Max was pleased to see what an impression he had made: he did not usually get so good a listener. "And to think," said he, "that all this talk came of your having asked me a question on a matter that is already five years old. I am sorry to have taken up so much time explaining myself."
"On the contrary," said the King, "I am glad. Five years? Yes, I am very glad to know that." He got up and moving to the table made a call on his private telephone. "Would you mind waiting a few minutes," he went on, "perhaps I shall need your countenance."
A secretary answered the call; and presently the Comptroller-General himself appeared to learn the royal pleasure.
"I am sorry, my dear General," said the King, "to trouble you at so late an hour. But about that matter of the widow—who is not a widow. I wish fifty pounds to be sent to her—anonymously. Yes, fifty pounds. Will you see that it is done to-night?"
Turning to Max he said, as though referring to conversation already passed, "You have effectually interested me in her case."
Max saw that he was being used as a pawn in a game he did not understand, and held his tongue; and the Comptroller-General, finding himself dismissed, retired to do for once as he was told.
And so, by the inglorious device of anonymity and lavishness combined the King maintained his point, and sent his gift to the relief of one who was, as a matter of fact, just as legally a widow as any other you or I may like to name.
John of Jingalo had not yet broken the official leading-strings, but on this occasion he had circumvented them. Flushed with his triumph, he bade his son an affectionate good-night. "Come and talk to me again," he said. "I don't agree with anything you say, but you help me to think."
It was a sign of progress. Hitherto he had relied, with a far greater sense of security and comfort, on those who had enabled him not to think. Consultation with Max, insidious as the drug-habit, and as secretively employed, was henceforth to count for much in the development of the Constitutional Crisis. Hereditary monarchy had conceived the idea of turning its hereditary material to account. No doubt the Cabinet would have objected, preferring to keep its victim in complete mental isolation; but at present, the Cabinet did not know.