"I cannot put you back into the crush of the crowd, because by an appeal to its loyal feelings and domestic instincts I was so fortunate as to disperse it. What I might do, of course, is to deliver you to the tender mercies of my servants, to whom,—when you brought back the medal,—you blustered about delivering it to me personally. This not-exactly-very-clever ruse would have failed—had I not happened to step upon the scene. Your English policy is often more fortunate than masterly.... Fortune certainly has favored you to-day. Not in the fulfillment of your ambition to accompany a Prussian Army to the field of action—that is a wish impossible to gratify. For we put up a general defense against the presence of any save the most highly accredited Correspondents, and the War Minister will only grant Legitimations to two or three. But in obtaining for an obscure paragraphist a special interview with the Prussian Minister for Foreign Affairs on the eve of a world-crisis, Fortune has certainly favored you. Go back now to your hotel and write your article; then telegraph to Fleet Street and make your own terms!"
"I'll be shot if I do!" choked out P. C. Breagh, flaming scarlet to his hair-roots. "And I thank Your Excellency for a lesson, and I beg to take my leave!"
"Why does he go? Why does he talk about a lesson?" asked the broad, cynical gaze that rested on him.
As though he had spoken aloud, P. C. Breagh answered:
"Because I set my personal advantage above common gratitude and honor. Your Excellency lost the medal in pulling me out of the scrimmage at the risk of your own life, and when I found the thing—I used it,—exactly as you say! True, you'd snubbed me when I'd tried to thank you! yet I did believe your having saved me might help me in some way.... But it would be better to cadge in the dustbins for a living, than make money out of information gained by trickery. And I apologize sincerely for having been such a cad!"
"'Cad' is the slang for vulgarian, is it not?" He added: "Yes, they inculcate a code of honor at the English public schools."
The voice grated. P. C. Breagh hated its owner. But he answered, looking squarely in the bulldog face that bent on him:
"They do, and I am sorry to have broken at least one of its articles. May I wish Your Excellency good afternoon!"
The speaker bowed, not clumsily, and turned to quit the room, when a ferocious growl behind him, and the scraping of heavy claws on slippery parquet pulled round his head. Savage, red-rimmed eyes challenged, and the bared gleaming fangs of a huge boarhound couched at length under a wrought-iron sofa at the west end of the longish room menaced the stranger's throat:
"Down, Tyras!" ordered the Minister harshly, and with a deep groan the heavy brute dropped its nose between its forepaws, and lay still, shaken by occasional rumbling growls.