CHAPTER XVIII
For the twentieth time Miss Eleanor Byrd peered out of the second story front window, and turned back with a sigh to where her aunt sat in the soft glow of the lamp.
“What can he want, auntie? What can he want?” she repeated, also for the twentieth time.
The elder Miss Byrd did not speak for an instant. “I hope he doesn’t wantanything,” she burst out at last. “I wish you had never written to him. It is bad enough that your sister should be connected with that awful paper of his—”
“Now, auntie!” Nellie’s eyes danced. “Now, auntie, did you ever see a copy of the Gazette in your life? Honestly, now?”
Miss Byrd flushed—a lovely pink flush, like that of a Dresden shepherdness grown old. “Of course not,” she answered indignantly. “Of course not. Your grandfather would never allow me to read papers of that sort—”
“Of what sort, auntie,” innocently.
“Ofthatsort,” returned Miss Byrd decisively.“It’s terrible that Lillian should write for it. No one who conducts a paper like that can be a gentleman! Look what the President has said about him! He has branded him as undesirable—undesirable—and my own niece writes to such a man. And he ventures to telegraph—telegraph—to make an appointment with her.”
Nellie laughed softly. She began to say something; then jumped up and ran to the window and peered out behind the edge of the blind. An instant later she came back.
“Another false alarm, auntie!” she said. “Maybe you’re going to have your wish, and he won’t come at all. But”—she paused and suddenly dropped on her knees beside the elder woman’s chair. “Dear auntie,” she murmured, softly. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry to grieve you. I know you don’t approve of what Lillian is doing—”
“Nellie!” Miss Lee’s tone was shocked.
“Oh! It’s true, auntie. You’re always thinking that gentlewomen don’t do such things and yet you are always perfectly certain that Lilly must be a gentlewoman because she is a Byrd. Well! auntie! Neither Lilly nor I are gentlewomen. We may be ladies—I hope we are—but we’re not gentlewomen. There are no gentlewomenin these days. They went out of existence with crinoline—except where they survive in such delightful creatures as you. No gentlewoman earns her own living, and Lilly and I have got to earn ours. Times have changed, auntie, dear! This branch of the Byrd family is poor, dead poor. Lilly threw herself into the breach and is making lots of money, while I barely starve along. I’m tired of it, and if Mr. McNew wants my services, he can have them, at a price.” A twinkle came into the girl’s eyes. “I hope he won’t want me to go a-burgling, and then tell what it feels like,” she finished.
“Nellie!”
“Oh! I was only joking, you dear old thing!”
“I know, dear!” returned the older lady, plaintively. “But do you think it’s quite proper to jest on such subjects? I can’t bear to think of such a thing. Oh! if you—” She broke off as the front bell rang, loudly and insistently.
Nellie Byrd sprang to her feet.
“It’s they,” she cried, darting to the door. Then she came back. “Dear auntie!” she breathed. “It’s all right. Don’t worry.” Then she tripped down the stairs to admit her visitors.
McNew entered first—a big rough-looking manwith a pointed beard. “Miss Byrd?” he questioned.
“Yes! You are Mr. McNew, I suppose. Won’t you come in?”
Mr. McNew strode in. “This is Mr. Risdon, Miss Byrd,” he explained. “He tries to run the Gazette’s Washington office.”
Miss Byrd’s eyes rested kindly on the correspondent. “I know Mr. Risdon by sight,” she explained. “No one could be a social secretary in Washington without knowing him. My sister Lillian has written me about him, too. Won’t you sit down, gentlemen?”
“Thank you!” Risdon drew forward a chair and the three disposed themselves.
McNew wasted no time in preliminaries. He was a busy man, and had no time to spare.
“Miss Byrd,” he began, as soon as he was seated. “Some time ago I received an application from you for work? Do you still want it?”
Miss Byrd nodded. “Very much,” she said. “I hope you have some for me.”
“That depends! Your sister has done very good work for the Gazette. Risdon here suggested sending her to South America. He and she both fooled me; they got me to send her for one thing, andthey arranged for her to do another. But she’s done both very well.”
“I’m glad!”
“That’s one reason why I’m inclined to give you a chance. I am told that you speak German fluently, Miss Byrd.”
Nellie nodded. “About as well as I do English,” she declared.
“Very good! If you will apply tomorrow to Senator Pratt—you know his address—he will engage you as his daughter’s social secretary at twenty-five dollars a week. The Gazette will pay you forty dollars more.”
Nellie Byrd’s pale face bloomed with sudden vivid color. McNew staring at her, read her thoughts, and smiled grimly. He enjoyed startling people.
“What’s the matter?” he demanded.
