11 The Swoop Read online

  “So I hear,” he said slowly. “But in Shropshire, they tell me, they are having trouble with the mangel-wurzels.”

  The prince frowned at this typical piece of shifty Russian diplomacy.

  “How is your Highness getting on with your Highness’s roller-skating?” he enquired guardedly.

  The Russian smiled a subtle smile.

  “Poorly,” he said, “poorly. The last time I tried the outside edge I thought somebody had thrown the building at me.”

  Prince Otto flushed. He was a plain, blunt man, and he hated this beating about the bush.

  “Why does a chicken cross the road?” he demanded, almost angrily.

  The Russian raised his eyebrows, and smiled, but made no reply. The prince, resolved to give him no chance of wriggling away from the point, pressed him hotly.

  “Think of a number,” he cried. “Double it. Add ten. Take away the number you first thought of. Divide it by three, and what is the result?”

  There was an awed silence. Surely the Russian, expert at evasion as he was, could not parry so direct a challenge as this.

  He threw away his cigarette and lit a cigar.

  “I understand,” he said, with a tinkle of defiance in his voice, “that the Suffragettes, as a last resource, propose to capture Mr. Asquith and sing the Suffragette Anthem to him.”

  A startled gasp ran round the table.

  “Because the higher he flies, the fewer?” asked Prince Otto, with sinister calm.

  “Because the higher he flies, the fewer,” said the Russian smoothly, but with the smoothness of a treacherous sea.

  There was another gasp. The situation was becoming alarmingly tense.

  “You are plain-spoken, your Highness,” said Prince Otto slowly.

  At this moment the tension was relieved by the Young Turk falling off his chair with a crash on to the floor. Everyone jumped up startled. Raisuli took advantage of the confusion to pocket a silver ash-tray.

  The interruption had a good effect. Frowns relaxed. The wranglers began to see that they had allowed their feelings to run away with them. It was with a conciliatory smile that Prince Otto, filling the Grand Duke’s glass, observed:

  “Trumper is perhaps the prettier bat, but I confess I admire Fry’s robust driving.”

  The Russian was won over. He extended his hand.

  “Two down and three to play, and the red near the top corner pocket,” he said with that half-Oriental charm which he knew so well how to exhibit on occasion.

  The two shook hands warmly.

  And so it was settled, the Russian having, as we have seen, waived his claim to bombard London in his turn, there was no obstacle to a peaceful settlement. It was obvious that the superior forces of the Germans and Russians gave them, if they did but combine, the key to the situation. The decision they arrived at was, as set forth above, as follows. After the fashion of the moment, the Russian and German generals decided to draw the Colour Line. That meant that the troops of China, Somaliland, Bollygolla, as well as Raisuli and the Young Turks, were ruled out. They would be given a week in which to leave the country. Resistance would be useless. The combined forces of the Germans, Russians, Swiss, and Monacoans were overwhelming, especially as the Chinese had not recovered from their wanderings in Wales and were far too footsore still to think of serious fighting.

  When they had left, the remaining four Powers would continue the invasion jointly.

  Prince Otto of Saxe-Pfennig went to bed that night, comfortably conscious of a good work well done. He saw his way now clear before him.

  But he had made one miscalculation. He had not reckoned with Clarence Chugwater.

  Part Two

  Chapter 1

  IN THE BOY SCOUTS’ CAMP

  Night!

  Night in Aldwych!

  In the centre of that vast tract of unreclaimed prairie known to Londoners as the Aldwych Site there shone feebly, seeming almost to emphasise the darkness and desolation of the scene, a single light.

  It was the camp-fire of the Boy Scouts.

  The night was raw and windy. A fine rain had been falling for some hours. The date of September the First. For just a month England had been in the grip of the invaders. The coloured section of the hostile force had either reached its home by now, or was well on its way. The public had seen it go with a certain regret. Not since the visit of the Shah had such an attractive topic of conversation been afforded them. Several comic journalists had built up a reputation and a large price per thousand words on the King of Bollygolla alone. Theatres had benefited by the index of a large, new, unsophisticated public. A piece at the Waldorf Theatre had run for a whole fortnight, and “The Merry Widow” had taken on a new lease of life. Selfridge’s, abandoning its policy of caution, had advertised to the extent of a quarter of a column in two weekly papers.

