I had seen nothing of Dawson during my intimate association with Madame Gilbert. He had written to me copiously for a very busy man he was a curiously voluminous letter-writer. He always employed the backs of official forms and wrote in pencil. His handwriting, large and round, was that of a man who had received a good and careful Board School education, but was quite free from personal characteristics. Dawson’s letters in no respect resembled the man. They were very long, very dull, and very crudely phrased. He had evidently tried to put them into what he conceived to be a literary shape, and the effect was deplorable. One may read such letters, the work of unskilled writers, in the newspapers which devote space to “Correspondence.” The writers, like Dawson, can probably talk vividly and forcibly, using strong nervous vernacular English, but the moment they take the pen all thought and individual character become swamped in a flood of turgid, commonplace jargon. I was disappointed with Dawson’s letters, and I am sure that he will be even more disappointed when he finds none of them made immortal in this book. His purpose in sending them to me will have been ruthlessly defeated.

A week after Madame had vanished down my lift for the last time, Dawson in the make-up with which I was most familiar called upon me at my office. He also came to say good-bye, for a turn of the official wheel had come, and he was ordered south to resume his duties at the Yard. He was, he told me, taking a last tour of inspection to make certain that the Secret Service net, which he had designed and laid, would be deftly worked by the hands of his subordinates. “I shall not be sorry,” said he, “to get back to my deserted family and to be once more the plain man Dawson whom God made.”

“You have so many different incarnations,” I observed, “that I wonder the original has not escaped your memory.”

He smiled. “If I had forgotten,” said he, “my wife would soon remind me. She always insists that she married a certain man Dawson and declines to recognise any other.”

“So if I come south to visit you, I shall see the original?”

“You will.”

“Thanks,” said I; “I will come at the earliest opportunity.”

“I don’t say that if you call at the Yard you will see quite the same person whom you will meet at Acacia Villas, Primrose Road, Tooting.”

“That would be too much to expect. But under any guise, Dawson, I am always sure of knowing you.”

“Yes, confound you. I would give six months’ pay to know how you do it.”

“You shall know some day, and without any bribery. Now that you are here, talk, talk, talk. I want to get the taste of those rotten letters of yours out of my mouth.”

He looked surprised and hurt. He looked exactly as a famous sculptor looked who, when a beautiful work of his hands was unveiled, wished me to publish a descriptive sonnet from his pen. I bluntly refused. He was an admirable sculptor, but a dreadful sonneteer. Yet in his secret heart he valued the sonnet far above the statue. In this strange way we are made.

I did not conceal from Dawson my interest in Madame Gilbert, and he rather rudely expressed strong disapproval. He suggested that for a married man I was much too free in my ways. “That woman is full of brains,” said he, “but she is the artfullest hussy ever made. She will turn any man around her pretty fingers if he gives way to her. She has made a nice fool of you and of that ass Froissart. She even tried her little games with me with me indeed. But I was too strong for her.”

I regarded Dawson with some interest and more pity. The poor fellow did not realise that Madame had for years moulded him to her hands like potter’s clay. She had mastered him by ingenuously pretending that he stood upon a serene pinnacle far removed from her influence. He had preened his feathers and done her bidding.

“We are not all strong like you, Dawson,” said I mildly.

I switched Dawson off the subject of Madame Gilbert, and directed his mind towards the contemplation of his own exploits. When handled judiciously he will talk freely and frankly, giving away official secrets with both hands. But his confidences always relate to the past, to incidents completed. When he has a delicate job on hand, he can be as close as the English Admiralty, even to me. He has no sense of proportion. Again and again he has recounted the interminable details of cases in which I take not the smallest interest, and has ignored all my efforts to dam the unprofitable flood of narrative and to divert the current into more fruitful channels. He looks at everything from the Dawson standpoint, and cares for nothing which does not add to the glory of Dawson. Unless he fills the stage, an incident has for him no value or concern. Happily for me the most startling of his exploits, that of bending a timid War Committee of the Cabinet to his will in the winter of 1915-1916, and of bluffing into utter submission nearly a hundred thousand rampant munition workers who were eager to “down tools,” fulfils all the Dawson conditions of importance. He and he alone filled a star part, to him and to him alone belonged the success of an incredibly bold manoeuvre. I have drawn Dawson as I saw him, in his weakness and in his strength. I have revealed his vanity and the carefully hidden tenderness of his heart. In my whimsical way I have perhaps treated him as essentially a figure of fun. But though I may smile at him, even rudely laugh at him, he is a great public servant who once at least though few at the time knew saved his country from a most grievous peril.

