A SILENT UNDERSTANDING
Phil descended from his _rick'sha_ at the Tokyo Club and paid the
coolie.
The building faced an open square between the Imperial Hotel and the
Parliament Buildings, along one of the smaller picturesque moats, which
the fever for modernization was now filling in to make a conventional
boulevard. A motor shed stood at the side of the plaza and an automobile
or two was generally in evidence. The structure was small but
comfortable enough, with reading- and card-rooms and a billiard-room of
many tables. It was the clearing-house for the capital's news, the
general exchange for Diet, Peers' Club and the Embassies. It was a place
of tacit free-masonry and conversational dissections. From five to seven
in the afternoon it was a polyglot babble of Japanese, English, French,
German and Italian, punctuated with the tinkle of glasses and the
cheerful click of billiard balls. Over its tables secretaries met to
gossip of the newest _entente_ or the latest social "affair," and
_protocols_ had been drafted on the big, deep, leather sofas adjoining
the bar.
The door was opened by a servile bell-boy in buttons. Phil tossed his
hat on to the hall-rack and entered. It was cool and pleasant inside,
and a great bowl of China asters sat on the table beside the membership
book. On the wall was a wire frame full of visitors' cards. He strode
through the office and entered a large, glass-inclosed piazza where a
number of Japanese, some in foreign, some in native costume, were
watching a game of _Go_. Two younger Legation _attachés_ were shaking
dice at another table. It was but a little past noon and the place had
an air of sober quiet, very different, Phil reflected, from the club on
the Yokohama Bund, which was always buzzing, and where he was
hail-fellow-well-met with everybody. Frowning, he passed into the next
room.
Here his eye lightened. Sitting in a corner of one of the huge sofas
which sank under his enormous weight, was Doctor Bersonin. A little
round table was before him on which sat a tall glass frosted with
cracked ice.
"Sit down," said the expert. "How do you come to be in Tokyo? The
Review, I presume." He struck a call-bell on the table and gave an order
to the waiter.
Phil lighted a cigarette. "No," he said, "I've come to stay for a
while."
"You haven't given up your bungalow on the Bluff?" asked Bersonin
quickly. There was an odd eagerness in his colorless face--a look of
almost dread, which Phil, lighting his cigarette, did not see. It
changed to relief as the other answered:
"No. Probably I shan't be here more than a few days."
The expert settled back in his seat. "You'll not find the hotel
everything it should be, I'm afraid," he observed more casually.
"I'm not there," Phil answered. "I--I've got a little Japanese house."
"So! A _ménage de garçon_, eh?" The big man held up his clinking glass
to the light, and under cover of it, his deep-set yellowish eyes darted
a keen, detective look at Phil's averted face. "Well," he went on, "how
are your affairs? Has the stern brother appeared yet?"
Phil shifted uneasily. "No," he replied. "I expect him pretty soon,
though." He drained the glass the boy had filled. "You've been
tremendously kind, Doctor," he went on hurriedly, "to lend me so much,
without the least bit of security--"
"Pshaw!" said Bersonin. "Why shouldn't I?" He put his hand on the
other's shoulder with a friendly gesture. "I only wish money could give
me as much pleasure as it does you, my boy."
Two men had seated themselves in the next room. Through the open door
came fragments of conversation, the gurgle of poured liquid and the
bubbling hiss of Hirano mineral water. Bersonin lowered his voice:
"Youth! What a great thing it is! Red-blood and imagination and zest to
enjoy. All it needs is the wherewithal to gild its pleasures. After a
time age catches us, and what are luxuries then? Only things to make
tiresomeness a little less irksome!"
Phil moved his glass on the table top in sullen circles. "But suppose
one hasn't the 'wherewithal' you talk of? What's the fun without money,
even when you're young? I've never been able to discover it!"
"Find the money," said Bersonin.
"I wish some one would tell me how!"
Bersonin's head turned toward the door. He sat suddenly rigid. It came
to Phil that he was listening intently to the talk between the two men
in the next room.
"I needn't point out"--it was a measured voice, cold and incisive and
deliberate--"that when the American fleet came, two years ago,
conditions were quite different. The cruise was a national _tour de
force_; the visit to Japan was incidental. Besides, there was really no
feeling then between the two nations--that was all a creation of the
yellow press. But the coming of this European Squadron to-day is a
different thing. It is a season of general sensitiveness and distrust,
and when the ships belong to a nation between which and Japan there is
real and serious diplomatic tension--well, in my opinion the time is, at
best, inopportune."
"Perhaps"--a younger voice was speaking now, less certain, less poised
and a little hesitant--"perhaps the very danger makes for caution.
People are particularly careful with matches when there's a lot of
powder about."
"True, so far as intention goes. But there is the possibility of some
_contre-temps_. You remember the case of the _Ajax_ in the Eighties. It
was blown up in a friendly harbor--clearly enough by accident, at least
so far as the other nation was concerned. But it was during a time of
strain and hot blood, and you know how narrowly a great clash was
averted. If war had followed, regiments would have marched across the
frontier, shouting: 'Remember the _Ajax_!' As it was, there was a panic
in three bourses. Solid securities fell to the lowest point in their
history. The yellow press pounded down the market, and a few speculators
on the short side made gigantic fortunes."
A moment's pause ensued. Bersonin's fingers were rigid. There seemed
suddenly to Phil to be some significance between his silence and the
conversation--as if he wished it to sink into his, Phil's, mind. The
voice continued:
"What has happened once may happen again. What if one of those
Dreadnaughts by whatever accident should go down in this friendly
harbor? It doesn't take a vivid imagination to picture the headlines
next morning in the newspapers at home!"
The ice in the tumblers clinked; there was a sound of pushed-back
chairs.
As their departing footsteps died in the hall, Bersonin's gaze lifted
slowly to Phil's face. It had in it now the look it had held when he
gazed from the roof of the bungalow on the Bluff across the anchorage
beneath. Phil did not start or shrink. Instead, the slinking evil that
ruled him met half-way the bolder evil in that glance, from whose
sinister suggestion the veil was for a moment lifted, recognizing a
tacit kinship. Neither spoke, but as the hard young eyes looked into the
cavernous, topaz eyes of Doctor Bersonin, Phil _knew_ that the thought
that lay coiled there was a thing unholy and unafraid. His heart beat
faster, but it warmed. He felt no longer awed by the other's greater
age, standing and accomplishments. He was conscious of a new,
half-insolent sense of easy comradeship.
"Suppose," said Bersonin slowly, "I should show you how to find the
money."
A sharp eagerness darted across Phil's face. Money! How much he needed
it, longed for it! It could put him on his feet, clear off his debts,
square his bridge-balance, and--his brother notwithstanding!--enable him
to begin another chapter of the careless life he loved! He looked
steadily into the expert's face.
"Tell me!" he almost whispered.
Bersonin rose and held out his hand. He did not smile.
"Come with me to-night," he said. "I dine late, but we'll take a spin in
my car and have some tea somewhere beforehand. Tell me where your house
is and I'll send Ishida with the motor-car for you."
Phil gave him the address and he went out with no further word. A great,
brass-fitted automobile, with a young, keen-eyed Japanese sitting beside
the chauffeur, throbbed up from the shed. Bersonin climbed ponderously
in. A gray-haired diplomatist, entering the Club with a stranger,
pointed the big man out to the other as he was whirled away.