The two men who were supping together in the grillroom at the Cafe Milan
were talking with a seriousness which seemed a little out of keeping
with the rose-shaded lamps and the swaying music of the band from the
distant restaurant. Their conversation had started some hours before in
the club smoking-room and had continued intermittently throughout the
evening. It had received a further stimulus when Richard Hamel, who had
bought an Evening Standard on their way from the theatre a few minutes
ago, came across a certain paragraph in it which he read aloud.
“Hanged if I understand things over here, nowadays, Reggie!” he
declared, laying the paper down. “Here’s another Englishman imprisoned
in Germany--this time at a place no one ever heard of before. I won’t
try to pronounce it. What does it all mean? It’s all very well to shrug
your shoulders, but when there are eighteen arrests within one week on a
charge of espionage, there must be something up.”
For the first time Reginald Kinsley seemed inclined to discuss the
subject seriously. He drew the paper towards him and read the little
paragraph, word by word. Then he gave some further order to an attentive
maitre d’hotel and glanced around to be sure that they were not
overheard.
“Look here, Dick, old chap,” he said, “you are just back from abroad
and you are not quite in the hang of things yet. Let me ask you a plain
question. What do you think of us all?”
“Think of you?” Hamel repeated, a little doubtfully. “Do you mean
personally?”
“Take it any way you like,” Kinsley replied. “Look at me. Nine years
ago we played cricket in the same eleven. I don’t look much like cricket
now, do I?”
Hamel looked at his companion thoughtfully. For a man who was doubtless
still young, Kinsley had certainly an aged appearance. The hair about
his temples was grey; there were lines about his mouth and forehead. He
had the air of one who lived in an atmosphere of anxiety.
“To me,” Hamel declared frankly, “you look worried. If I hadn’t heard so
much of the success of your political career and all the rest of it, I
should have thought that things were going badly with you.”
“They’ve gone well enough with me personally,” Kinsley admitted, “but
I’m only one of many. Politics isn’t the game it was. The Foreign Office
especially is ageing its men fast these few years. We’ve been going
through hell, Hamel, and we are up against it now, hard up against it.”
The slight smile passed from the lips of Hamel’s sunburnt, good-natured
face. He himself seemed to become infected with something of his
companion’s anxiety.
“There’s nothing seriously wrong, is there, Reggie?” he asked.
“Dick,” said Kinsley, with a sigh, “I am afraid there is. It’s very
seldom I talk as plainly as this to any one but you are just the person
one can unburden oneself to a little; and to tell you the truth, it’s
rather a relief. As you say, these eighteen arrests in one week do mean
something. Half of the Englishmen who have been arrested are, to my
certain knowledge, connected with our Secret Service, and they have
been arrested, in many cases, where there are no fortifications worth
speaking of within fifty miles, on one pretext or another. The fact of
the matter is that things are going on in Germany, just at the present
moment, the knowledge of which is of vital interest to us.”
“Then these arrests,” Hamel remarked, “are really bona fide?”
“Without a doubt,” his companion agreed. “I only wonder there have not
been more. I am telling you what is a pretty open secret when I tell
you that there is a conference due to be held this week at some place or
another on the continent--I don’t know where, myself--which will have a
very important bearing upon our future. We know just as much as that and
not much more.”
“A conference between whom?” Hamel asked.
Kinsley dropped his voice almost to a whisper.
“We know,” he replied, “that a very great man from Russia, a greater
still from France, a minister from Austria, a statesman from Italy, and
an envoy from Japan, have been invited to meet a German minister whose
name I will not mention, even to you. The subject of their proposed
discussion has never been breathed. One can only suspect. When I tell
you that no one from this country was invited to the conference, I think
you will be able, broadly speaking, to divine its purpose. The clouds
have been gathering for a good many years, and we have only buried our
heads a little deeper in the sands. We have had our chances and wilfully
chucked them away. National Service or three more army corps four years
ago would have brought us an alliance which would have meant absolute
safety for twenty-one years. You know what happened. We have lived
through many rumours and escaped, more narrowly than most people
realise, a great many dangers, but there is every indication this time
that the end is really coming.”
“And what will the end be?” Hamel enquired eagerly.
Kinsley shrugged his shoulders and paused while their glasses were
filled with wine.
