CHAPTER XX
Julian and Furley left the place together. They looked for the Bishop but found that he had slipped away.
“To Downing Street, I believe,” Furley remarked. “He has some vague idea of suggesting a compromise.”
“Compromise!” Julian repeated a little drearily. “How can there be any such thing! There might be delay. I think we ought to have given Stenson a week—time to communicate with America and send a mission to France.”
“We are like all theorists,” Furley declared moodily, stopping to relight his pipe. “We create and destroy on palter with amazing facility. When it comes to practice, we are funks.”
“Are you funking this?” Julian asked bluntly.
“How can any one help it? Theoretically we are right—I am sure of it. If we leave it to the politicians, this war will go dragging on for God knows how long. It’s the people who are paying. It’s the people who ought to make the peace. The only thing that bothers me is whether we are doing it the right way. Is Freistner honest? Could he be self-deceived? Is there any chance that he could be playing into the hands of the Pan-Germans?”
“Fenn is the man who has had most to do with him,” Julian remarked. “I wouldn’t trust Fenn a yard, but I believe in Freistner.”
“So do I,” Furley assented, “but is Fenn’s report of his promises and the strength of his followers entirely honest?”
“That’s the part of the whole thing I don’t like,” Julian acknowledged. “Fenn’s practically the corner stone of this affair. It was he who met Freistner in Amsterdam and started these negotiations, and I’m damned if I like Fenn, or trust him. Did you see the way he looked at Stenson out of the corners of his eyes, like a little ferret? Stenson was at his best, too. I never admired the man more.”