  Now the Young Turks were back at school in Constantinople, shuffling their feet and throwing ink pellets at one another; Raisuli, home again in the old mountains, was working up the kidnapping business, which had fallen off sadly in his absence under the charge of an incompetent locum tenens; and the Chinese, the Bollygollans, and the troops of the Mad Mullah were enduring the miseries of sea-sickness out in mid-ocean.

  The Swiss army had also gone home, in order to be in time for the winter hotel season. There only remained the Germans, the Russians, and the troops of Monaco.

  In the camp of the Boy Scouts a vast activity prevailed.

  Few of London’s millions realise how tremendous and far-reaching an association the Boy Scouts are. It will be news to the Man in the Street to learn that, with the possible exception of the Black Hand, the Scouts are perhaps the most carefully-organised secret society in the world.

  Their ramifications extend through the length and breadth of England. The boys you see parading the streets with hockey-sticks are but a small section, the aristocrats of the Society. Every boy in England, and many a man, is in the pay of the association. Their funds are practically unlimited. By the oath of initiation which he takes on joining, every boy is compelled to pay into the common coffers a percentage of his pocket-money or his salary. When you drop his weekly three and sixpence into the hand of your office-boy on Saturday, possibly you fancy he takes it home to mother. He doesn’t. He spend two-and-six on Woodbines. The other shilling goes into the treasury of the Boy Scouts. When you visit your nephew at Eton, and tip him five pounds or whatever it is, does he spend it at the sock-shop? Apparently, yes. In reality, a quarter reaches the common fund.

  Take another case, to show the Boy Scouts’ power. You are a City merchant, and, arriving at the office one morning in a bad temper, you proceed to cure yourself by taking it out of the office-boy. He says nothing, apparently does nothing. But that evening, as you are going home in the Tube, a burly working-man treads heavily on your gouty foot. In Ladbroke Grove a passing hansom splashes you with mud. Reaching home, you find that the cat has been at the cold chicken and the butler has given notice. You do not connect these things, but they are all alike the results of your unjust behaviour to your office-boy in the morning. Or, meeting a ragged little matchseller, you pat his head and give him sixpence. Next day an anonymous present of champagne arrives at your address.

  Terrible in their wrath, the Boy Scouts never forget kindness.

  The whistle of a Striped Iguanodon sounded softly in the darkness. The sentry, who was pacing to and fro before the camp-fire, halted, and peered into the night. As he peered, he uttered the plaintive note of a zebra calling to its mate.

  A voice from the darkness said, “Een gonyama-gonyama.”

  “Invooboo,” replied the sentry argumentatively “Yah bo! Yah bo! Invooboo.”

  An indistinct figure moved forward.

  “Who goes there?”

  “A friend.”

  “Advance, friend, and give the countersign.”

  “Remember Mafeking, and death to Injuns.”

  “Pass friend! All’s well.”

  The
figure walked on into the firelight. The sentry started; then saluted and stood to attention. On his face was a worshipping look of admiration and awe, such as some young soldier of the Grande Armee might have worn on seeing Napoleon; for the newcomer was Clarence Chugwater.

  “Your name?” said Clarence, eyeing the sturdy young warrior.

  “Private William Buggins, sir.”

  “You watch well, Private Buggins. England has need of such as you.”

  He pinched the young Scout’s ear tolerantly. The sentry flushed with pleasure.

  “My orders have been carried out?” said Clarence.

  “Yes, sir. The patrols are all here.”

  “Enumerate them.”

  “The Chinchilla Kittens, the Bongos, the Zebras, the Iguanodons, the Welsh Rabbits, the Snapping Turtles, and a half-patrol of the 33rd London Gazekas, sir.”

  Clarence nodded.

  “‘Tis well,” he said. “What are they doing?”

  “Some of them are acting a Scout’s play, sir; some are doing Cone Exercises; one or two are practising deep breathing; and the rest are dancing an Old English Morris Dance.”

  Clarence nodded.

  “They could not be better employed. Inform them that I have arrived and would address them.”

  The sentry saluted.

