"Rendel, I want you to do me a service."
"Please command me," Rendel said quickly, looking straight at him. He felt his heart beat as Stamfordham paused, put his hat down on the table, took his pocket-book out of his breast pocket and a folded paper out of it.
"I want you," he said, "to transcribe some pencil notes of mine."
"You want me to transcribe them?" said Rendel, with an involuntary inflection of surprise in his tone.
"Yes, if you will," said Stamfordham. "The fact is, Marchmont, the only man I have had since you left me who can read my writing when I take rough pencil notes in a hurry, has collapsed just to-day, out of sheer excitement I believe, and because he sat up for one night writing."
"Poor fellow!" said Rendel, half to himself.
"Yes," said Stamfordham drily; and then he went on, as one who knows that he must leave the sick and wounded behind without waiting to pity them. "These," unfolding the paper, "are notes of a conversation that I have just had at the German Embassy with Bergowitz." Rendel's quick movement as he heard the name showed that he realised what that juxtaposition meant at such a moment. "Every moment is precious," Stamfordham went on, "and it suddenly dawned on me as I left the Embassy that you were close at hand and might be willing to do it."
The German Embassy was at the moment, during some building operations, occupying temporary premises near Belgrave Square.
"I should think so indeed," Rendel said eagerly.
"The notes are very short, as you see," said Stamfordham. "You know, of course, what has been happening. I needn't go into that." And as he spoke a boy passed under the windows crying the evening papers, and they distinctly heard "Panic on the Stock Exchange." The two men's eyes met.