Mr. Gordon Jones rose to his feet. It had been an interesting, in some respects a momentous interview. He glanced around the plain but handsomely furnished office, a room which betrayed so few evidences of the world-flung power of its owner.
“After all, Sir Alfred,” he remarked, smiling, “I am not sure that it is Downing Street which rules. We can touch our buttons and move armies and battleships across the face of the earth. You pull down your ledger, sign your name, and you can strike a blow as deadly as any we can conceive.”
The banker smiled.
“Let us be thankful, then,” he said, “that the powers we wield are linked together in the great cause.”
Mr. Gordon Jones hesitated.
“Such things, I know, are little to you, Sir Alfred,” he continued, “but at the same time I want you to believe that his Majesty’s Government will not be unmindful of your help at this juncture. To speak of rewards at such a time is perhaps premature. I know that ordinary honours do not appeal to you, yet it has been suggested to me by a certain person that I should assure you of the country’s gratitude. In plain words, there is nothing you may ask for which it would not be our pleasure and privilege to give you.”
Sir Alfred bowed slightly.
“You are very kind,” he said. “Later on, perhaps, one may reflect. At present there seems to be only one stern duty before us, and for that one needs no reward.”
The two men parted. Sir Alfred rose from the chair in front of his desk and threw himself into the easy-chair which his guest had been occupying. A ray of city sunshine found its way through the tangle of tall buildings on the other side of the street, lay in a zigzag path across his carpet, and touched the firm lines of his thoughtful face. He sat there, slowly tapping the sides of the chair with his pudgy fingers. So a great soldier might have sat, following out the progress of his armies in different countries, listening to the roar of their guns, watching their advance, their faltering, their success and their failures. Sir Alfred’s vision was in a sense more sordid in many ways more complicated, yet it too, had its dramatic side. He looked at the money-markets of the world, he saw exchanges rise and fall. He saw in the dim vista no khaki-clad army with flashing bayonets, but a long, thin line of black-coated men with sallow faces, clutching their money-bags.
There was a knock at the door and his secretary entered.
“Captain Granet has been here for some time, sir,” he announced softly.
The banker came back to the present. He woke up, indeed, with a little start.
“Show my nephew in at once,” he directed. “I shall be engaged with him for at least a quarter of an hour. Kindly go round to the Bank of England and arrange for an interview with Mr. Williams for three o’clock this afternoon.”
The clerk silently withdrew. Granet entered, a few minutes later. The banker greeted him pleasantly.
“Well, Ronnie,” he exclaimed, “I thought that you were going to be down in Norfolk for a week! Come in. Bring your chair up to my side, so. This is one of my deaf mornings.”
Granet silently obeyed. Sir Alfred glanced around the room. There was no possible hiding-place, not the slightest chance of being overheard.
“What about it, Ronnie?”
“We did our share,” Granet answered. “Collins was there at the Dormy House Club. We got the signal and we lit the flare. They came down to within two or three hundred feet, and they must have thrown twenty bombs, at least. They damaged the shed but missed the workshop. The house caught fire, but they managed to put that out.”
“You escaped all right, I’m glad to see?”
“They got Collins,” Granet said, dropping his voice almost to a whisper. “He was shot by my side. They caught me, too. I’ve been in a few tight corners but nothing tighter than that. Who do you think was sent down from the War Office to hold an inquiry? Thomson—that fellow Thomson!”
The banker frowned.
“Do you mean the man who is the head of the hospitals?”
“Supposed to be,” Granet answered grimly. “I am beginning to wonder—Tell me, you haven’t heard anything more about him, have you?”
“Not a word,” Sir Alfred replied. “Why should I?”
“Nothing except that I have an uncomfortable feeling about him,” Granet went on. “I wish I felt sure that he was just what he professes to be. He is the one man who seems to suspect me. If it hadn’t been for Isabel Worth, I was done for—finished—down at that wretched hole! He had me where I couldn’t move. The girl lied and got me out of it.”
Sir Alfred drummed for a moment with his fingers upon the table.
“I am not sure that these risks are worth while for you, Ronnie,” he said.
The young man shrugged his shoulders. His face certainly seemed to have grown thinner during the last few days.
“I don’t mind it so much abroad,” he declared. “It seems a different thing there, somehow. But over here it’s all wrong; it’s the atmosphere, I suppose. And that fellow Thomson means mischief—I’m sure of it.”
“Is there any reason for ill-feeling between you two?” the banker inquired.
