When I entered my room at the Embassy I found Lord Barmouth and Sibyl together. She was persuading him to allow her to accept an invitation to visit some relatives in the north of England, for she was tired of Paris, she declared. When I entered he dismissed her, saying that he wished to talk with me privately.
“Ingram, something extremely serious is in the wind,” he said, when the door had closed and we were alone. His face was pale and showed traces of sleeplessness. “I was at de Wolkenstein’s reception last night, and overheard a conversation between Berchtold and de Hindenburg. There is a conspiracy against us!”
“In what manner?” I asked, surprised that he should have become aware of it.
“The intercepting of those secret instructions which you brought from London some months ago is part of it; the Ceuta affair is another portion; and it appears, as far as I can gather, that the Powers, with the exception of Russia and Italy, have formed a gigantic plot against us to provoke war.”
“To provoke war!” I echoed. “What details do you know?”
“Olsoufieff, who, as you know, is my personal friend, dropped a hint which we may take as a warning. He told me he had reason to believe that the secret service of both France and Germany had of late made several successful coups against us, and that the interests of those two nations had been considerably promoted thereby.”
“He told you nothing further?”
“He could not be more explicit,” replied His Excellency. “Russia, who, according to the Press, is our hereditary enemy, is in reality our friend. If every monarch loved unity and concord as well as the Czar, the peace of Europe would to-morrow be assured. Yet diplomatic usages prevented Olsoufieff from betraying his confrères in their diplomacy, even though he is my intimate friend.”
“And how are we to act?” I asked. “The theft of the contents of that despatch was certainly most astonishing. How it was accomplished is an inscrutable mystery.”
“Sibyl has been endeavouring to assist us,” answered the Ambassador. “She, too, was at the reception last night, and kept eyes and ears open. She heard that both Wolf and that scoundrel Bertini are in Paris in company. Surely that bodes no good!”