CHAPTER XXIII
Leaning alternately to right and to left to meet the roll of the ship, Ouro Preto made his way along the deck of the Southern Cross, his eyes fixed on a vacant chair by Lillian Byrd’s side. Miss Byrd saw him coming, and longed to escape, but could not do so.
She did not wish to talk with the count, although she had come on board the Southern Cross at Buenos Ayres for the express purpose of obtaining from him certain knowledge that she felt sure that he possessed. For three weeks she had been working, quietly and unobtrusively but effectively, to gain it, and when she saw him approaching she felt that success was about to crown her efforts.
Yet in that moment of prospective triumph contrition seized her, and she looked down, panic-stricken, striving to gain time.
Dismayed, she asked herself why she should hesitate. It was not from any pity for Ouro Preto. Pity is the only for the weak and Ouro Preto wasnot weak. Nor did her hesitation arise from sympathy or friendship. Miss Byrd was experienced enough to know that no woman could feel either sympathy or friendship for Ouro Preto except at her peril; besides, she told herself that she did not even like him. His attitude toward her irritated her; and his pride, based on his father’s wealth and his mother’s ancestry, was as offensive as it was unconscious.
Nor was she ashamed of her work; at least, she had never been so before.
Miss Byrd did not know why she hesitated and the fact that she did hesitate both angered and frightened her.
Ouro Preto did not realize the situation. His admiration for Miss Byrd had begun long before in Berlin and had steadily increased since the day he had come on board the Southern Cross and found her, and had grown intense as the voyage wore on. When the ship reached Barbadoes, at which island he had expected to transfer to his own yacht, which had come from Hamburg to meet him, he had been unable to tear himself away from the fascinating American and had decided to go on to New York on the Southern Cross and sail for Germany from there. Again and again hehad striven to place his relations with her on a sentimental footing, but always she evaded him, and the closing days of the voyage found him uncertain as to her feelings and determined to bring matters to a climax. He never guessed that it was on just this that Miss Byrd was counting.
When he reached her chair, he stood over it until he forced her to raise her eyes. Then he bowed. “May I sit down?” he asked.
For a moment the girl did not answer. Then she put out her hand and pushed the chair near her an inch or two farther away. “The chair belongs to the ship and the deck belongs to whomever occupies it,” she replied coldly, though her heart was fluttering.
The smile faded from Ouro Preto’s face. “Oh! but why are you so cruel,” he cried, wildly. “What have I done to anger you? Is it that my love offends you?”
Miss Byrd gasped. “I am not offended at all,” she answered briskly, ignoring the suggestion in the young fellow’s last words. “I am merely tired—bored if you will—by the length of this never-ending voyage. I am a very bad-tempered young woman, senor; and if you knew me at all well you would realize how unpleasant I am likely to bewhen I am bored.” The girl spoke hurriedly, feeling for words which would not be too rude and which might yet stave off the proposal which she felt was imminent.
But Ouro Preto was not to be stopped. “I do not believe it, senorita,” he babbled. “No, I do not believe it. You are altogether sweet and lovely—fit for a duchess. And I can make you one, senorita. Great things are impending. A few weeks more and I will be a duke and—”
His words steadied the girl. “Stop!” she cried. “I will not listen. I am not the inexperienced girl you think me. I am—”
“You are the one woman for me. You do not love me, senorita. I know it. But I can teach you to love me if you will give me the chance. And I can give you much—much. I do not speak of money—no! no! do not think of it! Money is nothing! I can give you more than money. I can give you position, rank, fame.”
Miss Byrd forced a laugh. “Where?” she demanded. “In Brazil?”
“In Brazil, yes, at first; then where you will. Listen, senorita, my mother is descended from the princely German house of Hochstein, now extinct in the male line. The emperor is about to reviveits honors and vest them in me—in me, do you understand. And this is not all. I am at the head of a great movement. Since I was a boy of sixteen I have been laboring for it, and now at last the time is ripe. Only one obstacle remains, and I am about to sweep it aside. Then—then—”
The man’s eyes burned: his breath came hot and fast. His tones carried the intoxication of assured success.
“It is a great game and a great stake,” he hurried on. “A great game. Its web involves four continents; it stretches from Brazil across both the Atlantic and the Pacific and far to the northward. And at its center I sit. Strand by strand I have woven it and tested it. It cannot break. Why! see here!”
He thrust his hand into his pocket and drew out a paper, which he tore apart with shaking fingers. “See!” he cried. “See what the emperor has written. With his own hand he has written it! Read! Read!”
The girl pushed away his hand. “No! No!” she cried. “I won’t read! I won’t listen.”