Granet nodded.
“You’ve hit it, sir.”
“Miss Conyers, eh?”
The young man’s face underwent a sudden change.
“Yes,” he confessed. “If I hadn’t begun this, if I hadn’t gone so far into it that no other course was possible, I think that I should have been content to be just what I seem to be—because of her.”
Sir Alfred leaned back in his chair. He was looking at his nephew as a man of science might have looked at some interesting specimen.
“Well,” he said, “I suppose you simply confirm the experience of the ages, but, frankly, you amaze me. You are moving amongst the big places of life, you are with those who are making history, and you would be content to give the whole thing up. For what? You would become a commonplace, easy-going young animal of a British soldier, for the sake of the affection of a good-looking, well-bred, commonplace British young woman. I don’t understand you, Ronald. You have the blood of empire-makers in your veins. Your education and environment have developed an outward resemblance to the thing you profess to be, but behind—don’t you fell the grip of the other things?”
“I feel them, right enough,” Granet replied. “I have felt them for the last seven or eight years. But I am feeling something else, too, something which I dare say you never felt, something which I have never quite believed in.”
Sir Alfred leaned back in his chair.
“In a way,” he admitted, “this is disappointing. You are right. I have never felt the call of those other things. When I was a young man, I was frivolous simply when I felt inclined to turn from the big things of life for purposes of relaxation. When an alliance was suggested to me, I was content to accept it, but thank heavens I have been Oriental enough to keep women in my life where they belong. I am disappointed in you, Ronnie.”
The young man shrugged his shoulders.
“I haven’t flinched,” he said.
“No, but the soft spot’s there,” was the grim reply. “However, let that go. Tell me why you came up? Wasn’t it better to have stayed down at Brancaster for a little longer?”
“Perhaps,” his nephew assented. “My arm came on a little rocky and I had to chuck golf. Apart from that, I wasn’t altogether comfortable about things at Market Burnham. I was obliged to tell Thomson that I saw nothing of Collins that night but they know at the Dormy House Club that he started with me in the car and has never been heard of since. Then there was the young woman.”
“Saved you by a lie, didn’t she?” the banker remarked. “That may be awkward later on.”
“I’m sick of my own affairs,” Granet declared gloomily. “Is there anything fresh up here at all?”
Sir Alfred frowned slightly.
“Nothing very much,” he said. “At the same time, there are distinct indications of a change which I don’t like. With certain statesmen here at the top of the tree, it was perfectly easy for me to carry out any schemes which I thought necessary. During the last few weeks, however, there has been a change. Nominally, things are the same. Actually, I seem to find another hand at work, another hand which works with the censorship, too. One of my very trusted agents in Harwich made the slightest slip the other day. A few weeks ago, he would either have been fined twenty pounds or interned. Do you know what happened to him on Wednesday? Of course you don’t he was arrested at one o’clock and shot in half an hour. Then you saw the papers this morning? All sailings between here and a certain little spot we know of have been stopped without a moment’s warning. I am compelled to pause in several most interesting schemes.”
“Nothing for me, I suppose?” Granet asked, a little nervously.
Sir Alfred looked at him.
“Not for the moment,” he replied, “but there will be very soon. Take hold of yourself Ronnie. Don’t look downwards so much. You and I are walking in the clouds. It is almost as bad to falter as to slip. Confess—you’ve been afraid.”
“I have,” Granet admitted, “not afraid of death but afraid of what might follow upon discovery. I am half inclined, if just one thing in the world came my way, to sail for New York to-morrow and start again.”
“When those fears come to you,” Sir Alfred continued slowly, “consider me. I run a greater risk than you. There are threads from this office stretching to many corners of England, to many corners of America, to most cities of Europe. If a man with brains should seize upon any one of them, he might follow it backwards—even here.”
Sir Alfred touched his chest for a moment. Then his hand dropped to his side and he proceeded.
“For twenty-eight years I have ruled the money-markets of the world. No Cabinet Council is held in this country at which my influence is not represented. The Ministers come to me one by one for help and advice. I represent the third great force of war, and there isn’t a single member of the present Government who doesn’t look upon me as the most important person in the country. Yet I, too, have enemies, Ronnie. There is the halfpenny Press. They’d give a million for the chance that may come at any day. They’d print my downfall in blacker lines than the declaration of war. They’d shriek over my ruin with a more brazen-throated triumph even than they would greet the heralds of peace. And the threads are there, Ronald. Sometimes I feel one shiver a little. Sometimes I have to stretch out my arm and brush too curious an inquirer into the place where curiosity ends. I sit and watch and I am well served. There are men this morning at Buckingham Palace with a V.C. to be pinned upon their breast, who faced dangers for ten minutes, less than I face day and night.”