“It will be in the nature of a diplomatic coup,” he said presently. “Of
that much I feel sure. England will be forced into such a position that
she will have no alternative left but to declare war. That, of course,
will be the end of us. With our ridiculously small army and absolutely
no sane scheme for home defence, we shall lose all that we have worth
fighting for--our colonies--without being able to strike a blow. The
thing is so ridiculously obvious. It has been admitted time after time
by every sea lord and every commander-in-chief. We have listened to it,
and that’s all. Our fleet is needed under present conditions to protect
our own shores. There isn’t a single battleship which could be safely
spared. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Egypt, India, must take care
of themselves. I wonder when a nation of the world ever played fast and
loose with great possessions as we have done!”
“This is a nice sort of thing to hear almost one’s first night in
England,” Hamel remarked a little gloomily. “Tell me some more about
this conference. Are you sure that your information is reliable?”
“Our information is miserably scanty,” Kinsley admitted. “Curiously
enough, the man who must know most about the whole thing is an
Englishman, one of the most curious mortals in the British Empire. A spy
of his succeeded in learning more than any of our people, and without
being arrested, too.”
“And who is this singular person?” Hamel asked.
“A man of whom you, I suppose, never heard,” Kinsley replied. “His name
is Fentolin--Miles Fentolin--and he lives somewhere down in Norfolk. He
is one of the strangest characters that ever lived, stranger than any
effort of fiction I ever met with. He was in the Foreign Office once,
and every one was predicting for him a brilliant career. Then there
was an accident--let me see, it must have been some six or seven years
ago--and he had to have both his legs amputated. No one knows exactly
how the accident happened, and there was always a certain amount of
mystery connected with it. Since then he has buried himself in the
country. I don’t think, in fact, that he ever moves outside his place;
but somehow or other he has managed to keep in touch with all the
political movements of the day.”
“Fentolin,” Hamel repeated softly to himself. “Tell me, whereabouts does
he live?”
“Quite a wonderful place in Norfolk, I believe, somewhere near the sea.
I’ve forgotten the name, for the moment. He has had wireless telegraphy
installed; he has a telegraph office in the house, half-a-dozen private
wires, and they say that he spends an immense amount of money keeping in
touch with foreign politics. His excuse is that he speculates largely,
as I dare say he does; but just lately,” Kinsley went on more slowly,
“he has been an object of anxiety to all of us. It was he who sent the
first agent out to Germany, to try and discover at least where this
conference was to be held. His man returned in safety, and he has one
over there now who has not been arrested. We seem to have lost nearly
all of ours.”
“Do you mean to say that this man Fentolin actually possesses
information which the Government hasn’t as to the intentions of foreign
Powers?” Hamel asked.
Kinsley nodded. There was a slight flush upon his pallid cheeks.
“He not only has it, but he doesn’t mean to part with it. A few hundred
years ago, when the rulers of this country were men with blood in their
veins, he’d have been given just one chance to tell all he knew, and
hung as a traitor if he hesitated. We don’t do that sort of thing
nowadays. We rather go in for preserving traitors. We permit them even
in our own House of Commons. However, I don’t want to depress you and
play the alarmist so soon after your return to London. I dare say the
old country’ll muddle along through our time.”
“Don’t be foolish,” Hamel begged. “There’s no other subject of
conversation could interest me half as much. Have you formed any idea
yourself as to the nature of this conference?”
“We all have an idea,” Kinsley replied grimly; “India for Russia; a
large slice of China for Japan, with probably Australia thrown in;
Alsace-Lorraine for France’s neutrality. There’s bribery for you. What’s
to become of poor England then? Our friends are only human, after all,
and it’s merely a question of handing over to them sufficient spoil.
They must consider themselves first: that’s the first duty of their
politicians towards their country.”
“You mean to say,” Hamel asked, “that you seriously believe that a
conference is on the point of being held at which France and Russia are
to be invited to consider suggestions like this?”
“I am afraid there’s no doubt about it,” Kinsley declared. “Their
ambassadors in London profess to know nothing. That, of course, is their
reasonable attitude, but there’s no doubt whatever that the conference
has been planned. I should say that to-night we are nearer war, if we
can summon enough spirit to fight, than we have been since Fashoda.”
“Queer if I have returned just in time for the scrap,” Hamel remarked
thoughtfully. “I was in the Militia once, so I expect I can get a job,
if there’s any fighting.”
