“You know that I have a sort of mission to you,” she said. “I should not call it that, perhaps, but it comes to very nearly the same thing. The Emperor has charged me to express to you and to Count Lanyoki his most earnest desire that if the things should come which we know of, you both maintain your position here at any cost. The Emperor’s last words to me were: ‘If war is to come, it may be the will of God. We are ready, but there is one country which must be kept from the ranks of our enemies. That country is England. England must be dealt with diplomatically.’ He looks across the continent to you, Prince. This is the friendly message which I have brought from his own lips.”
The Prince stirred his coffee thoughtfully. He was a man just passing middle-age, with grey hair, thin in places but carefully trimmed, brushed sedulously back from his high forehead. His moustache, too, was grey, and his face was heavily lined, but his eyes, clear and bright, were almost the eyes of a young man.
“You can reassure the Emperor,” he declared. “As you may imagine, my supply of information here is plentiful. If those things should come that we know of, it is my firm belief that with some reasonable yet nominal considerations, this Government will never lend itself to war.”
“You really believe that?” she asked earnestly.
“I do,” her companion assured her. “I try to be fair in my judgments. London is a pleasant city to live in, and English people are agreeable and well-bred, but they are a people absolutely without vital impulses. Patriotism belongs to their poetry books. Indolence has stagnated their blood. They are like a nation under a spell, with their faces turned towards the pleasant and desirable things. Only a few months ago, they even further reduced the size of their ridiculous army and threw cold water upon a scheme for raising untrained help in case of emergency. Even their navy estimates are passed with difficulty. The Government which is conducting the destinies of a people like this, which believes that war belongs to a past age, is never likely to become a menace to us.”
Anna drew a little sigh and lit the cigarette which the Prince passed her. She threw herself back in her chair with an air of contentment.
“It is so pleasant once more to be among the big things,” she declared. “In Berlin I think they are not fond of me, and they are so pompous and secretive. Tell me, dear Prince, will you not be kinder to me? Tell me what is really going to happen?”
He moved his chair a little closer to hers.
“I see no reason,” he said cautiously, “why you should not be told. Events, then, will probably move in this direction. Provocation will be given by Servia. That is easily arranged. Tension will be caused, Austria will make enormous demands, Russia will remonstrate, and, before any one has time to breathe, the clouds will part to let the lightnings through. If anything, we are over-ready, straining with over-readiness.”
“And the plan of campaign?”
“Austria and Italy,” the Prince continued slowly, “will easily keep Russia in check. Germany will seize Belgium and rush through to Paris. She will either impose her terms there or leave a second-class army to conclude the campaign. There will be plenty of time for her then to turn back and fall in with her allies against Russia.”
“And England?” Anna asked. “Supposing?”
The Prince tapped the table with his forefinger.
“Here,” he announced, “we conquer with diplomacy. We have imbued the present Cabinet, even the Minister who is responsible for the army, with the idea that we stand for peace. We shall seem to be the attacked party in this war. We shall say to England—‘Remain neutral. It is not your quarrel, and we will be capable of a great act of self-sacrifice. We will withhold our fleet from bombarding the French towns. England could do no more than deal with our fleet if she were at war. She shall do the same without raising a finger.’ No country could refuse so sane and businesslike an offer, especially a country which will at once count upon its fingers how much it will save by not going to war.”
“And afterwards?”
The Prince shrugged his shoulders. “Afterwards is inevitable.”
“Please go on,” she insisted.
“We shall occupy the whole of the coast from Antwerp to Havre. The indemnity which France and Russia will pay us will make us the mightiest nation on earth. We shall play with England as a cat with a mouse, and when the time comes…. Well, perhaps that will do,” the Prince concluded, smiling.
Anna was silent for several moments.
“I am a woman, you know,” she said simply, “and this sounds, in a way, terrible. Yet for months I have felt it coming.”
“There is nothing terrible about it,” the Prince replied, “if you keep the great principles of progress always before you. If a million or so of lives are sacrificed, the great Germany of the future, gathering under her wings the peoples of the world, will raise them to a pitch of culture and contentment and happiness which will more than atone for the sacrifices of to-day. It is, after all, the future to which we must look.”
A telephone bell rang at the Prince’s elbow. He listened for a moment and nodded.
“An urgent visitor demands a moment of my time,” he said, rising.
“I have taken already too much,” Anna declared, “but I felt it was time that I heard the truth. They fence with me so in Berlin, and, believe me, Prince Herschfeld, in Vienna the Emperor is almost wholly ignorant of what is planned.”
The door was opened behind them. The Prince turned around. A young man had ushered in Herr Selingman. For a moment the latter looked steadily at Anna. Then he glanced at the Ambassador as though questioningly.
“You two must have met,” the Prince murmured.
“We have met,” Anna declared, smiling, as she made her way towards the door, “but we do not know one another. It is best like that. Herr Selingman and I work in the same army—”
“But I, madame, am the sergeant,” Selingman interrupted, with a low bow, “whilst you are upon the staff.”
