Though the Earl of Bracondale, K.G., was His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, yet Darnborough, the ever-astute, sleepless man of secrets, was the keeper of Great Britain’s prestige abroad. Though his name never appeared on the roll of Government servants, and did not draw any salary as an official, yet he was the only man in England who could demand audience of the Sovereign at any hour by day or by night, or who had the free entrée to the Royal residences and could attend any function uninvited.
As a statesman, as a secret agent, as an ingenious plotter in the interests of his country, he was a genius. He was a discovery of the late Lord Salisbury in the last days of the Victorian Era. At that time he had been a Foreign Office clerk, a keen-eyed young man with a lock of black hair hanging loosely across his brow. Lord Salisbury recognised in him a man of genius as a diplomat, and with his usual bluntness called him one day to Hatfield and gave him a very delicate mission abroad.
Darnborough went. He had audience with the Shah of Persia, juggled with that bediamonded potentate, and came back with his draft of a secret treaty directed against Russia’s influence safely in his pocket. He had achieved what British Ministers to Teheran for the previous fifteen years had failed to effect. And from that moment Darnborough had been allowed a free hand in international politics.
Lord Rosebery, Lord Lansdowne, and Sir Edward Grey had adopted the same attitude towards him as the great Lord Salisbury. He was the one man who knew the secret policy of Britain’s enemies, the man who had so often attended meetings of the Cabinet and warned it of the pitfalls open for the destruction of British prestige.
At that moment the renowned chief of the Secret Service was explaining the latest conspiracy afoot against England, a serious conspiracy hatched in both Berlin and Vienna to embroil our nation in complications in the Far East. Darnborough’s agents in both capitals had that morning arrived at Downing Street post-haste and reported upon what was in progress, with the result that their chief had come to place before the Foreign Minister the latest iniquity of diplomatic juggling.
His lordship lay in bed and listened to the man of secrets without uttering a word.
At length he turned his head restlessly on the pillow and, with a weary sigh, remarked:
“Ah! Darnborough, I fear that each day brings us nearer the peril, nearer the day of Germany’s attack. The exposure of those confidential reports upon our naval manœuvres was serious enough to our diplomacy. The policy of the Government is, alas! one of false assurance in our defences. The country has been lulled to sleep far too long. False assurances of our national security have been given over and over again, and upon them the Cabinet have pursued a policy of bluff. But, alas! the days of Palmerston and Salisbury are past. Europe can gauge the extent and strength of our national defence, and, with the navigation of the air, we live no longer upon ‘the tight little island’ of our revered ancestors.”
“Yes,” replied the man seated in the chair by the bedside, as he stretched his legs forward and folded his arms. “In all the capitals it is to-day the fashion to laugh at England’s greatness, and to speak of us as a declining Power. I hear it everywhere. The Great Powers are in daily expectation of seeing the tail of the British lion badly twisted, and I quite agree that the most unfortunate leakage of a national secret was that report upon the last naval manœuvres. The bubble of our defensive and offensive power has burst.”
“And poor Richard Harborne lost his life,” remarked the Earl.