

'You're mad.'

'What do you mean, Eliot?' he demanded angrily. 'Are you with us, or aren't you? You've known perfectly well that's our plan, since January. You chose to live here cheaply and in comfort, and now you're asked to do something in return you're showing up as a coward.'

'I'm not a coward. It's just that I'm not interested in murdering people.'

'Oh, damn you!' Ruston banged the table. 'We're going to change the history of the world. And you're no more serious about it than a cricket match.'

'I don't see why you should pick me to do your dirty work.'

'Let me explain our plan.' Wince seemed unconcerned with the argument. 'We've got a couple of blokes 'oo'll be in the firin'-line. Railwaymen, from the Great Northern.'

'Members for ten years, utterly reliable, both been to Dusseldorf and trained with explosives,' said Ruston warmly.

'There won't be nobody watchin' the line most o' the way. Stands to reason, don't it? They'd need 'arf the army. An' wot's the point? The Kaiser's a popular chap, the King's cousin. They'll send a tank engine ahead of the royal special, so if anyone's provided a rather generous detonator, or removed a rail or two on the sly, the driver and fireman'll get it in the eye, not 'is Imperial Majesty. Our men will set orf the charge as the train goes across, then run for it.'

'They won't run far,' Eliot said.

Wince continued calmly, 'There'll be a carriage an' pair with another of our blokes, getting them to Chatham along the main road in less than an hour. In Chatham, we've an 'ahse they can lie low in, as long as they like.'

'Where'll you get the dynamite from?' Eliot asked. 'You can't buy it at the Army and Navy Stores.'

Ruston smiled smugly. 'It's under your feet.'

'So far, there seems nothing for me to do, anyway,' Eliot pointed out. 'I don't care going along just for the excitement.'

'You are the hub of the operation, Eliot. Your orders are to take a room in the _Bull and Mouth_ inn at Sittingbourne for the week of the funeral. Sittingbourne is exactly where the two railway lines join. Our two railwaymen are heroes of the people, but they are unschooled. They can barely read and write. We need an intelligent man to pass messages, to free the snags, to extemporize should anything go wrong. A well-spoken fellow like you will create not a breath of suspicion. You won't use your own name, of course. Choose any you like,' Ruston ended generously.

'Lenin?' suggested Eliot.

'You must take this seriously,' Ruston repeated angrily.

'I take extremely seriously the certainty that I shall be arrested and hanged, as colonel of a regiment of two illiterates.'

'Then you will be a martyr,' Ruston assured him solemnly.

'Why not go instead? Wouldn't you like to be a martyr, too?'

'To be frank, I am too important to risk.'

'I've thought of another objection.'

'What's that?'

'My father will undoubtedly be sacked by the Duke.'

Ruston glared. He checked what he was about to say. 'I interpret this foolish attitude as embarrassment at having to perform your duty, when you had every intention of avoiding it. We shall be back tomorrow.' Wince began folding his map. 'I have important things to accomplish tonight.'

'And I am becoming late for my dinner.'

Eliot was evasive about the visit until sitting in the corner of a narrow French restaurant in Soho. It was one of the few open, the evening after the King's death. The tables were crude, the floor sawdusted, the walls lined with scrolled mirrors, the ceiling over the gas-globes thick with dead flies. Eliot said it served the best veal in London.

'They wish to change my duties from pushing political tracts through clergymen's letter boxes to blowing up the German Emperor,' he announced.

Nancy stared, mouth agape. 'Oh, God save us,' she muttered. 'But it's crazy.'

'I know. The only effect of the plan will be the locking up of its perpetrators.'

'There's a lot about this movement you've never told me of, isn't there?' She was more frightened than reproachful.

'There's a lot I don't know myself. You must have guessed the house is a staging-post for comrades from the Continent? Scotland Yard certainly has our address, but as we're doing nothing illegal I don't give a tinker's cuss. There's German money behind it, which probably accounts for the Kaiser's privilege as the target. Communism's a German phenomenon. Marx and Engels were Rhinelanders, remember. Over there, it's a voice demanding to govern. Here it's just a voice, to which the British workers are as deaf as to the street-corner evangelists.'

Eliot reached for her hand across the zinc-topped table with paper cloth. 'I can't forgive myself for getting you mixed in this, dearest. I should have told you at the beginning, but of course I was scared you'd just fly off.'

She was concerned only at his being mixed in it. He said ruefully, 'When I joined, I suppose I'd have blown up the Duke and my father with him. Now my ideas upon the British revolution are as gentlemanly as Carlyle's on the French one. I still want a revolution, but only in the abstract.'

The fat proprietor in his tight alpaca coat presented the burgundy. Eliot sniffed, sipped and nodded. 'Ruston's probably as appalled at the scheme as I am, but too frightened to admit it. I've the idea that Wince is the boss, really. Everything is so devious in a revolutionary body, I suspect for the fun of it.'

'We must leave the house at once,' Nancy said firmly.

'You must. You're going home to New York by the next boat.'

'Of course I'm not.'

'Nancy, my darling-love is sweet but life is sweeter.'

She looked scared. 'You mean we're in danger?'

'If they're ruthless enough to kill the Kaiser, they certainly are to kill me.'

The proprietor served their _blanquette de veau a l'ancienne._ 'Ruston tried to scare me about one of our comrades who was found shot,' Eliot resumed. 'Though I doubt for ratting on the movement. He was a young man afflicted with the same malady as Oscar Wilde. He had strange business with important men who would have mourned him by cracking a bottle of champagne.'

'I'll go to New York if you come too. That'll solve everything.'

'I can't leave overnight, like Mrs Crippen. No more than Dr Crippen could. I've patients depending on me.'

'They can go down the road to the Royal Free Hospital. They survived before your surgery was there.'

'They'd think poorly of me. And I don't care to run away. It would blow a hole in my political career.'

'Why not stay in New York? There'd be no trouble, Fixing you a licence to practice.'

He was silent for some time. 'No,' he said.

'Do you suppose the whole plan's a fantastic dream of those two men?' Nancy suggested more cheerfully. 'My father gets threats against his life every month. Nothing happens. He just passes them along to Pinkerton's.'

'I shall emulate Gilbert's admirably sagatious Duke of Plaza-Toro in similar circumstances,' Eliot decided. 'I shall send my resignation in, the first of all his corps, O!'

'Go to the police,' she suggested eagerly. 'You know enough about Ruston and Wince.'

'Enough to get them both hanged on the same morning. But I can hardly denounce them without incriminating myself.'

They decided the safest plan was an anonymous letter to Scotland Yard, warning of an attempt upon the Kaiser during his train journey to London. Eliot calculated it would line the railway with policemen, to scare away the two unlettered assassins. They must move house instantly, Nancy insisted. Eliot recalled Crippen's remark about leaving Hilldrop Crescent. He suggested they bought the fag-end of the lease. Nancy agreed. Scrubbed and stripped of its pink hangings, the house was tolerable. 'At least, there's no dynamite in the cellar,' Eliot told her.