"Better give them one if they look like trouble," his host advised. "They've plenty of spunk, but I can tell you they make tracks for their holes if they hear one of those things bark."
"They shall hear it fast enough, if they try to hustle me," Fischer observed grimly.
"You've some pluck," the Irishman declared, as he watched his departing guest ascend the steps. "Sure, this is no place for cowards, anyway. And good night and good luck to you! Jake will do your job slick, if any one could."
Fischer beat his little tattoo upon the trapdoor, crawled through it and underneath the flap in the counter, out into the saloon. He paused for a moment to look around, on his way to the door. The fight was apparently over, for every one was standing at the counter, drinking with a swarthy-faced man whose cheeks were stained with blood. From a distant corner came the sound of groans. The air seemed heavier than ever with foul tobacco smoke. The man at the piano still thrashed out his unmelodious chords. Some women in a corner were pretending to dance. One or two of them looked curiously at Fischer, but he passed out, unchallenged. Even the air of the slum outside seemed pure and fresh after the heated den he had left. He reached the corner of the street in safety and stepped quickly into his car. He threw both windows wide open and murmured an order to the chauffeur. Then he leaned back and closed his eyes for a moment. He was a man not overburdened with imagination, but it seemed to him just then that he would never be able altogether to forget the face of that ghastly, dehumanised creature, crouching like some terrified wild animal in his fetid refuge.
Mrs. Theodore Hastings was forty-eight years old, which her friends said was the reason why her mansion on Fifth Avenue was furnished and lit with the delicate sombreness of an old Italian palace. There was about it none of the garishness, the almost resplendent brilliancy associated with the abodes of many of our neighbours. Although her masseuse confidently assured her that she looked twenty-eight, Mrs. Hastings preferred not to put the matter to the test. She received her carefully selected dinner guests in a great library with cedarwood walls, furnished with almost Victorian sobriety, and illuminated by myriads of hidden lights. Pamela, being a relative, received the special consideration of an affectionately bestowed embrace.
"Pamela, my child, wasn't it splendid I heard that you were in New York!" she exclaimed. "Quite by accident, too. I think you treat your relatives shamefully."
Her niece laughed.
"Well, anyhow, you're the first of them I've seen at all, and directly Jim told me he was coming to you, I made him ring up in case you had room for me."
"Jimmy was a dear," Mrs. Hastings declared, "and, of course, there couldn't be a time when there wouldn't be room for you. Even now, at the last moment, though, I haven't quite made up my mind where to put you. Choose, dear. Will you have a Western bishop or a rather dull Englishman?"
"What is the name of the Englishman?" Pamela asked, with sudden intuition.
"Lutchester, dear. Quite a nice name, but I know nothing about him. He brought letters to your uncle. Rather a queer time for Englishmen to be travelling about, we thought, but still, there he is. Seems to have found some people he knows—and I declare he is coming towards you!"
"I met him in London," Pamela whispered, "and I never could get on with bishops."
The dinner table was large, and arranged with that wonderful simplicity which Mrs. Hastings had adopted as the keynote of her New York parties. She had taken, in fact, simplicity under her wing and made a new thing of it. There were more flowers than silver, and cut glass than heavy plate. There seemed to be an almost ostentatious desire to conceal the fact that Mr. Hastings had robbed the American public of a good many million dollars.
"Of course," Pamela declared, as they took their places, and she nodded a greeting to some friends around the table, "fate is throwing us together in the most unaccountable manner."
"I accept its vagaries with resignation," Lutchester replied. "Besides, it is quite time we met again. You promised to show me New York, and I haven't seen you for days."
"I don't even remember the promise," Pamela laughed, "but in any case I have changed my mind. I am not sure that you are the nice, simple-minded person you profess to be. I begin to have doubts about you."
"Interest grows with mystery," Lutchester remarked complacently. "Let us hope that I am promoted in your mind."
"Well, I am not at all sure. Of course, I am not an Englishman, so it is of no particular interest to me, but if you really came over here on important affairs, I am not sure that I approve of your playing golf the day after your arrival."
"That, perhaps, was thoughtless," he admitted, "but one gets so short of exercise on board ship."
"Of course," Pamela observed tentatively, "I'd forgive you even now if you'd only be a little more frank with me."
"I am prepared to be candour itself," he assured her.
"Tell me," she begged, "the whole extent of your mission in America?"
He glanced around.
"If we were alone," he replied, "I might court indiscretion so far as to tell you."
"Then we will leave the answer to that question until after dinner," she said.
She talked to her left-hand neighbour for a few moments, and Lutchester followed suit. They turned to one another again, however, at the first opportunity.
"I have conceived," she told him, "a great admiration for Mr. OscarFischer."
"A very able man," Lutchester agreed.
"He is not only that," Pamela continued, "but he is a man with large principles and great ideas."
"Principles!" Lutchester murmured.
"Of course, you don't like him," Pamela went on, "and I don't wonder at it. He is thoroughly German, isn't he?"
"Almost prejudiced, I'm afraid," Lutchester assented.
"Don't be silly," Pamela protested. "Why, he's German by birth, and although you English people are much too pig-headed to see any good in an enemy, I think you must admit that the way they all hang together— Germans, I mean, all over the world—is perfectly wonderful."
"There have been a few remarks of the same sort," Lutchester reminded her, "about the inhabitants of the British Empire—Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, for instance."
"As a matter of fact," Pamela admitted generously, "I consider that your Colonials understand the word patriotism better than the ordinary Englishman. With them, as with the Germans, it is almost a passionate impulse. Your hearts may be in the right places, but you always give one the impression of finding the whole thing rather a bore."
