Dinny dropped the page as if it had stung her, and stood with a transfigured look on her face. Not the words she had been reading caused this change – she was hardly conscious of what they were. No! She had got an inspiration, and she could not think why she had not had it before! She ran downstairs to the telephone and rang up Fleur’s house.
‘Yes?’ came Fleur’s voice.
‘I want Michael, Fleur; is he in?’
‘Yes. Michael – Dinny.’
‘Michael? Could you by any chance come round at once? It’s about Hubert’s diary. I’ve had a “hunch”, but I’d rather not discuss it on the ’phone. Or could I come to you? – You can come? Good! Fleur too, if she likes; or, if not, bring her wits.’
Ten minutes later Michael arrived alone. Something in the quality of Dinny’s voice seemed to have infected him, for he wore an air of businesslike excitement. She took him into the alcove and sat down with him on a sofa under the parakeet’s cage.
‘Michael dear, it came to me suddenly: if we could get Hubert’s diary – about 15,000 words – printed at once, ready for publication, with a good title like “Betrayed” – or something – ’
‘ “Deserted”,’ said Michael.
‘Yes, “Deserted”, and it could be shown to the Home Secretary as about to come out with a fighting preface, it might stop him from issuing a warrant. With that title and preface and a shove from the Press, it would make a real sensation, and be very nasty for him. We could get the Preface to pitch it strong about desertion of one’s kith and kin, and pusillanimity and truckling to the foreigner and all that. The Press would surely take it up on those lines.’
Michael ruffled his hair.
‘It is a hunch, Dinny; but there are several points: first, how to do it without making it blackmailish. If we can’t avoid that, then it’s no go. If Walter sniffs blackmail, he can’t possibly rise.’
‘But the whole point is to make him feel that if he issues the warrant he’s going to regret it.’
‘My child,’ said Michael, blowing smoke at the parakeet, ‘it’s got to be much more subtle than that. You don’t know public men. The thing is to make them do of their own accord out of high motives what is for their own good. We must get Walter to do this from a low motive, and feel it to be a high one. That’s indispensable.’
‘Won’t it do if he says it’s a high one? I mean need he feel it?’
‘He must, at least by daylight. What he feels at three in the morning doesn’t matter. He’s no fool, you know. I believe,’ and Michael rumpled his hair again, ‘that the only man who can work it after all is Bobbie Ferrar. He knows Walter upside down.’
‘Is he a nice man? Would he?’
‘Bobbie’s a sphinx, but he’s a perfectly good sphinx. And he’s in the know all round. He’s a sort of receiving station, hears everything naturally, so that we shouldn’t have to appear directly in any way.’
‘Isn’t the first thing, Michael, to get the diary printed, so that it looks ready to come out on the nail?’
‘Yes, but the Preface is the hub.’
‘How?’
‘What we want is that Walter should read the printed diary, and come to the conclusion from it that to issue the warrant will be damned hard luck on Hubert – as, of course, it will. In other words, we want to sop his private mind. After that, what I see Walter saying to himself is this: “Yes, hard luck on young Cherrell, hard luck, but the magistrate committed him, and the Bolivians are pressing, and he belongs to the classes; one must be careful not to give an impression of favouring privilege – ” ’
‘I think that’s so unfair,’ interrupted Dinny, hotly. ‘Why should it be made harder for people just because they happen not to be Tom, Dick and Harry? I call it cowardly.’
‘Ah! Dinny, but we are cowardly in that sort of way. But as Walter was saying when you broke out: “One must not lightly stretch points. The little Countries look to us to treat them with special consideration.” ’
‘But why?’ began Dinny again: ‘That seems – ’
Michael held up his hand.
‘I know, Dinny, I know. And this seems to me the psychological moment when Bobbie, out of the blue as it were, might say: “By the way, there’s to be a preface. Someone showed it me. It takes the line that England is always being generous and just at the expense of her own subjects. It’s pretty hot stuff, Sir. The Press will love it. That lay: We can’t stand by our own people, is always popular. And you know” – Bobbie would continue – “it has often seemed to me, Sir, that a strong man, like you, ought perhaps to do something about this impression that we can’t stand by our own people. It oughtn’t to be true, perhaps it isn’t true, but it exists and very strongly; and you, Sir, perhaps better than anyone, could redress the balance there. This particular case wouldn’t afford a bad chance at all of restoring confidence on that point. In itself it would be right, I think” – Bobbie would say – “not to issue a warrant, because that scar, you know, was genuine, the shooting really was an act of self-defence; and it would certainly do the country good to feel that it could rely again on the authorities not to let our own people down.” And there he would leave it. And Walter would feel, not that he was avoiding attack, but that he was boldly going to do what was good for the Country – indispensable, that, Dinny, in the case of public men.’ And Michael rolled his eyes. ‘You see,’ he went on, ‘Walter is quite up to realizing, without admitting it, that the preface won’t appear if he doesn’t issue the warrant. And I daresay he’ll be frank with himself in the middle of the night; but if in his 6 PM mind he feels he’s doing the courageous thing in not issuing the warrant, then what he feels in his 3 AM mind won’t matter. See?’