“France!” she cried. “England had nothing against France and now she is her ally.” “Three years ago the political conditions were different,” he answered. “Those representatives of England came and sat with representatives of Germany and Austria while they plotted the destruction of France.” “But how do you know this, Cyril? I can’t understand.” “No more do I, but it’s a fact. Let me go on. At the table in the lodge where this conference was held, Viscount Melborne made notes of what was goin’ on, includin’ the combinations of land and naval forces that could be made against France and Russia, and the plans to break the Russian Federation in the Balkans. When the meetin’ was over all the scraps of paper these chaps had scribbled on were destroyed by fire before the eyes of the men who had made ’em, except those of Viscount Melborne, who put ’em in his pocket, and with them a pencil copy of this secret treaty in his own handwriting. The original copy of the treaty was entrusted to Harlow-Gorden, who put it in his dispatch-box. It was not until the next day when the Englishmen, in the train on the way to Paris, discovered that Viscount Melborne’s private papers were missin’. Jolly fine mess--what? They got off at the next stop, went back to Schöndorf and looked for the papers, but neither there nor at the lodge was there hair or hide of ’em. So they went back to England hopin’ that by some fortunate accident the papers had been destroyed.” “And these--” asked the girl, “are they?” He nodded. “To make the story short, I found out where they had gone. My flights to Germany have been made for this purpose. Don’t you see? The papers came into the hands of the Emperor of Germany and he was plannin’ to have ’em sent to the President of the French Republic--England’s ally. It wouldn’t do, you know, to have such papers at such a time fall into the hands of France. Hardly a credit to English diplomacy. What? Might even result in a new _entente_.” “But where were the papers in the meanwhile?” she asked. “That is what took me so bally long to find out. After many hunts away from Windenberg at night, I traced ’em to a Socialist by the name of Gottschalk at Schöndorf, who had received ’em from a pensioner of the Imperial Forest Service, one of the attendants at the huntin’ lodge where the conference was held. Whether he found ’em or stole ’em I don’t know, but I frightened him and he confessed. I was on the very point of stealing ’em from Gottschalk when I found out that he had been writin’ to the Wilhelmstrasse, and when I tried to get ’em they were gone. If I’d got ’em then, you would not be here, Doris, and I----” “But how did you learn what the Wilhelmstrasse proposed to do with them?”