ON Godfrey’s transference from Godalming, Baltazar, with characteristic suddenness, moved into a furnished house in London. The reasons for his sojourn at the inn existed no longer. Besides, books and other belongings were quickly usurping the cubic space at his disposal. Marcelle, urgently invited to a consultation, advised, according to her practical mind, a flat or a small house which he could furnish for himself; and she offered such aid as her duties would allow. He ruled out her suggestion. There must be rooms for Godfrey and Quong Ho whenever they should be in town; rooms for servants; decent living rooms, so that the inhabitants should not have to herd higgledy-piggledy together; also ample accommodation for Marcelle, should she care to change her mind. Nothing but a large house would suit him. As for waiting until painters, decorators, paper-hangers, curtain-makers, carpet-layers, electric-light fitters and suchlike war-attenuated tribes had completed their business, it was out of the question. It would take months. He wanted to establish himself in a ready-made home right now, and get on with the war. Such a home his friend Mrs. Jackman had suggested. The owner, poor fellow, killed in the war; the wife and a boy of thirteen left ill-provided for. As she could not afford to live in the house, and yet shrank from selling it and its precious contents, the boy’s heritage, she would be content to let it furnished for an indefinite period. There it was—Sussex Gardens—near the Park—admirable in every way. He was accustomed to spacious habitations. His house in Chen-Chow covered nearly an acre. In his exile at Spendale Farm he had room to breathe. The Godalming inn was charming in its way, but now and then he had mad impulses to attack the walls of his sitting-room with his nails and tear them down. What was wrong with Sussex Gardens? “It’s extravagant, trouble-shirking, and generally manlike.”
“Marry me,” said he, “and you shall have a house economical, trouble-inviting and generally woman-like. Any kind of old house you consider ideal.”
“You’ll want four or five servants to run it,” she objected, ignoring his proposition. “Where are you going to get them from in these war times?”
“They’re already there. A cook who’ll act as housekeeper——”
“You’ll be robbed right and left.”
“Come and save me,” said Baltazar.
She laughed. “I’m tempted to do so, just out of pity for you.”
“Pity won’t do, my dear,” said he.
“Then you must go your own way.”
“I’m going it,” said Baltazar. “Perhaps you’ll come to Sussex Gardens now and then to see Godfrey. Possibly Quong Ho?”
“I might even come to see John Baltazar,” said Marcelle.
So Baltazar settled down in the big house and gave himself up to the infinite interests of war-racked London. The weeks and the months passed. Quong Ho at Cambridge, under the benign tutelage of Dr. Sheepshanks, began the study of Greek for his Little Go, and wrote to his patron curious impressions of the University. “I have the option,” said he, “of taking up for this examination either an infant’s primer on Logic compiled by an illustrious thinker of a bygone age, called Jevons, or a humorous work on the Evidence of Christianity, by the divine Paley, who seems to have been one of the patriarchs of the Anglican Church. As the latter seems the more entertaining, seeing that it tends to destroy in the mind of the reasoning believer all faith in the historical truth of the Christian religion, I am studying it with a deep interest based on the analogy between English and Chinese academic conservatism. On the other hand, dear sir and most venerated master, if you could suggest a course in Theology more in consonance with modern philosophical thought, I should derive from it much instruction and recreation.” Baltazar bade him get on with his Greek, so that if he wanted light reading, he could soothe his leisure hours with Aristotle and Thucydides. “I am working at Greek, like stags,” wrote Quong Ho later; “with all the more zeal because I find I have completed already the mathematical course required for my Tripos.” Some time afterwards he wrote again: “If you, most honoured sir, would permit me, I should esteem it a privilege to read for the Science Tripos as well as the Mathematical. I should enjoy the possibility of the application of my sound mathematical equipment to the higher branches of physics.” “Do what you like, my dear fellow,” replied Baltazar. “Suck the old place dry.” Quong Ho delighted him. Sheepshanks wrote enthusiastically of the rare bird. “He will be a monument,” said he, “to your sound and masterly teaching. I wish you would come back to us.” But Baltazar had other things to do. Having set his house in order, established Quong Ho at Cambridge, seen Godfrey accept his filial position and cemented relations, such as they were, with Marcelle, he plunged head foremost into the war. Others floundered about in it, tired after two strenuous years of buffeting. He came to it fresh, with new zeal and unimpaired strength of mind and body. With a new, keen judgment, too, being in the unique position of one with historical perspective. Others had lived through the fateful years and could not clear their brains of the myraid cross-currents that had swirled through them day by day, almost hour by hour, and had systematized themselves into their mental being, so that, with all their passionate patriotism, they could not see the main course. Baltazar brought an untroubled and vigorous intellect to bear on an accurately studied situation.
“We’re all at sixes and sevens,” cried Weatherley one day in despair, when they were discussing the new weekly review of the Far Eastern policy which he had asked Baltazar to control. “Unless we’re careful, the project will drop to pieces. Russell now declines to edit it unless we give him an autocratic hand. But Russell’s mad on Slovenes and Ruthenes and Croats. Clever as he is, he has no sense of proportion. I don’t know what the devil we’re going to do. There’s no one else can give the time. For the review to be any good, a man must throw his whole soul into it.”
