Grant, a little later in the morning, presented himself at the office of the newspaper in New York which was generally considered to be the most influential and weighty in the Metropolis. Its correspondents were to be found in every capital of the world. One of the editors was received weekly at the White House. It stood for what was sane and beneficent in American legislation and the cause which it espoused was seldom known to languish. The editor, Daniel Stoneham, was an old friend of Grant’s, and on sending up his card he was shown at once into his presence. The two men shook hands warmly.

“Good man. Grant!” Stoneham exclaimed. “Glad to see you back again. One hears of you hobnobbing with Kings and Prime Ministers and the great people of the earth. Quite time you showed a little interest in your own country.”

“Well, I’m here on the old job,” Grant declared sinking into the easy-chair to which his friend had pointed and accepting a cigarette.

“The deuce you are!” the other observed, with some surprise. “I thought since you had become a millionaire you’d turned slacker. I haven’t heard anything of you for a year or so.”

“I’ve been doing much more difficult and unpleasant work than ever before in my life,” Grant confided. “I’ve been doing Secret Service work which is only half official. That is to say, that if I get into trouble I’m not acknowledged and if I do any good work the Department gets the credit. That doesn’t matter, though. The point is that I’ve made a scoop on my own. There’s trouble brewing.”

“What sort of trouble?” Stoneham demanded. “Do you mean anything in connection with the invitation from Nice?”

“Well, I’ll tell you this for one thing. That invitation would never have been sent but for me.”

“Say, you’re not pulling my leg, are you?”

“I was never more in earnest in my life. It was touch and go with Lord Yeovil’s proposition. There were three votes against it. Four would have barred it. The fourth man had been bought for fifty thousand pounds. I imitated the methods of the adventurous novelists and abducted him. I kept him out at sea all night and the voting took place without him. If he’d got there in time, Lord Yeovil’s motion would have been defeated, America would never have been invited to join the Pact and the trouble which is even now brewing against her would have developed very rapidly.”

“Serious business this, Grant,” Stoneham remarked.

“The most serious part of it is that it’s the truth,” Grant rejoined drily. “However, the first stage in the battle has been won. The invitation has been despatched to Washington. Now I tell you where the second stage of the battle begins and where America will need the aid of every one of her loyal citizens. There will be, without the slightest doubt, an immense and cunningly engineered propaganda to prevent America’s accepting that invitation. I want to fight that propaganda, Daniel. I want you to help me.”

The editor sat back in his chair and his thoughtful grey eyes studied Grant’s face. He was a short man, clean-shaven, with smooth black hair streaked with grey. Whenever any one wished to annoy him they called him the Napoleon of journalism. Still the likeness was there.

“Whose were the three votes against the invitation being sent to America?” he enquired.

“Germany, Japan, and Russia.”

“And the one which would have been given but for your intervention?”

“Scandinavia,” Grant replied. “That of course has no political significance. It was simply that the man himself was bought.”

“And what do you suppose is the reason for Germany and Japan voting against the United States being allowed to join the Pact?” Stoneham asked.

“I believe it is their intention to attack us,” Grant pronounced. “The Pact only forbids aggressions between the countries belonging. She has no jurisdiction even over her own members who find cause to quarrel with an outside country. We’ve been a little too high and mighty, Stoneham. If we’d decided to adopt the attitude of remaining outside the affairs of the world, we should never have subscribed to the Limitation of Armaments. To-day, for all our great wealth, our immense man power, and our supreme civilisation, the combined armaments of Japan and Germany are precisely double our own.”

“Of course,” Stoneham said, “if any other man in the world were to come to me and talk like this, I should say that he was a lunatic.”

“I am no lunatic, Dan,” Grant declared. “I know very well what I am talking about.”

“Have you any proofs?”

“I sent them to Washington an hour after I landed. You don’t need them, Dan. You believe me, I know.”

“Yes, I believe you.”

“And you’ll help? You’ll put that in the forefront of your whole policy, the acceptance by the United States of this invitation from the Pact? You’ll press it home to the people, Dan? Remember, it’s our last chance. We’ve refused twice.”

Stoneham was curiously silent. He was looking for a moment out of the uncurtained window, away over the skyscrapers and chimney pots to where little flashes of the blue Hudson, with its tangle and burden of sea and river-going craft were visible, There was something smouldering in his eyes.

“Grant,” he said at last, “you’ve brought me news. I have some to give you. In a way, although I never realised it before, my news bears upon yours.”

“Get along with it,” Grant begged.

“A commanding interest in this paper—three quarters of the shares in fact—was signed away last night. The control of the paper has gone out of our hands altogether.”

“Who is the buyer?” Grant demanded eagerly.

“Felix Pottinger,” was the quiet reply.

“And who’s behind him?”

“They tried to keep that secret. But I found out by an accident. The real buyer is Cornelius Blunn of Berhn.”

Grant was thunderstruck.

“Fifteen days ago,” he confided after a brief silence, “I was a guest at a dinner party given by that man. A few days before that we were scrapping on my yacht. He tried to start a mutiny. Offered ten thousand pounds to some of my youngsters to get the yacht back in time for his Scandinavian friend to vote at the Nice Conference. Blunn and I have had the gloves oflf all the time. He sent some one down from Berlin to spy on me at Monte Carlo. My God! This comes of our hospitality to foreigners. This is where we make the laughing stock of ourselves for all the world. Cornelius Blunn! The German multimillionaire! The man who hates America, her industries and her politics, is calmly allowed to come here and buy the only great American newspaper which represents no other interests save those of America.............