"How is Kendricks?" Herr Freudenberg asked.
"Alive, but barely conscious."
"It is a pity," Herr Freudenberg said coldly. "Kendricks is responsible for a good deal of the trouble. Did you see that to-night's article is here?"
Estermen nodded.
"He must have been a day ahead," he explained. "It was probably a later one of the series upon which he was engaged when the thing occurred."
"This one will do sufficient harm," Herr Freudenberg remarked grimly.
Estermen shrugged his shoulders.
"It is true, and yet we have a great start. Public opinion is thoroughly unsettled. Even those who accepted the entente as the most brilliant piece of diplomacy of the generation, are beginning to wonder what really has been gained by it. If I were at Berlin," Estermen continued, with a covert glance up at his master, "now is the time I should choose. To-morrow Le Grand Journal will be silent. To-morrow I should send a polite notification to the English Government that owing to the unsettled condition of the country, and the nervousness of certain German residents, His Imperial Majesty has thought it wise to send a warship to Agdar."
"The German subjects are a trifle hypothetical," Herr Freudenberg muttered. "We had the utmost difficulty in persuading an ex-convict to go out there."
"What does it matter?" Estermen asked. "He is there. He represents the glorious liberties of the Fatherland. Millions have been spent before now for the blood of one man."