At Some Disputed Barricade_ A Novel - Anne Perry [25]
Mason did not argue. “I’ll go tomorrow night, after I’ve reported to my paper,” he said simply. His face hardened as he smothered the weakness within himself, the momentary faltering, the longing to turn away. “There’s no reason to delay.”
“Good,” the Peacemaker said simply. He looked at the empty tea tray, sandwiches all eaten. “Would you like a Glenmorangie?”
“Yes,” Mason accepted. “Yes, I would.”
Richard Mason was not the last visitor to the house in Marchmont Street that evening. At close to midnight, after he had read the article and deleted Schenckendorff’s message the Peacemaker stood in the dark before the uncurtained window, his mind racing with new ideas. Hope had rekindled in him for an end to the madness of the battlefield. It might even be that the ordinary soldier himself at last could take control of his destiny. Most men who were actually commanded to kill the enemy, to fire the bullets, to let off the gas, who charged with the bayonets fixed, had no personal enmity toward the German soldiers in the lines opposite them. They knew they were just ordinary men like themselves. If the French could mutiny, then surely so could the British. Mason would bring him back the truth of morale in Flanders. Then perhaps there would be an end to it.
There was a knock on the door again, tentative at this late hour.
The Peacemaker swung around angrily. “What is it?” he demanded. He was inwardly exhausted by the unceasing emotional soar and plunge between despair and the blindness and the folly of those with whom he had to work. Time and time again he had been on the brink of success, the beginning of the end, only to have it dashed from his hand. “What is it?” he said again.
The manservant opened the door, looking apologetic. “It is a gentleman to see you, sir. He won’t give his name, but he says it is to do with a certain event on Hampstead Heath. Shall I ask him to leave, sir?”
“No. Tell him to come in,” the Peacemaker said quickly. “Do not disturb us. We shall require no refreshment. You may retire. I shall show him out.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll send the gentleman up.”
The man who arrived a moment later was thin, with a dark mustache and large, red-knuckled hands. He closed the door behind him. He met the Peacemaker’s eyes without flinching, as if they were equals. The Peacemaker did not like him. They were on the same side by force, not idealism. There was no passion for humanity in this man, only for himself and his own profit, but he was useful. “Yes?” he said curtly.
“Corracher’s been talking to someone in the Secret Intelligence Service,” the man told him. “He’s seen the pattern, and it looks as if he could make a fight of it.”
“Rubbish!” the Peacemaker snapped. “He’ll only dig himself in deeper. No one’s going to believe him.”
“This man did,” his visitor replied. “Started asking a lot of questions, getting police records—times and places. He was very thorough.”
The Peacemaker felt a tiny flash of anxiety, nothing more than a cold touch inside, there and then gone again. “Any idea who it is?”
“The man from Intelligence? His name is Matthew Reavley.” The man said it without expression, as if it meant nothing to him.
“Thank you.” The Peacemaker’s voice was little more than a whisper, and he stood perfectly still in the room. Reavley again. The name was like a curse. He cleared