“Will Germany be in a position to help us after the war?” Pamela asked.
“Never doubt it,” Fischer replied vehemently. “Before peace is signed the sea power of England will be broken. Financially she will be ruined. She is a country without economic science, without foresight, without statesmen. The days of her golden opportunities have passed, frittered away. Unless we of our great pity bind up her wounds, England will bleed to death before the war is over.”
“That, you must remember,” Pamela said practically, “is your point of view.”
“I could tell you things—” he began.
“Don’t,” she begged. “I know what your outlook is now. Be definite. Leaving aside that other matter, what is your proposition to me?”
Fischer walked for a while in silence. They had turned back some time since, and were once more nearing the Plaza.
“You ask me to leave out what is most vital,” he said at last. “I have never been married, Miss Van Teyl. I am wealthy. I am promised great honours at the end of this war. When that comes, I shall rest. If you will be my wife, you can choose your home, you can choose your title.”
She shook her head.
“But I am not sure that I even like you, Mr. Fischer,” she objected. “We have fought in opposite camps, and you have had the bad taste to be victorious. Besides which, you were perfectly brutal to James, and I am not at all sure that I don’t resent your bargain with me. As a matter of fact, I am feeling very bitter towards you.”
“You should not,” he remonstrated earnestly. “Remember that, after all, women are only dabblers in diplomacy. Their very physique prevents them from playing the final game. You have brains, of course, but there are other things— experience, courage, resource. You would be a wonderful helpmate, Miss Van Teyl, even if your individual and unaided efforts have not been entirely successful.”
She sighed. Pamela just then was a picture of engaging humility.
“It is so hard for me,” she murmured, “I do not want to marry yet. I do not wish to think of it. And so far as you are concerned, Mr. Fischer—well, I am simply furious when I think of your attitude last night. But I love adventures.”
“I will promise you all the adventures that can be crammed into your life,” he urged.
“But be more definite,” she persisted. “Where should we start? You are over here now on some important mission. Tell me more about it?”
“I cannot just yet,” he answered. “All that I can promise you is that, if I am successful, it will stop the war just as surely as Captain Graham’s new explosive.”
“I thought you were going to make a confidante of me,” she complained.
He suddenly gripped her arm. It was the first time he had touched her, and she felt a queer surging of the blood to her head, a sudden and almost uncontrollable repulsion. The touch of his long fingers was like flame; his eyes, behind their sheltering spectacles, glowed in a curious, disconcerting fashion.
“To the woman who was my pledged wife,” he said, “I would tell everything. From the woman who gave me her hand and became my ally I would have no secrets. Come, I have a message, more than a message, to the American people. I am taking it to Washington before many hours have passed. If it is your will, it should be you to whom I will deliver it.”
Pamela walked on with her head in the air. Fischer was leaning a little towards her. Every now and then his mouth twitched slightly. His eyes seemed to be seeking to reach the back of her brain.
“Please go now,” she begged. “I can’t think clearly while you are here, and I want to make up my mind. I will send to you when I am ready.”
CHAPTER XVII
Table of Contents
Pamela sat that afternoon on the balcony of the country club at Baltusrol and approved of her surroundings. Below her stretched a pleasant vista of rolling greensward, dotted here and there with the figures of the golfers. Beyond, the misty blue background of rising hills.
“I can’t tell you how peaceful this all seems, Jimmy,” she said to her brother, who had brought her out in his automobile. “One doesn’t notice the air of strain over on the Continent, because it’s the same everywhere, but it gets a little on one’s nerves, all the same. I positively love it here.”
“It’s fine to have you,” was the hearty response. “Gee, that fellow coming to the sixteenth hole can play some!”
Pamela directed her attention idly towards the figure which her brother indicated—a man in light tweeds, who played with an easy and graceful swing, and with the air of one to whom the game presented no difficulties whatever. She watched him drive for the seventeenth—a long, raking ball, fully fifty yards further than his opponent’s— watched him play a perfect mashie shot to the green and hole out in three.
“A birdie,” James Van Teyl murmured. “I say, Pamela!”
She took no notice. Her eyes were still following the figure of the golfer. She watched him drive at the last hole, play a chip shot on to the green, and hit the hole for a three. The frown deepened upon her forehead. She was looking very uncompromising when the two men ascended the steps.
“I didn’t know, Mr. Lutchester, that there were any factories down this way,” she remarked severely, as he paused before her in surprise.
For a single moment she fancied that she saw a flash of annoyance in his eyes. It was gone so swiftly, however, that she remained uncertain. He held out his hand, laughing.
“Fairly caught out, Miss Van Teyl,” he confessed. “You see, I was tempted, and I fell.”
His companion, an elderly, clean-shaven man, passed on. Pamela glanced after him.
“Who is your opponent?” she asked.
“Just some one I picked up on the tee,” Lutchester explained. “How is our friend Fischer this morning?”
“I walked with him for an hour in the Park,” Pamela replied. “He seemed quite cheerful. I have scarcely thanked you yet for returning the pocketbook, have I?”
His face was inscrutable.
“Couldn’t keep a thing that didn’t belong to me, could I?” he observed.
