CHAPTER III

THE LEAGUERS’ FIRST MOVE

In the Solicitor-General’s chambers, in Paper Buildings, Bobby Herrick was fuming, and looking at his watch. At intervals Wilson, the head-clerk, fussed in and out with briefs and papers. All the bundles were tied together with the inevitable tape; well may it blush red for the unholy and mendacious things it has enfolded! Westwood’s clerk, however, never blushed. For one thing, he had bargained so remorselessly for heavier fees at moments critical for his employer’s clients that he had lost the power of feeling shame. For another, he had a thick and doughy skin which preserved the same unhealthy hue at all times and in all places. He was a prosperous man, belonging, it was said, to the ranks of “gigmanity,” for he kept his pony chaise at Brixton. There were some who said that Josiah Wilson would sell his little soul for gold if only Mephistopheles would care to make a bid. He certainly had investments, and his average income from “clerk’s fees” (which immemorial usage extracts from the client, instead of from the advocate) was quite substantial. Many a struggling junior at the Bar would have been thankful to earn a third of that average income. Wilson really earned nothing except in the manner indicated; but he wore a silk-fronted frock-coat and a massive watch-chain. Nature, in its abhorrence of a straight line, had taken care that there should be no straight line in the waistcoat which that gleaming chain adorned.

“Sir John’s late this morning,” said Wilson.

“Yes, I know he is,” agreed Herrick impatiently.

“Something wrong, I expect,” suggested Wilson, with a shifty look.

“Good heavens! I hope not.” Herrick started up. “Why, everything depends on his being in Court. He’s going to claim his privilege and reply on the whole case for the Crown.”

“He can’t if he isn’t there,” said Wilson. “He was a bit queer yesterday. Liver--that’s what it is,” he added hesitatingly.

“Confound his liver!” Herrick muttered, under the slight cover of his fair moustache. “Look here,” he said aloud, “why don’t you ring him up?”

“I might do that,” assented Wilson, but not with enthusiasm.

“He seemed all right in Court yesterday; a bit fagged, nothing more. It’s the House that knocks him up.”

“He wasn’t all right last night when I took down that last report from Scotland Yard.”

“Well, go and ring them up, man. There’s hardly time to get there before the Court sits, and the Lord Chief won’t wait for anyone.”

In a few moments he heard Wilson’s “Are you there?”--the feeble stereotyped inquiry of the telephonist--and presently the tinkle of the bell in the outer room in answer. Herrick felt nervous and excited--moved by an unaccountable apprehension of sinister happenings. So far as he knew at the moment, he had nothing to do but prompt his leader in regard to dates and details, if Westwood’s memory or private notes should fail him. The case had been a professional and financial godsend to the young barrister. Of course he knew perfectly well that the brief had not come to him as the just due of his talents. He was young, untried, and inexperienced--except in his capacity as one of the lesser “devils” in the Solicitor-General’s forensic Hades. The Treasury Solicitor gave him brief No. 4 because it was officially known that it would suit Sir John Westwood to have him in the case. He also happened to be a young fellow of good family, with a not very remote chance of succeeding to an earldom; finally, he was engaged to be married to Sir John Westwood’s only daughter.

While Wilson seemed to be trying to extract intelligible information over the wires, Herrick took a turn up and down the slip of a back room in which he worked; then he stood awhile with his bulky brief tucked under his arm, and hands clasped behind him, gazing across the sunlit grass in the gardens. It was a perfect spring morning in point of weather, and Bobby, as the Bar called him, reflected how pleasant it would be if he and Aldwyth Westwood were up the river, or sauntering side by side along the woodland ways.

Suddenly the door behind him was opened, and the staccato voice of a boy-clerk announced, “Miss Westwood.”

“Father can’t come! Isn’t it dreadfully unlucky?” she exclaimed, entering in a whirlwind of “frock and frill.”

“Unlucky!” echoed Herrick, turning, aghast; “why, it’s the very---- Well, it’s simply disastrous! I firmly believe that unless he has the last word to the jury, they’ll acquit those scoundrels. The prosecution will fall through like a house of cards! Is anything serious the matter?”

“I don’t know--I can’t make out,” was the girl’s anxious answer. “He seems quite----well, almost stupefied this morning. Of course you know he’s not been well for some time past, and last night----” She paused, her lips trembling, tears in her tender eyes.

“My dear girl, I’m so awfully sorry,” said Herrick, taking her hand. “It can’t be helped. Don’t worry; the doctor will pull him round in no time. You sent for one, of course?”

“Yes, I telephoned to Queen Anne Street before I left.”

