“Quite. While I was seated over yonder with a friend of mine, a banker of Liège, the man came in, greeted his friend, and joined us. And then they began to chat. Personally, I’m tired of all these war alarms. They come too frequently, being set about by unscrupulous operators on the Bourses.”
“Then you don’t believe the rumour—eh?”
“I never believe rumours which I hear in such circumstances as those. Not until I have some confirmation,” the man declared.
“I have not seen the papers to-day. Is there any mention of the crisis?” Hubert asked.
“None that I have seen,” Pujalet replied. “It is merely an alarmist rumour, no doubt.”
Waldron lit another cigarette and reflected deeply.
It was distinctly curious and certainly most alarming that the fact which was regarded as such a dead secret in Vienna should have been openly discussed in that café in Brussels on the previous night. On his journey he had carefully watched the principal French and Italian papers, but there was no mention whatever of the affair. Besides, before leaving Rome he had arranged that if anything fresh leaked out regarding the crisis a telegram should meet him on his arrival at the Gare de Lyon.
With that innate cautiousness and shrewd discretion which was inborn in him, and which had placed him above others in the profession of diplomacy, he carefully questioned Henri Pujalet further, asking him the opinion held by the stranger regarding the pending crisis, and other such-like questions.
But the mind of the man seated before him seemed an utter blank regarding what had transpired.
“All I know is that the man told us that Austria is secretly preparing for war, and that in a few days Europe would be aflame. I naturally put him down to be one of those alarmist cranks with whom one so often comes into contact—a man who exaggerates the gossip of the Bourse and repeats it as actual fact with embroidery of his own.”