MYSTERY AT GENEVA





MYSTERY
AT GENEVA
AN IMPROBABLE TALE OF SINGULAR HAPPENINGS
BY
ROSE MACAULAY
AUTHOR OF "DANGEROUS AGES," "POTTERISM," ETC.
OOTIC TOMt £X£l £v fi&OViJ £X^1 ^v ^SovP) TOtGt

BONI and LIVERIGHT
Publishers New York


Copyright, 1923, by
BONI AND LlVERIGHT, INC.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA


NOTE
As I have observed among readers and critics
a tendency to' discern satire where none is in-
tended, I should like to say that this book is
simply a straightforward mystery story, devoid
of irony, moral or meaning. It has for its
setting an imaginary session of the League of
Nations Assembly, but it is in no sense a
study of, still less a skit on, actual conditions
at Geneva, of which indeed I know little, the
only connection I have ever had with the
League being membership of its Union.





MYSTERY AT GENEVA





MYSTERY AT GENEVA
i
HENRY, looking disgusted, as well he might,
picked his way down the dark and dirty cork-
screw stairway of the dilapidated fifteenth
century house where he had rooms during
the fourth (or possibly it was the fifth) As-
sembly of the League of Nations. The stair-
way, smelling of fish and worse, opened out
on to a narrow cobbled alley that ran between
lofty mediaeval houses down from the Rue du
Temple to the Quai du Seujet, in the ancient
wharfside quarter of Saint Gervais.
Henry, pale and melancholy, his soft hat
slouched over his face, looked what he was, a
badly paid newspaper correspondent lodging
in unclean rooms. He looked hungry; he
looked embittered; he looked like one of the
under dogs, whose time had not come yet,
would, indeed, never come. He looked, how-
ever, a gentleman, which, in the usual sense


MYSTERY AT GENEVA
6i the word, he was not. He was of middle
height, slim and not inelegant of build; his
trousers, though shiny, were creased in the
right place; his coat fitted him though it
lacked two buttons, and he dangled a mon-
ocle, which he screwed impartially now into
one brown eye, now into the other. If any
one would know, as he very properly might,
whether Henry was a bad man or a good, I
can only reply that we are all of us mixed,
and most of us not very well mixed.
Henry was, in fact, at the moment a jour-
nalist, and wrote for the British Bolshevist,
a revolutionary paper with a startlingly small
circulation; and now the reader knows the
very worst of Henry, which is to say a great
deal, but must, all the same, be said.
Such as he was, Henry, on this fine Sunday
morning in September, strolled down the
Allee Petit Chat, which did not seem to him,
as it seems to most English visitors, in the least
picturesque, for Henry was a quarter Italian,
and preferred new streets and buildings to
old. Having arrived at the Quai du Mont
Blanc, he walked along it, brooding on this
and that, gazing with a bitter kind of envy at


MYSTERY AT GENEVA
the hotels which were even now opening their
portals to those more fortunate than he—the
Bergues, the Paix, the Beau Rivage, the
Angleterre, the Russie, the Richemond. All
these hostels were, on this Sunday morning
before the opening of the Assembly, receiving
the delegates of the nations, their staffs and
secretaries, and even journalists. Crowds of
little grave-faced Japs proceeded into the Ho-
tel de la Paix; the entrance hall of Les
Bergues was alive with the splendid, full-
throated converse of Latin Americans ("Ah,
they live, those Spaniards!" Henry sighed);
while at the Beau Rivage the British Empire
and the Dominions hastened, with the morbid
ardour of their race, to plunge into baths af-
ter their night journey.
Baths, thought Henry bitterly. There were
no baths in the Allee Petit Chat. All his
bathing must be done in the lake—and cold
comfort that was. Henry was no lover of
cold water: he preferred it warm.
These full-fed, well-housed, nobly cleaned
delegates. . . . Henry quite untruly re-
ported to his newspaper, which resented the
high living of others, that some of them occu-


MYSTERY AT GENEVA
pied as many as half a dozen rooms apiece
in the hotels, with their typists, their secre-
taries, and their sycophantic suites.
Even the journalists, lodging less proudly
in smaller hotels, or in apartments, all lodged
cleanly, all decently, excepting only Henry,
the accredited representative of the British
Bolshevist.
Bitterly and proudly, with a faint sneer
twisting his lips, Henry, leaning against the
lakeside parapet, watched the tumultuous ar-
rival of the organisers of peace on earth. The
makers of the new world. What new world?
Where tarried it? How slow were its makers
at their creative task! Slow and unsure,
thought Henry, whose newspaper was not of
those who approved the League.
With a sardonic smile Henry turned on his
heel and pursued his way along the Quai to-
wards that immense hotel where the League
Secretariat lived and moved and had its being.
He would interview some one there and try to
secure a good place in the press gallery. The
Secretariat officials were kind to journalists,
even to journalists on the British Bolshevist,
a newspaper which was of no use to the


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 5
League, and which the Secretariat despised,
as they might despise the yapping of a tire-
i some and insignificant small dog.
'2
The Secretariat were in a state Of disturb-
ance and expectation. The annual break in
their toilsome and rather tedious year was
upon them. For a month their labours would
be, indeed, increased, but life would also
move. One wearied of Geneva, its small and
segregated society, its official gossip, the Cal-
vinistic atmosphere of the natives, its dreary
winter, its oppressive summer, its eternal lake
and distant mountains, its horrid little steam-
boats rushing perpetually across and across
from one side of the water to the other—one
wearied of Geneva as a place of residence.
What was it (though it had its own charm)
as a dwelling-place for those of civilised and
cosmopolitan minds? Vienna, now, would
be better; or Brussels: even the poor old
Hague, with its ill-fated traditions. Or, said


6 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
the French members of the staff, Paris. For
the French nation and government were in-
creasingly attached to the League, and had
long thought that Paris was its fitting home.
It would be safer there.
However, it was at Geneva, and it was very
dull except at Assembly time, or when the
Council were in session. Assembly time was
stimulating and entertaining. One saw then
people from the outside world; things
hummed. Old friends gathered together, new
friends were made. The nations met, the As-
sembly assembled, committees committeed,
the Council councilled, grievances were aired
and either remedied or not; questions were
raised and sometimes solved; governments
were petitioned, commissions were sent to in-
vestigate, quarrels were pursued, judgments
pronounced, current wars deplored, the year's
work reviewed. Eloquence rang from that
world-platform, to be heard at large, through
the vastly various voices of a thousand news-
papers, in a hundred rather apathetic coun-
tries.
In spite of the great eloquence, industry, in-
telligence, and many activities of the delegates


8 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
considerable powers. The committee meet-
ings were, in fact, not only more effective
than the Assembly meetings, but more stim-
ulating, more amusing.
Henry, entering the Palais des Nations,
found it in a state of brilliant bustle. The big
hall hummed with animated talk and cheer-
ful greetings in many tongues, and members
of the continental races shook one another ar-
dently and frequently by the hand. How dull
it would be, thought Henry, if ever the Es-
peranto people got their way, and the flavour
of the richly various speech of the nations was
lost in one colourless, absurd and inorganic
language, stumblingly spoken and ill under-
stood.
Henry entered a lift, was enclosed with a
cynical American, a brilliant-looking Span-
iard, a tall and elegant woman of assurance
and beauty, and an intelligent-faced cosmo-
politan who looked like a British-Italian-
Latin-American-Finn, which, in point of fact,
he was. Alighting at the third floor, Henry
found his way to the department he required
and introduced himself to one of its officials,
who gave him a pink card assigning him to a


MYSTERY AT GENEVA
seat in the press gallery, which he felt would
not be one he would really like.
"You've not been out here before, have
you?" said the official, and Henry agreed
that this was so.
"Well, of course, we don't expect much of
a show from your fanatical paper. . . ." The
official was good-humoured, friendly, and tol-
erant. The Secretariat were, indeed, sincerely
indifferent to the commentary on their pro-
ceedings both of the Morning Post and the
British Bolshevist, for both could be taken
for granted. One of these journals feared that
the League sought disarmament, the other
that it did not; to one it was a league of
cranks, conscientious objectors, and (fearful
and sinister word) internationals, come not to
destroy but to fulfil the Covenant, bent on car-
rying out Article 8, substituting judiciary ar-
bitration for force, and treating Germany as
a brother; to the other it was a league of mili-
tarist and capitalist states, an extension of the
Supreme Allied Council, bent on destroying
Article 18 and other inconvenient articles of
the Covenant, and treating Germany as a dog.
To both it was, in one word, Poppycock. Sin-


io MYSTERY AT GENEVA
cerely, honestly, and ardently, both these jour-
nals thought like that. They could not help
it; it was temperamental, and the way they
saw things,
3
Henry descended the broad and shallow
double stairway of the Palais des Nations, up
and down which tripped the gay crowds who
knew one another but knew not him, and so
out to lunch, which he had poorly, inex-
pensively, obscurely and alone, at a low eat-
ing-house near the Secretariat. After lunch
he had coffee at a higher eating-house, on the
Quai, and sat under the pavement awning
reading the papers, listening to the band,
looking at the mountain view across the lake,
and waiting until the other visitors to Geneva,
having finished their more considerable lunch-
eons, should emerge from their hotels and be-
gin to walk or drive along the Quai. Mean-
while he read L'Humeur, which he found on
the table before him. But L'Humeur is not
really very funny. It has only one joke, only


MYSTERY AT GENEVA n
one type of comic picture: a woman incom-
pletely dressed. Was that, Henry speculated,
really funny? It happens, after all, to nearly
all women at least every morning and every
evening. Was it really funny even when to
the lady thus unattired there entered a gentle-
man, either M. l'Amant or M. le Mari?
Was only one thing funny, as some persons
believed? Was it indeed really funny at all?
Henry, who honestly desired to brighten his
life, tried hard to think so, but failed, and
relapsed into gloom. He could not see that it
was funnier that a female should not yet have
completed her toilet than that a male should
not. Neither was funny. Nothing, perhaps,
was funny. The League of Nations was not
funny. Life was not funny, and probably not
death. Even the British Bolshevist, which he
was reduced to reading, wasn't funny, though
it did have on the front page a column headed
"Widow's Leap Saves Cat from Burning
House."
A young man sat down at Henry's little
table and ordered drink; a bright, neat, brisk
young man, with an alert manner. Glancing
at the British Bolshevist, he made a conver-


12 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
sational opening which elicited the fact that
Henry represented this journal at Geneva.
For himself, he was, it transpired, correspond-
ent of the Daily Sale, a paper to which the
British Bolshevist was politically opposed
but temperamentally sympathetic; they had
the same cosy, chatty touch on life.
The two correspondents amused themselves
by watching the delegates and other foreign
arrivals strolling to and fro along the elegant
spaciousness of the Quai, chatting with one
another. They noticed little things to write
to their papers about, such as hats, spats, ways
of carrying umbrellas and sticks, and so forth.
They overheard fragments of conversation in
many tongues. For, clustering round about
the Assembly, were the representatives, offi-
cial and unofficial, of nearly all the world's
nations, so that Henry heard in the space of
ten minutes British, French, Italians, Rus-
sians, Poles, Turks, Americans, Armenians,
Dutch, Irish, Lithuanians, Serb-Croat-Slov-
enes, Czecho-Slovakians, the dwellers in Dal-
matia and Istria, and in the parts of Latin
America about Brazil, Assyrio-Chaldeans,
and newspaper correspondents, all speaking


MYSTERY AT GENEVA
of Unprotected Minorities, irresistibly (or so
they hoped) moving in their appeals.
Many of the representatives of these eager
sections of humanity walked on the Quai du
Mont Blanc on this fine Sunday afternoon and
listened to the band, and buttonholed delegates
and their secretaries, and chatted, and spat.
The Czecho-Slovakians spat hardest, the Cos-
ta-Ricans loudest, the Unprotected Armenians
most frequently, and the Serb-Croat-Slovenes
most accurately, but the Assyrio-Chaldeans
spat farthest. The Zionists did not walk on
the Quai. They were holding meetings to-
gether and drawing up hundreds of petitions,
so that the Assembly might receive at least
one an hour from to-morrow onwards. Zion-
ists do these things thoroughly.
Motor-cars hummed to and fro between the
hotels and the Secretariat, and inside them one
saw delegates. Flags flew and music played,
and the jet d'eau sprang, an immense crystal-
line tree of life, a snowy angel, up from the
azure lake into the azure heavens.
Henry gave a little sigh of pleasure. He
liked the scene.
"Will there be treats?" he asked his com-
panion. "I like treats."


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 15
"Treats? Who for? The delegates get
treats all right, if you mean that."
"For us, I meant."
"Oh, yes, the correspondents get a free trip
or a free feed now and then too. I usually get
out of them myself; official beanos bore me.
The town's very good to us; it wants the sup-
port of the press against rival claimants, such
as Brussels."
"I should enjoy a lake trip very much,"
said Henry, beginning to feel that it was good
to be there.
"Well, don't forget to hand in your address,
then, so that it gets on the list."
Henry was damped. 24 Allee Petit Chat,
Saint Gervais—it sounded rotten, and would
sound worse still to the Genevan syndics, who
knew just where it was and what, and were
even now engaged in plans for pulling down
and rebuilding all the old wharfside quarter.
No; he could not hand in that address. . . .
"I suppose you've got to crab the show,
whatever it does, haven't you?" said the Daily
Sale man presently. "Now I'm out to pat it
on the back—this year. I like that better.


16 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
It's dull being disagreeable all the time; so
obvious, too."
"My paper is obvious," Henry owned
gloomily. "Truth always is. You can't get
round that."
"Oh, well, come," the other journalist
couldn't stand that—"it's a bit thick for one
of your lot to start talking about truth. The
lies you tell daily—they have ours beat to a
frazzle. Why, you couldn't give a straight
account of a bus accident!"
"We could not. That is to say, we would
not," Henry admitted. "But we lie about
points of fact because our principles are true.
They're so true that everything has to be
made to square with them. If you notice,
our principles affect all our facts. Yours
don't, quite all. You'd report the bus acci-
dent from pure love of sensation. We, in re-
porting it, would prove that it happened be-
cause buses aren't nationalised, or because the
driver was underpaid, or the fares too high, or
because coal has gone up more than wages,
or something true of that sort. We waste
nothing; we use all that happens. We're


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 17
propagandists all the time, you're only propa-
gandists part of the time; and commercialists
the rest."
"Oh, certainly no one would accuse you of
being commercialists," agreed the Sale man
kindly. "Hallo, what's up?"
Henry had stiffened suddenly, and sat
straight and rigid, like a dog who dislikes
another dog. His companion followed his
tense gaze, and saw a very neat, agreeable-
looking and gentlemanly fellow, exquisitely
cleaned, shaved, and what novelists call
groomed (one supposes this to be a kind of
rubbing-down process, to make the skin
glossy), with grey spats, amalacca cane, and
a refined grey suit with a faint stripe and
creases like knife-blades. This gentleman
was strolling by in company with the senior
British delegate, who had what foreigners
considered a curious and morbid fad for walk-
ing rather than driving, even for short dis-
tances.
"Which troubles you?" inquired the repre-
sentative of the Daily Sale. "Our only Lord
B., or that Secretariat fellow?"


18 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
"That Secretariat fellow," Henry replied
rather faintly.
The other put on his glasses, the better to
observe the neat, supercilious figure. He
laughed a little.
"Charles Wilbraham. Our Gilbert. The
perfect knut. The type that does us credit
abroad. Makes up for the seedy delegates
and journalists, what? . . . He is said to have
immense and offensive private wealth. In
fact, it is obvious that he could scarcely pre-
sent that unobtrusively opulent appearance
on his official salary. They don't really get
much, you know, poor fellows; not for an
expensive place like this. .. . The queer thing
is that no one seems to know where Wil-
braham gets his money from; he never says.
A very close, discreet chap; a regular civil
servant. Do you know him, then?"
Henry hesitated for a moment, appearing
to think. He then replied, in the pained and
reserved tone in which Mr. Wickham might
have commented upon Mr. Darcy: "Slightly.
Very slightly. As well as I wish. In fact,
rather better. He wouldn't remember me.
But I'll tell you one thing. But for a series


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 19
of trivial circumstances, I too might have
been ... oh, well, never mind. Not, of course,
that for any consideration I would serve in
this ludicrous and impotent machine set up by
the corrupt states of the world. Wilbraham
can: I could not. My soul, at least, is my
own."
"Oh, come," remonstrated the other jour-
nalist. "Come, come. Surely not. . . . But I
must go and look up a few people. See you
later on."
Henry remained for a minute, broodingly
watching the neat receding back of Charles
Wilbraham. How happy and how proud it
looked, that serene and elegant back! How
proud and how pleased Henry knew Charles
Wilbraham to be, walking with the senior
British delegate, whom every one admired,
along the Quai du Mont Blanc! As proud
and as happy as a prince. Henry knew bet-
ter than most others Charles Wilbraham's
profound capacity for proud and princely
pleasure. He loved these assemblies of im-
portant persons; loved to walk and talk with
the great. He had, ever since the armistice,
contracted a habit of being present at those


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 21
gates stood and walked about the hall, wait-
ing for the session of the League of Nations
Assembly to begin. The hum of talk rose
up and filled the hall; it was as if a swarm
of bees were hiving. What a very great deal,
thought Henry, had the human race to say,
always! Only the little Japs at the back sat
in silent rows, scores and scores of them (for
Japanese are no use by ones), immobile, im-
passive, with their strange little masks and
slanting eyes, waiting patiently for the busi-
ness of the day to begin. When it began,
their reporters would take down everything
that was said, writing widdershins, very dili-
gently, very slowly, in their solemn picture
language. There was something a little sin-
ister, a little macabre, a little Grand Gui-
gnolish about the grave, polite, mysterious
little Japs. The Yellow Peril. Perilous be-
cause of their immense waiting patience, that
would, in the end, tire the restless Western
peoples out. How they stored their energy,
sitting quiet in rows, and how the Westerners
expended theirs! What conversations, what
gesticulations, what laughter filled the hall!
The delegates greeting one another, shaking


MYSTERY AT GENEVA
one another by the hand, making their al-
liances and friendships for the session, ar-
ranging meals together, kindly, good-
humoured, and polite, the best of friends in
private for all their bitter and wordy
squabbles in public. The chief Russian dele-
gate, M. Kratzky, a small, trim little ex-
Bolshevik, turned Monarchist by the recent
coup d'etat, was engaged in a genial conversa-
tion with the second French delegate. France
had loudly and firmly voted last year against
the admission of Russia to the League, but
when the coup d'etat restored the Monarchist
Government (a government no less, if no
more, corrupt than the Bolshevik rule which
had preceded it, but more acceptable to Eu-
rope in general), France held out to her old
ally fraternal arms. The only delegates who
cut the Russians were the Germans, and
among the several delegates who cut the Ger-
mans were the Russians, for, as new mem-
bers, these delegates were jealous one of the
other. The Turkish delegates, also recently
admitted, were meanwhile delightful to the
Armenians, as if to prove how they loved
these unhappy people, and how small was the


MYSTERY AT GENEVA
truth of the tales that were told concerning
their home life together. The two Irish dele-
gates, O'Shane from the Free State and Mac-
dermott from Ulster, were personally great
friends, though they did not get on well to-
gether on platforms, as both kept getting and
reading aloud telegrams from Ireland about
crimes committed there by the other's politi-
cal associates. This business of getting tele-
grams happens all the time to delegates, and
is a cause of a good deal of disagreeableness.
On this, the first morning of the Assembly,
telegrams shot in in a regular barrage, and
nearly every delegate stopped several. Many
came from America. The trouble about
America was that every nation in the League
had compatriots there, American by citizen-
ship, but something else by birth and sym-
pathy, so that the Ukrainian congregation of
Woodlands, Pa., would telegraph to request
the League to save their relations in Ukraine
from the atrocities of the Poles, and the Polish
settlement in Milwaukee would wire and en-
treat that their sisters and their cousins and
their aunts might be delivered from the ma-
rauding Ukrainians, and Baptist congrega-