“You have a marvellous gift for discovering lost property,” she murmured.
“For discovering the owners, you mean,” he retorted, with a little bow.
“You’re some golfer, I see, Mr. Lutchester,” Van Teyl interposed.
“I was on my game to-day,” Lutchester admitted. “With a little luck at the seventh,” he continued earnestly, “I might have tied the amateur record. You see, my ball—but there, I mustn’t bore you now. I must look after my opponent and stand him a drink. We shall meet again, I daresay.”
Lutchester passed on, and Pamela glanced up at her brother.
“Is he a sphinx or a fool?” she whispered.
“Don’t ask me,” Van Teyl replied. “Seems to me you were a bit rough on him, anyway. I don’t see why the fellow shouldn’t have a day’s holiday before he gets to work. If I had his swing, it would interfere with my career, I know that, well enough.”
“Did you recognise the man with whom he was playing?” Pamela inquired.
“Can’t say that I did. His face seems familiar, too.”
“Go and see if you can find out his name,” Pamela begged. “It isn’t ordinary curiosity. I really want to know.”
“That’s easy enough,” Van Teyl replied, rising from his place. “And I’ll order tea at the same time.”
Pamela leaned a little further back in her chair. Her eyes seemed to be fixed upon the pleasant prospect of wooded slopes and green, upward-stretching sward. As a matter of fact, she saw only two faces— Fischer’s and Lutchester’s. Her chief impulse in life for the immediate present seemed to have resolved itself into a fierce, almost a passionate curiosity. It was the riddle of those two brains which she was so anxious to solve. … Fischer, the cold, subtle intriguer, with schemes at the back of his mind which she knew quite well that, even in the moment of his weakness, he intended to keep to himself; and Lutchester, with his almost cyn
ical devotion to pleasure, yet with his unaccountable habit of suggesting a strength and qualities to which he neither laid nor established any claim. Of the two men it was Lutchester who piqued her, with whom she would have found more pleasure in the battle of wits. She found herself alternately furious and puzzled with him, yet her uneasiness concerning him possessed more disquieting, more fascinating possibilities than any of the emotions inspired by the other man.
Van Teyl returned to her presently, a little impressed.
“Thought I knew that chap’s face,” he observed. “It’s Eli Hamblin— Senator Hamblin, you know.”
“A friend and confidant of the President,” she murmured. “A Westerner, too. I wonder what he’s doing here … Jimmy!”
“Hallo, Sis?”
“You’ve just got to be a dear,” Pamela begged. “Go to the caddy master, or professional, or some one, and find out whether Mr. Lutchester met him here by accident or whether they arrived together.”
“You’ll turn me into a regular sleuthhound,” he laughed. “However, here goes.”
He strolled off again, and Pamela found herself forced to become mundane and frivolous whilst she chatted with some newly-arrived acquaintances. It was not until some little time after her brother’s return that she found herself alone with him.
“Well?” she asked eagerly.
“They arrived within a few minutes of one another,” Van Teyl announced. “Senator Hamblin bought a couple of new balls and made some inquiries about the course, but said nothing about playing. Lutchester, who appears not to have known him, came up later and asked him if he’d like a game. That’s all I could find out.”
Pamela pointed to a little cloud of dust in the distance.
“And there they go,” she observed, “together.”
Van Teyl threw himself into a chair and accepted the cup of tea which his sister handed him.
“Well,” he inquired, “what do you make of it?”
“There’s more in that question than you think, James,” Pamela replied. “All the same, I think I shall be able to answer it in a few days.”
Another little crowd of acquaintances discovered them, and Pamela was soon surrounded by a fresh group of admirers. They all went out presently to inspect the new tennis courts. Pamela and her brother were beset with invitations.
“You positively must stay down and dine with us, and go home by moonlight,” Mrs. Saunders, a lively young matron with a large country house close by, insisted. “Jimmy’s neglected me terribly these last few months, and as for you, Pamela, I haven’t seen you for a year.”
“I’d love to if we can,” Pamela assured her, “but Jimmy will have to telephone first.”
“Then do be quick about it,” Mrs. Saunders begged, “It doesn’t matter a bit about clothes. We’ve twenty people staying in the house now, and half of us won’t change, if that makes you more comfortable. Jimmy, if you fail at that telephone I’ll never forgive you.”
But Van Teyl, who had caught the little motion of his sister’s head towards the city, proved equal to the occasion. He returned presently, driving the car.
“Got to go,” he announced as he made his farewells. “Can’t be helped, Pamela. Frightfully sorry, Mrs. Saunders, we are wanted up in New York.”
Pamela sighed.
“I was so afraid of it,” she regretted as she waved her adieux… . .
An hour or so later the city broke before them in murky waves. Pamela, who had been leaning back in the car, deep in thought, sat up.
“You are a perfect dear, James,” she said. “Do you think you could stand having Mr. Fischer to dinner one evening this week?”
“Sure!” he replied, a little curiously. “If you want to keep friends with him for any reason, I don’t bear him any ill-will.”
“I just want to talk to him,” Pamela murmured, “that’s all.”
