e last few weeks, however,
there has been a change. Nominally, things are the same. Actually, I
seem to find another hand at work, another hand which works with the
censorship, too. One of my very trusted agents in Harwich made the
slightest slip the other day. A few weeks ago, he would either have been
fined twenty pounds or interned. Do you know what happened to him on
Wednesday? Of course you don't he was arrested at one o'clock and shot
in half an hour. Then you saw the papers this morning? All sailings
between here and a certain little spot we know of have been stopped
without a moment's warning. I am compelled to pause in several most
interesting schemes."

"Nothing for me, I suppose?" Granet asked, a little nervously.

Sir Alfred looked at him.

"Not for the moment," he replied, "but there will be very soon. Take
hold of yourself Ronnie. Don't look downwards so much. You and I
are walking in the clouds. It is almost as bad to falter as to slip.
Confess--you've been afraid."

"I have," Granet admitted, "not afraid of death but afraid of what might
follow upon discovery. I am half inclined, if just one thing in the
world came my way, to sail for New York to-morrow and start again."

"When those fears come to you," Sir Alfred continued slowly, "consider
me. I run a greater risk than you. There are threads from this office
stretching to many corners of England, to many corners of America, to
most cities of Europe. If a man with brains should seize upon any one of
them, he might follow it backwards--even here."

Sir Alfred touched his chest for a moment. Then his hand dropped to his
side and he proceeded.

"For twenty-eight years I have ruled the money-markets of the world.
No Cabinet Council is held in this country at which my influence is not
represented. The Ministers come to me one by one for help and advice. I
represent the third great force of war, and there isn't a single member
of the present Government who doesn't look upon me as the most important
person in the country. Yet I, too, have enemies, Ronnie. There is the
halfpenny Press. They'd give a million for the chance that may come at
any day. They'd print my downfall in blacker lines than the declaration
of war. They'd shriek over my ruin with a more brazen-throated triumph
even than they would greet the heralds of peace. And the threads are
there, Ronald. Sometimes I feel one shiver a little. Sometimes I have
to stretch out my arm and brush too cu