to see the terror fall upon the faces of all these great crowds who throng your streets. They are a stolid, unbelieving people—these. The blow, when it comes, will be the harder.”
Bellamy sighed.
“You are right,” he said. “When one comes to think of it, it is amazing. How long the prophets of woe have preached, and how completely their teachings have been ignored! The invasion bogey has been so long among us that it has become nothing but a jest. Even I, in a way, am one of the unbelievers.”
“You are not serious, David!” she exclaimed.
“I am,” he affirmed. “I think that if we could read that document we should see that there is no plan there for the immediate invasion of England. I think you would find that the blow would be struck simultaneously at our Colonies. We should either have to submit or send a considerable fleet away from home waters. Then, I presume, the question of invasion would come again. All the time, of course, the gage would be flung down, treaties would be defied, we should be scorned as though we were a nation of weaklings. Austria would gather in what she wanted, and there would be no one to interfere.”
Louise was very pale but her eyes were flashing fire.
“It is the most terrible thing which has happened in history,” she said, “this decadence of your country. Once England held the scales of justice for the world. Now she is no longer strong enough, and there is none to take her place. David, even if you know what that document contains, even then will it help very much?”
“Very much indeed. Don’t you see that there is one hope left to us—one hope—and that is Russia? The Czar must be made to withdraw from that compact. We want to know his share in it. When we know that, there will be a secret mission sent to Russia. Germany and Austria are strong, but they are not all the world. With Russia behind and France and England westward, the struggle is at least an equal one. They have to face both directions, they have to face two great armies working from the east and from the west.”
She nodded, and they sat there in silence for several moments. Bellamy was thinking deeply.
“You say, Louise,” he asked, looking up quickly, “that your rooms have been searched. When was this?”
“Only last night,” she replied.
Bellamy drew a little sigh of relief.
“At any rate,” he said, “Streuss has no idea that the document is not in our possession. He knows nothing about Laverick. How are we going to deal with him, Louise, when he comes for his answer?”
“You have a plan?” she asked.
“There is only one thing to be done,” Bellamy declared. “I shall say that we have already handed over the document to the English Government. It will be a bluff, pure and simple. He may believe it or he may not.”
“You will break your compact then,” she reminded him.
“I shall call myself justified,” he continued. “He has attempted to rob us of the document. You are sure of what you say—that your rooms and dressing-room have been searched?”
“Absolutely certain,” she declared.
“That will be sufficient,” Bellamy decided. “If Streuss comes to me, I shall meet him frankly. I shall tell him that he has tried to play the burglar and that it must be war. I shall tell him that the compact is in the hands of the Prime Minister, and that he and his spies had better clear out.”
She looked at him questioningly.
“Of course, you understand,” he added, “there is one thing we can do, and one thing only. We must send a mission to Russia and another to France, and before the German fleet can pass down the North Sea we must declare war. It is the only thing left to us—a bold front. Without that packet we have no casus belli. With it, we can strike, and strike hard. I still believe that if we declare war within seven days, we shall save ourselves.”
Streuss and Kahn looked, too, across the panorama of London, across the dingy Adelphi Gardens, the turbid Thames, the smoke-hung world beyond. They were together in Streuss’s sitting-room on the seventh floor of one of the great Strand hotels.
“Our enterprise is a failure!” Kahn exclaimed gloomily. “We cannot doubt it any longer. I think, Streuss, that the best course you and I could adopt would be to realize it and to get back. We do no good here. We only run needless risks.”
The face of the other man was dark with anger. His tone, when he spoke, shook with passion.
“You don’t know what you say, Kahn!” he cried hoarsely. “I tell you that we must succeed. If that document reaches the hands of any one in authority here, it would be the worst disaster which has fallen upon our country since you or I were born. You don’t understand, Kahn! You keep your eyes closed!”
“What men can do we have done,” the other answered. “Von Behrling played us false. He has died a traitor’s death, but it is very certain that he parted with his document before he received that twenty thousand pounds.”
“Once and for all, I do not believe it!” Streuss declared. “At mid-day, I can swear to it that the contents of that envelope were unknown to the Ministers of the King here. Now if Von Behrling had parted with that document last Monday night, don’t you suppose that everything would be known by now? He did not part with it. Bellamy and Mademoiselle lie when they say that they possess it. That document remains in the possession of Von Behrling’s murderer, and it is for us to find him.”
Kahn sighed.
“It is outside our sphere—that. What can we do against the police of this country working in their own land?”
Streuss struck the table before which they were standing. The veins in his temples were like whipcord.
“Adolf,” he muttered, “you talk like a fool! Can’t you see what it means? If that document reaches its destination, what do you suppose will happen?”
“They will know our plans, of course,” Kahn answered. “They will have time to make preparation.”
Streuss laughed bitterly.
“Worse than that!” he exclaimed. “They are not all fools, these English statesmen, though one would think so to read their speeches. Can’t you see what the result would be if that document reaches Downing Street? War at a moment’s notice, war six months too soon! Don’t you know that every shipbuilding yard in Germany is working night and day? Don’t you know that every nerve is being strained, that the muscles of the country are hammering the rivets into our new battleships? There is but one chance for this country, and if her statesmen read that document they will know what it is. It is open to them to destroy the German navy utterly, to render themselves secure against attack.”
“They would never have the courage,” Kahn declared. “They might make a show of defending themselves if they were attacked, but to take the initiative—no! I do not believe it.”
“There is one man who has wit enough to do it,” Streuss said. “He may not be in the Cabinet, but he commands it. Kahn, wake up, man! You and I together have never known what failure means. I tell you that that document is still to be bought or fought for, and we must find it. This morning Mademoiselle drove into the city and called at the offices of a stockbroker within
