Karolides' death would set the Balkans by the
ears, and then Vienna would chip in with an ultimatum. Russia wouldn't
like that, and there would be high words. But Berlin would play the
peacemaker, and pour oil on the waters, till suddenly she would find a
good cause for a quarrel, pick it up, and in five hours let fly at us.
That was the idea, and a pretty good one too. Honey and fair speeches,
and then a stroke in the dark. While we were talking about the
goodwill and good intentions of Germany our coast would be silently
ringed with mines, and submarines would be waiting for every battleship.

But all this depended upon the third thing, which was due to happen on
June 15th. I would never have grasped this if I hadn't once happened
to meet a French staff officer, coming back from West Africa, who had
told me a lot of things. One was that, in spite of all the nonsense
talked in Parliament, there was a real working alliance between France
and Britain, and that the two General Staffs met every now and then,
and made plans for joint action in case of war. Well, in June a very
great swell was coming over from Paris, and he was going to get nothing
less than a statement of the disposition of the British Home Fleet on
mobilization. At least I gathered it was something like that; anyhow,
it was something uncommonly important.

But on the 15th day of June there were to be others in London--others,
at whom I could only guess. Scudder was content to call them
collectively the 'Black Stone'. They represented not our Allies, but
our deadly foes; and the information, destined for France, was to be
diverted to their pockets. And it was to be used, remember--used a
week or two later, with great guns and swift torpedoes, suddenly in the
darkness of a summer night.

This was the story I had been deciphering in a back room of a country
inn, overlooking a cabbage garden. This was the story that hummed in
my brain as I swung in the big touring-car from glen to glen.

My first impulse had been to write a letter to the Prime Minister, but
a little reflection convinced me that that would be useless. Who would
believe my tale? I must show a sign, some token in proof, and Heaven
knew what that could be. Above all, I must keep going myself, ready to
act when things got riper, and that was going to be no light job with
the police of the British Isles in full cry after me and the watchers
of the Black Stone running silently and