u over to our
side. Why should not that become an alliance--an absolute alliance? Your
interests are drawn into ours. You have now a real and great reason for
throwing in your lot with us. Let me look at you. Let me think whether I
may not venture upon a great gamble."

Norgate did not flinch. He appeared simply a little puzzled. Selingman's
blue, steel-like eyes seemed striving to reach the back of his brain.

"All the things that we accomplish in my country," the latter continued,
"we do by method and order. We do them scientifically. We reach out into
the future. So far as we can, we foresee everything. We leave little to
chance. Yet there are times when one cannot deal in certainties. Young
man, the news which you have told us this afternoon has brought us to
this pitch. I am inclined to gamble--to gamble upon you."

"Is there any question of consulting me in this?" Norgate asked coolly.

Selingman brushed the interruption on one side.

"I now make clear to you what I mean," he continued. "You have joined my
little army of helpers, those whom I have been able to convince of the
justice and reasonableness of Germany's ultimate aim. Now I want more
from you. I want to make of you something different. More than anything
in the world, for the furtherance of my schemes here, I need a young
Englishman of your position and with your connections, to whom I can give
my whole confidence, who will act for me with implicit obedience,
without hesitation. Will you accept that post, Francis Norgate?"

"If you think I am capable of it," Norgate replied promptly.

"You are capable of it," Selingman asserted. "There is only one grim
possibility to be risked. Are you entirely trustworthy? Would you flinch
at the danger moment? Before this afternoon I hesitated. It is your
alliance with the Baroness which gives me that last drop of confidence
which was necessary."

"I am ready to do your work," Norgate said. "I can say no more. My own
country has no use for me. My own country seems to have no use for any
one at all just now who thinks a little beyond the day's eating and
drinking and growing fat."

Selingman nodded his head. The note of bitterness in the other's tone was
to his liking.

"Of rewards, of benefits, I shall not now speak," he proceeded. "You have
something in you of the spirit of men who aim at the greater things.
There is, indeed, in your attitude towards life something of the
idealism, the ever-stretching heav