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The Great Secret, a fiction by E. Phillips Oppenheim |
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CHAPTER XL. 'THE ORACLE' SPEAKS |
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_ The issue of the _Daily Oracle_ which appeared on the following, or rather the same, morning electrified Europe. Nothing like it had been known in the memory of man. For one halfpenny, the city clerk, the millionaire, and the politician were alike treated to a sensation which, since the days of Caxton, has known no parallel. The whole of the front page of the paper was devoted to a leading article, printed in large type, and these questions were the text of what followed: "1. Do the Government know that within eighty miles of Kiel are one hundred and eighty thousand troops, with guns and all the munitions of war, assembled there for the purpose of an immediate invasion of England, assembled partly in secrecy, and partly under the ridiculous pretexts of manoeuvres? "2. Do the Government know that it is a skeleton fleet, the weedings of the German navy, which awaits our squadron in Kiel waters, and that the remainder of the German fleet, at its full strength and ready for action, is lying in hiding close at hand? "3. That there exists in London, under the peaceful guise of a trade union, an army of nearly 200,000 Germans, who have passed their training, and that a complete scheme exists for arming and officering same at practically a moment's notice? "4. That a German army is even now massed upon the French frontier, prepared to support the claims to the throne of France of Prince Victor of Normandy, and that a conspiracy has been discovered within the last forty-eight hours amongst the French army, to suffer an invasion of their country on this pretext? "5. That an American paper is to-day publishing the names of some of her richest citizens, who are finding the money for French Royalist agents, to buy over the wavering officers of the army of our ally, the army of the French Republic! "There is ignorance which is folly," the article went on, "and ignorance which is sin. The Government have proved themselves guilty of the first; if they show themselves guilty also of the second, the people of this country have the right to hurl from their places the fools who have brought them to the brink of disaster, and to save themselves. In their name, we demand two things: "The dispatch of a gunboat with orders to the Channel Squadron to at once return to their waters. "The mobilization of our Mediterranean Fleet." With this text Staunton had written his article, and he had written it with a pen of fire. Every word burned its way home. With the daring of those few hours of inspiration, he had turned inference into fact, he had written as a man who sees face to face the things of which he writes. There could be but one result. At ten o'clock a Cabinet Council was called, and Staunton was telephoned for. Before midday, everything that he had suggested was done. Even then, we knew that the question of peace or war must be trembling in the balance. "Let it come if it will," Guest declared from his easy-chair in Gilbert's study, "the great plot is smashed. I pledge you my word that to-morrow the German newspapers will hold us up to scorn, will seek to make of us the laughing-stock of the world. They will explain everything. There will be no war. A German invasion of England is only possible by intrigues which will keep France apart, and treachery which will render our fleet ineffective. This plot has taken five years to develop, and I have been on its track from the first. Thank God, I can call myself square now with the past! ..." There was no war, but the laughter of the German newspapers was a little hysterical. The Press of the world took the matter more seriously. But there was no war, and there are people even to-day, mostly his journalistic enemies, who say that Staunton was hoaxed. * * * * * "Do we receive our deserts in this world?" some one asked one night, when our dinner table at Saxby was like a suggestion of old times--and we all paused to think. "Staunton has a peerage," Adele remarked. "Luckier than I," Guest laughed; only he called himself Guest no longer, but Lord Leslie Wendover. "My past disgrace had to be wiped out by an invitation to Windsor and a ribbon. Such are the ways of diplomacy, which never dare own a mistake." "The amazing denseness of the man!" his wife murmured. "Do I count for nothing?" He bent and touched her hand with his lips, as Adele leaned forward and laughed at me across the table. "I think," she said; "that you both deserve--what you got--us!" [THE END] _ |
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