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It is a passage which might well be haunted with memories of the famous courtesans, dignitaries, criminals "de luxe" and aristocrats of the world,—the long straight stretch of passage leading from the Hotel de Paris to the International Sporting Club of Monte Carlo. Nevertheless it seemed to Grant Slattery a strange place for this meeting which, during his last two years' wandering about Europe, he had dreaded more than anything else on earth. Complete recognition came slowly. Each slackened speed as the distance between them diminished. When they came to a standstill there was a moment's silence.
"Gertrude!" he exclaimed.
"Grant!" she murmured.
The purely automatic exercise of this conventional exchange of greetings helped him at first through what must always have been a bitter and terrible moment. For though Grant Slattery had every quality which goes to the making of a man, he had also, about some things, a woman's sensitiveness.
"It is a long time," she said softly.
"Time is entirely relative," he remarked didactically.
She seemed a little helpless. It was an embarrassing situation for her and a painful one for him, this encounter with the girl who had jilted him publicly in the face of all Washington society and eloped with his rival This meeting in the curved archway passage with a flunkey at either end was the first since he had taken leave of her at her house one night three years ago, after an evening at the opera. She had lain in his arms for a moment, her lips had met his willingly—even as he had often remembered since—with a touch of somewhat rare passion. And on the morrow she had become the Princess von Diss and had sailed for Berlin.
"This was bound to happen some day," she said, regaining her self-possession almost to the point of calmness. "I hope that you are going to be nice to me."
"I was prepared even to be grateful," he answered, with a little bow. "Alas! now that I see you I find it impossible."
"Very nice indeed," she approved. "I don't think I have changed much, have I?"
"You're looking more beautiful than ever," he assured her.
She smiled. His eyes told her that he spoke the truth.
"And you," she went on, "you're just the same—a little more dignified perhaps. They tell me that you have left the diplomatic service. Is that so?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"No work left," he replied. "We move on towards the millennium."
Their eyes met for a moment. There was a silent question in hers which he ignored.
"Where were you going?" she enquired.
"I've been lunching at the Club," he answered. "I was just going to stroll across to the tennis courts for an hour."
"You can come to the Rooms with me instead," she suggested. "We will find two chairs and talk for a little time. We can't part like this."
He hesitated.
"Am I likely to meet your husband?"
"My husband is not in Monte Carlo at present. I hope you're not going to be horrid about him, Grant—you won't want to fight a duel or anything of that sort?"
"If I had felt that way about it," he answered, "it would have been at an earlier stage of the proceedings. A woman has a right to change her mind. I have harboured no grievance against any one."
He turned with her and they made their way to the Bar, almost deserted at that early hour, for it was barely four o'clock, and the Rooms were only just opened. They found two comfortable chairs and sat for a few moments in silence. Each was taking stock of the other. He had spoken the truth when he had declared that she was more beautiful than ever. She was very fair, her complexion exquisitely creamy, with scarcely a tinge of colour. Her eyes were so deep a blue that they seemed at times almost to attain to that rare and wonderful shade commonly termed violet. Her hair was yellow, the colour of the faint gold in the morning sky. Her lips were a little fuller than the delicacy of her features required, but beautifully shaped. Her figure he thought improved. She still possessed the grace of long limbs and a slender body, but she had passed from a threatened thinness to a gracious but still delicate shapeliness. He looked admiringly at her beautiful fingers as she withdrew her gloves.
"You always liked my hands," she murmured, studying them for a moment.
His eyes were fixed upon a ring she wore,—a thin platinum guard with a single beautifully set pearl. She smiled at him.
"Terribly wrong of me to keep it, I know," she admitted. "But I have. Do you want it back, Grant?"
"No," he answered, a little brusquely. "But—"
"But what?"
"I am not going to flirt with you," he declared.
She threw her head back and laughed.
"The same familiar Grant, honest to the point of pugnacity. Why, my dear man, how do you ever expect to shine as a diplomatist?"
"I have given up the idea," he reminded her.
"So you are not going to flirt with me," she sighed.
He avoided the challenge of her eyes, secretly delighted that he found it so easy.
"Since we are here, we must order something," he insisted, summoning the waiter. "The fellow has been watching us reproachfully for the last five minutes."
"It's very early, but I'll have some tea," she acquiesced resignedly.
Grant gave the order and turned back to his companion. He was forced to make conversation in order to avoid drifting too readily into the intimacies of the past.
"You find life amusing in Berlin?" he asked politely.
"Not at all. Berlin bores me. That is why I'm here. And I can see perfectly well that you are going to do your best to bore me too. I am disappointed in you."
"That," he complained, "is a little hard. Now that I am a free man, I am full of intelligent interest in Berlin. I hoped that you might gratify my curiosity."
"You were there yourself for two years," she reminded him drily.
"But that was five years ago. The evidences of what I suppose must be called the Royalist movement had only just then begun to appear. Prince Frederick, for instance, was still at school—he had scarcely shown himself in public. Now they tell me that he is almost a popular idol."
Gertrude von Diss gazed thoughtfully into her little gold mirror and used her powder puff with discretion.