24 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
tions in the Middle West wired to the Rou-
manian delegation to bring up before the
Assembly the persecution of Roumanian Bap-
tists. And the Albanian delegate (a benign
bishop) had telegrams daily from Albania
about the violation of Albanian frontiers by
the Serbs, and the Serbian delegate had even
more telegrams about the invasions and depre-
dations of the Albanians. And the German
and Polish delegates had telegrams from
Silesia, and the Central and South American
delegates had telegrams about troubles with
neighbouring republics. And the Armenians
had desperate messages from home about the
Turks, for the Turks, despite the assignment
to Armenia of a national home, followed them
there with instruments of torture and of death,
making bonfires of the adults, tossing the in-
fants on pikes, and behaving in the manner
customarily adopted by these people towards
neighbours. There is this about Armenians:
every one who lives near them feels he must
assault and injure them. There is this about
Turks: they feel they must assault and injure
any one who lives near them. So that the
contiguity of Turks and Armenians has been


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 25
even more unfortunate than are most contigu-
ities. Neither of these nations ought to be
near any other, least of all each other.
Meanwhile the Negro Equality League
wired, "Do not forget the coloured races,"
and the Constructive Birth Control Society
urged, "Make the world safe from babies"
(this, anyhow, was the possibly inaccurate
form in which this telegram arrived), and
the Blackpool Methodist Union said, "The
Lord be with your efforts after a World
Peace, watched by all Methodists with hope,
faith and prayer," and the Blue Cross Society
said, "Remember our dumb friends," and
Guatemala (which was not there) telegraphed,
"Do not believe a word uttered by the delegate
from Nicaragua, who is highly unreliable."
As for the Bolshevik refugees, they sent
messages about the Russian delegation which
were couched in language too unbalanced
to be made public either in the Assembly
Journal or in these pages, but they would
be put in the Secretariat Library for people
to read quietly by themselves. This also
occurred to a telegram from the Non-Co-
operatives of India, who wired with refer-


26 . MYSTERY AT GENEVA
ence to the freedom of their country from
British rule, a topic unsuited to discussion
from a world platform.
All this fusillade of telegrams made but
small impression on the recipients, who found
in them nothing new. As one of the British
delegates regretfully observed, "Denique
nullum est jam dictum quod non sit dictum
prius."
But one telegram there was, addressed to
the acting-President of the League, and
handed in to him in the hall before the ses-
sion began, which aroused some interest. It
remarked, tersely and scripturally, in the
English tongue, "I went by and lo he was
not." It had been despatched from Geneva,
and was unsigned.
"And who," said the acting-President med-
itatively to those round him (he was an acute,
courteous, and gentle Chinaman), "is this
Lo? It is a name" (for so, indeed, it seemed
to him), "but it is not my name. Does the
sender, all the same, refer to the undoubted
fact that I, who shall open this Assembly as
its President, shall, after the first day's ses-
sion, retire in favour of the newly elected


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 27
President? Is it, perhaps, a taunt from some
one who wishes to remind me of the tran-
sience of my office? Possibly from some gen-
tleman of Japan ... or America . . . who
knows? or does it, perhaps, refer not to my-
self, but to some other person or persons,
system or systems, who will, so the sender
foresees, have their day and cease to be?"
The acting-President was a scholar, and well
read in English poetry. But, as his knowledge
did not extend to the English translation of
the Hebrew Psalms, he added, "It reads, this
wire, like a quotation from literature?"
One of the British delegates gave him its
source and explained that, in this context
"lo" was less a name than an ejaculation, and
would probably, but for the limitations of the
telegraphic code, have had after it a point of
exclamation. "The telegram," added the
British delegate, who was something of a
biblical student, "seems to be a combination
of the Bible and Prayer Book translations of
the verse in question. The Revised Version
of the Bible has again another translation, a
rather unhappy compromise. I believe the
correct rendering"


28 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
"It is sarcasm," interrupted a French Sec-,
retariat official. "C'est I'ironie. The sender
means that we are of so little use that in his
eyes we don't exist. C'est tout. We're used
to these gibes."
"I expect it means," said another member
of the Secretariat hopefully (he was sick of
Geneva), "that the fellow thinks the League
will soon be moved to Brussels."
"Is Maxse visiting Geneva by any chance?"
inquired one of the delegates from Central
Africa. "It has rather his touch. But then
Maxse would always sign his name. He's un-
ashamed. ... I dare say this is merely some
religious maniac reminding us that sic transit
gloria mundi. Very likely a Jew. . . . Look.
. . . Look, I have a much better one than
that from the Non-Alcoholics. . . ."
So they proceeded in their leisurely, at-
tached, and pleasant way to discuss these out-
pourings from eager human hearts all over
the globe.
But the second French delegate, after
brooding awhile, said suddenly: "Ce tele-
gramme la, celui qui dit, 'J'ai traverse par la,
et voici, il est biffe!' les Boches l'ont ex-


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 29
pedie. Oui, justement. Tous les Boches veu-
lent detruire la Societe des Nations; ils le
desirent d'autant plus depuis que l'Allemagne
est admise dans la Societe des Nations. C'est
une chose tout a fait certaine."
The French would talk like that about the
Germans: you could not stop them. They
had not, and possibly never would have, what
is called a League mind. Central Africa,
who had remonstrated gently but to no effect,
pointing out that Germans would probably
not be acquainted with the English version of
the Psalms, either Prayer Book or Bible. To
prevent international emotion from running
high, the acting-President caused the bell to
be rung and the Assembly to be summoned to
their seats.
5
So here, thought Henry of the British BoU
shevist, was this great world federation in ses-
sion. He could not help being excited, for
he was naturally excitable, and it was his first
(and, had he known it, his last) Assembly.


MYSTERY AT GENEVA
He was annoyed by the noisy moving and
chattering of the people behind him in the
gallery, which prevented his hearing the
opening speech so well as he otherwise would
have done. Foreigners—how noisy they
were! They were for ever passing to and fro,
shaking hands with one another, exchanging
vivacious comments. Young French widows,
in their heavy crape, gayest, most resigned,
most elegant of creatures, tripped by on their
pin-like heels, sweetly smiling their patient
smiles. How different from young British
widows, who, from their dress, might just as
well have only lost a parent or brother. All
widows are wonderful: Henry knew this, for
always he had heard "Dear so-and-so is being
simply wonderful" said of bereaved wives,
and knew that it merely and in point of fact
meant bereaved; but French widows are wid-
ows indeed. However, Henry wished they
would sit still.
Henry was at the end of a row of English
journalists. On his right, across a little gang-
way, were Germans. "At close quarters," re-
flected Henry, "one is not attracted by this
unfortunate nation. It lacks—or is it rather


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 31
that it has—a je ne sais quoi. ... It is per-
haps more favourably viewed from a dis-
tance: but even so not really favourably. Pos-
sibly, like many other nations, it is seen to
greatest advantage at home. I must visit Ger-
many." For Henry was anxious to acquire a
broad, wise, unbiassed international mind.
The acting-President was speaking, in his
charming and faultless English. He was say-
ing what a great deal the League had done
since the preceding Assembly. It did indeed
seem, as he lightly touched on it, a very great
deal. It had grappled with disease and drugs,
economics, sanitation, prostitution, and educa-
tion; it had through its Court of Justice ar-
bitrated several times in international disputes
and averted several wars; other wars it had
deplored; it had wrestled with unemployment
and even with disarmament . . . ("not, per-
haps, quite happily put," murmured one Brit-
ish delegate to another). It had had great
tasks entrusted to it and had performed them
with success. It hoped to have, in the future,
greater tasks yet; ... it had admitted to
membership several new nations, to whom it
had extended the heartiest fraternal welcome;


32 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
, . . above all it had survived in the face of
all its enemies and detractors. . . . This pres-
ent session was faced with a large and impor-
tant programme. But before getting on to it
there must be elections, votings, committees,
a new President, and so forth.
The speaker sat down amid the applause
proper to the occasion, and the interpreter
rose to translate him into French.
An elderly English clergyman behind
Henry tapped his shoulder with a pencil and
said, "What paper do you represent? I am
reporting for the Challenge. The Churches
have not taken enough interest in the League.
One must stir them up. I preach about noth-
ing else, in these days. The Church of Eng-
land is sadly apathetic."
"It is a fault churches have," said Henry.
"All the same, the Pope has telegraphed a
blessing."
Those who would fain follow the French
interpreter hushed them. Henry leant over,
and watched Latin America conferring
among itself, looking excited and full of pur-
pose. Latin America obviously had some-
thing on its mind.


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 33
"What interests them so much?" he won-
dered aloud, and the journalist next him en-
lightened him.
"They've made up their minds to have a
Latin American President again. They say
they make a third of the Assembly, and it's
disgraceful that they don't have one every
year. They don't want Edwards again; they
want one who'll let the Spanish Americans
get on their legs every few minutes. Ed-
wards had lived abroad too long and was too
cosmopolitan for them. They're going to put
up a really suitable candidate this time, and
jolly well see he gets it. He won't, of course.
But there may be the hell of a row."
"That will be very amusing," said Henry
hopefully.
They were taking the votes of the delegates
for the committee on the credentials of dele-
gates. Suppose, thought Henry, that in that
hall there were one or more delegates whose
credentials were impeachable; delegates, per-
haps, who had come here by ruse with forged
authority, or by force, having stolen the cre-
dentials from the rightful owners. ... It
might be done: it surely could be done, by


34 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
some unprincipled adventurer from a far
country. Perhaps it had been done, and per-
haps the committee would never be the wiser.
Or perhaps there would be a public expose.
, . . That would be interesting. Public ex-
poses were always interesting. Henry's drift-
ing glance strayed to the platform, where the
Secretariat staff sat, or went in and out
through the folding door. There, standing by
the door and watching the animated scene, was
Charles Wilbraham, composed, pleased, se-
rene, looking like a theatrical producer on the
first night of a well-staged play.
Yes, public exposes were interesting. , . .
The committee was elected and the Assembly
dispersed for lunch, over which they would
occupy themselves in lobbying for the Presi-
dential election in the afternoon. Henry saw
Charles Wilbraham go out in company with
one of the delegates from Central Africa. No
doubt but that the fellow had arranged to be
seen lunching with this mainstay of the
League. To lunch with the important . . .
that should be the daily goal of those for
whom life is not a playground but a ladder.


36 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
enough to conceal their vexation, and from
the public in the galleries (for Dr. Svensen
was the most widely popular figure in the As-
sembly), the new President took his place
and made the appropriate speech, in his sono-
rous English. Many in the hall were bored,
some because the new President was known
to be in with the English, who are not always
liked by other nations; some because he spoke
English readily and French ill, and most of
them understood French readily and English
not at all; others because he was of the party
which was bent on carrying out certain meas-
ures in Europe for which they saw no neces-
sity.
However, Dr. Svensen, a brief person and
no word-waster, did not detain his audience
long. At six o'clock the Assembly adjourned.
7
Henry despatched a short scornful story of
the proceedings to his newspaper (which
would not, he knew, print a long or effusive
one), and dined with another English jour-


MYSTERY AT GENEVA
nalist in a cafe in the old cite. The other
journalist, Grattan, came from Paris, and was
bored with the League and with Geneva. He
preferred to report crime and blood, some-
thing, as he said, with guts in it. Statesmen
assembled together made him yawn. For his
part, he wished something would happen dur-
ing the Assembly worth writing home about—
some crime passionnel, some blood and thun-
der melodrama. "Perhaps," said Henry,
hopefully, "it will."
"Well, it may. All these hot-blooded Lat-
ins and Slavs herded together ought to be able
to produce something. ... I bet you the
Spanish Americans are hatching something
to-night over there. . . ." He waved his
hand in the direction of the other side of the
lake, where the great hotels blazed their thou-
sand windows into the night. Behind those
windows burnt who knew what of passion and
of plot?
8
Dr. Svensen, strolling at a late hour across
the Pont du Mont Blanc (he was returning


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 39
morning the unsophisticated Henry Beech-
tree took his seat in the Press Gallery. He
soon perceived his mistake. The show ob-
viously was not going to begin for ages. No
self-respecting delegate or journalist would
come into the hall on the stroke of the hour.
The superior thing, in this as in other depart-
ments of life, was to be late. Lateness showed
that serene contempt for the illusion we call
time which is so necessary to ensure the re-
spect of others and oneself. Only the servile
are punctual. . . .
But "Nothing to swank about in being
late," thought Henry morosely; "only means
they've spent too long over their coffee and
bread and honey, the gluttons. I could have
done the same myself."
Indeed, he wished that he had, for he fell
again into the hands of the elderly clergyman
who had addressed him yesterday, and who
was, of course, punctual too.
"I see," said the clergyman, "that you have
one of the French comic papers with you. A
pity their humour is so much spoilt by sug-
gestiveness."
Suggestiveness. Henry could never under-


MYSTERY AT GENEVA
stand that word as applied in condemnation.
Should not everything be suggestive? Or
should all literature, art, and humour be a
cul-de-sac, suggesting no idea whatsoever?
Henry did not want to be uncharitable, but
he could not but think that those who used
this word in this sense laid themselves open to
the suspicion (in this case, at least, quite un-
justified) that their minds were only recep-
tive of one kind of suggestion, and that a
coarse one.
"I expect," he replied, "that you mean
coarseness. People often do when they use
that word, I notice. Anyhow, the papers are
not very funny, I find."
"Suggestiveness," said the clergyman, "is
seldom amusing."
Before Henry had time to argue again
about this word, he hurried on.
"I sent yesterday a long message to the
Church Times, the Guardian, the Common-
wealth, and the Challenge about the first
meeting. It is most important that these
papers should set before their readers the part
that the Church ought to play in promoting
international good will."


MYSTERY AT GENEVA
"He is a great scholar and a delightful
writer. No one has gone more deeply into
mediaeval Church history and modern theo-
logical criticism. So I am told, but I have
not read him myself, as he prefers to write
in Italian, though he has a perfect command
of several other tongues."
"Nor I, as I am not very much interested
in Church history or theological criticism.
Besides, his writings are, I suppose, heret-
ical."
"I don't know as to that; I am no judge.
But he was, I believe, as you say, retired for
heresy. And now he lives in the most delight-
ful of mediaeval chateaux at Monet, a little
village up the lake. I have been to see him
there. If I may, I will introduce you. He
enjoys making the acquaintance of his co-re-
ligionists. In this Calvinistic part of the
world the educated classes are nearly all Prot-
estants. The ex-cardinal does not care for
Protestants; he finds them parvenus and bour-
geois. He is a delightfully courteous host,
however, even to those, and a wonderful
talker. And his heart is in the League. A wit,
a scholar, an aristocrat, a bon-viveur, and a


MYSTERY AT GENEVA
philanthropist. If your Church retains many
priests as good as those she expels, she is to be
congratulated."
"She is," Henry agreed. "She can afford
to fling out one or two by the way. Yes; I
would like to know him, the ex-cardinal; he
looks witty and shrewd, and at the same time
an idealist. . . . But how late they are in be-
ginning. My watch is seldom right, but I
imagine it must be after ten-thirty."
The young man Grattan, with whom Henry
had dined last night, lounged in, with his cyn- •
ical smile.
"You're very young and innocent, Beech-
tree. I suppose you've been here since ten.
It's just on eleven now. The President's not
to hand and no one seems to know where he is.
Oh, well, it's not his fault; people spoil him.
His head's turned, poor Svensen. I expect
he made a night of it and is lying in this morn-
ing. I don't blame him. We don't need a
President. But there seems to be some unrest
among the Secretariat."
This seemed, indeed, to be so. The members
of this body, standing about the hall and plat-
form, were animated and perturbed; the more


MYSTERY AT GENEVA
irresponsible juniors seemed amused, others
anxious. The Secretary-General was talking
gravely to another high official.
The correspondent of the Daily Insurance,
who had been talking in the hall to the dele-
gates and Secretariat, watched by Henry from
above with some envy, at this point entered
the Press Gallery, edged his way to his seat,
picked up the papers he had deposited there
earlier, and made rapidly for the exit.
"Got a story already?" Grattan said to him.
"No, but there may be one any moment.
They've sent round to the Metropole, and
Svensen didn't sleep in his bed. He never
came in last night after dinner."
He was off. Grattan whistled, and looked
more cheerful.
"That's good enough. That's a story in it-
self. Didn't sleep in his bed. That's a head-
line all right. Good old Svensen. Here, I'm
going down to hear more. Mustn't let Jef-
ferson get ahead of us. Come along, Beech-
tree, and nose things out. This will be nuts
for our readers. Even your crabbed paper
will have to give a column to Svensen Not


MYSTERY AT GENEVA
Sleeping in His Bed. Can't you see all the
little eyes lighting up?"
He rushed away, and Henry followed.
Meanwhile the bell was rung and MM. les
Delegues took their seats. The Deputy-Presi-
dent, the delegate for Belgium, took the chair.
The President, he announced, was unfor-
tunately not yet in attendance. Pending his
arrival, the Assembly would, since time
pressed, proceed with the order of the day,
which was the election of committees. . . .
The Assembly, always ready to vote, began to
do so. It would keep them busy for some
time,
10
Meanwhile Henry stood about in the lobby,
where a greater excitement and buzz of talk
than usual went on. Where was Dr. Sven-
sen? The other members of the Norwegian
delegation could throw no light on the ques-
tion. He had dined last night at the Beau
Rivage, with the British delegation; he had
left that hotel soon after eleven, on foot; he
had meant, presumably, to walk back to the


46 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
Metropole, which stood behind the Jardin
Anglais, on the Mont Blanc side. The hall
porter at the Metropole asserted that he had
never returned there. The Norwegian dele-
gation, not seeing him in the morning, had
presumed that he had gone out early; but now
the hotel staff declared that he had not spent
the night in the hotel.
"He probably thought he would go for a
long walk; the night was fine," Jefferson, who
knew his habits, suggested. "Or for a row up
the lake. The sort of thing Svensen would
do."
"In that case he's drowned," said Grattan,
who was of a forthright manner of speech.
"He's a business-like fellow, Svensen. He'd
have turned up in time for the show if he
could, even after a night out."
The next thing was to inquire of the boat-
keepers, and messengers were despatched to
do this.
"I am afraid it looks rather serious," re-
marked a soft, grave, important voice behind
Henry's back. "I am pretty intimate with
Svensen; I was lunching with him only yes-
terday, as it happens. He didn't say a word


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 47
then of any plan for a night expedition. I am
afraid it looks sadly like an accident of some
sort."
"Perspicacious fellow," muttered Jefferson,
who did not like Charles Wilbraham.
Henry edged away; neither did he like
Charles Wilbraham. He did not even turn
his face towards him.
He jostled into his friend the English
clergyman, who said, "Ah, Mr. Beechtree.
I want to introduce you to Dr. Franchi." He
led Henry by the arm to the corner where the
alert-looking ex-cardinal stood, talking with
the Spaniard whom Henry had noticed in the
lift at the Secretariat buildings.
"Mr. Beechtree, Your Eminence," said the
Reverend Cyril Waring, who chose by the use
of this title to show at once his respect for the
ex-cardinal, his contempt for the bigotry
which had unfrocked him, and his disgust at
the scandalous tongues which whispered that
the reason for his unfrocking had been less
heresy than the possession of a wife, or even
wives. If Canon Waring had heard these
spiteful on-dits, he paid no attention to them;


MYSTERY AT GENEVA
lite face, saw it grow suddenly sullen, even
spiteful, at the sound of a voice raised in con-
versation not far from him.
"Perhaps you will do me the honour of
lunching with me, M. Kratzky. I have a
little party coming, including Suliman
Bey. . . ."
Mr. Kratzky was, in his way, the most
deeply and profusely blood-stained of Rus-
sians. One of the restored Monarchist gov-
ernment, he it was who had organised and
converted the Tche-ka to Monarchist use, till
they became in his hands an instrument of
perfect and deadly efficiency, sparing neither
age, infancy, nor ill-health. M. Kratzky had
devised a system of espionage so thorough, of
penalties so drastic, that few indeed were safe
from torture, confinement, or death, and most
experienced all three. One would scarcely
say that the White tyranny was worse than the
Red had been, or worse than the White before
that (one would indeed scarcely say that any
Russian government was appreciably worse
than any other); but it was to the full as bad,
and Kratzky (the Butcher of Odessa, as his
nickname was) was its chief tyrant. And


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 51
"Oh, Wilbraham doesn't succeed. Indeed
no. Most people see at once that he is just
a solemn ass. That face, you know , , . like
a mushroom. . . ."
"Ah, that is a Bernard Shaw phrase. A
bad play, that, but excellent dialogue. . . .
But he is good-looking, Mr. Wilbraham."
Henry moodily supposed that he was. "In
a sort of smug, cold way," he admitted.
"E cosa fa tra questo bel giovanotto e quel
Charles Wilbraham?" wondered the ex-car-
dinal, within himself.
II.
Henry left the Salle de la Reformation and
went out into the town to look for further
light on the mystery. How proud he would
be if he should collect more information
about it than the other journalists! Than Jef-
ferson, for instance, who was always ahead in
these things, interviewing statesmen, getting
statements made to him. . . . No one made
statements to Henry; he never liked to ask for
them. But he was, he flattered himself, as


52 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
good as any one else at nosing out news stories,
mysteries, and so forth.
Musing deeply, he walked to the ice-cream
cafe, close to the Assembly Hall. There he
ordered an ice of mixed framboise, pistachio,
and coffee, and some iced raspberry syrup,
and sat outside under the awning, slowly en-
joying the ice, sucking the syrup through
straws, and thinking. He always thought best
while eating well too; with him, as with many
others, high living and high thinking went
together, or would have, only lack of the
necessary financial and cerebral means pre-
cluded much practice of either.
While yet in the middle of the raspberry
syrup he suddenly lifted his mouth from the
straws, ejaculated softly, and laughed.
"It is a possibility," he muttered. "A pos-
sibility, worth following up. . . . Odder
things have happened . . . are happening,
all the time. ... In fact, this is not at all an
odd thing. . . ." Decisively he rapped on
the table for his bill, paid for his meal, and
rose to go, not forgetting first to finish his
raspberry syrup.
He walked briskly along the side of the


mystery; ax geneva 53
lake to the Molard jetty, where he found a
mouette in act to start for the other side. How
he loved these mouette rides, the quick rush
through blue water, half Geneva on either
side, and the narrow shave under the Pont du
Mont Blanc. He was always afraid that one
day they would not quite manage it, but would
hit the bridge; it was a fear of which he could
not get rid. He always held his breath as they
rushed under the bridge, and let it out in
relief as they emerged safely beyond it. How
cheap it was: a lake trip for fifteen centimes!
Henry was sorry when they reached the other
side. He walked thoughtfully up from the
landing stage to the Secretariat, where he as-
cended to the room of Mr. Wilbraham. Mr.
Wilbraham was not, of course, there; he was
over at the Assembly Hall. But his secretary
was there; a cheerful young lady typing
letters with extraordinary efficiency and
rapidity.
"Oh," said Henry, "I'm sorry. I thought
Mr. Wilbraham might possibly be here."
"No," said the young lady agreeably. "He
is over at the Assembly. Will you leave a
message?"


