Part 33 (1/2)

”He makes no mistakes,” Bellamy a.s.sured her. ”He saw Laverick enter that pa.s.sage and come out. Afterwards he went back to his office, although he had closed up there and had been on his homeward way.

The thing could not have been accidental.”

”Why do you not go to him openly?” she suggested. ”He is, after all, an Englishman, and when you tell him what you know he will be very much in your power. Tell him of the value of that doc.u.ment.

Tell him that you must have it.”

”It could be done,” Bellamy admitted. ”I think that one of us must talk plainly to him. Listen, Louise,--are you seeing him again?”

”I have invited him to come to the Opera House to-night.”

”See what you can do,” he begged. ”I would rather keep away from him myself, if I can. Have you heard anything of Streuss?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

”Nothing directly,” she replied, ”but my rooms have been searched--even my dressing-room at the Opera House. That man's spies are simply wonderful. He seems able to plant them everywhere. And, David!--”

”Yes, dear?”

”He has got hold of La.s.sen,” she continued. ”I am perfectly certain of it.”

”Then the sooner you get rid of La.s.sen, the better,” Bellamy declared.

”It is so difficult,” she murmured, in a perplexed tone. ”The man has all my affairs in his hands. Up till now, although he is uncomely, and a brute in many ways, he has served me well.”

”If he is Streuss's creature he must go,” Bellamy insisted.

She nodded.

”Let us sit down for a few minutes,” she said. ”I am tired.”

She sank on to a seat and Bellamy sat by her side. In full view of them was Buckingham Palace with its flag flying. She looked thoughtfully at it and across to Westminster.

”Do they know, I wonder, your country-people?” she asked.

”Half-a-dozen of them, perhaps,” he answered gloomily, no more.

”To-day,” she declared, ”I seem to have lost confidence. I seem to feel the sense of impending calamity, to hear the guns as I walk, to see the terror fall upon the faces of all these great crowds who throng your streets. They are a stolid, unbelieving people--these.

The blow, when it comes, will be the harder.”

Bellamy sighed.

”You are right,” he said. ”When one comes to think of it, it is amazing. How long the prophets of woe have preached, and how completely their teachings have been ignored! The invasion bogey has been so long among us that it has become nothing but a jest.

Even I, in a way, am one of the unbelievers.”

”You are not serious, David!” she exclaimed.

”I am,” he affirmed. ”I think that if we could read that doc.u.ment we should see that there is no plan there for the immediate invasion of England. I think you would find that the blow would be struck simultaneously at our Colonies. We should either have to submit or send a considerable fleet away from home waters. Then, I presume, the question of invasion would come again. All the time, of course, the gage would be flung down, treaties would be defied, we should be scorned as though we were a nation of weaklings. Austria would gather in what she wanted, and there would be no one to interfere.”

Louise was very pale but her eyes were flas.h.i.+ng fire.

”It is the most terrible thing which has happened in history,” she said, ”this decadence of your country. Once England held the scales of justice for the world. Now she is no longer strong enough, and there is none to take her place. David, even if you know what that doc.u.ment contains, even then will it help very much?”