She laughed as she made her adieux and departed. The door closed heavily behind her. Selingman came a little further into the room.
“You have read your dispatches this morning, Prince?” he asked.
“Not yet,” the latter replied. “Is there news, then?”
Selingman pointed to the closed door. “You have spoken for long with her?”
“Naturally,” the Prince assented. “She is a confidential friend of the Emperor. She has been entrusted for the last two years with all the private dispatches between Vienna and Berlin.”
“In your letters you will find news,” Selingman declared. “She is pronounced suspect. She is under my care at this moment. A report was brought to me half an hour ago that she was here. I came on at once myself. I trust that I am in time?”
The Prince stood quite silent for a moment.
“Fortunately,” he answered coolly, “I have told her nothing.”
CHAPTER XVIII
Table of Contents
As Norgate entered the premises of Selingman, Horsfal and Company a little later on the same morning he looked around him in some surprise. He had expected to find a deserted warehouse—probably only an office. He saw instead all the evidences of a thriving and prosperous business. Drays were coming and going from the busy door. Crates were piled up to the ceiling, clerks with notebooks in their hands passed continually back and forth. A small boy in a crowded office accepted his card and disappeared. In a few minutes he led Norgate into a waiting-room and handed him a paper.
“Mr. Selingman is engaged with a buyer for a few moments, sir,” he reported. “He will see you presently.”
Norgate looked through the windows out into the warehouse. There was no doubt whatever that this was a genuine and considerable trading concern. Presently the door of the inner office opened, and he heard Mr. Selingman’s hearty tones.
“You have done well for yourself and well for your firm, sir,” he was saying. “There is no one in Germany or in the world who can produce crockery at the pr
ice we do. They will give you a confirmation of the order in the office. Ah! my young friend,” he went on, turning to Norgate, “you have kept your word, then. You are not a customer, but you may walk in. I shall make no money out of you, but we will talk together.”
Norgate passed on into a comfortably furnished office, a little redolent of cigar smoke. Selingman bit off the end of a cigar and pushed the box towards his visitor.
“Try one of these,” he invited. “German made, but Havana tobacco—mild as milk.”
“Thank you,” Norgate answered. “I don’t smoke cigars in the morning. I’ll have a cigarette, if I may.”
“As you will. What do you think of us now that you have found your way here?”
“Your business seems to be genuine enough, at all events,” Norgate observed.
“Genuine? Of course it is!” Selingman declared emphatically. “Do you think I should be fool enough to be connected with a bogus affair? My father and my grandfather before me were manufacturers of crockery. I can assure you that I am a very energetic and a very successful business man. If I have interests in greater things, those interests have developed naturally, side by side with my commercial success. When I say that I am a German, that to me means more, much more, than if I were to declare myself a native of any other country in the world. Sit opposite to me there. I have a quarter of an hour to spare. I can show you, if you will, over a thousand designs of various articles. I can show you orders—genuine orders, mind—from some of your big wholesale houses, which would astonish you. Or, if you prefer it, we can talk of affairs from another point of view. What do you say?”
“My interest in your crockery,” Norgate announced, “is non-existent. I have come to hear your offer. I have decided to retire—temporarily, at any rate—from the Diplomatic Service. I understand that I am in disgrace, and I resent it. I resent having had to leave Berlin except at my own choice. I am looking for a job in some other walk of life.”
Selingman nodded approvingly.
“Forgive me,” he said, “but it is true, then, that you are in some way dependent upon your profession?”
“I am not a pauper outside it,” Norgate replied, “but that is not the sole question. I need work, an interest in life, something to think about. I must either find something to do, or I shall go to Abyssinia. I should prefer an occupation here.”
“I can help you,” Selingman said slowly, “if you are a young man of common sense. I can put you in the way of earning, if you will, a thousand pounds a year and your travelling expenses, without interfering very much with your present mode of life.”
“Selling crockery?”
Selingman flicked the ash from the end of his cigar. He shook his head good-naturedly.
“I am a judge of character, young man,” he declared. “I pride myself upon that accomplishment. I know very well that in you we have one with brains. Nevertheless, I do not believe that you would sell my crockery.”
“It seems easy enough,” Norgate observed.
“It may seem easy,” Selingman objected, “but it is not. You have not, I am convinced, the gifts of a salesman. You would not reason and argue with these obstinate British shopkeepers. No! Your value to me would lie in other directions—in your social position, your opportunities of meeting with a class above the commercial one in which I have made my few English friends, and in your own intelligence.”
“I scarcely see of what value these things would be to a vendor of crockery.”
“They would be of no value at all,” Selingman admitted. “It is not in the crockery business that I propose to make use of you. I believe that we both know that. We may dismiss it from our minds. It is only fencing with words. I will take you a little further. You have heard, by chance, of the Anglo-German Peace Society?”
“The name sounds familiar,” Norgate confessed. “I can’t say that I know anything about it.”