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 55
Miss Doris Wembley looked at Beechtree,
rather liked him, and said: "Right. But I
must finish one letter first."
She proceeded with her efficient, rapid, and
noisy labours. She did not need to look at the
keyboard, she was like that type of knitter
who knits the while she gazes into space; she
had learnt "Now is the time for all good men
to come to the help of the party."
Henry, strolling round the room, observing
details, had time to speculate absently on the
wonderful race of typists. He had in the past
known many of them well, and felt towards
them a regard untouched by glamour. How,
he had often thought, they took life for
granted, unquestioning, unwondering, accept-
ing, busy eternally with labours they under-
stood so little, performed so well, rattling out
their fusillade of notes that formed words they
knew not of, sentences that, uncomprehended,
yet did not puzzle them or give them pause,
on topics which they knew only as occasioning
cascades of words. To them one word was
the same, very nearly the same, as another of
similar length; words had features, but no
souls; did they fail to decipher the features of


56 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
one of them, another of the same dimensions
would do. And what commas they wielded,
what colons, what semis, what stops! But
efficient they were, all the same, for they were
usually approximately right, and always in-
credibly quick. Henry knew that those ste-
nographers who had been taken out to Geneva
were, in the main, of a more sophisticated or-
der, of a higher intellectual equipment. But
Charles Wilbraham's secretary was of the in-
genuous type. Probably the more sophis-
ticated would not stay with him. A pretty
girl she was, with a round brown face, kind
dark eyes, and a wide, sweet, and dimpling
mouth. Henry, like every one else, liked a
girl to be pretty, but, quite unlike most young
men, he preferred her to be witty. The
beauty of the dull bored him very soon;
Henry had his eccentricities. He did not think
that Miss Wembley was going to be amusing,
but still, he intended to cultivate her ac-
quaintance.
Henry looked at his watch. It was twelve
forty-five. "Can't the rest wait?" he said.
"I'm just on done. It's a re-type I'm doing.
I spelt parliament with a small p, and Mr.


58 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
"Foul play," said the journalist Grattan,
hopefully. "Obviously foul play."
"Ask the Bolshevist refugees," the Times
correspondent said with a shrug. For he had
no opinion of these people, and believed them
to be engaged in a continuous plot against the
peace of the world, in combination with the
Germans. The Morning Post was inclined
to agree, but held that O'Shane, the delegate
from the Irish Free State, was in it too.
Whenever any unpleasant incident occurred,
at home or abroad (such as murders, rob-
beries, bank failures, higher income tax,
Balkan wars, strikes, troubles in Ireland, or
cocaine orgies), the Times said, "Ask the Bol-
shevists and the Germans," and the Morning
Post said, "Ask the Bolshevists and the Ger-
mans by all means, but more particularly ask
Sinn Fein," just as the Daily Herald said,
"Ask the capitalists and Scotland Yard," and
some eminent litterateurs, "Ask the Jews."
We must all have our whipping-boys, our
criminal suspects; without them sin and dis-
aster would be too tragically diffused for our
comfort. Henry Beechtree's suspect was
Charles Wilbraham. He knew that he sus-


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 59
pected Charles Wilbraham too readily; Wil-
braham could not conceivably have com-
mitted all the sins of which Henry was fain
to believe him guilty. Henry knew this, and
kept a guard on his own over-readiness, lest it
should betray him into rash accusation. In-
formation; evidence; that was what he had to
collect.
The question was, as an intelligent member
of the Secretariat pointed out, who stood to
benefit by the disappearance of Svensen from
the scenes? Find the motive for a deed, and
very shortly you will find the doer. Had
Svensen a private enemy? No one knew.
Many persons disapproved of the line he was
apt to take in public affairs: he wanted to
waste money on feeding hungry Russians
("No one is sorrier than my tender-hearted
nation for starving persons," the other dele-
gates would say, "but we have no money to
send them, and are not Russians always
hungry?") and was in an indecent hurry
about disarmament, which should be a slow
and patient process. ("No one is more anx-
ious than my humane nation for peace," said
the delegates, "but there is a dignified caution


6o MYSTERY AT GENEVA
to be observed.") Yes; many persons dis-
agreed with Svensen as to the management of
the affairs of the world; but surely no one
would make away with him on that account.
Far more likely did it seem that he had inad-
vertently stumbled into the lake, after dining
well. What an end to so great and good a
man!
J3
Lord Burnley, the senior British delegate,
that distinguished, notable, and engaging fig-
ure in the League, had, as has been said ear-
lier, a strange addiction to walking. This
afternoon, having parted from his friends
outside the Assembly Hall, he started, as was
a favourite pastime of his, to walk through the
Older and more picturesque streets of the city,
for which he had a great taste.
As he strolled in his leisurely manner up the
Rue de la Cite, stopping now and then to look
at its antique and curious shops, he came to a
bookshop, whose outside shelf was stocked
with miscellaneous literature. Lord Burnley,
who could seldom pass an old bookshop with-


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 61
out pausing, stopped to glance at the row bf
paper-backs, and was caught by a familiar
large bound book among them. Familiar in-
deed, for was it not one of his own works?
He put on his glasses and looked closer. Yes:
the volume was inscribed Scepticism as a
Basis for Faith, by George Burnley. And
printed on a paper label below the title was
the inscription, "Special Edition, recently an-
notated by the Author."
Strange! Lord Burnley was puzzled. For
neither recently nor at any other time was he
conscious of having issued a special annotated
edition of this work.
For a minute or two he pondered, standing
on the pavement. Then, deciding to inquire
further into this thing, he stooped his head
and shoulders and passed under the low lintel
into the little dark shop.
Henry, having left the Assembly, sent off
his message to his newspaper (it was entirely
about the disappearance of Dr. Svensen),


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 63
. it in the dusty speckled glass. "A trifle weak
perhaps. I am a trifle weak; that is so. But,
on the whole, the face of a gentleman and a
decent fellow. And not devoid of intelligence.
. . . Interesting, to see one's own face. Espe-
cially in this old glass. Now I must be off.
Hat, stick, overcoat, scarf—that is everything."
He walked down to the Eaux-Vives jetty,
where a smart electric launch did indeed
await him, and in it a young lady of hand-
some appearance, who regarded him with
friendly interest and said, in pronounced
American with an Italian accent, "I'm real
pleased to meet you, Mr. Beechtree. Step
right in. We'll start at once."
Henry stepped right in, and sat down by
this prepossessing girl.
"I must introduce myself," she said. "My
name is Gina Longfellow, and I'm Dr.
Franchi's niece."
"What excellent English you talk I" said
Henry politely.
"American," she corrected him. "My
father was a native of Joliet, 111. Are you
acquainted with the Middle West?"
"I've travelled there," said Henry, and re-


64 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
pressed a shudder, for he had found the Mid-
dle West deplorable. He preferred South
America.
"I am related to the poet," said Miss Long-
fellow. "That great poet who wrote Hia-
watha, Evangeline, and The Psalm of Life.
Possibly you came across him out in the
States?"
"No," said Henry. "I fancy he was even
then dead. You are a descendant of his?"
"A descendant—yes. I remember now; he
died, poor nonno. . . . The lake pleases you,
Mr. Beechtree?"
"Indeed, yes. It is very beautiful."
Miss Longfellow's fine dark eyes had a mo-
mentary flicker of resentment. Most young
men looked at her, but Mr. Beechtree at the
lake, with his melancholy brooding eyes.
Henry liked handsome young women well
enough, but he admired scenery more. The
smooth shimmer of the twilight waters, still
holding the flash of sunset, the twinkling city
of lights they were swiftly leaving behind
them at the lake's head, the smaller constella-
tions of the lakeside villages on either hand—


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 65
these made on Henry, whose aesthetic nerve
was sensitive, an unsteadying impression.
Miss Longfellow recalled his attention.
"Do you think the League will last?" she
inquired sharply. "Do you like Geneva? Do
you think the League will be moved some-
where else? Isn't it a real pity the French
are so obstructionist? Will the Americans
come in?"
Henry adjusted his monocle and looked at
her in some surprise.
"Well," she said impatiently, "I guess you're
used to those questions by now."
"But you've left out the latest," Henry said.
"What do you think can have happened to
Svensen?"
"Ah, there you have us all guessing," she
amiably returned. "Poor Svensen. Who'd
have thought it of him?"
"Thought what?"
"Why, this. He always seemed such a
white man. My, isn't it queer what people
will do?"
Henry, who had been brought up on Dr.
Svensen's narrations of his Arctic explora-


66 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
tions, and greatly revered him, said, "But I
don't believe he's done anything."
"Not done a get-away, you mean? Well
now, why should he, after all? Perhaps he
fell right into this deep lake after dining, and
couldn't get out, poveretto. Yet he was a real
fine swimmer they say."
"Most improbable," said Henry, who had
dismissed that hypothesis already. He leant
forward and spoke discreetly. "I fancy, Miss
Longfellow, there are those in Geneva who
could throw some light on this affair if they
chose."
"You don't say! Dio mio! Now isn't that
quite a notion!" Miss Longfellow was in-
terested. "Why, Mr. Beechtree, you don't
suspect foul play, do you?"
Henry nodded.
"I suppose I rather easily suspect foul
play," he candidly admitted. "It's more in-
teresting, and I'm a journalist. But in this
case there are reasons"
"Now isn't this too terribly exciting! Rea-
sons! Just you tell me all you know, Mr.
Beechtree, if it's not indiscreet. Non son'
giornalista, io!"


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 67
"I don't know anything. Except that there
are people who might be glad to get Svensen
out of the way."
"But who are they? I thought every one
respected him ever so!"
"Respect is akin to fear," said Henry.
On that dictum, the launch took a swift
turn to the right, and dashed towards a jetty
which bore on a board above it the words,
"Chateau Leman. Defense."
"A private jetty," said Henry.
"Yes. The village jetty is beyond. This
is my uncle's. That path only leads up to the
chateau."
They disembarked, and climbed up a steep
path which led through a wrought iron gate
into a walled garden that ran down to the
lake's edge. Henry, who was romantic, said,
"How very delightful. How old is the
chateau?"
"Chi sa? Real old, I can tell you. Ask
Uncle Silvio. He's great on history. He's
for ever writing historical books. History
and heresy—Dio mio! That is why they
turned him out of the Church, you know."


68 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
"So I heard. , . . Are you a Catholic, Miss
Longfellow?"
"I was brought up Catholic. Women believe
what they are taught, as a rule, don't they?"
"I hadn't observed it," Henry said, "partic-
ularly. Are women so unlike men then?"
"That's quite a question, isn't it? What do
you think?"
"I can't think in large sections and masses
of people," Henry replied. "Women are so
different one from another. So are men.
That's all I can see, when people talk of the
sexes."
"Macehe! You don't say!" said Miss
Longfellow, looking at him inquiringly.
"Most people always think in large masses of
people. They find it easier, more convenient,
more picturesque."
"It is indeed so," Henry admitted. "But
less accurate. Accuracy—do you agree with
me?—is of an importance very greatly under-
estimated by the majority of persons."
"I guess," said Miss Longfellow, not^ inter-
ested, "you're quite a clever young man."
Henry replied truthfully, "Indeed, no,"
and at this point they turned a bend in the


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 69
path and the chateau was before them in the
evening light; an arcaded, balconied, white-
washed building, vine-covered and red-roofed,
with queer outside staircases and green-shut-
tered windows, many of which were lit. Cer-
tainly old, though restored. A little way from
it was a small belf ried chapel.
"Charming," said Henry, removing his eye-
glass the better to look. "Amazingly charm-
ing."
A big door stood open and through this
they passed into a hall lit by large hanging
lamps and full of dogs, or so it seemed to
Henry, for on all sides they rose to stare at
him, to sniff at his ankles, for the most part
with the air of distaste commonly adopted
towards Henry by these friends of man.
"You're not a dog lover?" Miss Longfellow
suggested, and Henry again replied that he
could not like or dislike his fellows in large
sections; some dogs he liked, others not, as
with men, women, and children.
"But I guess they don't like you very
much," she returned, shrewdly observing their
manners to him. "Now isn't that cute, how
they take to some people and not to others I


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 71
quiry, but stood in the hall and cried, "Zio!"
in a voice like a May cuckoo's.
A door opened, and in a moment Dr.
Franchi, small and frail and charming, came
forward with a sweet smile and hand out-
stretched, through a throng of fawning, grin-
ning dogs.
"A pleasure indeed, Mr. Beechtree."
"He is like Leo XIII.," was Henry's
thought. "Strange, that he should be a
heretic 1"
15
They sat at dinner on a terrace, under hang-
ing lamps, looking out at the lake through
vine-festooned arches. The moon rose, like
the segment of an orange, sending a softly
glowing path to them across black water.
Here and there the prow lanterns of boats
rosily gleamed. The rest was violet shadow.
How Henry, after his recent experiences
of cheap cafes, again enjoyed eating a meal
fit for a gentleman. Radiant silver, napery
like snow (for, in the old fashion still in use


72 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
on the continent, Dr. Franchi had a fair linen
cloth spread over his dinner-table; there is no
doubt but that this extravagant habit gives an
old-world charm to a meal), food and wines
of the most agreeable, conversation to the lik-
ing of all three talkers (which is, after all,
the most that can be said of any conversation),
one of the loveliest views in Europe, and
gentle night air—Henry was indeed fortu-
nate. How kind, he reflected, was this ex-
cardinal, who, having met him but once, asked
him to such a pleasant entertainment. Why
was it? He must try to be worthy of it, to
seem cultivated and agreeable and intelligent.
But Henry knew that he was none of these
things; continually he had to be playing a
part, trying to hide his folly under a pre-
tence of being like other people, sensible and
informed and amusing, whereas really he was
more like an animal, interested in the foolish
and fleeting impressions of the moment. He
was not fit for a gentleman's dinner-table.
The conversation was of all manner of
things. They spoke, of course, of the League.
"It has a great future," said Dr. Franchi,


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 73
"by saying which I by no means wish to un-
derrate its present."
"Rather capitalist in tendency, perhaps?"
the correspondent of the British Bolshevist
suggested. "A little too much in the hands
of the major states?" But he did not really
care.
"You misjudge it," Dr. Franchi said. "It
is a very fair association of equal states. A
true democracy: little brothers and great,
hand in hand. Oh, it will do great things;
is, indeed, doing great things now. One can-
not afford to be cynical about such an attempt.
Anything which encourages the nations to
take an interest in one another's concerns"
"There has surely," said Henry, still rather
apathetically voicing his paper, "always been
too much of that already. Hence wars. Na-
tions should keep themselves to themselves.
International impertinence . . . it's a great
evil. Live and let live."
"You don't then agree that we should at-
tempt a world-cosmogony? That the nations
should be as brothers, and concern themselves
with one another's famines, one another's rev-
olutions, one another's frontiers? But why


74 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
this curious insistence on the nation as a unit?
Why select nationality, rather than the ego,
the family, the township, the province, the
continent, the hemisphere, the planet, the solar
system, or even the universe? Isn't it just a
little arbitrary, this stress we lay on national-
ism, patriotism, love of one particular coun-
try, of the territories united fortuitously under
one particular government? What is a gov-
ernment, that we should regard it as a con-
necting link? What is a race, that queer,
far-flung thing whose boundaries march with
those of no nation? And when we say we love
a country, do we mean its soil, the people
under its government, or the scattered peoples
everywhere sharing some of the same blood
and talking approximately the same tongue?
What, in fact, is this patriotism, this love of
country, that we all feel, and that we nearly
all exalt as if it were a virtue? We don't
praise egoism, or pride of family, or love of
a particular town or province, in the same
way. What magic is there in the ring that
embraces a country, that we admire it as
precious metal and call the other rings foolish


78 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
agreed. "About the Catholic convert there
is often a quite peculiar lack of distinc-
tion. . . . But we will not talk about these."
16
They were now eating fruit. Melon, apri-
cots, pears, walnuts, figs, and fat purple
grapes. The night ever deepened into a
greater loveliness. In the steep, sweet garden
below the terrace nightingales sang.
"On such a night as this," said Dr. Franchi,
cracking a walnut, "it is difficult to be an
atheist."
"Why so?" asked Henry dreamily, biting
a ripe black fig, and wishing that the ex-
cardinal had not thought it necessary to give
so lovely and familiar an opening phrase so
tedious an end.
"Don't tell me," he added quickly, repent-
ing his thoughtless question. "What night-
ingales! What figs! And what apricocks!"
(for so he always called this fruit). He hated
to talk about atheists, and about how God had
fashioned so beautiful a world. It might be


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 79
so, but the world, on such a night, was enough
in itself.
Dr. Franchi's keen, gentle eyes, the eyes
of a shrewd weigher of men, observed him and
his distastes.
"An aesthete," he judged. "God has given
him intuition rather than reason. And not
very much even of that. He might easily be
misled, this youth."
Aloud he said, "All I meant was that
"'Holy joy about the earth is shed,
And Holiness upon the deep,'
as one of your Edwardian poets has sung.
That was a gifted generation: may it rest in
peace. For I think it mostly perished in that
calamitous war we had. . . . But your Geor-
gians—they too are a gifted generation, is it
not so?"
"You mean by Georgians those persons who
are now flourishing under the sovereignty of
King George the Fifth of England? Such as
myself? I do not really know. How could it
be that gifts go in generations? A generation,
surely, is merely chronological. Gifts are
sporadic. No, I find no generation, as such,


80 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
gifted. Except, of course, with the gifts com-
mon to all humanity. . .. People speak of the
Victorians, and endow them with special
qualities, evil or good. They were all black
recently; now they are being whitewashed—
or rather enamelled. I think they had no
qualities, as a generation (or rather as several
generations, which, of course, they were);
men and women then were, in the main, the
same as men and women to-day. I see nothing
but individuals. The rest is all the fantasy
of the foolish, who love to generalise, till they
cannot see the trees for the wood. General-
isations make me dizzy. I see nothing but the
separate trees. There is nothing else. . . ."
Dreamily Henry wandered on, happy and
fluent with wine and figs. A ripe black fig,
gaping to show its scarlet maw—what could
be more lovely, and more lusgious to the
palate?
As to Miss Longfellow, she was eating her
dessert so rapidly and with such relish that
she had no time for conversation. All she
contributed to it was, between bites, a cheer-
ful nod now and then at Henry to show that
she agreed with him.