Baltazar had one of his flashes. “If you like, I’ll edit the damned thing. You’ve all been fiddling about for a title. I’ve got one. ‘The New Universe.’ I’ll undertake to make a living thing of it, wipe out all the dreary, weary old weekly and monthly respectabilities. We won’t have a second-rater writing for it. We’ll appeal to ‘Longleat’s towers’ and ‘Mendip’s sunless caves.’ We’ll make it the one thing that matters in this quill-driven country. We’ll have it translated into all known languages and circulate it over the civilized earth. It’ll be the only publication that’ll give everybody the truth about everything.”
He went on in his vehement way. When Weatherley asked him where the money for so gigantic a scheme was to come from, he quoted the Tichborne claimant.
“Some has money and no brains and some has brains and no money. If those with no money can’t get money from those with no brains, God help them.”
And it came to pass, a few days afterwards, at a meeting of the committee of the new review, that Baltazar had his way. As he looked with even vision on Ruthenes, Slovenes, Belgians, Hereros, Jugo-Slavs, British miners, Samoans, the staff of the Foreign Office, Indian princes, Mrs. Annie Besant, the denizens of Arkansas, the Southern Chinese, the gilded adorners of Newport, the Women’s Emergency League, the Wilhelmstrasse, Armenians, and the Young Men’s Christian Association, a fact elicited by lengthy discussion of the multitudinous phases of world politics, and as he succeeded in convincing all the several zealots of particular interests, that their impassioned aims were an integral part of his far-reaching scheme, they came unanimously to the conclusion that no one but he had the universality to edit The New Universe, and passed a resolution promising him their loyal co-operation.
“I’m going to make this darned thing hum,” said Baltazar to Weatherley.
Money was the first object. Brains he could command in plenty. He envisaged London as his El Dorado. The history of his exploitation of the capitalist and landowner would, if it were published, become a text-book on the science and remain forever a classic. He forced wealth-guarding doors of whose existence he had been ignorant six months before; by a stroke of the genius which had brought him his position in China, he secured the support, financial and moral, without the control of an important group of newspapers; he enlisted the aid of every possible unit in his rapidly increasing circle of acquaintance. The scope of the Weekly had extended far beyond the modest bounds of its conception. Originally it was to be an appeal to the thinkers of all nations. “Damn thinkers,” said Baltazar. “They’re as scarce as angels and about as useful. We want to put thoughts into the heads of those that don’t think. It’s the Doers we want to get hold of. A thing academic is a thing dead. This is going to live.” Some of the superior smiled at his enthusiasm; but Baltazar damned them and went his way. This was going to be the Great Teaching Crusade of the War, the most far-sweeping instrument of propaganda known to journalism. He pulled all strings, brought in all parties. A high dignitary of the Labour World and a Tory Duke of unimpeachable integrity found themselves appointed as Trustees of The New Universe Publication Fund. Money flowed in.
One day he ran across Pillivant, in St. James’s Street, Pillivant mainly individualized by a sable fur coat and a lustrous silk hat and a monstrous cigar cutting his red face like a fifteen-inch gun cutting the deck of a battleship. Baltazar greeted him as a long-lost brother and haled him off to lunch at his club. Mellowed by the club’s famous Chambertin and 1870 port, he took a rosy view of all kinds of worlds including The New Universe, as presented by his host. It was a great scheme, he agreed. He was sick of all newspapers, no matter of what shades of opinion. They were all the same. Honesty was not in them. Nor was there honesty in any Government. Men with not a quarter of what he had done for the country to their credit, were being rewarded with peerages and baronetcies. In the New Year’s Honours List he had not been mentioned. Not even offered a beastly knighthood. But it didn’t matter. He was a patriot. And it was very fine old brandy, and he didn’t mind if he did have another glass. Still, if a man put down a thousand pounds for a thing, it was only business prudence to know where he stood.
“You’ll stand here,” cried Baltazar, spreading before his eyes a printed list of the General Committee, a galaxy of dazzling names. “You’ll take rank in the forefront of the biggest patriotic crusade that ever was. Your light will no longer be under a bushel. It will shine before men. What’s the good of your name being lost in a close-printed subscription list? This is a totally different thing. Your appearance here will give you position. Look at the people. Have you ever stood in with a crowd like this before?”
Baltazar held the mellowed profiteer with his compelling eyes.
“I can’t say that I have,” replied Pillivant. “But all the same——”
“But all the same,” Baltazar interrupted, “you’ve been at loggerheads with the War Office. There was that question asked in the House over the Aerodrome contract. You told me about it yourself. Now listen to me carefully”—Baltazar played a gambler’s card—“your coming in with us will be a guarantee of integrity. It’s obvious that no one on this list could do otherwise than run straight. The worry it would save you!” He looked at his watch and jumped up. “By George! I’ve got an appointment with our Treasurer, Lord Beldon. Would you like to come along and hear more about the scheme? Waiter! Ask them to get me a taxi. We’ll find our hats and coats round here.”
