Mystery at Geneva: An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings Read online

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  [Transcriber's Notes:

  The Greek phrase on the title page has been transliterated and placed between +plus marks+.

  Every effort has been made to replicate this text as closely as possible, including most inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation. A list of examples of the above, as well as a list of changes (corrections of spelling and punctuation) made to the original text appears at the end of this book. ]

  * * * * *

  MYSTERY AT GENEVA

  An improbable tale of singular happenings

  by

  ROSE MACAULAY

  Author of "Dangerous Ages," "Potterism," etc.

  +hostis toia echei en h?don? echei en h?don? toia.+

  LONDON: 48 PALL MALL

  W. COLLINS SONS & CO. LTD.

  GLASGOW MELBOURNE AUCKLAND

  Copyright 1922.

  LONDON AND GLASGOW: W. COLLINS SONS AND CO. LTD.

  MYSTERY AT GENEVA

  NEW NOVELS

  TYLER OF BARNET BERNARD GILBERT

  PILGRIM'S REST F. BRETT YOUNG

  PIRACY MICHAEL ARLEN

  BEANSTALK MRS. HENRY DUDENEY

  ROSEANNE E. MARIA ALBANESI

  BIG PETER ARCHIBALD MARSHALL

  NOTE

  As I have observed among readers and critics a tendency to discernsatire where none is intended, I should like to say that this book issimply a straightforward mystery story, devoid of irony, moral ormeaning. It has for its setting an imaginary session of the League ofNations Assembly, but it is in no sense a study of, still less a skiton, actual conditions at Geneva, of which indeed I know little, theonly connection I have ever had with the League being membership ofits Union.

  1

  Henry, looking disgusted, as well he might, picked his way down thedark and dirty corkscrew stairway of the dilapidated fifteenth centuryhouse where he had rooms during the fourth (or possibly it was thefifth) Assembly of the League of Nations. The stairway, smelling offish and worse, opened out on to a narrow cobbled alley that ranbetween lofty medi?val houses down from the Rue du Temple to the Quaidu Seujet, in the ancient wharfside quarter of Saint Gervais.

  Henry, pale and melancholy, his soft hat slouched over his face,looked what he was, a badly paid newspaper correspondent lodging inunclean rooms. He looked hungry; he looked embittered; he looked likeone of the under dogs, whose time had not come yet, would, indeed,never come. He looked, however, a gentleman, which, in the usual senseof the word, he was not. He was of middle height, slim and notinelegant of build; his trousers, though shiny, were creased in theright place; his coat fitted him though it lacked two buttons, and hedangled a monocle, which he screwed impartially now into one browneye, now into the other. If any one would know, as they very properlymight, whether Henry was a bad man or a good, I can only reply that weare all of us mixed, and most of us not very well mixed.

  Henry was, in fact, at the moment a journalist, and wrote for the_British Bolshevist_, a revolutionary paper with a startlingly smallcirculation; and now the reader knows the very worst of Henry, whichis to say a great deal, but must, all the same, be said.

  Such as he was, Henry, on this fine Sunday morning in September,strolled down the All?e Petit Chat, which did not seem to him, as itseems to most English visitors, in the least picturesque, for Henrywas a quarter Italian, and preferred new streets, and buildings toold. Having arrived at the Quai du Mont Blanc, he walked along it,brooding on this and that, gazing with a bitter kind of envy at thehotels which were even now opening their portals to those morefortunate than he--the Bergues, the Paix, the Beau Rivage, theAngleterre, the Russie, the Richemond. All these hostels were, on thisSunday morning before the opening of the Assembly, receiving thedelegates of the nations, their staffs and secretaries, and evenjournalists. Crowds of little grave-faced Japs processed into theHotel de la Paix; the entrance hall of Les Bergues was alive with thesplendid, full-throated converse of Latin Americans ("Ah, they live,those Spaniards!" Henry sighed); while at the Beau Rivage the BritishEmpire and the Dominions hastened, with the morbid ardour of theirrace, to plunge into baths after their night journey.