“What message did your father send me?”

“None at all--isn’t it dreadful? He seemed quite indifferent, and, as I told you, almost stupefied. When I questioned him, he seemed to have no power to answer clearly. When he spoke, his voice was thick and I could hardly understand a word he said.”

“Good heavens! It sounds as if some drug had been at work. I suppose he never----?”

“I am quite sure he never takes a drug of any sort,” was the girl’s emphatic answer to the unfinished question.

“No, of course not, of course not,” said her lover soothingly; then, looking once more at his watch: “Well, I ought to see our other leader at once, that’s clear.”

“That’s Mr Boulton, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Boulton. Look here, will you come down to the Bailey in my hansom, and we’ll talk about this on the way?”

“Yes, I can do that, and then drive home again,” she agreed readily.

“And you must tell Sir John he needn’t worry. I daresay the case will work out all right, after all.”

“You don’t think so really,” said Aldwyth, looking with her clear eyes into his.

And in his heart of hearts he did not.

Within a few minutes they were driving eastward as fast as the congested traffic of the street, alleged to have been specially beloved by Dr Johnson, would permit. On Blackfriars Bridge, cabs, omnibuses, vans, and vehicles of all sorts, held back by the raised hand of the constable on duty, were let loose just as the hansom in which the lovers sat had reached the end of Fleet Street. There was nothing unusual or remarkable in being blocked. But what struck Herrick as distinctly odd was the vast number of low-class pedestrians who were to be noticed streaming over the bridge from the Surrey side, and turning to the right up Ludgate Hill. The crowd impeded the vehicular traffic under the railway bridge, and blocked the narrow turning which gave access to that ancient bit of London, still popularly known as the Old Bailey. As Herrick stood up to pay the cabman presently, he noticed with surprise that other streams of people of the same low order seemed to be converging from Holborn, Giltspur Street, and Newgate Street.

What did it mean? When he had sent Aldwyth off in the hansom with a lover’s look for herself and a last message of sympathy for her father, he turned to Henshaw, the detective inspector, who was standing near counsel’s entrance to the Courts.

“Where’s all this riff-raff coming from,” asked the barrister.

“Slums,” said Henshaw briefly.

“But why?”

“Ah! that’s the question! Honourable members of this precious League, perhaps. There’s more in this affair than meets the eye, Mr Herrick.”

“The jury won’t know what to make of it.”

“Begging your pardon, I think they’ll be made to know.”

“What!--intimidation? Surely not!”

“P’raps we’ll know more about it after a bit,” said the detective; and, with eyes scanning the growing crowd, he moved quietly away.

“Pass along; pass along there, please,” said the uniformed men, with monotonous iteration; and Herrick, ere he hurried into the building, noticed that half a dozen of the constables were busily employed in keeping the fast-gathering multitude in motion.

“Bad news about Boulton,” were almost the first words he heard in one of the corridors. The speaker was a circuit chum of his, and one of the junior counsel on the other side.

“Why! What do you mean?” he demanded anxiously.

“What! haven’t you heard? Set upon by hooligans near St Pancras station last night. Picked up insensible, and taken to the hospital in Gray’s Inn Road. We shall be on directly,” and, tilting up his wig, the speaker hurried down the corridor.

A sense of planned events, a fatalistic feeling, gripped Herrick at the heart. Then, with a deep-drawn breath, he turned into the robing room--the armoury of forensic fray. While he robed, he looked round eagerly for Arthur Dutton, who held brief No. 3 for the prosecution. Dutton was a stuff gownsman of many years’ experience, a master of criminal pleading--on paper and parchment--and one of the permanent advisers of the Crown. If Dutton were in good form, all might yet be well; though, unfortunately, as advocate he did not usually excel. But Dutton was nowhere to be seen, and that morning nobody had come across him. Of course it might be that he was already in his place in Court, and thither Herrick hurried, entering just as cries of “Silence!” from the ushers heralded the approach of Lord Malvern, the presiding judge.

“Where’s Sir John?” asked the Assistant Treasury Solicitor in an anxious whisper. In a few hurried sentences Herrick informed him of the great man’s sudden illness.

“Both our leaders absent! Good heavens! What’s going to happen?”

What actually happened next was the passing of a telegram from hand to hand until it reached the Treasury official.

“Read that,” he said, and sat back in his seat, dismayed.

Herrick read the message. It was as follows:--

“_To Treasury Solicitor,

“Central Criminal Court._

“_Have received telegram reporting dangerous illness of my father. Am leaving town for Windermere._

“_From Dutton, Euston Station._”