Nellie’s color receded, leaving her pale. She looked at McNew thoughtfully, apparently trying to fathom him.
“I hoped you could give me a chance to try something besides acting as social secretary,” she syllabled, slowly. “But beggars mustn’t be choosers. I understand the twenty-five dollars, but why the forty. What service do I render the Gazettewhen I am acting as social secretary for Senator Pratt.”
McNew watched the light coming and going behind the girl’s clear blue eyes. “For the forty dollars,” he answered, slowly. “I wish you to watch and report to me every act of the Countess del Ouro Preto, who is spending the winter with Miss Pratt? Will you do it?”
“No!” If Nellie Byrd was disappointed, she concealed the fact well. Her voice came as calm as ever. “You are mistaken in me, Mr. McNew. I am not a spy.”
“Why not?” McNew shot the question at her. “Why not? Why not? Tell me why not.”
“It is not honorable.”
“Honorable! Honorable! Was Nathan Hale dishonorable? Was Major Andree dishonorable?”
Miss Byrd shook her head. “They were soldiers. What they did they did for their country. That fact glorified their acts. They were not newspaper spies.”
McNew hitched his chair forward. His eyes glowed. “Miss Byrd,” he said, slowly. “In watching the Countess del Ouro Preto you will probably be doing a service to your country scarcely less than that of a spy in a war. You will notbe risking death, but you will be risking your social standing, which you would probably lose if it became known that you were a Gazette spy. I have reason to believe that the countess is the channel of communication between the German and the Japanese Ambassadors in a plot to humiliate the United States—perhaps to involve it in war. I want to know the truth; I want to know it in order to get an exclusive story for the Gazette. But I want still more to know it for the sake of the United States. The Monroe doctrine—But Risdon will explain that to you.”
Miss Byrd turned to Risdon while McNew leaned back and watched the changes flit over her delicate face as the younger man talked. A new shade of earnestness, altogether charming, crept over it toward the end.
Risdon went over the situation as he understood it to exist. He told of the petition of the Ouro Pretos to the Emperor and its supposed result; of the rebellion that broke out shortly afterwards in Brazil; of the visit (reported by a Gazette correspondent) of the Countess to Japan; of her return to the United States and of her alleged conferences with the Japanese and German ambassadors; and called attention to the growing excitementin California growing out of the strike and boycott that was being enforced against the Japanese restaurants, and out of the denial of public school privileges to the Japanese in San Francisco.
McNew broke in. “Your sister,” he said, “has sent some incendiary yarns from Brazil—which I have not printed. Yesterday she cabled the worst of all. She’s on her way home now, by the way.”
Nellie’s eyes brightened. “Oh! is she?” she cried. “I’m so glad. I didn’t know.”
“Nobody knew. Risdon here didn’t know till he heard me tell you. And it’s just as well to talk about it. It mightn’t do any harm and again it might. She’s coming on the same ship with Ouro Preto!”
“Oh!” Miss Byrd’s tones were significant and not altogether approving.
But McNew settled back in his chair. “Go on, Risdon,” he ordered.
Risdon resumed. “There really isn’t much more to say,” he declared. “Altogether the circumstances are very suspicious. Singly they amount to nothing, together they may amount to a good deal. The countess is a very clever woman, and we believe that she is the mainspring of the plot and isdoing some very important work in connection with it in this country, and we want to find out what this work is.”
Miss Byrd had followed the argument closely. “And then?” she questioned, calmly, when Risdon finished.
“Then we will print it. It will be a great scoop for the Gazette, of course. But it may also mean salvation for the country.”
“And,” broke in McNew, “You don’t want to run away with the idea that you are betraying your employer. Old Pratt will know what your errand in his house is.”
“Oh!” Miss Byrd’s face cleared. “That changes the case,” she conceded.
“Of course! You see Risdon here got scared, and wired a lot of stuff last night that brought me down to Washington in a hurry. I saw Pratt this morning and reasoned with him. He’s willing enough to oblige the Gazette, Pratt is. Besides, he had his suspicions already. Pratt’s no fool, you understand. No fool ever gets to be United States Senator nowadays. Pratt’s got the far west idea of women, and he doesn’t understand the type of the countess. She doesn’t understand him either, however. So it’s a stand off. The upshot is thathe agreed to my terms. He won’t discuss it with you, though! To him you will be his daughter’s social secretary and nothing else, and you’ve got to attend to your duties as such; what else you may do he doesn’t care. Now—Will you do it?”
McNew rose, and Miss Byrd did so also. “Yes,” she said, slowly. “I will do it!”
“Good! Then the first thing you have to do is to forget that you know German.”