Chapter XI

The name of the Anapootra Ruby Mines--that name of power--left Mr. Clutterbuck as blank as ever.

It couldn't be a medicine by the name of it, and if it was an investment, he hadn't come for any advice of _that_ sort. He thought he knew his way about _there_.

"I don't understand what you mean," he said a little bluntly, for of late his courage had increased with his worries.

"Why," said Mr. Bailey, as though it were the simplest thing in the world, "the Anapootra _Ruby_ Mines. Talk about 'em. Say you're interested in 'em. It'll work marvels."

Mr. Clutterbuck was almost in despair.

"If that's all you got to tell me," he said----

William Bailey put a hand on his shoulder. "Now there you are," he said, "that's just what I was afraid of. I give you a tip--it isn't a tip I'd give anybody else, and it's the very best tip I could give you. And because you don't see _why_ it's a good tip, you're going to reject it."

"No I'm not, Mr. Bailey, really I'm not," said the unfortunate Clutterbuck. "But I don't understand--upon my word I don't understand."

"What's there to understand?" asked William Bailey. "There are the Anapootra Ruby Mines, and you just talk about them; that's easy enough. You bring them up at dinner; you add a postscript when you write a letter: 'By the way, have you heard about the Anapootra Ruby Mines?' Or you open a paper and say to the company: 'It's funny, but I don't see anything about the Anapootra Ruby Mines to-day.' You mayn't see _why_ it will work wonders, but it will. By the way, have you ever seen the name in a paper?"

"I seem to have seen it somewhere," said Mr. Clutterbuck, not liking to confess his ignorance.

"Well, you haven't," replied William Bailey rudely. "You may bet your hat on that. If they'd been in the papers, there'd be nothing to talk about. But _you_ talk about them long enough, and they'll get in the papers all right."

"But I don't see the connection," quavered Mr. Clutterbuck.

"Well, there it is," said William Bailey sighing, "there's the tip. If you try it and let it work, it will do marvels; and then you'll see what I've done."

"But what are they?" persisted Mr. Clutterbuck.

"Oh, ruby mines!" almost shouted William Bailey.

"Yes, certainly, but where?"

"In Anapootra of course," said Bailey.

Mr. Clutterbuck rose to go with a joyless face.

"You come back to me when it begins to work, and I'll see you through," were the last words of William Bailey, and his guest heard them ringing in his ears as he went mournfully to the train.

In The Plâs that very evening he tried it on. They were at their lonely meal, all three, Charlie Fitzgerald, who inwardly wished he had got away, Mrs. Clutterbuck, and the master of the house. They dared not have friends under such a cloud. Mr. Clutterbuck said casually to Mrs. Clutterbuck:

"My dear, do you know anything of the Anapootra Ruby Mines?"

"No," said Mrs. Clutterbuck sharply, and at the same time in a manner that clearly showed she was bored. The City had always wearied her since her husband's success; she hardly thought it quite the thing to speak of it before Charlie Fitzgerald. As for that well-born youth, he remained quite silent and ate with singular rapidity the Mousseline Braganza à la Polignac which he had before him.

"Do you know anything about them?" said Mr. Clutterbuck undaunted, and turning to Charlie Fitzgerald.

His wife issued one of her commanding glances, but he avoided it.

"The--Anapootra--Ruby--Mines?" said Charlie Fitzgerald, hesitating between each syllable. "No, I don't. I know about the _Brah_mapootra: it's a river."

"Yes," said Mr. Clutterbuck, and this singularly unfruitful conversation ended.

But Charlie Fitzgerald wondered and wondered more deeply what on earth he was to do. His task had been difficult enough already; it was becoming impossible.

Next day he took his bag and was off, but he promised to be home before the end of the week, and he promised still more sincerely, in private to Mr. Clutterbuck, to do everything that could possibly be done, and if he failed, to form some further plan. He was careful not to use any of the cars--he had used them quite enough lately, and the weather was foul. He took the train in the common fashion and drove from Victoria straight to Barnett House. The telephone had prepared them for his visit, and the Duke of Battersea, always the kindest and the warmest of friends to the young men of his rank, took him affectionately into the inner room, and heard all he might have to say.

* * * * *

The Duke of Battersea, now well stricken in years, was of that kind which age matures and perfects.