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 81
"Yours," said Dr. Franchi, "is not, perhaps,
the most natural view of life. It is more nat-
ural to see people in large groups, with def-
inite characteristic markings, according to
period, age, nationality, sex, or what not.
Also, such a view has its truth, though, like
all truths, it may be over-stressed. . . . But
here comes our coffee. After we have drunk
it, Gina will leave us perhaps and you and
I will smoke our cigars and have a little talk
on political questions, and matters outside a
woman's interests. Our Italian women do not
take the same interest in affairs which your
English women do."
"No," Miss Longfellow readily agreed.
"We don't like the New Woman over here.
Perhaps Mr. Beechtree admires her though."
"The New Woman?" Henry doubtfully
queried. "Is there a new woman? I don't
know the phrase, except from old Victorian
Punch pictures. . . . Thank you, yes; a little
cherry brandy."
"Ah, has the woman question, then, over in
your country—died out? Fought to a finish,
perhaps, with honours to the victorious sex?"
"The woman question, sir? What woman


82 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
question? I know no more of woman ques-
tions than of man questions, I am afraid.
There is an infinity of questions you may ask
about all human beings. People ask them all
the time. Personally, I don't; it is less trouble
not to. There people are; you can take them
or leave them, for what they're worth. Why
ask questions about them? There is never a
satisfactory answer."
"A rather difficult youth to talk to," the
ex-cardinal reflected. "He fails to follow up,
or, apparently, even to understand, any of the
usual conversational gambits. Is he very ig-
norant, or merely perverse?"
As to Miss Longfellow, she gave Henry up
as being not quite all there, and anyhow a
bloodless kind of creature, who took very little
notice of her. So she went indoors and played
the piano.
"I am failing," thought Henry. "She does
not like me. I am not being intelligent. They
will talk of things above my head, things I
cannot understand."
Apathy held him, drinking cherry brandy
under the moon, and he could not care.


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 83
Woman question? Man question? What was
all this prating?
"And now," said Dr. Franchi, as he enjoyed
a cigar and Henry a cigarette and both their
liqueurs, "let us talk of this mysterious busi-
ness of poor Svensen."
"Yes, do let's," said Henry, for this was
much more in his line.
"I may misjudge you, Mr. Beechtree, but
I have made a guess that you entertain cer-
tain suspicions in this matter. Is that the
case? Ah, I see I am right. No, tell me
nothing you do not wish. In fact, tell me
nothing at all. It would be, at this point,
indiscreet. Instead, let us go through all the
possible alternatives." He paused, and puffed
at his cigar for a while in thoughtful silence.
"First of all," he presently resumed, "poor
Svensen may have met with an accident. He
may have fallen into the lake and have been
drowned. But this we will set aside as im-
probable. Geneva is seldom quite deserted at
night, and he would have attracted attention.


84 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
Besides which, I have heard that he is an
excellent swimmer. No; an improbable con-
tingency. What remains? Foul play. Some
person or persons have attacked him in a
deserted spot and either murdered or kid-
napped him. But who? And for what pur-
pose? Robbery? Personal enmity? Revenge?
Or an impersonal motive, such as a desire, for
some reason, to damage and retard the doings
of the Assembly? It might be any of these.
. , . Let us for a moment take the hypothesis
that it is the last. To whom, then, might such
a desire be attributed? Unfortunately, my
dear Mr. Beechtree, to many different per-
sons."
"But more to some than to others," Henry
brightly pointed out.
"Certainly more to some than to others.
More to the Poles than to the Lithuanians, for
instance, for is it not to the Polish interest to
hold up the proceedings of the Assembly
while the present violation of the Lithuanian
frontier by Polish hordes continues? Well,
they know that any inquiry into that matter
set on foot by the League would end in their
discomfiture. Every day that they can retard


86 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
about the Irish delegates? Are they not both,
for their different reasons, full of anger and
discontent against Great Britain and against
Europe in general, and may they not well in-
tend, in the determined manner of their race,
to hold up the association of nations at the
pistol's mouth, so to speak, until it considers
their grievances and adjudicates in their fa-
vour? And then we must not exclude from
suspicion the natives of this city and canton.
Calvinists are, in my experience, capable of
any malicious crime. A dour, jealous, un-
pleasant people. They might (and often have
they done so) perpetuate any wickedness in
the name of the curious God they worship."
"Indeed, yes," said Henry. "How con-
fusing it all is, to be sure! But you haven't
mentioned the biggest stumbling-block of all,
sir—disarmament."
"Ah, yes; disarmament. As you say, the
most tremendous issue of all. And it is, as
every one knows, going to be, during this ses-
sion of the League, decisively dealt with by
the Council. Many a nation, militant from
terror, from avarice, from arrogance, or from
habit, many a political faction, and many a


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 87
big business, has a vital interest in hindering
disarmament discussions. You think, then,
that"
"I will tell you," said Henry, leaning for-
ward eagerly and lowering his rather high
voice, "what I think. I think that there are
those not far from us who haVe a great deal
of money in armaments, and who get nervy
whenever the subject comes up. There are
things that I know. . . . I came out here know-
ing them, and meaning to speak when the time
came. Not because it was my duty, which is
why (I understand) most people expose
others, but because I had a very great desire
to. There is some one towards whom I feel
a dislike—a very great dislike; I may say hate.
He deserves it. He is a most disagreeable
person, and has done me, personally, a great
injury"—Henry was feeling the expansive
influence of the cherry brandy—"and nat-
urally I wish to do him one in my turn. I
have wished it for several years; to be exact,
since the year 1919. I have waited and
watched. I have always known him to be
detestable, but until recently I thought that
he was also detestably and invariably in the


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 89
ment scheme should ever really be seriously
contemplated by the nations? That his father-
in-law, this munitions prince, is even now in
Geneva, privately visiting his daughter and
son-in-law and holding a watching brief on
the Assembly proceedings? I ask you, what
would the League staff say of one of their
members of which this should be revealed?
Would he be regarded as a fit incumbent of
the office he holds? Wouldn't he be dismissed,
kicked out as incompetent—as unscrupulous,
I mean," Henry amended quickly. His voice
had risen in a shrill and trembling crescendo
of dislike.
Dr. Franchi, leaning placidly back in his
chair, his delicate fingers stroking a large
Persian cat on his knee, shrewdly watched
him.
"I had better say," he observed, in his tem-
perate and calming manner, "that I believe
I know to whom you allude. I have guessed,
since I saw you this morning when a certain
individual was speaking near you, that you
took no favourable view of him. And now
I perceive that you are justified. You will
be doubly justified if we can prove, what I


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 91
it has, after such a disastrous session. Mark
my words; there will be further attempts on
the persons of prominent delegates. Whether
they will be successful attempts or not is a
question. Who is responsible for them is an-
other question. You say (and I am half with
you) our friend of the Secretariat, who had
better be nameless until we can bring him to
book. Others will say other things. Many
will be suspected. Notably, no doubt, the
Spanish Americans, who lend themselves
readily to such suspicions; they have that air,
and human life is believed not to be unduly
sacred to them. Besides, they never got on
with Svensen, who is reported to have alluded
to them not infrequently as "those damned
Red Indians." The Scandinavian tempera-
ment and theirs are so different. I do not
even feel sure myself that they are not im- I
plicated. The initiation of the affair by our;
Secretariat friend would not, in fact, preclude
their participation in it. I had nearly said,
show me a Spanish American, still worse a
Portuguese, and I will show you a scoundrel.
Nearly, but not quite, for it is a mistake to
say such things of one's brothers in the League,


MYSTERY AT GENEVA
Besides, I like them. They are pleasing,
amusing fellows, and do not rasp one's nerves
like the Germans and many others. One can
forgive them much; indeed, one has to. Many
people, again, would be glad to put responsi-
bility on the Germans. An unfortunate race,
for nothing is so unfortunate as to be unloved.
We must discover the truth, Mr. Beechtree.
You have a line of inquiry to follow?"
"I am making friends with the fellow's
secretary," said Henry. "She likes me, I may
say. And she talks quite a lot. She would
not consciously betray her chief's confidence,
though she" does not like him; but all the same
I get many clues from her. . . , Oh, my
God!"
The ejaculation, which was made under his
breath, was shocked involuntarily out of him
by the sight of Dr. Franchi's Persian cat ex-
tracting with its paw from a bowl that stood
on the terrace balustrade a large goldfish and
devouring it.
After the first glance Henry looked away,
leaning back in his chair, momentarily over-
come with a feeling of nausea, which made
his face glisten white and damp, and caused


MYSTERY AT GENEVA
"I am all right now," said Henry. "A
momentary faintness—quite absurd. ... I ex-
pect goldfish do not really feel either emotion
or pain. They say that fish do not feel hooks.
Or worms, either. . . . They say all sorts of
comforting things about this distressing
world, don't they? One should try to believe
them all...."
"You are," said Dr. Franchi quietly, "if
I may say so, a decidedly unusual young man."
"Indeed, no," said Henry. "But I have
encroached on you long enough. I must go."
18
The motor-launch churned its foaming path
down the moonlit lake. Henry sat in the
stern, trailing his fingers in cool, phosphores-
cent water, happy, drowsy, and well fed.
What a delightful evening! What a charm-
ing old man! What a divine way of being
taken home! And now he had the warm, en-
couraged feeling of not pursuing a lone trail,
for the ex-cardinal's last words to him had
been: "Coraggio! Follow every clue; push


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 95
home every piece of evidence. Between us
we will yet lay this enemy of the public good
by the heel."
The very thought that they would yet do
that flushed Henry's cheek and kindled his
eye.
Assuredly the wicked should not always
flourish like the bay tree. "I went by, and
lo he was not," thought Henry, quoting the
queer message received by the President be-
fore the first session of the Assembly.
The launch dashed up to the Quai du Seujet,
and Henry presented a franc to the pilot, and
stepped off, trying to emulate this gentleman's
air of never having visited such a low wharf
before. "You have brought me rather too
far," he said. "But I will walk back."
But, now he came to think of it, Dr. Fran-
chi's man must obviously know where he
lived, so camouflage was unavailing. He had
intended (only, lost in thought, he had let the
moment pass) to be set down at the Paquis,
as if he had been staying on the Quai du Mont
Blanc or thereabouts. But he had said noth-
ing, and, without doubt or hesitation, this dis-
agreeable chauffeur (or whatever an electric


96 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
launch man was called) had made for the
Quai du Seujet and drawn up at it, as if he
knew, as doubtless he did, that Henry's lodg-
ing was in one of the squalid alleys off it.
It could not be helped. Things do get
about; Henry knew that of old. However, to
maintain the effect of his words to the man,
he started to walk away from the St. Gervais
quarter towards the Mont Blanc bridge, until
the launch was foaming on its homeward way.
Then he retraced his steps.
As he passed the end of the bridge, he saw
a well-known and characteristic figure, small,
trim, elegant, the colour of ivory, clad in
faultless evening dress, beneath an equally
faultless light coat, standing by the parapet.
Some one was with him, talking to him—an
equally characteristic figure, less well known
to the world at large, but not less well known
to Henry.
Henry stopped abruptly, and stood in the
shadow of a newspaper kiosk. He was not in
the least surprised. Any hour of the day or
night did for Charles Wilbraham to talk to
the great. He would leave a dinner at the
same time as the most important person pres-


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 97
ent, in order to accompany him on his way.
He would waylay cabinet ministers in streets,
bishops (though himself not of their faith)
in closes, and royal personages incognito. He
would impede their progress, or walk deli-
cately beside them, talking softly, respectfully,
with that perfect propriety of diction and ad-
dress which he had always at command.
"Soapy Sam," muttered Henry from behind
the kiosk.
The two on the bridge moved on. They
came towards Henry, strolling slowly and
talking. The well-known personage was ap-
parently telling an amusing story, for Charles
was all attention and all smiles.
"As Chang was saying to me the other
night," Henry prospectively and unctuously
quoted Charles.
They left the bridge, and turned along the
Quai du Mont Blanc. Charles's rather high
laugh sounded above the current of their talk.
They paused at the Hotel des Bergues. The
eminent person mounted its steps; Charles ac-
companied him up the steps and inside. Prob-
ably the eminent person wished, by calling
on some one there, to shake off Charles before


98 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
going to his own hotel. But he had not shaken
off Charles, who was of a tenacious habit.
"Calling on the Latin Americans," Henry
commented. "Wants to have a drink and a
chat without Charles. Won't get it, poor
chap. Well, I shall sleuth around till they
come out. I'm going to trail Charles home
to his bed, if it takes all night."
He settled himself on the parapet of the
Quai and watched the hotel entrance. He did
not have to wait long. In some minutes
Charles came out alone. He looked, thought
Henry, observing him furtively from under
his pulled-down hat brim, a little less elated
than he had appeared five minutes earlier. His
self-esteem had suffered some blow, thought
Henry, who knew Charles's mentality. Men-
tality: that was the word one used about
Charles, as if he had been a German during
the late war (Germans having, as all readers
of newspapers will remember, mentalities).
Charles walked rapidly across the bridge,
towards the road that led to his own chalet,
a mile out of the town. Henry, keeping his
distance, hurried after him, through the steep,
silent, sleeping city, up on to the dusty, tram-


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 99
lined, residential road above it, till Charles
stopped at a villa gate and let himself in.
Then Henry turned back, and tramped
drowsily down the dusty road beneath the
moonless sky, and down through the steep,
sleeping city, and across the Pont des Bergues,
and so to the Quai du Seujet and the Allee
Petit Chat, which lay dense and black and
warm in shadow, and was full of miauling
cats, strange sounds, and queer acrid smells.
The drainage system of the St. Gervais quar-
ter was crude.
In the stifling bedroom of his crazy tene-
ment, Henry undressed and sleepily tumbled
into bed as the city clock struck two.
In the dawn, below the miauling of lean
cats and the yelping of dogs, he heard the
lapping and shuffling of water, and thought
of boats and beating oars.
19
To what cold seas of inchoate regret, of pas-
sionate agnosticism as to the world's mean-
ings, if any, does one too often wake, and


ioo MYSTERY AT GENEVA
know not why! Henry, on some mornings,
would wake humming (as the queer phrase
goes) with prosperity, and spring, warm and
alive, to welcome the new day. On other
mornings it would be as if he shivered per-
plexed on the brink of a fathomless abyss,
and life engulfed him like chill waters, and
he would strive, defensively, to divest himself
of himself and be but as one of millions of
the ant-like creatures that scurry over the
earth's face, of no more significance to himself
than were the myriad others. He could just
achieve this state of impersonality while he
lay in bed. But when he got up, stood on the
floor, looked at the world no longer from
beyond its rim but from within its coils, he
became again enmeshed, a creature crying "I,
I, I," a child wanting Pears' soap and never
getting it, a pilgrim here on earth and stran-
ger. Then the seas of desolation would swamp
him and he would sink and sink, tumbled in
their bitter waves.
In such a mood of causeless sorrow he woke
late on the morning after he had dined with
Dr. Franchi. To keep it at arms' length he
lay and stared at his crazy, broken shutters,


io2 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
noon; many people had seen him in the Rue
de la Cite and the neighbourhood. He had
even been observed to enter a bookshop. The
rest was silence. From that bookshop he had
not been seen to emerge. The bookseller af-
firmed that he had left after spending a few
minutes in the shop. No further information
was to hand.
"Cherchez la femme," one comic paper had
the audacity to remark, a propos l'affaire
Svensen and Burnley. Even Svensen and
Burnley, so pure-hearted, so public-spirited,
so League-minded, were not immune from
such ill-bred aspersions.
20
The elegant and scholarly Spaniard, Luiz
Vaga, strolled by. He wore a canary-coloured
waistcoat and walked like a fastidious and
graceful bullfinch. He stopped beside
Henry's breakfast-table, cocked his head on
one side, and said, "Hallo. Good-morning.
Heard the latest news?"


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 103
Henry admitted that he had heard no news
later than that in the morning press.
"Chang's gone now," said Vaga. "Gone to
join Svensen and Burnley. I regret to say that
he was last seen, late last night, paying a call
on my fellow-countrymen from South
America at Les Bergues hotel. Serious sus-
picion rests on these gentlemen, for poor
Chang has not been heard of since."
"Somehow," Henry said thoughtfully, "I
am not surprised. L'addition, s'il vous plait.
No, I cannot say I am surprised. I rather
thought that there would be more disappear-
ances very shortly. Burnley and Chang. A
good haul. . . . Who saw him going into the
Bergues?"
"Our friend Wilbraham, who was out late
with him last night. And the Bergues people
don't deny it. But they say he left again, soon
after midnight. The hall porter, who has,
it is presumed, been corrupted, confirms this.
But he never returned to his hotel. Poor
Burnley and Chang! Two good talkers, schol-
ars, and charming fellows. There are few
such, in this vulgar age. It is taking the best,
this unseen hand that strikes down our dele-
1


104 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
gates in their prime. So many could be
spared. . . . But God's will must be done.
These South Americans are its very fitting
tools, for they don't care what they do, reck-
less fellows. Mind you, I don't accuse them.
Personally I should be more inclined to sus-
pect the Zionists, or the Bolshevik refugees,
or your Irishmen, or some of the Unprotected
Minorities, or the Poles, or the Anti-Vivisec-
tion League, who are very fierce. But, for
choice, the Poles; anyhow as regards Burnley.
There were certain words once publicly
spoken by Burnley to the Polish delegation
about General Zeligowsky which have ran-
kled ever since. Zeligowsky has many wild
disbanded soldiers at his command. . . . How-
ever—Chang, anyhow, went to see the South
Americans, and has not emerged. There we
are."
"There we are," Henry thoughtfully
agreed, as they strolled over the Pont du Mont
Blanc. "And what, then, is Wilbraham's ex-
planation of the affair Chang?"
Vaga shrugged his shoulders.
"Our friend Wilbraham is too discreet to
make allegations. He merely states the fact


MYSTERY AT GENEVA ioS
—that he saw Chang into the Bergues between
twelve and one and left him there. ... I
gather that he accompanied him into the hotel,
but did not stay there long himself. I can
detect a slight acrimony in his manner on the
subject, and deduce from it that he was not
perhaps encouraged by Dr. Chang or his hosts
to linger. I flatter myself I know Wilbra-
ham's mentality fairly well—if one may be
permitted that rather opprobrious word."
"Yes, indeed," Henry said. "It is precisely
what Wilbraham has. I know it well."
"In that case, I believe if you had heard
Wilbraham on this matter of his call at Les
Bergues that you would agree with me that
his importance suffered there some trifling
eclipse."
"There may be other reasons," said Henry,
"in this case, for the manner you speak of.
. . . But I won't say any more now." He bit
off the stream of libel that had risen to his
lips and armed himself in a careful silence,
while the Spaniard cocked an inquiring dark
eye at his brooding profile.
In the Jardin Anglais they overtook Dr,
Franchi and his niece, making their way to


106 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
the Assembly Hall. The ex-cardinal was
greatly moved. "Poor Dr. Chang," he la-
mented, "and Burnley too, of all menl A wit,
a scholar, a philosopher, a metaphysician, a
theologian, a man of affairs. In fine, a man
one could talk to. What a mind! I am greatly
attached to Lord Burnley. They must be
found, gentlemen. Alive or (unthinkable
thought) dead, they must be found. The As-
sembly must do nothing else until this sinister
mystery is unravelled. We must employ de-
tectives. We must follow every clue."
Miss Longfellow said, "My! Isn't it all
quite too terribly sinister! Don't you think
so, Mr. Beechtree?"
Henry said he did.
21
They reached the Assembly Hall. The lob-
by, buzzing with delegates, Secretariat, jour-
nalists, Genevan syndics, and excitement, was
like a startled hive. The delegates from Cuba,
Chili, Bolivia, and Paraguay, temporarily at
one, were informing the eager throng who


io8 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
that any one had seen Dr. Chang in the cite,
but then, as the delegate from Paraguay re-
marked, even the inhabitants of the cite must
sleep sometimes.
Police and detectives had early been put to
work to search the cathedral quarter. Syste-
matically they were making inquiries in it,
street by street, house by house. Systemati-
cally, too, others were making inquiries in the
old St. Gervais quarter.
"But police detective work is never any
good," as Henry, a well-read person in some
respects, remarked. "It is well known that
one requires non-constabulary talent."
22
The bell rang, and a shaken and disorgan-
ised Assembly assembled in the hall. The
Deputy-President, in an impassioned speech,
lamented the sinister disappearance of his
three so eminent colleagues. As he remarked,
this would not do. Some evil forces were at
work, assaulting the very life of the League,
for it must now be apparent that these disap-


