quite as
farcical as all the rest of it. The foreign financier--they called him
the Duc de Mersch--was by way of being a philanthropist on megalomaniac
lines. For some international reason he had been allowed to possess
himself of the pleasant land of Greenland. There was gold in it and
train-oil in it and other things that paid--but the Duc de Mersch was
not thinking of that. He was first and foremost a State Founder, or at
least he was that after being titular ruler of some little spot of a
Teutonic grand-duchy. No one of the great powers would let any other of
the great powers possess the country, so it had been handed over to the
Duc de Mersch, who had at heart, said Cal, the glorious vision of
founding a model state--_the_ model state, in which washed and
broadclothed Esquimaux would live, side by side, regenerated lives,
enfranchised equals of choicely selected younger sons of whatever
occidental race. It was that sort of thing. I was even a little
overpowered, in spite of the fact that Callan was its trumpeter; there
was something fine about the conception and Churchill's acquiescence
seemed to guarantee an honesty in its execution.

The Duc de Mersch wanted money, and he wanted to run a railway across
Greenland. His idea was that the British public should supply the money
and the British Government back the railway, as they did in the case of
a less philanthropic Suez Canal. In return he offered an eligible
harbour and a strip of coast at one end of the line; the British public
was to be repaid in casks of train-oil and gold and with the
consciousness of having aided in letting the light in upon a dark spot
of the earth. So the Duc de Mersch started the _Hour_. The _Hour_ was to
extol the Duc de Mersch's moral purpose; to pat the Government's back;
influence public opinion; and generally advance the cause of the System
for the Regeneration of the Arctic Regions.

I tell the story rather flippantly, because I heard it from Callan, and
because it was impossible to take him seriously. Besides, I was not very
much interested in the thing itself. But it did interest me to see how
deftly she pumped him--squeezed him dry.

I was even a little alarmed for poor old Cal. After all, the man had
done me a service; had got me a job. As for her, she struck me as a
potentially dangerous person. One couldn't tell, she might be some
adventuress, or if not that, a speculator who would damage Cal's little
schemes. I put it to