“When I arrived in London I took a room at this Club, of which I have been a member for some years, and reported immediately at the Admiralty. But there, in spite of all diligence on my part, I was quite unable to learn what was wanted of me. Of course, I could have gone to my Uncle, who is in the government, and perhaps he might have enlightened me, although he has nothing to do with the Navy, but I rather like to avoid Uncle Metgurne. He brought me up since I was a small boy, and seems unnecessarily ashamed of the result. It is his son who is the attache’ in St. Petersburg that I spoke to you about.”
“Metgurne, Metgurne,” she said to herself. “Surely I know that name?”
She laid down the letter, pressed the electric button, and unlocked the door. When the servant came, she said:
“Will you ask at the office if they have any biographical book of reference relating to Great Britain, and if so, please bring it to me.”
The servant appeared shortly after with a red book which proved to be an English “Who’s Who” dated two years back. Turning the pages she came to Metgurne.
“Metgurne, twelfth Duke of, created 1681, Herbert George Alan.” Here followed a number of other titles, the information that the son and heir was Marquis of Thaxted, and belonged to the Diplomatic Service, that Lord Metgurne was H. M. Secretary of State for Royal Dependencies; finally a list of residences and clubs. She put down the book and resumed the letter.
“I think I ought to have told you that when I reach St. Petersburg I shall be as anxious to avoid my cousin Thaxted as I am to steer clear of his father in London. So I sat in my club, and read the papers. Dear me, this is evidently going to be a very long letter. I hope you won’t mind. I think perhaps you may be interested in learning how they do things over here.
“After two or three days of anxious waiting there came a crushing communication from the Admiralty which confirmed my worst fears and set me at crossing the bridge again. I was ordered to report next morning at eleven, at Committee Room 5, in the Admiralty, and bring with me full particulars pertaining to the firing of gun number so-and-so of the ‘Consternation’s’ equipment on such a date. I wonder since that I did not take to drink. We have every facility for that sort of thing in this club. However, at eleven next day, I presented myself at the Committee Room and found in session the grimmest looking five men I have ever yet been called upon to face. Collectively they were about ten times worse in appearance than the court-martial I had previously encountered. Four of the men I did not know, but the fifth I recognized at once, having often seen his portrait. He is Admiral Sir John Pendergest, popularly known in the service as ‘Old Grouch,’ a blue terror who knows absolutely nothing of mercy. The lads in the service say he looks so disagreeable because he is sorry he wasn’t born a hanging judge. Picture a face as cleanly cut as that of some severe old Roman Senator; a face as hard as marble, quite as cold, and nearly as white, rescued from the appearance of a death mask by a pair of piercing eyes that glitter like steel. When looking at him it is quite impossible to believe that such a personage has ever been a boy who played pranks on his masters. Indeed, Admiral Sir John Pendergest seems to have sprung, fully uniformed and forbidding, from the earth, like those soldiers of mythology. I was so taken aback at confronting such a man that I never noticed my old friend, Billy Richardson, seated at the table as one of the minor officials of the Committee. Billy tells me I looked rather white about the lips when I realized what was ahead of me, and I daresay he was right. My consolation is that I didn’t get red, as is my disconcerting habit. I was accommodated with a chair, and then a ferrety-faced little man began asking me questions, consulting every now and then a foolscap sheet of paper which was before him. Others were ready to note down the answers.