by the King of England and the Prime Minister. It has been signed by the President of France and the Premier. It has been signed by the King of Italy and Berati’s master. It only remains to have your signature and Hindenburg’s.”
“Signed?” Behrling repeated incredulously.
“Absolutely. It is the simplest of all pacts that has ever been recorded. The secondary tabulated formula of minor conditions will be issued shortly, but they will none of them affect the main point. America, England, France and Italy have entered into a compact that under no circumstances will they go to war. It is to be a five-power pact. You are the man for whose signature we are waiting now and the thing is finished.”
“Under no circumstances are we to go to war,” Behrling muttered, in dazed fashion.
“Well, you see you cannot go to war,” Fawley pointed out with a smile, “if there is no one to go to war with.”
Behrling waved his hand towards the east window with a sweeping gesture and his companion nodded understandingly.
“Quite so,” he admitted. “There is Soviet Russia, but Soviet Russia came into the world spouting peace. With America and the four civilised nations of Europe united, she will scarcely blacken the pages of history by attempting a bellicose attitude. If she did, there is a special clause which would mean for her economic destruction.”
Behrling rose from his place and walked restlessly up and down the room. His pride was hurt, his dreams of the future dimmed. The promises he had made his people were to become then impossible. He swung around and faced Fawley.
“Look here,” he said. “This pact of yours. Well enough for England to sign it—she has all that she needs. Well enough for France—she bled the world in 1919. Well enough for Italy, who could not even conquer Austria and is laden with spoils. What about us? Stripped of everything. The pact comes to us at an evil moment. Peace is great. Peace is a finer condition than warfare. I grant you that, but peace should come at the right moment. It is the wrong moment for Germany.”
“Others besides you,” Fawley acknowledged, “have seen the matter from that point of view, Behrling. England and America have both discussed it with sympathy. I bring you a great offer—an offer which you can announce as the result of your own policy—a great triumph to salve the humiliation of the country. In consideration of your signing the pact, England will restore to you your colonies.”
Behrling resumed his perambulations of the room. His heart was lighter. This man with the quiet voice and the indescribable sense of power spoke the truth. War was an impossibility. Here was something to send the people crazy with delight, to make them forget the poison of Versailles. Behrling knew as well as any German how, apart from their intrinsic value, the thought of foreign possessions had always thrilled his country-people. The Polish Corridor—nothing. A matter of arrangement. But the colonies back again! The jewels set once more in her crown and he—Behrling—the man to proclaim this great happening as the result of his own diplomacy. He resumed his seat.
“Major Fawley,” he said, “I suppose in all history there has never been a case of an unknown ambassador like yourself speaking with a voice of such colossal authority. You are known to the world only as an American Secret Service agent who became a free lance and betrayed the country for which he worked.”
“In her own interests,” his visitor reminded him, “and in the interests of the world. That is true. But I do not ask you to take my word. It is not I who will bring you the treaty or lead you to it. You will find it at the English Ambassador’s or the American Embassy, I am not sure which. Five minutes will tell us. You can sign it to-day. You can lunch with Martin Green, the American Ambassador, where you will probably meet Lord Inglewood, the Englishman. You can sign it to-day and issue your proclamation to the German people this afternoon. You will have the largest crowd that Germany has ever known shouting outside your residence to-night. The coming of peace to the world, after all, Behrling, is the greatest boon that could happen. I only deal with superficials. You will meet the councillors at both embassies during the day. You will understand much that I cannot tell you. But nothing can dim the truth. This is peace. And however you may talk, Behrling,” Fawley went on, after a momentary break in his voice, “of the military spirit, the grand sense of patriotism that comes from the souls of the German people, you know and they all know in their calm moments that they too are fathers, they too have their own little circle of friends and shudder at the thought of being robbed of them. War may have its glories. They fade away into blatant vapours if you compare them with the splendours of the peaceful well-ordered life—the arts progressing, manufactories teeming with work and life, the peoples of every nation blessed without ever-haunting anxiety.”
Behrling smiled and there was little of the grimness left in his face.
“You are eloquent, my doyen of Secret Service men,” he observed.
Fawley smiled back.
“I think,” he said, “that it is the longest speech I ever made in my life.”
Behrling was holding the telephone in his hand. He touched a bell and demanded the presence of his secretary. Already he was on fire, yet even in that moment he seemed scarcely able to take his eyes off his visitor.
“After all,” he remarked, with a smile half-whimsical, half-jealous at the corners of his lips, “you will be the outstanding figure in this business.”
Fawley shook his head.
“My name will never be heard,” he declared. “I shall remain what I have been all my life—the Secret Service agent.”
CHAPTER XXXI
The Marchese Marius di Vasena, Italian Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, threw himself into an easy-chair with a sigh of relief. This was the moment for which he had been waiting more or less patiently since the night when he had sheltered Martin Fawley, and Fawley in return had taken him a little way into his confidence, had raised for him with careful and stealthy fingers the curtain which shrouded a Utopian future…From outside the folding doors came the sound of floods of music distant and near at hand, the shuffling of feet, the subdued hum of happy voices, the fluttering of women’s dresses like the winged passage of a flock of doves.
“We make history, my friends,” the Marchese exclaimed, with a gesture which would have been dramatic if he himself, like most of the diplomats and politicians of the five countries, had not been somewhat overtired.
“What sort of chapter in the world’s history, I wonder,” Prince von Fürstenheim, German Ambassador, speculated. “I have been present at many functions organised to celebrate the launching of a new war. I have never yet heard of a great entertainment like this given to celebrate the coming of perpetual peace. How can there be perpetual peace? Is it not that we mock ourselves?”
“I do not think so,” Willoughby Johns declared. “There has never before been such a unanimous and vociferous European Press. This pact of ours, through its sheer simplicity, seems to have touched the imagination of millions.”
The great ball at the American Embassy to celebrate the formal signing of the greatest of written documents since the Magna Charta was in full swing. The Marchese, however, felt that he had done his duty. A young Prince connected with the Royal House, whom he had been asked to look after, was safely established in the ballroom outside. He
