In the meantime Lord Stamfordham, watching the situation, felt there was not a single instant to lose. There is one moment in the life of a conflagration when it can be stamped out: that moment passed, no power can stop it. Stamfordham, his head clear, his determination strong and ready, resolved to act without hesitating on his own responsibility. He sent a letter round to Prince Bergowitz, the German Ambassador, begging him to come and see him. Prince Bergowitz was laid up with an attack of gout which unfortunately prevented his coming, but he would be glad to receive Lord Stamfordham if he would come to see him.

It was a little later in the same day that Rendel, alone in his study, was standing, newspaper in hand, in front of the map of Africa looking to see the exact localities where the events were happening which might have such dire consequences. At that moment Wentworth, passing through Cosmo Place, looked through the window and saw him thus engaged. He knocked at the hall door, and, after being admitted, walked into the study without waiting to be announced.

"Looking at the map of Africa, and I don't wonder," he said. "Isn't it awful?"

"It's terrible," said Rendel, "about as bad as it can be."

"Look here, why aren't you over there to help to settle it?" said Wentworth.

"Well, I should not have been there, in any case," said Rendel. "That is where I should have been—look," with something like a sigh.

"You would have been nearer than you are now," said Wentworth. "Upon my word, I haven't patience with you. The idea of throwing up such a chance as you have had!"

"How do you know about it?" Rendel said.

"How do I know?" said Wentworth. "Everybody knows that you were offered it and refused."

"After all," said Rendel, "there are some things one leaves undone in this world. It does not follow that because people are offered a thing they must necessarily accept it."

"I don't say I am not in favour of leaving things undone," Wentworth said, "on occasion."

"So I have observed," said Rendel.

"But really, you know," Wentworth went on, "this is too much. What do you intend to do?"

"What do I intend to do?" Rendel said, with a half smile, then unconsciously imparting a greater steadfastness into his expression, "broadly speaking, I intend to do—everything."

"Oh! well, there's hope for you still," Wentworth said, "if that is your intention. It's rather a large order, though."

"Well, as I have told you before," Rendel said, "I don't see why there should be any limit to one's intentions. The man who intends little is not likely to achieve much."

"That's all very well, and plausible enough, I dare say," said Wentworth, "but the way to achieve is not to begin by refusing all your chances."

"This is too delightful from you," said Rendel, "who never do anything at all."

"Not at all," said Wentworth. "It is on principle that I do nothing, in order to protest against other people doing too much. I wish to have an eight hours' day of elegant leisure, and to go about the world as an example of it. It would be just as inconsistent of me to accept a regular occupation as it is of you to refuse it."

"I have a very simple reason for refusing this," said Rendel more seriously, and he paused. "I am a married man."

"To be sure, my dear fellow," said Wentworth, "I have noticed it."

"My wife didn't want to go to Africa," said Rendel, "and there was an end of it."

"Oh, that was the end of it?" said Wentworth.

"Absolutely," said Rendel. "She did not want to leave her father."

"Ah, is that it?" said Wentworth, feeling that he could not decently advance an urgent plea against Sir William. "Poor old man! I know he's gone to pieces frightfully since his wife died—still, couldn't some one have been found to take care of him?"

"Hardly any one like Rachel," Rendel said.

"Naturally," said Wentworth.

"You know he is living with us?" Rendel said.

"Is he?" said Wentworth surprised. "Upon my word, Frank, you are a good son-in-law."

Rendel ignored the tone of Wentworth's last remark and said quite simply—

"Oh! well, there was nothing else to be done. He's been ill, you know, really rather bad; first he had a chill, and then influenza on the top of it. He's frightfully low altogether."

"But I rather wonder," said Wentworth, "as Mrs. Rendel had her father with her, that you didn't go to Africa without her. Wouldn't that have been possible?"

"No," said Rendel decidedly. "Quite impossible."

"I should have thought," said Wentworth, "that in these enlightened days a husband who could not do without his wife was rather a mistake."

"That may be," said Rendel. "But I think on the whole that the husband who can do without her is a greater mistake still."

"It is a great pity you were not born five hundred years ago," said Wentworth.

"I should have disliked it particularly," said Rendel. "I should have been fighting at Flodden, or CrÉcy, or somewhere, and I should have been too old to marry Rachel, even in these days of well-preserved centenarians. It is no good, Jack; I am afraid you must leave me to my folly."

"Well, well," said Wentworth, agreeing with the word, and thinking to himself that even the wisest of men looks foolish at times when he has the yoke of matrimony across his shoulders; "after all there is to be said—if we are going to have another war on our hands in Africa, which Heaven forfend, the time of the statesmen over there is hardly come yet."

At this moment the door opened and the two men turned round quickly as Rachel came in.