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 109
pearances were not coincidences, but links in
a connected chain of crime. What and whose
was the unseen hand behind these dastardly
deeds? What secret enemies of the League
were so cunningly and assiduously at work?
Was murder their object, or merely abduc-
tion? Whose turn would it be next? (At this
last inquiry a shudder rippled over the al-
ready agitated assembly.) But MM. les
Delegues might rest assured that what could
be done was being done, both for the discovery
of their eminent colleagues, the detection of
the assaulters, and the aversion of such dis-
asters in future.
At this point the delegate for Greece leapt
to his feet.
"What," he demanded, "is being done with
this last object? What provision is being made
for the safety of our persons?"
His question was vigorously applauded,
while the English interpreter, quite unheard,
explained it to those in the hall who lacked
adequate knowledge of the French language.
The Deputy-President was understood to
reply that it was uncertain as yet what effec-
tive steps could be taken, but that all the


no MYSTERY AT GENEVA
forces of law and order in Geneva had been
invoked, and that MM. les Delegues were
hereby warned not to go about alone by night,
or, indeed, much by day, and not to venture
into obscure streets or doubtful-looking shops.
Mademoiselle the delegate from Roumania
demanded the word. Mademoiselle the dele-
gate for Roumania was a large and buxom
lady with a soft, mellifluous voice that cooed
like a turtle-dove's when she spoke eloquently
from platforms of the wrongs of unhappy
women and poor children. This delegate was
female indeed. Not hers the blue-stocking
sexlessness of the Scandinavian lady delegates,
with their university degrees, their benign,
bumpy foreheads, and their committee man-
ners. She had been a mistress of kings; she
was a very woman, full of the elan of sex.
When she swam on to the platform and turned
her eyes to the ceiling, it was seen that they
brimmed with tears.
"Mon Dieu, M. le Vice-President," she
ejaculated. "Mon Dieu!" And proceeded in
her rich, voluptuous voice to dwell on the
iniquities of the traffic in women and children
all over the world. The nets of these traf-


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 111
fickers were spread even in Geneva—that city
of good works—and who would more greatly
desire to make away with the good men of
the League of Nations than these wicked traf-
fickers? How well it was known among them
that Lord Burnley, Dr. Svensen, and Dr.
Chang held strong opinions on this sub-
ject. . . .
At this point a French delegate leapt to
his feet and made strong and rapid objection
to these accusations. No one more strongly
than his pure and humane nation disliked this
iniquitous traffic in flesh and blood, but the
devil should have his due, and there was no
proof that the traffickers were guilty of the
crimes now under discussion. Much might
be allowed a lady speaker in the height of
her womanly indignation, which did credit
to her heart and sex, but scarcely so much
as that.
For a moment it looked like a general
squabble, for other delegates sprang to their
feet and called out, and the interpreters, dash-
ing round the hall with notebooks, could
scarcely keep pace, and every one was excited
except the Japanese, who sat solemnly in rows


ii2 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
and watched. For the hold, usually so firm,
exercised by the chair over the Assembly, had
given way under the stress of these strange
events, and in vain did the Deputy-President
knock on the table with his hammer and cry
"Messieurs! Messieurs! La parole est a.
Mademoiselle la Deleguee de la Roumanie!"
But he could not repress those who called
out vehemently that "II ne s'agit pas a present
de la traite des femmes; il s'agit seulement
de la disparition de Messieurs les Delegues!"
And something unconsidered was added about
those states more recently admitted to the
League, which had to be hastily suppressed.
Mademoiselle la Deleguee on the platform
continued meanwhile to coo to heaven her
indignation at the iniquitous traffic in these
unhappy women, until the Deputy-President,
in his courteous and charming manner, sug-
gested in her ear that she should, for the
sake of peace, desist, whereupon she smiled
and bowed and swept down into the hall, to be
surrounded by congratulating friends shak-
ing her by the hand.
"M. Menavitch demande la parole," an-
nounced the Deputy-President, who should


ii4 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
I wouldn't put it past him to have plotted
the whole thing."
"Ask the Black and Tans," his Free State
colleague was naturally moved to retort.
"My God," whispered the Secretary-Gen-
eral to the Deputy-President. "If the Irish
are off . . . We must stop this."
Fortunately, here the delegates for Para-
guay eased the situation by proposing that the
question of the disappearance of delegates
should be referred to a committee to be elected
for that purpose, and that the voting for that
committee should begin forthwith. (The
South American delegates always welcomed
the appointment of committees, for they al-
ways hoped to be on them.) Lord John Les-
ter, one of the delegates from Central Africa,
who was less addicted to committees, thinking
that their methods lacked expedition, rose to
protest, but was overruled. The Assembly as
a whole would obviously feel happier about
this affair if it were in committee hands, so
the elections were proceeded with at once.
The delegate for Central Africa resigned him-
self, only remarking that he hoped at least
that the sessions of the committee would be


mystery; at geneva 117
towards the ex-cardinal, whom he greatly
liked.
"What discord, where all was harmony and
brotherhood!" continued Dr. Franchi sadly,
"Not quite all. Never quite all, even be-
fore," corrected Lord John, who, though an
idealist, faced facts. There were always ele-
ments of . . . But we were on the way; we
were progressing. And now—this."
He waved his hand impatiently at the vocif-
erous Slavs, and then at the door of the As-
sembly Hall, "All at one another's throats;
all hurling accusations; all getting telegrams
from home about each other; all playing the
fool. And there are some people who say
there is no need for a League of Nations in
such a world I"
Impatiently Lord John Lester pushed his
way through the chattering crowds in the
lobby, and out into the street. He wanted to
breathe, and to get away from the people who
regarded the recent disasters mainly as an ex-
citement, a news story, or a justification for


n8 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
their international distastes. To him they
were pure horror and grief. They were his
friends who had disappeared; it was his
League which was threatened.
Moodily he walked along the paths of the
Jardin Anglais; broodingly he seated himself
upon a bench and stared frowning at the jet
d'eau, and suspected, against his will, the
Spanish and Portuguese Americans.
A large lady in purple, walking on high-
heeled shoes as on stilts, and panting a little
from the effort, stopped opposite him.
"Such a favour!" she murmured. "I told
my husband it was too much to ask. But no,
he would have it. He made me come and
speak to you. I've left him over there by the
fountain." She creaked and sat down on
the bench, and Lord John, who had risen as
she addressed him, sat down too, wondering
how most quickly to get away.
"The Union," said the lady; and at that
word Lord John bent towards her more atten-
tively. "Lakeside branches. We're starting
them, my husband and I, in all the lake vil-
lages. So important; so necessary. These
villages are terribly behind the times. They


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 119
simply live in the past. And what a past!
Picturesque if you will—but not progressive
—oh, no! So some of us have decided that
there must be a branch of the Union in every
lake village. We have brought a little band
of organisers over to Geneva to-day, to attend
the Assembly. But the Assembly is occupied
this morning in electing committees. Neces-
sary, of course; but no mention of the broader
principles on which the League rests can be
made until the voting is over. So we are hav-
ing a little business meeting in an office off the
Rue Croix d'Or. And when my husband and
I caught sight of you he said to me, 'If only
we could get Lord John to come right away
now and address a few words to our little
gathering—oh, but really quite a few—its
dead bones would live I' Now, do I ask too
much, Lord John?"
"My dear lady," said Lord John, "I'm
really sorry, but I simply haven't the time. I
wish you all the luck in the world, but"
The purple lady profoundly sighed.
"I told my husband so. It was too much to
ask. He's a colonel, you know—an Anglo-
Indian—and always goes straight for what


120 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
he wants, never hesitating. He would make
me ask you; . . . but at least we have your
good wishes, Lord John, haven't we?"
"Indeed, yes."
"The motto of our little village branches,"
she added as she rose, "is Si vis pacem, para
bellum. Or, in some villages, Si vis bellum,
para pacem. Both so true, aren't they? Now
which do you think is the best?"
Lord John Lester looked down at her in
silence, momentarily at a loss for an answer.
"Really, my dear lady, . . . I'm afraid I
don't like either at all. In fact, neither in any
way expresses the ideals or principles of the
League."
She looked disappointed.
"Now, you don't say so! But those are the
lines we're founding our branches on. One
has to be so careful, don't you think, or a
branch may get on the wrong lines, with all
these peace cranks about. And every branch
has its influence. They're ignorant in these
lake villages, but they do mean well, and
they're only anxious to learn. If only you
would come and tell our little organising band
how we ought to start them!"


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 121
Lord John, having taken the lady in, from
her topmost purple feathers to her pin-like
heels, decided that, in all probability, she had
not got a League mind. And she and the
Anglo-Indian colonel (who probably had not
got this type of mind either, for Anglo-Indian
colonels so exceedingly often have another)
were going to start branches of the League
of Nations Union all up the lake, to be so
many centres of noxious, watered-down, mean-
ingless League velleity, of the type which he,
Lord John, found peculiarly repugnant. Per-
haps, after all, it might be his duty to go and
say a few wholesome words to the little or-
ganising band assembled in the office off the
Rue Croix d'Or. Yes; it was obviously his
duty, and not to be shirked. With a sigh he
looked at his watch. It need not take him
more than half an hour, all told.
She gave a joyful pant.
"You're too good, Lord John! How grate-
ful we shall all be! You shall tell us all about
how we ought to do it, and give us some really
good mottoes! .... I remember helping
with branches of the National Service League
before the war, and they had such a nice motto


124 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
"I dare not," she replied. "I am in a
minority in my house; I am an unprotected
serving-woman, and there are three Turks in
the same house who leave me no peace. Even
now one of them is waiting for me with a
stick because I had a misfortune and broke
his hookah."
"It is certainly," said the Professor, "a case
for the police. If you do not like to inform
them, I will do so myself. Tell me where
you live."
"Just round the corner here, in a house in
that passage," she said. "Come with me and
see for yourself, sir, if you doubt my word as
to my sufferings."
Professor Inglis hesitated for a moment,
not wishing to be drawn into city brawls, but
when she added, "I appealed to you, sir, be-
cause I have been told how you are always on
the side of the unprotected, and also love the
Greeks," his heart melted in him, and he for-
got that, though he did indeed love the ancient
Greeks, he did not very much care for the
moderns of that race (such, for example, as
M. Lapoulis, the Greek delegate), and only
remembered that here did indeed seem to be


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 125
a very Unprotected Minority (towards which
persons his heart was always soft), and that the
Minority was a woman, poor, ill-favoured,
and malarial, talking a Greek more ancient
than was customary with her race, and perse-
cuted by Turks, which nation Professor In-
glis, in spite of his League mind, could not in-
duce himself to like. All these things he rec-
ollected as he stood hesitating by the fruit-
stall, and he reflected also that, until he had in
some degree verified the woman's tale, he
would not care to trouble the already much
burdened police with it; so, with a little sigh,
he turned to the poor woman and told her he
would come with her to her house and see for
himself, and would then assist her to take steps
to protect herself. She thanked him pro-
fusely, and led the way to the passage which
she had mentioned.
3
Chivalry, pity for the unprotected, love of
the Greek tongue, dislike of Turks—by all
these quite creditable emotions was Professor


i26 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
Inglis betrayed, as you may imagine, to his
fate,
26
Henry Beechtree, when he left the Assem-
bly Hall, had, for his part, fish to fry in the
Secretariat, and thither he made his rapid way.
He had arranged to meet Miss Doris Wem-
bley, the secretary of Charles Wilbraham,
that morning in her chief's room, and then to
lunch with her.
Henry was getting to know Miss Wembley
very well. It seemed to him as if he had al-
ways known her, as, indeed, he had. He knew
the things she would say before she said them.
He knew which were the subjects she would
expand on, and which would land her,
puzzled and uninterested, in inward non-com-
prehension and verbal assent. She was a nice
girl, a jolly girl, an efficient girl, and a very
pretty girl. She liked Henry, whom she
thought amusing, shabby, and queer.
They began, of course, by talking of the
fresh disappearances.


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 127
"We've got bets in the Secretariat on who
will be the next," she told him. "I've put my
money on Branting. I don't know why, but
I somehow feel he'll go soon. But some
people say it'll be the S. G. himself. . . .
Isn't it too awful for their wives, poor things?
Poor little Madame Chang! They say she's
being simply wonderful."
"Wonderful," repeated Henry. "That's
what widows are, isn't it? But is it, I won-
der, enough to make one wonderful that one's
husband should disappear alive? You see,
they may not be dead, these poor delegates;
they may exist, hidden away somewhere."
"Oh, dear, yes, I hope so. Isn't it all too
weird? Have you any theories, Mr. Beech-
tree?"
Henry looked non-committal and said that
doubtless every one in Geneva had their pri-
vate suspicions (often, for that matter, made
public), and that he was no exception. He
then turned the conversation on to Wilbra-
ham's father-in-law, who was staying so pri-
vately in Geneva, and they had much fruitful
talk on this and other subjects.


128 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
27
The Assembly, having elected the com-
mittee, and listened to a long speech from a
Persian prince about the horrors of modern
warfare, and a poem of praise from an emi-
nent Italian Swiss on the beauties of the poet
Dante, whose birthday was approaching,
broke up for lunch.
The committee (which was to be called
Committee 9) was to meet at the Secretariat
that afternoon and consider what steps should
next be taken. It was a rather large commit-
tee, because nearly every one had been anx-
ious to be on it. It consisted of delegates
from France, Great Britain, Italy, Norway,
Central Africa, Sweden, Belgium, Holland,
Spain, Albania, Serbia, Brazil, Chili, Bolivia,
Panama, Paraguay, Uruguay, Costa Rica,
Guatemala, Greece, Poland, Lithuania, and
Haiti. Its sessions were to be in private, in
spite of the strongly expressed contrary desire
of Lord John Lester. The chairman was the
delegate for Paraguay. It was expected that
he would carefully and skilfully guide the
lines on which the committee should work so


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 129
that the regrettable suspicions which had acci-
dentally fallen on certain Latin Americans
should be diverted into other and more de*
serving channels.
28
The proceedings of the first meeting of
Committee No. 9 can be best reported in the
words of the Assembly Journal for the follow-
ing day. This journal, with its terse and yet de-
tailed accounts of current happenings, its po-
lite yet lucid style, and its red-hot topicality
(for it is truly a journal), makes admirable
reading for those who like their literature up-
to-date. Those who attend the meetings of
the Assembly are, as a matter of fact, excel-
lently well provided by the enterprise of the
Secretariat with literature. A delegate's or a
journalist's pigeon-hole is far better than a
circulating library. New every morning is
the supply, and those who, in their spare
hours, like a nice lie down and a nice read
(all in two languages) shall have for their
entertainment the Assembly Journal for the
day, the Verbatim Record of the last meetings


;i3o MYSTERY AT GENEVA
of the Assembly and Committees, selected
press opinions of the affair (these are often
very entertaining, and journalists approach
them with the additional interest engendered
by the hope that the comments they themselves
have sent home to their papers may have been
selected for quotation: in passing it may be
observed that Henry Beechtree had, in this
matter, no luck), and all kinds of documents
dealing with every kind of matter—the Traf-
fic in Women, Children, and Opium, the ad-
mission of a new state to the League, inter-
national disputes, disagreeable telegrams
from one country about another, the cost of
living in Geneva, the organisation of Inter-
national Statistics, International Health, or
International Education, the Economic
Weapon of the League, the status or the
frontiers of a Central European state, the de-
sirability of a greater or a less great publicity,
messages from the Esperanto Congress, and so
on and so forth; every kind of taste is, in fact,
catered for.
To quote, then, the Journal for the day after
the first meeting of the Committee for Deal-
ing with the Disappearance of Delegates:—


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 131
"Committee No. IX. met yesterday,
Wednesday, Sept. 8th, at 3.30 p.m., under the
chairmanship of M. Croza (Paraguay).
"The Chairman pointed out that the agenda
before the Committee fell under several
heads:—
"1. Deprecation of baseless suspicions and
malicious aspersions.
"2. Investigation into possible or probable
motives for the assaults.
"3. Consideration of the adoption of pre-
cautionary measures to safeguard in
future the persons of delegates.
"4. Organisation of complete house to
house search of the city of Geneva by
police.
"5. Consideration of various suspicions
based on reason and common sense.
"In order to carry on these lines of inquiry,
five sub-committees were appointed, each of
which would report to the plenary committee
day by day.
"All the sittings of the sub-committees
would be in private, as the publicity which
had been demanded by one of the delegates


132 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
from Central Africa would vitiate, in this
case, the effectiveness of the inquiry.
"Before the sub-committees separated, sev-
eral members addressed the committee. M.
Gomez (Panama) proposed that special at-
tention should be given to the fact that Geneva
at all times, but particularly during the ses-
sions of the Assembly, was a centre of pesti-
lential societies, among whom were to be
found in large numbers Socialists, Bolshe-
vists, Freemasons, and Jews. In his opinion,
the headquarters of all these societies should
be raided. Above all, it should be remem-
bered that the delegates were all brothers in
friendship, and as such were above the sus-
picion of any but the basest minds.
"M. Chapelle (France) said this was in-
deed true of the delegates, but that it would
be a mistake if the committee should not keep
its mind open to all possibilities, and it must
be remembered that some of the nations most
recently admitted to the League had bands of
their fellow-countrymen in Geneva, who were
undoubtedly sore in spirit over recent eco-
nomic and political decisions, and might
(without, well understood, the sanction of


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 133
their delegates) have been guilty of this at-
tack on the personnel of the League by way
of revenge. I
"Signor Nelli (Italy) strongly deprecated
the suggestion of M. Chapelle as unworthy of
the spirit of fraternity between nations which
should animate members of the League.
"After some further discussion of Item 5
of the agenda, it was agreed to leave it to the
sub-committee appointed to consider it, and
the committee then broke up into five sub-
committees."
The Journal, always discreet, sheltered un-
der the words "further discussion of Item 5"
a good deal of consideration of various sus-
picions based on reason and common sense.
Most members of the committee, in fact, had
their suggestions to make; in committee
people always felt they could speak more
freely than in the Assembly, and did so. Bol-
shevist refugees, bands of marauding Poles
disbanded from General Zeligowski's army,
Sinn Feiners, Orangemen, Albanians, Turks,
unprotected Armenians, Jugo-Slavs, women-
traffickers, opium merchants, Greeks, Zion-


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 135
Morning Post, and who was an old school-
fellow of his. Excited by his own utterances
on the subject of Catholics, Fergus Macder-
mott suddenly remembered, while drinking
his tea, what day it was.
"My God," he remarked, profoundly
moved, to Mr. Garth of the Morning Post,
"it's the 8th of September."
"What then?" inquired Mr. Garth, who
was an Englishman and knew not days, except
those on which university matches were to be
played or races run or armistices celebrated.
"What's the 8th?"
The blue eyes of Mr. Macdermott gazed at
him with a kind of kindling Orange stare.
"The 8th," he replied, "is a day we keep in
Ulster."
"Do you? How?"
"By throwing stones," said Mr. Macder-
mott, simply and fervently. "At processions,
you know. It's a great Catholic day—like
August 15th—I forget why. Some Catholic
foolery. The birthday of the Virgin Mary, I
fancy. Anyhow we throw stones. ... I
wonder will there be any processions here?"
"You can't throw stones if there are," his


