“Everybody's taking this 'Days of Uniting' frightfully seriously. Ive had a letter from my governor ordering me to report on the fifteenth inst.”
“Which is the day after to-morrow.”
“I looked up the calendar, and you're right, Jimmy. According to the governor, people think it's a very good idea.”
“Who wouldn't, with free railway traveling chucked in?” said Jimmy in disgust.
The girl came out on to the lawn at that minute with a newspaper in her hand.
“Mr. Blake, have you seen this?” she asked.
“What is it?” asked Jimmy. “Something about the 'Days of Uniting?'”
“No, it is an article in the Post-Herald, and Stephens says that the police are going round to all the newspaper shops confiscating the paper because of that paragraph.”
Jimmy almost snatched the newspaper from Delia's hand. She had marked the place with blue pencil, and he read:
“I don't know any of the people who have been taken,” said Jimmy, shaking his head. “It is rather a rum proceeding.”
The afternoon papers carried an authoritative statement issued by the government, that the arrests were made for political purposes, and that the prisoners would be released on the eve of the “Days of Uniting” and returned to their homes in time for the festival. Jimmy was not interested in this particular eccentricity of government; he was too concerned, too worried, by the insoluble mystery which his visit to the Warden's Lodge had set him.
He was in town most of the day, pursuing independent inquiries.
The girl did not know her father was living so close at hand, and he did not enlighten her upon the subject. No reply had come to his wire to Schaffer, and this puzzled him. A call on one of Gerald's old friends, however, assured him that he had sent the message to the right address.
“I am not quite sure,” said the gray-bearded biologist to whom he addressed his inquiry, “but I have a notion that Schaffer is in Switzerland. I read the report of a lecture he delivered there a week ago. He may still be there.”
But Jimmy's chief center of inquisitorial activities was in the House of Commons. Ordinarily he did not take a very great interest in the fluctuation of English politics, and the page in the newspapers containing the Parliamentary reports was one he never read in any circumstances. But that morning he had looked up a newspaper file to discover what other occupation the premier had than sweeping floors. The first thing that struck him was that the answers to questions which are supposed to be given by the ministers responsible for the various departments, had been dealt with by undersecretaries.
“The prime minister hasn't been in the House for over a week,” said a member. “We're rather sore about it, because not only he, but Harry Weltman has been absent, and they did not even turn up the other night to lead the debate on the new police bill. There is going to be a row, too, about these arrests, and the suppression of the Post-Herald.”
“Who were the people who were arrested?” asked Jimmy.
“Oh, small fry,” said the member indifferently. “Somebody was telling me they were mostly amateur scientists, but of that I have no information. The release of the criminals from prison is, of course, preposterous.”
“Does it extend to the county prisons?” asked Jimmy.
The member nodded.
“I don't know what the dickens is happening to this country,” he said irritably. “For some reason or other Chapelle has made himself a sort of dictator, and has introduced all kinds of regulations without the consent of Parliament. Do you know that foreign newspapers are not admitted into this country?”
Jimmy did not know.
“It is a fact. What is more, there's a tremendously severe censorship on newspaper telegrams. It is almost as though we were at war all over again.”
The censorship might have delayed Schaffer's answer, thought Jimmy, as he drove back to Blackheath. What was the meaning of it all? Had the prime minister gone mad? And what part was Maggerson playing? Maggerson, the unshaven, foul-looking Maggerson, whom he had seen huddled up over a table in the Warden's Lodge, writing for dear life. And who was the bearded man opposite to him? He was another factor, and the center of another mystery. He was not a member of the cabinet. Jimmy had taken the trouble to go to the office of an illustrated newspaper which, he remembered, had published some time before a portrait not only of the ministers, but of their undersecretaries.