The Great Impersonation by E. Phillips Oppenheim (books to read now txt) 📕

or so. Meanwhile, remember this. It is our great aim to keep England out of the war.”

“Terniloff is right, then, after all!” Dominey exclaimed.

Seaman laughed scornfully.

“If we want England out of the war,” he pointed out, “it is not that we desire her friendship. It is that we may crush her the more easily when Calais, Boulogne and Havre are in our hands. That will be in three months’ time. Then perhaps our attitude towards England may change a little! Now I go.”

Dominey folded up the map with reluctance. His companion shook his head. It was curious that he, too, for the first time in his life upon the same day, addressed his host differently.

“Baron Von Ragastein,” he said, “there are six of those maps in existence. That one is for you. Lock it away and guard it as though it were your greatest treasure on earth, but when you are alone, bring it out and study it. It shall be your inspiration, it shall lighten your moments of depression, give you courage when you are in danger; it shall fill your mind with pride and wonder. It is yours.”

Dominey folded it carefully up, crossed the room, unlocked a little safe and deposited it therein.

“I shall guard it, according to your behest, as my greatest treasure,” he assured his departing guest, with a fervour which surprised even himself.

XXVII

There was something dramatic, in the most lurid sense of the word, about the brief telephone message which Dominey received, not so many hours later, from Carlton House Terrace. In a few minutes he was moving through the streets, still familiar yet already curiously changed. Men and women were going about their business as usual, but an air of stupefaction was everywhere apparent. Practically every loiterer was studying a newspaper, every chance acquaintance had stopped to confer with his fellows. War, alternately the joke and bogey of the conversationalist, stretched her grey hands over the sunlit city. Even the lightest-hearted felt a thrill of apprehension at the thought of the horrors that were to come. In a day or two all this was to be changed. People went about then counting the Russian millions; the steamroller fetish was to be evolved. The most peaceful stockbroker or shopkeeper, who had never even been to a review in his life, could make calculations of man power with a stump of pencil on the back of an old envelope, which would convince the greatest pessimist that Germany and Austria were outnumbered by at least three to one. But on this particular morning, people were too stunned for calculations. The incredible had happened. The long-discussed war⁠—the nightmare of the nervous, the derision of the optimist⁠—had actually materialised. The happy-go-lucky years of peace and plenty had suddenly come to an end. Black tragedy leaned over the land.

Dominey, avoiding acquaintances as far as possible, his own mind in a curious turmoil, passed down St. James’s Street and along Pall Mall and presented himself at Carlton House Terrace. Externally, the great white building, with its rows of flower boxes, showed no signs of undue perturbation. Inside, however, the anteroom was crowded with callers, and it was only by the intervention of Terniloff’s private secretary, who was awaiting him, that Dominey was able to reach the inner sanctum where the Ambassador was busy dictating letters. He broke off immediately his visitor was announced and dismissed everyone, including his secretaries. Then he locked the door.

“Von Ragastein,” he groaned, “I am a broken man!”

Dominey grasped his hand sympathetically. Terniloff seemed to have aged years even in the last few hours.

“I sent for you,” he continued, “to say farewell, to say farewell and make a confession. You were right, and I was wrong. It would have been better if I had remained and played the country farmer on my estates. I was never shrewd enough to see until now that I have been made the cat’s-paw of the very men whose policy I always condemned.”

His visitor still remained silent. There was so little that he could say.

“I have worked for peace,” Terniloff went on, “believing that my country wanted peace. I have worked for peace with honourable men who were just as anxious as I was to secure it. But all the time those for whom I laboured were making faces behind my back. I was nothing more nor less than their tool. I know now that nothing in this world could have hindered what is coming.”

“Everyone will at least realise,” Dominey reminded him, “that you did your best for peace.”

“That is one reason why I sent for you,” was the agitated reply. “Not long ago I spoke of a little volume, a diary which I have been keeping of my work in this country. I promised to show it to you. You have asked me for it several times lately. I am going to show it to you now. It is written up to yesterday. It will tell you of all my efforts and how they were foiled. It is an absolutely faithful narrative of my work here, and the English response to it.”

The Prince crossed the room, unlocked one of the smaller safes, which stood against the side of the wall, withdrew a morocco-bound volume the size of a small portfolio, and returned to Dominey.

“I beg you,” he said earnestly, “to read this with the utmost care and to await my instructions with regard to it. You can judge, no doubt,” he went on a little bitterly, “why I give it into your keeping. Even the Embassy here is not free from our own spies, and the existence of these memoirs is known. The moment I reach Germany, their fate is assured. I am a German and a patriot, although my heart is bitter against those who are bringing this blot upon our country. For that reason, these memoirs must be kept in a safe place until I see a good use for them.”

“You mean if the