“Well, she didn’t,” said Baltazar. “She kept it—to gratify some vanity or ambition. I don’t know. Our talk was too concentrated to divagate into motives. Anyway, care for your honour didn’t affect her. She left it about, and Edgar Donnithorpe has got it and means to use it.”
The distracted young man sat down, his head in his hands, and groaned. “My God! That’s the end of me.”
Baltazar deliberately filled and lit a pipe, and said nothing. Better let the consequences of the lady’s betrayal soak in. . . . Presently Godfrey rose to his feet and his face was haggard.
“I’ll go to Donnithorpe and get it back. He daren’t show it. It’ll be accusing himself of giving away the information to The Morning Gazette.”
But Baltazar held him with his inscrutable eyes.
“You’re a brilliant soldier, my son, but you’re no match for a foxy old politician—a past master of dirty craft. He put himself right with the Prime Minister this morning. Besides, there’s the lady to be considered—not that I think she deserves much consideration. Still, it’s a convention of honour.”
Godfrey flashed: “I’m not going to bring her name into it!”
“He will. He’ll get the whole story out of you.”
“What the devil am I to do?” asked Godfrey with a helpless gesture.
Baltazar rose. “My boy,” said he, “in two or three days’ time they’re going to make me, a man suddenly sprung from nowhere, a Minister of the Crown. That shows I’m not altogether a silly fool.”