It took us a good hour to work through it. I explained the
cypher, and he was jolly quick at picking it up. He emended my
reading of it on several points, but I had been fairly correct, on the
whole. His face was very grave before he had finished, and he sat
silent for a while.
'I don't know what to make of it,' he said at last. 'He is right
about one thing--what is going to happen the day after tomorrow.
How the devil can it have got known? That is ugly enough in itself.
But all this about war and the Black Stone--it reads like some wild
melodrama. If only I had more confidence in Scudder's judgement.
The trouble about him was that he was too romantic. He had the
artistic temperament, and wanted a story to be better than God
meant it to be. He had a lot of odd biases, too. Jews, for example,
made him see red. Jews and the high finance.
'The Black Stone,' he repeated. 'DER SCHWARZE STEIN. It's like a
penny novelette. And all this stuff about Karolides. That is the
weak part of the tale, for I happen to know that the virtuous
Karolides is likely to outlast us both. There is no State in Europe
that wants him gone. Besides, he has just been playing up to Berlin
and Vienna and giving my Chief some uneasy moments. No! Scudder has
gone off the track there. Frankly, Hannay, I don't believe that part of
his story.
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