CHAPTER XVIII
Table of Contents
There was a ripple of interest and a good deal of curiosity that afternoon, in the lounge and entrance hall of the Hotel Plaza, when a tall, grey moustached gentleman of military bearing descended from the automobile which had brought him from the station, and handed in his name at the desk, inquiring for Mr. Fischer.
“Will you send my name up—the Baron von Schwerin,” he directed.
The clerk, who had recognised the newcomer, took him under his personal care.
“Mr. Fischer is up in his rooms, expecting you, Baron,” he announced. “If you’ll come this way, I’ll take you up.”
The Baron followed his guide to the lift and along the corridor to the suite of rooms occupied by Mr. Fischer and his young friend, James Van Teyl. Mr. Fischer himself opened the door. The two men clasped hands cordially, and the clerk discreetly withdrew.
“Back with us once more, Fischer,” Von Schwerin exclaimed fervently. “You are wonderful. Tell me,” he added, looking around, “we are to be alone here?”
“Absolutely,” Fischer replied. “The young man I share these apartments with—James Van Teyl—has taken his sister out to Baltusrol. They will not be back until seven o’clock. We are sure of solitude.”
“Good!” Von Schwerin exclaimed. “And you have news—I can see it in your face.”
Fischer rolled up easy chairs and produced a box of cigars.
“Yes,” he assented, with a little glitter in his eyes, “I have news. Things have moved with me. I think that, with the help of an idiotic Englishman, we shall solve the riddle of what our professors have called the consuming explosive. I sent the formula home to Germany, by a trusty hand, only a few hours ago.”
“Capital!” Von Schwerin declared. “It was arranged in London, that?”
“Partly in London and partly here,” Fischer replied.
Von Schwerin made a grimace.
“If you can find those who are willing to help you here, you are fortunate indeed,” he sighed. “My life’s work has lain amongst these people. In the days of peace, all seemed favourable to us. Since the war, even those people whom I thought my friends seem to have lost their heads, to have lost their reasoning powers.”
“After all,” Fischer muttered, “it is race calling to race. But come, we have more direct business on hand. Nikasti is here.”
Von Schwerin nodded a little gloomily.
“Washington knows nothing of his coming,” he observed. “I attended the Baron Yung’s reception last week, informally. I threw out very broad hints, but Yung would not be drawn. Nikasti represents the Secret Service of Japan, unofficially and without responsibility.”
“Nevertheless,” Fischer pointed out, “what he says will reach the ear of his country, and reach it quickly. You’ve gone through the papers I sent you?”
“Carefully,” Von Schwerin replied. “And the autograph letter?”
“That I have,” Fischer announced. “I will fetch Nikasti.”
He crossed the room and opened the door leading into the bedchambers.
“Are you there, Kato?” he cried.
“I am coming, sir,” was the instant reply.
Nikasti appeared, a few moments later. He was carrying a dress coat on his arm, and he held a clothes brush in his hand. It was obvious that he had studied with nice care the details of his new part.
“You can sit down, Nikasti,” Fischer invited. “This is the Baron von Schwerin. He has something to say to you.”
Nikasti bowed very low. He declined the chair, however, to which Fischer pointed.
“I am your valet and the valet of Mr. Van Teyl,” he murmured. “It is not fitting for me to be seated. I listen.”
Von Schwerin drew his chair a little nearer.
“I plunge at once,” he said, “into the middle of things. There is always the fear that we may be disturbed.”
Nikasti inclined his head.
“It is best,” he agreed.
“You are aware,” Von Schwerin continued, “that the Imperial Government of Germany has already made formal overtures, throug
h a third party, to the Emperor of Japan with reference to an alteration in our relations?”
“There was talk of this in Tokio,” Nikasti observed softly. “Japan, however, is under obligations—treaty obligations. Her honour demands that these should be kept.”
“The honour of a country,” Baron von Schwerin acknowledged, “is, without doubt, a sacred charge upon her rulers, but above all things in heaven or on earth, the interests of her people must be their first consideration. If a time should come when the two might seem to clash, then it is the task of the statesman to recognise this fact.”
Nikasti bowed.
“It is spoken,” he confessed, “like a great man.”
“Your country,” Von Schwerin continued, “is at war with mine because it seemed to her rulers that her interests lay with the Allies rather than with Germany. I will admit that my country was at fault. We did not recognise to its full extent the value of friendship with Japan. We did not bid high enough for your favours. Asia concerned us very little. We looked upon the destruction of our interests there in the same spirit as that with which we contemplated the loss of our colonies. All that might happen would be temporary. Our influence in Asia, our colonies, will remain with us or perish, according to the result of the war in Europe. But our statesmen overlooked one thing.”
“Our factories,” Nikasti murmured.
“Precisely! We have had our agents all over the world for years. Some are good, a few are easily deceived. There is no country in the world where apparently so much liberty is granted to foreigners as in Japan. There is no country where the capacity for manufacture and output has been so grossly underestimated by our agents, as yours.”
Nikasti smiled.
“I had something to do with that,” he announced. “It was Karl Neumann, was it not, on whom you relied? I supplied him with much information.”
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