Granet rose to his feet.
“For a moment,” he exclaimed, “I had forgotten!... Tell me,” he added, with sudden vigour, “what have we done it for? You made your great name in England, you were Eton and Oxford. Why is it that when the giant struggle comes it should be Germany who governs your heart, it should be Germany who calls even to me?”
Sir Alfred held out his hand. His eye had caught the clock.
“Ronnie,” he said, “have you ever wondered why in a flock of sheep every lamb knows its mother? Germany was the mother of our stock. Birth, life and education count for nothing when the great days come, when the mother voice speaks. It isn’t that we are false to England, it is that we are true to our own. You must go now, Ronnie! I have an appointment.”
Granet walked out to the street a little dazed, and called for a taxi.
“I suppose that must be it,” he muttered to himself.
Geraldine welcomed her unexpected visitor that afternoon cordially enough but a little shyly.
“I thought that you were going to stay at Brancaster for a week,” she remarked, as they shook hands.
“We meant to stay longer,” Granet admitted, “but things went a little wrong. First of all there was this Zeppelin raid. Then my arm didn’t go very well. Altogether our little excursion fizzled out and I came back last night.”
“Did you see anything of the raid?” Geraldine inquired eagerly.
“Rather more than I wanted,” he answered grimly. “I was motoring along the road at the time, and I had to attend a perfect court martial next day, with your friend Thomson in the chair. Can you tell me, Miss Conyers,” he continued, watching her closely, “how it is that a medical major who is inspector of hospitals, should be sent down from the War Office to hold an inquiry upon that raid?”
“Was Hugh really there?” she asked in a puzzled manner.
“He was, and very officially,” Granet replied. “If it weren’t that I had conclusive evidence to prove what I was doing there, he seemed rather set on getting me into trouble.”
“Hugh is always very fair,” she said a little coldly.
“You can’t solve my puzzle for me, then?” he persisted.
“What puzzle?”
“Why an inspector of hospitals should hold an inquiry upon a Zeppelin raid?”
“I’m afraid I cannot,” she admitted. “Hugh certainly seems to have become a most mysterious person, but then, as you know, I haven’t seen quite so much of him lately. Your change, Captain Granet, doesn’t seem to have done you much good. Has your wound been troubling you?”
He rose abruptly and stood before her.
“Do you care whether my wound is troubling me or not?” he asked. “Do you care anything at all about me?”
There was a moment’s silence.
“I care very much,” she confessed.
He seemed suddenly a changed person. The lines which had certainly appeared in his face during the last few days, become more noticeable. He leaned towards her eagerly.
“Miss Conyers,” he went on, “Geraldine, I want you to care—enough for the big things. Don’t interrupt me, please. Listen to what I have to say. Somehow or other, the world has gone amiss with me lately. They won’t have me back, my place has been filled up, I can’t get any fighting. They’ve shelved me at the War Office; they talk about a home adjutancy. I can’t stick it, I have lived amongst the big things too long. I’m sick of waiting about, doing nothing—sick to death. I want to get away. There’s some work I could do in America. You understand?”
“Not in the least,” Geraldine told him frankly.
“It’s my fault,” he declared. “The words all seem to be tumbling out anyhow and I don’t know how to put them in the right order. Can’t you see that I love you, Geraldine? I want you to be my wife, and I want to get right away as quickly as ever I can. Why not America? Why couldn’t we be married this week and get away from everybody?”
She looked at him in sheer amazement, amazement tempered just a little with a sort of tremulous uncertainty.
“But, Captain Granet,” she exclaimed, “you can’t be serious! You couldn’t possibly think of leaving England now.”
“Why not?” he protested. “They won’t let me fight again. I couldn’t stand the miserable routine of home soldiering. I’d like to get away and forget it all.”
“I am sure you are not in earnest,” she said quietly. “No Englishman could feel like that.”
“He could if he cared for you,” Granet insisted. “I’m afraid of everything here, afraid that Thomson will come back and take you away, afraid of all sorts of hideous things happening during the next few months.”
“You mustn’t talk like this, please,” she begged. “You know as well as I do that neither you nor I could turn our backs on England just now and be happy.”