The bitter struggles of his youth when, in part a foreigner, ill acquainted with our tongue and bewildered by many of our national customs, he had made his entry into English finance, had given him all the wisdom such trials convey, but they had left nothing of that bitterness too often bred in the souls of those who suffer. The failure of the Haymarket Bank would not indeed have checked so tenacious a character, but the undeserved obloquy which he suffered in the few years succeeding that misfortune, and during the period when it was falsely imagined that he had finally failed, might have put him out of touch with the national life and have given him a false and uncharitable estimate of the country of his adoption. So far from permitting any such acidity to warp his soul, Mr. Barnett (as he then was) had but the more faithfully gone forward in the path which destiny offered him, and he had reaped the reward which modern England never fails to give to those of her sons who have preserved, throughout all the vicissitudes of life, a true sense of proportion and a proper balance between material prosperity and the public service.

When he had been raised to the peerage as Lord Lambeth, a vigorous man of fifty years, not only was his public position assured, but that respect for a firm character and a just maintenance of a man's own establishment in the world which should accompany such a position, was deeply founded in the mind of the general public.

The newspapers, through which the great mass of our fellow citizens obtain their information, mentioned him not only continually, but with invariable deference, and often with admiration. His efforts in the House of Lords in favour of Bosnian freedom, and in the particular case of Macchabee Czernwitz, had proclaimed just that disinterested enthusiasm which we love to see applied by our great men to foreign affairs; while, nearer home, the Organ Grinders' Bill, for which he was mainly responsible, was a piece of practical legislation which had obtained general recognition upon both sides of either House.

It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that when the M'Korio Delta Development Company was taken over by the State, his connection with that gallant experiment in the building of Empire, earned him a permanent fame more valuable than any material reward. He had long ago severed all personal connection with the district, retaining only so many shares as permitted him to sit upon the Board, and it is no little tribute to this great Englishman to point out that after seventeen years, during which it had been impossible to pay a dividend, he was able triumphantly to persuade a united public opinion and the Chancellor of the Exchequer to purchase the concession at par: more, he handed over intact to the Crown not only the delta of the M'Korio River, but Mubu Otowa and the malarial district to the south of Tschè.

It was shortly after this achievement, in the year 1910, that he consented--somewhat reluctantly--to an advance in honour and accepted the Dukedom of Battersea.

The lower rungs of the ladder he had been willing to mount; but a natural reserve had forbidden him hitherto to accede to the most pressing entreaties from either Party. He had indeed kept aloof from party politics, and had subscribed to the funds of the two great organisations only because he thought it his duty to enable men poorer than himself to display their talents in the arena of Parliament and because he justly desired to preserve some power for righteousness with the Executive of the moment.

Even at this late hour, over seventy years of age, and prepared at any moment to answer the Great Summons, he would hardly have followed the advice of his friend the Prime Minister in accepting the honour proposed to him, had not the task been rendered sadly easier to him by one tragic accident: there was no longer an heir to his vast wealth and honourable name. The Master of Kendale (for such was the name of the old Scottish place), the handsome, intelligent boy with the bourbon nose, the wealth of black curls, proud full lips, and brilliant eyes which had lent such life to so many reunions, the child of Lord Lambeth's old age, his Ben-jamin was no more. The young soldier had lost his off stirrup only the summer before while trotting his yeomen on parade before the royal visitors to the Potteries, and when he was picked up he was quite dead; the neck was broken between the second and third cervical vertebræ.

For the old man the blow was terrible. Long widowed, all his hopes had centred upon this only child whom, though not yet of age, he had already begun to train in the great money which he was destined to inherit and control. For a moment he thought of giving up Barnett House--of resigning his affairs. At last he rallied, and the tragedy had this good in it for England, that it permitted him to accept the Dukedom, and perhaps also permitted him to continue, if only as a solace, that active interest in the wider commerce of the Empire wherein his talents were of such fruit and value to his country.

It was in connection with these that the Duke of Battersea had undertaken the management of those Anapootra Ruby Mines, the quiet transference of which to his able management had been the triumph of the last vice royalty. Is it to be wondered at if Fitzgerald, fearing such interests were menaced, went to warn their chief protector?

He was brief and clear. The Ruby Mines were out. They must be well out or old Clutterbuck wouldn't have heard of them, and old Clutterbuck had.

