“It’s a good job for us all that you’ve closed the young man’s mouth just in time,” she declared. “He knew something, that is evident.”
“And he kept it to himself, intending one day to launch it as a thunderbolt,” Rodwell remarked. “But you’ve been infernally clever over the affair, Molly. Without you, I don’t know what I should have done in this case. There was a distinct danger.”
“It wasn’t very difficult, after all,” his companion replied. “Money does wonders—especially the good money of Germany. Here in England ‘Number Seventy’ happily has much good money, and has a ‘good press.’”
“Yes,” laughed Rodwell. “And yet the fools here think they will win!”
“My dear Lewin, they would win if they were not so hopelessly egotistical, and if we had not long foreseen the coming conflict and Germanised the British political and official life as our first precaution. In consequence, our victory is assured. Already this country is in the grip of our German financiers, our pro-German politicians, labour-leaders, and officials of every class. Our good German money has not been ill-spent, I can assure you!” she laughed.
“I quite agree. But tell me how you really managed to engineer that evidence,” he asked, much interested.
“Well, after you had given me the correspondence four days ago, I took a taxi and went down to the City to see my old friend George Charlesworth,” was her reply. “He and I used to be quite old chums a year ago, when, as you know, he fell into the trap over that other little matter, and became so useful, though he still remains in entire ignorance.”
“Ah! of course, you know the arrangements of the office. I quite forgot that.”
“Yes. I arrived about five o’clock, just as the old boy was leaving, and sat in his room while he finished signing his letters. Already most of the clerks had gone. When he had finished, and all the staff had left, I lit up a cigarette and begged to be allowed to finish it before we went out, I having suggested that he should take me to dinner that night at the Carlton. Suddenly I pretended to grow faint, and asked him to get me some brandy. In alarm the dear old fellow jumped up quickly, and ran out to an hotel for some, leaving me in the office alone. Then, when he’d gone, it didn’t take me long to hurry out into the clerks’ office and put the papers in between the leaves of that big green ledger which I found in the desk at which young Sainsbury had worked—just as you had described where it would be found.”
“Excellent! You are always very ’cute, Molly,” he laughed. “I suppose you quickly recovered when Charlesworth got back with the brandy—eh?”