“Take it any way you like,” Kinsley replied. “Look at me. Nine years ago we played cricket in the same eleven. I don’t look much like cricket now, do I?” Hamel looked at his companion thoughtfully. For a man who was doubtless still young, Kinsley had certainly an aged appearance. The hair about his temples was grey; there were lines about his mouth and forehead. He had the air of one who lived in an atmosphere of anxiety. “To me,” Hamel declared frankly, “you look worried. If I hadn’t heard so much of the success of your political career and all the rest of it, I should have thought that things were going badly with you.” “They’ve gone well enough with me personally,” Kinsley admitted, “but I’m only one of many. Politics isn’t the game it was. The Foreign Office especially is ageing its men fast these few years. We’ve been going through hell, Hamel, and we are up against it now, hard up against it.” The slight smile passed from the lips of Hamel’s sunburnt, good-natured face. He himself seemed to become infected with something of his companion’s anxiety. “There’s nothing seriously wrong, is there, Reggie?” he asked. “Dick,” said Kinsley, with a sigh, “I am afraid there is. It’s very seldom I talk as plainly as this to any one but you are just the person one can unburden oneself to a little; and to tell you the truth, it’s rather a relief. As you say, these eighteen arrests in one week do mean something. Half of the Englishmen who have been arrested are, to my certain knowledge, connected with our Secret Service, and they have been arrested, in many cases, where there are no fortifications worth speaking of within fifty miles, on one pretext or another. The fact of the matter is that things are going on in Germany, just at the present moment, the knowledge of which is of vital interest to us.” “Then these arrests,” Hamel remarked, “are really bona fide?” “Without a doubt,” his companion agreed. “I only wonder there have not been more. I am telling you what is a pretty open secret when I tell you that there is a conference due to be held this week at some place or another on the continent--I don’t know where, myself--which will have a very important bearing upon our future. We know just as much as that and not much more.” “A conference between whom?” Hamel asked. Kinsley dropped his voice almost to a whisper.