No words of mine are needed to defend the commercial honour of the Duke of Battersea; still less need I waste a moment's effort in an apology for our great Civil Service. It needs men of a very different calibre from Mr. Bailey to throw doubt upon the absolute integrity of our Imperial system; and the last Lieutenant-Governor of Anapootra in particular, deservedly boasting a host of friends, intensely laborious, honourably poor, would have cause for complaint if even an eulogy of him, let alone a defence, were undertaken here. But in order to comprehend the foolish and treasonable agitation Mr. Bailey hoped to raise, it is necessary that I should put down plainly all the circumstances of the venture.

For many centuries the ruby mines of Anapootra had been worked as the property of that native State. And when the administration of the valley was taken over by Great Britain the exploitation of the mines very naturally followed. From April 1 of the year 1905 they had become, along with certain other possessions of the State, a portion of the public domain.

The traditional methods by which their wealth had hitherto been exploited were wholly insufficient. A community of some hundreds of natives, working upon a complex, co-operative system, living in a miserable state of poverty and degradation, had paid, from immemorial time, a fixed percentage of their output to their Sovereign; and the humanitarian faddism of Sir Charles Finchley--whose appointment was one of the few mistakes of Lord Curzon's viceroyalty--had permitted this system to endure during the first few years of our occupation. But it was obvious that so primitive an arrangement could not endure. In 1910 there was but one question before the new Lieutenant-Governor; whether it would be more profitable to establish a direct exploitation of these mines by the Crown, or to concede that exploitation for a term of years to some company which, under expert advice and with long experience of the business, might secure a higher profit to the State. It was only after deep thought and the full consideration of every detail, that the Lieutenant-Governor decided upon the latter course and signed a concession to a private company for a term of fifteen years.

He further determined--and it was the act of a strong man--to avoid the disadvantages of public competition with its accompaniment of ill-informed and often unpatriotic criticism, of questions in the House of Commons, and of all the paraphernalia of ignorance and cant.

He made the concession boldly to a company of his own choice, and though he was not particularly concerned with the persons involved so long as the company itself was in his opinion honest and efficient, he was none the less delighted to learn that so great a financier as the Duke of Battersea had guaranteed its position and security--nay, was himself, in his capacity of the Anglo-Moravian Bank, the principal shareholder in the new venture.

It is ill work excusing any man so talented and honest, so devoted to the public service, as the late Lieutenant-Governor of Anapootra, but the criticism to which he has been subjected makes that task necessary, however painful.

The concession signed was, upon the face of it, just such a document as political puritans at home, ignorant as they are of local conditions, would pounce upon in their desire to vent their ill-informed suspicion of their own countrymen. The rent to be paid by the company was but a quarter of that originally paid by the native workers, and less than a tenth of that which official estimates of the yield under modern methods had contemplated. Moreover, no rent was to be paid before 1915, the fourth year of the concession, and there were to be rebates in case the company should come upon weak pockets or the supply should fall below a certain level in the interval for which the concession was granted. Those of my readers who are acquainted with the details of finance will at once perceive that these advantages were no more than what was necessary to tempt a private venture and the risk of private capital. But if any _not_ acquainted with large financial operations should have lingering doubts, it is enough to add that the Lieutenant-Governor of Anapootra had been so scrupulously careful of the public interest as to resign his post and to terminate a great pro-consular career in order to accept the directorship of the new company where he could overlook its action and check its contributions to the exchequer. He was determined that no sacrifice upon his part should be spared in his zeal for the public fortune.

He did more: he persuaded the chief Government expert upon the mines to throw up _his_ secure place, the prospect of his pension--everything, and to take at a somewhat increased salary the position of Consulting Engineer to the new Company.

He did yet more. He, a man suffering from a grave internal disease,[8] underwent, in the height of the hot season, the long journey to England in order to impress upon the Secretary of State[9] the prime importance of secrecy. He risked what was dearer than life to him--his very honour--for a venture which would ensure riches to England, and would bring enlightenment and modern progress to one far forgotten corner of the Indian world.

In a word, he left nothing undone which a sensitive and scrupulous gentleman should do to preserve the interests of his country, and in all this action he sought no fame, he permitted not a word to appear in the public Press; he went so far--it was quixotic upon his part--as to deny all rumours until the plan was complete. And though the fame of the Anapootra Valley has since widely increased through the lucrative operations of the new company, and the wide dispersion of its shares among the public, its former Lieutenant-Governor has to this day successfully prevented his name from being connected with the history of that great new asset in our commercial system.