"My husband being a member of the Government," she said, "I never discuss politics. I wonder if I shall find a place at one of the baccarat tables. I have lost so much in my small way at roulette that I think I shall give it up for a time. It is not amusing to lose always."
"I'll go and see, if you like," he offered politely.
"Presently. Tell me about yourself. Why did you give up the Diplomatic Service?"
"Because there are no diplomatic activities left nowadays for the citizens of the United States," he replied. "The whole world has become a gigantic mart for tradespeople to buy, sell, and exchange wares. Consuls can do our business. And then I came into the Van Roorden money and turned lazy, I suppose."
"I don't follow you at all," she declared. "Even if commercial achievement has become the guiding lamp of the world, I don't in the least know what you mean by saying that there is no diplomacy left for the United States. Commerce is one of the chief reasons for diplomatic exchanges, isn't it? I know my adopted country people think so."
He shrugged his shoulders.
"Very likely," he confessed. "Don't take me too seriously. I was only inventing a justification for my laziness."
She indulged in a little grimace.
"You are distressingly uncommunicative," she observed. "I begin to suspect that we are both very clever people. All the same," she went on reflectively, "I don't see why we shouldn't exchange confidences. It might be amusing."
"It wouldn't be a fair bargain," he assured her. "Your husband holds a high official position in Berlin. He must be brought into touch with people who are intimately acquainted with the trend of political thought in every country. I am nobody and I know nobody."
A smile played for a moment at the corners of her lips.
"You have developed a new and most becoming trait," she declared. "You're the first modest man I've met for years. We don't raise them in Berlin."
"The conceit passed out of my system three years and two months ago," he answered a little bitterly.
She laid her hand upon his. Her voice was almost caressing.
"There is something I shall tell you about that, some day," she promised, "something which will help you to understand. Meanwhile try and believe that I too have suffered. I was not so callous as I seemed."
The old spell was upon him for a moment but he told himself that it was only his senses which were enchained; the rest of him was free.
"I am glad to hear that," he told her with well-simulated indifference.
The room was invaded by a crowd of young people, mostly in flannels, who had evidently come down from the tennis courts. The young woman who seemed to be the ringleader of their gaiety—a very attractive looking young person indeed in her white tennis clothes and smart hat—flashed a smile of welcome at Grant as she entered the room. The smile was modified as she glanced a little curiously at his companion. When they had settled down for tea at an adjacent table, however, she looked over her shoulder.
"We are having a riotous party to-night," she announced, "dining first at the Villa, coming down here and going on to dance somewhere afterwards. Will you be my escort?"
"With the utmost pleasure," he assented promptly. "But sha'n't I be getting into trouble? What about Bobby?"
She shook her head dolefully and dropped her voice.
"Misbehaved," she confided. "Seen at Nice when he ought to have been playing tennis, yesterday afternoon—terrible! Something Russian, covered with jewels! Bobby can't afford that sort of thing, you know. We're sending him to Coventry for at least two days."
"Poor fellow!" Grant murmured sympathetically.
"Don't be a hypocrite," the girl laughed. "You know you're glad. I don't think I shall ever look at him again. And I'm all rebound! Not later than eight-thirty dinner, please. Dad told me that he wanted to see you, but we're not going to leave you at home to study bridge problems."
"I shall be punctual," Grant assured her.
"Can't talk any more," she concluded, turning away. "These greedy people are eating up all the chocolate éclairs. As it is, every one's had more than his share. You are a pig, Arthur!"
"Who is she?" Gertrude enquired under her breath. "I dislike her anyhow. I wanted you to dine with me."
"I don't know whether I ought to apologize," he observed, "for having lost the American habit of introducing. Her name is Susan Yeovil. She's very charming and very popular. Her little set keep things moving down here."
"Is she by any chance the daughter of the English Prime Minister?" Gertrude asked eagerly.
Grant nodded.
"Lord Yeovil is down here for the International Congress," he replied. "They have a villa at Cap Martin."
"What does he want to see you for?"
"I thought that you might have learnt our secret from what Lady Susan said," he confided. "We solve the 'Field' bridge problems together. Very interesting, some of them."
"You're simply horrid," she declared impatiently.
It was the old pout which he remembered so well and a momentary tenderness beset him. He crushed it back.
"What are you in Monte Carlo for alone, just now, Gertrude?" he demanded, turning the tables upon her.
She drew a newspaper cutting from a thin gold card-case and handed it to him. It contained a list of visitors at the various Riviera hotels, his own name amongst them—underlined. He took the slip of paper from her fingers and looked at it long and earnestly. Then he handed it back without remark.
"That is why I came," she confessed. "It is perhaps just as foolish an impulse as the impulse which swept me off my feet and made a horrible woman of me three years and two months ago. But it came and I yielded to it. And now, the first night that I am here, you are dining out. You actually accept an invitation from that forward young woman whilst you are sitting by my side."
He smiled imperturbably. His impulse of tenderness had passed. He knew now why she had come, and the knowledge gave him an advantage. She had no idea that she had betrayed herself.