He opened his lips to speak but stopped short. It was obvious that she was deeply in earnest.
“And as for the other thing you spoke of,” she continued, “please won’t you do as I beg you and not refer to it again for the present? Perhaps,” she added, “when the war is over we may speak of it, but just now everything is so confused. I, too, seem to have lost my bearings....You know that I am going out to Boulogne in a few days with Lady Headley’s hospital? Don’t look so frightened. I am not an amateur nurse, I can assure you. I have all my certificates.”
“To Boulogne?” he muttered. “You are going to leave London?”
She nodded.
“Major Thomson arranged it for me, a few days ago. We may meet there at any time,” she added, smiling. “I am perfectly certain that the War Office will find you something abroad very soon.”
For a moment that queer look of boyish strength which had first attracted her, reasserted itself. His teeth came together.
“Yes,” he agreed, “there’s work for me somewhere. I’ll find it. Only—”
She checked him hurriedly.
“And I am quite sure,” she interrupted, “that when you are yourself again you will agree with me. These are not the times for us to have any selfish thoughts, are they?”
“Until a few weeks ago,” he told her, “I thought of nothing but the war and my work in it—until you came, that is.”
She held out her hands to check him. Her eyes were eloquent.
“Please remember,” she begged, “that it is too soon. I can’t bear to have you talk to me like that. Afterwards—”
“There will be no afterwards for me!” he exclaimed bitterly.
A shade of surprise became mingled with her agitation.
“You mustn’t talk like that,” she protested, “you with your splendid courage and opportunities! Think what you have done already. England wants the best of her sons to-day. Can’t you be content to give that and to wait? We have so much gratitude in our hearts, we weak women, for those who are fighting our battle.”
Her words failed to inspire him. He took her hand and lifted her fingers deliberately to his lips.
“I was foolish,” he groaned, “to think that you could feel as I do. Good-bye!”
Geraldine was alone when her mother came into the room a few minutes later. Lady Conyers was looking a little fluttered and anxious.
“Was that Captain Granet?” she asked.
Geraldine nodded. Lady Conyers anxiety deepened.
“Well?”
“I have sent him away,” Geraldine said quietly, “until the end of the war.”
Granet brought his car to a standstill outside the portals of that very august club in Pall Mall. The hall-porter took in his name and a few minutes his uncle joined him in the strangers’ room.
“Back again so soon, Ronnie?”
Granet nodded.
“America’s off,” he announced shortly. “I thought I’d better let you know. It must be the whole thing now.”
Sir Alfred was silent for a moment.
“Very well,” he said at last, “only remember this, my boy—there must be no more risks. You’ve been sailing quite close enough to the wind.”
“Did you call at the War Office?” Granet asked quickly.
His uncle assented.
“I did and I saw General Brice. He admitted in confidence that they weren’t very keen about your rejoining. Nothing personal,” he went on quickly, “nothing serious, that is to say. There is a sort of impression out there that you’ve brought them bad luck.”
Granet shrugged his shoulders.
“Well,” he said, “they know their own business best. What I am afraid of is being saddled with some rotten home duty.”
“You need not be afraid of that any more, Ronnie,” his uncle told him calmly.
Granet turned quickly around.
“Do you mean that they don’t want to give me anything at all?” he demanded anxiously.
Sir Alfred shook his head.
“You are too impetuous, Ronnie. They’re willing enough to give you a home command, but I have asked that it should be left over for a little time, so as to leave you free.”
“You have something in your mind, then—something definite?”
Sir Alfred looked out of the window for a moment. Then he laid his hand upon his nephew’s shoulder.
“I think I can promise you, Ronnie,” he said seriously, “that before many days have passed you shall have all the occupation you want.”
Surgeon-Major Thomson reeled for a moment and caught at the paling by his side. Then he recovered himself almost as quickly, and, leaning forward, gazed eagerly at the long, grey racing-car which was already passing Buckingham Palace and almost out of sight in the slight morning fog. There was a very small cloud of white smoke drifting away into space, and a faint smell of gunpowder in the air. He felt his cheek and, withdrawing his fingers, gazed at them with a little nervous laugh—they were wet with blood.
He looked up and down the broad pathway. For nine o’clock in the morning the Birdcage Walk was marvellously deserted. A girl, however, who had been driving a small car very slowly on the other side of the road, suddenly swung across, drew up by the kerb and leaned towards him.
“Hugh—Major Thomson, what is the matter with you?”
