if we are successfully to combat them. In
the past you've often done marvels. I can only hope that you will be
equally successful in this critical moment."

Then after a long and confidential chat we parted and a couple of hours
later I was again in the boat train, bound for the Continent. I
recognised how urgent was the matter, and how each hour's delay
increased our peril.

The public, or rather the omnivorous readers of the halfpenny press,
little dream how near we were at that moment to disaster. The completion
of the cleverly laid plans of Germany would mean a sudden blow aimed at
us, not only at our own shores, but also at our colonies at the same
moment--and such a blow, with our weakened army and neglected navy, we
could not possibly ward off.

Well I remember how that night I sat in the corner of the _wagon-lit_ of
the Simplon Express and reflected deeply. I was on my way to Milan to
join a friend. At Boulogne I had received a wire from Suzette, who had
already departed on her mission to Berlin.

My chief difficulty lay in the unfortunate fact that I was well known to
Pierron, who had now forsaken his original employers the Germans, hence
I dare not go to the German capital, lest he should recognise me. I knew
that in the pay of the French Secret Service was a clerk in the Treaty
department of the German Foreign Office, and without doubt he was
furnishing Pierron with copies of all the correspondence in progress.
Both the French and German Governments spend six times the amount
annually upon secret service that we do, hence they are always well and
accurately informed.

At Milan next day the porter at the "Metropole," the small hotel in the
Piazza del Duomo where I always stay, handed me a telegram, a cipher
message from Ray, which announced that his father had discovered that,
according to a despatch just received from His Majesty's Ambassador at
St. Petersburg, there was now no doubt whatever that the terms offered
by Germany were extremely advantageous to both Russia and the United
States, and that it was believed that the agreement was on the actual
point of being concluded.

That decided me. I felt that at all hazards, even though Pierron might
detect my presence, I must be in Berlin.

I was, however, unable to leave Milan at once, for Ford, whom I was
awaiting, was on his way from Corfu and had telegraphed saying that he
had missed the mail train at Brindisi, and would not arrive before the
morro