"Not one," Graveling interposed, "and for my part, I go further. I say that the man who stands there and talks about the risk of a foreign invasion like that, is no Englishman. I call him a traitor, and if the thing comes he speaks of, may he be hung from the nearest lamp-post! That's all I've got to say."
Maraton opened his lips and closed them again. He looked slowly down that wall of blank, unsympathetic faces and he merely shrugged his shoulders. Words were wasted upon them.
"Very well, gentlemen," he said, "let it be war. Perhaps we'd better let this be the end of our deliberations."
Graveling rose slowly to his feet. His face was filled with evil things. He pointed to Maraton.
"There's a word more to be spoken!" he exclaimed. "There's more behind this scheme of Maraton's than he's willing to have us understand! It looks to me and it sounds to me like a piece of dirty, underhand business. I'll ask you a question, Maraton. Were you at the Ritz Hotel one night about two months ago, with the ambassador of a foreign a country?"
"I was," Maraton admitted coolly.
Graveling looked around with a little cry of triumph.
"It's a plot, this; nothing more nor less than a plot!" he declared vigorously. "What sort of an Englishman does he call himself, I wonder? It's the foreigners that are at the bottom of the lot of it! They want our trade, they'd be glad of our country. They've bribed this man Maraton to get it without the trouble of fighting for it, even!"
Maraton moved towards the door. Holding it open, he turned and faced them.
"Before I came," he said, "I hoped that you might be men. I find you just the usual sort of pigmies. You call yourselves people's men! You haven't mastered the elementary truths of your religion. What's England, or France, or any other country in the world, by the side of humanity? Be off! I'll go my own way. Go yours, and take your little tinsel of jingoism with you. Whenever you want to fight me, I shall be ready."