He dabbed his cheek with his pocket handkerchief.
“Nothing,” he answered simply.
“Don’t be silly!” she exclaimed. “I felt certain that I heard a shot just now, and I saw you reel and spin round for a moment. And your cheek, too—it’s all over blood!”
He smiled.
“A bullet did come my way and just graze my cheek,” he admitted. “Most extraordinary thing. I wonder whether one of those fellows in the Park had an accident with his rifle.”
He glanced thoughtfully across towards where a number of khaki-clad figures were dimly visible behind the railings. Geraldine looked at him severely.
“Of course,” she began, “if you really think that I don’t know the difference between the report of a pistol and a rifle shot—”
He interrupted her.
“I was wrong,” he confessed. “Forgive me. You see, my head was a little turned. Some one did deliberately fire at me, and I believe it was from a grey racing-car. I couldn’t see who was driving it and it was out of sight almost at once.”
“But I never heard of such a thing!” she exclaimed. “Why on earth should they fire at you? You haven’t any enemies, have you?”
“Not that I know of,” he assured her.
She stepped from the car and came lightly over to his side.
“Take your handkerchief away,” she ordered. “Don’t be foolish. You forget that I am a certificated nurse.”
He raised his handkerchief and she looked for a moment at the long scar. Her face grew serious.
“Another half-inch,” she murmured,—“Hugh, what an abominable thing! A deliberate attempt at murder here, at nine o’clock in the morning, in the Park! I can’t understand it.”
“Well, I’ve been under fire before,” he remarked, smiling.
“Get into my car at once,” she directed. “I’ll drive you to a chemist’s and put something on that. You can’t go about as you are, and it will have healed up then in a day or two.”
He obeyed at once and she drove off.
“Of course, I’m a little bewildered about it still,” she went on. “I suppose you ought to go to the police-station. It was really a deliberate attempt at assassination, wasn’t it? If you had been—”
She paused and he completed her sentence with a humorous twinkle in his eyes.
“If I had been a person of importance, eh? Well, you see, even I must have been in somebody’s way.”
She drove in silence for some little distance.
“Hugh,” she asked abruptly, “why did the War Office send you down to Market Burnham after that Zeppelin raid?”
His face was suddenly immovable. He turned his head very slightly.
“Did Granet tell you that?”
She nodded.
“Captain Granet came to see me yesterday afternoon. He seemed as much surprised as I was. You were a little hard on him, weren’t you?”
“I think not!”
“But why were you sent down?” she persisted. “I can’t imagine what you have to do with a Zeppelin raid.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“I really don’t think it is worth while your bothering about the bandage,” he said.
“Hugh, you make me so angry!” she exclaimed. “Of course, you may say that I haven’t the right to ask, but still I can’t see why you should be so mysterious.... Here’s the chemist’s. Now come inside with me, please.”
He followed her obediently into the shop at the top of Trafalgar Square. She dressed his wound deftly and adjusted a bandage around his head.
“If you keep that on all day,” she said, “I think—but I forgot. I was treating you like an ordinary patient. Don’t laugh at me, sir. I am sure none of your professional nurses could have tied that up any better.”
“Of course they couldn’t,” he agreed. “By-the-bye, have you obtained your papers for Boulogne yet?”
“I expect to be going next week. Lady Headley promised to let me know this afternoon. Now I’ll take you down to the War Office, if you like.”
He took his place once more by her side.
“Hugh,” she inquired, “have you any idea who fired that shot?”
“None whatever,” he replied, “no definite idea, that is to say. It was some one who as driving a low, grey car. Do we know any one who possesses such a thing?”
She frowned. The exigencies of the traffic prevented her glancing towards him.
“Only Captain Granet,” she remarked, “and I suppose even your dislike of him doesn’t go so far as to suggest that he is likely to play the would-be murderer in broad daylight.”
“It certainly does seem a rather rash and unnecessary proceeding,” he assented, “but the fact remains that some one thought it worth while.”
“Some one with a grudge against the Chief Inspector of Hospitals,” she observed drily.
He did not reply. They drew up outside the War Office.
“Thank you very much,” he said, “for playing the Good Samaritan.”
She made a little grimace. Suddenly her manner became more earnest. She laid her fingers upon his arm as he stood on the pavement by her side.