"Well, so it is," Lutchester insisted. "Who wants to give up a very agreeable profession and enter upon a career of bloodshed, abandon all one's habits, and lose most of one's friends? No, we are honest about that, at any rate! Germany may be enjoying this war. We aren't."
"What was your profession?" Pamela inquired.
"Diplomacy," Lutchester confided. "I intended to become an ambassador."
"Do you think you have the requisite gifts?"
"What are they?"
"Secrecy, subtlety, caution, and highly-developed intelligence," she replied. "How's that?"
"All those gifts," he assured her, "I possess."
She fanned herself for a moment and looked at him.
"We are not a modest race ourselves," she said, "but I think you can give us a lead. By the bye, were you playing golf with Senator Hamblin by accident the other afternoon?"
"You mean the old Johnny down at Baltusrol?" he asked coolly. "I picked him up wandering about by the professionals' shed."
"Did you talk politics with him?"
"We gassed a bit about the war," Lutchester admitted cheerfully.
Pamela laughed. She leaned a little forward. The buzz of conversation now was insistent all around them.
"Of you two," she whispered, "I prefer Fischer."
Lutchester considered the matter for some time.
"Well, there's no accounting for tastes," he said presently. "I shouldn't have thought him exactly your type."
"He may not be," Pamela confessed, "but at least he has the courage to speak what is in his mind."
Lutchester smiled.
"So Fischer has taken you into his confidence, has he?" he murmured. "Well, now, that seems queer to me. I should have thought your interests would have lain the other way."
"As an individual?"
"As an American."
"I am not wholly convinced of that."
"Come," he protested, "what is the use of a friend from whom you are separated by an unnegotiable space?"
"What unnegotiable space?"
"The Atlantic."
"And why is the Atlantic unnegotiable?"
"Because of a little affair called the British fleet," Lutchester pointed out.
"There is also," she reminded him drily, "a German fleet, and they haven't met yet."
"Ah! I had almost forgotten there was such a thing," he murmured."Where do they keep it?"
"You know. You aren't nearly so stupid as you pretend to be," she said, a little impatiently. "I should like you so much better if you would be frank with me."
"What about those qualifications for my ambassadorial career?" he reminded her—"Secrecy, subtlety, caution."
"The master of these," she whispered, rising to her feet in response to her hostess's signal, "knows when to abandon them—"
Lutchester changed his place to a vacant chair by James Van Teyl's side.
"I was going to ask you, Mr. Van Teyl," he inquired, "whether your Japanese servant was altogether a success? I think I shall have to get a temporary servant while I am over here."
"Nikasti was entirely Fischer's affair," Van Teyl replied, "and I can't say much about him as I have given up my share of the apartments at the Plaza. The fellow's all right, I dare say, but we hadn't the slightest use for a valet. The man on the floor's good enough for any one."
"By the bye," Lutchester inquired, "is Fischer still in New York?"
"No, he's in Washington," Van Teyl replied. "I believe he's expected back to-morrow…. Say, can I ask you a question?"
Lutchester almost imperceptibly drew his chair a little closer.
"Of course you can," he assented.
"What I want to know," Van Teyl continued confidentially, "is how you get that long run on your cleek shots? I saw you play the sixteenth hole, and it looked to me as though the ball were never going to stop."
Lutchester smiled.
"I have made a special study of that shot," he confided. "Yes, I can tell you how it's done, but it needs a lot of practice. It's done in turning over the wrists sharply just at the moment of impact. You get everything there is to be got into the stroke that way, and you keep the ball low, too."
"Gee, I must try that!" Van Teyl observed, making spasmodic movements with his wrists. "When could we have a day down at Baltusrol?"
"It will have to be next week, I'm afraid, if you don't mind," Lutchester replied. "I've a good many appointments in New York, and I may have to go to Washington myself. By the bye, I thought our host lived there."
"So he does," Van Teyl assented. "Nowadays, though, it seems to have become the fashion for politicians to own a house up in New York and do some entertaining here. They're after the financial interest, I suppose."
"Is your uncle a keen politician?"
"Keen as mustard," Van Teyl answered. "So's my aunt. She'd give her soul to have the old man nominated for the Presidency."
"Any chance of it?"
"Not an earthly! He'll come a mucker, though, some day, trying. He'd take any outside chance. For a clever man he's the vainest thing I know."
Lutchester smiled enigmatically as he followed the example of the others and rose to his feet.
"Even in America, then," he observed, "your great men have their weaknesses."
Fischer, exactly one week after his nocturnal visit to Fourteenth Street, hurried out of the train at the Pennsylvania Station, almost tore the newspapers from the news stand, glanced through them one by one and threw them back. The attendant, open-mouthed, ventured upon a mild protest. Fischer threw him a dollar bill, caught up his handbag, and made for the entrance. He was the first passenger from the Washington Limited to reach the street and spring into a taxi.
"The Plaza Hotel," he ordered. "Get along."
They arrived at the Plaza in less than ten minutes. Mr. Fischer tipped the driver lavishly, suffered the hall porter to take his bag, returned his greeting mechanically, and walked with swift haste to the tape machine. He held up the strips with shaking fingers, dropped them again, hurried to the lift, and entered his rooms. Nikasti was in the sitting-room, arranging some flowers. Fischer did not even stop to reply to his reverential greeting.
"Where's Mr. Van Teyl?" he demanded.
"Mr. Van Teyl has gone away, sir," was the calm reply. "He left here the day before yesterday. There is a letter."
Fischer took no notice. He was already gripping the telephone receiver.
"982, Wall," he said—"an urgent call."
He stood waiting, his face an epitome of breathless suspense. Soon a voice answered him.
"That the office of Neville, Brooks and Van Teyl?" he demanded. "Yes!Put me through to Mr. Van Teyl. Urgent!"