"I told you that I had lost my conceit," he said, "and I am not going to take you literally. There is no hardship, you see, in exchanging Berlin for Monte Carlo in February."
"There are other places on the Riviera," she reminded him. "We have a villa at Cannes and quite a number of friends there. Let me know the worst, Grant. What about to-morrow?"
"To-morrow I am entirely at your service," he replied, "except for the matter of some tennis in the afternoon. We must lunch together."
She sighed contentedly.
"You aren't going to be absolutely horrid, then?"
"I couldn't be for long," he assured her. "All the same, I am afraid that I'm running a terrible risk."
Again the smile—and with it the little stab at his heart. He was a man with instincts of faithfulness.
"I may be running that risk myself," she whispered.
Presently Grant and his companion rose and moved to the Rooms, crowded now with a strange medley of people, men and women of every nationality, and speaking every tongue, differing racially but brought into a curious affinity,—the women by the great dress-makers of the world, the men by the unwritten laws of Saville Row. The corner in which they found themselves was an auspicious one and they stood for a moment or two looking on. They themselves were the objects of some attention. Gertrude, after her last season divided between London and Paris, had become recognised as a beauty of almost European fame. Her companion—Mr. Grant P. Slattery was the name upon his visiting card—had also acquaintances in most of the capitals of the world. In a way he was a good foil to the woman by whose side he stood,—a tall, good-looking young American, a little slimmer than the usual type, looking somewhat older than his thirty years, perhaps because of a certain travelled air, a quiet assurance born of his brief but successful diplomatic career in three of the great capitals.
"My adopted country people are back again in force," Gertrude remarked.
"They interest me more than any other people here," Grant confessed. "It is as though the nation had changed its type."
"Explain yourself, please," she invited.
"I must speak frankly if I do," he warned her.
"As frankly as you please. I hold no brief for my husband's country people. I like some of them and hate others."
"Well, then," he continued, "it seems to me that the women are no longer blowsy and florid and over-dressed, the men no longer push their way and swagger. Somehow or other the women have learnt how to dress and the men have acquired manners. They are not in the least like the travelling Germans of say thirty years ago—just before the war."
"They are feeling their way," she remarked cynically.
He looked down at her with the air of one who has listened to wise words. In reality, it was he who was feeling his way.
"I am not so sure," he reflected. "I wonder sometimes whether the whole nation has not changed, whether the war did not purge them of their boastfulness and conceit, whether this present generation has not acquired a different and a less offensive outlook."
"Do you really believe that?" she asked.
"I am simply speculating," he answered. "To begin with there is a great change in your aristocracy. Young Prince Frederick, for instance. Every one says that he has modelled himself exactly upon what the present King Edward VIII of England was like when he was a lad of twenty. All the older statesmen tell us that he was the most popular young man in the civilised world, modest, democratic, charming. These are not Teutonic qualities, you know, but your Prince Frederick is certainly developing them."
"I wonder," she murmured.
"Tell me, what is your own attitude towards your husband's country people?" he went on, almost bluntly. "Do you like them or don't you? And, more important still, do you believe in them or don't you?"
She looked around her a little nervously. The Rooms were thronged with people but the corner in which they were standing was still almost isolated.
"My friend," she confided, "I am a simple woman and not a psychologist. I live amongst the German people. I do not dislike them as I am sure I should have disliked the Germans of thirty years ago, but I do not understand them. You must remember that of the Germans who made their country the most hated in the world before the war of nineteen-fourteen, I naturally knew nothing. I wasn't even born when the Peace of Versailles was signed. The German of those days is, so far as I am concerned, as extinct as the dodo!"
"If he is not extinct," Grant said, "he is at least not in the limelight."
"He has perhaps learnt to wear the sheep's clothing," she suggested. "You will not be able to induce me to say one word either for or against these people whom I confess that I do not understand. If you would really like to know all about them," she went on, "shall we ask the one man who ought to know? Have you ever met Prince Lutrecht?"
"Never," Grant replied. "I know of him, of course, and I have heard Lord Yeovil speak of him several times lately. They meet most days, of course, at Nice."
"I shall present you," she promised. "You will find him a most interesting and delightful man, and, if my husband is to be believed, it is he who, for the next generation, will decide the destinies of his country."
"It will give me great pleasure to meet him," Grant assured her. "He was not in office when I was in Berlin but I remember being told he had a great dislike to America and Americans."
She shrugged her shoulders.
"His father was of the Hohenzollern régime," she remarked, "and the Republican Government of to-day is a bitter pill for the aristocracy of a score of generations. He seems to be alone just now. Wait until I call you."
She crossed the room and was welcomed cordially by a tall, exceedingly aristocratic-looking man, apparently about sixty years of age, dressed with the utmost care, handsome and with a charming smile. A moment or two later he made his way with Gertrude by his side to where Grant was standing. He brushed aside Gertrude's formal introduction.
"I had interests in the Foreign Office at Berlin when Mr. Slattery was at the American Embassy," he said. "I remember him quite well. I regret very much to hear that you have left the Service, Mr. Slattery. We need all the help we can get nowadays from Americans of your status and culture."