“Hugh,” she said, “before you go let me tell you something. I think that the real reason why I lost some of my affection for you was because you persisted in treating me without any confidence at all. The little things which may have happened to you abroad, the little details of your life, the harmless side of your profession—there were so many things I should have been interested in. And you told me nothing. There were things which seemed to demand an explanation with regard to your position. You ignored them. You seemed to enjoy moving in a mysterious atmosphere. It’s worse than ever now. I am intelligent, am I not—trustworthy?”
“You are both,” he admitted gravely. “Thank you very much for telling me this, Geraldine.”
“You still have nothing to say to me?” she asked, looking him in the face.
“Nothing,” he replied.
She nodded, slipped in her clutch and drove off. Surgeon-Major Thomson entered the War Office and made his way up many stairs and along many wide corridors to a large room on the top floor of the building. Two men were seated at desks, writing. He passed them by with a little greeting and entered an inner apartment. A pile of letters stood upon his desk. He examined them one by one, destroyed some, made pencil remarks upon others. Presently there was a tap at the door and Ambrose entered.
“Chief’s compliments and he would be glad if you would step round to his room at once, sir,” he announced.
Thomson locked his desk, made his way to the further end of the building and was admitted through a door by which a sentry was standing, to an anteroom in which a dozen people were waiting. His guide passed him through to an inner apartment, where a man was seated alone. He glanced up at Thomson’s entrance.
“Good morning, Thomson!” he said brusquely. “Sit down, please. Leave the room, Dawkes, and close the door. Thanks! Thomson, what about this request of yours?”
“I felt bound to bring the matter before you, sir,” Thomson replied. “I made my application to the censor and you know the result.”
The Chief swung round in his chair.
“Look here,” he said, “the censor’s department has instructions to afford you every possible assistance in any researches you make. There are just twenty-four names in the United Kingdom which have been admitted to the privileges of free correspondence. The censor has no right to touch any letters addressed to them. Sir Alfred Anselman is upon that list.”
Thomson nodded gravely.
“So I have been given to understand,” he remarked.
The Chief leaned back in his chair. His cold grey eyes were studying the other’s face.
“Thomson,” he continued, “I know that you are not a sensationalist. At the same time, this request of yours is a little nerve-shattering, isn’t it? Sir Alfred Anselman has been the Chancellor’s right-hand man. It was mainly owing to his efforts that the war loan was such a success. He has done more for us in the city than any other Englishman. He has given large sums to the various war funds, his nephew is a very distinguished young officer. Now there suddenly comes a request from you to have the censor pass you copies of all his Dutch correspondence. There’d be the very devil to pay if I consented.”
Thomson cleared his throat for a moment.
“Sir,” he said, “you and I have discussed this matter indirectly more than once. You are not yet of my opinion but you will be. The halfpenny Press has sickened us so with the subject of spies that the man who groans about espionage to-day is avoided like a pestilence. Yet it is my impression that there is in London, undetected and unsuspected, a marvellous system of German espionage, a company of men who have sold themselves to the enemy, whose names we should have considered above reproach. It is my job to sift this matter to the bottom. I can only do so if you will give me supreme power over the censorship.”
“Look here, Thomson,” the Chief demanded, “you don’t suspect Sir Alfred Anselman?”
“I do, sir!”
The Chief was obviously dumbfounded. He sat, for a few moments, thinking.
“You’re a sane man, too, Thomson,” he muttered, “but it’s the most astounding charge I’ve ever heard.”
“It’s the most astounding conspiracy,” Thomson replied. “I was in Germany a few weeks ago, as you know.”
“I heard all about it. A very brilliant but a very dangerous exploit, that of yours, Thomson.”
“I will tell you my impressions, sir,” the latter continued. “The ignorance displayed in the German newspapers about England is entirely a matter of censorship. Their actual information as regards every detail of our military condition is simply amazing. They know exactly what munitions are reaching our shores from abroad, they know how we are paying for them, they know exactly our financial condition, they know all about our new guns, they know just how many men we could send over to France to-morrow and how many we could get through in three months’ time. They know the private views of every one of the Cabinet Ministers. They knew in Berlin yesterday what took place at the Cabinet Council the day before. You must realise yourself that some of this is true. How does the information get through?”
“There are spies, of course,” the Chief admitted.
“The ordinary spy could make no such reports as the Germans are getting hour by hour. If I am to make a success of my job, I want the letters of Sir Alfred Anselman.”
The Chief considered for several moments. Then he wrote a few lines on a sheet of paper.
“There’ll be the perfect devil to pay,” he said simply. “We shall have Cabinet Ministers running about the place like black beetles. What’s the matter with your head?”