  Baths, thought Henry bitterly. There were no baths in the All?e PetitChat. All his bathing must be done in the lake--and cold comfort thatwas. Henry was no lover of cold water: he preferred it warm.

  These full-fed, well-housed, nobly cleaned delegates.... Henry quiteuntruly reported to his newspaper, which resented the high living ofothers, that some of them occupied as many as half a dozen roomsapiece in the hotels, with their typists, their secretaries, and theirsycophantic suites.

  Even the journalists, lodging less proudly in smaller hotels, or inapartments, all lodged cleanly, all decently, excepting only Henry,the accredited representative of the _British Bolshevist_.

  Bitterly and proudly, with a faint sneer twisting his lips, Henry,leaning against the lake-side parapet, watched the tumultuous arrivalof the organisers of peace on earth. The makers of the new world. Whatnew world? Where tarried it? How slow were its makers at theircreative task! Slow and unsure, thought Henry, whose newspaper was notof those who approved the League.

  With a sardonic smile Henry turned on his heel and pursued his wayalong the Quai towards that immense hotel where the League Secretariatlived and moved and had its being. He would interview some one thereand try to secure a good place in the press gallery. The Secretariatofficials were kind to journalists, even to journalists on the_British Bolshevist_, a newspaper which was of no use to the League,and which the Secretariat despised, as they might despise the yappingof a tiresome and insignificant small dog.

  2

  The Secretariat were in a state of disturbance and expectation. Theannual break in their toilsome and rather tedious year was upon them.For a month their labours would be, indeed, increased, but life wouldalso move. One wearied of Geneva, its small and segregated society,its official gossip, the Calvinistic atmosphere of the natives, itsdreary winter, its oppressive summer, its eternal lake and distantmountains, its horrid little steamboats rushing perpetually across andacross from one side of the water to the other--one wearied of Genevaas a place of residence. What was it (though it had its own charm) asa dwelling-place for those of civilised and cosmopolitan minds?Vienna, now, would be better; or Brussels: even the poor old Hague,with its ill-fated traditions. Or, said the French members of thestaff, Paris. For the French nation and government were increasinglyattached to the League, and had long thought that Paris was itsfitting home. It would be safer there.

  However, it was at Geneva, and it was very dull except at Assemblytime, or when the Council were in session. Assembly time wasstimulating and entertaining. One saw then people from the outsideworld; things hummed. Old friends gathered together, new friends weremade. The nations met, the Assembly assembled, committees committeed,the Council councilled, grievances were aired and either remedied ornot; questions were raised and sometimes solved; governments werepetitioned, commissions were sent to investigate, quarrels werepursued, judgments pronounced, current wars deplored, the year's workreviewed. Eloquence rang from that world-platform, to be heard atlarge, through the vastly various voices of a thousand newspapers, ina hundred rather apathetic countries.

  In spite of the great eloquence, industry, intelligence, and manyactivities of the delegates, there was, in that cosmopolitan andcynical body, the Secretariat, a tendency to regard them, _en masse_,rather as children to be kept in order, though to be given areasonable amount of liberty in such harmless amusements as talking onplatforms. Treats, dinners and excursions were arranged for them; theSecretariat liked to see them having a good time. They would meet inthe Assembly Hall each morning to talk, before an audience; noblesentiments would then exalt and move the nations and be flashed acrossEurope by journalists. But in the afternoons they would cross the lakeagain to the Palais des Nations, and meet in Rooms A, B, C, or D,round tables (magic phrase! magic arrangement of furniture and humanbeings!) in large or small groups, and do the work. The Assembly Hallwas, so to speak, the front window, where the goods were displayed,but where one got away with the goods was in the back parlour. There,too, the fiercest international questions boiled up, boiled over, andwere cooled by the calming temperature of the table and the sweet butfirm reasonableness of some of the representatives of the moreconsiderable powers. The committee meetings were, in fact, not onlymore effective than the Assembly meetings, but more stimulating, moreamusing.

  Henry, entering the Palais des Nations, found it in a state ofbrilliant bustle. The big hall hummed with animated talk and cheerfulgreetings in many tongues, and members of the continental races shookone another ardently and frequently by the hand. How dull it would be,thought Henry, if ever the Esperanto people got their way, and theflavour of the richly various speech of the nations was lost in onecolourless, absurd and inorganic language, stumblingly spoken and illunderstood.

