Walk with Care (2 page)

Garrett made a schoolboy grimace and turned his shoulder.

“Damn creepy devil,” he said, and jabbed at the last name on the list.

“Masterson.”

Mr Smith started very slightly. The Masterson scandal was only a few months old. Beginning with a whisper, it had suddenly assumed a force which had sent Masterson crashing into disgrace.

Garrett tore his list across, flung it on the fire, and stamped it down.

“Mannister says there's a plot to drive him out of public life,” he said.

There was a pause, a silence. The paper with the five scrawled names flared in thin yellow flame an fell away to a quivering grey ash.

^*
See
Danger Calling
.

CHAPTER III

A BELL RANG IN
house, a long faint peal just heard in the book-lined room. Ananias stopped muttering and clapped his wings.

“Oh Lord!” said Garrett—“that's him!” He flung round a wrist and looked at his watch. “Quarter of an hour before his time. What did I tell you? Man's in a blue funk. His usual form is ten minutes late and think yourself damn lucky it's not twenty.”

The door was opening as he spoke, but it was not in Garrett to drop his voice. Miller announced, “Mr Mannister,” and Bernard Mannister advanced a few steps and then paused.

Anyone who had ever heard him speak in public would have found the gesture a familiar one. Just so did he come upon a platform, his tall figure finely held, his leonine head thrown back, his deep-set eyes scanning the audience, one hand thrust in a pocket, the other a little advanced as if in welcome. But whereas upon the platform his well formed features bore a look of smiling complacency, they now expressed something that approached uneasiness. Had it not been Mannister, one would have said that he was nervous.

Garrett's jerky introduction was like a stone pitched into water; it set up ripples in the quiet room. As Mr Smith, vaguely courteous, shook hands and indicated a chair, the ripples spread. One of them must have reached Ananias, for his contented murmur changed to an angry sibilant whisper. It crossed Mr Smith's mind to hope that Mannister had no Spanish. In a far away past Ananias had been the property of a Spanish sailor. The vocabulary lingered.

Mannister took the chair on the left of the fire. Mr Smith let himself down into one on the opposite side. Garrett remained standing, his back to the fire, his strong square hands plunged deep amongst the odds and ends in his shapeless pockets.

Mannister, now completely the guest, leaned a little forward and addressed his host with as much ease as if he had been a public meeting.

“In one sense, Colonel Garrett has introduced me, but in another and a wider sense—” He made a rhetorical pause, and upon the pause there fell the shadow of a question.

Mr Smith was silent, courteously and attentively silent. Colonel Garrett jingled whatever there was to jingle in those crowded pockets of his. Ananias offered an observation, still in Spanish, which was doubtless as untrue as it was impolite.

Bernard Mannister did not allow the pause to become oppressive.

“I feel,” he said, “that unless Colonel Garrett has given you an explanation of my visit—” And there he paused again.

Garrett stopped jingling. He said briskly,

“I have told Mr Smith that you came to us, and that I suggested your meeting me here. On what you have told us so far, there's nothing which we can take any official notice of. There are some odd points of course, and, as I told you, it struck me that you might care to have an outside opinion. Departments get into grooves—think in them, move in them, work in them. Mr Smith's outside all that. If you care to put your case to him, you'll get away from the official mind.”

This was another and a more civilized Garrett. Mr Smith wondered whether he had learnt the speech by heart; he thought it possible. He gazed at Mannister very much as he would have gazed at a mountain or any other fine natural object. He saw a change of expression. Doubt? Embarrassment? One could not associate embarrassment with Bernard Mannister. Whatever it was, it passed in a flash and he was

“My case? I hardly have a case. I have certainly been troubled, but I do not quite know why I should trouble Mr Smith. You must pardon me, but I do not perfectly apprehend the position—”

“No?” said Mr Smith. He was leaning back, his fine head relieved against the rough brown leather of the chair. His hands lay upon the arms—long, delicate-fingered hands. His gaze went mournfully past Bernard Mannister.

Garrett's stubby eyebrows twitched. He thrust directly into these generalities.

“Position? Whose? Mine? Yours? Mr Smith's? Your secretaries'? We've all got positions. We'd better come down to brass tacks.”

