“This is my fiancée, Miss Haldane,” I explained. “I forgot to introduce you. She knows the whole story.”
Just where we paused, an iron seat faced the wide expanse of blue and shining water, and for a moment I gazed out over the Channel and breathed a silent prayer of thanksgiving for my escape, of remembrance for the men who lay beneath that flood. Then I turned, and began my story. Ere I had spoken a dozen words, Maxwell had his note book out, writing rapidly. Throughout, he wrote without a question, without a word. As I ended, he closed his note book slowly.
“What we want to know, Mr. Maxwell,” said Dorothy anxiously, “is the right thing to do. Should this go straight to the paper, or ought it to go first to the English government? You see there’s probably no living man who saw this except Jim and his sailors, and we want to do right. We want to do right by the men that died, and the people that remain.”
Wise, able, thoughtful, a scholar and a gentleman, a great journalist, a man who counted among his friends the greatest men of two countries,—no man could be found who could decide such a question better than Maxwell. He looked at Dorothy.
“That was the very question in my mind, Miss Haldane,” he answered. “But I think there’s only one answer. I believe we should take this straight to the King. He is at Buckingham Palace, and I believe we should go directly to him with the story. I have met him a number of times, and I know we can get an audience immediately.”
“I’m very glad you think so,” I said. “How about the trains?”
“We can do it better in my car,” he replied.
Ten minutes for gasolene, and we started off. Through quiet villages where red farmhouses stood framed in vivid green, by tower and manor house embowered in ancient oaks, through hedge-rowed land and city street we sped, till the rows of villas, each modelled from a single type, showed the outskirts of London. Then, at a slower pace, we passed through a smoky fog, across the river, by the Abbey, to the long front of Buckingham Palace. All the way we sat silent under the heavy burden of the news that brought the end of those long centuries of unconquerable British power. No enemy who could be conquered had they met. The day had come for peace, and Britain and Germany had been the greatest sufferers in the change of epochs.
Past the red-coated sentry, to the door of the palace we drove. A few words on a card brought a secretary with a startled face, and scarce five minutes had elapsed before Maxwell was ushered in. Dorothy and I remained in the car. As Maxwell left, he remarked, “Orrington, under any ordinary circumstances, I’d ask for an audience for you, but now there’s no time to be lost. I can get an immediate interview alone, where I could not get one with you.”
“That’s all right,” I said apathetically, “I’m glad not to be obliged to move.”