Other nations have public servants perhaps better trained in a technical sense than are ours, but no nation can boast a body of men who will thus obscurely and without reward sacrifice themselves wholly in the public service and be content to remain unknown.

There is the whole truth upon the Anapootra Ruby Mines.

The reader who has followed the plain narrative put before him will be able to judge between it and the monstrous assumption upon which Mr. Bailey was prepared to conduct, or at any rate to initiate, his mischievous agitation.

The rapidity with which that agitation developed was embarrassing, even to a man so used to immediate decisions as the Duke of Battersea. To the ex-Lieutenant-Governor, whom his long and faithful public service in the tropics had deprived of digestion and had rendered partially deaf, it was appalling.

It was upon Tuesday afternoon, January 8, 1912, that Mr. Bailey, looking up at the ceiling, had launched the fatal words. It was upon Tuesday evening that Mr. Clutterbuck had repeated them in the presence of Fitzgerald: thanks to the prompt and loyal action of that strong young Irish soul, the Duke knew of them before Wednesday noon.

Forewarned is forearmed:--the malignant plot was at last defeated--but at what a sacrifice of honest ambition and happy lives the reader must learn and curse the name of William Bailey.

* * * * *

Charlie Fitzgerald sat long with the aged Duke--though there was little to say. He received with deference and grateful willingness the suggestion to be of service in a matter where written words were impossible. He made a note of whom he was to visit; how high he was to go in the event of some agency threatening to print the story of the Company; what he was to say to the editor by telephone, and what by letter to the Secretary of State. He proved that afternoon a second son to the old childless man, and when he had dined alone with him, and admired the new Rodin on the stairs, he went off to Scotland in the midnight sleeper to see the ex-Governor before the post should reach him. He was prepared to do all this and more for the Duke of Battersea, and the Duke was a grateful man.

* * * * *

The next morning's post was something of a trial to Mr. Clutterbuck in the absence of his secretary. He had learnt to depend upon that prop altogether, and at any other time he would have allowed all the letters which were not, by the handwriting, the letters of friends to accumulate unopened; but that day, January 10, 1912, that Thursday, he was too anxious to do any such thing. He opened one letter, then another; the third positively stupefied him. It was from his agent in Mickleton, and simply told him that a petition was to be lodged disputing the validity of his election. They had learnt the news upon the Wednesday evening.

Mr. Clutterbuck was an honest man.

The occasions on which it is possible to bring against a man of English lineage the grave accusation of tampering with political morals are very, very rare; still rarer, thank God, are the occasions on which such an accusation can be maintained.

In vain did Mr. Clutterbuck--all his energies on the strain as they used to be in the old days of commerce--minutely examine his experiences of the month before. He could not discover a word or a gesture of his or any act authorised by him, even indirectly, which could have led to so monstrous an accusation. His sense of honour felt the thing keenly, and the agent's letter trembled in the hand that held it. Then, like a clap of thunder, came the memory of the bag of sovereigns and the Bogey Man.

He had been assured and reassured that it was a common practice admitted in all elections: he knew, upon perfectly good evidence, that another Bogey Man had done the same ritual and necessary act for Lord Henfield. It was without a doubt a fixed custom in every election. The sum was small; it was a fair wage for honest work openly done. Nevertheless the memory of the actual metal weighed intolerably upon Mr. Clutterbuck's ill ease.

That had done it! The only other source he could think of was his wife, and he knew her too well to suspect her of any foolish and ill-considered act of charity which might have compromised his chances.

As for the half-sovereign, the wicked little half-sovereign, his lawyer had completely satisfied him. The return of it cleared him wholly. No! It was the Bogey Man, and there was no help for it.

He went in at once to see Mr. Bailey. He forgot to telephone: he was in an agony lest that one friend and stay should be out. But there he found him again, still at his international list, which had now got as far as the "M's," "Montague--Samuel, 1883 (Gladstone)."

This time he did not forget his manners. He met the merchant with great sympathy, and looking at him a little critically, said with good cheer:

"It's begun to work, you see!" He had seen about the petition in the papers.

Mr. Clutterbuck did not even hope to understand. "Oh, Mr. Bailey," he said. "Mr. Bailey, what on earth am I to do?"