Mannister had kept his upright pose. He might have been awaiting the half turn and courteous formula with which a chairman introduces a distinguished speaker. It was not an attitude which really suited the comfortable, sprawling chair. He said in a dignified voice,

“By all means, Colonel Garrett. My position is very easily defined. I suspect that my correspondence is being tampered with. You, I believe, take the view that there is not sufficient evidence to induce your department to give the matter their attention. There remains Mr Smith's position.” He made a slight inclination of the head and proceeded. “Am I to understand that Mr Smith has an official status?”

One of Mr Smith's hands lifted and fell again.

“No—no—oh no.”

“Certainly not,” said Garrett. He drove a heel back against the log and sent the sparks flying.

Mannister's voice became a trifle louder.

“What then?” he inquired.

Ananias said “Awk!” very suddenly and loudly. Mr Smith rebuked him in a perfunctory manner, then observed,

“It appears, Mr Mannister, that you have been brought here on false pretences. I am merely the—er—man in the street. Colonel Garrett's idea seems to have been that the—er—man in the street can sometimes apprehend a point which eludes the departmental mind. You are naturally under no sort of constraint in what may be a personal and confidential matter.”

Mannister leaned forward.

“It was as a matter of public policy and public duty that I approached the Foreign Office. I must confess to having been disquieted. I number amongst my correspondents prominent public men in every country. They write to me in the way of friendship. They permit themselves the freedom which friends accord to one another. They treat informally of subjects which in public require, and of necessity receive, the most careful handling. It does not, I think, need a great deal of perspicacity to appreciate the harm which might be done if some of these confidential discussions were to be made public.”

“No,” said Mr Smith—“no.”

“The world,” pursued Mr Mannister on a rising note—“the world—world consciousness, world politics, world aspirations—is in a condition so delicate, so highly sensitized, that it is impossible to predicate the effect of a single jarring touch. I submit that at this moment the publication of such a correspondence might deal a disastrous blow at the very foundations of our civilization. It is, to my mind, a question of ‘Shall Chaos come again?'”

He certainly had a very fine voice, and at least one appreciative auditor. Ananias drank in the rich rolling sounds, head cocked and one foot slightly raised,

Garrett came into the pause with an abrupt,

“Well, there you are! You say someone's been tampering with your correspondence—and we say, ‘What makes you think so?'”

Mannister frowned upon him. He had “an eye like Jove, to threaten and command,” and a brow with magnificent accommodation for a frown.

“There have been leakages,” he said with an air of majestic reserve.

Garrett looked as if he would have liked to have replied, “Sez you.” Instead, he grunted.

“Not definite enough.”

“It has been going on for some time,” said Bernard Mannister, “but, as you observe, there is nothing definite upon which action could have been taken. The leakages might have been attributable to some other source—my correspondents might themselves have been indiscreet. But in the last few days I have become convinced that not only is the public safety menaced, but that my own reputation is in danger—that there is, in fact, a conspiracy which aims at discrediting me and driving me from public life.” He paused.

In a hushed and reverent manner Ananias began to murmur:

“Walk with care, walk with care. Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom, Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom. Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom. Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM!”

As he approached the last line, his voice swelled in that imitation which is the sincerest form of flattery. It is doubtful if Mr Mannister was flattered. His frown became more Olympian. For the first time, he leaned back as one who has reached a period.

Mr Smith gazed blandly at a handsomely bound edition of Gibbon's
Decline and Fall
which occupied the uppermost shelf on the farther wall.

“Why?” said Garrett abruptly.

“I really beg your pardon?”

“You say there's a plot. Why should there be a plot? You say to drive you out of public life. Well, why should anyone want to drive you out of public life? Whose corns are you treading on?”

Mannister made an oratorical gesture.

“I have laboured for the cause of peace.”

Garrett kicked the log again.

“Let's stick to the point! When you came to see me, you said you'd missed a document. Are you suggesting that it was lost in transit?”

“No—no—no—I received it.”

“What was it—a letter?”

“A highly confidential letter enclosing certain memoranda.”

“From?”

“I would prefer not to say.”