"Frank," said Rachel. "Should you mind——" Then she stopped as she saw Wentworth. "Oh, how do you do, Mr. Wentworth? I didn't know you were here. Don't let me interrupt you."

"On the contrary," said Wentworth, "it is I who am interrupting your husband."

"I only came to see, Frank, if you were very busy," she said.

"I am not at this moment. Do you want me to do anything?"

"Well, presently, would you play one game of chess with my father? I am not really good enough to be of much use; it doesn't amuse him to play with me."

"Yes," said Rendel. "I have just got one or two letters to write and then I'll come."

"I think it would really be better," said Rachel, "if he came in here. It is rather a change for him, you know, to come into a different room after having been in the house all day."

"Just as you like," said Rendel, without much enthusiasm, but also without any noticeable want of it.

"Well," said Wentworth, "I'm not going to keep you any longer, Frank. I just came in to—give you my views about things in general."

"Thank you," said Rendel, with a smile. "I am much beholden to you for them."

"Perhaps you would come up and see my father, Mr. Wentworth," said Rachel, "before you go away?"

"I shall be delighted," Wentworth said. His feeling towards Sir William Gore was kindly on the whole, and the kindliness was intensified at this moment by compassion, although he could not help resenting a little that Gore should have been an indirect cause of Rendel's refusing what Wentworth considered was the chance of his friend's life. He shook hands with Rendel and prepared to follow Rachel. At this moment a loud, double knock resounded upon the hall door with a peremptoriness which must have induced an unusual and startling rapidity in the movements of Thacker, Rendel's butler, for almost instantly afterwards he threw open the study door with a visible perturbation and excitement in his demeanour, saying—

"It's Lord Stamfordham, sir, who wants particularly to see you." And to Rendel's amazement Lord Stamfordham appeared in the doorway. He bowed to Wentworth, whom he knew slightly, and shook hands with Rachel. She then went straight out, followed by Wentworth. As the door closed behind them, Stamfordham, answering Rendel's look of inquiry and without waiting for any interchange of greetings, said hurriedly—

"Rendel, I want you to do me a service."

"Please command me," Rendel said quickly, looking straight at him. He felt his heart beat as Stamfordham paused, put his hat down on the table, took his pocket-book out of his breast pocket and a folded paper out of it.

"I want you," he said, "to transcribe some pencil notes of mine."

"You want me to transcribe them?" said Rendel, with an involuntary inflection of surprise in his tone.

"Yes, if you will," said Stamfordham. "The fact is, Marchmont, the only man I have had since you left me who can read my writing when I take rough pencil notes in a hurry, has collapsed just to-day, out of sheer excitement I believe, and because he sat up for one night writing."

"Poor fellow!" said Rendel, half to himself.

"Yes," said Stamfordham drily; and then he went on, as one who knows that he must leave the sick and wounded behind without waiting to pity them. "These," unfolding the paper, "are notes of a conversation that I have just had at the German Embassy with Bergowitz." Rendel's quick movement as he heard the name showed that he realised what that juxtaposition meant at such a moment. "Every moment is precious," Stamfordham went on, "and it suddenly dawned on me as I left the Embassy that you were close at hand and might be willing to do it."

The German Embassy was at the moment, during some building operations, occupying temporary premises near Belgrave Square.

"I should think so indeed," Rendel said eagerly.

"The notes are very short, as you see," said Stamfordham. "You know, of course, what has been happening. I needn't go into that." And as he spoke a boy passed under the windows crying the evening papers, and they distinctly heard "Panic on the Stock Exchange." The two men's eyes met.

"Yes, there is a panic on the Stock Exchange," Stamfordham said, "because every one thinks there will be war—but there probably won't."

"Not?" said Rendel. "Can it be stopped?"

Stamfordham answered him by unfolding the piece of paper and laying it down before him on the table. It was a map of Africa, roughly outlined, but still clearly enough to show unmistakably what it was intended to convey, for all down the map from north to south there was a thick line drawn to the west of the Cape to Cairo Railway—the latter being indicated, but more faintly, in pencil—starting at Alexandria and running down through the whole of the continent, bending slightly to the southward between Bechuanaland and Namaqualand, and ending at the Orange River. East of that line was written ENGLAND, west of it GERMANY, and below it some lines of almost illegible writing in pencil.

Rendel almost gasped.

"What?" he said; "a partition of Africa?"

"Yes," said Stamfordham. Then he said with a sort of half smile, "The partition, that is to say, so far as it is in our own hands. But," speaking rapidly, "I will just put you in possession of the facts of the case and give you the clue. We abandon to Germany everything that we have a claim to west of this line. It does not come to very much," in answer to an involuntary movement on Rendel's part; and he swept his hand across the coast of the Gulf of Guinea as though wiping out of existence the Gold Coast, Ashanti, Sierra Leone, and all that had mattered before. "Germany abandons to us everything that she lays claim to on the east of it, including therefore the whole course of the Cape to Cairo Railway."