“It was I who inaugurated that body,” Selingman announced. “It is I who direct its interests.”
“Congratulate you, I’m sure. You must find it uphill work sometimes.”
“It is uphill work all the time,” the German agreed. “Our great object is, as you can guess from the title, to promote good-feeling between the two countries, to heal up all possible breaches, to soothe and dispel that pitiful jealousy, of which, alas! too much exists. It is not easy, Mr. Norgate. It is not easy, my young friend. I meet with many disappointments. Yet it is a great and worthy undertaking.”
“It sounds all right,” Norgate observed. “Where do I come in?”
“I will explain. To carry out the aims of our society, there is much information which we are continually needing. People in Germany are often misled by the Press here. Facts and opinions are presented to them often from an unpalatable point of view. Furthermore, there is a section of the Press which, so far from being on our side, seems deliberately to try to stir up ill-feeling between the two countries. We want to get behind the Press. For that purpose we need to know the truth about many matters; and as the truth is a somewhat rare commodity, we are willing to pay for it. Now we come face to face. It will be your business, if you accept my offer, to collect such facts as may be useful to us.”
“I see,” Norgate remarked dubiously, “or rather I don’t see at all. Give me an example of the sort of facts you require.”
Mr. Selingman leaned a little forward in his chair. He was warming to his subject.
“By all means. There is the Irish question, then.”
“The Irish question,” Norgate repeated. “But of what interest can that be to you in Germany?”
“Listen,” Selingman continued. “Just as you in London have great newspapers which seem to devote themselves to stirring up bitter feeling between our two countries, so we, alas! in Germany, have newspapers and journals which seem to devote all their energies to the same object. Now in this Irish question the action of your Government has been very much misrepresented in that section of our Press and much condemned. I should like to get at the truth from an authoritative source. I should like to get it in such a form that I can present it fairly and honestly to the public of Germany.”
“That sounds reasonable enough,” Norgate admitted. “There are several pamphlets—”
“I do not want pamphlets,” Selingman interrupted. “I want an actual report from Ulster and Dublin of the state of feeling in the country, and, if possible, interviews with prominent people. For this the society would pay a bonus over and above the travelling expenses and your salary. If you accept my offer, this is probably one of the first tasks I should commit to you.”
“Give me a few more examples,” Norgate begged.
“Another subject,” Selingman continued, “upon which there is wide divergence of opinions in Germany, and a great deal of misrepresentation, is the attitude of certain of your Cabinet Ministers towards the French entente: how far they would support it, at what they would stop short.”
“Isn’t that rather a large order?” Norgate ventured. “I don’t number many Cabinet Ministers among my personal friends.”
Selingman puffed away at his cigar for a moment. Then he withdrew it from his mouth and expelled large volumes of smoke.
“You are, I believe, intimately acquainted with Mr. Hebblethwaite?”
“How the mischief did you know that?” Norgate demanded.
“Our society,” Selingman announced, smiling ponderously, “has ramifications in every direction. It is our business to know much. We are collectors of information of every sort and nature.”
“Seems to have been part of your business to follow me about,” observed Norgate.
“Perhaps so. If we thought it good for us to have you followed about, we certainly should,” Selingman admitted. “You see, in Germany,” he added, leaning back in his chair, “we lay great stress upon detail and intelligence. We get to know things: not the smattering of things, like you over here are too often content with, but to know them thoroughly and understand them.
Nothing ever takes us by surprise. We are always forewarned. So far as any one can, we read the future.”
“You are a very great nation, without a doubt,” Norgate acknowledged, “but my quarter of an hour is coming to an end. Tell me what else you would expect from me if I accepted this post?”
“For the moment, I can think of nothing,” Selingman replied. “There are many ways in which we might make use of you, but to name them now would be to look a little too far into the future.”
“By whom should I really be employed?”
“By the Anglo-German Peace Society,” Selingman answered promptly. “Let me say a word more about that society. I am proud of it. I am one of those prominent business men who are responsible for its initiation. I have given years of time and thought to it. All our efforts are directed towards promoting a better understanding with England, towards teaching the two countries to appreciate one another. But in the background there is always something else. It is useless to deny that the mistrust existing between the two countries has brought them more than once almost to the verge of war. What we want is to be able, at critical times, to throw oil upon the troubled waters, and if the worst should come, if a war really should break out, then we want to be able to act as peacemakers, to heal as soon as possible any little sores that there may be, and to enter afterwards upon a greater friendship with a purified England.”
“It sounds very interesting,” Norgate confessed. “I had an idea that you were proposing something quite different.”
“Please explain.”
“To be perfectly frank with you,” Norgate acknowledged, “I thought you wanted me to do the ordinary spy business—traces of fortresses, and particulars about guns and aeroplanes—”
“Rubbish, my dear fellow!” Selingman interrupted. “Rubbish! Those things we leave to our military department, and pray that the question of their use may never arise. We are concerned wholly with economic and social questions, and our great aim is not war but peace.”
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