“I was shot at in the Park,” Thomson explained. “A man had a flying go at me from a motor-car.”
“Was he caught?”
Thomson shook his head.
“I didn’t try,” he replied. “I want him at liberty. His time will come when I break up this conspiracy, if I do it at all.”
The Chief looked a little aggrieved.
“No one’s even let off a pop-gun at me,” he grumbled. “They must think you’re the more dangerous of the two, Thomson. You’d better do what you can with that order as soon as possible. No telling how soon I may have to rescind it.”
Thomson took the hint and departed. He walked quickly back to his room, thrust the order he had received into an envelope, and sent it round to the Censor’s Department.
Mr. Gordon Jones, who had moved his chair a little closer to his host’s side, looked reflectively around the dining-room as he sipped his port. The butler remained on sufferance because of his grey hairs, but the footmen, who had been rather a feature of the Anselman establishment, had departed, and their places had been filled by half a dozen of the smartest of parlourmaids, one or two of whom were still in evidence.
“Yours is certainly one of the most patriotic households, Sir Alfred, which I have entered,” he declared. “Tell me again, how many servants have you sent to the war?”
Sir Alfred smiled with the air of one a little proud of his record.
“Four footmen and two chauffeurs from here, eleven gardeners and three indoor servants from the country,” he replied. “That is to say nothing about the farms, where I have left matters in the hands of my agents. I am paying the full wages to every one of them.”
“And thank heavens you’ll still have to pay us a little super-tax,” the Cabinet Minister remarked, smiling.
Sir Alfred found nothing to dismay him in the prospect.
“You shall have every penny of it, my friend,” he promised. “I have taken a quarter of a million of your war loan and I shall take the same amount of your next one. I spend all my time upon your committees, my own affairs scarcely interest me, and yet I thought to-day, when my car was stopped to let a company of the London Regiment march down to Charing-Cross, that there wasn’t one of those khaki-clad young men who wasn’t offering more than I.”
The Bishop leaned forward from his place.
“Those are noteworthy words of yours, Sir Alfred,” he said. “There is nothing in the whole world so utterly ineffective as our own passionate gratitude must seem to ourselves when we think of all those young fellows—not soldiers, you know, but young men of peace, fond of their pleasures, their games, their sweethearts, their work—throwing it all on one side, passing into another life, passing into the valley of shadows. I, too, have seen those young men, Sir Alfred.”
The conversation became general. The host of this little dinner-party leaned back in his place for a moment, engrossed in thought. It was a very distinguished, if not a large company. There were three Cabinet Ministers, a high official in the War Office, a bishop, a soldier of royal blood back for a few days from the Front, and his own nephew—Granet. He sat and looked round at them and a queer little smile played upon his lips. If only the truth were known, the world had never seen a stranger gathering. It was a company which the King himself might have been proud to gather around him; serious, representative Englishmen—Englishmen, too, of great position. There was not one of them who had not readily accepted his invitation, there was not one of them who was not proud to sit at his table, there was not one of them who did not look upon him as one of the props of the Empire.
There was a little rustle as one of the new parlourmaids walked smoothly to his side and presented a silver salver. He took the single letter from her, glanced at it for a moment carelessly and then felt as though the fingers which held it had been pierced by red-hot wires. The brilliant little company seemed suddenly to dissolve before his eyes. He saw nothing but the marking upon that letter, growing larger and larger as he gazed, the veritable writing of fate pressed upon the envelope by a rubber stamp—by the hand, perchance, of a clerk—“Opened by Censor.”
There was a momentary singing in his ears. He looked at his glass, found it full, raised it to his lips and drained it. The ghastly moment of suspended animation passed. He felt no longer that he was in a room from which all the air had been drawn. He was himself again but the letter was there. Mr. Gordon Jones, who had been talking to the bishop, leaned towards him and pointed to the envelope.
“Is that yours, Sir Alfred?” he asked.
Sir Alfred nodded.
“Becoming a little more stringent, I see,” he observed, holding it up.
“I thought I recognised the mark,” the other replied. “A most outrageous mistake! I am very glad that it came under my notice. You are absolutely free from the censor, Sir Alfred.”
“I thought so myself,” Sir Alfred remarked. “However, I suppose an occasional mistake can scarcely be wondered at. Don’t worry them about it, please. My Dutch letters are simply records of the balances at my different banks, mere financial details.”
