“
I’m going, of course,” said Gorman. “The whole thing is interesting, quite exciting.”
He had just given me a detailed account of his interview with Sir Bartholomew Bland-Potterton, and a rather picturesque version of the way King Konrad Karl presented his case.
“Do you expect,” I said, “to be able to persuade Donovan to sell?”
“Of course not,” said Gorman. “I don’t even mean to try.”
“Gorman,” I said, “I’m accustomed more or less to political morality, I mean the morality of politicians. I recognize—everybody must recognize—that you can’t be expected to tie yourselves down to the ordinary standards. But——”
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh, nothing much. Only you’ve accepted a Pink Vulture from Megalia and a baronetcy from England as a reward for services you don’t mean to render. Now is that quite—quite——?”
Gorman looked at me for a minute without speaking. There was a peculiar twinkle in his eyes.
“If I were you,” he said at last, “I’d go back to Ireland for a while. Try Dublin. You have been too long over here. You wouldn’t say things like that if you weren’t becoming English.”