E. Phillips Oppenheim - 21 Greatest Spy Thrillers in One Premium Edition (Mystery & Espionage Series)

“I think he is the most irresistible person,” Norgate agreed. “I met him two or three nights ago, coming over from Berlin, and he spoke of nothing but crockery and politics. To-night I dine with him, and I find a different person.”

“He is a perfect dear,” one of the other girls exclaimed, “but so curiously inquisitive! I have a great friend, a gunner, whom I brought with me to one of his parties, and he is always asking me questions about him and his work. I had to absolutely worry Dick so as to be able to answer all his questions, didn’t I, Rosa?”

Miss Morgen nodded a little guardedly.

“I should not call him really inquisitive,” she said. “It is because he likes to seem interested in the subject which interests you.”

“I am not at all sure whether that is true,” the other young lady objected. “You remember when Ellison Gray was always around with us? Why, I know that Mr. Selingman simply worried Maud’s life out of her to get a little model of his aeroplane from him. There were no end of things he wanted to know about cubic feet and dimensions. He is a dear, all the same.”

“A perfect dear!” the others echoed.

They drew up outside the Milan. Rosa Morgen turned to their escort.

“We will meet you in the hall in five minutes,” she said. “Then we can all go together and find Mr. Selingman.”

Table of Contents

Selingman’s supper party was in some respects both distinctive and unusual. Norgate, looking around him, thought that he had never in his life been among such a motley assemblage of people. There were eight or nine musical comedy young ladies; a couple of young soldiers, one of whom he knew slightly, who had arrived as escorts to two of the young ladies; Prince Edward of Lenemaur; a youthful peer, who by various misdemeanours had placed himself outside the pale of any save the most Bohemian society, and several other men whose faces were unfamiliar. They occupied a round table just inside the door of the restaurant, and they sat there till long after the lights were lowered. The conversation all the time was of the most general and frivolous description, and Selingman, as the hour grew later, seemed to grow larger and redder and more joyous. The only hint at any serious conversation came from the musical comedy star who sat at Norgate’s left.

“Do you know our host very well?” she asked Norgate once.

“I am afraid I can’t say that I know him well at all,” Norgate replied. “I met him in the train coming from Berlin, a few nights ago.”

“He is the most original person,” she declared. “He entertains whenever he has a chance; he makes new friends every hour; he eats and drinks and seems always to be enjoying himself like an overgrown baby. And yet, all the time there is such a very serious side to him. One feels that he has a purpose in it all.”

“Perhaps he has,” Norgate ventured.

“Perhaps he has,” she agreed, lowering her voice a little. “At least, I believe one thing. I believe that he is a good German and yet a great friend of England.”

“You don’t find the two incompatible, then?”

“I do not,” the young lady replied firmly. “I do not understand everything, of course, but I am half German and half English, so I can appreciate both sides, and I do believe that Mr. Selingman, if he had not been so immersed in his business, might have been a great politician.”

The conversation drifted into other channels. Norgate was obliged to give some attention to the more frivolous young lady on his right. The general exodus to the bar smoking-room only took place long after midnight. Every one was speaking of going on to a supper club to dance, and Norgate quietly slipped away. He took a hurried leave of his host.

“You will excuse me, won’t you?” he begged. “Enjoyed my evening tremendously. I’d like you to come and dine with me one night.”

“We will meet at the club to-morrow afternoon,” Selingman declared. “But why not come on with us now? You are not weary? They are taking me to a supper club, these young people. I have engaged myself to dance with Miss Morgen—I, who weigh nineteen stone! It will be a thing to see. Come with us.”

Norgate excused himself and left the place a moment later. It was a fine night, and he walked slowly towards Pall Mall, deep in thought. Outside one of the big clubs on the right-hand side, a man descended from a taxicab just as Norgate was passing. They almost ran into one another.

“Norgate, you reprobate!”

“Hebblethwaite!”

The latter passed his arm through the young man’s and led him towards the club steps.

“Come in and have a drink,” he invited. “I am just up from the House. I do wish you could get some of your military friends to stop worrying us, Norgate. Two hours to-night have been absolutely wasted because they would talk National Service and heckle us about the territorials.”

“I’ll have the drink, although heaven knows I don’t need any!” Norgate replied. “As for the rest, I am all on the side of the hecklers. You ought to know that.”

They drew two easy-chairs together in a corner of the great, deserted smoking-room, and Hebblethwaite ordered the whiskies and sodas.

“Yes,” he remarked, “I forgot. You are on the other side, aren’t you? I haven’t a word to say against the navy. We spend more money than is necessary upon it, and I stick out for economy whenever I can. But as regards the army, my theory is that it is useless. It’s only a temptation to us to meddle in things that don’t concern us. The navy is sufficient to defend these shores, if any one were foolish enough to wish to attack us. If we need an army at all, we should need one ten times the size, but we don’t. Nature has seen to that. Yet tonight, when I was particularly anxious to get on with some important domestic legislation, we had to sit and listen to hours of prosy military talk, the possibilities of this and that. They don’t realise, these brain-fogged ex-military men, that we are living in days of common sense. Before many years have passed, war will belong to the days of romance.”

“For a practical politician, Hebblethwaite,” Norgate pronounced, “you have some of the rottenest ideas I ever knew. You know perfectly well that if Germany attacked France, we are almost committed to chip in. We couldn’t sit still, could we, and see Calais and Boulogne, Dieppe and Ostend, fortified against us?”

“If Germany should attack France!” Hebblethwaite repeated. “If Prussia should send an expeditionary force to Cornwall, or the Siamese should declare themselves on the side of the Ulster men! We must keep in politics to possibilities that are reasonable.”

“Take another view of the same case, then,” Norgate continued. “Supposing Germany should violate Belgium’s independence?”

“You silly idiot!” Hebblethwaite exclaimed, as he took a long draught of his whisky and soda, lit a cigar, and leaned back in his chair, “the neutrality of Belgium is guaranteed by a treaty, actually signed by Germany!”

“Supposing she should break her treaty?” Norgate persisted. “I told you what I heard in the train the other night. It isn’t for nothing that that sort of work is going on.”

Hebblethwaite shook his head.

“You are incorrigible, Norgate! Germany is one of the Powers of Europe undoubtedly possessing a high sense of honour and rectitude of conduct. If any nation possesses a national conscience, and an appreciation of national ethics, they do. Germany would be less likely than any nation in the world to break a treaty.”

“Hebblethwaite,” Norgate declared solemnly, “if you didn’t understand the temperament and character of your constituents better than you do the German temperament and character, you would never have set your foot across the threshold of Westminster. The fact of it is you’re a domestic politician of the very highest order, but as regards foreign affairs and the greater side of international politics, well, all I can say is you’ve as little grasp of them as a local mayor might have.”