Another few seconds of waiting, then once more he bent over the instrument.
"That you, Van Teyl?… Yes, Fischer speaking. Oh, never mind about that! Listen. What price are Anglo-French?… No, say about what?… Ninety-five?… Sell me a hundred thousand…. What's that?… What?… Of course it's a big deal! Never mind that. I'm good enough, aren't I? There'll be no rise that'll wipe out half a million dollars. I've got that lying in cash at Guggenheimer's. If you need the money, I'll bring it you in half an hour. Get out into the market and sell. Damn you, what's it matter about news! Right! Sorry, Jim. See you later."
Fischer put down the telephone and wiped his forehead. Notwithstanding the fatigue in his face, there was a glint of triumph there. He laid his hand upon Nikasti's shoulder.
"My friend," he said, "there's big proof coming of what I said to you the other day. You'll find that letter you carry will mean a different thing now. There's news in the air."
"There has been a great battle, perhaps?" Nikasti asked slowly.
"All that is to be known you will hear before evening," Fischer replied. "Tell some one to send me some coffee. I have come through from Washington. I am tired."
He sank a little abruptly into an easy-chair, took off his spectacles, and leaned his head back upon the cushions. In the sunlight his face was almost ghastly. A queer sense of weakness had suddenly assailed him. His mind flitted back through a vista of sleepless nights, of strenuous days, of passions held in leash, excitement ground down.
"I am tired," he said. "Telephone down to the office, Nikasti, for a doctor."
Nikasti obeyed, and his summons was promptly answered. The doctor who arrived was pleasantly but ominously grave. In the middle of his examination the telephone rang. Fischer, without ceremony, moved to the receiver. It was Van Teyl speaking.
"I've sold your hundred thousand Anglo-French," he announced. "It's done the whole market in, though—knocked the bottom out of it. They've fallen a point and a half. Shall I begin to buy back for you? You'll make a bit."
"Not a share," Fischer answered fiercely. "Wait!"
"Have you any news you're keeping up your sleeve?" Van Teyl persisted.
"If I have, it's my own affair," was the curt reply, "and I don't tell news over the telephone, anyway. Watch the market, and go on selling where you can."
"I shall do as you order," Van Teyl replied, "but you're all against the general tone here. By the bye, you got my letter?"
"I haven't opened it yet," Fischer snapped. "What's the matter?"
"Pamela and I have taken a little flat in Fifty-eighth Street. Seems a little abrupt, but she didn't want to be alone, and she hates hotels. We felt sure you'd understand."
"Yes, I understand," Fischer said. "Good-by! I'm busy."
The doctor completed his examination. When he had finished he mentioned his fee.
"You work too hard, and you live in an atmosphere of too great strain. The natural consequences are already beginning to show themselves. If I give you medicine, it will only encourage you to keep on wasting yourself, but you can have medicine if you like."
"Send me something to take for the next fortnight," Fischer replied."After that, I'll take my chance."
The doctor wrote a prescription and took his leave. Fischer leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. His mind travelled back through these latter days of his over-strenuous life. In such minutes of relaxation, few of which he permitted himself, he realised with bitter completeness the catastrophe which had overtaken him—him, Oscar Fischer, of all men on earth. Into his life of grim purposes, of lofty and yet narrow ambitions, of almost superhuman tenacity, had crept the one weakening strain whose presence in other men he had always scoffed at and derived. There was a new and enervating glamour over the days, a new and hatefully powerful rival for all his thoughts and dreams. Ten years ago, he reflected sadly, this might have made a different man of him, might have unlocked the gates into another, more peaceful and beautiful world, visions of which had sometimes vaguely disturbed him in his cold and selfish climb. Now it could only mean suffering. This was the first stroke. It was the assertion of humanity which was responsible for his present weakness. How far might it not drag him down?
There should be a fight, at any rate, he told himself, as an hour or two later he made his way downtown. He paid several calls in the vicinity of Wall Street, and finished up in Van Teyl's office. That young man greeted him with a certain relief.
"You know the tone of the market's still against you, Fischer," he warned him once more.
Fischer threw himself into the client's easy-chair. The furniture in the office seemed less distinct than usual. He was conscious of a certain haziness of outline in everything. Van Teyl's face, even, was shrouded in a little mist. Then he suddenly found himself fighting fiercely, fighting for his consciousness, fighting against a wave of giddiness, a deadly sinking of the heart, a strange slackening of all his nerve power. The young stockbroker rose hastily to his feet.
"Anything wrong, old fellow?" he asked anxiously.
"A glass of water," Fischer begged.
He was conscious of drinking it, vaguely conscious that he was winning. Soon the office had regained its ordinary appearance, his pulse was beating more regularly. He had once more the feeling of living—of living, though in a minor key.
"A touch of liver," he murmured. "What did you say about the markets?"
"You look pretty rotten," Van Teyl remarked sympathetically. "Shall I send out for some brandy?"
"Not for me," Fischer scoffed. "I don't need it. What price areAnglo-French?"
"Ninety-four. You've only done them in a point, after all, and that's nominal. I daresay I could get ten thousand back at that."
"Let them alone," was the calm reply. "I'll sell another fifty thousand at ninety-four."
"Look here," Van Teyl said, swinging round in his chair, "I like the business and I know you can finance it, but are you sure that you realise what you are doing? Every one believes Anglo-French have touched their bottom. They've only to go back to where they were—say five points—and you'd lose half a million."
Fischer smiled a little wearily.
"That small sum in arithmetic," he remonstrated, "had already passed through my brain. Send in your selling order, Jim, and come out to lunch with me. I've come straight through from Washington—only got in this morning."
