Bellamy nodded.
"Your arrival is not inopportune, Prince. When did you come?"
"I reached Charing Cross at midnight," the Prince answered. "Our train was an hour late. I am presenting my credentials early this morning, and I am hoping for an interview during the afternoon."
Bellamy considered for a moment.
"It is true!" he said. "Between us three there is indeed no need for secrecy. The information you speak of will be in our hands within a few hours. I have no doubt whatever but that your Minister will share in it."
"You know of what it Consists?" the Prince inquired curiously.
"I think so," Bellamy answered, glancing at the clock. "For my own part, although the information itself is invaluable, I see another and a profounder source of interest in that document. If, indeed, it is what we believe it to be, it amounts to a casus belli."
"You mean that you would provoke war?" Prince Rosmaran asked.
Bellamy shrugged his shoulders.
"I," said he,--"I am not even a politician. But, you know, the lookers-on see a good deal of the game, and in my opinion there is only one course open for this country,--to work upon Russia so that she withdraws from any compact she may have entered into with Austria and Germany, to accept Germany's cooperation with Austria in the despoilment of your country as a casus belli, and to declare war at once while our fleet is invincible and our Colonies free from danger."
The Prince nodded.
"It is good," he admitted, "to hear man's talk once more. Wherever one moves, people bow the head before the might of Germany and Austria. Let them alone but a little longer, and they will indeed rule Europe."
Three o'clock struck. The Prince rose.
"I go," he announced.
"And I," Bellamy declared. "Come to my rooms at ten o'clock tomorrow morning, Prince, and you shall hear the news."
Bellamy lingered behind. For a moment he held Louise in his arms and gazed sorrowfully into her weary face.
"Is it worth while, I wonder?" he asked bitterly.
"Worth while," she answered, opening her eyes and looking at him, "to feel the mother love? Who can help it who would not be ignoble?"
"But yours, dear," he murmured, "is all grief. Even now I am afraid."
"We can do no more than toil to the end," she said. "David, you are sure this time?"
"I am sure," he replied. "I am going back now to the hotel where Laverick is staying. We are going to sit together and smoke until the morning. Nothing short of an army could storm the hotel. I was with them all only an hour ago,--Streuss, that blackguard Lassen, and Adolf Kahn, the police spy. They are beaten men and they know it. They had Laverick, had him by a trick, but I made a dramatic entrance and the game was up."