But the man would not be denied. “Read! Read!” he clamored. “Read! See what the emperor promises.” Determinedly he thrust the paperbefore her eyes, and held it there while its words burned themselves into the girl’s brain, never to be forgotten.
“You see! You see!” he cried.
Miss Byrd drew back. Her brain was whirling. Half understood facts and unintelligible rumors had suddenly blended into a comprehensive whole. Rutile’s fancies had become facts—the facts of a great political conspiracy. It was not merely what Ouro Preto had said; taken alone that might be set down as the vaporings of a dreamer who took wishes and fancies for facts. But dreamers do not receive letters such as his from the Kaiser; and their dreams are not corroborated by a horde of apparently unrelated facts such as Miss Byrd had in her possession.
The man was still speaking. “Only one thing remains in my way now,” he triumphed. “Nothing but these cursed Yankees can oppose me. And now I am going to draw their teeth. Too long have they assumed to control the destinies of all the Americans. Too long have they stood in my way. Now—now I am about to eliminate them—to crush them if they dare to interpose. Thank God you are English—”
“But I am not English!”
The man started back. “Not English!” he babbled. “Not English! Are you not the niece of Lord Maxwell?”
“No! I am—I am—Count! I have deceived you. I have let you think me English. I knew you had a secret and I wanted to wheedle it out of you. I am ashamed—ashamed. I don’t know why! I never was ashamed of my work before. But I am now. You cannot say anything too bad for me. I deserve it all.” The girl bowed her head and her shoulders shook.
The man caught her wrist, and spun her around to face him. “You are a government spy?” he demanded desperately.
The girl shook her head. “No! I am a newspaper woman.”
The man’s bowed shoulders suddenly straightened. Hope sprang up in him. “A newspaper woman! Then—then—Come! That is not so bad. You can resign and marry me.”
But Lillian shook her head. “No! No! I cannot,” she murmured. “I am sorry, but—I cannot.”
Ouro Preto stared at her. Then: “Well? Let that go for the moment. Later—But now—See? I am rich! very rich! I will pay you two—threeyears’ salary and you will forget all that I have said. It is a bargain? No?”
But the girl bowed her head miserably. “Oh!” she cried. “I have fallen low—low! I said you could say nothing too hard for me to hear, but I never dreamed that you—you of all men—would offer me money! that you should think me for sale. I am shamed. I have had to earn my own living and I have done it. I have gone on from step to step, not realizing. But, believe me, I never did anything quite so indefensible as this before. I never tricked a man’s love to get his secret before.”
The man was listening intently. But his thoughts were clearly of himself, and not of her. He seemed to have forgotten the words of love that he had breathed only a few moments before. When he spoke his tones still trembled, but with an emotion very different from love.
“Then you will not forget?” he asked.
“How can I?” whispered the girl, miserably. “If I only could! But I can’t! I can’t. I can resign and I will. I shall give nothing to the paper about you. If your secret were almost anything but what it is, I would repeat it to no one. But”—the girl’s figure straightened—“but you are plottingagainst my country! and I must warn those who should know. I must! I must! You see that, don’t you, Count?”
Pleadingly she leaned forward and gazed up into his face.
“You would not have me a traitor, would you?” she questioned, pitifully. “I don’t know just what you and your emperor are plotting, but I can guess and I must report it. Why! count, my ancestors have been Americans for nearly three hundred years. They have been soldiers, statesman, patriots! I can’t be the first of my line to play the traitor. I can’t let the Emperor William plot against my country without warning.”
The man forced a laugh. “Plots! Plots! What are you talking about? There is no plot. Only a—a—oh, nothing at all. It is only a—a diplomatic errand to your State Department. Surely it needs no warning against my diplomacy. Plots! Heavens! What sort of a plot could Germany carry through against the United States. Your strenuous President would smash any plot in a moment, even at the cost of war. And do you think Germany wants war? No! No! a thousand times no. It is only a diplomatic triumph that I seek to win. To lose it would discredit me for alltime. You do not wish for that! No! No! senorita! Your government needs no help from you. Let it play its own game.”
But the girl shook her head. In her mind’s eye she saw the web of which Ouro Preto had spoken. Wide and strong it stretched over half the world. Beneath its shadow she could see the flash of cannon and the smoke of ruined cities, with half the world bathed in blood.
The vision faded. Once more she saw the swaying deck, flashing waves, the masts and funnels tracing wide arcs across the blue firmament. Ouro Preto was still speaking; he was asking her something—something that she could not understand. With new eyes she looked upon him. All fascination, all liking, all friendship had vanished. She could see only the enemy with whom she must cope. Blindly she struggled to her feet, pushed past the man’s opposing arms and fled away to her stateroom.
That night she sent the long wireless message that McNew showed to the President.