Van Teyl called in his clerk and gave a few orders. Then he took up his hat and left the office with his client.
"From Washington, eh?" he remarked curiously, as they passed into the crowded streets. "So that accounts—"
He broke off abruptly. His companion's warning fingers had tightened upon his arm.
"Quite right!" Van Teyl confessed. "There's gossip enough about now, and they seem to have tumbled to it that you're our client. The office has been besieged this morning. Sorry, Ned, I'm busy," he went on, to a man who tried to catch his arm. "See you later, Fred. I'll be in after lunch, Mr. Borrodaile. No, nothing fresh that I know of."
Fischer smiled grimly.
"Got you into a kind of hornets' nest, eh?" he observed.
"It's been like this all the morning," Van Teyl told him. "They believe I know something. Even the newspaper men are tumbling to it. We'll lunch up at the club. Maybe we'll get a little peace there."
They stepped into the hall of a great building, and took one of the interminable row of lifts. A few minutes later they were seated at a side table in a dining room on the top floor of one of the huge modern skyscrapers. Below them stretched a silent panorama of the city; beyond, a picturesque view of the river. A fresh breeze blew in through the opened window. They were above the noise, even, of the street cars.
"Order me a small bottle of champagne, James," Fischer begged, "and some steak."
Van Teyl stared at his companion and laughed as he took up the wine list.
"Well, that's the first time, Fischer, I've known you to touch a drop of anything before the evening! I'll have a whisky and soda with you. Thank God we're away from that inquisitive crowd for a few minutes! Are you going to give me an idea of what's moving?"
Fischer watched the wine being poured into his glass.
"Not until this evening," he said. "I want you to bring your sister and come and dine at the new roof-garden."
"I don't know whether Pamela has any engagement," Van Teyl began, a little dubiously.
"Please go and see," Fischer begged earnestly. "The telephones are just outside. Tell your sister that I particularly wish her to accept my invitation. Tell her that there will be news."
Van Teyl went out to the telephone. Fischer sipped his champagne and crumbled up his bread, his eyes fixed a little dreamily on the grey river. He was already conscious of the glow of the wine in his veins. The sensation was half pleasurable, in a sense distasteful to him. He resented this artificial humanity. He had the feeling of a man who has stooped to be doped by a quack doctor. And he was a little afraid.
His young companion returned triumphant.
"Had a little trouble with Pamela," he observed, as he resumed his place at the table. "She was thinking of the opera with a girl friend she picked up this morning. However, the idea of news, I think, clinched it. We'll be at the Oriental at eight o'clock, eh?"
Fischer looked up from the fascinating patchwork below. Already there was anticipation in his face.
"I am very glad," he said. "There will certainly be news."
"Now indeed I feel that I am in New York," Pamela declared, as she broke off one of the blossoms of the great cluster of deep red roses by her side, and gazed downward over her shoulder at the far-flung carpet of lights. "One sees little bits of America in every country of the world, but never this."
Fischer, unusually grave and funereal-looking in his dinner clothes and black tie, followed her gesture with thoughtful eyes. Everything that was ugly in the stretching arms of the city seemed softened, shrouded and bejewelled. Even the sounds, the rattle and roar of the overhead railways, the clanging of the electric car bells, the shrieking of the sirens upon the river, seemed somehow to have lost their harsh note, to have become the human cry of the great live city, awaking and stretching itself for the night.
"I agree with you," he said. "You dine at the Ritz-Carlton and you might be in Paris. You dine here, and one knows that you are in America."
"Yet even here we have become increasingly luxurious," Pamela remarked, looking around. "The glass and linen upon the tables are quite French; those shaded lights are exquisite. That little band, too, was playing at the Ritz three years ago. I am sure that the maitre d'hotel who brought us to our table was once at the Cafe de Paris."
"Money would draw all those things from Europe even to the Sahara," Fischer observed, "so long as there were plenty of it. But millions could not buy our dining table in the clouds."
"A little effort of the imagination, fortunately," Pamela laughed, looking upwards. "There are stars, but no clouds."
"I guess one of them is going to slip down to the next table before long," Van Teyl observed, with a little movement of his head.
They all three turned around and looked at the wonderful bank of pink roses within a few feet of them.
"One of the opera women, I daresay," the young man continued. "They are rather fond of this place."
Pamela leaned forward. Fischer was watching the streets below; Only a short distance away was a huge newspaper building, flaring with lights. The pavements fringing it were thronged with a little stationary crowd. A row of motor-bicycles was in waiting. A night edition of the paper was almost due.
"Mr. Fischer," she asked, "what about that news?"
He withdrew his eyes from the street. Almost unconsciously he straightened himself a little in his place. There was pride in his tone. Behind his spectacles his eyes flashed.
"I would have told it you before," he said, "but you would not have believed it. Soon—in a very few moments—the news will be known. You will see it break away in waves from that building down there, so I will bear with your incredulity. The German and British fleets have met, and the victory has remained with us."
"With us?" Pamela repeated.
"With Germany," Fischer corrected himself hastily.
"Is this true?" James Van Teyl almost shouted. "Fischer, are you sure of what you're saying? Why, it's incredible!"
"It is true," was the proud reply. "The German Navy has been a long time proving itself. It has done so now. To-day every German citizen is the proudest creature breathing. He knew before that his armies were invincible. He knows now that his fleet is destined to make his country the mistress of the seas. England's day is over. Her ships were badly handled and foolishly flung into battle. She has lost many of her finest units. Her Navy is to-day a crippled and maimed force. The German fleet is out in the North Sea, waiting for an enemy who has disappeared."
"It is inconceivable," Pamela gasped.
