“Thank you, Mr. Fenn,” she said, “I don’t think that we will trouble you. Mr. Furley is making enquiries both at Mr. Orden’s rooms and at his clubs.”
“You are perfectly satisfied, so far as I am concerned, I trust?” he persisted, as he opened the door for them.
“Perfectly satisfied,” Catherine replied, looking him in the face, “that you have told us as much as you choose to for the present.”
Fenn closed the door behind Catherine and the Bishop and turned back into the room. Bright laughed at him unpleasantly.
Fenn threw himself into his chair, took a cigarette from a paper packet, and lit it.
“No objection,” his friend yawned. “What’s wrong now?”
“Haven’t you heard the news? It seems he’s the fellow who has been writing those articles on Socialism and Labour, signing them ‘Paul Fiske.’ Idealistic rubbish, but of course the Bishop and his lot are raving about him.”
“I’ve read some of his stuff,” Bright admitted, himself lighting a cigarette; “good in its way, but old-fashioned. I’m out for something a little more than that.”
“Stick to the point,” Fenn enjoined morosely. “Now they’ve found out who Julian Orden is, they want him produced. They want to elect him on the Council, make him chairman over all our heads, let him reap the reward of the scheme which our brains have conceived.”
“They’d better have him, I suppose,” Bright said, with slow and evil emphasis. “Yes, they’d better have him. We’ll take off our hats, and assure him that it was a mistake.”
“Too late. I’ve told Miss Abbeway and the Bishop that he is at large. You backed me up.”
Bright thrust his long, unpleasant, knobby fingers into his pocket, and produced a crumpled cigarette, which he lit from the end of his companion’s.
“I have come to the conclusion,” Fenn decided, “that it is not in the interests of our cause that Orden should become associated with it in any way.”
“We’ve a good deal of power,” Bright ruminated, “but it seems to me you’re inclined to stretch it. I gather that the others want him delivered up. We can’t act against them.”
“Not if they know,” Fenn answered significantly.
Bright came over to the mantelpiece, leaned his elbow upon it, and hung his extraordinarily unattractive face down towards his companion’s.