“All the same,” Mr. Gordon Jones insisted, “there has been gross neglect somewhere. I will see that it is inquired into to-morrow morning.”
“Very kind of you,” Sir Alfred declared. “As you know, I have been able to give you fragments of information now and then which would cease at once, of course, if my correspondence as a whole were subject to censorship. An occasional mistake like this is nothing.”
There was another interruption. This time a message had come from the house—Ministers would be required within the next twenty minutes. The little party—it was a men’s dinner-party only—broke up. Very soon Sir Alfred and his nephew were left alone. Sir Alfred’s fingers shook for a moment as he tore open the seal of his letter. He glanced through the few lines it contained and breathed a sigh of relief.
“Come this way, Ronnie,” he invited.
They left the dining-room and, eschewing the inviting luxuries of the billiard room and library, passed into a small room behind, plainly furnished as a business man’s study. Granet seized his uncle by the arm.
“It’s coded, I suppose?”
Sir Alfred nodded.
“It’s coded, Ronnie, and between you and me I don’t believe they’ll be able to read it, but whose doing is that?” he added, pointing with his finger to the envelope.
“It must have been a mistake,” Granet muttered.
Sir Alfred glanced toward the closed door. Without a doubt they were alone.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Mistakes of this sort don’t often occur. As I looked around to-night, Ronnie, I thought—I couldn’t help thinking that our position was somewhat wonderful. Does it mean that this is the first breath of suspicion, I wonder? Was it really only my fancy, or did I hear to-night the first mutterings of the storm?”
“No one can possibly suspect,” Granet declared, “no one who could have influence enough to override your immunity from censorship. It must have been an accident.”
“I wonder!” Sir Alfred muttered.
“Can’t you decode it?” Granet asked eagerly. “There may be news.”
Sir Alfred re-entered the larger library and was absent for several minutes. When he returned, the message was written out in lead pencil:—
Leave London June 4th. Have flares midnight Buckingham Palace, St. Paul’s steps, gardens in front of Savoy. Your last report received.
Granet glanced eagerly back at the original message. It consisted of a few perfectly harmless sentences concerning various rates of exchange. He gave it to his uncle with a smile.
“I shouldn’t worry about that, sir,” he advised.
“It isn’t the thing itself I worry about,” Sir Alfred said thoughtfully,—“they’ll never decode that message. It’s the something that lies behind it. It’s the pointing finger, Ronnie. I thought we’d last it out, at any rate. Things look different now. You’re serious, I suppose? You don’t want to go to America?”
“I don’t,” Granet replied grimly. “That’s all finished, for the present. You know very well what it is I do want.”
Sir Alfred frowned.
“There are plenty of wild enterprises afoot,” he admitted, “but I don’t know, after all, that I wish you particularly to be mixed up in them.”
“I can’t hang about here much longer,” his nephew grumbled. “I get the fever in my blood to be doing something. I had a try this morning.”
His uncle looked at him for a moment.
“This morning,” he repeated. “Well?”
Granet thrust his hands into his trousers pockets. There was a frown upon his fine forehead.
“It’s that man I told you about,” he said bitterly,—“the man I hate. He’s nobody of any account but he always seems to be mixed up in any little trouble I find myself in. I got out of that affair down at Market Burnham without the least trouble, and then, as you know, the War Office sent him down, of all the people on earth, to hold an inquiry. Sometimes I think that he suspects me. I met him at a critical moment on the battlefield near Niemen. I always believed that he heard me speaking German—it was just after I had come back across the lines. The other day—well, I told you about that. Isabel Worth saved me or I don’t know where I should have been. I think I shall kill that man!”
“What did you say his name was?” Sir Alfred asked, with sudden eagerness.
“Thomson.”
There was a moment’s silence. Sir Alfred’s expression was curiously tense. He leaned across the table towards his nephew.
“Thomson?” he repeated. “My God! I knew there was something I meant to tell you. Don’t you know, Ronnie?—but of course you don’t. You’re sure it’s Thomson—Surgeon-Major Thomson?”
“That’s the man.”
“He is the man with the new post,” Sir Alfred declared hoarsely. “He is the head of the whole Military Intelligence Department! They’ve set him up at the War Office. They’ve practically given him unlimited powers.”
“Why, I thought he was inspector of Field Hospitals!” Granet gasped.
“A blind!” his uncle groaned. “He is nothing of the sort. He’s Kitchener’s own man, and this,” he added, looking at the letter, “must be his work!”