"Germany has shown lately that she needs no help from any one, sir," Grant replied.
The Prince smiled gravely.
"You are very kind. There is no power on earth which could hinder the German people from attaining to their destiny. But we need understanding and we need sympathy. We are not always represented to our friends as we would wish. I hope that I shall see more of you in Monte Carlo, Mr. Slattery. I am staying at the Villa Monaco and shall be glad to receive your visit. I am usually to be found at home, at any time when the Congress at Nice is not sitting."
He passed on, with a low bow and a whispered farewell to Gertrude, leaving in Grant's mind a curious impression of unfriendliness, for which he could not in the least account. Even his civility had seemed unnatural.
"They say that he is to be our next President," Gertrude confided.
Her companion watched the Prince thoughtfully as the latter paused to accept the greetings of a friend.
"I don't think I ever met a man who looked so ill-fitted to be the President of a great democracy," he remarked drily.
"Could you think of a more suitable post for him?"
He nodded.
"I could more easily imagine him the Mephistophelian chancellor of an autocrat."
"Back in the Hohenzollern days?"
"Or in the days which may be in store for us," he replied.
She looked into the baccarat room.
"An empty place at my favourite table!" she exclaimed. "Call on me early to-morrow, Grant, and we'll plan something. Forgive my hurrying. I can't afford to miss this."
He watched her pass into the outer room and seat herself contentedly in the vacant place. Then he strolled from table to table, risking a louis now and then, but scarcely waiting to see the result. A spirit of restlessness pursued him. He stood aloof for some minutes, watching Gertrude immersed in the baccarat. Then he wandered into the Bar, where Susan Yeovil presently found him. She sank into a chair by his side.
"Broke!" she announced ruefully, turning her little handbag inside out. "Not a louis left, and the others won't be ready to go home for an hour yet."
"Can I be of any assistance?" he ventured.
She shook her head.
"I've been too nicely brought up. I couldn't possibly borrow money from you. Tell me about the beautiful lady."
"She was very well known three or four years ago in Washington as Gertrude Butler," Grant confided. "She is the woman to whom I was engaged and who married Prince Otto von Diss."
She was instantly grave.
"You poor thing!" she exclaimed. "How horrid for you meeting her like that. Did you mind much?"
"I don't know," he replied. "I was asking myself that question as you came up. I have never been able to analyse exactly my feeling for her, either during those days of our engagement or since. I was very much in love with her, if that counts for anything."
"It doesn't," she assured him. "Being in love is just a spring disease. I fancied myself in love with Bobby before I heard of him advertising himself with that Russian lady in Nice. Six sets of tennis this afternoon, three éclairs and the cocktail you are going to give me presently have completely cured me."
"Fancy intruding your own experiences in such a serious matter! You are only a child," he reminded her with a smile.
"I'm nineteen," she retorted. "Surely that is old enough for anything. I am of age for the great passion itself, if only it would arrive, and arrive quickly. I believe I heard that croupier call out number fourteen. I know I shall end by besmirching my good name and borrowing a louis from you."
He laid a handful of notes upon the table beside them. She shook her head again.
"Don't tempt me," she begged. "Besides, I think I would rather talk. I am interested in the Princess. Tell me just how you are feeling about her."
"I couldn't," he confessed.
"Is she here without her husband?"
"Yes."
"Cat! Of course she's come to flirt with you."
"I don't think so. I think she has come here with an altogether different purpose."
"What purpose?"
He smiled at her with affected tolerance.
"After all, you know," he said, "young people shouldn't be too curious."
She drew away from him petulantly.
"I wonder," she complained, "why you always persist in treating me as though I were a child."
"Well, aren't you?" he rejoined. "Nineteen isn't very old, you know."
"Anyway, if father can tell me things," she argued, "I don't see why you should be so secretive."
"What does your father tell you?"
"Nothing that I am going to repeat to you, Mr. Inquisitor. I will tell you this, though," she went on, dropping her voice a little. "He isn't at all happy about the way things are going over at Nice. Did you know that it was he who insisted upon sittings being suspended for a day, and that he and Arthur sent no less than twenty cables away last night."
"Yes, I knew," he admitted, "but I had no idea that you did."
She permitted herself a friendly little grimace.
"I only mentioned it just to show that every one doesn't ignore me as you do," she observed. "Here's Arthur. He's having a day off, isn't he?"
The young man came up and displayed a handful of plaques. He was good-looking in a pale, rather tired way.
"Why do I slave for your father, Lady Susan," he demanded, "for a vulgar pittance, when there are thousands to be picked up here without the slightest effort?"
"Vulgar pittance!" she scoffed. "I'm sure Dad, or rather the country, pays you quite as much as you're worth. Besides, look at the number of free meals you get!"
"This to the private secretary of a Prime Minister!" the young man groaned. "Why, my dear child—"
"I'm nobody's 'dear child'!" she interrupted. "I am 'Lady Susan' to you two men, except perhaps after a dance, or in the moonlight, or on the river, when I feel yielding and let either of you call me 'Susan.' Please, get it into your heads that I am nobody's 'child.' In this age of flappers, nineteen is almost passé. I could be married to-morrow if I chose."