  Standing in an attitude of deep thought, with his feet apart, his hands clasped behind him, and his chin sunk upon his breast, Clarence made a singularly impressive picture. He had left his Essex home three weeks before, on the expiration of his ten days’ holiday, to return to his post of junior sub-reporter on the staff of a leading London evening paper. It was really only at night now that he got any time to himself. During the day his time was his paper’s, and he was compelled to spend the weary hours reading off results of races and other sporting items on the tape-machine. It was only at 6 p.m. that he could begin to devote himself to the service of his country.

  The Scouts had assembled now, and were standing, keen and alert, ready to do Clarence’s bidding.

  Clarence returned their salute moodily.

  “Scout-master Wagstaff,” he said.

  The Scout-master, the leader of the troop formed by the various patrols, stepped forward.

  “Let the wardance commence.”

  Clarence watched the evolutions absently. His heart was ill-attuned to dances. But the thing had to be done, so it was as well to get it over. When the last movement had been completed, he raised his hand.

  “Men,” he said, in his clear, penetrating alto, “although you have not the same facilities as myself for hearing the latest news, you are all, by this time, doubtless aware that this England of ours lies ‘neath the proud foot of a conqueror. It is for us to save her. (Cheers, and a voice “Invooboo!”) I would call on you here and now to seize your hockey-sticks and rush upon the invader, were it not, alas! that such an action would merely result in your destruction. At present the invader is too strong. We must wait; and something tells me that we shall not have to wait long. (Applause.) Jealousy is beginning to spring up between the Russians and the Germans. It will be our task to aggravate this feeling. With our perfect organisation this should be easy. Sooner or later this smouldering jealousy is going to burst into flame. Any day now,” he proceeded, warming as he spoke, “there may be the dickens of a dust-up between these Johnnies, and then we’ve got ‘em where the hair’s short. See what I mean, you chaps? It’s like this. Any moment they may start scrapping and chaw each other up, and then we’ll simply sail in and knock what’s left endways.”

  A shout of applause went up from the assembled scouts.

  “What I am anxious to impress upon you men,” concluded Clarence, in more measured tones, “is that our hour approaches. England looks to us, and it is for us to see that she does not look in vain. Sedulously feeding the growing flame of animosity between the component parts of the invading horde, we may contrive to bring about that actual disruption. Till that day, see to it that you prepare yourselves for war. Men, I have finished.”

  “What the Chief Scout means,” said Scout-master Wagstaff, “is no rotting about and all that sort of rot. Jolly well keep yourselves fit, and then, when the time comes, we’ll give these Russian and German blighters about the biggest hiding they’ve ever heard of. Follow the idea? Very well, then. Mind you don’t go mucking the show up.”

  “Een gonyama-gonyama!” shouted the new thoroughly roused troops. “Invooboo! Yah bo! Yah bo! Invooboo!”

  The voice of Young England—of Young England alert and at its post!

  Chapter 2

  AN IMPORTANT ENGAGEMENT

  Historians, when they come to deal with the opening years of the twentieth century, will probably call this the Music-Hall Age. At the time of the great invasion the music-halls dominated England. Every town and every suburb had its Hall, most of them more than one. The public appetite for sightseeing had to be satisfied somehow, and the music-hall provided the easiest way of doing it. The Halls formed a common place on which the celebrity and the ordinary man could meet. If an impulsive gentleman slew his grandmother with a coal-hammer, only a small portion of the public could gaze upon his pleasing features at the Old Bailey. To enable the rest to enjoy the intellectual treat, it was necessary to engage him, at enormous expense, to appear at a music-hall. There, if he happened to be acquitted, he would come on the stage, preceded by an asthmatic introducer, and beam affably at the public for ten minutes, speaking at intervals in a totally inaudible voice, and then retire; to be followed by some enterprising lady who had endeavoured, unsuccessfully, to solve the problem of living at the rate of ten thousand a year on an income of nothing, or who had performed some other similarly brainy feat.

  It was not till the middle of September that anyone conceived what one would have thought the obvious idea of offering music-hall engagements to the invading generals.

