Horlock drew a paper knife slowly down between his fingers.

"I sent Williams to you yesterday."

"You did. A nice errand for a respectably brought-up young man!"

"Chuck that, Tallente."

"Why? I didn't misunderstand him, did I?"

"Apparently. He told me that you used the word 'blackmail.'"

"I don't think the dictionary supplies a milder equivalent."

"Tallente," said Horlock with a frown, "we'll finish with this once and for ever. I refused the offer of the ma.n.u.script in question."

"I am glad to hear it," was the laconic reply.

"Leaving that out of the question, then, I suppose there's no chance of your ratting?"

"Not the faintest. I rather fancy I've settled down for good."

Horlock lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair.

"No good looking impatient, Tallente," he said. "The door's locked and you know it. You'll have to listen to what I want to say. A few minutes of your time aren't much to ask for."

"Go ahead," Tallente acquiesced.

"There is only one ambition," Horlock continued, "for an earnest politician. You know what that is as well as I do. Wouldn't you sooner be Prime Minister, supported by a recognised and reputable political party, than try to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for your friends Dartrey, Miller and company?"

"So this is the last bid, eh?" Tallente observed.

"It's the last bid of all," was the grave answer. "There is nothing more."

"And what becomes of you?"

"One section of the Press will say that I have shown self-denial and patriotism greater than any man of my generation and that my name will be handed down to history as one of the most single-minded statesmen of the day. Another section will say that I have been forced into a well-deserved retirement and that it will remain a monument to my everlasting disgrace that I brought my party to such straits that it was obliged to compromise with the representative of an untried and unproven conglomeration of fanatics. A third section--"

"Oh, chuck it!" Tallente interrupted. "Horlock, I appreciate your offer because I know that there is a large amount of self-denial in it, but I am glad of an opportunity to end all these discussions. My word is pa.s.sed to Dartrey."

"And Miller?" the Prime Minister asked, with calm irony.

Tallente felt the sting and frowned irritably.

"I have had no discussions of any sort with Miller," he answered. "He has never been represented to me as holding an official position in the party."

"If you ever succeed in forming a Democratic Government," Horlock said, "mark my words, you will have to include him."

"If ever I accept any one's offer to form a Government," Tallente replied, "it will be on one condition and one condition only, which is that I choose my own Ministers."

"If you become the head of the Democratic Party," Horlock pointed out, "you will have to take over their pledges."

"I do not agree with you," was the firm reply, "and further, I suggest most respectfully that this discussion is not agreeable to me."

An expression of hopelessness crept into Horlock's face.

"You're a good fellow, Tallente," he sighed, "and I made a big mistake when I let you go. I did it to please the moderates and you know how they've turned out. There isn't one of them worth a row of pins. If any one ever writes my political biography, they will probably decide that the parting with you was the greatest of my blunders."

He rose to his feet, swinging the key upon his finger.

"One more word, Tallente," he added. "I want to warn you that so far as your further progress is concerned, there is a snake in the gra.s.s somewhere. The ma.n.u.script of which Williams spoke to you, and which would of course d.a.m.n you forever with any party which depended for its existence even indirectly upon the trades unions, was offered to me, without any hint at financial return, on the sole condition that I guaranteed its public production. It is perfectly obvious, therefore, that there is some one stirring who means harm. I speak to you now only as a friend and as a well-wisher. Did I understand Williams to say that the doc.u.ment was stolen from your study at Martinhoe?"

"It was stolen," Tallente replied, "by my secretary, Anthony Palliser, who disappeared with it one night in August."

"'Disappeared' seems rather a vague term," Horlock remarked.

"A trifle melodramatic, I admit," Tallente a.s.sented. "So were the circ.u.mstances of his--disappearance. I can a.s.sure you that I have had the police inspector of fiction asking me curious questions and I am convinced that down in Devonshire I am still an object of suspicion to the local gossips."

"I remember reading about the affair at the time," Horlock remarked, as he unlocked the door. "It never occurred to me, though, to connect it with anything of this sort. Surely Palliser was a cut above the ordinary blackmailer?"

Tallente shrugged his shoulders. "A confusion of ethics," he said. "I dare say you remember that the young man conspired with my wife to boost me into a peerage behind my back However!--"

"One last word, Tallente," Horlock interrupted. "I am not at liberty to tell you from what source the offer as to your article came, but I can tell you this--Palliser was not or did not appear to be connected with it in any way."

"But I know who was," Tallente exclaimed, with a sudden lightning-like recollection of that meeting on the railway platform at Woody Bay.--"Miller!"

Horlock made no answer. To his visitor, however, the whole affair was now clear.

"Miller must have bought the ma.n.u.script from Palliser," he said, "when he knew what sort of an offer Dartrey was going to make to me and realised how it would affect him. Horlock, I am not sure, after all, that I don't rather envy you if you decide to drop out of politics. The main road is well enough, but the by-ways are pretty filthy."

Horlock remained gravely silent and Tallente pa.s.sed out of the room, realising that he had finally severed his connection with orthodox English politics. The realisation, however, was rather more of a relief than otherwise. For fifteen years he had been c.u.mbered with precedent in helping to govern by compromise. Now he was for the clean sweep or nothing. He strolled into the House and back into his own committee room, read through the orders of the day and spoke to the Government Whip. It was, as Horlock had a.s.sured him, a dead afternoon. There were a sheaf of questions being asked, none of which were of the slightest interest to any one. With a little smile of antic.i.p.ation upon his lips, he hurried to the telephone. In a few moments he was speaking to Annie, Lady Jane's maid.

"Will you give her ladyship a message?" he asked. "Tell her that I am unexpectedly free for an hour or so, and ask if I may come around and see her?" The maid was absent from the telephone for less than a minute.

When she returned, her message was brief but satisfactory. Her ladyship would be exceedingly pleased to see Mr. Tallente.

CHAPTER XI

Tallente found a taxi on the stand and drove at once to Charles Street.

The butler took his hat and stick and conducted him into the s.p.a.cious drawing-room upon the first floor. Here he received a shock. The most natural thing in the world had happened, but an event which he had never even taken into his calculation. There were half a dozen other callers, all, save one, women. Jane saw his momentary look of consternation, but was powerless to send him even an answering message of sympathy. She held out her hand and welcomed him with a smile.

"This is perfectly charming of you, Mr. Tallente," she said. "I know how busy you must be in the afternoons, but I am afraid I am old-fashioned enough to like my men friends to sometimes forget even the affairs of the nation. You know my sister, I think--Lady Alice Mountgarron? Aunt, may I present Mr. Tallente--the Countess of Somerham. Mrs. Ward Levitte--Lady English--oh! and Colonel Fosbrook."

Tallente made the best of a very disappointing situation. He exchanged bows with his new acquaintances, declined tea and was at once taken possession of by Lady Somerham, a formidable-looking person in tortoise-sh.e.l.l-rimmed spectacles, with a rasping voice and a judicial air.

"So you are the Mr. Tallente," she began, "who Somerham tells me has achieved the impossible!"

"Upon the face of it," Tallente rejoined, with a smile, "your husband is proved guilty of an exaggeration."