The tone in which he answered, and the words and the grimness of his face, impressed Hamilton somehow with a new and keener sense of the seriousness of the occasion.
'Tread lightly,' Sarrasin said, 'speak in low tones, but for your life not in a whisper—a whisper travels far. Keep your eyes about you, and find out, if you can, who are stirring. I am going to look in on Mrs. Sarrasin's room for a moment, and I shall keep my eyes about me, I can tell you. The more people we have awake and on the alert, the better—always provided that they are people whose nerves we can trust. As I tell you, Hamilton, I can trust the nerves of Mrs. Sarrasin. I have told her to be on the watch—and she will be.'
'I am sure—I am sure,' said Hamilton; and he cut short the encomium by hurrying on his way to the Dictator's room.
Sarrasin left Hamilton's room and went for a moment or two to let Mrs. Sarrasin know how things were going. He had left Hamilton's room door half open. When he was coming out of his wife's room he heard the slow, cautious step of a man in the corridor on which Hamilton's room opened, and which was at right angles with that on which Mrs. Sarrasin was lodged. Could it be Hamilton coming back without having roused the Dictator? Just as he turned into that corridor he saw someone look into Hamilton's doorway, push the door farther apart, and then enter the room. Sarrasin quickly glided into the room after him; the man turned round—and Sarrasin found himself confronted by Soame Rivers.
'Hello!' Rivers said, with his usual artificiality of careless ease, 'I thought Hamilton was here. This is his room, ain't it?'
'Yes, certainly, this is his room; he has just gone to look up the Dictator.'
'Has he gone to waken him up?' Rivers asked, with a shade of alarm passing over him. For Rivers had been meditating during the last two hours over his suppressed, telegram, and thinking what a fix he should have got himself into if any danger really were to threaten the Dictator and it became known that he, the private secretary of Sir Rupert Langley, had in Sir Rupert's own house deliberately suppressed the warning sent to him from the Foreign Office—a warning sent for the protection of the man who was then Sir Rupert's guest. If anything were to happen, diplomacy would certainly never further avail itself of the services of Soame Rivers. Nor would Helena Langley be likely to turn a favourable eye on Soame Rivers. So, after much consideration, Rivers thought his best course was to get at Hamilton and let him know of the warning. Of course he need not exactly say when he had received it, and Hamilton was such a fool that he could easily be put off, and in any case the whole thing was probably some absurd scare; but still Rivers wanted to be out of all responsibility, and was already cursing the sudden impulse that made him crumple up the telegram and keep it back. Now, he could not tell why, his mind misgave him when he found Sarrasin coming into Hamilton's room and heard that Hamilton had gone to arouse the Dictator.
'We have thought it necessary to waken his Excellency' Sarrasin said emphatically; and he did not fail to notice the look of alarm that came over Rivers's face. 'Something wrong here,' Sarrasin thought.
'You don't really suppose there is any danger; isn't it all alarmist nonsense, don't you think?'
'I hadn't said anything about danger, Mr. Rivers.'