Mystery at Geneva | Page 4

hoped) moving in their appeals.
Many of the representatives of these eager sections of humanity walked on the Quai du Mont Blanc on this fine Sunday afternoon and listened to the band, and buttonholed delegates and their secretaries, and chatted, and spat. The Czecho-Slovakians spat hardest, the Costa-Ricans loudest, the Unprotected Armenians most frequently, and the Serb-Croat-Slovenes most accurately, but the Assyrio-Chaldeans spat farthest. The Zionists did not walk on the Quai. They were holding meetings together and drawing up hundreds of petitions, so that the Assembly might receive at least one an hour 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, and the jet cTeau sprang, an immense crystalline tree of life, a snowy angel, 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 mean that."
"For us, I meant--"
"Oh, yes, the correspondents get a free trip or a free feed now and then 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 against rival claimants, such as Brussels."
"I should enjoy a lake trip very much," said Henry, beginning to feel that it was good to be there.
"Well, don't forget to hand in your address then, so that it gets on the list."
Henry was damped. 24 Alle Petit Chat, Saint Gervais it sounded rotten, and would sound worse still to the Genevan syndics, who knew just where it was and what, and were even now engaged in plans for pulling clown and rebuilding all the old wharfside quarter. No; he could not hand in that address....
"I suppose you've got to crab the sbow, whatever it does, haven't you," said the Daily Sale man presently. "Now I'm out to pat it on the back this year. I like that better. It's dull being disagreeable all the time; so obvious, too."
"My paper is obvious," Henry owned gloomily. "Truth always is. You can't get round that."
"Oh, well, come," the other journalist couldn't stand that "it's a bit thick for one of your lot to start talking about truth. The lies you tell daily they have ours beat to a frazzle. Why, you couldn't give a straight account of a bus accident!"
"We could not. That is to say, we would not," Henry admitted. ' But we lie about points of fact because our principles are true. They're so true that everything has to be made to square with them. If you notice, our principles affect all our facts. Yours don't, quite all. You'd report the bus accident from pure love of sensation. We, in reporting it, would prove that it happened because buses aren't nationalised, or because the driver was underpaid, or the fares too high, or because coal has gone up more than wages, or something true of that sort. We waste nothing; we use all that happens. We're propagandists all the time, you're only propagandists part of the time; and commercialists the rest."
"Oh, certainly no one would accuse you of being commercialists." agreed the Sale man kindly. "Hallo, what's up?"
Henry had stiffened suddenly, and sat straight and rigid, like a dog who dislikes another dog. His companion followed his tense gaze, and saw a very neat, agreeablelooking and gentlemanly fellow, exquisitely cleaned, shaved, and what novelists call groomed (one supposes this to be a kind of rubbing-down process, to make the skin glossy), with gray spats, a malacca cane, and a refined gray suit with a faint stripe and creases like knife-blades. This gentleman was strolling by in company with the senior British delegate, who had what foreigners considered a curious and morbid fad for walking rather than driving, even for short distances.
"Which troubles you?" inquired the representative of the Daily Sale. "Our only Lord B., or that Secretariat fellow?"
"That Secretariat fellow," Henry replied rather faintly.
The other put on his glasses, the better to observe the neat, supercilious figure. He laughed a little.
"Charles Wilbraham. Our Gilbert. The perfect knut. The type that does us credit abroad. Makes up for the seedy delegates and journalists, what?... He is said to have immense and offensive private wealth. In fact, it is obvious that he could scarcely present that unobtrusively opulent appearance on his official salary. They don't really get much, you know, poor fellows; not for an expensive place like this.... The queer thing is that no one seems to know where Wilbraham gets his money from; he never says. A very close, discreet chap; a regular civil servant. Do you know him, then?"
Henry hesitated for a moment,