It wanted thirty minutes to midnight.
The New Year's Eve fun at Shepheard's Hotel in Cairo was fast and
furious.
Ministerial officers and their women-folk, British officers of the
garrison, officials and their wives from all parts of Egypt, Society
from the other hotels, and a sprinkling of grave, brown-faced Egyptian
gentlemen in frock coats and fezes, all congregate here to dine, to
dance, to throw "serpentines," and to make merry by touching the golden
pig--a real pig covered with gold paint--at the coming of the New Year.
That night was no exception, for the _salons_ were crowded to
overflowing, champagne flowed freely, and everyone laughed heartily at
the various antics of the great assembly. Cosmopolitan it was, in every
sense of the word, for most European languages could be heard there. In
the ballroom a great dance was in progress, while the supper-room was
crowded to suffocation, and in the big _salons_ one could hardly move
about so dense was the well-dressed crowd.
Upon this scene Hubert Waldron gazed when he arrived in a cab from the
Savoy. Though Lola, her uncle, and Miss Lambert had, on landing,
obtained rooms at Shepheard's, the Englishman had failed to do so, and
had therefore gone to the Savoy, whither Henri Pujalet had also gone, as
well as Chester Dawson, the Easthams, and several other members of the
party.
Already they had been in Cairo three days, and though Waldron had
watched Pujalet continuously, the lovers had not held any clandestine
meeting.
As he elbowed his way through that New Year's Eve crush in the big
Oriental lounge, however, he suddenly--came upon the pair. Lola, her
face beaming with supreme pleasure, was dressed in simple, yet becoming
taste in turquoise blue, with a touch of the same colour in her dark
hair, while the Frenchman, erect and well-groomed, presented a
particularly smart appearance. Neither noticed the diplomat, so
engrossed were they in their conversation. The opportunity of meeting
was, of course, a unique one, for even if her uncle discovered her how
could he reprove her for dancing with a man who had been their
fellow-traveller for nearly three weeks?
The girl's face was flushed with excitement and pleasure now that she
hung upon her lover's arm as he led her back to the ballroom.
Hubert Waldron watched them, then sighed and turned away.
He had not gone far up the long _salon_ before he was accosted by a
rather thick-set, clean-shaven Englishman of about thirty-five, with
blue eyes, rather fair hair, and whose clothes fitted perfectly.
"Hulloa, Waldron! By Jove! Who'd have dreamt of meeting you here!
Why, I thought you were still in Madrid!"
"Jerningham!" gasped the diplomat. "My dear old Jack, how are you?" he
cried, grasping his hand warmly.
"Oh, so-so," replied the other, nonchalantly. "I've been travelling
about a lot of late. And you?"
"Been on leave up to Wady Haifa, and now on my way back to Madrid."
"And to the Teatro Real--eh?" added his friend with a sly grin.
"No. She's in London. An engagement there."
"And you're not in London! Why?"
"Can't get my leave extended, or, you bet, I'd be back in town like a
shot. What would I give for a bit dinner at the St James's Club and a
stroll along Piccadilly."
"Of course. But how's the lady?"
"Very well--I believe. I had a wire yesterday telling me of her great
success at the Palace. The newspapers are full of her photographs and
all that."
"And all the nuts in town running madly after her--eh? Beatriz likes
that."
Waldron did not reply for a few moments, then, changing the subject, he
said:
"Let's go along to the bar. This crowd is distinctly unpleasant."
Five minutes later, when the pair were seated in a quiet corner, Waldron
asked in a low, confidential tone:
"What's the latest? I've been away from the Embassy for nine weeks."
"Oh, the political situation remains about the same. I've been mostly
in Germany and Russia, since I was last in Madrid. I had a rather good
scoop about a fortnight ago--bought the designs of the new Krupp aerial
gun."
"By Jove, did you?"
"Yes. It has taken me three months to negotiate, and the fellow who
made the deal tried to back out of it at the last moment."
"Traitors always do," remarked the diplomat.
"Yes," admitted the British secret-service agent, as Jack Jerningham
actually was. "They usually lose heart at the crucial moment. But in
this case the new invention of our friends is simply a marvellous one.
It's a feather in my cap in the department, I'm glad to say."
"You've had a good many feathers in your cap during the past five years,
my dear Jack," Waldron replied. "Your successes since you left the navy
have been phenomenal--especially when a year ago you obtained a copy of
the secret treaty signed by Austria regarding the partition of the
Balkans. That was an amazing feat--never before equalled by any secret
agent, I should think."
