5

Rud saw.

The arcana of the basement and cellars of number seventeen and the flavour of the locked–up garage behind altered the whole complexion of the day for Rud. He had been living triumphantly in a storm of rhetoric all day, living gloriously by the spoken word. "I am the Common Man." He had been carried by the torrent of his own speech into the very seat of the boss. In the absence of the boss. Now here was something more fundamental than rhetoric.

Bodisham had closed and relocked the double doors behind them. The second one was covered with green baize for the evident purpose of making it sound–proof. The main cellar was a sort of arsenal, with a newly–made bolthole and dug–out below it. There were only about a dozen rifles in the arms collection, but there were three or four guns with short barrels, a considerable miscellany of pistols, life–preservers, assorted ammunition, a trunk of knuckle–dusters, truncheons, and a number of other murderous–looking implements whose use was not immediately apparent.

"Golly!" said Chiffan. "It's a bit out of a gangster film. It's a schoolboy's dream. At least—It would have been a dream twenty–five years ago. But now—Of course, weapons!

"Weapons. Human beings have always loved weapons. Hardly a man alive who does not love to caress a good rifle…"

He became exceedingly thoughtful for a space.

"This isn't all," said Bodisham. "There's more yet."

He unlocked a door at the back of the cellar and led the way along a paved passage to a group of and cramped apartments, three on either side. They had heavy doors with bolts and locks on the outer face, and each had a small, square peep–hole in the upper panel.

"They look like prison cells," said Rud.

"They are prison cells," said Bodisham.

"But—Illegal?"

"Party discipline. Kidnapping. How should I know?" "He's never used them?"

"We don't know. One's rather dirty and has—you know—the prison smell.

"It reminds one a little of the sort of thing they had under the chateaux of the Loire," said Bodisham. "Or in High Germany. Picturesque, romantic old High Germanee."

"The Boss must be crazy."

"Crazy!" said Chiffan. "But is he? No! It's the new style in politics. He's merely been studying continental models. This sort of thing is current political reality in a dozen countries to–day. Dilettantism—no! Grim reality. It's spreading. Why shouldn't it spread here? He's just been doing his best to keep up with the times. Why, in Belgium, for example, there must be dozens and dozens of little caches like this now. And in Czechoslovakia. Not to speak of France and Germany."

"I don't believe," said Rud.

"I'm not telling you things," said Bodisham. "I'm showing you things."

"Kidnapping. Secret arrests," said Chiffan. "There's enough here to show you what the Boss has been dreaming about. Dreaming, do I say? Contemplating. Continental methods. He's just a sample. It's all coming back. It never really left off. The little ways of man with man. I suppose they kept stuff like this in the Tower. The Bourbons did it. Lettres de cachet. Napoleon kidnapped and murdered people. The Brown House. The Lipari Islands. Quiet corners of the Ogpu life. Under the British raj, in some of the prince's palaces. Under any dispensation. Here it is—right under our noses."

"But to find this in England!" said Rud.

"Why not in England?" asked Chiffan.

"Or America," said Bodisham. "Much more probable in America."

"In a great free country like America!" protested Rud.

"Running the world by votes and resolutions and processions and demonstrations is all very well when things are easy and the other side won't fight," said Chiffan. "But there's always been jails and there's always been cellars and drains under the social fabric, and when houses are pulled down or tumble down, the cellars come up to the surface and the drains stink…Esoteric politics, Rud. You've got to face it, my boy."