  Henry entered a lift, was enclosed with a cynical American, abrilliant-looking Spaniard, a tall and elegant woman of assurance andbeauty, and an intelligent-faced cosmopolitan who looked like aBritish-Italia
n-Latin-American-Finn, which, in point of fact, he was.Alighting at the third floor, Henry found his way to the departmenthe required and introduced himself to one of its officials, who gavehim a pink card assigning him to a seat in the press gallery, which hefelt would not be one he would really like.

  "You've not been out here before, have you," said the official, andHenry agreed that this was so.

  "Well, of course we don't expect much of a show from your fanaticalpaper...." The official was good-humoured, friendly, and tolerant.The Secretariat were, indeed, sincerely indifferent to the commentaryon their proceedings both of the _Morning Post_ and the _BritishBolshevist_, for both could be taken for granted. One of thesejournals feared that the League sought disarmament, the other that itdid not; to one it was a league of cranks, conscientious objectors,and (fearful and sinister word) internationals, come not to destroy butto fulfil the Covenant, bent on carrying out Article 8, substitutingjudiciary arbitration for force, and treating Germany as a brother;to the other it was a league of militarist and capitalist states,an extension of the Supreme Allied Council, bent on destroyingArticle 18 and other inconvenient articles of the Covenant, andtreating Germany as a dog. To both it was, in one word, Poppycock.Sincerely, honestly, and ardently, both these journals thoughtlike that. They could not help it; it was temperamental, and theway they saw things.

  3

  Henry descended the broad and shallow double stairway of the Palaisdes Nations, up and down which tripped the gay crowds who knew oneanother but knew not him, and so out to lunch, which he had poorly,inexpensively, obscurely and alone, at a low eating-house near theSecretariat. After lunch he had coffee at a higher eating-house, onthe Quai, and sat under the pavement awning reading the papers,listening to the band, looking at the mountain view across the lake,and waiting until the other visitors to Geneva, having finished theirmore considerable luncheons, should emerge from their hotels andbegin to walk or drive along the Quai. Meanwhile he read _L'Humeur_,which he found on the table before him. But _L'Humeur_ is not reallyvery funny. It has only one joke, only one type of comic picture: awoman incompletely dressed. Was that, Henry speculated, really funny?It happens, after all, to nearly all women at least every morning andevery evening. Was it really funny even when to the lady thusunattired there entered a gentleman, either M. l'Amant or M. le Mari?

  _Was_ only one thing funny, as some persons believed? Was it indeedreally funny at all? Henry, who honestly desired to brighten his life,tried hard to think so, but failed, and relapsed into gloom. He couldnot see that it was funnier that a female should not yet havecompleted her toilet than that a male should not. Neither was funny.Nothing, perhaps, was funny. The League of Nations was not funny. Lifewas not funny, and probably not death. Even the _British Bolshevist_,which he was reduced to reading, wasn't funny, though it did have onthe front page a column headed "Widow's Leap Saves Cat from BurningHouse."

  A young man sat down at Henry's little table and ordered drink; abright, neat, brisk young man, with an alert manner. Glancing at the_British Bolshevist_, he made a conversational opening which elicitedthe fact that Henry represented this journal at Geneva. For himself,he was, it transpired, correspondent of the _Daily Sale_, a paperto which the _British Bolshevist_ was politically opposed buttemperamentally sympathetic; they had the same cosy, chatty touchon life.

