“Do you find many of your acquaintances in Africa look you up, Everard?” she asked.
“Except for Seaman,” Dominey replied, looking through the barrels of his gun, “who really does not count because we crossed together, this is my first visitor from the land of fortune. I expect there will be plenty of them by and by, though. Colonials have a wonderful habit of sticking to one another.”
CHAPTER XXI
Table of Contents
There was nothing in the least alarming about the appearance of Mr. Ludwig Miller. He had been exceedingly well entertained in the butler’s private sitting-room and had the air of having done full justice to the hospitality which had been offered him. He rose to his feet at Dominey’s entrance and stood at attention. But for some slight indications of military training, he would have passed anywhere as a highly respectable retired tradesman.
“Sir Everard Dominey?” he enquired.
Dominey nodded assent. “That is my name. Have I seen you before?”
The man shook his head. “I am a cousin of Doctor Schmidt. I arrived in the Colony from Rhodesia, after your Excellency had left.”
“And how is the doctor?”
“My cousin is, as always, busy but in excellent health,” was the reply. “He sends his respectful compliments and his good wishes. Also this letter.”
With a little flourish the man produced an envelope inscribed:
To Sir Everard Dominey, Baronet,
Dominey Hall,
In the County of Norfolk,
England.
Dominey broke the seal just as Seaman entered.
“A messenger here from Doctor Schmidt, an acquaintance of mine in East Africa,” he announced. “Mr. Seaman came home from South Africa with me,” he explained to his visitor.
The two men looked steadily into each other’s eyes. Dominey watched them, fascinated. Neither betrayed himself by even the fall of an eyelid. Yet Dominey, his perceptive powers at their very keenest in this moment which instinct told him was one of crisis, felt the unspoken, unbetokened recognition which passed between them. Some commonplace remark was uttered and responded to. Dominey read the few lines which seemed to take him back for a moment to another world:
“Honoured and Honourable Sir,
“I send you my heartiest and most respectful greeting. Of the progress of all matters here you will learn from another source.
“I recommend to your notice and kindness my cousin, the bearer of this letter—Mr. Ludwig Miller. He will lay before you certain circumstances of which it is advisable for you to have knowledge. You may speak freely with him. He is in all respects to be trusted.
“KARL SCHMIDT.” (Signed)
“Your cousin is a little mysterious,” Dominey remarked, as he passed the letter to Seaman. “Come, what about these circumstances?”
Ludwig Miller looked around the little room and then at Seaman. Dominey affected to misunderstand his hesitation.
“Our friend here knows everything,” he declared. “You can speak to him as to myself.”
The man began as one who has a story to tell.
“My errand here is to warn you,” he said, “that the Englishman whom you left for dead at Big Bend, on the banks of the Blue River, has been heard of in another part of Africa.”
Dominey shook his head incredulously. “I hope you have not come all this way to tell me that! The man was dead.”
“My cousin himself,” Miller continued, “was hard to convince. The man left his encampment with whisky enough to kill him, thirst enough to drink it all, and no food.”
“So I found him,” Dominey assented, “deserted by his boys and raving. To silence him forever was a child’s task.”
“The task, however, was unperformed,” the other persisted. “From three places in the colony he has been heard of, struggling to make his way to the coast.”
“Does he call himself by his own name?” Dominey asked.
“He does not,” Miller admitted. “My cousin, however, desired me to point out to you the fact that in any case he would probably be shy of doing so. He is behaving in an absurd manner; he is in a very weakly state; and without a doubt he is to some degree insane. Nevertheless, the fact remains that he is in the Colony, or was three months ago, and that if he succeeds in reaching the coast you may at any time be surprised by a visit from him here. I am sent to warn you in order that you may take whatever steps may be necessary and not be placed at a disadvantage if he should appear.”
“This is queer news you have brought us, Miller,” Seaman said thoughtfully.
“It is news which greatly disturbed Doctor Schmidt,” the man replied. “He has had the natives up one after another for cross-examination. Nothing can shake their story.”
“If we believed it,” Seaman continued, “this other European, if he had business in this direction, might walk in here at any moment.”
“It was to warn you of that possibility that I am here.”
“How much do you know personally,” Seaman asked, “of the existent circumstances?”
The man shook his head vaguely.
“I know nothing,” he admitted. “I went out to East Africa some years ago, and I have been a trader in Mozambique in a small way. I supplied outfits for officers and hospitals and sportsmen. Now and then I have to return to Europe to buy fresh stock. Doctor Schmidt knew that, and he came to see me just before I sailed. He first thought of writing a very long letter. Afterwards he changed his mind. He wrote only these few lines I brought, but he told me those other things.”
“You have remembered all that he told you?” Dominey asked.
“I can think of nothing else,” was the reply, after a moment’s pause. “The whole affair has been a great worry to Doctor Schmidt. There are things connected with it which he has never understood, things connected with it which he has always found mysterious.”
“Hence your presence here, Johann Wolff?” Seaman asked, in an altered tone.
The visitor’s expression remained unchanged except for the faint surprise which shone out of his blue eyes.
