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William Makepeace Thackeray - "Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo"

the end of the year but we - "The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett"

Henry James - "A Little Tour In France"

Elizabeth - "Elizabeth and her German Garden*"

The Kingdom of the Blind

E >> E. Phillips Oppenheim >> The Kingdom of the Blind




Thomson heard the crack of a rifle and saw one of them leap into the
air and collapse. The other one staggered and fell on his knees. A
dozen of them were there together with their hands stretched to the
skies. Then Thomson was conscious that one of the oil-clad figures
was coming in his direction, making for the steps, running with
swift, stealthy gait. A flash of light gleamed upon the fugitive for
a moment. He wore a hat like a helmet; only his face, blackened with
grease, and his staring eyes, were visible. He came straight for
Thomson, breathing heavily.

"Hands up!" Thomson cried.

The man aimed a furious blow at him. Thomson, who quite
unconsciously had drawn a revolver from his pocket, shot him through
the heart, watched him jump up and fall, a senseless, shapeless heap
upon the bottom of the steps, and, with a queer instinct of
bloodthirstiness, ran down the line of the wrecked Zeppelin, seeking
for more victims. The soldiers were coming up in force now, however,
and detachments of them were marching away their prisoners. Another
company was stationed all around the huge craft, keeping guard.
Thomson walked back once more towards the Admiralty. The sky was
still lurid with the reflection of many fires but the roar of the
guns had diminished, and for several minutes no bomb had been thrown.
With the revolver in his hand still smoking, he ran into a man whom
he knew slightly at the Admiralty.

"Thomson, by God!" the man exclaimed. "What are you doing with that
revolver?"

"I don't know," he answered. "I've just shot one of those fellows
from the Zeppelin. How are things going?"

"There are six Zeppelins down in different parts, and a couple of
dozen aeroplanes," the other replied. "Woolwich is safe, and the
Houses of Parliament and Whitehall. Heaps of reports to come in but I
don't believe they've done much damage."

Thomson passed on. It was lighter now and the streets were thronged
with people. He turned once more towards the Strand and stood for a
moment in Trafalgar Square. One wing of the National Gallery was
gone, and the Golden Cross Hotel was in flames. Leaning against the
Union Club was another fallen aeroplane. Men and women were rushing
everywhere in wild excitement. He made his way down to the War
Office. It seemed queer to find men at work still in their rooms. He
sent Ambrose for an orderly and received a message from headquarters.

"Damage to public buildings and property not yet estimated. All
dockyards and arsenals safe, principal public buildings untouched.
Only seventeen dead and forty injured reported up to five minutes
ago. Great damage done to enemy fleet; remainder in full retreat,
many badly damaged. Zeppelin just down in Essex, four aeroplanes
between here and Romford."

Thomson threw down his revolver.

"Well," he muttered to himself, "perhaps London will believe now
that we are at war!"



CHAPTER XXXVI

"London, too, has its scars, and London is proud of them," a great
morning paper declared the next morning. "The last and gigantic
effort of German 'frightfulness' has come and passed. London was
visited before dawn this morning by a fleet of sixteen Zeppelins and
forty aeroplanes. Seven of these former monsters lie stranded and
wrecked in various parts of the city, two are known to have collapsed
in Essex, and another is reported to have come to grief in Norfolk.
Of the aeroplanes, nineteen were shot down, and of the rest so far no
news has been heard. The damage to life and property, great though it
may seem, is much less than was expected. Such losses as we have
sustained we shall bear with pride and fortitude. We stand now more
closely than ever in touch with our gallant allies. We, too, bear the
marks of battle in the heart of our country."

Thomson paused to finish his breakfast, and abandoning the leading
article turned to a more particular account.

"The loss of life," the journal went on to say, "although
regrettable, is, so far as accounts have reached us, not large. There
are thirty-one civilians killed, a hundred and two have been admitted
into hospitals, and, curiously enough, only one person bearing arms
has suffered. We regret deeply to announce the death of a very
distinguished young officer, Captain Ronald Granet, a nephew of Sir
Alfred Anselman. A bomb passed through the roof of his house in
Sackville Street, completely shattering the apartment in which he was
sitting. His servant perished with him. The other occupants of the
building were, fortunately for them, away for the night."

The paper slipped from Thomson's fingers. He looked through the
windows of his room, across the Thames. Exactly opposite to him a
fallen chimney and four blackened walls, still smouldering, were
there to remind him of the great tragedy. He looked down at the paper
again. There was no mistake. It was the judgment of a higher Court
than his!

