The Gay Triangle by William Le Queux

"Unless we can solve this terrible mystery in the course of a few weeks, it is hardly too much to say that England is doomed."

The speaker was the white-haired Professor Durward, the distinguished head of the Royal Society. He sat facing the Prime Minister in the latter's room at 10, Downing Street. Round the long table were grouped the members of the Cabinet. They were men who had lived through stormy and troublous times and had met stories of disaster without flinching. But, as they admitted afterwards, none of the terrible tidings of past years, when the fortunes of the Empire seemed to be tottering, had affected them to the same extent as the few brief words with which the distinguished savant summed up the long deliberations on which they had been engaged. They seemed pregnant with the very message of Fate. Almost they could see the writing on the wall.