第82章 CHAPTER XXXVI(2)

"That was my excuse," he explained, "for running backwards and forwards between France and England at the beginning of the war. There's no particular secret about my position now. I've had a very hard fight to keep it, a very hard fight to make it a useful one. Until last night, at any rate, it hasn't seemed to me that English people realised that we were at war. Now, I hope at last that we are going to take the gloves off. Do you know," he went on, a little later, "that in France they think we're mad. Honestly, in my position, if I had had the French laws at my back I believe that by to-day the war would have been over. As it is, when I started even my post was a farce. We had to knuckle under the whole of the time, to the civil authorities. They wanted to fine a spy ten shillings or to bind him over to keep the peace! I've never had to fight for anything so hard in my life as I've had to fight once or twice for my file of men at the Tower. At the beginning of the war we'd catch them absolutely red-handed. All they had to do was to surrender to the civil authorities, and we had a city magistrate looking up statutes to see how to deal with them.""There are a good many things which will make strange reading after the war is over," the Admiral said grimly. "I fancy that my late department will provide a few sensations. Still, our very mistakes are our justification. We were about as ready for war as Lady Conyers there is to play Rugby football for Oxford.""It has taken us the best part of a year to realise what war means," Thomson assented. "Even now there are people whom one meets every day who seem to be living in abstractions.""Last night's raid ought to wake a few of them up," the Admiral grunted. "Ishould like to have shown those devils where to have dropped a few of their little toys. There are one or two men who were making laws not so long ago, who'd have had a hole in their roofs."Geraldine laughed softly.

"I really think that dad feels more bloodthirsty when he talks about some of our politicians than he does about the Germans," she declared.

"Some of our worst enemies are at home, any way," Sir Seymour insisted, "and we shall never get on with the war till we've weeded them out.""Where did the nearest bomb to you drop?" Thomson inquired.

"The corner of St. James's Street," Sir Seymour replied. "There were two houses in Berkeley Street alight, and a hole in the roof of a house in Hay Hill. The bomb there didn't explode, though. Sad thing about young Granet, wasn't it? He seems to be the only service man who suffered at all."Lady Conyers shivered sympathetically.

"It was perfectly ghastly," she murmured.

"A very promising young officer, I should think," the Admiral continued, "and a very sad death. Brings things home to you when you remember that it was only yesterday he was here, poor fellow!"Geraldine and her mother rose from their places, a few minutes later. The latter looked up at Thomson as he held open the door.

"You won't be long, will you?" she begged.

"You can take him with you, if you like," the Admiral declared, also rising to his feet. "He doesn't drink port and the cigarettes are in your room. I have to take the Chair at a recruiting meeting at Holborn in a quarter of an hour.