Narraway returned the greeting and sat down, not comfortably, but a little forward, listening.
“Bad business about your informant West being killed,” Croxdale began. “I presume he was going to tell you a great deal more about whatever it is building up among the militant socialists.”
“Yes, sir,” Narraway said bleakly. “Pitt and Gower were only seconds too late. They saw West, but he was already terrified of something and took to his heels. They caught up with him in a brickyard in Shadwell, only moments after he was killed. The murderer was still bending over him.” He could feel the heat of the blood in his cheeks as he said it. It was partly anger at having been so close, and yet infinitely far from preventing the death. One minute sooner and West would have been alive, and all his information would be theirs. It was also a sense of failure, as if losing him were an incompetence on the part of his men, and so of himself. Deliberately he met Croxdale’s eyes, refusing to look away. He never made excuses, explicit or implicit.
Croxdale smiled, leaning back and crossing his long legs. “Unfortunate, but luck cannot always be on our side. It is the measure of your men that they kept track of the assassin. What is the news now?”
“I’ve had a couple of telegrams from Pitt in St. Malo,” Narraway answered. “Wrexham, the killer, seems to have more or less gone to ground in the house of a British expatriate there. The interesting thing is that they have seen other socialist activists of note.”
“Who?” Croxdale asked.
“Pieter Linsky and Jacob Meister,” Narraway replied.
Croxdale stiffened, straightening up a little, his face keen with interest. “Really? Then perhaps not all is lost.” He lowered his voice. “Tell me, Narraway, do you still believe there is some major action planned?”
“Yes,” Narraway said without hesitation. “I think West’s murder removes any doubt. He would have told us what it was, and probably who else was involved.”
“Damn! Well you must keep Pitt there, and the other chap, what’s his name?”
“Gower.”
“Yes, Gower too. Give them all the funds they need. I’ll see to it that that meets no opposition.”
“Of course,” Narraway said with some surprise. He had always had complete authority to disburse the funds in his care as he saw fit.
Croxdale pursed his lips and leaned farther forward. “It is not quite so simple, Narraway,” he said gravely. “We have been looking into the matter of past funds and their use, in connection with other cases, as I daresay you know.” He interlaced his fingers and looked down at them a moment, then up again quickly. “Mulhare’s death has raised some ugly questions, which I’m afraid have to be answered.”
Narraway was stunned. He had not realized the matter had already gone as far as Croxdale, and before he had even had a chance to look into it more deeply, and prove his own innocence. Was that Austwick’s doing again? Damn the man.
“It will be,” he said now to Croxdale. “I kept certain movements of the funds secret, to protect Mulhare. They’d have killed him instantly if they’d known he received English money.”
“Isn’t that rather what happened?” Croxdale asked ruefully.
Narraway thought for a moment of denying it. They knew who had killed Mulhare, but it was only proof they lacked; the deduction was certain in his own mind. But he did not need another moral evasion. His life was too full of shadows. He would not allow Croxdale to provoke him into another. “Yes.”
“We failed him, Narraway,” Croxdale said sadly.
“Yes.”
“How did that happen?” Croxdale pressed.
“He was betrayed.”
“By whom?”
“I don’t know. When this socialist threat is dealt with, I shall find out, if I can.”
“If you can,” Croxdale said gently. “Do you doubt it? You have no idea who it was here in London?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“But you used the word betrayed,” Croxdale persisted. “I think advisedly so. Does that not concern you urgently, Narraway? Whom can you trust, in any Irish issue?—of which, God knows, there are more than enough.”
“The European socialist revolutionaries are our most urgent concern now, sir.” Narraway also leaned forward. “There is a high degree of violence threatened. Men like Linsky, Meister, la Pointe, Corazath, are all quick to use guns and dynamite. Their philosophy is that a few deaths are the price they have to pay for the greater freedom and equality of the people. As long, of course, as the deaths are not their own,” he added drily.
“Does that take precedence over treachery among your own people?” He left it hanging in the air between them, a question that demanded answering.
Narraway had seen the death of Mulhare as tragic, but less urgent than the threat of the broader socialist plot that loomed. He knew how he had guarded the provenance of the money, and did not know how someone had made the funds appear to return to Narraway’s own personal account. Above all he did not know who was responsible, or whether it was done through incompetence—or deliberately in order to make him look a thief.
“I’m not yet certain it was betrayal, sir. Perhaps I used the word hastily.” He kept his voice as level as he could; still, there was a certain roughness to it. He hoped Croxdale’s less sensitive ear did not catch it.
Croxdale was staring at him. “As opposed to what?”
“Incompetence,” Narraway replied. “And this time we covered the tracks of the transfers very carefully, so no one in Ireland would be able to trace it back to us. We made it seem like legitimate purchases all the way.”
“Or at least you thought so,” Croxdale amended. “But Mulhare was still killed. Where is the money now?”
Narraway had hoped to avoid telling him, but perhaps it had always been inevitable that Croxdale would have to know. Maybe he did, and this was a trap. “Austwick told me it was back in an account I had ceased using,” he replied. “I don’t know who moved it, but I shall find out.”
Croxdale was silent for several moments. “Yes, please do, and with indisputable proof, of course. Quickly, Narraway. We need your skills on this wretched socialist business. It seems the threat is real.”
“I’ll look into the money as soon as we have learned what West’s killers are planning,” Narraway answered. “With a little luck, we’ll even catch some of them and be able to put them away.”
Croxdale looked up, his eyes bright and sharp. Suddenly he was no longer an amiable, rather bearlike man but tigerish, the passion in him like a coiled spring, masked only by superficial ease. “Do you imagine that a few martyrs to the cause will stop anything, Narraway? If so, I’m disappointed in you. Idealists thrive on sacrifice, the more public and the more dramatic the better.”
“I know that.” Narraway was stung by the misjudgment. “I have no intention of giving them martyrs. Indeed, I have no intention of denying them social reform and a good deal of change, but in pace with the will of the majority of the people in the country, not ahead of it, and not forced on them by a few fanatics. We’ve always changed, but slowly. Look at the history of the revolutions of 1848. We were about the only major country in Europe that didn’t have an uprising. And by 1850, where were all the idealists from the barricades? Where were all the new freedoms so bloodily won? Every damn one of them gone, and all the old regimes back in power.”
Croxdale was looking at him intensely, his expression unreadable.
“We had no uprising,” Narraway went on, his voice dropped a level but the heat still there. “No deaths, no grand speeches, just quiet progress, a step at a time. Boring, perhaps unheroic, but also bloodless—and more to the point, sustainable. We aren’t back under the old tyrannies. As governments go, ours is not bad.”