“Very well—let's get on with this. Where do you keep your correspondence? Who has access to it?”

“My secretaries have access—naturally. But I keep important papers in a safe.”

“Was this letter in your safe?”

Mannister made another gesture.

“I can't say. It should have been.”

“How
should
have been?”

Mannister appeared to hesitate.

“One of my secretaries was bringing me papers and putting them away again.”

“In the safe?”

“In the safe.”

Garrett's hands went into his pockets. He jingled coins and knives and pencils.

“You have two secretaries?”

“Yes.”

“Who are they?”

“Ware, and Deane.”

Garrett produced crumpled paper and a scrubby pencil end.

“One at a time please, and a little more about 'em.”

Mannister sat up again.

“Geoffrey Deane. He has been with me for six years. I have every confidence in him.”

“School? College?” He noted down the answers…. “Age?”

“About thirty.”

“And you've perfect confidence in him. Well, that's Deane. What about Ware?”

“Jeremy Ware. I engaged him about two months ago. He had been with poor Denny. Mrs Denny gave him a very good reference. I have no reason to suppose—”

“But you've perfect confidence in Deane?”

“Certainly,” said Bernard Mannister. “I believe I said so.”

“Denny?” said Mr Smith in an abstracted voice. His tone conveyed some sort of indefinite question, addressed not so much to Mannister as to himself.

It was Mannister who answered.

“Gilbert Denny, who was drowned eighteen months ago. A most sad close to a very promising career. We had been speaking on the same platform not a month before it happened. It came as a very great shock.”

“Yes,” said Mr Smith—“yes.”

Garrett jerked impatiently.

“You knew Denny. Did you know Ware when he was Denny's secretary?”

“I may have seen him—it is possible.”

Garrett gathered from his tone that other people's secretaries scarcely came into Mr Mannister's line of vision.

“No personal acquaintance?”

“Oh no.”

Garrett jingled.

“Denny was drowned eighteen months ago. Ware's been with you two months. Two from eighteen leaves sixteen. What was he doing in the interval?”

“It is a little more than sixteen really,” said Mannister. “He was not actually in Denny's employment at the time of his death.”

“Why?”

“I believe Denny meant to travel for some time. He was, I understand, about to go round the world. He had told Ware that he would not require his services. He gave him a month's salary and let him go.”

“Well, that's the point—where did he go?”

“I understand that he had some difficulty in obtaining employment. Mrs Denny's recommendation did not carry the same weight that Denny's would have done. He had a couple of terms' work in a preparatory school—one of the junior masters was away ill—and after that he was unable to get regular employment.”

“And you heard of him?” Garrett's voice was sharp.

“Through an agent. The fact that he had been with poor Denny encouraged me in the belief that I might find in him something more than the mere routine service which is so common nowadays. The objects to which I have devoted my life require something more than this. They demand a zeal, a devotion—” Mr Mannister's voice had begun to roll again. Although handicapped by his position, he contrived a gesture indicative of noble zeal.

Ananias, tensely watchful, supplied a kind of ground bass to the peroration. Mr Smith's abstraction approached the border line of trance. Garrett fidgeted with growing impatience, and finally interrupted.

“Yes, yes, but we haven't got time for all that! How did Ware pan out? Enthusiasm, zeal and all the rest of it?”

Mannister leaned back with an air of dignified offence.

“I fear not.” He raised a monitory hand. “Pray do not misunderstand me—I have no complaint to make of Mr Ware. He has done his work quite competently. He has fulfilled the letter of our contract. One cannot buy enthusiasm in the market-place.” His voice fell, as if from weariness.

“Boom—boom—boom!”
said Ananias.

Garrett's eyebrows twitched.

“Well, that's that—competent but not enthusiastic. And the missing letter was in the safe, and Ware had access to it? Do you let new secretaries loose amongst these world-shaking documents of yours?”

The angry colour ran up into Mr Mannister's face. There was quite a lightning flash from his fine eyes. His voice held thunderous vibrations.

“I am not in the habit of letting anyone loose amongst my private papers. If my correspondents were less well aware of my absolute discretion, the present situation would not have arisen, or would at any rate be far less painful in its character.”