"I do not ask you to believe my word," Fischer exclaimed. "Look!"
As though the flood gates had been suddenly opened, the stream of patient waiters broke away from the newspaper building below. Like little fireflies, the motor-bicycles were tearing down the different thoroughfares. Boys like ants, with their burden of news sheets, were running in every direction. Motor-trucks had started on their furious race. Even the distant echoes of their cries came faintly up. Fischer called a messenger and sent him for a paper.
"I do not know what report you will see," he said, "but from whatever source it comes it will confirm my story. The news is too great and sweeping to be contradicted or ignored."
"If it's true," Van Teyl muttered, "you've made a fortune in my office to-day. It looks like it, too. There was something wrong with Anglo-French beside your selling for the last hour this afternoon. I couldn't get buyers to listen for a moment."
"Yes, I shall have made a great deal of money," Fischer admitted, "money which I shall value because it comes magnificently, but I hope that this victory may help me to win other things."
He looked fixedly at Pamela, and she moved uneasily in her chair. Almost unconsciously the man himself seemed somehow associated with his cause, to be assuming a larger and more tolerant place in her thoughts. Perhaps there was some measure of greatness about him after all. The strain of waiting for the papers became almost intolerable. At last the boy reappeared. The great black headlines were stretched out before her. She felt the envelopment of Fischer's triumph. The words were there in solid type, and the paper itself was one of the most reliable.
Pamela looked up from the sheet.
"It is too wonderful," she whispered, with a note of awe in her tone."I don't think that any one ever expected this. We all believed in theBritish Navy."
"There is nothing," Fischer declared, "that England can do whichGermany cannot do better."
"And America best of all," Pamela said.
Fischer bowed.
"That is one comparison which will never now be made," he declared, "for from to-night Germany and America will draw nearer together. The bubble of British naval omnipotence is pricked."
"Meanwhile," Van Teyl observed, putting his paper away, "we are neglecting our dinner. Nothing like a good dose of sensationalism for giving us an appetite."
Fischer was watching his glass being filled with champagne. He seized it by the stem. His eyes for a moment travelled upwards.
"I am an American citizen," he said, with a strange fervour in his tone, "but for the moment I am called back. And so I lift my glass and I drink—I alone, without invitation to you others—to those brave souls who have made of the North Sea a holy battle-ground."
He drained his glass and set it down empty. Pamela watched him as though fascinated. For a single moment she was conscious of a queer sensation of personal pity for some shadowy and absent friend, of something almost like a lump in her throat, a strange instinct of antagonism towards the man by her side so enveloped in beatific satisfaction—then she frowned when she realised that she had been thinking of Lutchester, that her first impulse had been one of sympathy for him. The moment passed. The service of dinner was pressed more insistently upon them. James Van Teyl, who had been leaning back in his chair, talking to one of the maitres d'hotel, dismissed him with a little nod and entrusted them with a confidence.
"Say, do you know who's coming to the next table?" he exclaimed."Sonia!"
They were all interested.
"You won't mind?" Fischer asked diffidently.
"In a restaurant, how absurd!" Pamela laughed. "Why, I'm dying to see her. I wonder how it is that some of these greatest singers in the world lead such extraordinary lives that people can never know anything of them."
"Society is tolerant enough nowadays," her brother observed, "but Sonia won't give them even a decent chance to wink at her eccentricities. She crossed, you know, on the Prince Doronda's yacht, for fear they wouldn't let her land."
"Here she comes," Pamela whispered.
There was a moment's spellbound silence. Two maitres d'hotel were hurrying in front. A pathway from the lift had been cleared as though for a royal personage. Sonia, in white from head to foot, a dream of white lace and chinchilla, with a Russian crown of pearls in her glossy black hair, and a rope of pearls around her neck, came like a waxen figure, with scarlet lips and flashing eyes, towards her table. And behind her—Lutchester! Pamela felt her fingers gripping the tablecloth. Her first impulse, curiously enough, was one of wild fury with herself for that single instant's pity. Her face grew cold and hard. She felt herself sitting a little more upright. Her eyes remained fixed upon the newcomers.
Lutchester's behaviour was admirable. His glance swept their little table without even a shadow of interest. He ignored with passive unconcern the mistake of Van Teyl's attempted greeting. He looked through Fischer as though he had been a ghost. He stood by Sonia's side while she seated herself, and listened with courteous pleasure to her excited admiration of the flowers and the wonderful vista. Then he took his own place. In his right hand he was carrying an evening paper with its flaming headlines.
"That," Fischer pronounced, struggling to keep the joy from his tone, "is very British and very magnificent!"
* * * * *
Pamela had imperfect recollections of the rest of the evening. She remembered that she was more than usually gay throughout dinner-time, but that she was the first to jump at the idea of a hurried departure and a visit to a cabaret. Every now and then she caught a glimpse of Sonia's face, saw the challenging light in her brilliant eyes, heard little scraps of her conversation. The Frenchwoman spoke always in her own language, with a rather shrill voice, which made Lutchester's replies sound graver and quieter than usual. More than once Pamela's eyes rested upon the broad lines of his back. He sat all the time like a rock, courteous, at times obviously amusing, but underneath it all she fancied that she saw some signs of the disturbance from which she herself was suffering. She rose to her feet at last with a little sigh of relief. It was an ordeal through which she had passed.
Once in the lift, her brother and Fischer discussed Lutchester's indiscretion volubly.
"I suppose," Van Teyl declared, "that there isn't a man in New York who wouldn't have jumped at the chance of dining alone with Sonia, but for an Englishman, on a night like this," he went on, glancing at the paper, "say, he must have some nerve!"
