more that isn't true besides. But I believe you're the sort of chap to
respect a confidence."

I didn't rise to the sentiment. I knew as well as he did that he was
bamboozling me, that he was, as he said, only telling me--not the truth,
but just what I should hear everywhere. I did not bear him any ill-will;
it was part of the game, that. But the question was, who was Jack? It
might be Fox himself.... There might, after all, be some meaning in the
farrago of nonsense that that fantastic girl had let off upon me. Fox
really and in a figure of speech such as she allowed herself, might be
running a team consisting of the Duc de Mersch and Mr. Churchill.




CHAPTER FOUR


He might really be backing a foreign, philanthropic ruler and
State-founder, and a British Foreign Minister, against the rather
sinister Chancellor of the Exchequer that Mr. Gurnard undoubtedly was.
It might suit him; perhaps he had shares in something or other that
depended on the success of the Duc de Mersch's Greenland Protectorate. I
knew well enough, you must remember, that Fox was a big man--one of
those big men that remain permanently behind the curtain, perhaps
because they have a certain lack of comeliness of one sort or another
and don't look well on the stage itself. And I understood now that if he
had abandoned--as he had done--half a dozen enterprises of his own for
the sake of the _Hour_, it must be because it was very well worth his
while. It was not merely a question of the editorship of a paper; there