To this Mr. Bailey returned the irrelevant reply: "Go on talking about the Anapootra Ruby Mines!" as though that action were a sort of panacea for the disturbed heart of man. It was bitter mockery in the ear of one whose greatest hopes were thus dashed at the end of a long and honourable life.

"I had expected more from you, Mr. Bailey," said Mr. Clutterbuck gravely.

William Bailey was again touched.

"I mean it, Clutterbuck," he said; "I really mean it. All medicines are bitter at first; it's a big business, but it's the right way--I do assure you it's the right way. I suppose you've written about those Ruby Mines--postscripts, eh? A few cards I hope? A word or two to friends in the train? Mentioned them to the servants? They're very useful, servants are! Oh, and by the way, I ought to have told you--the parson. Parsons are splendid; so are doctors. But you can't have done them all yet."

"Mr. Bailey," said Mr. Clutterbuck solemnly, "I haven't opened my lips in the matter; at least," he added, correcting himself, "only to my wife at dinner."

"And Charlie 'Fitzgerald' was there no doubt. My Cousin Charlie?" asked William Bailey pleasantly. "I've just got past him on my list--at least not him, but his grandfather. 'Daniels--Fitzgerald 1838.' Jolly old man his grandfather, but a little greasy--I remember him. He was called Daniels--Daniel Daniels; son of old Moss Daniels, the Dublin sheeny, that came to people's help, you know; you ought to know about the Daniels; very old family; we used to call his wife's drawing-room the lions' den. She was my aunt, you know," he added cheerfully. "Cousin of mine, is Charlie."

"Oh, but Mr. Bailey," groaned Mr. Clutterbuck, leaving all these irrelevancies aside, "what _am_ I to do?"

"Oh, let 'em have it," said William Bailey in the serenity of his dissociation from politics and every other vanity.

"Let 'em unseat me!" shrieked Mr. Clutterbuck.

"You can't help it," said Mr. Bailey, "eh?"

"But they can't prove anything," said his guest. He was excited and defiant. "There's nothing to prove!"

"Oh, come," said Mr. Bailey, "come Mr. Clutterbuck. Don't go on like that. If they're going to unseat you, they're going to unseat you. And what's being unseated? Old Buffle was unseated three times."

"I should die of it!" said Mr. Clutterbuck with a groan.

"No you won't," said Mr. Bailey. "The Lord shall make your enemies your footstool; or, at any rate, His agent on earth will give you a good day's sport with them. Meanwhile you go on with those Ruby Mines. And, wait a minute, there's something to do to keep your mind off it meanwhile: there's a good agency in Fetter Lane; they have a lot of first-rate men. I remember a man called Bevan who did some very good work for an enemy of mine a little time ago. Go and give them a tenner and get them to find out who was behind that petition; though I think I know already. I'll come with you."

* * * * *

The two men went eastward together, Mr. Bailey talking of a thousand improbable things on the way, and they laid the task before the very courteous manager, who assured them it would be the simplest thing in the world. And so it was, for they learnt the same evening that though the petition had been lodged by a large grocer of the name of Hewlett in Mafeking Avenue, the real mover in the affair was a workman resident in a small street off the Crescent, a casual labourer of the name of Seale.

"That's all right," said Mr. Bailey when the news came to them as they sat at dinner together. "You won't find out that way. They been got at. That's a tenner wasted," he added anxiously, "but I'll pay it--I gave the advice. You go back home, and I'll let you know everything I hear within two days."

And Mr. Clutterbuck went home a little, but only a little, comforted; feeling that he had indeed one ally--but what an ally! A man who talked in enigmas, a _dilettante_ with wild theories in which he himself only half believed; a man half ostracised, half tolerated, and wholly despised, but a man in the swim, anyhow: the memory of that consoled Mr. Clutterbuck.

Two days afterwards Charlie Fitzgerald returned. His story was perfectly concise, too concise, alas, for that stricken household. He did not bother them with his visit to the Duke of Battersea and to Scotland--he spoke only of their own business. He had seen Peter Street yet once again. They were sorry, but it had happened from having too many names on the list; some had to wait; they admitted they had postponed Mr. Clutterbuck's name to Paardeberg Day, when there was a batch of thirty to bring out.

"But now there's the Petition," said Charlie Fitzgerald a little awkwardly; "you see under the circumstances----"

"I see," said Mr. Clutterbuck with a grim face.

