“I know that smell,” said the Queen. “It’s—it’s——”
It is extraordinarily difficult to recognize a smell in such a way as to say definitely what it belongs to. Phillips and Gorman sniffed. Like the Queen they knew the smell but could not name it. It was Gorman who fixed it first.
“Petrol,” he said.
“Of course,” said the Queen. “I knew I recognized it.”
“That’s it,” said Phillips. “I was thinking of Elliman’s Embrocation; but it’s petrol, of course.”
“There must be gallons of it here,” said Gorman. “Thousands of gallons.”
Phillips, stretching his arms wide, began to make rough measurements of the cisterns.
“Now why on earth,” said Gorman, “should the Emperor want to store up huge quantities of petrol in this cave?”
It seems odd now that any one could possibly have failed to guess what the petrol was for and why it was there. But early in 1914 very few people were thinking about a war with Germany. Gorman, as a politician, must have heard some talk of such a possibility; but no doubt he regarded all he heard as part of the game that politicians play. Gorman is a man with the instincts of a sportsman. He thought, without any bitterness, of the war threat as a move, not a very astute move, on the part of an imperialist party anxious for office. It was comparable to those which his own party played. The Queen and Phillips had never thought about European politics at all.