Perhaps the nod, though encouraging, had an air of habit, for Mr. Beechtree added quickly, "What I have to tell you is most unusual. It implicates persons not usually implicated. Indeed, never before. I am not here to hurl random accusations against persons for whom I happen to feel a distaste. I am here with solid, documentary evidence. I have it in this case." He opened his shabby dispatch case, and showed it full of papers. "It implicates," he continued, "an individual who holds a distinguished position on the staff of the Secretariat." M. Croza leant forward, interested, stimulated, not displeased. "You amaze me," he said. "Take a note, Alvarez, if you please." "Some years ago," said Henry, gratified by the delegate's attention and the secretary's poised pencil, "before the League of Nations, so-called----" "It _is_ the League of Nations," said the delegate, with a little frown. "To be sure it is," Henry recollected himself. He had merely used "so-called" as a term indicative of contempt, like "sic," forgetting that he was not addressing the readers of the _British Bolshevist_. "Well, before the League of Nations existed--to be exact, in the year 1919--I had occasion, by chance, to discover some things about this individual. I learnt that his wife was the daughter of an armaments knight, and that he himself had a great deal of money in the business. There was no great harm in this, from his point of view; he never, in those days, professed to be a pacifist, for, though he wielded throughout the war a pen in preference to a sword, he truly believed it to be mightier; he was, in fact, in the Ministry of Information. He was not inconsistent in those days, though he was, I imagine, never easy in his mind about this money he had, and held his shares under his wife's name only. But when the League Secretariat was formed, he was one of the first to receive an appointment on it. It was not generally known where he got his income from, and he found himself in a prominent position on the staff of a League, one of whose objects, if only one among many, is to end war. So there he was, his fortune dependent on the continuation of the very thing he was officially working to suppress. It wasn't to be expected that he should be pleased at the prospect of the disarmament question coming up before the Assembly; or at the prospect of the various disputes going on now in the world being discussed in the Assembly and referred to judicial arbitration. Much better for him if the rumours and threats of war should continue." "Continue," stated the delegate, "they always will. That, Mr. Beechtree, we may take as certain, in this imperfect world. Yes.... He's an Englishman, I assume, this friend of yours?" "An Englishman, yes. Intensely an Englishman." Henry paused a moment. "I had better tell you at once; he is Charles Wilbraham."