Ashenden need not have feared that the conversation would proceed with difficulty and the notion he had had that Sir Herbert had asked him in order to question him about his secret mission was quickly dispelled. The ambassador behaved to him as though he were a travelling Englishman who had presented a letter of introduction and to whom he desired to show civility. You would hardly have thought that a war was raging, for he made to it only such references as showed that he was not deliberately avoiding a distressing subject. He spoke of art and literature, proving himself to be a diligent reader of catholic taste, and when Ashenden talked to him, from personal acquaintance, of the writers whom Sir Herbert knew only through their works, he listened with the friendly condescension which the great ones of the earth affect towards the artist. (Sometimes, however, they paint a picture or write a book, and then the artist gets a little of his own back.) He mentioned in passing a character in one of Ashenden’s novels, but did not make any other reference to the fact that his guest was a writer. Ashenden admired his urbanity. He disliked people to talk to him of his books, in which indeed, once written, he took small interest, and it made him self-conscious to be praised or blamed to his face. Sir Herbert Witherspoon flattered his self-esteem, by showing that he had read him, but spared his delicacy by withholding his opinion of what he had read. He spoke too of the various countries in which during his career he had been stationed and of various persons, in London and elsewhere, that he and Ashenden knew in common. He talked well, not without a pleasant irony that might very well have passed for humour, and intelligently. Ashenden did not find his dinner dull, but neither did he find it exhilarating. He would have been more interested if the ambassador had not so invariably said the right, wise and sensible thing upon every topic that was introduced. Ashenden was finding it something of an effort to keep up with this distinction of mind and he would have liked the conversation to get into its shirtsleeves, so to speak, and put its feet on the table. But of this there was no chance and Ashenden once or twice caught himself wondering how soon after dinner he could decently take his leave. At eleven he had an appointment with Herbartus at the Hôtel de Paris.
The dinner came to an end and coffee was brought in. Sir Herbert knew good food and good wine and Ashenden was obliged to admit that he had fared excellently. Liqueurs were served with the coffee, and Ashenden took a glass of brandy.
“I have some very old Benedictine,” said the ambassador. “Won’t you try it?”
“To tell you the honest truth I think brandy is the only liqueur worth drinking.”
“I’m not sure that I don’t agree with you. But in that case I must give you something better than that.”
He gave an order to the butler who presently brought in a cobwebbed bottle and two enormous glasses.
“I don’t really want to boast,” said the ambassador as he watched the butler pour the golden liquid into Ashenden’s glass, “but I venture to think that if you like brandy you’ll like this. I got it when I was Counsellor for a short time in Paris.”
“I’ve had a good deal to do lately with one of your successors then.”
“Byring?”
“Yes.”
“What do you think of the brandy?”
“I think it’s marvellous.”
“And of Byring?”
The question came so oddly on the top of the other that it sounded faintly comic.
“Oh, I think he’s a damned fool.”
Sir Herbert leaned back in his chair, holding the huge glass with both hands in order to bring out the aroma, and looked slowly round the stately and spacious room. The table had been cleared of superfluous things. There was a bowl of roses between Ashenden and his host. The servants switched off the electric light as they finally left the room and it was lit now only by the candles that were on the table and by the fire. Notwithstanding its size it had an air of sober comfort. The ambassador’s eyes rested on the really distinguished portrait of Queen Victoria that hung over the chimneypiece.
“I wonder,” he said at last.
“He’ll have to leave the diplomatic service.”
“I’m afraid so.”
Ashenden gave him a quick glance of enquiry. He was the last man from whom he would have expected sympathy for Byring.
“Yes, in the circumstances,” he proceeded, “I suppose it’s inevitable that he should leave the service. I’m sorry. He’s an able fellow and he’ll be missed. I think he had a career before him.”
“Yes, that is what I’ve heard. I’m told that at the F.O. they thought very highly of him.”
“He has many of the gifts that are useful in this rather dreary trade,” said the ambassador, with a slight smile, in his cold and judicial manner. “He’s handsome, he’s a gentleman, he has nice manners, he speaks excellent French and he has a good head on his shoulders. He’d have done well.”
“It seems a pity that he should waste such golden opportunities.”
“I understand he’s going into the wine business at the end of the war. Oddly enough he’s going to represent the very firm from whom I got this brandy.”
Sir Herbert raised the glass to his nose and inhaled the fragrance. Then he looked at Ashenden. He had a way of looking at people, when he was thinking of something else perhaps, that suggested that he thought them somewhat peculiar but rather disgusting insects.
“Have you ever seen the woman?” he asked.
“I dined with her and Byring at Larue’s.”
“How very interesting.
