“I’m glad to hear it,” she said, “for I was going to ask you a question.”
“What was that?”
“Have you sent in your resignation to the Prime Minister?”
“No, no. Of course not. That’s where your error in judgment, if I may be allowed to say so, comes in. I’m aware I couldn’t be seen publicly with that crowd. I had to manage a secret meeting. But it was in order to get them on our side. I thought a frank discussion with them might produce good results.”
“Has it?”
“I think so,” said he. “Oh yes, I think so. I’m speaking at Bristol to-night. You’ll see from my speech what my position is. I mean to define it unmistakably.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
She turned away, hating him and despising him more than ever. She passed a hideous day, overwhelmed with fears of treason and disaster.
They were justified the following morning when, looking through the newspapers brought to her bedside, she first glanced at and then pored over the leading article in the important daily edited by Fordyce, one of the guests at the amazing dinner-party. It was an attack on the Government’s conduct of the war, based, ostensibly, on the rumours whose inaccuracy Godfrey had begged her to contradict, but, to those with inner knowledge, on the real facts of the plan of the High Command. It was done with diabolical craft. Challenged as to the source of his information, Fordyce could point to the article and defy anyone to prove that he was possessed of any esoteric information at all. It was mere logical deduction from the general trend of the war policy of the Allied Military Authorities. And yet the shivering woman knew that the scheme had been divulged to Fordyce. How? In terror she sprang from her bed and opened the secret drawer of her desk. The sheet of notepaper was there just as she had left it. For a moment or two she stood, her hand on her breast, laughing in a silly way. Edgar was capable of many things; but not of rifling her private papers. He was capable of betraying the Government to Fordyce, but as a Minister, she reflected, he would possibly be aware of the scheme. As the Saturday evening host he had communicated it to Fordyce. Possibly to others. But no. That would have been madness. A man does not blacken himself to a dozen men at once. The others he had assembled so as to prepare them, in his underhand, insinuating way, for this master-stroke. . . . She closed the secret drawer with an impatient snap, and went about the room clenching her hands and uttering futile words.
“The villain! The infernal villain!”