136 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
more discreet friend admonished him. "Pull
yourself together, Fergus, and don't look so
fell. These things simply aren't done outside
your maniac country, you know. Remember
where and what you are."
The wild blue fire still leapt in Mr. Mac-
dermott's Celtic eyes. His mind obviously
still hovered round processions.
"Of course," he explained, "one couldn't
throw stones. Not abroad. But one might go
and look on. . . ."
"Certainly not. Not if I can prevent you.
You'll disgrace the League by shouting: 'To
hell with the Pope.' I know you. If a pro-
cession is anywhere in the offing, it will make
you feel so at home that you'll lose your head
entirely. Go and find O'Shane and punch his
head if you want to let off steam. He'll be
game, particularly as it's one of his home fes-
tivals too. You're neither of you safe to have
loose on the Nativity of the B.V.M., if that's
what it is."
Macdermott gazed at the lake with eyes
that dreamed of home.
"It'd be a queer thing," he murmured, "if
there wouldn't be a procession somewhere to-


138 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
over Ulster by the Southern Free State Gov-
ernment. At the same moment, in his room
at the same hotel, Denis O'Shane, the Free
State delegate, was typing his manifesto,
which was about the tyranny exercised over
South Ireland by Ulster.
At 7.45 Macdermott finished his document,
read it through with satisfaction and remem-
bered that he had to go and dine with Garth.
He left his hotel with this intention, and could
not have said at what point his more profound,
his indeed innate intention, which was to go
to the Church of Notre Dame, asserted itself.
Anyhow, at eight o'clock, there he was in the
Place Cornavin, arriving at the outskirts of
the crowd which was watching the white-
robed crucifer and acolytes leading the pro-
cession out of open church doors and down
the steps.
Macdermott, blocked by the crowd, could
hardly see. He felt in an inferior position
towards this procession, barred from it by a
kindly and reverent crowd of onlookers. In
his native city things were different. He had
here no moral support for his just contempt
of Popish flummery. He did not want to do


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 139
anything to the procession, merely to stare
it down with the disgust it deserved, but this
was difficult when he could only see it above
bared heads.
A voice just above him said, in French:
"Monsieur cannot see. He would get a better
view from this window here. I beg of you to
come in, monsieur."
Looking up, Macdermott saw the face of a
kindly old woman looking down at him from
the first-floor window of the high house be-
hind him. Certainly, he admitted, he could
not see, and he would rather like to. He en-
tered the hospitable open door, which led into
a shop, and ascended a flight of stone steps.
On the top step, in the darkness of a narrow
passage, a chloroformed towel was flung and
held tight over his head and face, and he was
borne to the ground.
30
Thus this young Irishman's strong religious
convictions, which did him credit, betrayed
him to his doom. But, incomprehensibly,


i4o MYSTERY AT GENEVA
doom, in the sense (whatever sense that was)
in which it had overtaken his fellow-dele-
gates, was after all averted. He did not dis-
appear into silence as they had. On the con-
trary, the kindly old woman who had rushed
from the front window and bent over him as
he lay unconscious on the stairhead, saw him
presently open his eyes and stir, and heard the
faint, bewildered murmur of "To hell with the
Pope," which is what Orangemen say me-
chanically when they come to, as others may
say, "Where am I?"
Very soon he sat up, dizzily.
"I was chloroformed," he said, "by some
damned Republican. Where is the chap?
Don't let him make off."
But he was informed that this person had
already disappeared. When the old lady of
the house, hearing him fall, had come out and
found him, there had been no trace of either
his assaulter or of the chloroformed towel.
The kindly old lady was almost inclined to
think that monsieur must have fainted, and
fancied the Republican, the chloroform, and
the attack.
Fergus Macdermott, who never either


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 141
fainted or fancied, assured her that this was
by no means the case.
"It's part, no doubt," he said, "of this Sinn
Fein plot against delegates. Why they didn't
put it through in my case I can't say. I sup-
pose they heard you coming. . . . But what
on earth did they mean to do with me? Now,
madame, we must promptly descend and make
inquiries as to who was seen to leave your
front door just now. There is no time to be
lost. . . . Only I feel so infernally
giddy. . . ."
The inquiries he made resulted in little.
Some standers-by had seen two men leave the
house a few minutes since, but had observed
nothing, neither what they were like nor
where they went. No, it had not been ob-
served that they were of South Irish aspect.
It seemed hopeless to track them. The old
lady said that she lived there alone with her
husband, above the shop; but that, of course,
any scoundrel might stray into it while the
door stood open, and lurk in ambush.
"How did they guess that the old lady was
going to invite me in?" Macdermott won-
tlered. "If they did guess, that is, and if it


i42 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
was really part of the anti-delegate cam-
paign. Of course, if not, they may merely
have guessed she should ask some one (it may
be her habit), and hidden in ambush to rob
whoever it might be. But they didn't rob
me. ... It could be that this good old lady
was in the plot herself, no less, for all she
speaks so civil. But who is to prove that, I
ask you? It's queer and strange. . . ."
Thus pondering, Fergus Macdermott took
a cab and drove to the hotel where he was
to dine with Garth, the representative of the
Morning Post. He, would be doing Garth
a good turn to let him get in with the tale
before the other papers; he would be able
to wire it home straight away. The Morning
Post deserved that: a sound paper it was, and
at times the only one in England that got hold
of and stated the Truth. This attack on Mac-
dermott proved conclusively to his mind, what
he and the Morning Post had from the first
suspected and said, that the Irish Republicans
were at the back of the whole business,
helped, as usual, by German and Bolshevik
money.
"Ah, this proves it," said Macdermott, his


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 143
blue eyes very bright in his white face as he
drove along.
As to the procession, he had forgotten all
about it.
Mademoiselle Bjornsen, substitute dele-
gate for one of the Scandinavian countries, a
doctor of medicine, and a woman of high pur-
pose and degree, of the type which used to be
called, in the old days when it flourished in
Great Britain, feminist, often walked out in
the evening for a purpose which did her great
credit. She was of those good and disinter-
ested women who care greatly for the troubles
of their less fortunate, less well-educated and
less well-principled sisters, and who often
patrol streets in whatever city they happen to
find themselves, with a view to extending the
hand of succour to those of their sex who ap-
pear to be in error or in need.
On this evening of the 8th of September,
Mile. Bjornsen was starting out, after her din-
ner at the Hotel Richemond, on her nightly
patrol, when she was joined by Mile. Binesco


146 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
they themselves are thought tiresome, queer,
unsympathetic, unwomanly or unmanly, by
the more fully sexed partner they have been
betrayed by love's blindness into taking unto
themselves.
This is one of life's more frequent tragedies,
but had not affected either Mlle. Binesco, who
was womanly, and had always married (so to
speak) manly men, or Mile. Bjornsen, who
was neutral, and had not married any one, hav-
ing been much too busy.
Anyhow, these two ladies were at one in
their quest to-night. Both, whatever their
minds might be like, had warm feminine
hearts. Geneva, that godly Calvinist city,
was a poor hunting-ground on the whole for
them. But they turned their steps to the old
cite, rightly believing that among those an-
cient and narrow streets vice might, if any-
where, flit by night.
"These wicked traffickers in human flesh
and blood," observed Mlle. Binesco sighing
(for she was rather stout), as they ascended
the Rue de la Cite; "do not tell me they are
not somehow behind the mysterious assaults


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 147
on our unhappy comrades of the League.
Never tell me so, for I will not believe it."
"I will not tell you," Mile. Bjornsen, an
accurate person, replied, "for I know nothing
at all about it, nor does any one else. But to
me it seems improbable. I sometimes think,
mademoiselle, that there is some danger that
the preoccupation which women like our-
selves naturally feel with the suppression of
this cruel trade and the rescue of its victims,
may at times lead us into obsession or exag-
geration. I try to guard myself against that.
Moderation and exactitude are important."
"Ah, there speaks the north. For me, ma-
demoiselle, I cannot be moderate; it is a qual-
ity alien to my perhaps over-impetuous tem-
perament. I have never been cautious—
neither in love, hate, nor in the taking of risks.
You will realise, mademoiselle, that the risk
you and I are taking to-night is considerable.
Have we not been warned not to penetrate
into the more squalid parts of the city by
night? And we are not only delegates, but
women. At any moment we might be attacked
and carried off to some dwelling of infamy,
there to wait deportation to another land."


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 149
simply, for the courage of a thousand Scan-
dinavian heroes beat in her blood.
"And where you adventure, my dear
friend,".cried Mlle. Binesco, "I, a Roumanian
woman and a friend of kings, will not be be-
hind! We advance, then, in the name of hu-
manity and of our unhappy sexl"
32
Humanity, compassion, womanly sympathy,
and devotion to the cause of virtue—by these
noble qualities these two poor ladies were
lured to their fate. For it should be by now
superfluous to say that, though they entered
that archway, they did not emerge from it.
33
There also disappeared that night the good
Albanian bishop, betrayed by who knew what
of episcopal charity and response to appeals
for succour from his fellow-countrymen, the
helpless sheep of his flock, threatened by the


150 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
wolfish atrocities of the ineffable Serb-Croat-
Slovenes.
It did indeed seem that this unseen hand
was taking the highest types of delegate for
its purposes so mysterious and presumably
so fell.
34
Every one turned next morning with inter-
est to the day's issue of "Press Opinions" to dis-
cover what the world's newspapers were say-
ing of the tragic and extraordinary state of
affairs in Geneva. They were saying, it
seemed, on the whole, very much what might
be expected of them. The American press,
for instance, observed that the League, with-
out the support of the United States, was
obviously falling into the state of disruption
and disintegration which had long since been
prophesied. What was to be expected, when
the Monroe Doctrine was being threatened
continually by the bringing before the League
of disputes between the South and Central
American republics, disputes which, being
purely American, could not possibly be settled


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 151
by European intervention in any shape or
form? On this question of the Monroe Doc-
trine, the security and utility of the whole
League rested. ... It was rumoured that it
was the shaky attitude of the League on this
point that was responsible for its present col-
lapse. . . .
("Seems very like saying that America is
behind the whole game," commented many
readers.)
The French press commented on the fact
that no one had yet dared to lay a hand on
the French delegates. "Whatever," it said,
"may be thought of the other delegates, the
whole world has agreed to see in France a
nation so strong, so beneficent, and so humane,
that it merits the confidence of humanity at
large. Without it, no affairs could flourish.
The tribute to the prestige of France evinced
by this notable omission of assault cannot but
be gratifying to all who love France. With
the tragic disappearance of several English-
speaking delegates, it might perhaps be nat-
ural to dispense with the tedious use of two
languages where only one is necessary. No
one listens to the interpretations into English


152 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
of French speakers; the general chatter of
voices and movement which immediately
starts when the English interpreter begins, is
surely sign enough of the general feeling on
this point. . . ."
The more nationalist section of the Italian
press—the Popolo d'ltalia, for instance—
prophesied, with tragic accuracy, that the Al-
banian delegate would very soon be among
the victims of this criminal plot, in which it
was not, surely, malicious to detect Yugo-Slav
agency. It also spoke with admiration of the
poet Dante.
The Swiss press, in much distress, urged the
clearing up of this tragic mystery, which so
foully stained the records of the noble city of
Geneva, so beautiful in structure, so chaste in
habits, so idealistic in outlook, the centre of
the intellectual thought of Europe, and, above
all, so cheap to live in. For their part (so said
La Suisse), they attributed these outrages to
criminal agents from the hotels and shops of
Brussels, Vienna, and other cities which might
be mentioned, who had been sent to discredit
Geneva as a safe and suitable home for the
League. Fortunately, however, such discred-


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 153
iting was impossible: on the contrary, the
cities discredited were the above-mentioned,
which had hatched and put into execution
such a wicked plot.
The extracts selected from the British press
spoke with various voices. The Morning Post
commented, without much distress, on the ob-
vious disintegration and collapse of the
League, which had always had within itself
the seeds of ruin and now was meeting its ex-
pected Nemesis. Such preposterous houses
of cards, said the Morning Post, cannot expect
to last long in a world which is, in the main, a
sensible place. It did not now seem probable
that, as some said, Bolshevists were behind
these outrages; on further consideration it was
not even likely to be Irish traitors; for these
sections of the public would doubtless ap-
prove the League, typical as it was of the
folly which so strongly actuated themselves.
Far more likely was it that their assaults were
the work, misguided but surely excusable, of
the Plain Man, irritated at last to execute
judgment on these frenzied and incompetent
efforts after that unprofitable dream of the
visionary, a world peace. It was well known


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 155
said that at last the Assembly, formerly a little
dull, had taken on all the interest of a blood
and thunder melodrama. . . .
35 ^
The days went by, and the nights. Why
dwell on them, or, in detail, on the strange
—or rather the now familiar, but none the
less sinister—events which marked each? One
could tell of the disappearance, one after an-
other, of the prominent members of the
Council—of the decoy of Signor Nelli, the
chief Italian delegate, by messengers as from
Fiume with strange rumours of Jugo-Slav
misdeeds; of the sudden disappearance of
Latin Americans from the Casino, whither
they had gone to chat, to drink, and to play;
of the silent stealing away of rows upon rows
of Japanese, none knew how or why; of how
Kristna, the distinguished Indian, was lured
to meet a supposed revealer of a Gandhi anti-
League plot.
As full-juiced apples, waxing over-mellow,
drop in a silent autumn night, so dropped


156 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
these unhappy persons, delegate by delegate,
to their unguessed-at doom. And it would
indeed appear as if there were some carefully
deliberated design against the welfare of the
League, for gradually it appeared that those
taken had, on the whole, this welfare more at
heart than those left; their ideals were more
pacific, their hearts more single, their minds
more League.
The Turkish delegation, for example, did
not disappear. Nor the Russian, nor the Ger-
man, nor the Greek, nor the Serb-Croat-
Slovene.
In the hands of those left, the Assembly and
its committees were less dangerous to the wars
of the world than they had been before. The
best, from a League standpoint, were gone.
What, for instance, would happen to the dis-
armament question should it be brought up,
with the most ardent members of the disarma-
ment committee thus removed from the scene?
But, indeed, how could that or any other
question be brought up, in the present state
of agitation, when all minds were set on the
one problem, on how to solve this appalling
mystery that spread its tentacles further every


158 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
unrest. Russia was reaching out its evil
White hands to grasp and weld again into a
vast unhappy whole its former constituent re-
publics of Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Es-
thonia, Tauride, and White Russia. There
seemed every chance that it would shortly suc-
ceed in doing so. The nations growled every-
where like sullen dogs on fragile chains.
Never had the League of Nations, in all its
brief career, been more necessary, never less
available. Not a grievance could be given
that public airing from what is called a
world platform, which is so beneficial to the
airers, so apt at promoting fraternal feeling,
so harmless to all concerned. Instead, griev-
ances festered and went bad, and blood-poi-
soning was rapidly setting in. Not a voice
could be raised, as many voices would have
been raised, from that world-platform, to
urge contending parties to refer their differ-
ences to the court of International Justice, so
ready and eager to adjudicate, to apply inter-
national conventions, whether general or par-
ticular, international custom as evidence for
a general practice accepted as law, and teach-
ings of the most highly qualified publicists as


i6o MYSTERY AT GENEVA
it stumbles on mystery and disaster, becoming
material for a shocker. The meeting together
of organisations for the betterment of the
world is not News, in the sense that their fail-
ure is. Deeply Henry, going about his secret
and private business, intent and absorbed,
pondered this question of News, what it is and
what it is not. Crime is News; divorce is
News; girl mothers are News; fabric gloves
and dolls' eyes are, for some unaccountable
reason, News; centenaries of famous men are,
for some still stranger reason, News; railway
accidents are News; the wrong-doing of cler-
gymen is News; strangest of all, women are,
inherently and with no activities on their part,
News, in a way that men are not. Henry had
often thought this very singular. He had read
in accounts of public gatherings (such as
criminal trials, tennis tournaments, and box-
ing matches) such statements as "There were
many well-dressed women present." These
women had done nothing to deserve their
fame; they were merely present, just as men
were. But never had Henry read, "There
were many well-dressed men present," for
men were not News. To be News in oneself,


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 161
without taking any preliminary action—that
was very exciting for women. A further
question arose: were women News to their
own sex, or only to men? And were men per-
haps News to women? "There were many
well-dressed men present." . . . Ah, that
would be exciting reading for women, and
perhaps a woman reporter would thrill to it
and set it down. But men do not care how
many men were present, or how well they
were dressed, or what colour their hats and
suits were. All sorts of articles and letters
appear in the papers about women. Profound
questions are raised concerning them. Should
they smoke? Should they work? Vote? Take
orders? Marry? Exist? Are not their
skirts too short, or their sleeves? Have they
a sense of humour, of honour, of direction?
Are spinsters superfluous? But how seldom
similar inquiries are propounded about men.
How few persons discuss superfluous bache-
lors, or whether the male arm or leg is an im-
modest sight, or whether men should vote.
For men are not News.
Anyhow, thought Henry, anyhow delegates
became News the moment they disappeared.


164 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
eleven-thirty, he was walking about the old
city, followed at some distance by Henry
Beechtree.
Charles was not alone. He had with him
M. Kratzky from Russia, Sir John Levis, and
a small, quiet Calvinist minister whom Henry
had lately seen about Geneva.
The four gentlemen turned out of the Rue
du Perron down the narrow, ancient and cu-
rious Passage de Monnetier, and out of that
into a deep-arched alley running through a
house into another street. Henry, watching
from the corner of the Passage de Monnetier,
did not dare to follow nearer for some mo-
ments. When he had given them a little time,
he softly tiptoed to the mouth of the alley.
It was one of those deep cobbled passages that
run through many houses in the old quarter.
It was profoundly dark; Henry could only
faintly discern the three figures half-way
down it. They seemed to have stopped, and
to be bending down as if looking for some-
thing on the ground. The spark of an electric
torch gleamed suddenly, directed by the little
clergyman; its faint disc of light swam over
the dirty floor of the passage, till it came to


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 165
rest on an iron ring that lay flat to the ground.
The clergyman seized this ring and jerked at
it; after a moment it left the ground in his
hand, and with it the flap of a trap-door.
Whispers inaudible to Henry passed be-
tween the members of the party; then, one by
one, the three figures descended through the
open trap into the bowels of the earth, and the
lid closed upon them.
Henry tiptoed forward; should he follow?
On the whole—no. On the whole he would
wait until Wilbraham, his father-in-law, M.
Kratzky, and the clergyman emerged. What,
after all, would be the use of finding oneself
underground with desperate, detected crim-
inals, whose habit it apparently was to stick
at nothing? What, after all, could he do?
Henry was shivering, less from fear than
excitement. Here, indeed, was a clue. Were
they kept immured underground, these unfor-
tunate captive delegates? And did Wilbra-
ham and his criminal associates visit them
from time to time with food and drink? Or
without? With nothing, perhaps, but taunts?
And how many more in Geneva knew of this
trap-door and its secret? There were, every


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 167
Now and then a dog or a cat rushed by him,
startling him. Then, after twenty minutes or
so, he wearied of waiting. Weariness and
curiosity defeated caution; he pulled up the
trap-door by its ring and peered down into
blackness. Blackness, stillness, emptiness, and
a queer, mouldy smell. Henry sat on the hole's
edge for a full minute, dangling his legs.
Then, catching his breath a little (it may or
may not have been mentioned that Henry was
not very brave), he swung himself down on to
a hard, earthy floor.
It was a tunnel he was in; a passage about
six feet high and four feet wide. How many
feet or yards long was a more difficult and a
much more interesting question. Feet?
Yards? It might be miles. Henry's imagina-
tion bored through the impenetrable dark in
front of the little moon thrown by his electric
torch; through and along, through and along,
towards what? The horrid four who had pre-
ceded him—where were they? Did they lurk,
planning some evil, farther along the tunnel,
just out of earshot? Or had they emerged by
some other exit? Or were they even now re-
turning, to meet Henry in a moment face to


168 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
face, to brush by him as he pressed against the
damp brick wall, to turn on him suddenly
that swimming moon of light . . . and then
what?
Charles Wilbraham was no taker of human
life, Henry felt assured. He was too pru-
dent, too respectable, too much the civil serv-
ant. M. Kratzky, on the other hand, was a
taker of human life—he did it as naturally as
others would slay midges; while he breathed
he slew. If Henry should be discovered spy-
ing, M. Kratzky's counsels would be all for
making forth an end of Henry. Sir John
Levis was an armament knight: members of
the staff of the British Bolshevist needed not
to know more of him than that: the Calvinist
minister was either a Calvinist minister, and
that was bad, or a master-criminal of the un-
derworld disguised as a Calvinist minister,
and that was worse. Or both of these. Four
master-criminals of the underworld—these
intriguing, appalling creatures, so common in
the best fiction, so rare even in the worst life—
if one were to meet four of them together in
a subterranean passage . . . Could human
flesh and nerves endure it?


