“Great news, my friends!” she exclaimed.  “Light up the committee room.  I want to talk to you.”

Those who were entitled to followed her into the room across the passage.  One or two secretaries and a visitor remained outside.  Six of them seated themselves at the long table—­Phineas Cross, the Northumbrian pitman, Miles Furley, David Sands, representative of a million Yorkshire mill-hands, Thomas Evans, the South Wales miner.

“We got a message from you, Miss Abbeway, a little time ago,” Furley remarked.  “It was countermanded, though, just as we were ready to start.”

“Yes!” she assented.  “I am sorry.  I telephoned from Julian Orden’s rooms.  It was there we made the great discovery.  Listen, all of you!  I have discovered the identity of Paul Fiske.”

There was a little clamour of voices.  The interest was indescribable.  Paul Fiske was their cult, their master, their undeniable prophet.  It was he who had set down in letters of fire the truths which had been struggling for imperfect expression in these men’s minds.  It was Paul Fiske who had fired them with enthusiasm for the cause which at first had been very much like a matter of bread and cheese to them.  It was Paul Fiske who had formed their minds, who had put the great arguments into their brains, who had armed them from head to foot with potent reasonings.  Four very ordinary men, of varying types, sincere men, all of plebeian extraction, all with their faults, yet all united in one purpose, were animated by that same fire of excitement.  They hung over the table towards her.  She might have been the croupier and they the gamblers who had thrown upon the table their last stake.

“In Julian Orden’s rooms,” she said, “I found a letter from the editor of the British Review, warning him that his anonymity could not be preserved much longer—­that before many weeks had passed the world would know that he was Paul Fiske.  Here is the letter.”

She passed it around.  They studied it, one by one.  They were all a little stunned.

“Julian!” Furley exclaimed, in blank amazement.  “Why, he’s been pulling my leg for more than a year!”

“The son of an Earl!” Cross gasped.

“Never mind about that.  He is a democrat and honest to the backbone,” Catherine declared.  “The Bishop will tell you so.  He has known him all his life.  Think!  Julian Orden has no purpose to serve, no selfish interest to further.  He has nothing to gain, everything to lose.  If he were not sincere, if those words of his, which we all remember, did not come from his heart, where could be the excuse, the reason, for what he stands for?  Think what it means to us!”

“He is the man, isn’t he,” Sands asked mysteriously, “whom they are looking after down yonder?”

“I don’t know where ‘down yonder’ is,” Catherine replied, “but you have him in your power somewhere.  He left his rooms last Thursday at about a quarter past six, to take that packet to the Foreign Office, or to make arrangements for its being received there.  He never reached the Foreign Office.  He hasn’t been heard of since.  Some of you know where he is.  The Bishop and I want to go and find him at once.”