I knew Fox, and I knew Churchill and the Duc de Mersch, and the Hour. "And those financial articles . . . in the Hour . . . were they now? . . . Were they . . . was the Trans-Greenland railway actually . . . did I think it would be worth one's while . . . in fact . . ." and so on.
I never was any good in a situation of that sort, never any good at all. I ought to have assumed blank ignorance, but the man's eyes pleaded; it seemed a tremendous matter to him. I tried to be non-committal, and said: "Of course I haven't any right." But I had a vague, stupid sense that loyalty to Churchill demanded that I should back up a man he was backing. As a matter of fact, nothing so direct was a-gate, it couldn't have been. It was something about shares in one of de Mersch's other enterprises. Polehampton was going to pick them up for nothing, and they were going to rise when the boom in de Mersch's began—something of the sort. And the boom would begin as soon as the news of the agreement about the railway got abroad.
I let him get it out of me in a way that makes the thought of that bare place with its gilt book-
[134]