"Or else," Fischer remarked, "a wonderful indifference. So far as I have studied the Anglo-Saxon temperament, I should be inclined to vote for the indifference. That is why I think Germany will win the war. Every man in that country prays for his country's success, not only in words, but with his soul. I have not found the same spirit in England."
"The English people," Pamela interposed, "have a genius for concealment which amounts to stupidity."
"I have a theory," Fischer said, "that to be phlegmatic after a certainpitch is a sign of low vitality. However, we shall see. Certainly, ifEngland is to be saved from her present trouble, it will not be theLutchesters of the world who will do it, nor, it seems, her Navy."
They found their way to a large cabaret, where Pamela listened to an indifferent performance a little wearily. The news of what was termed a naval disaster to Great Britain was flashed upon the screen, and, generally speaking, the audience was stunned. Fischer behaved throughout the evening with tact and discretion. He made few references to the matter, and was careful not to indulge in any undue exhilaration. Once, when Van Teyl had left the box, however, to speak to some friends, he turned earnestly to Pamela.
"Will it please you soon," he begged, "to resume our conversation of the other day? However you may look at it, things have changed, have they not? An invincible British Navy has been one of the fundamental principles of beliefs in American politics. Now that it is destroyed, the outlook is different. I could go myself to the proper quarter in Washington, or Von Schwerin is here to be my spokesman. I have a fancy, though, to work with you. You know why."
She moved uneasily in her place.
"I have no idea," she objected, "what it is that you have to propose. Besides, I am only just a woman who has been entrusted with a few diplomatic errands."
"You are the niece of Senator Hastings," Fischer reminded her, "and Hastings is the man through whom I should like my proposal to go to the President. It is an honest offer which I have to make, and although it cannot pass through official channels, it is official in the highest sense of the word, because it comes to me from the one man who is in a position to make himself responsible for it."
Her brother came back to the box before Pamela could reply, but, as they parted that night, she gave Fischer her hand.
"Come and see our new quarters," she invited. "I shall be at home any time to-morrow afternoon."
It was one of the moments of Fischer's life. He bowed low over her fingers.
"I accept, with great pleasure," he murmured.
Sonia had the air of one steeped in an almost ecstatic content. On her return from the roof garden she had exchanged her wonderful gown for a white silk negligee, and her headdress of pearls for a quaint little cap. She was stretched upon a sofa drawn before the wide-flung French windows of her little sitting-room at the Ritz-Carlton, a salon decorated in pink and white, and filled almost to overflowing with the roses which she loved. By her side, in an easy chair which she had pressed him to draw up to her couch, sat Lutchester.
"This," she murmured, "is one of the evenings which I adore. I have no work, no engagements—just one friend with whom to talk. My fine clothes have done. I am myself," she added, stretching out her arms. "I have my cigarettes, my iced sherbet, and the lights and murmur of the city there below to soothe me. And you to talk with me, my friend. What are you thinking of me—that I am a little animal who loves comfort too much, eh?"
Lutchester smiled.
"We all love comfort," he replied. "Some of us are franker than others about it."
She made a little grimace.
"Comfort! It is my own word, but what a word! It is luxury I worship—luxury—and a friend. Is that, perhaps, another word too slight, eh?"
He met the provocative gleam of her eyes with a smile of amusement.
"You are just the same child, Sonia," he remarked. "Neither climate nor country, nor the few passing years, can change you."
"It is you who have grown older and sterner," she pouted. "It is you who have lost the gift of living to-day as though to-morrow were not. There was a time, was there not, John, when you did not care to sit always so far away?"
She laid her hand—ringless, over-manicured, but delicately white—— upon his. He smoothed it gently.
"You see, Sonia," he sighed, "troubles have come that harden the hearts even of the gayest of us."
She frowned.
"You are not going to remind me—" she began.
"If I reminded you of anything, Sonia," he interrupted, "I would remind you that you are a Frenchwoman."
She stretched out her hand restlessly and took one of the Russian cigarettes from a bowl by her side.
"You are not, by any chance, going to talk seriously, dear John?"
"I am," he assured her, "very seriously."
"Oh, la, la!" she laughed. "You, my dear, gay companion, you who have shaken the bells all your life, you are going to talk seriously! And to-night, when we meet again after so long. Ah, well, why should I be surprised?" she went on, with a pout.
"You have changed. When one looks into your face, one sees the difference. But to me, of all people in the world! Why talk seriously to me! I am just Sonia, the gipsy nightingale. I know nothing of serious things."
"You carry one very serious secret in your heart," he told her gravely, "one little pain which must sometimes stab you. You are a Frenchwoman, and yet—"
Lutchester paused for a moment. Sonia, too, seemed suddenly to have awakened into a state of tense and vivid emotion. The cigarette burned away between her fingers. Her great eyes were fixed upon Lutchester. There was something almost like fear in their questioning depths.
"Finish! Finish!" she insisted. "Continue!"
"And yet," he went on, "your very dear friend, the friend for whose sake you are here in America, is your country's enemy."
She raised herself a little upon the couch.
"That is not true," she declared furiously. "Maurice loves France. His heart aches for the misery that has come upon her. It is your country only which he hates. If France had but possessed the courage to stand by herself, to resist when England forced her friendship upon her, none of this tragedy would ever have happened. Maurice has told me so himself. France could have peace today, peace at her own price."
"There is no peace which would leave France with a soul, save the peace which follows victory," Lutchester replied sternly.
She crushed her cigarette nervously in her fingers, threw it away, and lit another.
"I will not talk of these things with you," she cried. "It was not for this that you sought me out, eh? Tell me at once? Were these the thoughts you had in your mind when you sent your little note?—when you chose to show yourself once more in my life?"