"But has Germany agreed?" said Rendel, stupefied with surprise.

"Germany has agreed," said Stamfordham. "We have just heard from Berlin."

Rendel felt as if his breath were taken away by the rapid motion of the events.

"That means peace, then?" he said.

"Yes," Stamfordham said; "peace."

"Then when is this going to be given to the world?" said Rendel.

"Some of it possibly to-morrow," said Stamfordham. "The Cabinet Council will meet this evening, and the King's formal sanction obtained. Of course," he went on, "the broad outlines only will be published—the fact of the understanding at any rate, not necessarily the terms of the partition. But it is important for financial reasons that the country should know as soon as possible that war is averted."

"Of course, of course," said Rendel. "Immeasurably important."

Stamfordham took up his hat and held out his hand with his air of courtly politeness as he turned towards the door.

"I may count upon you to do this for me immediately?"

"This instant," said Rendel, taking up the papers. "Shall I take them to your house as soon as they are done?"

"Please," said Stamfordham. "No, stay—I am going back to the German Embassy now, then probably to the Foreign Office. You had better simply send a messenger you can rely upon, and tell him to wait at my house to give them into my own hand, as I am not sure where I shall be for the next hour. Rendel, I must ask you by all you hold sacred to take care of those papers. If that map were to be caught sight of before the time——"

Rendel involuntarily held it tighter at the thought of such a catastrophe.

"Good Heavens!—yes," he said. "But that shan't happen. Look," and he dropped the paper through the slit in the closed revolving corner of his large writing-table, a cover that was solidly locked with his own key so that, though papers could be put in through the slit, it was impossible to take them out again without unlocking the cover and lifting it up. "This is the only key," he said, showing his bunch. "Now then, they are perfectly safe while I go across the hall with you."

Stamfordham nodded.

"By the way," he said, pausing, "you are married now, Rendel...."

"I am, yes, I am glad to say," Rendel replied.

"To be sure," said Stamfordham, with a little bow conveying discreet congratulation. "But—remember that a married man sometimes tells secrets to his wife."

"Does he, sir?" said Rendel, with an air of assumed innocence.

"I believe I have heard so," said Stamfordham.

"On the other hand," said Rendel, "I also have heard that a married man sometimes keeps secrets from his wife."

"Oh well, that is better," said Stamfordham.

"From some points of view, perhaps," said Rendel. Then he added more seriously, "You may be quite sure, sir, that no one—no one—in this house shall know about those papers. I would give you my word of honour, but I don't suppose it would make my assertion any stronger."

"If you said nothing," said Stamfordham, "it would be enough;" and Rendel's heart glowed within him as their eyes met and the compact was ratified. "By the way, Rendel, there was one thing more I wanted to say to you. There will probably be a vacancy at Stoke Newton before long; aren't you going into the House?"

"Some time," said Rendel. "When I get a chance."

"Well, there is going to be a chance now," said Stamfordham. "Old Crawley is going to resign. I hear it from private sources; the world doesn't know it yet. It is a safe Imperialist seat, and in our part of the world."

"I should like very much to try," said Rendel, forcing himself to speak quietly.

"Suppose you write to our committee down there?" said Stamfordham. "That is, when you have done your more pressing business—I mean mine."

"That shall come before everything else," Rendel said. "I will do it at this moment."

He turned quickly back into his study after Stamfordham had left him, and unlocked and threw up the revolving cover of the writing-table hastily, for fear that something should have happened to the paper on which the destinies of the civilised world were hanging. There it was, safe in his keeping, his and nobody else's. He took it in his hand and for a moment walked up and down the room, unable to control himself, trying to realise the tremendous change in the aspect of his fortunes that had taken place in the last half-hour. Then he had seemed to himself in the backwater, out of the throng of existence. He had been trying to reconcile himself to the idea that he was "out of it," as he had put it to himself—left behind. And now he shared with the two great potentates of the world the knowledge of what was going to take place; it was his hand that should transcribe the words that had decided it; he was a witness, and so far the only one. Then with an effort he forced himself to be calm. Every minute was of importance. He sat down at the writing-table, took up the paper, and pored over it to try to disentangle the strange dots, scratches, and lines which, flowing from Stamfordham's pen, took the place of handwriting. Some ill-natured people said that Stamfordham was quite conscious of the advantage of having writing which could not be read without a close scrutiny. It was no doubt possible. However, having the clue to what the contents of the paper were, Rendel, to his immense relief, found that he could decipher it. As he was writing the first word of the fair copy the door of the study opened slowly, and Sir William Gore appeared on the threshold, a newspaper in his hand.