"Just off to the Foreign Office," he said. "Can't wait to talk now. Haven't a minute. See you later."
There was no reason why he should have stopped to talk to me even if he had not been going to the Foreign Office. I should certainly not have tried to detain him. Bland-Potterton bores me. I did indeed see him later, though I certainly did not want to. It was at a reception, a gorgeous but uncomfortable affair in Ellesmere House. Bland-Potterton was in a corner with a highly decorated foreigner who looked like a stage brigand. I found out afterwards that he was the Megalian ambassador. Bland-Potterton was talking to him with intense earnestness.
Another day he dashed at me in the smoking-room of the club. I was half asleep at the moment and desired nothing in the world so much as to be let alone. But Bland-Potterton woke me by whispering in my ear. He might just as well have spoken in the ordinary way. There was only one other man in the room and he was quite asleep. Besides, Bland-Potterton's whisper carries further than most men's conversational voices.
"Have you," he hissed, "any news from Gorman? A letter? A message? Anything?"
"No," I said, "I haven't. Why the deuce should I? Is he gun-running, or threatening to vote against the Government, or likely to be arrested?"
"No, no, no. Nothing of that sort. Nothing to do with Ireland. It's this unfortunate business with the Emperor. But I mustn't say any more. The Embassies are nervous, you know."
"I don't know," I said. "Which Embassies?"
"The--the--the--well, practically all except the Chinese."
"Wonderful people the Chinese," I said. "So calm. We ought to imitate them more than we do."
Bland-Potterton did not think so. He went on fussing. He rushed about London, creating small whirlpools behind him as if he had been a motor-boat. I had the greatest difficulty at times in not being sucked into his wake.
All this Gorman would have enjoyed hugely. I felt sorry that he was missing it. However, in the end he had his compensation.
One day during the last week in July--Gorman is no more to be relied on for an exact date than Donovan or the Queen--a steamer arrived in Salissa. She was a remarkable looking steamer and flew a flag which neither Gorman nor Donovan had ever seen before. She had two small guns, mounted one on the fore-deck and one right aft. She had a smart, well-cared-for look, as if she were a yacht, or belonged to some navy. But she was very old. Gorman says that she reminded him of the pictures of the royal yacht in which Queen Victoria came to Ireland to open Kingstown harbour at the very beginning of her reign. She was a paddle steamer. She had an exaggerated form of fiddle bow, a long bowsprit and two tall masts on which sails might easily have been set.