"Yes. I am at home in the work. I love it." Then he laughed silently. "I am the servant of every pompous official who visits London. I am the slave of my orders. I am a cypher on the official lists, I am nothing amongst the people of the nation which I serve. Yet I am the head of the underground system which works here in England, and, incidentally, my income is four times that of a Captain-General. Your honor is very great, Ludwig, but I wonder if you have advanced since—those days."
Von Salzinger made no reply. He was thinking of the recent scene in which he had participated in the castle of Kuhlhafen. His face expressed something of his feelings of chagrin, and his companion was not slow to detect them.
"This is a thought of yours too, perhaps," he went on at once. "The moment a man enters the higher ranks of our army his troubles begin. He must fight for favor, and win it or decay in some obscure ditch in the military office. Nor can he rely for five minutes upon that favor. Degradation awaits at the first blunder which it is not humanly possible to avoid. Is it not so?"
All the buoyancy of Von Salzinger seemed to have vanished from his hard eyes. His old friend was telling him all that he had only too much reason to be aware of. He had fought his way up that perilous ladder of Prussian militarism, and like so many others he had tripped and fallen, and now was faced with the task of making good the temporary set-back. He had struggled hard at the first trip, and he told himself that fortune had favored him, and he had kept his hold, but well he knew that unless he recovered his foothold himself he must fall to the bottom and die in obscurity.
He turned on the Secret Service man.
"It is all as you say. But the very uncertainty of it makes it all the more worth winning. That is why I am in London now. When I have finished in London I shall have achieved the lasting honor, so rare in our Fatherland."
Stryj shook his head.
"There is none—no lasting honor in our Fatherland," he said.
Then with a quick turn he pointed at the window of a fashionable photographic studio. There was a life-size portrait standing in the very centre of it. It was a full-length portrait of a man of over six feet. He was in the uniform of a British field-marshal.
"There is lasting honor in this country," he said, as they paused and stood gazing at the wonderful face in the portrait, with its level, stern brows, its convincing, powerful eyes, and the heavy moustache that in no way detracted from the purposeful set of the jaws. "They are loyal to those they honor here. The man who has fought a great war for them, as that man has done, need do no more. His name and fame will go down to history with the vast material honor they have showered upon him. That is a name that will never die—in England."