"But," said Gorman, "if there's a European war----"
"Smith," he said, "that admiral informs me that he has orders to deport us from this island and dump us down somewhere in Sicily. That so?"
"Yes, sir," said Smith. "Those are the Emperor's orders. Very urgent orders. In the case of your refusal to obey, the admiral is to fire on the palace."
"So I understand," said Donovan. "Now what I want you to do is to go off to the steamer and negotiate with the admiral."
"Shall we say £500? or ought I to go higher?"
"I don't think," said Smith, "that it will be necessary to give so much. If you will allow me to suggest, I'd say an offer of £10."
For the first time since the interview began Donovan was startled.
"Ten pounds!" he said. "Do you mean ten?"
"Giving me permission to rise to twenty pounds if necessary," said Smith.
"But an admiral!" said Donovan. "Remember he's an admiral."
"Yes, sir. But admirals aren't quite the same thing here as in England. Don't belong to the same class. Don't draw the same salary."
"Make it twenty-five pounds," said Donovan. "I'd be ashamed to offer less to a Tammany boss."
"Very good, sir, just as you please, sir."
"Right," said Donovan. "And now we've got that settled, and we've three-quarters of an hour to spare, before the bombardment is timed to begin. There are one or two points I'd like to have cleared up. But I wish you'd sit down, Smith, and take a cigar. As head of the Intelligence Department of this kingdom----"
"If you're quite sure, sir, that there isn't anything you want me to fetch. A drink, sir?"
"Not for me," said Donovan. "I want to talk."
Smith sat down, stretched himself comfortably in a deep chair and lit a cigar.
"What's the Emperor's game?" said Donovan. "What's he after? What the hell does he mean by monkeying round this island ever since I bought it?"
"Well," said Smith, "I haven't got what you could call official knowledge of the Emperor's plans. My orders came to me through Steinwitz, and Steinwitz doesn't talk unnecessarily."
The servant manner and the cockney accent disappeared when Smith sat down. He talked to Donovan as one man of the world to another.
"Still," said Donovan, "you've got some sort of idea."
"Last December," said Smith, "I was in London keeping an eye on King Konrad Karl. The Emperor liked to know what he was doing. One day I got orders to take delivery of some large cisterns from a firm in Germany, paying for them by cheque drawn on my own account. They were consigned to me as water cisterns. My business was to ship them to Hamburg and hand them over to Captain von Moll. That's all I was told. But I happened to find out what von Moll's orders were. He was to land those cisterns in Salissa. I satisfied myself that they were here as soon as I arrived with you on the _Ida_. Von Moll concealed them very well; but he was a bit careless in other ways. He seems to have lived in the palace while he was here and he left some papers lying about, torn up but not burnt. One of them was a letter from Steinwitz. Phillips, the officer of the _Ida_, had his eye on those papers. I swept them up and destroyed them."