In the early weeks of 1916, when work for the Navy, and work in the gun and ammunition shops which were rapidly being organised all over the country, were within a very little of being suspended by a general strike of workmen, terrified for their threatened trade-union privileges, the strength and resource of Dawson put forth boldly in the North dammed the peril at its source. In spite of the penalties laid down in Munition Acts, in spite of the powers vested in military authorities by the Defence of the Realm Regulations, there would have been a great strike, and both the Navy and the New Army would have been hung up gasping for the ships, the guns, and the supplies upon which they had based all their plans for attack and defence. The danger arose over that still insistent problem the “dilution of labour.” The new armies had withdrawn so many skilled and unskilled workmen from the workshops, and the demands for munitions of all kinds were so overwhelming, that wholly new and strange methods of recruiting labour were urgent. Women must be employed in large numbers, in millions; machinery must be put to its full use without regard for the restrictions of unions, if the country were to be saved. Many of the younger and more open-minded of the trade-union officials had enlisted; many of those older ones who remained could not bend their stiff minds to the necessity for new conditions. They were not consciously unpatriotic their sons were fighting and dying; they were not consciously seditious, though secret enemy agents moved amongst them, and talked treason with them in the jargon of their trades. They simply could not understand that the hardly won privileges of peace must yield to the greater urgencies of war.

Civilians came north to examine the position on behalf of the Ministry of Munitions; they came, wrung their hands, and reported in terror that if dilution were pressed, a hundred thousand men would be “out.” Yet the risk had to be taken, for dilution must be pressed. Dawson was hard at work sweeping into his widespread net all those whom he knew to be enemy agents and all those whom he suspected. It was not an occasion for squeamishness. With the consent of his official superiors, he picked up with those prehensile fingers of his many of the most troublesome of the union agitators, and deported them to safe spots far distant, where they were constrained to cease from troubling. Still the danger increased, and he saw that a few days only could intervene between industrial peace and war. Already the manufacture of heavy howitzers for the Spring Offensive had been stopped by a cunning embargo upon small essential parts and the moment had arrived for a trial of strength between authority and rebellion. He made up his mind, plainly told his chiefs what his plans were, obtained their whole-hearted concurrence, and went south by the night train. By telegram he had sent an ultimatum which struck awe into the official mind. “Unless,” he wired, in code, “the Cabinet wants a revolution, it had better meet at once and call me in. Unless it does this at once I shall not go back here. I shall resign, and leave the Government in the soup where it deserves to be.”

Such a message from a man who in official eyes was no more than a Chief Inspector of Police was in itself a portent. It revealed how completely war had upset all official standards and conventions.

To the Chief, his Commissioner, he opened his mind freely. “I am about fed up with politicians and lawyers,” said he. “There is big trouble coming, and not a man of them all has the pluck to get his blow in first. I have always found that men will respect an order they like to be governed but they despise slop. What the devil’s the use of Ministers going North and telling the men how well they have done, and how patriotic they are, when the men themselves all know that they’ve done damn badly and mean to do worse? I could settle the whole business in twenty-four hours.”

“They are frightened men, Dawson,” said the Chief. “That is the matter with the Government. They have been brought up to slobber over the public and try to cheat it out of votes. They can’t tell the truth. When hard deadly reality breaks through their web of make-believe, they cower together in corners and howl. I doubt if you will get a free hand, Dawson. What do you want martial law?”

“Yes. That, or something like it. If I have the threat of it at my back, so that it rests with me, and me alone, to put it into force, I shall not need to use it. But I must go North with the proclamation in my pocket or I shall not go North at all. Here is my resignation.” Dawson tossed a letter upon the table, and laughed. The Chief picked it up and read the curt lines in which Dawson delivered his last word.