"Heaven forbid!" Arthur exclaimed. "At any rate unless it were to me."
"You'd have to change considerably before I'd marry either of you," she declared. "If you've won all those plaques, you can lend me one. You can get it out of Father to-night."
"And you refused to borrow from me," Grant said reproachfully.
"Well, you see Arthur is one of the household," she explained, "and I don't feel the same way about him. Besides, I shall probably repay him in ten minutes. I feel that my luck is in."
She strolled off. The Honourable Arthur Lymane sank into her vacant place.
"You're coming up to-night, Slattery?"
"I'm dining."
"The Chief wants to see you particularly," Lymane confided, dropping his voice. "He's already cabled to Washington. There's a damned funny atmosphere about the proceedings at Nice this time. Nothing that amounts to anything without doubt, but every one seems to be so jolly mysterious."
"Is that so?" Grant murmured.
"The Chief took the bull by the horns yesterday when he suspended sittings for twenty-four hours. It gives us a breathing spell, anyway."
"Have you any idea what's at the bottom of it all?" Grant asked.
His companion shook his head.
"The Chief will talk to you to-night. He may be more communicative with you than he has been with me. By Jove! Grant, old fellow!" he exclaimed, his tone suddenly changing to one of wondering admiration. "There's the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in my life. Coming straight at us, too."
The young man had already risen to his feet as though about to take his departure, but, as Gertrude crossed the room towards them, he remained transfixed, watching her. His look was no ordinary stare. The admiration it expressed was, in its way, too subtle and too involuntary.
"She's coming straight at us," he repeated, in an agitated whisper. "For heaven's sake, if you know her, Slattery, present me."
Gertrude, smiling, came towards them. She seemed already to appreciate the situation. Grant rose to his feet.
"Congratulate me!" she exclaimed. "I've won thirty thousand francs."
"Come and celebrate with us," Grant invited, drawing up a chair for her. "Let me present my friend, Mr. Arthur Lymane—the Princess von Diss."
The uproarious little dinner party at the Villa Miranda drew to a close. Lord Yeovil rose to his feet and laid his hand on Grant's shoulder.
"My young friend," he said, "let us leave this scene of debauchery for a few minutes. You and I will take our coffee together in my den. Thank heavens, none of my colleagues or any members of our new Yellow Press were present here to-night. You were the only silent person, Arthur," he added, pausing on his way to the door. "You look as though you had seen a vision."
The young man, whose silence had indeed been noticeable, looked up.
"I have," he admitted.
"Arthur has fallen in love with a beautiful stranger," Susan called out. "Something must be done about it. Now that we've sent Bobby to Coventry we can't really spare Arthur. Dad, isn't it one of the duties of a Prime Minister's private secretary to flirt with his daughter when she feels so disposed?"
"Certainly," Lord Yeovil agreed.
"It is also," Grant reminded her, with a slight smile, "part of the duties of a Prime Minister's daughter to see that his secretary doesn't fall under the influence of fascinating but mysterious strangers."
"That settles your hash, young man," Susan declared, across the table. "You stick to me to-night."
"I think I'll resign," Arthur announced. "These conferences are a great strain on my nervous system as it is."
"Wouldn't you be scared if Dad took you at your word!" Susan observed, reaching over the table for the cigarettes. "You'd never get another job."
"You're all very rude to me," Arthur complained, with a show of dignity. "I am considered in political circles to be a young man of much promise. The Daily Sun said so last week."
There was a chorus of derision, in the midst of which Grant and his host made their way to a small sitting room at the back of the house. Coffee and liqueurs were upon the sideboard, and upon the table was a copy of the Field and two packs of cards.
"Now, my young friend," Lord Yeovil invited, "help yourself to anything you fancy, and there upon the table you will find a highly interesting bridge problem—by way of bluff. Only, whatever we may have to say to one another, let us get it over quickly. The great thing is not to keep Susan waiting. She doesn't understand the interference of international history with her amusements! First of all, have you anything fresh to report?"
"Nothing very definite, sir," Grant acknowledged. "But, in a sense, my cruise to Archangel was a success."
"You mean that you were right in your suspicions?"
"I obtained a good deal of evidence in support of it, evidence which is now in the hands of the British Admiralty. I was at Archangel for a fortnight and I had letters of introduction to two of the Russian admirals. I spent a lot of time on their ships. They were almost as hospitable as the sailors of the old régime."
"Tried to drink you under the table and that sort of thing, I suppose."
Grant smiled.
"I survived the ordeal, but I am afraid that my liver is temporarily deranged," he admitted. "I obtained a lot of quite useful information. Personally I am absolutely convinced now that the Russian fleet has never been trained or adjusted to form a separate unit. It is intended to act in conjunction with the German fleet in some unknown enterprise. A number of the engineers and gunners are Germans and there is a distinct atmosphere of German discipline about the whole outfit. In addition, as I dare say you've heard, they're all armed with German guns. Of course, even a non-expert can easily understand," he went on, after a brief pause, during which he accepted and lit a cigar which his host had silently passed him, "that two nations like Germany and Russia might easily keep within the tonnage allowed them by the Washington Conference, and yet, if each concentrated upon a particular sort of armament, they would, when brought together, be a more formidable fighting unit than the united forces of any two countries who had each spread out their tonnage to make an individual unit."
