“Of course,” he was proceeding, “the Churchill gang would like to go on playing the standoff to us. But it won’t do, they’ve got to come in or see themselves left. Gurnard has pretty well nobbled their old party press, so they’ve got to begin all over again.”
That was it—that was precisely it. Churchill ought to have played the standoff to people like us—to have gone on playing it at whatever cost. That was what I demanded of the world as I conceived it. It was so much less troublesome in that way. On the other hand, this was life—I was living now and the cost of living is disillusionment; it was the price I had to pay. Obviously, a Foreign Minister had to have a semiofficial organ, or I supposed so. … “Mind you,” Fox whispered on, “I think myself, that it’s a pity he is supporting the Greenland business. The thing’s not altogether straight. But it’s going to be made to pay like hell, and there’s the national interest to be considered. If this Government didn’t take it up, some other would—and that would give Gurnard and a lot of others a peg against Churchill and his. We can’t afford to lose any more coaling stations in Greenland or anywhere else. And, mind you, Mr. C. can look after the interests of the niggers a good deal better if he’s a hand in the pie. You see the position, eh?”
I wasn’t actually listening to him, but I nodded at proper intervals. I knew that he wanted me to take that line in confidential conversations with fellows seeking copy. I was quite resigned to that. Incidentally, I was overcome by the conviction—perhaps it was no more than a sensation—that that girl was mixed up in this thing, that her shadow was somewhere among the others flickering upon the sheet. I wanted to ask Fox if he knew her. But, then, in that absurd business, I did not even know her name, and the whole story would have sounded a little mad. Just now, it suited me that Fox should have a moderate idea of my sanity. Besides, the thing was out of tone, I idealised her then. One wouldn’t talk about her in a smoking-room full of men telling stories, and one wouldn’t talk about her at all to Fox.
The musical critic had been prowling about the room with Fox’s eyes upon him. He edged suddenly nearer, pushed a chair aside, and came toward us.
“Hullo,” he said, in an ostentatiously genial, after-dinner voice, “what are you two chaps a-talking about?”
“Private matters,” Fox answered, without moving a hair.
“Then I suppose I’m in the way?” the other muttered. Fox did not answer.
“Wants a job,” he said, watching the discomfited Teuton’s retreat, “but, as I was saying—oh, it pays both ways.” He paused and fixed his eyes on me. He had been explaining the financial details of the matter, in which the Duc de Mersch and Callan and Mrs. Hartly and all these people clubbed together and started a paper which they hired Fox to run, which was to bring their money back again, which was to scratch their backs, which. … It was like the house that Jack built; I wondered who Jack was. That was it, who was Jack? It all hinged upon that.
“Why, yes,” I said. “It seems rather neat.”
“Of course,” Fox wandered on, “you are wondering why the deuce I tell you all this. Fact is, you’d hear it all if I didn’t, and a good deal more that isn’t true besides. But I believe you’re the sort of chap to respect a confidence.”
I didn’t rise to the sentiment. I knew as well as he did that he was bamboozling me, that he was, as he said, only telling me—not the truth, but just what I should hear everywhere. I did not bear him any ill-will; it was part of the game, that. But the question was, who was Jack? It might be Fox himself. … There might, after all, be some meaning in the farrago of nonsense that that fantastic girl had let off upon me. Fox really and in a figure of speech such as she allowed herself, might be running a team consisting of the Duc de Mersch and Mr. Churchill. He might really be backing a foreign, philanthropic ruler and State-founder, and a British Foreign Minister, against the rather sinister Chancellor of the Exchequer that Mr. Gurnard undoubtedly was. It might suit him; perhaps he had shares in something or other that depended on the success of the Duc de Mersch’s Greenland Protectorate. I knew well enough, you must remember, that Fox was a big man—one of those big men that remain permanently behind the curtain, perhaps because they have a certain lack of comeliness of one sort or another and don’t look well on the stage itself. And I understood now that if he had abandoned—as he had done—half a dozen enterprises of his own for the sake of the Hour, it must be because it was very well worth his while. It was not merely a question of the editorship of a paper; there was something very much bigger in the background. My Dimensionist young lady, again, might have other shares that depended on the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s blocking the way. In that way she might very well talk allegorically of herself as in alliance with Gurnard against Fox and Churchill. I was