"Don't take it like that," said Charlie Fitzgerald, "they can't prove anything. It's only a bit of spite."

"That's what I was saying to-day," said Mr. Clutterbuck. And the Anapootra Ruby Mines were forgotten--but Mr. Bailey had not forgotten them!

The horror of the Member--of the still Member for Mickleton, of the Member for Mickleton in the National Party interest--was as deep as hell when he received by post a marked copy of a low Socialist rag, whose name he barely knew, and there under the title "What We Don't Hear," was a jeering allusion to the Anapootra mines, coupled with a laudatory account of himself as the champion of popular rights. Next day a severe but obscure rebuke connecting his name with an unworthy piece of demagogy appeared in the _Standard_. A little later a fine defence of his courage was included in a letter to the _Guardian_. Mr. Clutterbuck was in terror of the unknown, and everywhere the dreadful sound of Anapootra haunted him. He walked over the Downs to clear his brain; he sat down in the little inn at Ragman's Corner, where they always gave him a private room and treated him as the chief gentleman of their neighbourhood. He had hardly tasted his glass of sherry when the publican said to him with cheerful respect:

"Well, sir, I see you've started another hare, and I wish you luck, sir. Here's to the People!"

Mr. Clutterbuck turned pale; but when the publican had finished his glass and wiped his mouth with his finger, he did not fail to add:

"Here's to you, sir, and the Putrid Ruby Mines, whatever they may be, and good luck to the lot!"

Oh the agony of an isolated man! Oh, passion of humanity, when it can find no fellow on whom to repose! The violent agitation of youth returned to his aged blood as he went home in the dark January evening, and he almost feared that the belated peasants whom he met so rarely as he hurried home, would each of them whisper as they passed the hateful name of Anapootra; that some evil shape would start from the darkness and scream it in his ear.

For a day or two the agony endured. Visitors and guests, the parson in his weekly visit, the doctor who had come to advise him upon the nature of his port, all in varied tones slyly or gravely, or with astonishment or casually, all brought in the Accursed Thing.

The _Times_--and he loved them for it--had not printed a word; but the _Spectator_, keen and breezy as it is, and abreast of every new interest in English life, had published an honourable protest; the editor was sure that a man who was in the forefront of the heroes who had redeemed the Congo would not sully his name by a disreputable agitation against his fellow countrymen; while, in another sphere, the _Winning Post_, as he knew by a secret peep taken at the bookstall, positively had a cartoon of a vague ghastly thing labelled "The Anapootra Ruby Mines," and a little figure, undoubtedly himself, supporting it with difficulty in the face of a violent gale.

Then after a few days his mood gradually changed. Mr. Clutterbuck began to take a secret pride in his connection with these Gemmiferous Caves of the Orient. There was no doubt at all that for the second time in two months he was a public man; a martyr perhaps in a public cause. Greatness began to apparel him, and side by side with the case of Rex _v._ Fishmonger and Another, which he understood in a certain fashion, the Anapootra Ruby Mines--still a complete mystery to him--supported his growing fame.

One inept Radical sheet went so far as to suggest that he was the cat's-paw of the wicked men who had perpetrated that fraud upon their country, but the greater part, especially of the Democratic press, nobly maintained his integrity, and said they would see him through to the end.

His new publicity consoled him a crumb, a mere crumb, in the prospect of the dreadful days before him. He sometimes indulged the inward hope that no evidence could unseat a man now so deservedly the darling of a Public cause; in the intervals when this consolation failed him, he fell back upon the memory of his integrity and unblemished if short public life; he had assured and reassured himself as to the Bogey Man, and he was at last at ease upon the bag of gold. The consciousness of his innocence out-weighed the gloomy prophecies of William Bailey, and as the days passed the memory of that gentleman's forecast grew paler and faded away. But the passage of the days brought with it also the time of the election petition; there was a week, five days--four. On the last Monday he sat for an hour or two with Charlie--who was of course to give evidence--they considered every aspect, and could see no loophole for attack. On the morrow they went into Mickleton together, and as they passed at speed through the streets of the borough they seemed to him too silent; even the police he thought--it may have been but fancy--but even the police, he could have sworn, were colder and more formal than of yore.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 8: Liver.]

[Footnote 9: Then (in 1911) Mr. Buffle.]