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Once more Fawley crossed that huge spacious apartment, at the far end of which Berati sat enthroned behind his low desk, a grim and motionless figure. The chair on his left-hand side was vacant. There was no sign anywhere of Patoni.

“I ought to apologise for my sudden return to Rome, perhaps,” Fawley ventured. “Events marched quicker than I had anticipated. Except for a brief stay at Monte Carlo, I have come here directly from Paris.”

Berati leaned slightly forward. His eyes were like slits of coal-black fire, his lower lip was dragged down, his face resembled a sculptor’s effort to reproduce the human sneer.

“You have been paying quite a round of visits, I understand,” he remarked icily. “London—I scarcely thought that London and Downing Street were places with which we had any present concern.”

“You were misinformed, sir,” Fawley replied calmly. “London and Washington are both concerned in the present situation.”

Berati rang a bell from under his desk, an unseen gesture. In complete silence, so stealthily that Fawley was unaware of their presence until he felt a heavy hand upon each of his shoulders, two of the new Civic Guards had entered the room and moved up to where he stood. They were standing on either side of him now—portents of the grim future.

“You and the Princess,” Berati said harshly; “both of you pretend to have been working for Italy. You have been working for England. The Princess, for all I know, has been working for France—”

“Not exactly correct, sir,” Fawley interrupted. “Of the Princess’ activities I know little, except that I believe she was trying to coerce you into signing a treaty with the wrong party in Germany. So far as I am concerned, I will admit that I have deceived you. I professed to enter your service. I never had the intention of working for one nation only. I had what I venture to consider a greater cause at heart.”

Berati glared at him from behind his desk. He seemed to have suddenly become, in these moments of unrestrained anger, the living presentment of the caricatures of himself which Europe had studied with shivering repugnance for the last two years.

“There is one thing about you, Major Fawley,” he said. “There will not be many words between us, so I will pay you a compliment. I think that you are the bravest man I ever met.”

“You flatter me,” Fawley murmured.

“Somehow or other,” Berati went on, “you learnt the most important secrets of the French fortifications. You must have taken enormous risks. I sent five men after you to check your statements and every one of them lies buried amongst the mountains. Yours was a wonderful and courageous effort but your visit here to-day is perhaps a braver action still. Do you realise that, Fawley? You must have known that if ever you came within my reach—within my grasp—you would pay for your treachery with your life.”

“I knew there was a risk,” Fawley admitted coolly. “On the other hand, I know that you have brains. I am less afraid of you than I should be of most men, because I think that when you have listened to what I have to say you will probably widen your view. You will realise that the person whom you accuse of betraying her has saved Italy.”

“Fine talk,” Berati sneered.

“Never in my life,” Fawley assured him, “have I made a statement which I could not prove. What I am going to disclose now is the greatest secret which has existed in Europe for a hundred years. If it is your wish that I should continue in the presence of these men, I will do so. For reasons of policy, I should advise you to send them away. I am unarmed: your person is sacred from me. I give you my word as an American officer that I shall not raise my hand to save my life. I do pray for one thing, however, and that is that the few words I have to say now are spoken for your ear only.”

“Search this man for arms,” Berati commanded.

Fawley held out his hands. The two guards went over him carefully. The contents of his pockets were laid out upon the table.

“The Signor has no weapon,” one of the two men announced.

“Wait outside the door,” Berati ordered.

The men retired. Fawley returned the various articles they had left upon the table to his pockets. He waited until the door was closed.

“General Berati,” he said, “on the twenty-fourth of May or thereabouts you intended to launch the most amazing aeroplane attack which history has ever dreamed of—some thousand aeroplanes were to have destroyed utterly Nice, Toulon, and Marseilles and swept around upon Paris. A German army, munitioned and armed by Soviet Russia, was to have joined hands with forty divisions of Italians upon the eastern frontier of France. Roughly, these were your plans.”

“It is fortunate indeed,” Berati sneered, “that the man who knows them so well is the man who is about to die.”

“We are all about to die,” was the indifferent response. “The length of our lives is merely a figure of speech. In comparison with the cause for which I am fighting, my life is as valueless as a handful of dust.”

There was a light in Fawley’s eyes which Berati had never seen before. In spite of himself, he was impressed.

“What is this cause of yours?” he asked.

“By this time you should have known,” Fawley answered. “Remember, I went through the war. I started as an ardent soldier. The profession of arms was to me almost a sacred one. I took it as an axiom that the waging of war alone could decide the destinies of the world. I came out at the end of the war a broken man. The horror of it had poisoned my blood. For two years I was recovering my health mentally and physically. I came back into the world a crank if you like, a missionary if you will, but at any rate, a man with a single desperate purpose. It made a man of me once again. My own life became, as I have told you, worthless except in so far as I could use it to carry out my purposes. Washington alone knew the truth and they thought me crazy. Two people in England divined it. To the official classes of every other nation in Europe I was just a Secret Service agent working for himself, for his own advancement, and because he loved the work. Italy—I came to you. I cared nothing for Italy. Germany—I went to Germany. I cared nothing for Germany. France—I very nearly mortally offended, but I cared nothing for France. What I did care for was to cherish the great ambition which has come to fruition after years of suffering. To do something—to devote every atom of energy remaining to me in life—to tear out of the minds of men this poisonous idea that war is the sane and inevitable method of dealing with international disputes.”

Berati sat with his chin raised upon his hand, sprawling across the table, his eyes fixed upon his visitor.

“France has made the first sacrifice,” the latter went on. “I am hoping that Italy will make the second. I ask you to send a messenger, General Berati, across to the French Embassy and to request them to hand you a letter which they are holding, addressed to you in my care. I tell you frankly that I dared not bring it myself across the frontier or travel with it to Rome, but the letter is there. When you see what it contains, I will finish my explanation.”

“That means,” Berati said, “that I shall have to keep you alive for another half an hour?”

“It would be advisable,” Fawley acquiesced.