"Splendid!" he muttered, rising to his feet. "If only I can do it!"
"Of course you can do it," Kendricks insisted firmly. "Before you spoke so often you used to write for the Nineteenth Century every month. You haven't forgotten the trick. Some of your sentences I remember even now. I tell you, Julien, they helped me to appreciate you. I liked you better when you took up the pen sometimes than I liked you in those perfect clothes and perfect manner in your office at Downing Street. Your tongue had the politician's trick of gliding over the surface of things. Your pen scratched and spluttered its way into the heart of affairs. Get back to it, Julien. I want your first article before I leave Paris to-night."
"I'll do my best," Julien promised. "It's a great scheme. I'm going to commence now."
"I hoped you would," Kendricks replied. "You've got the atmosphere here. You're sitting in the heart of the France that belongs to the French. It isn't for nothing that I've taken you round a little with me since we were here. Chance was kind, too, when it brought us up against Freudenberg. Remember, Julien, journalism isn't the gentlemanly art it was ten or twenty years ago. You can take up your pen and stab. That's what we want."
"It's fine," Julien declared. "It is war!"
Kendricks rose to his feet.
"I'm going to bed," he announced. "The last month has been exciting and there's plenty more to come. I need sleep. Julien, just a word of caution."
"Fire away," Julien sighed. He was already gazing steadfastly out of the window, already the sentences were framing themselves in his mind.
"The day upon which your first article appears," Kendricks said, "Freudenberg will strike. Your life here will never be wholly safe. You will be encompassed with spies and enemies. Why, this wild-cat scheme of his of sending you off on some expedition was solely because you are the one man of whom he is afraid. He feared lest Carraby might make some hideous blunder in a crisis and that the country might demand you back. That is why he wanted you out of the way."
"You may be right," Julien admitted. "What's that striking—one o'clock? Till to-night, David!"