CHAPTER XI

THE SIGN OF THE SPIDER

The London season languished. Even the cult of the great god Pleasure found few genuinely zealous votaries. Trade, said the managers of the big West-end drapery establishments, had never been so bad. Manifestly there was something radically wrong when crowds of women-folk no longer blocked the pavement in front of Simon Robertson’s great plate-glass windows. The king lay ill at Windsor Castle, and such social functions as might ordinarily have counted on the presence of royalty roused but little interest. Arid, parching days, and sultry, suffocating nights, made ball-rooms and places of entertainment almost unendurable. The booking-offices of the theatres told a convincing tale of bad business, and the art of advertisement in manifold forms, so well understood by stars of the stage and actor-managers (and so zealously promoted by the writers of dramatic gossip in the papers) took forms which suggested the desperation of despair. In the world of music it was just the same. People yawned or sighed wearily when their eyes met the puff preliminary concerning the latest freak in musical precocity. Even the emotional women who usually worshipped as near as might be the bushy-haired violinists exploited by concert agencies, fanned themselves languidly and stayed at home. In the city there was but little difference in the look of things. Men appeared to be busy, but their seeming energy was largely due to the mere habit of hurry, acquired through the influence of surroundings. Every morning, as usual, the swarm of stockbrokers, dealers, and hangers-on of the House, came bustling out of the stations at Liverpool Street, Broad Street, and Cannon Street. Between nine-thirty and ten-thirty the accustomed crowds might be seen hurrying over London Bridge. But when the brokers reached the Stock Exchange there was next to nothing to do. American rails refused to lend themselves to any sort of manipulated excitement, and in the mining market, shares were thrown about at rubbish prices, or could not be made to change hands at all. The financial journals still came out, but their advertisement pages lacked those big announcements of new issues from which their profits were mainly derived. They eked out a precarious existence by publishing carefully edited reports of company meetings at so much per column, supplying copies at special rates for transmission to confiding shareholders. The daily columns of market prices became shorter and shorter, for, in such times, the smaller companies could not pay to have their dead or dying stock quoted as if it still possessed the elements of vital movement.

Of course, the galvanic efforts of the “great dailies” still continued; but the latest attempt of the _Times_ to introduce a new and important series of instructive works on almost give-away terms into the homes of the public (including a beautiful bookcase in fumed oak) met with practically no response at all.

But the papers, with editorial finger on the pulse of London, now took up a theme to which increasing space was devoted day by day. The leading journal showed that it still knew how to thunder. Its latest warnings, its most booming utterances, were directed against the growing power and audacity of the Leaguers of London. It told the nation plainly what had been hinted at before in the _Detector_--in effect, that there was a great conspiracy on foot, and that unless the Governmental powers bestirred themselves, the safety of the capital, if not of the whole nation, would be imperilled.

This conspiracy, it was stated, had ramifications and objects far more dangerous than those that had been exposed in the famous series of articles on “Parnellism and Crime.”

Tudor Street and Carmelite Buildings were not to be outdone by Printing House Square or Fleet Street. The League figured constantly in the bold headlines and contents bills of the halfpenny journals, and one of them--the _Epoch_--whose prosperity was not so great as was commonly supposed, bent on a bid for fame, now boldly alleged that the head centre of the mysterious League was none other than the Anglo-Mexican millionaire, Marcus White. The result was looked for with anxiety and interest. When it was known, the devout believers in the disinterestedness of the _Epoch_ received something of a shock; for one morning it was announced that the paper had changed hands, and the journal which so recently had denounced the Leaguers of London and all their works, was now the accredited organ of the League, and the champion of its objects. There was something sinister and cynical in the transaction.

The price paid for the _Epoch_, its goodwill, its plant, its printing houses and stock, was said to be enormous, but in its sale as a commercial property the commercial instinct was by no means eliminated. It became at once a powerful collecting agency for the League. A coupon-form, with the imprint of the spider-disc, appeared in every copy, and it was intimated that those readers who subscribed a stated sum to the funds of the League, would have their names and addresses carefully registered, thereby securing immunity from further applications for financial support. In effect, such subscribers would obtain the protection of the League itself, in case of public disturbance, or that risk to life and property which, according to the contemporaries of the _Epoch_, the police of London were not in sufficient strength to avert.

Coupons, with names and addresses, and remittances often largely exceeding the minimum amount invited, now poured into the offices of the _Epoch_ by every post. The receipt sent in every case was a metal disc, which now met the eye of astonished Londoners in every street, railway carriage, omnibus, tram-car, and place of public resort. It was worn prominently on the left breast by an ever-increasing multitude, men and women, and even by children, belonging to all ranks of life.