“Johann Wolff,” he repeated. “That is not my name. I am Ludwig Miller, and I know nothing of this matter beyond what I have told you. I am just a messenger.”
“Once in Vienna and twice in Cracow, my friend, we have met,” Seaman reminded him softly but very insistently.
The other shook his head gently. “A mistake. I have been in Vienna once many years ago, but Cracow never.”
“You have no idea with whom you are talking?”
“Herr Seaman was the name, I understood.”
“It is a very good name,” Seaman scoffed. “Look here and think.”
He undid his coat and waistcoat and displayed a plain vest of chamois leather. Attached to the left-hand side of it was a bronze decoration, with lettering and a number. Miller stared at it blankly and shook his head.
“Information Department, Bureau Twelve, password—‘The Day is coming,’” Seaman continued, dropping his voice.
His listener shook his head and smiled with the puzzled ignorance of a child.
“The gentleman mistakes me for some one else,” he replied. “I know nothing of these things.”
Seaman sat and studied this obstinate visitor for several minutes without speaking, his finger tips pressed together, his eyebrows gently contracted. His vis-a-vis endured this scrutiny without flinching, calm, phlegmatic, the very prototype of the bourgeois German of the tradesman class.
“Do you propose,” Dominey enquired, “to stay in these parts long?”
“One or two days—a week, perhaps,” was the indifferent answer. “I have a cousin in Norwich who makes toys. I love the English country. I spend my holiday here, perhaps.”
“Just so,” Seaman muttered grimly. “The English country under a foot of snow! So you have nothing more to say to me, Johann Wolff?”
“I have executed my mission to his Excellency,” was the apologetic reply. “I am sorry to have ca
used displeasure to you, Herr Seaman.”
The latter rose to his feet. Dominey had already turned towards the door.
“You will spend the night here, of course, Mr. Miller?” he invited. “I dare say Mr. Seaman would like to have another talk with you in the morning.”
“I shall gladly spend the night here, your Excellency,” was the polite reply. “I do not think that I have anything to say, however, which would interest your friend.”
“You are making a great mistake, Wolff,” Seaman declared angrily. “I am your superior in the Service, and your attitude towards me is indefensible.”
“If the gentleman would only believe,” the culprit begged, “that he is mistaking me for some one else!”
There was trouble in Seaman’s face as the two men made their way to the front of the house and trouble in his tone as he answered his companion’s query.
“What do you think of that fellow and his visit?”
“I do not know what to think, but there is a great deal that I know,” Seaman replied gravely. “The man is a spy, a favourite in the Wilhelmstrasse and only made use of on important occasions. His name is Wolff—Johann Wolff.”
“And this story of his?”
“You ought to be the best judge of that.”
“I am,” Dominey assented confidently. “Without the shadow of a doubt I threw the body of the man I killed into the Blue River and watched it sink.”
“Then the story is a fake,” Seaman decided. “For some reason or other we have come under the suspicion of our own secret service.”
Seaman, as they emerged into the hall, was summoned imperiously to her side by the Princess Eiderstrom. Dominey disappeared for a moment and returned presently, having discarded some of his soaked shooting garments. He was followed by his valet, bearing a note upon a silver tray.
“From the person in Mr. Parkins’ room—to Mr. Seaman, sir,” the man announced, in a low tone.
Dominey took it from the salver with a little nod. Then he turned to where the youngest and most frivolous of his guests were in the act of rising from the tea table.
“A game of pills, Eddy,” he proposed. “They tell me that pool is one of your greatest accomplishments.”
“I’m pretty useful,” the young man confessed, with a satisfied chuckle. “Give you a black at snooker, what?”
Dominey took his arm and led him into the billiard-room.
“You will give me nothing, young fellow,” he replied. “Set them up, and I will show you how I made a living for two months at Johannesberg!”
CHAPTER XXII
Table of Contents
The evening at Dominey hall was practically a repetition of the previous one, with a different set of guests from the outer world. After dinner, Dominey was absent for a few minutes and returned with Rosamund upon his arm. She received the congratulations of her neighbours charmingly, and a little court soon gathered around her. Doctor Harrison, who had been dining, remained upon the outskirts, listening to her light-hearted and at times almost brilliant chatter with grave and watchful interest. Dominey, satisfied that she was being entertained, obeyed Terniloff’s gestured behest and strolled with him to a distant corner of the hall.
“Let me now, my dear host,” the Prince began, with some eagerness in his tone, “continue and, I trust, conclude the conversation to which all that I said this morning was merely the prelude.”
“I am entirely at your service,” murmured his host.
“I have tried to make you understand that from my own point of view—and I am in a position to know something—the fear of war between this country and our own has passed. England is willing to make all reasonable sacrifices to ensure peace. She wants peace, she intends peace, therefore there will be peace. Therefore, I maintain, my young friend, it is far better for you to disappear at once from this false position.”
“I am scarcely my own master,” Dominey replied. “You yourself must know that. I am here as a servant under orders.”
“Join your protests with mine,” the Prince suggested. “I will make a report directly I get back to London. To my mind, the matter is urgent. If anything should lead to the discovery of your false position in this country, the friendship between us which has become a real pleasure to me must seriously undermine my own position.”