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 169
Henry, with his shuddering dislike of see-
ing even a goldfish injured or slain, shrank
far more shudderingly from being injured or
slain himself. The horrid wrench that phys-
ical assault was—and then, perhaps, the sharp
break with life, the plunge into a blank un-
known—and never to see again on this earth
the person whom one very greatly loved. . . .
As has been said, Henry was not brave.
But he was, after all, a journalist on the scent
of a story, and that takes one far; he was also
a hunter in pursuit of a hated quarry, and that
takes one farther.
Henry crossed himself, muttered a prayer
and advanced down the passage, his torch a
lantern before his feet, his nerves shivering
like telegraph wires in a winter wind, but
fortunately not making the same sound.
37
On and on and on. It was cold down there,
like death, and bitter like death, and dark.
Rats scuffled and leaped. Once Henry trod
on one of them; it squeaked and fled, leaving


xyo MYSTERY AT GENEVA
him sick and cold. His imagination was held
and haunted by the small quiet pastor; he
seemed, on the whole, the worst of the four
miscreants. A sinister air of deadly badness
there had been about him. . . . Lines ran in
and out of Henry's memory like cold mice.
Something about "a grim Genevan minister
walked by with anxious scowl." . . . Horrid.
... It made you sweat to think of him. Then
on the passage there opened another passage,
running sharply into it from the right. That
was odd. Which should be followed?
Henry swung his flashlight up each in turn,
and both seemed the same narrow blackness.
He advanced a few steps, and on his left yet
another turning struck out from the main
tunnel.
"My God," Henry reflected, "the place is a
regular catacomb."
If one should lose oneself therein, one might
wander for days, as one did in catacombs,
. . . Having no tallow candle, but only an
electric torch, one might eat one's boots , , H
the very rats....
Not repressing a shudder, Henry stood hes-
itating at the cross-roads, looking this way and


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 171
that, his ears strained to listen for sounds.
And presently, turning a corner, he per-
ceived that there were sounds—footsteps and
low voices, advancing down the left-hand pas-
sage towards him. Quickly shutting his light,
he stepped back till he came to the right-hand
turning, and went a little way up it, to where
it sharply bent. Just round the corner he
stopped, and stood hidden. He was gambling
on the chance that whoever were coming
would advance, back or forward, along the
main tunnel when they struck into it. If, on the
other hand, they crossed this and turned up
his passage, he could hastily recede before
them until perhaps another turning came, or
possibly some exit, or until they turned on
him that horrid moon of light and caught
him....
Well, life is a gamble at all times, and more
particularly to those who play the spy.
Henry listened. The steps came nearer.
They had a queer, hollow sound on the earthy
floor. Low voices murmured.
It came to Henry suddenly that these were
not the voices of Charles Wilbraham, of Sir
John Levis, of M. Kratzky, or, presumably


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 173
Protestant ministers. They're all down here
doing it now. I am tracking them. And His
Holiness, you remember, sent an encouraging
message to the Assembly"
"The sort of flummery he would encourage.
. . . I beg your pardon, Beechtree. We will
not discuss religion: not to-night. Time is
short. How did you get into this rat-trap?
And whom, precisely, are you tracking?"
"Through a trappon in an archway off the
Passage de Monnetier. And I am tracking
Wilbraham, Sir John Levis, M. Kratzky, and
a Protestant clergyman, who all preceded me
through it. But I don't know in the least
where they have got to. There are so many
ramifications in this affair. I took it for a
single tunnel, but it seems to be a regular
system."
"It is," said Garth. "It extends on the other
side of the water too. We got into it this
evening through that house in the Place Cor-
navin where Macdermott was bilked by a Sinn
Feiner."
"We had our suspicions of that house ever
since," Macdermott went on; "so we went ex-
ploring this evening, and by the luck of God


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 175
"Your lunatic paper has turned your brain,
my son," Garth said.
"Well, let's be getting on," Macdermott
impatiently urged. "Which way did your
plotters take, Beechtree? We may as well be
getting after them, anyhow."
"I don't know. I've lost them. I didn't
follow at once, you see; I waited, thinking
they would come out presently. When they
didn't, I came down too. But by that time
they'd got a long start. And, as there are other
exits, they may have got out anywhere."
"Well, let's come along and look. We'll
each take a different passage; we'll explore
every avenue, like Cabinet Ministers. I'll go
straight ahead; one of you two take that right-
hand road, and the other the next turning,
whenever it comes. We'll each get out where
and how we can. Come on."
Garth turned up to the right. Henry went
on with Macdermott for some way, till an-
other turning branched off, running left.
"Ah, there's yours," said the Ulster dele-
gate. "I shall keep straight on, whatever al-
luring avenues open on either side to tempt
me. To-morrow (if we get out of this) we'll


i76 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
bring a gang of police down and do the thing
thoroughly. Good luck, Beechtree. Don't
scrag honest civil servants or good clergymen
on sight. And don't let old Kratzky scrag
you. Politically he's on the right side (that's
why he'd want to scrag you, and quite right,
too), but personally he's what you might call
a trifle unprincipled, and that's why he'd do
it as soon as look at you."
38
Henry walked alone again. The passage
oozed water. The silence was chilly and deep.
Against it and far above it, occasional sounds
beat, as the world's sounds beat downwards
into graves.
Geneva was amazing. How many people
knew that it was under-run by this so intricate
tunnel system? Did the town authorities
know? Surely yes. And, knowing, had they
not thought, when the recent troubles began,
to explore these avenues? (How that horrid
phrase always stuck in one's mind; one could
not get away from it, as many a statesman,


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 181
The man led the way to the steps and up
them, into a tiny ground-floor bedroom, and
through that into a passage. As he unbolted
a side door, Henry said to him, "You know
something about Signor Wilbraham, then?"
The plump little figure shrugged.
"A good deal too much, certainly."
"Good," said Henry. "Later you shall tell
what you know. Don't be afraid. He can't
hurt you."
As to that the raised eyebrows showed
doubt. Wilbraham, it was apparent, inspired
a deep mistrust. The fat little man was shiv-
ering, either from fear or cold or thwarted
sleep, as he opened the door for Henry to
pass out.
"The will of God will be done," was what
he regretfully said, "unless his dear Mother
can by any means avert it. For me, I escape,
if necessary, where they cannot find me.
Good-night, signore."
He shut the door softly behind Henry, who
found himself outside a block of old houses
at the lake end of the Rue Muzy, under a
setting moon, as the city clocks struck two.
The night, which had seemed to Henry al-


182 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
ready so long, was yet, as nights of action go,
young.
Henry, as he walked homewards by the
lake's edge, wondered where and in what man-
ner Macdermott and Garth had emerged, or
would emerge, to the earth's face.
The earth's face! Never, on any of the
lovely nights in that most lovely place, had
it seemed to Henry fairer than it seemed this
night, as he walked along the Quai des Eaux
Vives, the clean, cool air filling his lungs and
gently fanning his damp forehead, the dark
and shining water lapping softly against its
stone bounds. How far better was the earth's
face than its inside!
Henry, tired and chilled, had now no
thought but sleep. To-morrow early he would
go to the President of Committee 9 with his
report. Also he would wire the story early
to his paper. As he lay in bed, too much ex-
cited, after all, to sleep (for Henry suffered
from nervous excitement in excess), he com-
posed his press story. Anti-disarmament,
anti-peace fiends, plotting with Russian Mon-
archists to wreck the League ... all this had
the British Bolshevist many a time suggested,


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 183
but now it could speak with no uncertain
voice. Names might even be given.... Then,
in the evening, when the police had explored
the avenues, investigated the mystery, and
proved the facts, a second telegram, more
detailed, could be despatched. What a scoop!
After all, thought Henry, tossing wakeful and
wide-eyed in the warm dawn, after all he was
proving himself a good journalist. No one
could say after this that he was not a good
journalist.
39
M. Fernandez Croza, delegate from Para-
guay, and President of the Committee on the
Disappearance of Delegates, sat after break-
fast with his private secretary and his ste-
nographer in his sitting-room at the Hotel des
Bergues, dictating a speech he meant to de-
liver at that morning's session of the Assembly
on the beauties of a world peace. It was a
very creditable and noble speech, and he
meant to deliver it in Spanish, as a protest,
though his English and French were fault'
less.


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 185
spondent of the British Bolshevist, and the
words "Urgent and private business."
"I suppose he wants a statement on the Par-
aguay attitude towards Argentine meat," M.
Croza commented. "I had better see him."
He turned to his stenographer, and said (in
Spanish, in which tongue, it may be observed,
it sounded even better than in the English
rendering) : "And so the gentle doves of peace
comma pursued down stormy skies by the
hawks of war comma shall find at length . . .
shall find at length. . . . Alvarez, please finish
that sentence later on. That will do for the
present, senorita. . . . Admit Mr. Beechtree,
messenger."
Mr. Beechtree was admitted. The slim,
pale, shabby, and yet somehow elegant young
man, with his monocle, so useless, so foppish,
dangling on its black ribbon, pleased, on the
whole, M. Croza's fastidious taste.
After introductions, courtesies, apologies,
and searings, Mr. Beechtree got to business.
"I have," he began, in his soft, light, tired
voice, "a curious story to tell. I am in a po-
sition, after much search, to throw a good deal
of light on the recent mysterious disappear-


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 187
poised pencil, "before the League of Nations,
so called"
"It if the League of Nations," said the del-
egate, with a little frown.
"To be sure it is," Henry recollected him-
self. He had merely used "so called" as a
term indicative of contempt, like "sic," for-
getting that he was not addressing the readers
of the British Bolshevist. "Well, before the
League of Nations existed—to be exact, in the
year 1919—I had occasion, by chance, to dis-
cover some things about this individual. I
learnt that his wife was the daughter of an
armaments knight, and that he himself had
a great deal of money in the business. There
was no great harm in this, from his point of
view; he never, in those days, professed to be
a pacifist, for, though he wielded throughout
the war a pen in preference to a sword, he
truly believed it to be mightier; he was, in
fact, in the Ministry of Information. He was
not inconsistent in those days, though he was,
I imagine, never easy in his mind about this
money he had, and held his shares under his
wife's name only. But when the League Sec-
retariat was formed, he was one of the first to


188 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
receive an appointment on it. It was not gen-
erally known where he got his income from,
and he found himself in a prominent position
on the staff of a League, one of whose objects,
if only one among many, is to end war. So
there he was, his fortune dependent on the
continuation of the very thing he was officially
working to suppress. It wasn't to be expected
that he should be pleased at the prospect of
the disarmament question coming up before
the Assembly; or at the prospect of the vari-
ous disputes going on now in the world being
discussed in the Assembly and referred to
judicial arbitration. Much better for him if
the rumours and threats of war should con-
tinue."
"Continue," stated the delegate, "they al-
ways will. That, Mr. Beechtree, we may take
as certain, in this imperfect world. Yes. . . .
He's an Englishman, I assume, this friend of
yours?"
"An Englishman, yes. Intensely an Eng-
lishman." Henry paused a moment. "I had
better tell you at once; he is Charles Wil-
braham."
"Wilbraham!" M. Croza was startled. He


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 189
felt no love for Wilbraham, who, for his part,
felt and showed little for the Latin American
republics. M. Croza bitterly remembered
various sneers which had been repeated to
him. .. . Besides, it was Wilbraham who had
cast suspicion on Paraguay. Further, he had
been at Oxford with Wilbraham, and had dis-
liked him there.
"Go on, sir," he said gravely and yet
ardently.
"So," said Henry, "Wilbraham hatches a
scheme. Or, possibly it is hatched by his
father-in-law, Sir John Levis (he's one of the
directors of Pottle & Rett's, the great arma-
ment firm), and Wilbraham is persuaded to
carry it out; it doesn't matter which. Levis
has been in Geneva now for some days. He
has lain rather low and has not been staying
at Wilbraham's house, but I've evidence from
his secretary that they have been constantly
together. They cast around to find convenient
colleagues, unscrupulous enough to do des-
perate things, and with their own reasons for
wishing to nullify the work of the League and
to hold up discussion of international affairs
while disturbances come to a head."


igo MYSTERY AT GENEVA
"Such colleagues," mused M. Croza,
^'jvould not be hard to find."
"Whom do they pitch on? There are a'
number of possibly suitable helpers, and I
can't say how many of them are involved.
But what I have evidence of is that they
brought in the Russian delegate to their coun-
cils—Kratzky, who is a byword even among
Russians for sticking at nothing. If Kratzky
could stave off discussion of European politics
and paralyse the Assembly until Russia should
be ready and able to pounce on and hold by
force the new Russian republics—well, nat-
urally monarchist Russia would be pleased.
I have evidence that Wilbraham and Levis
have been continually meeting and conferring
with Kratzky since the Assembly began.
Kratzky, that bloody butcher. . . ."
M. Croza, whose sympathy was all with
small republics against major powers, agreed
about Kratzky.
"You haven't," he suggested, "notes of what
has actually passed between Wilbraham and
Kratzky on the subject?"
"I regret that I have not. I could never
get near enough, , „ . But I have evidence


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 191
of continual meetings, continual lunches and
conferences. This I have obtained from Wil-
braham's secretary. She has to keep his en-
gagements for him. I have obtained posses-
sion of the little pocket-book in which she
notes them. I have it here. See: 'Saturday,
Lunch, Cafe du Nord, Kratzky and Sir John.
Sunday, Up Saleve, with Kratzky, Monday, 8
jf. m., Bathe, Kra 'No, that can't be
Kratzky; he wouldn't bathe; that must be
some one else. And so on, and so on. Now,
I ask you, what would one talk about to
Kratzky all that time except some iniquitous
intrigue? It's all Kratzky knows about. So,
you see, when I began to suspect all this, I
took to tracking Wilbraham, following him
about. It's been, I can tell you, a most tiring
job. Wilbraham is such a very tedious man.
A most frightful bore. His very voice makes
me sick. ... But I followed him. I tracked
him. All over the shop I tracked him. And
last night he trapesed round the town with
Levis and Kratzky and a horrid little Cal-
vinist clergyman who must be in it too, I
hate Calvinists, don't you?"


i92 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
"Intolerable persons," agreed the delegate
from Paraguay.
"Well, at last they hared down a trap-door
in an archway into the bowels of the earth.
I saw them into it. After some time I went
down too. I couldn't find them, but I found
an extraordinary system of tunnelling—a reg-
ular catacomb* You get in and out of it all
over the town, through trappons, mostly in
eld houses, I think. I didn't discover where
half the tunnels ended. But obviously Wil-
braham and his friends know all about it.
And that's what they've done with the dele-
gates. Either hidden them somewhere alive'
down there, or killed them. When Kratzky's
in an affair, the people up against him don't,
as a rule, come out alive. ... I don't know
how much the police know about this tunnel
business, but they must make a complete in-
vestigation, of course."
"Obviously, without delay. ... A singular
story, Mr. Beechtree; very singular."
"Life is singular," said Henry.
"There you are very right." . . . But M.
Croza, used to the political life of South
American republics, found no stories of plots


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 193
and intrigues really singular. "You have rea-
son," he added, "to think badly of Mr. Wil-
braham, I infer?"
"Grave reasons. I know him for a very
ugly character. It is high time he was ex-
posed."
M. Croza thought so too. As has been said,
he did not care for Charles Wilbraham. And
what a counter-charge to Wilbraham's ac-
cusations against the residents at the Hotel
des Bergues!
"One of these Catholic converts," he re-
flectively commented. "I do not like them.
To be born a Catholic, that is one thing, and
who can help it? After all, it is the true faith.
To become a Catholic—that is quite another
thing, and seems to us in Paraguay to denote
either feebleness of intellect or a dishonest
mind. In a man, that is. Women, of course,
are different, not having intellect, and being
naturally devotes. So, anyhow, we believe in
Paraguay. But perhaps one is unfair."
"It is difficult not to be unfair to these,"
Henry agreed. "But it is more than difficult,
it is impossible, to be unfair to Wilbraham.
Nothing we think or say of him can be in


194 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
excess of the truth. Such is Wilbraham. He
always has been. . . . Now, if you will, sir,
I will show you the documents I have with
me which corroborate my story."
The delegate beckoned to his secretary.
"Go through Mr. Beechtree's papers, Al-
varez. I must be getting to the Assembly.
It is past the hour. ... At this afternoon's
meeting of Committee 9, Mr. Beechtree, I
will lay these suggestions of yours before my
colleagues, and we will consider what action
shall be taken. You will be present. Mean-
while, Alvarez, have orders taken to the po-
lice to explore the subterranean passages. Mr.
Beechtree, you will be able to direct them
to the means of entry, will you not?"
"I shouldn't wonder," said Henry, "if they
are being explored. Macdermott, from Ul-
ster, and Garth of the Morning Post, were
down there last night. I don't know if they
ever got out or not, but if they did they'll
be doing something about it this morning.
They take a different view from mine, I may
say. Macdermott suspects Sinn Feiners (Ul-
ster has only one idea, you know), and Garth
agrees with him, but adds Bolsheviks and


196 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
as it comes before us, irrespective of precon-
ceived theories. The open mind is the empty
mind. The pre-judgment is oftdn the delib-
erate and considered judgment, based on rea-
son, whereas the post-judgment is a hasty
makeshift affair, based on the impressions of
the moment. Fortunately, however, the two
are apt, in the same mind, to concur"
"Quite so, quite so." M. Croza, who was
in a hurry, nodded affably but decidedly, and
Henry, who was apt, in the interests of dis-
cussion, to forget himself, left him.
Henry despatched straightway a long mes-
sage to the British Bolshevist, guarded in
language but sinister in implication, and hint-
ing that further developments and more def-
inite revelations were imminent. In the jour-
nalists' lobby he encountered Garth, who had
also been sending a message.
"Oh, hallo," said Garth, "so you got out all
right. So did Macdermott. I had the devil
of a time. I tried one exit that didn't work;


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 197
must have been bolted on the outside, I sup-
pose. Anyhow, I hammered away and noth-
ing happened. Then I struck another avenue
and came to another trap which gave after
mighty efforts on my part, and I came up into
that bookshop which Burnley disappeared
into, and which told the police so firmly that
he left again in a few minutes. The trap was
hidden away under the counter. I didn't stop;
I thought it probably wasn't healthy, so I
unbolted the front door and crept off home to
bed. First thing this morning I put the po-
lice on the track, and they're getting busy
now asking the bookseller questions and send-
ing gangs to work the catacombs. One thing
I've discovered: that bookshop is a meeting-
place for Bolshie refugees and German an-
archists. They meet in the old chap's back
parlour and do their plotting there and send
gold to the trade-unions."
"How do you know?" Henry asked, inter-
ested.
"Well, it's quite obvious. Too busy to go
into the evidence now. I must look in at the
Assembly and see what's doing. . . ."
Henry perceived that the correspondent of


2oo MYSTERY AT GENEVA
chair with a portfolio full of papers, looking
pale, shabby, and tired, but exalted, like one
whose great moment is at hand.
After the minutes of the last meeting had
been read, the President rose to address the
committee in French. He had, he said, some
fresh and important facts to communicate. A
quite new line of inquiry had that day been
suggested to him by one who had for some
time been secretly pursuing investigations.
The facts revealed were so startling, so amaz-
ing, that very substantial evidence would be
necessary to persuade committee members of
their truth. It could at present be only a ten-
tative theory that was set before the committee;
but let the committee remember that magna
est Veritas et prevalebit; that they were there
to fulfil a great duty, and not to be deterred by
any fears, any reluctances, any personal
friendships, any dread of scandal, from seek-
ing to draw out truth from her well. He
asked his colleagues to listen while he told
them a strange story.
The story, as he told it, gained from his
more important presence, his more eloquent
and yet more impartial manner, a plausibility