“Good man,” commented he; “that is the way to talk. They can’t understand how any man can have the grit to resign a fat job before he is kicked out. They never do. They compromise. You may put starch into their soft backbones, but personally I doubt the possibility. But at least you will get your chance. There is to be a meeting of the War Committee the first thing to-morrow morning and you are to be summoned. I told the Home Secretary that I should resign myself if they did not give you a full opportunity to state your case. I will support you as long as I am in this chair.”

Dawson held out his hand. “Thank you,” he said simply. The two men clasped hands and looked into one another’s eyes. “It is a good country, Dawson,” said the Chief “a jolly good country, and worth big risks to oneself. It will be saved by plain, honest men if it is to be saved at all. Our worst enemies are not the Germans, but our flabby-fibred political classes at home. The people are just crying out to be told what to do, and to be made to do it. Yet nobody tells them. Don’t let the Cabinet browbeat you, and smother you with plausible sophistries. Just talk plain English to them, Dawson.”

“I will. For once in their sheltered lives they shall hear the truth.”

For what follows, Dawson is my principal, but not my sole authority. I have tested what he told me in every way that I could, and the test has held. Somehow I am prepared to believe in the manner told by him he forced the Cabinet to give him the authority for which he asked, and he used it in the manner which I shall tell of. He held what is always a first-rate advantage: he knew exactly what he wanted, no more or less, and was prepared to get it or retire from official life. Those who gave to him authority gave it reluctantly gave it because they were between the devil and the deep sea. They would gladly have thrown over Dawson, but they could not throw over the civil and military powers who supported him in his demands. And had they thrown him over they would have been left to deal by their incompetent unaided selves with a strike in the midst of war which might have spread like a prairie fire over the whole country. But though they bent before Dawson, I am very sure that they did not love him, and that he will never be the Chief Commissioner of Metropolitan Police. Against his name in the official books stands a mark of the most deadly blackness. Strength and success are never pardoned by weakness and failure.

When at last Dawson was summoned to the sitting; of the War Committee, he found himself in the presence of some half a dozen elderly and embarrassed-looking gentlemen arranged round a big table. They had been discussing him, and trying to devise some decent civil means to get rid of him. He and his story of the coming strike in the North were a distressful inconvenience, an intolerable intrusion upon a quiet life. When he entered, he was without a friend in the room, except the War Minister who loved a man who knew his own mind and was prepared to accept big responsibilities. But even he doubted whether it were possible to achieve the results aimed at with the means required by Dawson.

Our friend suffered from no illusions. “I knew what I was up against,” he said to me long afterwards. “I knew that they were all longing to be quit of me and to go to sleep again. But I had made up my mind that they should get some very plain speaking. I would compel them to understand that what I offered was a forlorn chance of averting a civil war, and that if they refused my offer they would be left to themselves not to stamp out a spark of revolution, but to subdue a roaring furnace. They could take their choice in the certain knowledge that if they chose wrongly the North would be in flames within forty-eight hours. It was a great experience, Mr. Copplestone. I have never enjoyed anything half so much.”

Dawson was offered a chair set some six feet distant from the sacred table, but he preferred to stand. His early training held, and he was not comfortable in the presence of his superiors in rank or station except when standing firmly at attention.

The Prime Minister fumbled with some papers, looked over them for a few embarrassed minutes, and then spoke.

“Great pressure has been placed upon us, Mr. Dawson, to see you and to hear your report. Great pressure to my mind improper pressure. I have here letters from Magistrates, Lords Lieutenant, competent military authorities, naval officers superintending shipyards, officials of the Munitions Department. They all declare that the industrial outlook in the North is most perilous, and that at any moment a situation may arise which will be fraught with the gravest peril to the country. We have replied that the law provides adequate remedies, but to that the retort is made that the men who are at the root of the grave troubles pending snap their fingers at the law. We are pressed to take counsel with you, though why the high officers who communicate with me should, as it were, shift their responsibilities upon the shoulders of a Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard I am at a loss to comprehend. What I would ask of my colleagues is this: who is in fact responsible for the maintenance of a due observance of law in the Northern district from which you have come, and where you appear to discharge unofficial and wholly irregular functions? Who is responsible? Perhaps my learned friend the Home Secretary can enlighten us?” The Prime Minister paused, and smiled happily to himself. He had at least made things nasty for an intrusive colleague. But the Home Secretary, suave, alert, was not to be caught. He at any rate was not prepared to admit responsibility.