"You think that is the basis of this understanding between Germany and Russia?" Lord Yeovil asked.
"I am convinced of it," Grant replied. "Internal evidence was more difficult to get than external, but I have obtained a certain amount of proof that, contrary to the provisions of the Pact, there exists a secret naval understanding between Germany and Russia. Fortunately for us and for every one it is Great Britain's turn this year to police the seas, so I have made an exhaustive report to your Admiralty. I'm pretty certain that there'll be British warships in the Baltic before many weeks are past."
"You didn't come back in the yacht?"
Grant shook his head.
"I came back overland, sir. I spent four days in Berlin,—my second visit as a traveller from the Bethlehem Steel Company."
"Pick up anything?"
"Not much," was the grim acknowledgement. "They're pretty close-lipped in Berlin just now, and I had to be careful. I came away, however, with the absolute conviction that there is something in the air. There is what we used to call 'cyclonic disturbance' about, and the trail led here. You probably know more about it than I do."
"That 'cyclonic disturbance' is brewing, all right," the other assented. "We're in the thick of it at Nice. The day before yesterday we came almost to a deadlock over a question which Lutrecht persisted in raising and which we discussed for hours. I am going to treat you with a great deal of confidence, as I always have done, Grant. Years ago, when you were First Secretary at your Embassy in London, and I was Foreign Minister, I discovered that you shared one conviction which has been at the root of the whole of my policy from the moment I entered the Cabinet. That conviction is that the interests of Great Britain and the United States of America are inextricably and inevitably identical. I sha'n't dilate. There it is in plain words, the text of my political life, and because I know that you share it, I have treated you with a confidence I have not extended even to one of my own countrymen. I am now going beyond the limits of official propriety. I am going to tell you what the trouble has been at the last two meetings of the Pact. It has been this: Lutrecht, apparently out of a clear sky, has enunciated this principle and claims the confirmation of the Pact; that, whereas every nation of the Pact stands together against aggression by any member of it against another member, there is nothing in its constitution to prevent two members of the Pact arriving at a separate and individual understanding as regards proceedings directed against any nation not a member of the Pact. Do you follow me, Grant?"
"To the bitter end," was Grant's reply. "The thing's as plain as a pikestaff. I have felt this coming for years. We are close on the trouble now."
"Well," Lord Yeovil continued, "I suspended proceedings for twenty-four hours to obtain the opinion of some international jurists. I shall delay them for another twenty-four hours until after to-morrow's meeting."
Grant leaned a little forward in his chair. It was obvious that he was deeply moved.
"I can't tell you, sir, how much I appreciate your confidence," he said, "and honestly I think the fact that you have been willing to give it to me has been and will be helpful to the peace of the world. And now I am going to ask you something else. You are postponing the consideration of Prince Lutrecht's arguments until after to-morrow, as you admit, with a purpose. Is that purpose your intention to propose to the Conference that the United States be once more invited to join the Pact?"
The Prime Minister eyed his vis-à-vis, for a moment, with inscrutable countenance. He was no longer the indulgent father of a tomboy daughter or the genial host of a young people's party. He looked every inch of him the great statesman he really was.
"Where did you get that from, Grant?" he demanded.
"You know my position, sir," the young man replied earnestly. "I am the one foreign Secret Service agent my country can claim. Even then, I'm not official. I have money to spend and I spend it. I have sources of information and I use them. I have friends in Washington, too, with whom I am in touch hour by hour. This is not a question of betrayal; it is more divination. They expect that invitation on the other side, sir. And the best of them hope for it. Will it be forthcoming?"
Lord Yeovil considered for a full minute. Then he knocked the ash from his cigar.
"Well," he admitted, "you've seen your way to the truth, Grant. I'm going to risk it. It's a big thing so far as I am concerned. If, by any chance, the Conference opposes me, my resignation will be inevitable. If, by any chance, I get the thing through, and Washington refuses, I shall be the most discredited politician who ever placed his country in a humiliating position."
"I don't think the United States will refuse," Grant declared. "It is most unfortunate that the matter will have to go to the Senate and be publicly discussed because, of course, as you know, there are always malignant influences in a polyglot country like ours. But I know the feeling of the people who count. They want to come in like hell."
"I expect you've been supplying them with a little information," Lord Yeovil observed.
Grant nodded.
"I never leave them alone," he admitted. "To a certain extent I'm afraid they look upon me as an alarmist for the simple reason that there is scarcely a single citizen of the United States who doesn't believe absolutely in the impregnability of his country. However, I think I've stirred them up a little in Washington, and there's more to be done in that way, yet. Do you feel inclined to tell me, sir, what would be the prospect of the voting if you bring forward your motion to-morrow?"
