William Le Queux - Her Royal Highness - A Romance of the Chancelleries of Europe

“You’ve had a good many feathers in your cap during the past five years, my dear Jack,” Waldron replied. “Your successes since you left the navy have been phenomenal – especially when a year ago you obtained a copy of the secret treaty signed by Austria regarding the partition of the Balkans. That was an amazing feat – never before equalled by any secret agent, I should think.”

“Bah! Nothing really very wonderful,” was Jerningham’s modest reply. “More by good luck than anything else. I’m here in Cairo to report on the growing unrest. At home the Chief suspects German influence to be at work.”

“And what’s the result of your inquiries?”

“Our friends are, no doubt, at the bottom of it all. Across the North Sea they mean business; and the ‘day’ must come very soon.”

“You’ve made that prophecy for several years now.”

“Because I happen to know, my dear boy. If one man should know the truth, surely it’s my unimportant self. My Chief has always agreed with me, although it is the fashion in the House to laugh at what is called ‘the German bogey.’ But that’s exactly what they desire in Berlin. They don’t want the British public to take our warnings too seriously. But if you doubt the seriousness of the present situation, ask anybody at the Berlin Embassy. They’ll tell you the truth – and they ought surely to know.”

Jack Jerningham and Hubert Waldron had been friends ever since their youth. The estate near Crowhurst, in Sussex, which Waldron’s father owned, though his diplomatic duties had kept him nearly always abroad, adjoined that of the Jerninghams of Heatherset, of whom Jack was the second son.

After Dartmouth he had passed into the navy, had become a full lieutenant, and afterwards had joined the Intelligence Department, in which capacity he was constantly travelling about the world as the eyes and ears of the Embassies, and ever ready to purchase out of the secret-service fund any information or confidential plan which might be advantageous to the authorities at Whitehall.

A typical, round-faced, easy-going naval officer of a somewhat careless and generous disposition, nobody outside the diplomatic circle ever suspected his real calling. But by those who did know, the ambassadors, ministers, and staffs of the embassies and legations, he was held in highest esteem as a thoroughgoing patriot, a man of great discretion and marvellous shrewdness, in whom his Chief at home placed the most complete confidence.

“There’ll be trouble here in Cairo before long, I fear,” he was whispering to his friend. “Kitchener will have a very rough time of it if the intrigues of our friends at Berlin are successful. They are stirring up strife every day, and the crisis would have arrived long ago were it not for Kitchener’s bold firmness. They know he won’t stand any nonsense from the native opposition. Britain is here to rule, and rule she will. Hence our friends the enemy are just a little afraid. I’m going back home next week to report upon the whole situation.”

“I’m getting pretty, sick of the humdrum of diplomacy,” Hubert declared wearily, between the puffs of his excellent cigarette. Though the big American bar was crowded by men, in the corner where they sat upon a red plush settee they could not be overheard, the chatter and noise being so great. “We at the Embassies are only puppets, after all. It is such men as you who shape the nation’s policy. We’re simply the survival of the old days when kings exchanged courtesies and views by means of their ambassadors, and we, the frills of the Embassy, merely dress up, dance attendance at every function, and pretend to an importance in the world which we certainly do not possess.”

“My dear Hubert, you never spoke truer words than those. Everything nowadays is worked from Downing Street, and the ambassador is simply the office boy who delivers the message. Your father was one of the brilliant men of the old regime. The Empire owes much to him, especially for what he did at Rome.”

“Yes, those days have passed. In this new century the world has other ways and other ideas. It is the age of advertisement, and surely the best advertisement manager which the world has ever known is the Kaiser William.”

“Oh, that’s admitted,” laughed the secret agent. “Why, he can’t go to his castle at Corfu for a week – as he does each spring – without some wonderful relic of Greek antiquity being unearthed in his presence. It is whispered that they sow them there in winter, just as the brave Belgians sow the bullets on the battlefield of Waterloo. To-day we are assuredly living on the edge of a volcano,” Jerningham went on. “When the eruption takes place – and who knows when it will – then, at that hour, the red-tape must be burst asunder, the veil torn aside, and the bitter truth faced – the bubble of British bombast will, I fear, be pricked.”

“You are always such a confounded pessimist, my dear Jack,” laughed Waldron.

“Ah, Hubert, I’m a pessimist because I am always on the move from capital to capital and I learn things as I go,” was Jerningham’s quick reply. “You fellows at the Embassies sit down and have a jolly good time at balls, dinners, tea-fights, and gala performances. Why? Because you’re paid for your job – paid to remain ignorant. I’m paid to learn. There’s the little difference.”

“I admit, my dear fellow, that without your service we should be altogether a back number. To your department is due the credit of knowing what is going on in the enemy’s camps.”

“I should think so. I don’t pay out ten thousand a year, more or less, without getting to know something, I can tell you.”

While Waldron and his friend were discussing matters, shouts suddenly arose everywhere – the golden pig had entered and was being touched for luck by everyone, and men raised their glasses to each other, to wish one another “A Happy New Year.” The Christian year had opened, but the Egyptians in fezes only smiled and acknowledged the compliment. Their year had not yet commenced.

“Well,” exclaimed Jack Jerningham at last. “You haven’t told me much about Beatriz.”

“Why should I, my dear fellow, when there’s nothing to tell?”

“Ah, I’m glad to hear that,” was his friend’s quick response, apparently much relieved, for the fascination of the handsome ballerina for Hubert Waldron was the gossip of half the Embassies of Europe. Hubert was a rising man, the son of a great diplomat, but that foolish infatuation would, if continued, most certainty stand in the way of his advancement. Many of his friends, even the Ambassador’s wife, had given him broad hints that the friendship was a dangerous one. Yet, unfortunately, he had not heeded them.

Every man who is over head and ears in love thinks that his adored one is the perfect incarnation of all the virtues. Even when Waldron had heard her discussed in the Casino, that smart club in the Calle de Alcata, he refused to credit the stories told of her, of the magnificent presents she received from admirers, and more especially from the favoured one, the septuagenarian Duke of Villaneuva y Geltru.

“Why are you so glad to hear it?” Hubert asked, his brow slightly knit, for after all it was a sore subject.

“Well, to tell you the truth, because there is so much gossip flying about.”

“What gossip?”

“Of course you know quite well. Why ask me to repeat it, old chap?”

“But I don’t,” was the other’s reply.

“Well,” exclaimed Jerningham after a pause, “perhaps you are, after all, like most men – you close your ears to the truth because you love her.”

“Yes, Jack, I admit it. I do love her.”