“It is possible, sir,” he said, “that in some vague, undefined, constitutional way I am responsible for the police service of the United Kingdom. But happily my direct charge does not in practice extend beyond England. The centre of disturbance appears to be on the northern side of the Border, within the jurisdiction of the Secretary for Scotland. It is possible that my right honourable friend who holds that office, and whom I am pleased to see here with us, will answer the Prime Minister’s question. He is responsible for his obstreperous countrymen.” The Home Secretary paused, and also smiled happily to himself. He had evaded a trap, and had involved an unloved colleague in its meshes; what more could be required of a highly placed Minister?

“God forbid!” cried the Scottish Secretary hastily. “These aggressive and troublesome workmen are no countrymen of mine. It is true,” he added pensively, “that when I am in the North I claim that a somewhat shadowy Scottish ancestry makes of me a Scot to the finger tips, but no sooner do I cross the Border upon my return to London than I revert violently to my English self. A kindly Providence has ordained that the central Scottish Office should be in London, and my urgent duties compel me to reside there permanently. Which is indeed fortunate. It is true that technically my responsibilities cover everything, or nearly everything, which occurs in the unruly North, but I do not interfere with the discretion of those on the spot who know the local conditions and can deal adequately with them. I am content to rest my action upon the advice of those responsible authorities whose considered opinions have been quoted by the Prime Minister.”

The Prime Minister smiled no more. The wheel which he had jogged so agreeably had come full round, and, in colloquial speech, had biffed him in the eye. He fumbled the papers once more, and frowned.

“It seems to me,” plaintively put in the First Lord of the Admiralty (a political chief very different from the one whom Dawson encountered in Chapter XII), “though I am a child in these high matters, that no one is ever responsible for the exercise of those duties with which he is nominally charged. For, consider my own case. Though I am the First Lord, and attend daily at the Admiralty, I am convinced that the active and accomplished young gentleman whom I had the misfortune to succeed regards himself as still responsible to the people of this country for the disposition and control of the Fleets. At least that is the not unnatural impression which I derive from his frequent speeches and newspaper articles.”

There was a general laugh, in which all joined except the War Minister and Dawson. They were not politicians.

“If there is a big strike,” growled the War Minister, “the Spring Offensive will be off. It is threatened now, very seriously. I am months behind with my howitzers.”

His colleagues looked reproachfully at the famous warrior, and shifted uneasily in their chairs. He had an uncomfortable habit of blurting forth the most unpleasant truths.

“Yes,” put in the Minister for Munitions, “we are behind with the howitzers and with ammunition of all kinds. But what can one do with these savage brutes in the North? I went there myself and spoke plainly to them. By God’s grace I am still alive, though at one moment I had given up myself for lost. At one works where I made a speech the audience were armed with what I believe are called monkey wrenches, and showed an almost uncontrollable passion for launching them at my head. I was hustled and wellnigh personally assaulted. Like my patriotic friend the Scottish Secretary, I was very happy indeed when I got south of the Border. The central office of the Munitions Department is happily in London, and my urgent duties compel me to reside there permanently. I have no leisure for roving expeditions.”

“This is very interesting,” broke in the First Lord, who lay back in his chair with shut eyes. “There appears to be no eagerness on the part of any one of us to stick his hands into the northern hornets’ nest, or to admit any responsibility for it. All of us, that is, except our courageous and silent friend Mr. Dawson.” He opened his eyes and smiled most winningly towards Dawson. “Would it not be well if we gave him an opportunity of telling us what his views are?”

“I have been waiting for him to begin,” growled the War Minister.

“We are at your service, Mr. Dawson,” said the Prime Minister graciously.

Dawson, standing stiffly at attention, had closely followed the conversation, and, as it proceeded, his heart sank. He despaired of discovering courage and quick decision in the group of Ministers before him. Yet when called upon he made a last effort. If the country were to be saved, it must be saved by its people, not by its politicians, and he was a man of the people, resolute, enduring, long suffering.

