Chapter One

       A State Secret

       Table of Contents

      “Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favour of the Lord.” — Proverbs xviii, 22.

      “Have those urgent dispatches come in from Berlin, Deedes?”

      “Captain Hammerton has not yet arrived,” I answered.

      “Eleven o’clock! Tut, tut! Every moment’s delay means greater risk,” and the Earl of Warnham, Her Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, strode up and down his private room, with his hat still on, impatiently snapping his bony fingers in agitation quite unusual to him.

      “Hammerton wired from Berlin yesterday, when on the point of leaving,” I observed, taking a telegram from the table before me.

      “In cipher?”

      “Yes.”

      “No accident is reported in the papers, I suppose?”

      “Nothing in the Times,” I replied.

      “Strange, very strange, that he should be so long overdue,” the Earl said, at last casting himself into his padded chair, and lounging back, his hands thrust deep into his pockets as he stared thoughtfully into space.

      I resumed my writing, puzzled at the cause of the chief’s excited demeanour, but a few moments later sharp footsteps sounded outside in the corridor, followed by a loud rapping, and there entered the messenger, clad in his heavy fur-lined travelling coat, although a July morning, and carrying a well-worn leather dispatch-box, which he placed upon my table.

      “Late, Hammerton. Very late,” snapped the Earl, glancing at his watch.

      “There’s a dense fog in the Channel, your Lordship, and we were compelled to come across dead slow the whole distance. I’ve driven straight from the station,” the Captain answered good-humouredly, looking so spruce and well-groomed that few would credit he had been travelling for nearly twenty-four hours.

      “Go and rest. You must return to-night,” his Lordship said testily.

      “At seven-thirty?”

      “Yes, at my house in Berkeley Square.”

      Then, taking up the receipt I had signed for the dispatch-box, the messenger, to whom a journey to Constantinople or St Petersburg was about as fatiguing as a ride on the Underground Railway is to ordinary persons, walked jauntily out, wishing us both good-day.

      When the door had closed, Lord Warnham quickly opened the outer case with his key, and drew forth a second box, covered with red morocco, and securely sealed. This he also opened, and, after rummaging for some moments among a quantity of papers, exclaimed, in a tone of satisfaction, —

      “Ah! Here it is. Good! Seals not tampered with.”

      Withdrawing from the box a large official envelope, doubly secured with the seal of the British Embassy at Berlin, and endorsed by Sir Philip Emden, our Ambassador, he