"Thank you!" said Madge at her prickly pertest. "Since you are so pressing—"
"We must wait for the letters!" It was so that Miss Greta, coming out into the hall, announced her intention of being one of the party. So, too, she betrayed her cherished hope that Napier might join them.
"Of course Gavan must go." He, Sir William, wasn't going to be a spoil-sport! And he announced the fact with a roguish significance that made Miss Greta cast down her eyes. When she lifted them, there was the bag. It proved a light post. Sir William tore open two or three envelopes while he stood there.
"Anything in the papers?" Miss Greta asked Napier.
A glance at the outsides of her own letters seemed to satisfy her. Did she read other people's with the same facility?
"The papers don't seem to have come," Napier answered.
"Not come! I wonder why!" She listened while he explained, in the easy British fashion, "that now and then the fella at the Junction would forget to throw the papers out."
"And you stand that? Sir William doesn't get the man dismissed?"
"What the devil...!" Sir William broke out. Apparently there were things which Sir William could not stand! One of them was in the letter he held as he went fuming toward the library, with Napier at his heels.
"Shut the door! Look here. The fact of that confidential memorandum being in the hands of the British Government is known. Known in the Hamburg shipping center, of all things! Here, you see what they say." Sir William thrust under the eyes of his secretary the highly disconcerting letter he had just received from the Board of Trade. "Well—? It certainly didn't happen in my department. Damned impudence!" Sir William burst out, "to suppose that any of our people...." He glared at an invisible cross-examiner, "It's never been out of our hands!"