“It makes no difference,” said Filostrato. “This is how things have to be managed.”
“Quite,” said Miss Hardcastle. “It’s always done. Anyone who knows police work will tell you. And as I say, the real thing-the big riot-must take place within the next forty-eight hours.”
“It’s nice to get the tip straight from the horse’s mouth!” said Mark. “I wish I’d got my wife out of the town, though.”
“Where does she live?” said the Fairy.
“Up at Sandown.”
“Ah. It’ll hardly affect her. In the meantime, you and I have got, to get busy about the account of the riot.”
“But-what’s it all for?”
“Emergency regulations,” said Feverstone. “You’ll never get the powers we want at Edgestow until the Government declares that a state of emergency exists there.”
“Exactly,” said Filostrato. “It is folly to talk of peaceful revolutions. Not that the canaglia would always . . . resist-often they have to be prodded into it-but until there is the disturbance, the firing, the barricades-no one gets powers to act effectively. There is not enough what you call weigh on the boat to steer him.”
“And the stuff must be all ready to appear in the papers the very day after the riot,” said Miss Hardcastle. “That means it must be handed in to the D.D. by six to-morrow morning at latest.”
“But how are we to write it to-night if the thing doesn’t even happen till to-morrow at the earliest?”
Everyone burst out laughing.
“You’ll never manage publicity that way, Mark,” said Feverstone. “You surely don’t need to wait for a thing to happen before you tell the story of it!”
“Well, I admit,” said Mark, and his face also was full of laughter, “I had a faint prejudice for doing so, not living in Mr. Dunne’s sort of time nor in looking-glass land.”
“No good, sonny,” said Miss Hardcastle. “We’ve got to get on with it at once. Time for one more drink and you and I’d better go upstairs and begin. We’ll get them to give us devilled bones and coffee at two.”
This was the first thing Mark had been asked to do which he himself, before he did it, clearly knew to be criminal. But the moment of his consent almost escaped his notice; certainly, there was no struggle, no sense of turning a corner. There may have been a time in the world’s history when such moments fully revealed their gravity, with witches prophesying on a blasted heath or visible Rubicons to be crossed. But, for him, it all slipped past in a chatter of laughter, of that intimate laughter between fellow professionals, which of all earthly powers is strongest to make men do very bad things before they are yet, individually, very bad men. A few moments later he was trotting upstairs with the Fairy. They passed Cosser on the way and Mark, talking busily to his companion, saw out of the corner of his eye that Cosser was watching them. To think that he had once been afraid of Cosser!
“Who has the job of waking the D.D. up at six?” asked Mark.
“Probably not necessary,” said the Fairy. “I suppose the old man must sleep sometime. But I’ve never discovered when he does it.”
IV
At four o’clock Mark sat in the Fairy’s office re-reading the last two articles he had written-one for the most respectable of our papers, the other for a more popular organ. This was the only part of the night’s work which had anything in it to flatter literary vanity. The earlier hours had been spent in the sterner labour of concocting the news itself. These two Leaders had been kept for the end, and the ink was still wet. The first was as follows:
“While it would be premature to make any final comment on last night’s riot at Edgestow, two conclusions seem to emerge from the first accounts, which we publish elsewhere, with a clarity which is not likely to be shaken by subsequent developments. In the first place, the whole episode will administer a rude shock to any complacency which may still lurk among us as to the enlightenment of our own civilisation. It must, of course, be admitted that the transformation of a small university town into a centre of national research cannot be carried out without some friction and some cases of hardship to the local inhabitants. But the Englishman has always had his own quiet and humorous way of dealing with frictions and has never showed himself unwilling, when the issue is properly put before him, to make sacrifices much greater than those small alterations of habit and sentiment which progress demands of the people of Edgestow. It is gratifying to note that there is no suggestion in any authoritative quarter that the N.I.C.E. has in any way exceeded its powers or failed in that consideration and courtesy which was expected of it; and there is little doubt that the actual starting-point of the disturbances was some quarrel, probably in a public-house, between one of the N.I.C.E. workmen and some local Sir Oracle. But as the Stagyrite said long ago, disorders which have trivial occasions have deeper causes, and there seems little doubt that this petty fracas must have been inflamed, if not exploited, by sectional interests or widespread prejudice.
“It is disquieting to be forced to suspect that the old distrust of planned efficiency and the old jealousy of what is ambiguously called ‘Bureaucracy ’ can be so easily, though, we hope, temporarily, revived; though at the same time, this very suspicion, by revealing the gaps and weaknesses in our national level of education, emphasises one of the very diseases which the National Institute exists to cure. That it will cure it we need have no doubt. The will of the nation is behind this magnificent ‘peace-effort,’ as Mr. Jules so happily described the Institute, and any ill-informed opposition which ventures to try conclusions with it will be, we hope gently, but certainly firmly, resisted.
“The second moral to be drawn from last night’s events is a more cheering one. The original proposal to provide the N.I.C.E. with what is misleadingly called its own ‘police force’ was viewed with distrust in many quarters. Our readers will remember that while not sharing that distrust, we extended to it a certain sympathy. Even the false fears of those who love liberty should be respected as we respect even the ill-grounded anxieties of a mother. At the same time we insisted that the complexity of modern society rendered it an anachronism to confine the actual execution of the will of society to a body of men whose real function was the prevention and detection of crime: that the police, in fact, must be relieved sooner or later of that growing body of coercive functions which do not properly fall within their sphere. That this problem has been solved by other countries in a manner which proved fatal to liberty and justice, by creating a real imperium in imperio, is a fact which no one is likely to forget. The so-called ‘Police’ of the N.I.C.E.-who should rather be called its ‘Sanitary Executive’-is the characteristically English solution. Its relation to the National Police cannot, perhaps, be defined with perfect logical accuracy; but, as a nation, we have never been much enamoured of logic. The executive of the N.I.C.E. has no connection with politics: and if it ever comes into relation with criminal justice, it does so in the gracious role of a rescuer-a rescuer who can remove the criminal from the harsh sphere of punishment into that of remedial treatment. If any doubt as to the value of such a force existed, it has been amply set at rest by the episodes at Edgestow. The happiest relations seem to have been maintained throughout between the officers of the Institute and the National Police, who, but for the assistance of the Institute, would have found themselves faced with an impossible situation. As an eminent police officer observed to one of our representatives this morning, ‘But for the N.I.C.E. Police, things would have taken quite a different turn.’ If in the light of these events it is found convenient to place the whole Edgestow area under the exclusive control of the Institutional ‘police’ for some limited period, we do not believe that the British people-always realists at heart-will have the slightest objection. A special tribute is due to the female members of the force, who appear to have acted throughout with that mixture of courage and common sense which the last few years have taught us to expect of Englishwomen almost as a matter of course. The wild rumours, current in London this morning, of machine-gun fire in the streets and casualties by the hundred, remain to be sifted. Probably, when accurate details are available, it will be found, in the words of a recent Prime Minister, that ‘when blood flowed, it was generally from the nose.’”