Fawley grumbled. “Got my brother instead. Not much harm done, I’m glad to say. What sort of an Italian colony is yours here?”
“No idea,” Malcolm confessed. “This sort of work that you go in for is right outside my line. From what I have heard, though, I believe they are a pretty tough lot. Not as bad as in your country, though.”
“They don’t need to be,” Fawley smiled. “As a rule, I find it pretty easy to slip about but it seems I am not popular in Rome just now.”
“These fellows to-night didn’t annoy you in any way, I hope?” Malcolm asked.
“Not in the least. I dare say, as a matter of fact, they were very useful. I don’t take much notice of threats as a rule but I had word on the telephone that they were laying for me.”
“Official?”
“I think not. I think it was a private warning.”
The butler reopened the door.
“The Prime Minister is down, sir,” he announced. “If you will allow me, I will show you the way to the small dining room.”
“See you later,” Malcolm observed.
“I hope so,” Fawley answered. “By the by, I sha’n’t be sorry to have you keep those fellows to-night, Malcolm. First time in my life I’ve felt resigned to having nursemaids in attendance but there is a spot of trouble about.”
Malcolm’s forehead wrinkled in surprise. He had known Fawley several years but this was the first time he had ever heard him utter any apprehension of the sort.
“I’ll pass word along to the sergeant,” he promised. “They would not have been going in any case, though, until they had seen you safely home.”
Fawley had the rare honour of dining alone with the Prime Minister. As between two men of the world, their conversation could scarcely be called brilliant but, when dinner was over and at the host’s orders coffee and port simultaneously placed upon the table, the Prime Minister unburdened himself.
“You are a man of experience, Fawley,” he began. “You would call things on the Continent pretty critical, wouldn’t you?”
“Never more so,” Fawley assented. “If any one of five men whom Italy sent out to the frontier had got back to Rome alive, there would have been war at the present moment.”
The Prime Minister was allowing himself a glass of port and he sipped it thoughtfully.
“It’s a funny thing,” he went on. “We have ambassadors in every country of Europe and never, by any chance, do they make any reports to us which are of the slightest interest. When anything goes wrong, they are the most surprised men in the world. They seem always the last to foresee danger.”
“You must remember,” Fawley pointed out, “they are not allowed a Secret Service department. The last person to hear of trouble as a rule is, as you say, the ambassador to the country concerned. What can you do about it, though?”
“Not much, I’m afraid,” the other sighed. “Take our friend at Rome. It was only last night we had a long rigmarole from the Embassy there. Lord Rollins said he had never been more deeply impressed with the earnest desire of a certain great man for European peace. All the time we know that Berati has the draft of a treaty ready for the signature of whichever party in Germany comes out on top.”
“Berati very nearly made a mistake there,” Fawley remarked. “Still, I don’t know that he was to be blamed. There were a few hours when I was in Berlin when the chances were all in favour of a monarchy. Von Salzenburg and his puppet played the game badly or they would have won, all right.”
“Shall I tell you why I sent for you to-night?” the Prime Minister asked abruptly.
“I wish you would,” was the very truthful and earnest response.
“You have your finger upon the situation in Germany and in Rome. You are not so well informed about the Quai d’Orsay, perhaps, but you know something about that. You know that war is simmering. Can you think of any means by which trouble can be postponed for, say, one week?”
“You mean,” Fawley said, “keep things as they are for a week?”
“Yes.”
“And after that week?”
“Rawson is on his way over. He is coming on the new fast liner and there is a question of sending a plane to meet him. You know what this means, Fawley.”
“My God!”
There was a brief and curious silence. Fawley, the man of unchanging expression, the man whose thoughts no one could ever divine, was suddenly agitated. The light of the visionary so often somnolent in his eyes was back again. His face was transfigured. He was like a prophet who has suddenly been given a glimpse of the heaven he has preached… The Prime Minister was a man of impulses. He leaned over and laid his hand in friendly fashion for a moment on the other’s shoulder.
“I know what this must mean to you, Fawley,” he said. “The long and short of it is—so far as I could gather—the President is coming in. He is going to adopt your scheme. What we have to do now is to keep things going until Rawson arrives.”
“How much of this can be told to—say—three men in Europe?” Fawley asked.
“I have thought of that,” the Prime Minister replied. “You know that I am not an optimist—I have been coupled with the Gloomy Dean before now—yet I tell you that from a single word the President let fall this evening, they have made up their minds. America is going to make a great sacrifice. She is going to depart from her principles. She is going to join hands with us. It will be the launching of your scheme, Fawley…Don’t think that your labours are over, though. It is up to you to stop trouble until Rawson arrives. On that day we shall communicate simultaneously with France, Italy and Germany. Until that day what has to be done must be done unofficially.”
“It shall be done,” Fawley swore. “A week ago I heard from the White House. They were still hesitating.”
“They only came to an agreement this morning,” the Prime Minister announced. “It was the recent happenings in Germany which decided them. Another Hohenzollern régime—even the dimmest prospect of it—was enough to set the greatest democratic country in the world shivering.”
“It shall be done,” Fawley repeated stubbornly, and the light was flaming once more in his eyes. “For one week I shall be free from all the bullets in the world.”
“I shall ask you nothing of your plans,” the Prime Minister continued. “In years to come—on my deathbed, I think—these few minutes we are spending together will be one of the great memories of my life…I have been reading my history lately. It is not the first time that the future of the world has been changed by subterranean workings.”
“You can call me a spy if you like,” Fawley observed, with a smile. “I don’t mind.”
“You shouldn’t mind,” the Prime Minister replied. “They tell me that you are a millionaire and I know myself that you accept no decoration or honours except from your own country. What a reward, though, your own conscience will bring