  The two correspondents amused themselves by watching the delegatesand other foreign arrivals strolling to and fro along the elegantspaciousness of the Quai, chatting with one another. They noticedlittle things to write to their papers about, such as hats, spats,ways of carrying umbrellas and sticks, and so forth. They overheardfragments of conversation in many tongues. For, clustering round aboutthe Assembly, were the representatives, official and unofficial, ofnearly all the world's nations, so that Henry heard in the space often minutes British, French, Italians, Russians, Poles, Turks,Americans, Armenians, Dutch, Irish, Lithuanians, Serb-Croat-Slovenes,Czecho-Slovakians, the dwellers in Dalmatia and Istria, and in theparts of Latin America about Brazil, Assyrio-Chaldeans, and newspapercorrespondents, all speaking in their tongues the wonderful works ofGod. Geneva was like Pentecost, or the Tower of Babel. There wererepresented there very many societies, which regularly settled inGeneva for the period of the Assembly in order to send it messages,trusting thus to bring before the League in session the good causesthey had at heart. The Women's International League was there, and theEsperanto League, and the Non-Alcoholic Drink Society, and theMormons, and the Y.M.C.A. and the Union of Free Churches, and theUnprotected Armenians, and the Catholic Association, and the OrthodoxChurch Union, and the Ethical Society, and the Bolshevik Refugees (forit was in Russia, at the moment, the turn of the other side), and theSave the Children Committee, and the Freemasons, and the ConstructiveBirth Control Society, and the Feathered Friends Protection Society,and the Negro Equality League, and the Anti-Divorce Union, and theHumanitarian Society, and the Eugenic Society, and the Orangemen'sUnion, and the Sinn Feiners, and the Zionists, and the SaloonRestoration League, and the S.P.G. And hundreds of UnprotectedMinorities, irresistibly (or so they hoped) moving in their appeals.

  Many of the representatives of these eager sections of humanitywalked on the Quai du Mont Blanc on this fine Sunday afternoonand listened to the band, and buttonholed delegates and theirsecretaries, and chatted, and spat. The Czecho-Slovakians spathardest, the Costa-Ricans loudest, the Unprotected Armenians mostfrequently, and the Serb-Croat-Slovenes most accurately, but theAssyrio-Chaldeans spat farthest. The Zionists did not walk on theQuai. They were holding meetings together and drawing up hundredsof petitions, so that the Assembly might receive at least one anhour from to-morrow onwards. Zionists do these things thoroughly.

  Motor-cars hummed to and fro between the hotels and the Secretariat,and inside them one saw delegates. Flags flew and music played, andthe _jet d'eau_ sprang, an immense crystalline tree of life, a snowyangel, up from the azure lake into the azure heavens.

  Henry gave a little sigh of pleasure. He liked the scene.

  "Will there be treats?" he asked his companion. "I like treats."

  "Treats? Who for? The delegates get treats all right, if you meanthat."

  "For us, I meant."

  "Oh, yes, the correspondents get a free trip or a free feed now andthen too. I usually get out of them myself; official beanos bore me.The town's very good to us; it wants the support of the press againstrival claimants, such as Brussels."

  "I should enjoy a lake trip very much," said Henry, beginning to feelthat it was good to be there.

  "Well, don't forget to hand in your address then, so that it gets onthe list."

  Henry was damped. 24 All?e Petit Chat, Saint Gervais--it soundedrotten, and would sound worse still to the Genevan syndics, who knewjust where it was and what, and were even now engaged in plans forpulling down and rebuilding all the old wharfside quarter. No; hecould not hand in that address....

  "I suppose you've got to crab the show, whatever it does, haven'tyou," said the _Daily Sale_ man presently. "Now I'm out to pat it onthe back--this year. I like that better. It's dull being disagreeableall the time; so obvious, too."

  "My paper _is_ obvious," Henry owned gloomily. "Truth always is. Youcan't get round that."

  "Oh, well, come," the other journalist couldn't stand that--"it's abit thick for one of your lot to start talking about truth. The liesyou tell daily--they have ours beat to a frazzle. Why, you couldn'tgive a straight account of a bus accident!"

  "We could not. That is to say, we would not," Henry admitted. "But welie about points of fact because our principles are true. They're sotrue that everything has to be made to square with them. If younotice, our principles affect _all_ our facts. Yours don't, quite all.You'd report the bus accident from pure love of sensation. We, inreporting it, would prove that it happened because buses aren'tnationalised, or because the driver was underpaid, or the fares toohigh, or because coal has gone up more than wages, or something trueof that sort. We waste nothing; we use all that happens. We'repropagandists all the time, you're only propagandists part of thetime; and commercialists the rest."