“I can get you a better job than fighting--one you can start on
to-morrow, too,” Kinsley announced abruptly, “that is if you really want
to help?”
“Of course I do,” Hamel insisted. “I’m on for anything.”
“You say that you are entirely your own master for the next six months?”
“Or as much longer as I like,” Hamel assented. “No plans at all, except
that I might drift round to the Norfolk coast and look up some of
the places where the governor used to paint. There’s a queer little
house--St. David’s Tower, I believe they call it--which really belongs
to me. It was given to my father, or rather he bought it, from a man
who I think must have been some relative of your friend. I feel sure the
name was Fentolin.”
Reginald Kinsley set down his wine-glass.
“Is your St. David’s Tower anywhere near a place called Salthouse?” he
asked reflectively.
“That’s the name of the village,” Hamel admitted. “My father used to
spend quite a lot of time in those parts, and painted at least a dozen
pictures down there.”
“This is a coincidence,” Reginald Kinsley declared, lighting a
cigarette. “I think, if I were you, Dick, I’d go down and claim my
property.”
“Tired of me already?” Hamel asked, smiling.
Reginald Kinsley knocked the ash from his cigarette.
“It isn’t that. The fact is, that job I was speaking to you about was
simply this. We want some one to go down to Salthouse--not exactly as a
spy, you know, but some one who has his wits about him. We are all of us
very curious about this man Fentolin. There are no end of rumours which
I won’t mention to you, for they might only put you off the scent. But
the man seems to be always intriguing. It wouldn’t matter so much if he
were our friend, or if he were simply a financier, but to tell you the
truth, we have cause to suspect him.”
“But he’s an Englishman, surely?” Hamel asked. “The Fentolin who was my
father’s friend was just a very wealthy Norfolk squire--one of the best,
from all I have heard.”
“Miles Fentolin is an Englishman,” Kinsley admitted. “It is true, too,
that he comes of a very ancient Norfolk family. It doesn’t do, however,
to build too much upon that. From all I can learn of him, he is a sort
of Puck, a professional mischief-maker. I don’t suppose there’s anything
an outsider could find out which would be really useful to us, but
all the same, if I had the time, I should certainly go down to Norfolk
myself.”
The conversation drifted away for a while. Mutual acquaintances entered,
there were several introductions, and it was not until the two found
themselves together in Kinsley’s rooms for a few minutes before parting
that they were alone again. Hamel returned then once more to the
subject.
“Reggie,” he said, “if you think it would be of the slightest use, I’ll
go down to Salthouse to-morrow. I am rather keen on going there, anyway.
I am absolutely fed up with life here already.”
“It’s just what I want you to do,” Kinsley said. “I am afraid Fentolin
is a little too clever for you to get on the right side of him, but if
you could only get an idea as to what his game is down there, it would
be a great help. You see, the fellow can’t have gone into all this sort
of thing blindfold. We’ve lost several very useful agents abroad and
two from New York who’ve gone into his pay. There must be a method in
it somewhere. If it really ends with his financial operations--why,
all right. That’s very likely what it’ll come to, but we should like to
know. The merest hint would be useful.”
“I’ll do my best,” Hamel promised. “In any case, it will be just the few
days’ holiday I was looking forward to.”
Kinsley helped himself to whisky and soda and turned towards his friend.
“Here’s luck to you, Dick! Take care of yourself. All sorts of things
may happen, you know. Old man Fentolin may take a fancy to you and tell
you secrets that any statesman in Europe would be glad to hear. He may
tell you why this conference is being held and what the result will be.
You may be the first to hear of our coming fall. Well, here’s to you,
anyway! Drop me a line, if you’ve anything to report.”
“Cheero!” Hamel answered, as he set down his empty tumbler. “Astonishing
how keen I feel about this little adventure. I’m perfectly sick of the
humdrum life I have been leading the last week, and you do sort of take
one back to the Arabian Nights, you know, Reggie. I am never quite sure
whether to take you seriously or not.”
Kinsley smiled as he held his friend’s hand for a moment.
“Dick,” he said earnestly, “if only you’d believe it, the adventures in
the Arabian Nights were as nothing compared with the present-day
drama of foreign politics. You see, we’ve learned to conceal things
nowadays--to smooth them over, to play the part of ordinary citizens to
the world while we tug at the underhand levers in our secret moments.
Good night! Good luck!”