For the first time of his own accord, he drew his chair a little nearer to hers. He took her hand. She gave him both unresistingly.
"Listen, dear Sonia," he said, "it is true that I am a changed man. I am older than when we met last, and there are the other things. You remember the Chateau d'Albert?"
"Of course!" she murmured. "And the young Duc d'Albert's wonderful house party. We all motored there from Paris. You and I were together! You have forgotten that, eh?"
"I lay in that orchard for two days," he went on grimly, "with a hole in my side and one leg pretty nearly done for. I saw things I can never forget, in those days, Sonia. D'Albert himself was killed. It was in that first mad rush. Of the Chateau there remains but four blackened walls."
"Pauvre enfant!" she murmured. "But you are well and strong again now, is it not so? You will not fight again, eh? You were never a soldier, dear friend."
"Just now," he confided, "I have other work to do. It is that other work which has brought me to America."
She drew him a little closer to her. Her eyes questioned him.
"There is, perhaps, now," she asked, "a woman in your life?"
"There is," he admitted.
She made a grimace.
"But how clumsy to tell me, even though I asked," she exclaimed. "What is she like? … But no, I do not wish to hear of her! If she is all the world to you, why did you send me that little note? Why are you here?"
"Because we were once dear friends, Sonia," he said, "because I wish to save you from great trouble."
She shrank from him a little fearfully.
"What do you mean?"
"Sonia," he continued, with a note of sternness in his tone, "during the last two years you have gone back and forth between New York and Paris, six times. I do not think that you can make that journey again."
She was standing now, with one hand gripping the edge of the table.
"John! … John! … What do you mean?" she demanded, and this time her own voice was hard.
"I mean," he said, "that when you leave here for Paris you will be watched day and night. The moment you set foot upon French soil you will be arrested and searched. If anything is found upon you, such as a message from your friend in Washington—well, you know what it would mean. Can't you see, you foolish child, the risk you have been running? Would you care to be branded as a spy?—you, a daughter of France?"
She struck at him. Her lace sleeves had fallen back, and her white arm, with its little clenched fist, flashed through the twilight, aimlessly yet passionately.
"You dare to call me a spy! You, John?" she shrieked. "But it is horrible."
"It is the work of a spy," he told her gravely, "to bring a letter from any person in a friendly capital and deliver it to an enemy. That is what you have done, Sonia, many times since the beginning of the war, so far without detection. It is because you are Sonia that I have come to save you from doing it again."
She groped her way back to the couch. She threw herself upon it with her back towards him, her head buried in her hands.
"The letters are only between friends," she faltered. "They have nothing to do with the war."
"You may have believed that," Lutchester replied gently, "but it is not true. You have been made the bearer of confidential communications from the Austrian Embassy here to certain people in Paris whom we will not name. I have pledged my word, Sonia, that this shall cease."
She sprang to her feet. All the feline joy of her languorous ease seemed to have departed. She was quivering and nervous. She stood over her writing-table.
"A telegraph blank!" she exclaimed. "Quick! I will not see Maurice again. Oh, how I have suffered! This shall end it. See, I have written 'Good-by!' He will understand. If he comes, I will not see him. Ring the bell quickly. There—it is finished!"
A page-boy appeared, and she handed him the telegram. Then she turned a little pathetically to Lutchester.
"Maurice was foolish—very often foolish," she went on unsteadily, "but he has loved me, and a woman loves love so much. Now I shall be lonely. And yet, there is a great weight gone from my mind. Always I wondered about those letters. You will be my friend, John? You will not leave me all alone?"
He patted her hand.
"Dear Sonia," he whispered, "solitude is not the worst thing one has to bear, these days. Try and remember, won't you, that all the men who might have loved you are fighting for your country, one way or another."
"It is all so sad," she faltered, "and you—you are so stern and changed."
"It is with me only as it is with the whole world," he told her."To-night, though, you have relieved me of one anxiety."
Her eyes once more were for a moment frightened.
"There was danger for poor little me?"
He nodded.
"It is past," he assured her.
"And it is you who have saved me," she murmured. "Ah, Mr. John," she added, as she walked with him to the door, "if ever there comes to me a lover, not for the days only butpour la vie,I hope that he may be an Englishman like you, whom all the world trusts."
He laughed and raised her fingers to his lips.
"Over-faithful, you called us once," he reminded her.
"But that was when I was a child," she said, "and in days like these we are children no longer."
Lutchester left Sonia and the Ritz-Carlton a few minutes before midnight, to find a great yellow moon overhead, which seemed to have risen somewhere at the back of Central Park. The broad thoroughfare up which he turned seemed to have developed a new and unfamiliar beauty. The electric lamps shone with a pale and almost unnatural glow. The flashing lights of the automobiles passing up and down were almost whimsically unnecessary. Lutchester walked slowly up Fifth Avenue in the direction of his hotel.
Something—the beauty of the night, perhaps, or some faint aftermath of sentimentality born of Sonia's emotion—tempted him during those few moments to relax. He threw aside his mask and breathed the freer for it. Once more he was a human being, treading the streets of a real city, his feet very much upon the earth, his heart full of the simplest things. All the scheming of the last few days was forgotten, the great issues, the fine yet devious way to be steered amidst the rocks which beset him; even the depression of the calamitous news from the North Sea passed away. He was a very simple human being, and he was in love. It was all so unpractical, so illusionary, and yet so real. Events, actual happenings—he thrust all thoughts of these away from his mind. What she might be thinking of him at the moment he ignored. He was content to let his thoughts rest upon her, to walk through the moonlit street, his brain and heart revelling in that subtle facility of the imagination which brought her so easily to his presence. It was such a vividly real Pamela, too, who spoke and walked and moved by his side. His memory failed him nowhere, followed faithfully the kaleidoscopic changes in her face and tone, showed him even that long, grateful, searching glance when their eyes had met in Von Teyl's sitting-room. There had been times when she had shown clearly enough that she was anxious to understand, anxious to believe in him. He clung to the memory of these; pushed into the background that faint impression he had had of her at the roof-garden, serene and proud, yet with a faint look of something like pain in her startled eyes.