He drove a gratified Pillivant to Chesterfield Gardens and introduced him to Lord Beldon (with whom he had no appointment whatever) as an enthusiastic believer in The New Universe, ready to finance it to the extent of two or three thousand pounds. “Three thousand, wasn’t it?”
“I said between two and three thousand,” replied Pillivant, flattered at his reception by the powerful old peer, and not daring to fall back on the original one thousand that had been vaguely suggested. A bluff, of course, for which he admired Baltazar, although he cursed him in his heart; but was it worth while calling it? He could buy up this old blighter of a lord twice over. He would show him that he had the money. “I was thinking of two thousand five hundred,” he continued. “But what’s a miserable five hundred? Yes. You can put me down for three thousand. In fact”—with a flourish he drew a cheque-book from his pocket—“I’ll write you the cheque now, payable, I presume, to the Right Honourable the Earl of Beldon.”
“Or The New Universe. As you please.”
“Better be personal,” said Pillivant, enjoying the inscription of the rolling title and the prospect of the elevated eyebrows of the bank clerk who should debit the sum to his account.
“That’s exceedingly generous of you, Mr. Pillivant,” said Lord Beldon, putting the cheque into a drawer of his writing-table.
“Just patriotic, your lordship,” replied Pillivant, with a profiteering wave of the hand.
“I think,” said Baltazar, “that the contributor of such an important sum ought to be offered some practical interest in the scheme. Mr. Pillivant’s name will appear on the General Committee. But that’s more or less honorary. The sub-committees will do the real business. We’re going to deal with every phase of the war, Pillivant, and the various sub-committees—their names will be published large as life and twice as natural—will supply the editorial department with indisputable facts. Now,” he turned to Lord Beldon, “if Mr. Pillivant will serve on the Purity of Contracts Sub-Committee, he’ll be bringing us a tremendous and invaluable business experience.”
“That’s a most happy suggestion,” smiled Lord Beldon.
“I think so, too. I’ll get a run for my money,” said Pillivant.
When he had gone, Lord Beldon turned a puzzled brow on Baltazar.
“Isn’t that the chap about whom some nasty things were said a few months ago?”
Baltazar grinned. “It is,” said he. “We’ve made him disgorge some of his ill-gotten gains, and, by putting him on the sub-committee we’ll make him pretty careful about getting them ill in the future.”
Thus, with ruthless pertinacity he gathered in a great sum of money, and finally in a splendour of publicity the first number of The New Universe appeared, and from the first day of its appearance Baltazar felt himself to be a power in the land.
Another reputation in certain circles had meanwhile been made by his trenchant article on Chinese affairs in the Imperial Review. It led to an interview with the Chinese Ambassador, who professed agreeable astonishment at finding the famous but somewhat mysterious Anglo-Chinaman of Chen-Chow and the writer of the article one and the same person. After which he spent many pleasant hours at the Embassy, discussing Chinese art and philosophy and the prospects of the career of his prodigious pupil, Quong Ho. In course of time, the Foreign Office discreetly beckoned to him. It had heard from authoritative sources—it smiled—that Mr. Baltazar’s knowledge of China was unique, for though many other men were intimately acquainted with the country from the point of view of the official, the missionary, the merchant and the traveller, it had never heard of a man of his attainments who had divorced himself from all European influence and had attained a high position in the social and political life of non-cosmopolitan China. If Mr. Baltazar would from time to time put his esoteric knowledge at the service of the Foreign Office, the Foreign Office would be grateful. At last, after various interviews with various high personages, for all this was not conveyed to him in a quarter of an hour, it not being the way of the Foreign Office to fall on a stranger’s neck and open its heart to him, he received a proposal practically identical with Weatherley’s suggestion which he had so furiously flouted. The Secret Service—the Intelligence Department—had been crying out for years for a man like him, who should go among the Chinese as a Chinaman, thoroughly in their confidence. “A spy?” asked Baltazar bluntly. The Foreign Office smiled a bland smile and held out deprecating fingers. Of course not. An agent, acting for the Allies, counteracting German influence, working in his own way, responsible to no one but the Powers at Whitehall, but yet, with necessary secrecy, towards China’s longed-for Declaration of War against Germany.
“China will come in on our side before the year’s out,” said Baltazar.
How did he know it? Why, it was obvious to any student of the science of political forces. It was as supererogatory for a man to go out to China to persuade her to join the Allies as to stir up a bomb whose fuse was alight, in order to make it explode. The Foreign Office protested against argument by analogy. The forthcoming entry of China into the war was naturally not hidden from its omniscience. But that did not lessen the vital need of secret and skilful propaganda before, during and after the period that China might be at war. There were the eternal German ramifications to be watched; the possible Japanese influences—it spoke under the seal of the most absolute confidence—which, without any thought of disloyalty on the part of Japan, might, not accord with Western interests; there were also the bewildering cross-currents of internal Chinese politics. There were thousands of phases of invaluable information which could not be viewed by the Embassy; thousands of strings to be pulled which could not be pulled from Pekin. “We ............