He made his way down to the War Office at a little before ten
o'clock. The streets were crowded with people and there were throngs
surrounding each of the places where bombs had been dropped. Towards
the Pall Mall Arch the people were standing in thousands, trying to
get near the wreck of the huge Zeppelin, which completely blocked all
the traffic through St. James's Park. Thomson paused for a moment at
the top of Trafalgar Square and looked around him. The words of the
newspaper were indeed true. London had her scars, yet there was
nothing in the faces of the people to show fear. If anything, there
was an atmosphere all around of greater vitality, of greater
intensity. The war had come a little nearer at last than the columns
of the daily Press. It was the real thing with which even the
every-day Londoner had rubbed shoulders. From Cockspur Street to
Nelson's Monument the men were lined up in a long queue, making their
way to the recruiting office.

Admiral Conyers paid his usual morning visit to the Admiralty,
lunched at his club and returned home that evening in a state of
suppressed excitement. He found his wife and Geraldine alone and at
once took up his favourite position on the hearth-rug.

"Amongst the other surprises of the last twenty-four hours," he
announced, "I received one to-day which almost took my breath away.
It had reference to a person whom you both know."

"Not poor Captain Granet?" Lady Conyers asked. "You read about him,
of course?"

"Nothing to do with Granet, poor fellow," the Admiral continued.
"Listen, I was walking, if you please, for a few yards with the man
who is practically responsible to-day for the conduct of the war. At
the corner of Pall Mall we came face to face with Thomson. I nodded
and we were passing on, when to my astonishment my companion stopped
and held out both his hands. 'Thomson, my dear fellow,' he said, 'I
came round to your rooms to-day but you were engaged three or four
deep. Not another word save this--thanks! When we write our history,
the country will know what it owes you. At present, thanks!'"

"Major Thomson?" Lady Conyers gasped.

"Hugh?" Geraldine echoed.

The Admiral smiled.

"We passed on," he continued, "and I said to his lordship--'Wasn't
that Thomson, the Inspector of Field Hospitals?' He simply laughed at
me. 'My dear Conyers,' he said, 'surely you knew that was only a
blind? Thomson is head of the entire Military Intelligence
Department. He has the rank of a Brigadier-General waiting for him
when he likes to take it. He prefers to remain as far as possible
unknown and unrecognised, because it helps him with his work.' Now
listen! You've read in all the papers of course, that we had warning
of what was coming last night, that the reason we were so successful
was because every light in London had been extinguished and every
gun-station was doubly manned? Well, the warning we received was due
to Thomson and no one else!"

"And to think," Lady Conyers exclaimed "that we were half afraid to
tell your father that Hugh was coming to dinner!"

Geraldine had slipped from the room. The Admiral blew his nose.

"I hope Geraldine's going to be sensible," he said. "I've always
maintained that Thomson was a fine fellow, only Geraldine seemed
rather carried away by that young Granet. Poor fellow! One can't say
anything about him now, but he was just the ordinary type of showy
young soldier, not fit to hold a candle to a man like Thomson."

Lady Conyers was a little startled.

"You have such sound judgement, Seymour," she murmured.

Thomson was a few minutes late for dinner but even the Admiral
forgave him.

"Just ourselves, Thomson," he said, as they made their way into the
dining-room. "What a shock the Chief gave me to-day! You've kept
things pretty dark. Inspector of Hospitals, indeed!"

Thomson smiled.

"That was my excuse," he explained, "for running backwards and
forwards between France and England at the beginning of the war.
There's no particular secret about my position now. I've had a very
hard fight to keep it, a very hard fight to make it a useful one.
Until last night, at any rate, it hasn't seemed to me that English
people realised that we were at war. Now, I hope at last that we are
going to take the gloves off. Do you know," he went on, a little
later, "that in France they think we're mad. Honestly, in my
position, if I had had the French laws at my back I believe that by
to-day the war would have been over. As it is, when I started even my
post was a farce. We had to knuckle under the whole of the time, to
the civil authorities. They wanted to fine a spy ten shillings or to
bind him over to keep the peace! I've never had to fight for anything
so hard in my life as I've had to fight once or twice for my file of
men at the Tower. At the beginning of the war we'd catch them
absolutely red-handed. All they had to do was to surrender to the
civil authorities, and we had a city magistrate looking up statutes
to see how to deal with them."

"There are a good many things which will make strange reading after
the war is over," the Admiral said grimly. "I fancy that my late
department will provide a few sensations. Still, our very mistakes
are our justification. We were about as ready for war as Lady Conyers
there is to play Rugby football for Oxford."