  The first man to think of it was Solly Quhayne, the rising young agent. Solly was the son of Abraham Cohen, an eminent agent of the Victorian era. His brothers, Abe Kern, Benjamin Colquhoun, Jack Coyne, and Barney Cowan had gravitated to the City; but Solly had carried on the old business, and was making a big name for himself. It was Solly who had met Blinky Bill Mullins, the prominent sand-bagger, as he emerged from his twenty years’ retirement at Dartmoor, and booked him solid for a thirty-six months’ lecturing tour on the McGinnis circuit. It was to him, too, that Joe Brown, who could eat eight pounds of raw meat in seven and a quarter minutes, owed his first chance of displaying his gifts to the wider public of the vaudeville stage.

  The idea of securing the services of the invading generals came to him in a flash.

  “S’elp me!” he cried. “I believe they’d go big; put ‘em on where you like.”

  Solly was a man of action. Within a minute he was talking to the managing director of the Mammoth Syndicate Halls on the telephone. In five minutes the managing director had agreed to pay Prince Otto of Saxe-Pfennig five hundred pounds a week, if he could be prevailed upon to appear. In ten minutes the Grand Duke Vodkakoff had been engaged, subject to his approval, at a weekly four hundred and fifty by the Stone-Rafferty circuit. And in a quarter of an hour Solly Quhayne, having pushed his way through a mixed crowd of Tricky Serios and Versatile Comedians and Patterers who had been waiting to see him for the last hour and a half, was bowling off in a taximeter-cab to the Russian lines at Hampstead.

  General Vodkakoff received his visitor civilly, but at first without enthusiasm. There were, it seemed, objections to his becoming an artiste. Would he have to wear a properly bald head and sing songs about wanting people to see his girl? He didn’t think he could. He had only sung once in his life, and that was twenty years ago at a bump-supper at Moscow University. And even then, he confided to Mr. Quhayne, it had taken a decanter and a-half of neat vodka to bring him up to the scratch.

  The agent ridiculed the idea.

  “Why, your Grand Grace,” he cried, “there won’t be anything of that sort. You ain’t going t
o be starred as a comic. You’re a Refined Lecturer and Society Monologue Artist. ‘How I Invaded England,’ with lights down and the cinematograph going. We can easily fake the pictures.”

  The Grand Duke made another objection.

  “I understand,” he said, “it is etiquette for music-hall artists in their spare time to eat—er—fried fish with their fingers. Must I do that? I doubt if I could manage it.”

  Mr Quhayne once more became the human semaphore.

  “S’elp me! Of course you needn’t! All the leading pros, eat it with a spoon. Bless you, you can be the refined gentleman on the Halls same as anywhere else. Come now, your Grand Grace, is it a deal? Four hundred and fifty chinking o’Goblins a week for one hall a night, and press-agented at eight hundred and seventy-five. S’elp me! Lauder doesn’t get it, not in England.”

  The Grand Duke reflected. The invasion has proved more expensive than he had foreseen. The English are proverbially a nation of shopkeepers, and they had put up their prices in all the shops for his special benefit. And he was expected to do such a lot of tipping. Four hundred and fifty a week would come in uncommonly useful.

  “Where do I sign?” he asked, extending his hand for the agreement.

  Five minutes later Mr. Quhayne was urging his taxidriver to exceed the speed-limit in the direction of Tottenham.

  Chapter 3

  A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF THE SITUATION

  Clarence read the news of the two engagements on the tape at the office of his paper, but the first intimation the general public had of it was through the medium of headlines:—

  MUSIC-HALL SENSATION INVADING GENERALS’ GIGANTIC SALARIES RUMOURED RESENTMENT OF V.A.F. WHAT WILL WATER-RATS DO? INTERVIEW WITH MR. HARRY LAUDER

  Clarence chuckled grimly as the tape clicked out the news. The end had begun. To sow jealousy between the rival generals would have been easy. To sow it between two rival music-hall artistes would be among the world’s softest jobs.

  Among the general public, of course, the announcement created a profound sensation. Nothing else was talked about in train and omnibus. The papers had leaders on the subject. At first the popular impression was that the generals were going to do a comedy duo act of the Who-Was-It-I-Seen-You-Coming-Down-the-Street-With? type, and there was disappointment when it was found that the engagements were for different halls. Rumours sprang up. It was said that the Grand Duke had for years been an enthusiastic amateur sword-swallower, and had, indeed, come to England mainly for the purpose of getting bookings; that the Prince had a secure reputation in Potsdam as a singer of songs in the George Robey style; that both were expert trick-cyclists.