“Gentlemen,” said he, “we are threatened with a strike in the Northern shops and shipyards which will cripple the country. It will begin within forty-eight hours. I can stop it if I go North to-night with the full powers of the Government in my pocket, and with the means for which I ask. All the authorities in the North, civil, military and naval, have approved of my plans. I ask only leave to carry them out.”

“Your plans are?” snapped the War Minister.

“To get my blow in first,” said Dawson simply.

The First Lord again looked at Dawson, and a glint of fighting light flashed in his tired eyes. “Thrice armed is he who has his quarrel just; and four times he who gets his blow in first. How would you do it, Mr. Dawson.”

“Yes, how?” eagerly inquired the War Minister.

“I have served,” said Dawson, “in most parts of the world. When in West Africa one is attacked by a snake, one does not wait until it bites. One cuts off its head.”

“You have served?” asked the War Minister. “In what Service?”

“The Red Marines,” proudly answered Dawson.

“Ah!” The War Minister was plainly interested, and Dawson had, during the rest of the interview, no eyes for any one except for him and for the First Lord. He recognised these two as brother fighting men. The others he waved aside as civilian truck. “Ah! The Red Marines. Long service men, the best we have. So you would cut off the snake’s head before it can bite.”

“To-morrow afternoon,” explained Dawson, “I must attend a meeting of shop stewards, over two hundred of them. They contain the head of the snake. Give me powers, a proclamation of martial law which I may show them, and I will cut off the snake’s head.”

“You soldiers are always prating about martial law,” grumbled the Prime Minister. “We have given to you the amplest powers under the Defence of the Realm Act and the Munitions Act to punish strikers. Those are sufficient. I have no patience with plans for enforcing a military despotism.”

“Excuse me, sir,” said Dawson patiently, as to a child, “but if a hundred thousand men go out on strike, your Acts of Parliament will be waste paper. You cannot lock up or fine a hundred thousand men, and if you could you would still be unable to make them work. No means have ever been devised to make unwilling men work, except the lash, and that is useless with skilled labour. No one in the North cares a rap for Acts of Parliament, but there is a mystery about martial law which carries terror into the hardest heart and the most stupid brain. I want a signed proclamation of martial law, but I undertake not to issue it unless all other forms of pressure fail. I must have it all in cold print to show to the shop stewards when I strike my blow. Without that proclamation I am helpless, and you will be helpless, too, by Friday next. This is Wednesday. Unless I cut off the snake’s head to-morrow, it will bite you here even in your sheltered London.”

The Prime Minister fumbled once more with the papers before him, but they gave him no comfort. All advised the one measure of giving full authority to Dawson and of trusting to his energy and skill. “Dawson is a man of the people, and knows his own class. He can deal with the men; we can’t.” So the urgent appeals ran.

“And if you do not succeed? If you proclaim martial law and we have to enforce it, where shall we be then?”

“No worse off than you will be anyhow by Friday,” said Dawson curtly.

“So you say. But suppose that we think you needlessly fearful. Suppose that we prefer to wait until Friday and see; what then?”

“You will see what has not been seen in our country for over a hundred years,” retorted Dawson. “You will see artillery firing shotted guns in the streets.”

The Prime Minister shrugged his shoulders, but the War Secretary turned to his pile of maps and picked up one on which was marked all the depots and training camps in the northern district. “How many men do you want?” he asked.

“No khaki, thank you,” replied Dawson. “It is not trained, and the workmen are used to it. To them khaki means their sons and brothers and friends dressed up. I want my own soldiers of the Sea Regiment in service blue. I want eighty men from my old division at Chatham.”

“Eighty!” cried the War Minister “eighty men! You are going to stop a revolution with eighty Red Marines!”

“I could perhaps do with fewer,” explained Dawson modestly. “But I want to make sure work. Give me eighty Marines, none of less than five years’ service, a couple of sergeants, and a lieutenant a regular pukka lieutenant. Give them to me, and make me temporarily a captain in command, and I will engage to cut off the snake’s head. You can have my own head if I fail.”

The Great War Minister rose, walked over to Dawson, and shook his embarrassed hand. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Dawson,” said he. The First Lord, now fully awake, sat up and stared earnestly at the detective. Those two, the chiefs of the Navy and the Army, had grasped the startling fact that for once they were in the presence of a Man. The others saw only a rather ill-dressed, intrusive, vulgar police officer.