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 201
which Henry's had lacked. His very air, of
one making a painful and tentative revelation,
was better than Henry's rather shrill eager-
ness. Every now and then he paused and
waved his hand at Henry sitting behind him,
and said, "My friend Mr. Beechtree here has
documentary evidence of this, which I will
lay before the committee shortly." When/
after long working up to it, he gave the sus-
pected member of the Secretariat the name
of Wilbraham, it fell on the tense attention
of the whole table. Henry, looking up to
watch its reception, saw surprise on many
faces, incredulity on several, pleasure on more,
amusement on a few. He met also the blue
eyes of Mr. Macdermott fixed on him with a
smile of cynical admiration. Macdermott
would doubtless have something to say when
the President had done. But what he was now
thinking was that the correspondent of the
British Bolshevist had more journalistic gifts
than one would have given him credit for.
"Where, you may demand of me," pro-
ceeded the President, "is M. Wilbraham
now? That I cannot tell you. He entered
this system of secret passages last night in


204 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
"Who is he?" asked Henry, of an Italian
Swiss, and the answer came pat.
"The greatest detective at present alive. An
Italian, but at home in all countries, all lan-
guages, and all disguises. Really a marvel-
lous genius. Nothing balks him."
"We have, you see," continued Wilbraham,
in his disagreeable, sneering voice, "some
rather important information to communicate
to the committee, if you will pardon the inter-
ruption. Presently I will ask Signor Cristo-
fero to communicate it. But for the moment
might I be allowed to ask for a little personal
explanation? Since I entered the room I
heard a remark or two relating to myself and
various friends of mine which struck me as
somewhat strange. . . ."
M. Croza courteously bowed to him, with
hostile eyes.
"You have a right to an explanation, sir.
As you have entered at what I can but call
such a very inopportune moment, you heard
what I w^is saying—words uttered, need I say,
in no malicious spirit, but in a sincere and
public-spirited desire to discover the truth. I
was accusing and do accuse, no one; I was


zo6 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
spirited away, or even murdered, the missing
delegates, may I ask?"
"That," said M. Croza politely, "was Mr.
Beechtree's suggestion—only, of course, a
suggestion, based on various facts which had
come to his knowledge. You can, doubtless,
disprove these facts, sir, or account for them
in some other way. No one will be more
delighted than the committee over which I
preside."
"Might I hear these sinister facts?" Charles
was getting smoother, more unctuous, more
happy, all the time. It was the little curl of
his lip, so hateful, so familiar, with which he
said these words, which seemed to snap some-
thing in Henry's brain. He pushed back his
chair and sprang to his feet, breathless and
dizzy and hot. He regarded not the cries of
"Order," from the chair and the table; order
or not, he must speak now to Charles.
"You shall hear them, sir," he said, and his
voice rang shrilly up and up to a high and
quivering note. "There is one, at least, which
you will not be able to deny. That is that you
have shares, large and numerous, in the arma-
ments firm of Pottle and Kett, of which Sir


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 207
John Levis, your father-in-law, is chief di-
rector."
Charles fixed on him a surprised stare. He
put on his pince-nez, the better to look.
"I do not think," he said, in his calm,
smooth voice, "that I am called upon to dis-
cuss with you the sources of my income. In
fact, I'm afraid I don't quite see how you
come into this affair at all—er—Mr. Beech-
tree. But, since your statement has been made
in public, perhaps I may inform the commit-
tee that it is wholly erroneous. I had once
such shares as this—er—gentleman mentioned.
It ought to be unnecessary to inform this com-
mittee that I sold them all on my appoint-
ment to the Secretariat of the League, since
to hold them would, I thought, be obviously
inconsistent with League principles. If it in-
terests the committee to know, such money
that I possess is now mostly in beer. Mr.—er
—Beechtree's information, Mr. President, is
just a little behind the times. Such a stirring
organ as the British Bolshevist should, per-
haps, have a more up-to-date correspondent.
Will you, Mr. President, request Mr. Beech-
tree to be seated? I fear I find myself unable


MYSTERY AX GENEVA 209
43
The situation was of an unprecedented un-
usualness. The President of Committee 9
hardly knew how to deal with it. All eyes
gazed at Henry, who said quietlyr "That is a
damned lie," felt giddy, and sat down, leaning
back in his chair and turning paler. The
monocle dropped from his eye and hung
limply from its ribbon. Henry literally could
not, after his tiring night, his exhausting day,
the emotional strain of the last hour, stand up
to Charles Wilbraham any more. If he could
have a dose of sal volatile—a cocktail—any-
thing ... as it was, he wilted, all but crum-
pled up; all he was able for was to sit, as com-
posed as might be, under a deadly fire of eyes.
The pause was ended by Fergus Macder-
mott, who heaved largely from his chair and
remarked, "I would like to second Mr. Wil-
braham's suggestion that we will hear Mr.
Cristofero's communication. May I also sug-
gest that the income of Mr. Wilbraham is be-
tween himself and his bankers, and the sex of
Mr. Beechtree between him and his God, and
that both are irrelevant to the business before


2io MYSTERY AT GENEVA
this committee and need not be discussed."
The committee applauded this, though they
felt a keen interest in both the irrelevant top-
ics. The President called on Signor Cristo-
fero to address the committee, and beckoned
Mr. Wilbraham to a chair.
The little soi-disant pastor stepped forward.
He was a spare, small, elderly man, with a
white face and gentian-blue eyes and a mouth
that could make up as anything. During the
last few days it had been a prim and rather
smug button. Now it had relaxed in shrewder,
wider lines. He showed to Committee 9 the
face not of the Calvinist pastor but of the
great detective. He spoke the Italian of the
Lombardy Alps, the French of Marseilles, the
English of New York, the German of Alsace,
the Russian of Odessa, the Yiddish of the Ro-
man Ghetto, the Serbian of Dalmatia, the
Turkish of the Levant, the Greek of the Dode-
canese, and many other of the world's useful
tongues. He addressed the committee in
French, speaking rapidly and clearly, illus-
trating his story with those gestures of the
hands which in reality (though it is not com-
monly admitted) make nothing clearer, but


212 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
check them. The society had its agents all
over the world, in all countries. Some were
paid, others worked out of good will. This
society objected to the League partly because
it was afraid of the decrease of armaments,
and ultimately of wars. Unlikely as this pros-
pect sounded, the society was taking no
chances. Among its members were the di-
rectors of armament firms, inventors, profes-
sional soldiers of high rank, War Office offi-
cials, those who hoped to get some advantage
for themselves or their countries out of wars,
and those who genuinely thought the League
a dangerous and foolish thing calculated to
upset the peace of the world. Many of its
members also objected to the League on all
kinds of other grounds, disliking its humani-
tarian enterprises, its interference with ne-
farious traffickings, such as those in women,
opium, and cocaine. Powerful patent medi-
cine manufacturers were exasperated by its
anti-epidemic efforts; many great financiers
objected to the way it spent its money; some
great powers thought they would be freer in
their dealings with smaller powers without it.
And so on and so forth. All over the world.


214 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
largely enough paid. To him, to this unscru-
pulous and able man, the society had said,
"Hold up and discredit the coming Assembly
somehow. The method we leave to you. You
have carte blanche in the matter of money,
and you shall be paid an immense sum for
success."
"This man," said Signor Cristofero, "un-
dertook the mission. With unparalleled skill,
scheming and ingenuity, he decoyed and en-
trapped member after member of the Assem-
bly, luring each one by some suitable bait to
some spot where there was a trap-door giving
on to the system of underground passages
which runs, as is well known to the authorities,
beneath part of Geneva. What the authori-
ties did not know, is the number of trap-door
entries to these passages, and where they ulti-
mately lead. I have been exploring them now
for some days. Last night I conducted Mr.
Wilbraham through them, together with his
friends M. Kratzky and Sir John Levis. At
a certain point in one of the tunnels one ap-
pears to come up against an earth wall; it
seems to be a cul-de-sac. I made the discovery
that it is not a cul-de-sac. The earth wall is


2i8 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
of it, arrest him, and release the prisoners.
That is all I have to tell you, gentlemen."
44
Murmurs indicative of the utmost interest
broke out round the table directly Signor
Cristof ero stopped speaking. Interest mingled
here and there with a little disappointment,
for many a cherished theory had to be aban-
doned or modified. Mr. Macdermott, for in-
stance, had not yet found a place for Sinn
Fein in the plot as at present revealed, nor Mr.
O'Shane for Ulster. The Lithuanian dele-
gate was, to say the least of it, surprised that
the affair was not more largely due to dis-
banded Polish soldiers of Zeligowsky's army,
and the delegates of more than one nation
found it strange that the Germans appeared
to be out of this thing. But, after all, Dr.
Franchi had been only the agent; he might
be backed by any one in the world, and doubt-
less was. Also, he must have had many ruf-
fians in his employ to do the executive work.
So no doubt really and in the main things were


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 219
pretty much as each member of the committee
had suspected. The members who looked
most gratified were the Latin Americans,
from whom suspicion was now honourably
lifted (though they regretted that Charles
Wilbraham was no longer a suspect), and the
Serb-Croat-Slovene delegate, who stared at
his Italian colleague with a rather malicious
smile. Had he not always said that Italians
(unless it were Albanians) had done this
thing?
The President, after thanking Signor Cris-
tofero much for his highly interesting and im-
portant information, asked if any other gentle-
man would like to say anything. The delegate
from Bolivia begged to propose that the com-
mittee should accompany Signor Cristofero
and the police on the visit to the chateau, as
they certainly ought to be present on the oc-'
casion. This suggestion was received with
universal acclamation, and it was decided that
a steamer should take them all up to Monet
at six-thirty.
A subdued voice from beside the President's
chair inquired whether the press would also
be permitted on the expedition. In the ex-


22o MYSTERY AT GENEVA
citement, astonishment, and disappointment of
Signor Cristofero's story and the prospect of
such a stimulating lake trip, the correspondent
of the British Bolshevist had temporarily for-
gotten his (or her, as the case might be) own
troubles.
The inquiry focussed the attention of the
committee again on Mr. Beechtree, that du-
bious, if irrelevant, problem. A smile ran
round the room.
The President said that undoubtedly corre-
spondents would be permitted to accompany
the expedition, for reports of the day's discov-
eries and events must as soon as possible be
communicated to the press.
45
Mr. Beechtree, feeling uncomfortable un-
der the general interest and in the intolerable
presence of Mr. Wilbraham, slipped away.
He wanted privacy to think, to hide from the
fire of eyes. More, he wanted coffee. And
perhaps a raspberry ice-cream soda with it.
There was one place he knew of. . . . Dash-


MYSTERY AT] GENEVA 221
ing down to the Paquis, he just caught a tnou-
ette for the Eaux Vives jetty. From there to
the ice-cream cafe was but a short way. He
hurried to it, and soon was enjoying the com-
fort of coffee, a raspberry ice-cream soda, and
meringues. After all, there was always that,
however bitter a defeat one might suffer at the
hands of life. He also had a cocktail.
He drank, ate, and imbibed through straw,
to give himself a little courage and cheerful-
ness in the black bitterness of defeat. Black
bitterness it was, for his long-laid scheme of
revenge had toppled, crashing on the top of
him, and Charles Wilbraham, eyeing the
ruins, hatefully and superciliously smiled, for
ever and always in the right. ...
Charles Wilbraham towered, with his hate-
ful rightness, before Henry's drowsy eyes
(how long it was since he had slept!), and he
slipped for a moment into a dream, the straw
falling from his mouth.
He woke with a start, hastily ate a me-
ringue, called for his bill, and looked at his
watch. It was nearly six o'clock. In half an
hour the steamer would start for Monet.
Well, that at least would be interesting.


224 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
"So am I," Henry gloomily returned. "He
deserves to be upset. And I'm not even now
sure he hadn't a hand in it all. . . . But of
course it's no use saying so. No one will ever
believe it of him now that I've mucked it so.
They'll believe nothing I say. . . . Did you
hear what he said about me at the committee
meeting? I suppose every one has."
"Well, I imagine it's got about more or
less. Is it true, by the way?"
"On the contrary, a complete and idiotic
lie."
The expressionless detachment of Henry's
voice and face moved Grattan to mirth.
"That's all right, then; I'll put it about.
You keep on smiling, "old bean. No one's go-
ing to worry, even if it wasn't a lie, you
know."
"Wilbraham will worry. He will, no
doubt, take steps to have me excluded from the
Press Gallery as a disreputable character. I
don't particularly mind. What I do mind is
that it isn't Wilbraham who's going to get run
in for this business, but poor old Franchi. I
like Franchi. He's delightful, however many
delegates he's kidnapped."


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 229
tain. The Roumanian produced three keys,
unlocked the door, and led the way along a
further passage, this time only lighted by
high, small windows. Here began the Keep
Wing. At the farther end of this corridor
was another oak door, this time only once
locked. From beyond it came the sound of
cheerful voices raised in talk and laughter.
The Roumanian hung back. He obviously
did not desire to lead the way any farther.
After a short, low-toned conversation with
Signor Cristofero, he went back through the
triple-locked door.
"He fears his master," the detective re-
marked, with a shrug. "He is going to make
his escape from the chateau, lest the other
servants execute vengeance on him. No mat-
ter. We are now arrived."
Having with a gesture summoned round
him the police, he opened the door and led the
way into the room beyond.
It was a large refectory, with a long table
down the middle. At the near end of it sat
Dr. Franchi, with lifted glass; down the sides
were ranged the lost delegates. One of them—
perhaps Lord Burnley, who sat on his host's


230 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
right—seemed to have been telling art
amusing story, for all at the near end of the
table were laughing. Or rather, nearly all:
for, resolute in its gravity, its air of protest,
the face of Lord John Lester, the mainstay
of the League, was bent sadly over a dish of
salted almonds.
The ex-cardinal had barely time to look
round at the noise of entry before three police-
men seized him firmly and snapped handcuffs
on his wrists.
It was a scene the like of which, it is safe
to say, had never before been seen among
all the strange scenes which had been enacted
along the shores of that most lovely lake. A
strange scene, and a strange company.
The faces of some thirty delegates, inter-
rupted in their meal, were turned, with vary-
ing expressions, upon the newcomers. Lord
John Lester sprang to his feet, with an impa-
tient cry of "At last!" which was, however,
drowned by the ecstatic croon of Made-
moiselle the delegate for Roumania, "Ah!


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 233
dear brother. . . . This, then, gentlemen and
ladies, is good-bye. I must apologise for any
inconvenience that may have been caused by
your detention, either to yourselves or to the
society which you represent, and I must thank
you for the great pleasure you have afforded
me by your company. I think that, at least,
you will be able to report that you have suf-
fered no great discomforts while my guests."
"We have been most excellently enter-
tained," Lord Burnley replied, and a murmur
of assent ran round the table.
The Albanian Bishop rose to his feet, lift-
ing his glass.
"Your health, sir," he said, and the other
delegates drank the toast. (All except Lord
John Lester, who impatiently muttered
"Pshaw!")
"Indeed," said Mile. Binesco, "Dr. Franchi
has been more than kind. Another few days,
and we might have fallen into the hands of
the iniquitous traffickers behind him and been
deported overseas—but he personally has been
most good to us. All we could want. . . ."
Fergus Macdermott had pushed to the front
of the interested onlookers.


234 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
"I'd like to ask you one question, sir. Why
didn't your people finish the job they began
on myself—if it was your people, and not, as
I suspect, some Sinn Fein scoundrels?"
The ex-cardinal gave his kindly smile.
"It was certainly my people, Mr. Macder-
mott. But, in attacking you, they made a mis-
take. When they perceived who you were,
they desisted. They had, you see, orders not
to remove certain delegates, of whom you and
your colleague from South Ireland were two,
from the scene. It was considered that the
Irish delegates would serve the cause I have
the honour to represent better by their pres-
ence at the Assembly than by their absence
from it."
"Enough talk," Signor Cristofero put in,
"It is time we went."
"Brief and to the point as ever, dear
brother. Good-bye, then, gentlemen and
ladies. I regret, Lord Burnley, not to have
had time in which to finish the interesting con-
versation we began last night on the subject
of my present book. It will have to keep for
happier days. Meanwhile, I hope to have a


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 235
quiet little time in which to meditate on and
complete the book."
As he passed Henry Beechtree on his way
to the door, he stopped.
"Ah, my dear young man. Luck did not
favour our little plan, did it?"
"That person," said the disagreeable voice
of Charles Wilbraham, "is, if I may be al-
lowed to mention it, a young woman, Dr.
Franchi."
The ex-cardinal turned to him a cold face,
"I have known that, Mr. Wilbraham, a
good deal longer than you have." He smiled
sweetly at Henry.
"Yes, my young friend. There was an in-
cident, you may recollect, of a goldfish.... I
have several—er—nephews and nieces—and
have watched them grow up. Never yet have
I seen the boys disturbed by such episodes.
Masculine nerves are, as a rule, more robust.
You should remember this in future.... You
will pardon my having noticed the incident.
I would never have referred to it had not the
subject been raised. Some day you shall dine
with me again, if you will. . . . But my good


238 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
They had had, it seemed, a delightful time.
Books, newspapers, delicate food and wines,
games, conversation, everything except lib-
erty, had been provided for their delectation.
"One can't help, in some ways, being even
a little sorry it is at an end," Lord Burnley
murmured, as he watched the lights of the
chateau recede, and thought of the dusty
days of labour which were to follow.
"If only it's not too late—if only irretriev-
able damage has not been done," muttered
Lord John Lester, frowning at the same lights,
thinking of the vast agenda for the session,
and of the growling nations of the world.
"I think," the voice of Charles Wilbraham
came, high and conceited, to Henry Beech-
tree as he lurked disgraced in a corner and
listened and watched, "I think we may say
we have put a spoke in the wheel of these
scoundrels this time. Yes; / think we may
say that...."
So
Henry that night packed his things. He
was leaving next day. He was not going to


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 241
her in moments of stress, she had stood before
him, loathing his smooth voice, his lofty
-choice of words, his whole arrogant, pompous
presence. Then he had dictated the minute.
"From Mr. Wilbraham.
"To the Establishment Branch.
"I find I have to make other arrangements
about a secretary. I shall be glad if you will
transfer Miss Montana to other work, and
send some one to me more thoroughly efficient.
It would be well if I could have a selection
up for interview and make a choice, prefer-
ably after a preliminary trial. The wo%k will
be responsible, as I am going out to the Peace
Conference in a fortnight.
"8.1.1919."
"Kindly see," Charles had ordered her,
"that that is typed and goes down immediately.
I shall be glad to have it for initialing in not
more than five minutes from now."
That had been the way Charles had always
addressed his secretaries; Charles was like
that. Courtesy to a subordinate was, in his ,
view, wholly wasted. He kept all he had of


242 MYSTERY AT GENEVA
it for his superiors. "The only really rude
man in the Ministry," Henry had heard him
called by the typists, and typists always know.
Miss Montana had been subsequently trans-
ferred to the Establishment Branch, where
she had spent her time typing chits about other
people's salaries and appointments. Finally,
when the staff was reduced, she was the first
to be dismissed. She had never been to Paris;
never seen the Peace Conference. Charles,
with first one bullied secretary, now another,
had moved on his triumphant way from con-
ference to conference, a tour unbroken by his
appointment to the staff of the League of
Nations Secretariat. Miss Montana had never
been to a conference in her life.
In her loafing, idle and poor, about London,
with her idle and poor brother and her Irish
journalist lover, bitterness had grown more
bitter. No money, no prospects, no career.
Only chance bits of free-lance journalism, not
enough to pay the rent of decent rooms. She
had vowed to be revenged on Charles, but no
way presented itself. She had prayed God
to send her to some bright continental place
with a sunny climate and if possible with


MYSTERY AT GENEVA 245
not of herself, but of Charles. Charles was
in the right; she was in the wrong. Charles
(she might have known it) had done nothing
so unseemly as to retain armament shares
while entering the staff of the League; Charles
had transferred his money to beer. Charles
had not conspired against the League. Rather
had Charles conceived the clever idea of en-
gaging a famous detective to solve the mys-
tery, and triumphantly he had had it solved.
Charles emerged from this business, as al-
ways from every business, with credit;
Charles was triumphantly in the right.
It came to Miss Montana afresh, what she
had really always known, that the Charleses
of this world always are in the right. You
cannot put them in the wrong. They put you
in the wrong, for ever and ever. They may
be all wrong, within and without, but they
cannot be in the wrong. The wrong is in
them, not they in it. However false, selfish,
complacent, arrogant, and abominable a life
Charles might have led, one would know that
at the Judgment Day he would somehow be
in the right. . . . Right with God, Charles
would be, and contemptuously and without


fool1
lie In
fool'
i%
[kit
;W
Sert
tei:;
:St
lift
(0
lake