“A copy of the despatch you brought me last night reached the Quai d’Orsay at two o’clock this morning. Our secret agent there has handed a copy of it to Mr Kaye. The wording of the instructions, as sent to me by the Marquess, is exact. Here it is;” and he held towards me a sheet of that pale yellow paper used in the French Foreign Office, upon which a transcription of the despatch had been hurriedly traced in pencil.
I glanced at it, then stood speechless. The secret despatch had never left my possession. The theft was utterly incredible.
Chapter Twenty One.
The Sister Arts.
“But it is absolutely impossible that the despatch has been copied!” I cried, addressing His Excellency, when at last I found tongue. “I saw it written myself, and it never left my belt until I took it out here in your presence!”
“Well,” interposed Kaye grimly, turning to Lord Barmouth, “that it has really been copied is quite plain, for you have the copy in your hand. It was telegraphed to the Quai d’Orsay from Calais at half-past one o’clock this morning, and that copy reached my hands at four, half an hour after I had returned from Berlin. Our secret agent in the French Foreign Office happily lost no time in making us acquainted with our loss.”
“Fortunately for us,” remarked the Ambassador, pacing the floor from end to end. “Had we remained in ignorance that the secret of our policy was out, we might have found ourselves in a very awkward predicament. But how could the despatch possibly have been copied, when no other eyes have seen it except those of the Marquess and myself? The thing is incredible!”
“Ah! that’s the question,” observed Kaye. “The French system of espionage has very nearly approached perfection. Even though it be against our grain, as Englishmen, to employ spies ourselves, yet it is daily becoming more necessary. Every nation in the world has its elaborate secret service; therefore, England must not sleep and allow other nations to undermine her prestige.”