They gazed at each other.

‘Then it was Rodman wrote that letter!’ Mutimer cried.  ’I’ll swear to it.  He did it to injure me at the last moment.  Why haven’t they got him yet?  The police are useless.  But they’ve got Hilary, I see—­yes, they’ve got Hilary.  He was caught at Dover.  Ha, ha!  He denies everything—­says he didn’t even know of the secretary’s decamping.  The lying scoundrel!  Says he was going to Paris on private business.  But they’ve got him!  And see here again:  “The same Rodman is at present wanted by the police on a charge of bigamy.”  Wanted!  If they weren’t incompetent fools they’d have had him already.  Ten to one he’s out of England.’

It was a day of tumult for Mutimer.  At the hospital he found no encouragement, but he could only leave Alice in the hands of the doctors.  From the hospital he went to his mother’s house; he had not yet had time to let her know of anything.  But his main business lay in Clerkenwell and in various parts of the East End, wherever he could see his fellow-agitators.  In hot haste he wrote an announcement of a meeting on Clerkenwell Green for Sunday afternoon, and had thousands of copies printed on slips; by evening these were scattered throughout his ‘parishes.’  He found that the calumny affecting him was already widely known; several members of his committee met him with black looks.  Here and there an ironical question was put to him about his sister’s health.  With the knowledge that Alice might be dying or dead, he could scarcely find words of reply.  His mood changed from fear and indignation to a grim fury; within a few hours he made many resolute enemies by his reckless vehemence and vituperation.

The evening papers brought him a piece of intelligence which would have rejoiced him but for something with which it was coupled.  Delancey, alias Rodman, alias Williamson, was arrested; he had been caught in Hamburg.  The telegram added that he talked freely and had implicated a number of persons—­among them a certain Socialist agitator, name not given.  As Mutimer read this he fell for a moment into blank despair.  He returned at once to Holloway, all but resolved to throw up the game—­to abandon the effort to defend himself, and wait for what might result from the judicial investigations.  Adela resisted this to the uttermost.  She understood that such appearance of fear would be fatal to him.  With a knowledge of Demos which owed much to her last night’s experience, she urged to him that behind his back calumny would thrive unchecked, would grow in a day to proportions altogether irresistible.  She succeeded in restoring his courage, though at the same time there revived in Mutimer the savage spirit which could only result in harm to himself.

‘This is how they repay a man who works for them!’ he cried repeatedly.  ’The ungrateful brutes!  Let me once clear myself, and I’ll throw it up, bid them find someone else to fight their battles for them.  It’s always been the same:  history shows it What have I got for myself out of it all, I’d like to know?  Haven’t I given them every penny I had?  Let them do their worst!  Let them bark and bray till they are hoarse!’