“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.”