Dominey had risen to his feet and was standing on the hearthrug, in front of a fire of blazing logs. The Ambassador was sitting with crossed legs in a comfortable easy-chair, smoking one of the long, thin cigars which were his particular fancy.
“Your Excellency,” Dominey said, “there is just one fallacy in all that you have said.”
“A fallacy?”
“You have come to the absolute conclusion,” Dominey continued, “that because England wants peace there will be peace. I am of Seaman’s mind. I believe in the ultimate power of the military party of Germany. I believe that in time they will thrust their will upon the Kaiser, if he is not at the present moment secretly in league with them. Therefore, I believe that there will be war.”
“If I shared that belief with you, my friend,” the Ambassador said quietly, “I should consider my position here one of dishonour. My mandate is for peace, and my charge is from the Kaiser’s lips.”
Stephanie, with the air of one a little weary of the conversation, broke away from a distant group and came towards them. Her beautiful eyes seemed tired, she moved listlessly, and she even spoke with less than her usual assurance.
“Am I disturbing a serious conversation?” she asked. “Send me away if I am.”
“His Excellency and I,” Dominey observed, “have reached a cul-de-sac in our argument,—the blank wall of good-natured but fundamental disagreement.”
“Then I shall claim you for a while,” Stephanie declared, taking Dominey’s arm. “Lady Dominey has attracted all the men to her circle, and I am lonely.”
The Prince bowed.
“I deny the cul-de-sac,” he said, “but I yield our host! I shall seek my opponent at billiards.”
He turned away and Stephanie sank into his vacant place.
“So you and my cousin,” she remarked, as she made room for Dominey to sit by her side, “have come to a disagreement.”
“Not an unfriendly one,” her host assured her.
“That I am sure of. Maurice seems, indeed, to have taken a wonderful liking to you. I cannot remember that you ever met before, except for that day or two in Saxony?”
“That is so. The first time I exchanged any intimate conversation with the Prince was in London. I have the utmost respect and regard for him, but I cannot help feeling that the pleasant intimacy to which he has admitted me is to a large extent owing to the desire of our friends in Berlin. So far as I am concerned I have never met any one, of any nation, whose character I admire more.”
“Maurice lives his life loftily. He is one of the few great aristocrats I have met who carries his nobility of birth into his simplest thought and action. There is just one thing,” she added, “which would break his heart.”
“And that?”
“The subject upon which you two disagree—a war between Germany and this country.”
“The Prince is an idealist,” Dominey said. “Sometimes I wonder why he was sent here, why they did not send some one of a more intriguing character.”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“You agree with that great Frenchman,” she observed, “that no ambassador can remain a gentleman—politically.”
“Well, I have never been a diplomat, so I cannot say,” Dominey replied.
“You have many qualifications, I should think,” she observed cuttingly.
“Such as?”
“You are absolutely callous, absolutely without heart or sympathy where your work is concerned.”
“I do not admit it,” he protested.
“I go back to London to-morrow,” she continued, “a very miserable and unhappy woman. I take with me the letter which should have brought me hap
piness. The love for which I have sacrificed my life has failed me. Not even the whip of a royal command, not even all that I have to offer, can give me even five seconds of happiness.”
“All that I have pleaded for,” Dominey reminded her earnestly, “is delay.”
“And what delay do you think,” she asked, with a sudden note of passion in her tone, “would the Leopold Von Ragastein of six years ago have pleaded for? Delay! He found words then which would have melted an iceberg. He found words the memory of which comes to me sometimes in the night and which mock me. He had no country then save the paradise where lovers walk, no ruler but a queen, and I was she. And now—”
Dominey felt a strange pang of distress. She saw the unusual softening in his face, and her eyes lit up.
“Just for a moment,” she broke off, “you were like Leopold. As a rule, you know, you are not like him. I think that you left him somewhere in Africa and came home in his likeness.”
“Believe that for a little time,” Dominey begged earnestly.
“What if it were true?” she asked abruptly. “There are times when I do not recognise you. There are words Leopold used to use which I have never heard from your lips. Is not West Africa the sorcerer’s paradise? Perhaps you are an imposter, and the man I love is there still, in trouble—perhaps ill. You play the part of Everard Dominey like a very king of actors. Perhaps before you came here you played the part of Leopold. You are not my Leopold. Love cannot die as you would have me believe.”
“Now,” he said coolly, “you are coming round to my way of thinking. I have been assuring you, from the very first moment we met at the Carlton, that I was not your Leopold—that I was Everard Dominey.”
“I shall put you to the test,” she exclaimed suddenly, rising to her feet. “Your arm, if you please.”
She led him across the hall to where little groups of people were gossiping, playing bridge, and Seaman, the center of a little group of gullible amateur speculators, was lecturing on mines. They stopped to say a word or two here and there, but Stephanie’s fingers never left her companion’s arm. They passed down a corridor hung with a collection of wonderful sporting prints in which she affected some interest, into a small gallery which led into the ballroom. Here they were alone. She laid her hands upon his shoulders and looked up into his eyes. Her lips drew nearer to his.
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