Cator laughed.
“Yes,” he said, “a question to which you gave a very neat, but altogether unintelligible reply—eh? They were waiting that reply of yours in the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs with a good deal of anxiety, I can tell you. It was telephoned to Paris before you had delivered it.”
“Ah! copied from one of the sheets of replies given out to the Press Gallery, I expect,” observed the Under-Secretary. “But I had no idea that our friends across the Channel were so watchful of my utterances.”
“Oh, aren’t they? They are watchful of your movements, too,” replied the Secret Agent of Her Majesty’s Foreign Office. “Recollect, Mr Chisholm, you as Parliamentary Under-Secretary are in the confidence of the Government, and frequently possess documents and information which to our enemies would be priceless. If I may be permitted to say so, you should be constantly on the alert against any of your papers falling into undesirable hands.”
“But surely none have?” Dudley gasped in alarm.
“None have, to my knowledge,” his visitor replied.
“But information is gained by spies in a variety of ways. Perhaps few know better than myself the perfection of the secret service system of certain Powers who are our antagonists. Few diplomatic secrets are safe from them.”
“And few of the secrets of our rivals are safe from you, Captain Cator—if all I’ve heard be true,” observed Chisholm, smiling.
“Ah!” the other laughed; “I believe I’m credited with performing all sorts of miracles in the way of espionage. I fear I possess a reputation which I in no way desire. But,” he added, “can you tell me nothing more of this man Lennox—of his antecedents, I mean?”
“Nothing. I know absolutely nothing of his people.”