Mr. Mervin Brown on this occasion did not beat about the bush.  His old air of confident, almost smug self-satisfaction, had vanished.  He received Nigel with a new deference in his manner, without any further sign of that good-natured tolerance accorded by a busy man to a kindly crank.

“Lord Dorminster,” he began, “I have sent for you to renew a conversation we had some little time since.  I will be quite frank with you.  Certain circumstances have come to my notice which lead me to believe that there may be more truth in some of the arguments you brought forward than I was willing at the time to believe.”

“I must confess that I am relieved to hear you say so,” Nigel replied.  “All the information which I have points to a crisis very near at hand.”

The Prime Minister leaned a little across the table.

“The immediate reason for my sending for you,” he explained, “is this.  My friend the American Ambassador has just sent me a copy of a wireless dispatch which he has received from China from one of their former agents.  The report seems to have been sent to him for safety, but the sender of it, of whose probity, by the by, the American Ambassador pledges himself, appears to have been sent to China by you.”

“Jesson!” Nigel exclaimed.  “I have heard of this already, sir, from a friend in the American Embassy.”

“The dispatch,” Mr. Mervin Brown went on, “is in some respects a little vague, but it is, on the other hand, I frankly admit, disturbing.  It gives specific details as to definite military preparations on the part of China and Russia, associated, presumably, with a third Power whose name you will forgive my not mentioning.  These preparations appear to have been brought almost to completion in the strictest secrecy, but the headquarters of the whole thing, very much to my surprise, I must confess, seems to be in southern China.”

“In that case,” Nigel pointed out, “if you will permit me to make a suggestion, sir, you have a very simple course open to you.”

“Well?”

“Send for Prince Shan.”

“Prince Shan,” the Prime Minister replied, with knitted brows, “is not over in this country officially.  He has begged to be excused from accepting or returning any diplomatic courtesies.”

“Nevertheless,” Nigel persisted, “I should send for Prince Shan.  If it had not been,” he went on slowly, “for the complete abolition of our secret service system, you would probably have been informed before now that Prince Shan has been having continual conferences in this country with one of the most dangerous men who ever set foot on these shores—­Oscar Immelan.”

“Immelan has no official position in this country,” the Prime Minister objected.

“A fact which makes him none the less dangerous,” Nigel insisted.  “He is one of those free lances of diplomacy who have sprung up during the last ten or fifteen years, the product of that spurious wave of altruism which is responsible for the League of Nations.  Immelan was one of the first to see how his country might benefit by the new regime.  It is he who has been pulling the strings in Russia and China, and, I fear, another country.”