A large limousine passed him slowly, crawling up Fifth Avenue. Lutchester, with all his gifts of observation dormant, took no notice of its occupant, who leaned forward, raised the speaking-tube to his lips, and talked for a moment to his chauffeur. The car glided round a side street and came to a standstill against the curb. Its solitary passenger stepped quietly out and entered a restaurant. The chauffeur backed the car a little, slipped from his place, and followed Lutchester.
By chance the little throng of people here became thicker for a few moments and then ceased. Lutchester drew a little sigh of relief as he saw before him almost an empty pavement. Then, just as he was relapsing once more into thought, some part of his subconscious instinct suddenly leaped into warning life. Without any actual perception of what it might mean, he felt the thrill of imminent danger, connected it with that soft footfall behind him, and swung round in time to seize a deadly uplifted hand which seemed to end in a shimmer of dull steel. His assailant flung himself upon Lutchester with the lithe ferocity of a cat, clinging to his body, twisting and turning his arm to wrest it free. It was a matter of seconds only before his intended victim, with a fierce backward twist, broke the man's wrist and, wrenching himself free from the knees which clung around him, flung him forcibly against the railings which bordered the pavement. Lutchester paused for a moment to recover his breath and looked around. A man from the other side of the street was running towards them, but no one else seemed to have noticed the struggle which had begun and finished in less than thirty seconds. The man, who was half-way across the thoroughfare, suddenly stopped short. He shouted a warning to Lutchester, who swung around. His late assailant, who had been lying motionless, had raised himself slightly, with a revolver clenched in his left hand. Lutchester's spring on one side saved his life, for the bullet passed so close to his cheek that he felt the rush and heat of the air. The man in the center of the road was busy shouting an alarm vociferously, and other people on both sides of the thoroughfare were running up. Lutchester's eyes now never left the dark, doubled-up figure upon the pavement. His whole body was tense. He was prepared at the slightest movement to spring in upon his would-be murderer. The man's eyes seemed to be burning in his white face. He called out to Lutchester hoarsely.
"Don't move or I shall shoot!"
He looked up and down the street. One of the nearest of the hastening figures was a policeman. He turned the revolver against his own temple and pulled the trigger….
Lutchester and a policeman walked slowly back along Fifth Avenue. Behind them, a little crowd was still gathered around the spot from which the body of the dead man had already been removed in an ambulance.
"I really remember nothing," Lutchester told his companion, "until I heard the footsteps behind me, and, turning round, saw the knife. This is simply an impression of mine—that he might have descended from the car which passed me and stopped just round the corner of that street."
"He's a chauffeur, right enough," the inspector remarked. "It don't seem to have been a chance job, either. Looks as though he meant doing you in. Got any enemies?"
"None that I know of," Lutchester answered cautiously. "Why, the car's there still," he added, as they reached the corner.
"And no chauffeur," the other muttered.
The officer searched the car and drew out a license from the flap pocket. The commissionaire from the restaurant approached them.
"Say, what are you doing with that car?" he demanded.
"Better fetch the gentleman to whom it belongs," the inspector directed.
"What's up, anyway?" the man persisted.
"You do as you're told," was the sharp reply.
The commissionaire disappeared. The officer studied the license which he had just opened.
"What's the name?" Lutchester inquired.
The man hesitated for a moment, then passed it over.
"Oscar H. Fischer," he said. "Happen to know the name?"
Lutchester's face was immovable. He passed the license back again. They both turned round. Mr. Fischer had issued from the restaurant.
"What's wrong?" he asked hastily. "The commissionaire says you want me,Mr. Officer?"
The inspector produced his pocketbook.
"Just want to ask you a few questions about your chauffeur, sir."
Fischer glanced at the driver's seat of the car, as though aware of the man's disappearance for the first time.
"What's become of the fellow?" he inquired.
"Shot himself," the inspector replied, "after a deliberate attempt to murder this gentleman."
Mr. Fischer's composure was admirable. There was a touch of gravity mingled with his bewilderment. Nevertheless, he avoided meeting Lutchester's eyes.
"You horrify me!" he exclaimed. "Why, the fellow's only been driving for me for a few hours."
"That so?" the officer remarked, with a grunt. "Get any references with him?"
"As a matter of fact, I did not," Fischer admitted frankly. "I discharged my chauffeur yesterday, at a moment's notice, and this man happened to call just as I was wanting the car out this afternoon. He promised to bring me references to-morrow from Mr. Gould and others. I engaged him on that understanding. He told me that his name was Kay— Robert Kay. That is all that I know about him, except that he was an excellent driver. I am exceedingly sorry Mr. Lutchester," he went on, turning towards him, "that this should have happened."
"So you two know one another, eh?" the officer observed.
"Oh, yes, we know one another!" Lutchester admitted drily.
"I shall have to ask you both for your names and addresses," the official continued. "I think I won't ask you any more questions at present. Seems to me headquarters had better take this on."
"I shall be quite at your service," Lutchester promised.
The man made a few more notes, saluted, and took his leave. Fischer andLutchester remained for a moment upon the pavement.
"It is a dangerous custom," Lutchester remarked, "to take a servant without a reference."
"It will be a warning to me for the remainder of my life," Fischer declared.
"I, too, have learnt something," Lutchester concluded, as he turned away.