"They appear to me to be in our favour," was the deliberate reply. "When the Pact was first formed any invitation to join it had to be unanimous. Lately, however, that has been modified. Unless there are four dissentients now, any nation proposed, becomes, if willing to join, 'ipso facto' a member of the Pact. I can conceive two; it might be possible to conceive three dissentients. I can put my finger upon no possible fourth."
"I see," Grant murmured. "By the bye was Baron Naga at Nice yesterday?"
"He was."
"Do you know if he has received any dispatches from home since the last sitting?"
Lord Yeovil considered for a moment.
"He must have," he acknowledged, "because he was able to give us a very crude description of these flying boats of theirs, which the Italians are so curious about. He had no information at all two days ago when the matter came up."
"I'd give in the neighbourhood of a million dollars to see that dispatch," Grant declared.
There was still a great deal of noise in the dining room and in the passage. Lord Yeovil walked to the door and locked it. Then he came back to his place. He spoke slowly and with the air of one choosing his words.
"Slattery," he said, "it has been in my mind for two years to propose a further invitation to your country to join the Pact, because, in my opinion, conditions during the last decade have entirely altered, and the position of your country outside the Pact, even though she may be considered the greatest power in the world, has become anomalous and dangerous. She has subscribed to the Limitation of Armaments, which she herself inaugurated, and has scrupulously carried out her obligations. With all her power and wealth she is unable to launch a single battleship or put under arms a single regiment of soldiers beyond the proportion allotted to her by the other subscribing powers. Yet, although she is in this position, she is not a member of the Pact. That is to say, that, legally speaking, any two or three nations who do belong to the Pact might attack America with superior forces and the other members of the Pact would be powerless."
"You have placed the matter in a nutshell, sir," Grant agreed. "It was the consideration of these things which brought me to Europe and keeps me employed here. America, when the great call came, rose magnificently to her opportunities. She stretched across to Europe, and though, indeed, others bore the brunt of the burden, she ended the war of nineteen-fourteen. Since then, without a doubt, she has had a political relapse. Her statesmen have lost a certain measure of insight and vision. She has sunk back into the parochial. Politics have become more than ever a game and a profession. Her statesmen are so busy fighting over their own national problems that they have never envisaged the danger upon the horizon. That has been my view. It is my view to-day."
"Go on," Lord Yeovil invited. "You have not been in Europe during these last twelve months for nothing."
"I am convinced," Grant declared, "that Germany and Japan have arrived at an understanding to strike at America. I am convinced for that reason that they will oppose your invitation to America to-morrow. If they do not and I have wasted my time, then God be thanked for it. I shall go back to polo and golf, hunt the hounds at Pau, and never take myself seriously again."
The older man helped himself to a cigarette and tapped it thoughtfully upon the table without lighting it.
"There is just one thing, Slattery," he said. "I have the greatest respect and liking for Naga. I cannot somehow believe that he would oppose me to-morrow unless he first gave me some intimation of his intention. Besides, he isn't in the least bellicose. I believe him to be an honourable man, and I can't imagine his being mixed up in any Teutonic plot."
Grant nodded.
"I, too," he agreed, "have a great respect for Naga. At the same time, with these Orientals, one has to remember it is their country first, their country second, their country all the time."
There were warning sounds from outside—the exodus of all the young people into the hall. Insistent voices called for Grant. He slipped across and unlocked the door.
"You had better go," his host advised. "We understand one another and there is nothing more to be done at present. To-morrow, after the meeting of the Conference, we shall know where we stand."
"It's a private meeting, isn't it?"
"Yes. Thank God, we've managed to keep the Press out. Between you and me, Grant, if there were no newspapers, all the nations of the world would be sitting round in a family party. There would be no wars and very few quarrels. It is the enlightened Press of this generation which provides the fuel for tragedy."
The door was thrown open.
"'X to lead the ace of hearts and make the grand slam!'" Lady Susan cried. "Do come along, Grant. Whatever do grand slams in print matter? I have liqueurs on with Arthur that we're in the Club in twelve minutes. Do you think your Rolls-Royce is equal to it?"
"Nine-and-a-half is my time," Grant replied. "Nine, if you run up the stairs. Come on!"
The little party hurried off, their automobile lights flashing through the darkness of the curving drive, their voices disturbing the owls and waking many echoes in the violet stillness. Then the last car glided off down the hill and the Villa was left in silence.
Towards it, from the other side of Nice, came thundering through the darkness a great limousine, with its four lights flaring and siren whistle blowing. Outside, the driver sat with a face like a graven mask, with one thought in his brain. Inside, a man lay back amongst the cushions, upon whose forehead the sign of death seemed to already rest.