"It has taken us the best part of a year to realise what war means,"
Thomson assented. "Even now there are people whom one meets every day
who seem to be living in abstractions."

"Last night's raid ought to wake a few of them up," the Admiral
grunted. "I should like to have shown those devils where to have
dropped a few of their little toys. There are one or two men who were
making laws not so long ago, who'd have had a hole in their roofs."

Geraldine laughed softly.

"I really think that dad feels more bloodthirsty when he talks about
some of our politicians than he does about the Germans," she
declared.

"Some of our worst enemies are at home, any way," Sir Seymour
insisted, "and we shall never get on with the war till we've weeded
them out."

"Where did the nearest bomb to you drop?" Thomson inquired.

"The corner of St. James's Street," Sir Seymour replied. "There were
two houses in Berkeley Street alight, and a hole in the roof of a
house in Hay Hill. The bomb there didn't explode, though. Sad thing
about young Granet, wasn't it? He seems to be the only service man
who suffered at all."

Lady Conyers shivered sympathetically.

"It was perfectly ghastly," she murmured.

"A very promising young officer, I should think," the Admiral
continued, "and a very sad death. Brings things home to you when you
remember that it was only yesterday he was here, poor fellow!"

Geraldine and her mother rose from their places, a few minutes later.
The latter looked up at Thomson as he held open the door.

"You won't be long, will you?" she begged.

"You can take him with you, if you like," the Admiral declared, also
rising to his feet. "He doesn't drink port and the cigarettes are in
your room. I have to take the Chair at a recruiting meeting at
Holborn in a quarter of an hour. The car's waiting now. You'll excuse
me, won't you, Thomson?"

"Of course," the latter assented. "I must leave early myself. I
have to go back to the War Office."

Geraldine took his arm and led him into the little morning-room.

"You see, I am carrying you off in the most bare-faced fashion," she
began, motioning him to a seat by her side, "but really you are such
an elusive person, and only this morning, in the midst of that awful
thunder of bombs, when we stood on the roof and looked at London
breaking out into flames, I couldn't help thinking--remembering, I
mean--how short a time it is since you and I were face to face with
the other horror and you saved my life. Do you know, I don't think
that I have ever said 'thank you'--not properly?"

"I think the words may go," he answered, smiling. "It was a horrible
time while it lasted but it was soon over. The worst part of it was
seeing those others, whom we could not help, drifting by."

"I should have been with them but for you," she said quietly. "Don't
think that I don't know it. Don't think that I don't regret
sometimes, Hugh, that I didn't trust you a little more completely.
You are right about so many things. But, Hugh, will you tell me
something?"

"Of course!"

"Why were you so almost obstinately silent when father spoke of poor
Captain Granet's death?"

"Because I couldn't agree with what he said," Thomson replied. "I
think that Granet's death in exactly that fashion was the best thing
that could possibly have happened for him and for all of us."

She shivered as she looked at him.

"Aren't you a little cruel?" she murmured.

"I am not cruel at all," he assured her firmly. "Let me quote the
words of a greater man--'I have no enemies but the enemies of my
country, and for them I have no mercy.'"

"You still believe that Captain Granet--"

"There is no longer any doubt as to his complete guilt. As you know
yourself, the cipher letter warning certain people in London of the
coming raid, passed through his hands. He even came here to warn you.
There were other charges against him which could have been proved up
to the hilt. While we are upon this subject, Geraldine, let me finish
with it absolutely. Only a short time ago I confronted him with his
guilt, I gave him ten days during which it was my hope that he would
embrace the only honourable course left to him. I took a risk leaving
him free, but during the latter part of the time he was watched day
and night. If he had lived until this morning, there isn't any power
on earth could have kept him from the Tower, or any judge, however
merciful, who could have saved him from being shot."

"It is too awful," she faltered, "and yet--it makes me so ashamed,
Hugh, to think that I could not have trusted you more absolutely."

He opened his pocket-book and a little flush of colour came suddenly
into her cheeks. He drew out the ring silently.

"Will you trust yourself now and finally, Geraldine?" he asked.

She held out her finger.

"I shall be so proud and so happy to have it again," she whispered.
"I do really feel as though I had behaved like a foolish child, and I
don't like the feeling at all, because in these days one should be
more than ordinarily serious, shouldn't one? Shall I be able to make
it up to you, Hugh, do you think?"

He stooped to meet her lips.

"There is an atonement you might make, dear," he ventured. "Do you
remember a suggestion of mine at one of those historic luncheons of
Lady Anselman's?"

She laughed into his eyes for a moment and then looked away.

"I was wondering whether you had forgotten that," she confessed.

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