"And what's wrong with the papers?" enquired the interlocutor in an aggrieved voice. "I suppose they know as much about things as you do, any day."
The commissionaire pursed his lips, blew his nose, and finished his beer before he found words to convey his answer.
"The newspapers! The newspapers are common liars!" he answered, "and ought to be hanged as such. No—don't you go for to speak up for 'em—George Jenkins—we know all about the papers in our department."
Jenkins did not subside immediately.
"I presume Sir Gadsby takes you into 'is confidence—not to say asks your advice occasional?" he asked sarcastically.
"He might do worse than ask the advice of a man who's fought in h'all four quarters of the globe and 'as the right to wear six medals and twelve bars," interrupted another listener propitiatingly.
"So he might," replied the commissionaire smiling genially, "but that's neither here nor there. If you want to know why I say it's China, I don't mind telling you." He glanced round to see that no outsiders were within earshot and dropped his voice into a confidential whisper.
"Four secretaries have I known since I went to our place, and I studies 'em until I comes to read 'em like books, and Sir Gadsby Dimbleby is one of the easiest volumes I've ever had to study. I know 'is German face an' 'is Russian face as well as I know my own. This morning when he come in I could read China in 'is heye as plain as if it were in the biggest print. You mark my words there's trouble brewin' in China."
The oracle had spoken, and as is often the case with oracles which have not been primed with facts, the utterance was as wide of the mark as it could well be.
Sir Gadsby Dimbleby's brain had not been occupied in the least degree with Chinese affairs as he passed the portals of the Foreign Office. He was troubling about something which had happened much nearer home, a subject which had been pigeonholed in one of the compartments of his brain until the crisis in the relations with Germany caused by the premature disclosure of the unfortunate incident in the South Seas should have passed. That storm had been safely weathered, and H. M. Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs bethought himself of the promise he had made to himself to discover how the information had leaked out. To him it seemed uncommonly like treachery on the part of someone, and being by birth, education, and natural instinct a thorough English gentleman, the idea even of having to suspect anyone in the great department of which he was the head of treachery was odious to him. So the Great Man passed, heedless of the salutes of officials, to the uttermost sanctum where the Permanent Secretary sat with his fingers on the strings which directed British policy all over the world, peacefully enjoying a matutinal cigar while glancing over the précis of a verbose despatch, prepared by his own secretary, from the Governor of a wind-swept rock in the South Atlantic concerning the deadly damage likely to be done to British interests by ceasing to imprison a garrison in such an out-of-the-way spot.