Tales of Mystery & Suspense: 25+ Thrillers in One Edition. E. Phillips Oppenheim

am dining with the worshipful tanners—turtle soup and all the rest of it. Don’t let me miss more than I can help.”

      Mr. Hebblethwaite walked to the door to be sure that it was closed and came back again.

      “Look here, Wyatt,” he exclaimed, “what the devil have you been up to?”

      Wyatt whistled softly. A light broke across his face.

      “What do you mean?” he demanded.

      “You know perfectly well what I mean,” Hebblethwaite continued. “Five weeks ago we had it all out at a Cabinet meeting. You asked Parliament to lay down six battleships, four cruisers, thirty-five submarines, and twelve torpedo boats. You remember what a devil of a row there was. Eventually we compromised for half the number of battleships, two cruisers, and the full amount of small craft.”

      “Well?”

      “I am given to understand,” Hebblethwaite said slowly, “that you have absolutely disregarded the vote—that the whole number of battleships are practically commenced, and the whole number of cruisers, and rather more than the number of smaller craft.”

      Wyatt threw his cocked hat upon the table.

      “Well, I am up against it a bit sooner than I expected,” he remarked. “Who’s been peaching?”

      “Never mind,” Hebblethwaite replied. “I am not telling you that. You’ve managed the whole thing very cleverly, and you know very well, Wyatt, that I am on your side. I was on your side in pressing the whole of your proposals upon the Cabinet, although honestly I think they were far larger than necessary. However, we took a fair vote, and we compromised. You had no more right to do what you have done—”

      “I admit it, Hebblethwaite,” Wyatt interrupted quickly. “Of course, if this comes out, my resignation’s ready for you, but I tell you frankly, as man to man, I can’t go on with my job, and I won’t, unless I get the ships voted that I need. We are behind our standard now. I spent twenty-four hours making up my mind whether I should resign or take this risk. I came to the conclusion that I should serve my country better by taking the risk. So there you are. What are you going to do about it?”

      “What the mischief can I do about it?” Hebblethwaite demanded irritably. “You are putting me in an impossible position. Let me ask you this, Wyatt. Is there anything at the back of your head that the man in the street doesn’t know about?”

      “Yes!”

      “What is it, then?”

      “I have reasons to believe,” Wyatt announced deliberately, “reasons which are quite sufficient for me, although it was impossible for me to get up in Parliament and state them, that Germany is secretly making preparations for war either before the end of this year or the beginning of next.”

      Hebblethwaite threw himself into an easy-chair.

      “Sit down, Wyatt,” he said. “Your dinner can wait for a few minutes. I have had another man—only a youngster, and he doesn’t know anything—talking to me like that. We are fully acquainted with everything that is going on behind the scenes. All our negotiations with Germany are at this moment upon the most friendly footing. We haven’t a single matter in dispute. Old Busby, as you know, has been over in Berlin himself and has come back a confirmed pacifist. If he had his way, our army would practically cease to exist. He has been on the spot. He ought to know, and the army’s his job.”

      “Busby,” Wyatt declared, “is the silliest old ass who ever escaped petticoats by the mere accident of sex. I tell you he is just the sort of idiot the Germans have been longing to get hold of and twist round their fingers. Before twelve months or two years have passed, you’ll curse the name of that man, when you look at the mess he has made of the army. Peace is all very well—universal peace. The only way we can secure it is by being a good deal stronger than we are at present.”

      “That is your point of view,” Hebblethwaite reminded him. “I tell you frankly that I incline towards Busby’s.”

      “Then you’ll eat your words,” Wyatt asserted, “before many months are out. I, too, have been in Germany lately, although I was careful to go as a tourist, and I have picked up a little information. I tell you it isn’t for nothing that Germany has a complete list of the whole of her rolling stock, the actual numbers in each compartment registered and reserved for the use of certain units of her troops. I tell you that from one end of the country to the other her state of military preparedness is amazing. She has but to press a button, and a million men have their rifles in their hands, their knapsacks on their backs, and each regiment knows exactly at which station and by what train to embark. She is making Zeppelins night and day, training her men till they drop with exhaustion. Krupp’s works are guarded by double lines of sentries. There are secrets there which no one can penetrate. And all the time she is building ships feverishly. Look here—you know my cousin, Lady Emily Fakenham?”

      “Of course!”

      “Only yesterday,” Wyatt continued impressively, “she showed me a letter—I read it, mind—from a cousin of Prince Hohenlowe. She met him at Monte Carlo this year, and they had a sort of flirtation. In the postscript he says: ‘If you take my advice, don’t go to Dinard this August. Don’t be further away from home than you can help at all this summer.’ What do you think that meant?”

      “It sounds queer,” Hebblethwaite admitted.

      “Germany is bound to have a knock at us,” Spencer Wyatt went on. “We’ve talked of it so long that the words pass over our heads, as it were, but she means it. And I tell you another thing. She means to do it while there’s a Radical Government in power here, and before Russia finishes her reorganisation scheme. I am not a soldier, Hebblethwaite, but the fellows we’ve got up at the top—not the soldiers themselves but the chaps like old Busby and Simons—are simply out and out rotters. That’s plain speaking, isn’t it, but you and I are the two men concerned in the government of this country who do talk common sense to one another. We’ve fine soldiers and fine organisers, but they’ve been given the go-by simply because they know their job and would insist upon doing it thoroughly, if at all. Russia will have another four million men ready to be called up by the end of 1915, and not only that, but what is more important, is that she’ll have the arms and the uniforms for them. Germany isn’t going to wait for that. I’ve thought it all out. We are going to get it in the neck before seven or eight months have passed, and if you want to know the truth, Hebblethwaite, that’s why I have taken a risk and ordered these ships. The navy is my care, and it’s my job to see that we keep it up to the proper standard. Whose votes rob me of my extra battleships? Why, just a handful of Labour men and Irishmen and cocoa Liberals, who haven’t an Imperial idea in their brains, who think war belongs to the horrors of the past, and think they’re doing their duty by what they call ‘keeping down expenses.’ Hang it, Hebblethwaite, it’s worse than a man who won’t pay fire insurance for his house in a dangerous neighbourhood, so as to save a bit of money! What I’ve done I stick to. Split on me, if you want to.”

      “I don’t think I shall do that,” Hebblethwaite said, “but honestly, Wyatt, I can’t follow you in your war talk. We got over the Agadir trouble. We’ve got over a much worse one—the Balkan crisis. There isn’t a single contentious question before us just now. The sky is almost clear.”

      “Believe me,” Wyatt insisted earnestly, “that’s just the time to look for the thunderbolt. Can’t you see that when Germany goes to war, it will be a war of conquest, the war which she has planned for all these years? She’ll choose her own time, and she’ll make a casus belli, right enough, when the time comes. Of course, she’d have taken advantage of the position last year, but she simply wasn’t ready. If you ask me, I believe she thinks herself now able to lick the whole of Europe. I am not at all sure, thanks to Busby and our last fifteen years’ military administration, that she wouldn’t have a good chance of doing it. Any way, I am not going to have my fleet cut down.”

      “The country is prosperous,” Hebblethwaite acknowledged. “We can afford the ships.”