"Bah! Nothing really very wonderful," was Jerningham's modest reply.
"More by good luck than anything else. I'm here in Cairo to report on
the growing unrest. At home the Chief suspects German influence to be
at work."
"And what's the result of your inquiries?"
"Our friends are, no doubt, at the bottom of it all. Across the North
Sea they mean business; and the `day' must come very soon."
"You've made that prophecy for several years now."
"Because I happen to know, my dear boy. If one man should know the
truth, surely it's my unimportant self. My Chief has always agreed with
me, although it is the fashion in the House to laugh at what is called
`the German bogey.' But that's exactly what they desire in Berlin.
They don't want the British public to take our warnings too seriously.
But if you doubt the seriousness of the present situation, ask anybody
at the Berlin Embassy. They'll tell you the truth--and they ought
surely to know."
Jack Jerningham and Hubert Waldron had been friends ever since their
youth. The estate near Crowhurst, in Sussex, which Waldron's father
owned, though his diplomatic duties had kept him nearly always abroad,
adjoined that of the Jerninghams of Heatherset, of whom Jack was the
second son.
After Dartmouth he had passed into the navy, had become a full
lieutenant, and afterwards had joined the Intelligence Department, in
which capacity he was constantly travelling about the world as the eyes
and ears of the Embassies, and ever ready to purchase out of the
secret-service fund any information or confidential plan which might be
advantageous to the authorities at Whitehall.
A typical, round-faced, easy-going naval officer of a somewhat careless
and generous disposition, nobody outside the diplomatic circle ever
suspected his real calling. But by those who did know, the ambassadors,
ministers, and staffs of the embassies and legations, he was held in
highest esteem as a thoroughgoing patriot, a man of great discretion and
marvellous shrewdness, in whom his Chief at home placed the most
complete confidence.
"There'll be trouble here in Cairo before long, I fear," he was
whispering to his friend. "Kitchener will have a very rough time of it
if the intrigues of our friends at Berlin are successful. They are
stirring up strife every day, and the crisis would have arrived long ago
were it not for Kitchener's bold firmness. They know he won't stand any
nonsense from the native opposition. Britain is here to rule, and rule
she will. Hence our friends the enemy are just a little afraid. I'm
going back home next week to report upon the whole situation."
"I'm getting pretty, sick of the humdrum of diplomacy," Hubert declared
wearily, between the puffs of his excellent cigarette. Though the big
American bar was crowded by men, in the corner where they sat upon a red
plush settee they could not be overheard, the chatter and noise being so
great. "We at the Embassies are only puppets, after all. It is such
men as you who shape the nation's policy. We're simply the survival of
the old days when kings exchanged courtesies and views by means of their
ambassadors, and we, the frills of the Embassy, merely dress up, dance
attendance at every function, and pretend to an importance in the world
which we certainly do not possess."
"My dear Hubert, you never spoke truer words than those. Everything
nowadays is worked from Downing Street, and the ambassador is simply the
office boy who delivers the message. Your father was one of the
brilliant men of the old regime. The Empire owes much to him,
especially for what he did at Rome."
"Yes, those days have passed. In this new century the world has other
ways and other ideas. It is the age of advertisement, and surely the
best advertisement manager which the world has ever known is the Kaiser
William."
"Oh, that's admitted," laughed the secret agent. "Why, he can't go to
his castle at Corfu for a week--as he does each spring--without some
wonderful relic of Greek antiquity being unearthed in his presence. It
is whispered that they sow them there in winter, just as the brave
Belgians sow the bullets on the battlefield of Waterloo. To-day we are
assuredly living on the edge of a volcano," Jerningham went on. "When
the eruption takes place--and who knows when it will--then, at that
hour, the red-tape must be burst asunder, the veil torn aside, and the
bitter truth faced--the bubble of British bombast will, I fear, be
pricked."
"You are always such a confounded pessimist, my dear Jack," laughed
Waldron.
"Ah, Hubert, I'm a pessimist because I am always on the move from
capital to capital and I learn things as I go," was Jerningham's quick
reply. "You fellows at the Embassies sit down and have a jolly good
time at balls, dinners, tea-fights, and gala performances. Why?
Because you're paid for your job--paid to remain ignorant. I'm paid to
learn. There's the little difference."
"I admit, my dear fellow, that without your service we should be
altogether a back number. To your department is due the credit of
knowing what is going on in the enemy's camps."
"I should think so. I don't pay out ten thousand a year, more or less,
without getting to know something, I can tell you."