A clang of voices seemed to answer him, there was a brief minute's delay, ages as it seemed to the waiting Mr. Knewbit; then the mad elephants, unchained, began to heave and stamp and snort. And—at the rate of twenty-five thousand an hour, began to roll, from the great cylinders of damp paper, the day's issue of the Early Wire.
They rolled out—as similar cylinders were rolling up and down Fleet Street and all the world over, the Report of the late Debate in the Commons, the list of Bills beheaded by the Prime Minister, the ineffectual efforts of the gentleman who was trying to stop the Factory Owners from employing Infant Labor, the result of the Commission of Inquiry upon the Carlisle Railway Disaster, and all the News of the day. And in a space reserved for the Latest Foreign Intelligence appeared a telegram sent from Ems by the King of Prussia, as condensed at a dinner-council of three convivials, in the Wilhelm Strasse, Berlin.
And all the world read it and commented, as British stocks went up and Continental Stocks played seesaw:
"The King of Prussia refuses to receive the French Ambassador! ... This most certainly means WAR!"
XXV
Perched on the wall,—hung with an old-world Chinese paper, figured with sprays of bamboo, pagodas, bridges, mandarins promenading under yellow umbrellas, and fair Celestials reclining on the banks of a meandering, bright blue stream—the German fly of Mr. Knewbit's envy would have reaped scant information from the conversation of the three men sitting at the dinner-table, for the reason that they conversed in English—perhaps for privacy's sake.
The apartment, not ordinarily used as a dining-room, possessed three sets of folding-doors, and beyond a sofa and twelve heavy chairs, upholstered with a Chinese brocade matching the paper, was scantily furnished. The table plate was solid and handsome. A pair of huge silver-gilt wine-coolers displayed a goodly array of champagne bottles, a cellar-basket with rows of horizontal wicker-nests contained claret, Burgundy, and Rhine wine. The second course was under discussion, but the servants, after placing the dishes on the table, had withdrawn. By a bell kept on a dumb-waiter at the host's elbow, bearing sauces, clean plates, spare glasses, bread of white and black, and other requisites, the attendants could be summoned at need.
The hostess's chair at the table-head was vacant. The two guests' places were laid on the right and left hand of the host. All three men were in uniform, two were well stricken in years; and Time had not left sufficient locks among them to furnish a wig-maker with material for covering a bald patch.
Also, they were men of whom the world had heard much already, and was, before the ending of the year, to hear a great deal more.