第92章

"That is no copy which you have there. On the contrary, the handwriting is the handwriting of the Chancellor himself."The Prime Minister turned silently towards his colleague. The latter, whose eyes still seemed glued to those fateful words, looked up.

"All I can say is this," he remarked impressively, "that never in my time have I seen written words possessed of so much significance.

One moment, if you please."

He touched the bell, and his private secretary entered at once from an adjoining room.

"Anthony," he said, "telephone to the Great Western Railway Company at Paddington. Ask for the station master in my name, and see that a special train is held ready to depart for Windsor in half-an-hour.

Tell the station-master that all ordinary traffic must be held up, but that the destination of the special is not to be divulged."The young man bowed and withdrew.

"The more I consider this matter," the Foreign Minister went on, "the more miraculous does the appearance of this document seem.

We know now why the Czar is struggling so frantically to curtail his visit - why he came, as it were, under protest, and seeks everywhere for an opportunity to leave before the appointed time.

His health is all right. He has had a hint from Vienna that there has been a leakage. His special mission only reached Paris this morning. The President is in the country and their audience is not fixed until to-morrow. Rawson will go over with a copy of these papers and a dispatch from His Majesty by the nine o'clock train.

It is not often that we have had the chance of such a 'coup' as this."He drew his chief a few steps away. They whispered together for several moments. When they returned, the Foreign Minister rang the bell again for his secretary.

"Anthony," he said, "Sir James and I will be leaving in a few minutes for Windsor. Go round yourself to General Hamilton, telephone to Aldershot for Lord Neville, and call round at the Admiralty Board for Sir John Harrison. Tell them all to be here at ten o'clock tonight. If I am not back, they must wait. If either of them have royal commands, you need only repeat the word 'Finisterre.' They will understand."The young man once more withdrew. The Prime Minister turned back to the papers.

"It will be worth a great deal," he remarked, with a grim smile, "to see His Majesty's face when he reads this.""It would be worth a great deal more," his fellow statesman answered dryly, "to be with his August cousin at the interview which will follow. A month ago, the thought that war might come under our administration was a continual terror to me. To-day things are entirely different. To-day it really seems that if war does come, it may be the most glorious happening for England of this century. You saw the last report from Kiel?"Sir James nodded.

"There isn't a battleship or a cruiser worth a snap of the fingers south of the German Ocean," his colleague continued earnestly.

"They are cooped up - safe enough, they think - under the shelter of their fortifications. Hamilton has another idea. Between you and me, Sir James, so have I. I tell you," he went on, in a deeper and more passionate tone, "it's like the passing of a terrible nightmare - this. We have had ten years of panic, of nervous fears of a German invasion, and no one knows more than you and I, Sir James, how much cause we have had for those fears. It will seem strange if, after all, history has to write that chapter differently."The secretary re-entered and announced the result of his telephone interview with the superintendent at Paddington. The two great men rose. The Prime Minister held out his hand to Bellamy.

"Bellamy," he declared, "you've done us one more important service.