Lists of the disc-holders were published in batches in the _Epoch_ from day to day, and were read with extraordinary and ever-growing eagerness. In vain the _Times_ and other sober journals denounced the folly and danger which these ever-lengthening lists exemplified.

It was of no use to declare that people of high character and good position, were blindly, even madly, allying themselves with the scum of London and the off-scourings of the Continent; that their action would infallibly paralyse their only reliable protectors, and promote the cause of social disruption by giving the League the semblance of respectability. There was nothing to show, said the leader-writer, that this so-called Emigration League took any practical steps to give effect to its ostensible programme. On the contrary, there was ample evidence that it organised immigration of anarchists and miscreants of all sorts into England. Never before had the foreign element been so much in evidence in London. The tardy and much vaunted legislation against the influx of aliens had proved little better than a fiasco. Foreigners still swarmed to Grimsby, Hull, Newhaven, Southampton, and Harwich, though ineffectual steps were taken to check the influx at those ports; while no similar machinery had been fairly tried at Dover and at Folkestone. Aliens were everywhere, not only on English ground, but also on British ships. In vessels belonging to the port of Cardiff alone, the crews were foreigners in the proportion of fifty per cent. Thus the mercantile marine, which should be the great feeder of the Royal Navy--our first line of defence against Continental enemies--was become an actual source of danger, instead of strength, to the nation.

But warnings fell on deaf or indifferent ears. Personal safety had become the dominant idea. Panic was in the air, and the purchase, for such in truth it was, of the little metal disc, was now widely regarded as the only means of securing a magnet by which the alarmed population could hope to steer clear of the vortex towards which the tides of life were tending.

The _Daily Telephone_, in desperation, started a correspondence under the title: ARE WE AFRAID? Letters from all sorts and conditions of people descended like a postal avalanche upon the editorial offices; and while the selected correspondence was published from day to day, a series of special articles dealt with Crazes of the Past--Law and his Mississippi Scheme; Blunt and the South Sea Bubble; the Jabez Balfour fiasco; the Whitaker Wright boom, with many other examples of chicanery, folly, and consequent disaster, receiving elaborate notice. The moral was illustrated, the application was solemnly rubbed in; but all to little purpose. The sale of the metal disc still increased by leaps and bounds. Inborn inclination to abbreviate asserted itself, in accordance with abundant precedent, and one person would ask another: “Are you a Spider?” and the answer would be, “Yes,” “No,” or “I mean to be.” Thus the League, though having, it was believed, many inner circles or subdivisions, became sectionised into two great classes--the Leaguers proper (or improper) unemployed, unemployable, and hosts of discharged prisoners; and those others--the respectable “spiders,” holders of the metal disc as a species of insurance against the terrorism and depredation which were expected from the original Leaguers.

What, precisely, the “Spider” meant was the subject of much controversy. But what purported to be an explanation was given in one of the leading articles in the _Standard_; a totally different theory being put forward with equal prominence in the _Daily Chronicle_, in an article headed, “The Mystery of the Metal Disc.” At about the same time, in the _Morning Post_, the pen of a well-known author and journalist, whose versatile talents were constantly employed in surveying the world from St Andrews to the Antipodes, airily instructed the public concerning the Real Significance of the “Spider.” The writer, being of that nation which an English writer has declared “unspeakable,” naturally enough commenced with an allusion to the famous spider of a famous king of Scotland. He pointed out, however, that that particular spider was not of Scottish origin, because the insect really appeared to Robert Bruce in the little island of Rathlin, which is off the coast of Ireland. The writer then went on to treat of the spider at Sans Souci, which fell into the cup of chocolate prepared for Frederick the Great, whose life it was instrumental in saving. From Sans Souci he passed lightly to Mecca, and told of the spider that spun the web that hid Mahomet from his enemies. From that to the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury was only a step, and the theory of poison made from spiders’ bodies was aptly illustrated by a quotation from the _Winter’s Tale_. More pertinent, perhaps, was the reference to the old wives’ fable, which held that certain physical ills might be averted by wearing a spider in a nutshell round the neck. Finally, the versatile contributor raked in the legend connected with the “Shambles” shoal off Portland, at the bottom of which, according to tradition, are the wrecks of many ships seized and dragged down in far-off times by the giant spider, Kraken.

“Below the thunders of the upper deep; Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea, His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep The Kraken sleepeth.”

There to remain--

“Until the latter fire shall heat the deep; Then once by man and angels to be seen, In roaring he shall rise, and on the surface die.”

Such articles, perhaps, were calculated to spread, rather than restrict the general feeling of uneasiness. They served to fix the public mind upon what was already sufficiently in evidence, and by suggesting elements of the uncanny and occult, promoted the hysteric tendencies which were becoming so distressingly conspicuous among the people.