“I have rarely met a man with so economical a mind,” went on the War Minister, who resumed his seat. “If you had asked me for eight thousand, I should not have been surprised.” He turned to the Prime Minister. “If our resolute friend here can stop a revolution with eighty Red Marines, let him have them in God’s name.”

“Oh, he can have the Marines,” growled the Prime Minister “if the First Lord agrees. They are in his department. And if it pleases him to dress up as a temporary captain, that is nothing to me; but I draw a firm line at any proclamation of martial law.”

“Well,” asked the War Minister of Dawson, “what say you?”

“I must have the proclamation, my lord,” replied Dawson. “Not to put up in the streets, but to show to the shop stewards. They won’t believe that the Cabinet has any spunk until they see the proclamation signed by you. They know that what you say you do.”

["Great Heavens,” I said to Dawson, when he recounted to me the details of his surprising interview with the War Committee, “tact is hardly your strong suit. You could not have asked more plainly to be kicked out. The flabbier a Cabinet is, the more convinced are its members of adamantine resolution.”

“If I had to go down and out,” replied Dawson, “I had determined to go fighting. I was there to speak my mind, not to flatter anybody.”]

The silence which followed this awful speech could be felt. The Prime Minister gasped, flushed to the eyes, and half rose to dismiss Dawson from the room. He himself thought for a moment that all was lost, when through the tense atmosphere ran a ripple of gay laughter. It was the First Lord who, with instant decision, had taken the only means to save his new friend Dawson. He has a delightfully infectious silvery laugh, and the effect was electrical. The War Minister opened his great mouth, and bellowed Ha! Ha! Ha! The Minister of Munitions put his head down on the table and shrieked. Even the Home Secretary, a severe, humourless, legal gentleman, cackled. The Prime Minister, whose perceptions were of the quickest, saw that anger would be ridiculous in the midst of laughter. He admitted the First Lord’s victory, and forced a smile.

“You are not a diplomatist, Mr. Dawson,” said he reprovingly.

“Like Marcus Antonius,” whispered the First Lord, as he wiped his eyes delicately, “he is a plain, blunt man.”

The War Minister pulled a sheet of paper towards’ him and began to write. He scribbled for a few minutes, made a few corrections, and then read out slowly the words which he had set down. All present saw that the moment of acute crisis had arrived.

“That is all that I want,” said Dawson. “If you will sign that paper, my lord, I need not trouble you gentlemen any longer.”

“I am one of His Majesty’s principal Secretaries of State,” observed the War Minister. “Shall I sign, sir?”

“I believe,” remarked the Home Secretary primly, “that if one has regard for strict historical accuracy there is but one Secretary of State, and that I am that one.”

“I will not trouble you,” said the War Minister.

“I am technically responsible for the country over which I am supposed to rule,” put in the Scottish Secretary plaintively. “I speak, of course under correction, but north of the Border my signature might

“You are not a Secretary of State,” growled the War Minister, “and your seat is not safe. No one shall sign except myself, for I have no need to seek after working-class votes. Dawson and I will face this music.”

“And if I decline to permit you to sign?” asked the Prime Minister blandly. “This is not a Cabinet meeting, and we have no power to commit the Government to so grave a step.”

“You will require to fill up the vacant position of Secretary for War,” came the answer.

“And also the humble post of First Lord of the Admiralty,” murmured that high officer of State. “We are up against realities, and Cabinet etiquette can go hang for me.”

The War Minister again read aloud what he had written, signed it carefully and deliberately, and rising up, handed it to Dawson. “Get it printed at once and go ahead, Mr. Dawson.”

“Captain Dawson, R.M.L.I.,” corrected the First Lord, who also rose and warmly shook hands with the new captain. “You shall be gazetted at once. I will see the Adjutant-General myself and give orders to Chatham.”

“You have both made up your minds?” inquired the Prime Minister.

“Quite,” said the War Secretary. The First Lord nodded.

“Very good,” replied the Prime Minister; “I consent. We must above all things preserve the unity of the Cabinet in these circumstances of grave national crisis.”

“Clear out, Dawson,” whispered the First Lord.

Dawson cleared out.