“Our friends are, no doubt, at the bottom of it all. Across the North Sea they mean business; and the ‘day’ must come very soon.”
“You’ve made that prophecy for several years now.”
“Because I happen to know, my dear boy. If one man should know the truth, surely it’s my unimportant self. My Chief has always agreed with me, although it is the fashion in the House to laugh at what is called ‘the German bogey.’ But that’s exactly what they desire in Berlin. They don’t want the British public to take our warnings too seriously. But if you doubt the seriousness of the present situation, ask anybody at the Berlin Embassy. They’ll tell you the truth—and they ought surely to know.”
Jack Jerningham and Hubert Waldron had been friends ever since their youth. The estate near Crowhurst, in Sussex, which Waldron’s father owned, though his diplomatic duties had kept him nearly always abroad, adjoined that of the Jerninghams of Heatherset, of whom Jack was the second son.
After Dartmouth he had passed into the navy, had become a full lieutenant, and afterwards had joined the Intelligence Department, in which capacity he was constantly travelling about the world as the eyes and ears of the Embassies, and ever ready to purchase out of the secret-service fund any information or confidential plan which might be advantageous to the authorities at Whitehall.
A typical, round-faced, easy-going naval officer of a somewhat careless and generous disposition, nobody outside the diplomatic circle ever suspected his real calling. But by those who did know, the ambassadors, ministers, and staffs of the embassies and legations, he was held in highest esteem as a thoroughgoing patriot, a man of great discretion and marvellous shrewdness, in whom his Chief at home placed the most complete confidence.
“There’ll be trouble here in Cairo before long, I fear,” he was whispering to his friend. “Kitchener will have a very rough time of it if the intrigues of our friends at Berlin are successful. They are stirring up strife every day, and the crisis would have arrived long ago were it not for Kitchener’s bold firmness. They know he won’t stand any nonsense from the native opposition. Britain is here to rule, and rule she will. Hence our friends the enemy are just a little afraid. I’m going back home next week to report upon the whole situation.”
“I’m getting pretty, sick of the humdrum of diplomacy,” Hubert declared wearily, between the puffs of his excellent cigarette. Though the big American bar was crowded by men, in the corner where they sat upon a red plush settee they could not be overheard, the chatter and noise being so great. “We at the Embassies are only puppets, after all. It is such men as you who shape the nation’s policy. We’re simply the survival of the old days when kings exchanged courtesies and views by means of their ambassadors, and we, the frills of the Embassy, merely dress up, dance attendance at every function, and pretend to an importance in the world which we certainly do not possess.”
“My dear Hubert, you never spoke truer words than those. Everything nowadays is worked from Downing Street, and the ambassador is simply the office boy who delivers the message. Your father was one of the brilliant men of the old regime. The Empire owes much to him, especially for what he did at Rome.”
“Yes, those days have passed. In this new century the world has other ways and other ideas. It is the age of advertisement, and surely the best advertisement manager which the world has ever known is the Kaiser William.”