Thus did Mr. Batterby recover what he had lost and rise from where he had fallen; and thus were the fortunes of one man unmade and made in one night, and the Duke’s reputation put in peril and just saved, and the secrets of Great Britain prematurely disclosed; and all this through the unconscious action of poor Mr. Petre, who would not have hurt a fly, and who at that hour of the night was already sleeping his good sleep down in the peace of the Hampshire country-side.
There is among the many departments of our well-ordered State a department which would be known if we were Chinese as “The Board of Things to be Known and Not to be Known.” Its seeming simple and deceptive name wild horses shall not tear from my sealed lips; and the reader must content himself with surmise.
Over this small but exceedingly important and admirably efficient cell of the executive presides a man of good birth, education and manners (for it is a permanent). He is elderly and a little jaded, but astonishingly on the spot.
Some hours before those much greater men, the Duke and the Knight, had been exchanging civil nothings with the ingenuous Batterby, this permanent official (K.C.B., Porter Mansions, £3,500, Eton and Trinity. Recreation, Golfing. Clubs, Travelers’, Blue Posts) was saying not more than half a dozen phrases to an equal in social rank, an inferior in years and office.
“You know that damned Yankee’s in town?”
“Yes.”
“They’ve told you it’s the usual note?”
“Oh! Yes—and Jessie Malvers said she particularly hoped....”
“That’s all right. She’s not the only one. You sent round to the Press Department?”