Lord Yeovil, after the departure of the young people of the house, settled down to spend an evening after his own heart. He rang for his servant, ordered the wood fire to be replenished, exchanged his dinner coat for a smoking jacket, and lit a battered-looking briar pipe, which was the delight of his life. He was beginning to feel the need for a period of cool and impartial deliberation. For the last ten days he had been presiding over the meetings at Nice of the Pact of Nations, an organisation established in Paris in nineteen-thirty, and now, twenty years later, the guiding force of the world. Its bitterest critics—and, at its inauguration, there had been many—were forced now to admit that the Pact had become one of the brilliant successes of the century. Its conception had first been mooted at a Trade Conference at Genoa in nineteen-twenty-two, and its provisions, subsequently drawn up with the utmost care by a committee of European law makers, practically made war amongst its members impossible. France had been able to abandon herself at last to a sense of complete and luxurious security. Germany, admitted after some hesitation, had apparently been amongst its most law-abiding members. The Limitation of Armaments, the great pacific scheme initiated by the President of the United States early in nineteen-twenty-one, was still carried on as a separate institution but with numerous affiliations. There was only one great drawback to the Pact, one flaw alone which prevented its being the greatest association ever formed during the world's history, and that drawback was the fact which, at the present moment, was giving both Grant Slattery and Lord Yeovil cause for the greatest apprehension. The United States, after a period of profound deliberation, during which great dissensions had arisen, had decided to be the one great power outside its influence. For the same reasons which had kept her for so long out of the war of nineteen-fourteen, she had reiterated her policy of self-determination and had once more declared Europe outside the sphere of her political interests. Her position had been the principal subject of discussion amongst statesmen and thinkers for many years. No administration, however, had been strong enough to change it, and it was universally accepted now as an unassailable attitude. She had ample justification for believing herself strong enough to fight her own battles and defend her own honour. Her position was in its way magnificent and evoked the florid and rhetorical praise of many of her own writers, especially those who were in any way Teutonic in their origin. Those who, like Grant Slattery, saw the sinister side of the situation, were few and their voices unheard in the great glad pæan of thanksgiving in which her Press, day by day, and month by month, glorified and exaggerated her unexampled and amazing prosperity. Without a doubt America had become the richest country in the world.
It was of America that Lord Yeovil, who had once been an exceedingly popular Ambassador at Washington, was thinking as he smoked his disreputable pipe, lounging in an easy-chair, his feet upon the fender. He had a profound respect for Grant Slattery, whose handling of various intricate matters, whilst First Secretary in London, had won his unqualified approval. The young man had seemed at that time assured of an ambassadorship, and his complete withdrawal from the Diplomatic Service had been a mystery even to his intimates. Lord Yeovil knew the reason for that withdrawal and was day by day growing more thoroughly to appreciate it. He was thinking of it now as he smoked his meditative pipe, wondering exactly how much real information Grant had picked up in Berlin, wondering, too, whether that small cloud which had already appeared on the political horizon was destined to seriously disturb the thirty years of peace.
The sound of wheels in the drive and the pealing of the bell broke into his reflections. He glanced at the clock. It was a few minutes past eleven,—an impossible hour for an ordinary caller. Presently Andrews, a young typist employed by his private secretary, knocked at the door and entered.
"I'm sorry to disturb you, sir," he said, "but Baron Naga is here and asks if you will receive him."
"Baron Naga!" the Prime Minister repeated in amazement. "At this hour of the night!"
"He seems to have come straight from Nice," the young man confided.
"I will see him, unofficially, of course,—delighted. But what on earth is the urgency?"
"His Excellency gave me no intimation, sir."
"You can show him in," Lord Yeovil directed. "Explain that I'm out of harness and spending a quiet evening."
Baron Naga himself was obviously paying no visit of ceremony. He had not changed his clothes for the evening and was wearing the frock coat and dark trousers in which he usually appeared at meetings of the Conference. His complexion was always rather more waxen than sallow, but to-night it seemed positively ghastly. His little formal bow before he advanced to shake hands was unsteady. A man of another race and different manner of life might have been suspected of drunkenness.
"My dear Baron!" Lord Yeovil said hospitably. "This is very friendly of you. I hope you do not bring me bad news. Sit down, please," he invited.
The Ambassador sank into an easy-chair. He was most undoubtedly ill.
"I am much obliged to you, sir, for receiving me at this late hour," he said. "My errand is of some importance. I have come to announce to you, in the first place, that my Imperial Master has accepted my resignation from the highly honourable post of Ambassador to Great Britain, and also, from the representation of Japan at the Pact of the Nations. I shall not, therefore, be attending the Meeting to-morrow."
"God bless my soul!" Lord Yeovil exclaimed. "I regret very much to hear this."
"Your lordship is very kind," was the agitated reply. "Baron Katina is on his way from Berlin to take my place at the Pact of Nations, and Count Itash is already on the spot if anything of urgency should occur. My Imperial Master has not, I believe, as yet signified his wishes so far as regards my successor at St. James's."
"But, my dear Baron, this is most terrible news!" the other declared. "Most unexpected, too. If you will allow me to say so, there is no one with whom it has been a greater pleasure to work or whose loyal support during the past sessions of the Pact I have more appreciated."
"You are very kind, Lord Yeovil, most gracious," his visitor repeated, a little wistfully. "It has come to pass, however, that on a very vital matter I have found myself unable to conform to the desires and policy of those in whose hands the destiny of my country rests. It is a great grief to me."
"I am sure it must be," the Prime Minister assented, watching his visitor closely. "You have made me very curious. I was not aware that there was any subject of policy at present under consideration which could give scope for a difference of opinion of such drastic moment."